@in a NYT article long ago, a book review I think, they called her a fantastic researcher (before, of course, ripping into her opinions). I wouldn’t be surprised if he was alluding to it.
@ergh Kulawik delegitimizes his entire column by citing Ann Coulter as a source for simple electoral statistics could be easily found & don’t make her “immaculately researched.” Also, good job to Spec for cutting off his last sentence in the print edition.
@not really It’s no surprise that swing state senators are to the center of safe seat senators, but it’s hardly true that the dem lead in the senate is exclusively moderate and conservative dems.
Dems picked up 6 seats. Two are out-and-out liberal:
Sherrod Brown
Sheldon Whitehouse
And the rest of ’em are much liberaller (made-up word) than the opposition.
the Dems-are-conservative meme is just a GOP talking point.
@i like that bwog and #1 can’t even address his points-which are completely true. look at the picture for tester, webb, shuler…heck even casey is ardently pro life
@I think the odds are good that Kulawik is conservative first, Republican second. He doesn’t say the Democratic victory was undeserved, but expected – he’s just angry that the extreme end of the Dem. party capitalized on it
and #4’s right, his points were valid – the Dem lead in the senate is due, 100%, to moderate and conservative Dems
@of course citing webb and casey is too easy. for your webb and casey, i give you brown (OH), mccaskill (MO), and whitehouse (RI). tester is in the middle of the whole group rather than on the slightly conservative side with webb and casey.
kulawik undermines his own argument by ignoring these other victories for the dems. ohio’s new governor-elect is also a liberal. it’s careless and wrong to overlook the significance of ohio in this election; the same state that two years ago decided the election in favor of george w. bush just elected one of the most progressive guys in politics (at one point schumer and reid thought he was too liberal to win) to the senate and an almost as progressive guy, ted strickland, as governor.
sorry, kulawik and #4, but picking out three guys who fit your argument does not a national pattern make.
@what a specious argument. you’re aware that you’re citing democratic senators who happen to be ‘progressive’ versus DEMOCRATIC senators who happens to not be liberal. there were only 6 senate pick ups. half of those were by people whose actual views on the issues line up more with conservatives than liberals–how do you think that’s going to stack up when there’s another bill on partial birth abortion or something on the death penatly or anythign besides populist issues? especially in a 51-49 senate where lieberman is the 51st vote
and we’re not even counting the house, where guys like ellsworth, shuler, lampson and others are going to make the blue dogs even stronger
finally, ohio was not won because a certain progressive move. otherwise schmidt would have been gone too after the special election was so close. it was because the republicans in that state were more corrupt than nixon.
i really hope dems aren’t going to piss away this control by overreaching. they need to reach out to even more moderates and build a stronger coalition to win even more seats in ’08
schmidt BARELY defeated her democratic opponent, and it was in of the most republican areas of ohio. plus, her opponent was a newbie who had little name recognition at the start. the formidable challenge against schmidt shows that although she won, she’s still carrying around a lot of failure and loss.
and statewide, there was a progressive move. why else did the very progressive sherrod brown beat a two-term incumbent senator who based his whole campaign on emphasizing his “moderacy” and distancing himself from both his party and his president. his campaign even took on the slogan, “an INDEPENDENT fighter.” and brown didn’t just slightly beat this guy. he won by 12 points. you don’t call that a progressive move?
@oh for fuck's sake I can’t take this shit anymore about Kulawik being a voice of reason. He is a hack, and is nearly as poisonous to debate on this campus as the extreme far left (note: that means people like the Spartacists, not regular liberals that Kulawik, following O’Reilly/Hannity et al, paints as being off the map)
You want someone to address his “points” #4? Fine. Here you go. After that, I’m gonna have to take a shower.
Kulawik, after apparently immaculately researching Ann Coulter, talks about how this midterm election was pretty much nothing compared to previous sixth-year midterms as far as losses in Congress go. Unfortunately, he neglects to mention, probably on purpose, an element used exponentially more in modern politics that makes it categorically more difficult to beat an incumbent, namely gerrymandering. Innumerable analysts have stated that Republican losses would have been far greater if they hadn’t gerrymandered the fuck out of America for the past twelve years.
Creatively, Kulawik uses the “all politics are local” adage to analyze this election. Unfortunately and elastically, he chooses to prove it by parroting talking points from Fox News about how Nancy Pelosi “disappeared” the week before the election. Actually, it was Hastert who hibernated the week before the election, and sweet jesus you’re gonna talk about Democrats ducking when most Republican candidates refused to be seen within a country mile of the President himself? Kulawik has a (truly original) point in decrying the Democrats’ lack of a coherent agenda, but does that really prove that this election was about local politics?
