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Yesterdays elections are being written off in the media as unimportant or indicative of nothing. But in fact there are some fairly interesting lessons to be learned in yesterday's vote:
1. The fewer poor and or Black people that vote, the better for the Republicans. This is the lesson in Virginia where the voter turn out was much lower than last year, when Obama won the state. And African American votes went from 1/5 to about 16% of voters.
This has long been the strategy of the GOP. In 1980,
Paul Weyrich, the founder of the conservative movement was saying: "I don't want everyone to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They're won by a majority of voters."
The fight against ACORN is partly a fight about voter suppression. ACORN gets people to register to vote who do not normally register to vote. Kill ACORN and other efforts to get more people to vote and you manage to help the GOP.
2. Denying gays and lesbians the same rights as straight people is still a good strategy for winning. This is a lesson learned in Virginia, where newly elected GOP Governor McDonnell believes, at least according to a 20-year old graduate school thesis he wrote at the evangelical Regent University, that government should strengthen the traditional family by working against gay rights, abortion rights, and even women in the workplace (i.e. working women undermine the family).
It is also the lesson in
Maine, where a recently passed same-sex marriage law was overturned by the voters. Ah heck, it's also a lesson at Obama's Whitehouse where not a single thing has been done to stop discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military or to support same-sex marriage legislation.
It's good for the Republicans; it's good for the Dems; it just ain't so good for the gays and lesbians.
3. Rich candidates can buy the election. Although the NY
Times is trying to spin Michael Bloomberg's re-election as mayor of New York City as "close," the truth is he won and he won because he outspent his opponent by 14 to 1. In fact, Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own dollars into the election.
Of course, lesson number 1 also can be applied, since the Republican mayor also won an election where
the turnout appeared to be on track to be among the lowest in modern New York history.
The real lessons to be drawn from this election and every other one is that until there is real reform of campaign finance laws, until civil rights are not decided by a majority of voters, and until the GOP is held accountable for decades of voter suppression, the results of the election are that the best strategy for winning is not to run an honest campaign with good ideas for governance.
Instead, the best way to win an election is to suppress the vote, bash the queers, and buy the vote.
Christie Wins in New Jersey, McDonnell in Virginia - NYTimes.com.