Paul Begala: "This Was a Good Night For Barack Obama" (Video)

hotairpundit ^ | 5/19/10 | HAP

[Talkradio03]

Let the spin begin, Paul Begala on a late night CNN discussion of the election results says it was a good night for Obama and the Dems (Video)

[nathanbedford]

This is the Rahm Emanuel playbook. In a marginal district assume the clothes of a moderate and claim that the other fella is going to break your rice bowl. It seems to have worked very well in Pennsylvania 12.

My point is that Begala has a point and the implications of this election for the Democrats holding the house and the Senate are not good.

Obviously Obama is going to play the race card as he has with the Arizona immigration issue. He will try to demonize the right in every way conceivable. They will play the Social Security card as their second favorite trump. At a time of economic insecurity Obama and his Democrats will say that they are protecting you from crazed, ideological Republicans who will put grandma out on the ice. That is always to be expected. Up until now it has worked well for them. We thought that the tea parties was evidence that the times have changed, that this time the indignation of the people would sweep all before it.

I am saying, don't be so sure.

[firebrand]

This is the race the Dems were working on. Critz’s brazen walk into an election site tells us something. I admit that this is a mystical interpretation in a way.

I don’t really know much about the district, but Critz did run as a Republican with his pro 2A and pro-life platforms. This seems to be a favorite trick among Pennsylvania Dems. I’m also far from an expert on PA but I know there is a huge group of Dems who are pro-life and feel strongly about it and are torn between their union roots and the pro-life cause.

I refuse to take this one race as an omen for the future. It’s too much of an anomaly. Plus of course Begala was saying the most demoralizing, pro-Dem thing he could think of.

[nathanbedford]

We are in perfect agreement, we both pray that you're right and I am wrong.

[imskylark]

“trounced by eight points in a district that McCain carried”

AND Murtha still won by 58%. The Democrat also ran as pro-life, pro-gun, and against Obamacare.

[tlb]

>>> Let the spin begin, Paul Begala on a late night CNN discussion of the election results says it was a good night for Obama and the Dems

No spin necessary. It was. The Murtha seat is saved, Seastak has a better shot at winning for the dems in November then Specter did, and the Ky republicans stuck us with a Paulist timebomb that eventually will blow up in our faces. Not bad at all, for dems.

[ballplayer]

Agreed,But the Right has a Lot of evidence if they choose to use it that The Democrats may Run on seniors keeping their Social security but thats if they Survive being put to sleep under Obamacare

[MNJohnnie]

We were never going to win the House by taking “Safe” Democrat seats like PA 12.

If we win the House it will be because the “swing” districts turn to the right. McCain won PA12 by like 1%, Kerry carried it in 2004. Murtha carried it year after year with 19+% of the vote. It is a safe D seat. It was a long shot that the GOP can ever win it.

CDs are gerrymanded to be strongly for one part or the other. If the CD has a history of electing D's it is almost impossible to elect an R. Where we win the Congress is the swing districts. Taking back the solidly red CDs we lost by not pruning our deadwood in 2006 and 2008 will also help.

The people to watch are the Indys. In districts that are actually in play, the I’s are strongly anti Dem now. That bodes well for Nov if we can keep the intensity going.

PA 12 signifies nothing. It was always an 80% chance that we would lose it.

[wastoute]

Well, because it is the corollary to “Murphy’s Law”. If it CAN’T happen, it won’t. These entitlements are not going to be realized because they can’t be paid for. How we deal with that is the problem. If the libtards want a disorderly “Coming Insurrection” then we best be ready to give it to them.

Cheers! and keep your marksmanship skills in order. Prepare for scenes from “Shaun of the Dead”. The survivors will rebuild.

[Carley]

And Blanche Lincoln tried to vote twice.

Shameless but getting away with all the fraud all the time.

In Murtha’s district 175 people got two ballots. oops, no.

