Damn, but if it isn’t just a wonderful feeling when the GOP is, to quote a phrase borrowed from Channel 12 news last Tuesday night, “in shock.”
From today’s Newsday:
The Democrats’ dramatic gains in Tuesday’s election signal the end of decades of Republican domination of Long Island politics, experts in both parties say.
“The days of monolithic Republican control are over,” said John V.N. Klein, a former GOP Suffolk County Executive. “In the past when this kind of thing happened, I’d say give it a couple of elections and we’ll be back in charge again. We can’t count on that anymore.”
The days of monolithic Republican control are over.
My local township, Brookhaven (also known informally as “Crookhaven”), has been controlled by Republicans for the last three or four decades. On Tuesday night, Democrat Brian Foley won the Brookhaven Supervisor seat, and Democrats took control of the county legislature. The Nassau County District Attorney seat was unexpectedly taken over, by Democrat Kathleen Rice against incumbent Denis Dillon, Republican. Rice campaigned hard for a woman’s right to choose, proving that even in a hotbed of Republican “moral values,” enough people still believe that “rare, safe, and legal” is the best way to tackle the issue of unwanted pregnancy.
If politics is local, the Republicans are in for a rude awakening next November.
In California, even the Governator himself, Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is having a harder time than he ever could’ve imagined. As reported in today’s International Herald Tribune, the public responded to his four ballot initiatives (to which he devoted a substancial amount of his personal fortune), “no, no, no, and no.” More from the article:
His personal popularity, which a year ago was at nearly 70 percent, has dropped to the mid-30s – and with it his ability to threaten recalcitrant Democratic lawmakers by going over their heads to hold a public vote on proposals concerning teacher tenure, union political spending, state budget rules and legislative redistricting.
The movie-star-turned-governor had promised that Tuesday would be “Judgment Day” for his opponents. Instead, it was Schwarzenegger who was weighed in the balance and found wanting, suddenly at a crossroads in his brief political career.
The days of Republican rule are ending. Not soon enough. Every time they get in power, they destroy things, and then it takes a decade or more for the Democrats to clean up after them. It’s a shame we can’t just continue to move forward all the time instead of taking one step back for every two steps forward.