What could really solve that question? Oh, I dunno maybe the freaking exit polls, where the voters actually say what was most important to them in this election, and where “local issues” consistently ranked waaaaaayyyy behind congressional corruption and the war in Iraq as the most important issues. Kulawik thinks that because every Democrat didn’t have their talking points together (and yes of course the Republicans were the picture of a united front this election), therefore the election must have been about local issues. Well, that might have been the case, except that there was a platform that united Democratic and Independant voters nationally: hatred of the Republican party, and the culture of corruption and cronyism that it has come to embody as much as any administration and Congress in history.
Kulawik says that Democrats wouldn’t talk about national politics. Christ, that’s all the democrats would talk about. Just because the alternative they proposed wasn’t the one Kulawik wanted (“abortions will be mandatory for all women! Ban Christmas!), doesn’t mean there was no alternative. When the ticket you’re running against has a history of being inept, corrupt ideologues, your message is that you’re able, honest, and realistic, which is what the Democrats did. Of course, so far their fucking it up royally with their House appointments but thats what people voted for.
Did the Democrats pick a few candidates who went a little more to the right on some social issues to pick up a few votes? Sure. But there were also plenty of candidates who won in traditionally more conservative districts on distinctly liberal platforms. And these social issues weren’t even close to what people really voted on. What was important was the libertarian streak that many new Democratic candidates brought to their platforms because they were tired of Republican overreach and incompetence. Yes both Casey and Santorum are pro-life. But Santorum is “man-on-dog, shove-it-down-your-throat” pro-life and Casey is people-still-have-a-right-to-their-privacy, maybe-we-should-work-on-eliminating the root causes of teen pregnancy-pro-life. Their is a big difference.
Kulawik isn’t completely wrong. He usually isn’t. But he does the same shit he always does, a hallmark of slimy, dishonest, writing, which is to take a few disparate trends, ignore others, and, in his case, turn them into an argument where, somehow, the point is that “progressive” is a swear word in modern (why not make modern a swear word?) America, and that fringe 60 % is out of touch with the mainstream.
God I feel pathetic. But I just couldn’t stomach people talking about this guy like he’s really insightful when in real life his head is up Bill O’Reilly’s ass.
@Wow The ISO have learned to use the bourgeoisie computer.
1) RTFA: Kulawik clearly stated that voters were unhappy with Congress and the President – but the elections were kept “LOCAL” in the sense that the focus was on the candidates, not the party. Of course, you could just pull out a random intepretation and rant… oh wait, nevermind.
2)”hatred of the Republican party, and the culture of corruption and cronyism that it has come to embody as much as any administration and Congress in history.”
Amazing, almost word for word, you embody the same fringe leftist that Kulawik talked about (those who think that “bush is the worst president” and the “worst party” in history). If you assement held true, shouldn’t the results have been higher than the historical averages?
LOGIC! AHHHH, THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING
3) Kulawik NEVER said that liberals didn’t win elections – again, read the damn article. But with a slim lead in the Senate and a slightly larger one in the Senate, you have to admit, that the moderate/conservative/liberal bipartisans helped their cause – greatly. To take that point to the next step and say that these folks don’t represent the views of Pelosi, Boxer… and the hard line progressives, isn’t much a stretch.
You admit it yourself:
“Of course, so far their fucking it up royally with their House appointments but thats what people voted for.”
Say what you will, but you actually agree with him
@Erm You really don’t think this has been an exceptionally corrupt Congress? How many Republicans have resigned in disgrace, been indicted, and/or made sexual advances to underage interns in the last year? Whoops! Guess that’s the ol’ left-wing hyperbole machine kicking in again. Damn thing must be stuck on “truth.”
@you do realize bill jefferson got the most votes in his district right and is in the runoff…or that menendez won reelection easily despite having his own ethical troubles, or that the democratic congress has actually vote a resolution applauding a congressman in the early nineties who actually had sex with his pages…or that abramoff is now claiming he has information on 5 or 6 corrupt dem senators
the republicans deserved to be taken out for not ending this culture of corruption but don’t pretend like your shit doesn’t smell bad too
@Well... Note that I didn’t claim there wasn’t any Democratic corruption to complement what exists on the right. Can you back any of your claims up, or what?