[Jimmy Valentine]

"Paul Begalla is telling us nothing has changed"

He is whistling past the political graveyard.

Spector is gone.The issue is one of momentum for the rest of the year.

Begala is such a DemocRAT syncophant; he never even wipes off his chin.

[Philo1962]

I fear we have to consider carefully Paul Begalla's larger point, we got trounced by eight points in a district that McCain carried. Even though the district is two to one Democrat, we were supposed to have the intensity in an election with very little turn out.

There was a lot of intensity on the Democrats' side because there were some major contests in the Democratic primary, and none in the Republican primary. So there was a high turnout by Democrats.

More encouraging than the Burns v. Critz result is the primary defeat of Arlen Specter. This is the fourth time in seven months that a candidate strongly supported by Barack Obama has been shot down in flames by the voters. The first three times, Obama's chosen candidate was beaten by the GOP candidate. But this time, he was beaten by Obama's fellow Democrats.

Barack Obama has lost his mojo.

Guys like Begala and Carville can be relied upon to spin-doctor that as a "good night for Barack Obama," but Arlen Specter's failure speaks much more persuasively about the quality of the evening's results.

[BibChr]

Why? Because now no one will be bothering him with requests to campaign for them?

Genius.

[RU88]

The huge tumor protruding from his forehead needs to be examined immediately! Pretty soon he'll be speaking a foreign language he's never learned.

[PhillyMom]

I was on the State’s website. Bill Russell took a lot of votes from Tim Burns; Burns was the establishment candidate. That is telling. I don’t know the area that well, but from what I read in their local papers, this should have been a win for GOP up there. I don’t know what the State GOP is thinking, but hey, I’m from Philadelphia, and they have no clue here.

[nathanbedford]

Gentlemen:

Let's stop and consider what the issue is. The issue is whether the Republicans have the mojo to flip the house. I think they need 39 seats. This seems to me to be within reach. But there is also been talk of an 80 to 100 seat flip and I am simply saying that the evidence before our eyes does not support that. In fact, in cold logic the result in Pennsylvania 12 does not even support a 39 seat flip.

If our original premise is that the Democrats have fallen into such disfavor with the public that they're destined to be swamped in a tidal wave of voter revulsion for what they have done there is no evidence of that in yesterday's election, at least as far as the Democrat side of the aisle is concerned. And where there was a matchup between a Republican and a Democrat the Democrat won by 8% so there is no evidence of such revulsion in Pennsylvania 12.

It does no good to repeat what I have already said, to wit, there is a two to one Democrat majority, there was more intensity in the Senatorial races on the Democrat side, the Democrat ran as a moderate, because all that had already been noted in my initial post. It should equally be noted that the Democrat ran on the old line of protecting Social Security against the Republican barbarians. It seems to have worked again.

On the evidence before our eyes and not on wishful thinking, things are as they always have been, and at least in Pennsylvania 12. There is no evidence of any Republican tsunami in Pennsylvania 12. If you are looking for an indication of the national mood from Pennsylvania 12, and that is the only matchup, (did Abercrombie's Hawaii seat come in?), the indication is contrary to our hopes for the country as a whole.

It is not I who is whistling past the graveyard, it is those who would rather rely on supposition and wishful thinking rather than hard evidence who are likely to misdirect our electoral efforts.

MN Johnnie is absolutely correct when he observes that the independents are the group to watch and we have no data yet that I know if that tells us how the independents went in Pennsylvania 12. Since it is a two to one district, it is quite conceivable that the independents came in nicely on our side but simply were not enough to offset the advantage. Until we have that data a prudent person would ask, where were the independents in Pennsylvania 12 when we needed them? And if they were not there for us yesterday will they be there for us in November?

Do not shoot the messenger, that includes me and even Paul B. because even he can be right, er... I mean correct, as he spins.

[PA Engineer]

Guys like Begala and Carville can be relied upon to spin-doctor that as a "good night for Barack Obama," but Arlen Specter's failure speaks much more persuasively about the quality of the evening's results.

