Paging King Pyrrhus . . . And The Politics Of Hope
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2007 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I am not the type of person who reads too much in a single off-year election. But this certainly strikes me as being interesting. I didn't follow the race all that closely and it is entirely possible that it became as close as it was simply because Tsongas may have been a lousy candidate and Ogonowski was an exceptionally good one. But I have to think that in a period where everything seems to be going against Republicans, the Democrats should have racked up their usual impressive margins in the district. Instead, they had to put up with an uncomfortably close margin.
Again, I am not going to make too much of this. I will, however, point out that if a week is a long time in politics, the fact that we will wait over a year before the next President and the composition of the next Congress is determined means that nothing about the next election can be taken for granted.
No matter what the polls, the pundits and the conventional wisdom says, elections are decided by voters and voters are influenced by highly unpredictable events. These remarks are made ad nauseam, but that doesn't make them any less true. And it certainly doesn't justify throwing in the towel well in advance of the time the votes are actually cast.
I agree, we're a year away from elections and anything can happen. I also agree that some things lately are leaning more favorably to Republicans, not the least of which is Iraq, the economy, the SCHIP nonsense, and the current budget backlong. Having said that, and living in MA, I'm not sure I agree with your take on the Tsongas v. Ogonowski contest. Ogonnowski waa an excellent candidate - worked hard, well spoken, and had a good message. Tsongas, of course, had the machine - Clintons, the state pols, etc. - never easy in this state to switch to Republican. No question the results were closer than expected, and perhaps recent events had an impact. However, I tend to think that these stand alone elections are hard to ascertain a mood swing amongst the larger population. It very well could be; but so far, looking at what's happening in Congress with the list of GOP retirements getting longer and longer, the message is not only the populace is unhappy, but so are the members themselves. Not good.