And Abramoff is a long way from playing out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man could bring down two-thirds of the legislators in DC, regardless of party. You’re drawing conclusions that I didn’t offer. The point is that the Republicans are CERTAINLY the most prominent corrupt party. With them grappling to overturn a Dem majority, of course more is going to come to light.
There’s really no need to see everything in this black-and-white light (and I’m doing it too, but only because I’m responding to vitriol) — can we maybe agree that there are problems that need to be fixed? A major issue, I feel, in the Republican party is that nobody would admit that anything was wrong — candidates who have been EXPELLED often still won’t admit it. It’s a cultural issue. I don’t know if it’s endemic to them or common among the Democrats, but it’s a huge problem that corruption, crooked campaign finance, and the massive influence of lobbyists are taken in stride as part of the cost of doing business. So… whatever.
@what a lousy hypocrite. switching and baiting from a black and white charge against to republicans to a i only referred to them because they controlled congress. youre other points are bull too..there were plenty of repubs who did condemn foley and the crud in ohio–abramoff was a more complicated matter which as you said is still playing off- thus i don’t know how you can say ignoring stuff like corruption is endemic of republicans..
if anything their power just made their abuses more visible. my response should have proved that this doesn’t mean corruption is restricted to them however
@soo even providing a new high quality school for the neighborhood is aggressive expansion…because it means the ever so slight inconvenience of being housed in a local primary school while columbia battles the same people for the right to give it a dedicated building in manhattanville…unbelievable.
@you'll actually notice republicans on campus just don’t take things as hard as liberals do. so unfortunately nobody’s crying–all this election did is ensure there would be another moderate conservative on the supreme court and not a really conservative on there–which really isn’t that comforting when you consider there will likely only be 3 liberals left
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@well clinton picked up 5 house seats.
@DHI How does “all politics is local” work with “second term Presidents’ parties always lose midterms”?
@in a NYT article long ago, a book review I think, they called her a fantastic researcher (before, of course, ripping into her opinions). I wouldn’t be surprised if he was alluding to it.
@ergh Kulawik delegitimizes his entire column by citing Ann Coulter as a source for simple electoral statistics could be easily found & don’t make her “immaculately researched.” Also, good job to Spec for cutting off his last sentence in the print edition.
@AND anyone remember bush’s “mandate” after winning the popular vote?
this is just what happens
@not really It’s no surprise that swing state senators are to the center of safe seat senators, but it’s hardly true that the dem lead in the senate is exclusively moderate and conservative dems.
Dems picked up 6 seats. Two are out-and-out liberal:
Sherrod Brown
Sheldon Whitehouse
And the rest of ’em are much liberaller (made-up word) than the opposition.
the Dems-are-conservative meme is just a GOP talking point.
@wait.... couldn’t you just have said “more liberal”
@why is kulawik always bitching? That kid is a razor blade and a rope away from being an emo freak judging by his columns.
@hahahah That first headline is made of 23 shades of Awesome.
@I am #1 And this election was clearly a big victory for conservatism.
@well, what about ohio?
@i like that bwog and #1 can’t even address his points-which are completely true. look at the picture for tester, webb, shuler…heck even casey is ardently pro life
@I think the odds are good that Kulawik is conservative first, Republican second. He doesn’t say the Democratic victory was undeserved, but expected – he’s just angry that the extreme end of the Dem. party capitalized on it
and #4’s right, his points were valid – the Dem lead in the senate is due, 100%, to moderate and conservative Dems
@of course citing webb and casey is too easy. for your webb and casey, i give you brown (OH), mccaskill (MO), and whitehouse (RI). tester is in the middle of the whole group rather than on the slightly conservative side with webb and casey.
kulawik undermines his own argument by ignoring these other victories for the dems. ohio’s new governor-elect is also a liberal. it’s careless and wrong to overlook the significance of ohio in this election; the same state that two years ago decided the election in favor of george w. bush just elected one of the most progressive guys in politics (at one point schumer and reid thought he was too liberal to win) to the senate and an almost as progressive guy, ted strickland, as governor.
sorry, kulawik and #4, but picking out three guys who fit your argument does not a national pattern make.