This was a closed primary and most likely suppressed the Independent vote in the special election for District 12. Surprisingly it looks like Altmire is going to be toast in District 4 (Melissa Hart's old seat).

[Future Snake Eater]

In the world of electoral statistics, PA 12 is very much an outlier. If Murtha was still alive, he likely would have been reelected. There’s no end to the random freaks that are repeatedly elected across the country. I just don’t see how that translates to a potential lukewarm showing in November. There’s a LOT still to happen between now and then. It’s just too early to tell.

This time in 2008, I would’ve bet any amount of money that there was NO WAY Obama could win the election. Good thing I didn’t...

[MNJohnnie]

I think we can chalk this one up to a failure of the GOP Establishment in PA. How do you let a career political operative from DC run to the right of your candidate in the current political environment?

Go take a look at Critz issue page. He ran as a Republican. He hypes how he is Pro Life, Pro 2nd Amendment, Pro Domestic Energy production and Pro Military. He also stressed his ties to the US Military and his getting some big award from the National Guard.

Burns on the other hand has no solid creditably with the military plus he is easy to caricature as an "Evil big businessman" in a solidly blue collar district.

On the surface PA-12 voted for the more Conservative candidate. We know that is nonsense but most voters are not so involved in the process.

Once again it seems the GOP was more interested in a candidate that could self fund then one who actually had a serious shot at this seat.

The questions for Nov are:

Are there enough of these sorts of newbie Dems running as Republican Lite to hold these districts for the Dems?

Is the GOP Establishment so uniformly incompetent that they cannot find credible candidates who have a serious connection with the voters in these sorts of district?

How would these voters break if they are confronted with a serious Establishment Democrat vrs a serious challenger Conservative rather the being forced to choose between a faux "Republican lite" Democrat and a Establishment Country Club Republican?

I stand by my contention. PA 12 indicates nothing about Nov.

PA-12 was their seat to lose and they didn't. Big whoop!

The take away from PA 12 should be that the Dems had to work this hard to win this safe seat. Those facts should be ringing warning bells in DNC circles not generating the sort of arrogantly smug complacency expressed by Begula

[MNJohnnie]

I think we can chalk PA-12 up to a failure of the GOP Establishment in PA. How do you let a career political operative from DC run to the right of your candidate in the current political environment?

Go take a look at Critz issue page. He ran as a Republican. He hypes how he is Pro Life, Pro 2nd Amendment, Pro Domestic Energy production and Pro Military. He also stressed his ties to the US Military and his getting some big award from the National Guard.

Burns on the other hand has no solid creditably with the military plus he is easy to caricature as an “Evil big businessman” in a solidly blue collar district.

On the surface PA-12 voted for the more Conservative candidate. We know that is nonsense but most voters are not so involved in the process.

Once again it seems the GOP was more interested in a candidate that could self fund then one who actually had a serious shot at this seat.

The questions for Nov are:

Are there enough of these sorts of newbie Dems running as Republican Lite to hold these districts for the Dems?

Is the GOP Establishment so uniformly incompetent that they cannot find credible candidates who have a serious connection with the voters in these sorts of district?

How would these voters break if they are confronted with a serious Establishment Democrat vrs a serious challenger Conservative rather the being forced to choose between a faux “Republican lite” Democrat and a Establishment Country Club Republican?

I stand by my contention. PA 12 indicates nothing about Nov.

PA-12 was their seat to lose and they didn’t. Big whoop!

The take away from PA 12 should be that the Dems had to work this hard to win this safe seat. Those facts should be ringing warning bells in DNC circles not generating the sort of arrogantly smug complacency expressed by Begula

[dirtboy]

Beyond that, the GOP misplayed the 12th, IMO - they set up a bitter contest between two candidates instead of figuring out how to avoid such a situation and run as a unified party.

Lesson to all - we hang together or hang separately come November.