@what a specious argument. you’re aware that you’re citing democratic senators who happen to be ‘progressive’ versus DEMOCRATIC senators who happens to not be liberal. there were only 6 senate pick ups. half of those were by people whose actual views on the issues line up more with conservatives than liberals–how do you think that’s going to stack up when there’s another bill on partial birth abortion or something on the death penatly or anythign besides populist issues? especially in a 51-49 senate where lieberman is the 51st vote
and we’re not even counting the house, where guys like ellsworth, shuler, lampson and others are going to make the blue dogs even stronger
finally, ohio was not won because a certain progressive move. otherwise schmidt would have been gone too after the special election was so close. it was because the republicans in that state were more corrupt than nixon.
i really hope dems aren’t going to piss away this control by overreaching. they need to reach out to even more moderates and build a stronger coalition to win even more seats in ’08
@seriously you’re just plain wrong about ohio.
schmidt BARELY defeated her democratic opponent, and it was in of the most republican areas of ohio. plus, her opponent was a newbie who had little name recognition at the start. the formidable challenge against schmidt shows that although she won, she’s still carrying around a lot of failure and loss.
and statewide, there was a progressive move. why else did the very progressive sherrod brown beat a two-term incumbent senator who based his whole campaign on emphasizing his “moderacy” and distancing himself from both his party and his president. his campaign even took on the slogan, “an INDEPENDENT fighter.” and brown didn’t just slightly beat this guy. he won by 12 points. you don’t call that a progressive move?
@oh for fuck's sake I can’t take this shit anymore about Kulawik being a voice of reason. He is a hack, and is nearly as poisonous to debate on this campus as the extreme far left (note: that means people like the Spartacists, not regular liberals that Kulawik, following O’Reilly/Hannity et al, paints as being off the map)
You want someone to address his “points” #4? Fine. Here you go. After that, I’m gonna have to take a shower.
Kulawik, after apparently immaculately researching Ann Coulter, talks about how this midterm election was pretty much nothing compared to previous sixth-year midterms as far as losses in Congress go. Unfortunately, he neglects to mention, probably on purpose, an element used exponentially more in modern politics that makes it categorically more difficult to beat an incumbent, namely gerrymandering. Innumerable analysts have stated that Republican losses would have been far greater if they hadn’t gerrymandered the fuck out of America for the past twelve years.
Creatively, Kulawik uses the “all politics are local” adage to analyze this election. Unfortunately and elastically, he chooses to prove it by parroting talking points from Fox News about how Nancy Pelosi “disappeared” the week before the election. Actually, it was Hastert who hibernated the week before the election, and sweet jesus you’re gonna talk about Democrats ducking when most Republican candidates refused to be seen within a country mile of the President himself? Kulawik has a (truly original) point in decrying the Democrats’ lack of a coherent agenda, but does that really prove that this election was about local politics?
What could really solve that question? Oh, I dunno maybe the freaking exit polls, where the voters actually say what was most important to them in this election, and where “local issues” consistently ranked waaaaaayyyy behind congressional corruption and the war in Iraq as the most important issues. Kulawik thinks that because every Democrat didn’t have their talking points together (and yes of course the Republicans were the picture of a united front this election), therefore the election must have been about local issues. Well, that might have been the case, except that there was a platform that united Democratic and Independant voters nationally: hatred of the Republican party, and the culture of corruption and cronyism that it has come to embody as much as any administration and Congress in history.
Kulawik says that Democrats wouldn’t talk about national politics. Christ, that’s all the democrats would talk about. Just because the alternative they proposed wasn’t the one Kulawik wanted (“abortions will be mandatory for all women! Ban Christmas!), doesn’t mean there was no alternative. When the ticket you’re running against has a history of being inept, corrupt ideologues, your message is that you’re able, honest, and realistic, which is what the Democrats did. Of course, so far their fucking it up royally with their House appointments but thats what people voted for.
Did the Democrats pick a few candidates who went a little more to the right on some social issues to pick up a few votes? Sure. But there were also plenty of candidates who won in traditionally more conservative districts on distinctly liberal platforms. And these social issues weren’t even close to what people really voted on. What was important was the libertarian streak that many new Democratic candidates brought to their platforms because they were tired of Republican overreach and incompetence. Yes both Casey and Santorum are pro-life. But Santorum is “man-on-dog, shove-it-down-your-throat” pro-life and Casey is people-still-have-a-right-to-their-privacy, maybe-we-should-work-on-eliminating the root causes of teen pregnancy-pro-life. Their is a big difference.
Kulawik isn’t completely wrong. He usually isn’t. But he does the same shit he always does, a hallmark of slimy, dishonest, writing, which is to take a few disparate trends, ignore others, and, in his case, turn them into an argument where, somehow, the point is that “progressive” is a swear word in modern (why not make modern a swear word?) America, and that fringe 60 % is out of touch with the mainstream.
God I feel pathetic. But I just couldn’t stomach people talking about this guy like he’s really insightful when in real life his head is up Bill O’Reilly’s ass.
uggh
@work it right on, voice of reason. it’s about time.
@At least he’s not afraid to stand up for his beliefs. Unlike you.
@Wow The ISO have learned to use the bourgeoisie computer.
1) RTFA: Kulawik clearly stated that voters were unhappy with Congress and the President – but the elections were kept “LOCAL” in the sense that the focus was on the candidates, not the party. Of course, you could just pull out a random intepretation and rant… oh wait, nevermind.
2)”hatred of the Republican party, and the culture of corruption and cronyism that it has come to embody as much as any administration and Congress in history.”
Amazing, almost word for word, you embody the same fringe leftist that Kulawik talked about (those who think that “bush is the worst president” and the “worst party” in history). If you assement held true, shouldn’t the results have been higher than the historical averages?
LOGIC! AHHHH, THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING
3) Kulawik NEVER said that liberals didn’t win elections – again, read the damn article. But with a slim lead in the Senate and a slightly larger one in the Senate, you have to admit, that the moderate/conservative/liberal bipartisans helped their cause – greatly. To take that point to the next step and say that these folks don’t represent the views of Pelosi, Boxer… and the hard line progressives, isn’t much a stretch.
You admit it yourself:
“Of course, so far their fucking it up royally with their House appointments but thats what people voted for.”
Say what you will, but you actually agree with him
@House House**
@Erm You really don’t think this has been an exceptionally corrupt Congress? How many Republicans have resigned in disgrace, been indicted, and/or made sexual advances to underage interns in the last year? Whoops! Guess that’s the ol’ left-wing hyperbole machine kicking in again. Damn thing must be stuck on “truth.”
@you do realize bill jefferson got the most votes in his district right and is in the runoff…or that menendez won reelection easily despite having his own ethical troubles, or that the democratic congress has actually vote a resolution applauding a congressman in the early nineties who actually had sex with his pages…or that abramoff is now claiming he has information on 5 or 6 corrupt dem senators
the republicans deserved to be taken out for not ending this culture of corruption but don’t pretend like your shit doesn’t smell bad too
@Well... Note that I didn’t claim there wasn’t any Democratic corruption to complement what exists on the right. Can you back any of your claims up, or what?
And Abramoff is a long way from playing out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man could bring down two-thirds of the legislators in DC, regardless of party. You’re drawing conclusions that I didn’t offer. The point is that the Republicans are CERTAINLY the most prominent corrupt party. With them grappling to overturn a Dem majority, of course more is going to come to light.
There’s really no need to see everything in this black-and-white light (and I’m doing it too, but only because I’m responding to vitriol) — can we maybe agree that there are problems that need to be fixed? A major issue, I feel, in the Republican party is that nobody would admit that anything was wrong — candidates who have been EXPELLED often still won’t admit it. It’s a cultural issue. I don’t know if it’s endemic to them or common among the Democrats, but it’s a huge problem that corruption, crooked campaign finance, and the massive influence of lobbyists are taken in stride as part of the cost of doing business. So… whatever.
@Well... (sorry, that should read “come to light on the Democrats”)
@what a lousy hypocrite. switching and baiting from a black and white charge against to republicans to a i only referred to them because they controlled congress. youre other points are bull too..there were plenty of repubs who did condemn foley and the crud in ohio–abramoff was a more complicated matter which as you said is still playing off- thus i don’t know how you can say ignoring stuff like corruption is endemic of republicans..
if anything their power just made their abuses more visible. my response should have proved that this doesn’t mean corruption is restricted to them however
as for abramoff the story is breakign–and is apparetnly going to get even bigger
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/abramoff_report_1.html
@ad;fjksdfj 2) GERRYMANDERING !!!
i
@Q.R. ‘”man-on-dog, shove-it-down-your-throat” pro-life’
That’s amazing! I’m never going to stop quoting that line. Thank you, sir.
@yoooooo “man-on-dog!” ah santorum! and milorad pavic! oh the beauty of it all.
@soo even providing a new high quality school for the neighborhood is aggressive expansion…because it means the ever so slight inconvenience of being housed in a local primary school while columbia battles the same people for the right to give it a dedicated building in manhattanville…unbelievable.
@It makes me happy to know that Chris Kulawik is crying.
@you'll actually notice republicans on campus just don’t take things as hard as liberals do. so unfortunately nobody’s crying–all this election did is ensure there would be another moderate conservative on the supreme court and not a really conservative on there–which really isn’t that comforting when you consider there will likely only be 3 liberals left