NY-9 Used To Be So... So, You Know... Liberal

It's 1921 all over again! That was the last time a Republican won in NY-9. This time Brooklyn voters decided to send President Obama a message-- or a hodge podge of messages-- by electing an out-and-out fascist, Bob Turner, to Congress. He won 32,446 (54%) to 27,669 (46%)-- although Weprin won in the Queens part of the district 51-48%. Hordes of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn gave Obama a big thumbs down. In the 2012 midterms 67,011 Democrats voted; more than double the number who voted yesterday. If Obama thinks he's going to motivate Democrats and left-leaning independents next year, I can't wait to hear what he has in mind.

When Republican fascists attacked Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal-- which brought prosperity and dignity to millions of American working families-- they often spat out the word "Jew" as part of their derogatory description. It was before Christian right apocalyptic mania merged with militarism and Big Oil dictates to tamp down the overt anti-Semitism that was standard GOP fare until the 1980s. Since then, Jewish refugees have been a special class, almost as cherished and encouraged-- unlike when they were turned away by the thousands in the direst time of need-- as the Cubans. America has been taking in a hefty share of Russian and Eastern European Jews, some secular but some from bizarre post-medieval cults, the Hasidim.

One of the ways I disappointed my atheist father was by insisting I-- like everyone else in the 'hood-- get bar mitzvah-ed. When I was 12, living near Kings Highway and 17th Street in what is now New York's 9th congressional district, he offered to take me on a tour of Europe-- and pointed out I wouldn't have to go to Hebrew school-- if I decided to forego the bar mitzvah. In what I think was the last really über-stupid decision of my life I opted for the bar mitzvah. The one positive thing to come out of that was an opportunity to make some bank. The neighborhood shul had good turnouts on Friday nights and Saturdays but Orthodox Jews go to shul every morning to pray and according to rabbinical traditions, God doesn't hear the prayers unless there are at least 10 men present-- 10 men over 13. The neighborhood shul couldn't count on more than 8 on any given morning. So once I was bar mitzvah-ed (i.e.- a man) I could be part of a minyon (the quorum of 10). They gave me and my friend Stuie Cohen $25 or $50 a week each (I can't remember exactly-- only that it was a princely sum) to show up every morning at 7 on our way to school and sit there while they prayed. On mornings when only 7 of them showed up they would count the Torah as the 10th man and on morning when only 6 of them showed up-- they were all very old and frail-- they made due with the Black janitor. One of the old guys assured me he was a Falasha, an Ethiopian Jew, but I sensed I was being deceived and one day the janitor told me his family was from Dothan, Alabama, not Addis Ababa (let alone Gondar). That's probably the last thing I remember about being Jewish, other than the immense pride I felt at the role Jews played in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In my last year of high school James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (an African American and two Jews) were my heroes after they were brutally murdered by the KKK in Mississippi.

I haven't had a lot of interaction with Hasidics. They're very anti-assimilation. I feel uncomfortable writing about them; they're an easy target for bigotry with their ritual clothing and clannish behavior. And their racism... racism that would make the murderers of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner proud-- racism that "shows," in the words of Brooklyn blogger Hasidic Rebel, "the mentality of those who, while living in America, have yet to learn the value of respect and dignity for all mankind."

Black slaves called themselves Israelites before Abraham Lincoln freed them, although they were wise enough to gravitate to the liberating message of Jesus even if they admired the Jews freeing themselves from Pharaoh's bondage. My limited experience with Hasidim makes me think that, except for their propensity towards non-violence and their non-aggressive nature (more like passive-aggressive), they'd be perfect for the KKK... if they'd cut the peyes, dye the robes white and ditch the beaver-skin hats for pillowcases.

If the rebbe says we all shop at Store A, they all shop at Store A. And if the rebbe says we all vote for the right-wing kook, they all vote for the right-wing kook. And yesterday they did. The Hasidim used to be working class and populist. Many still are. But in NY-9, there are lots of rich Hasidim living in McMansions. My sister says her old neighborhood, Manhattan Beach, is unrecognizable as Russian immigrants came in, bought up the properties and tore down the beautiful old character houses and replaced them with sterile McMansions with mezuzahs; and, this week, with Vote Bob Turner signs. NY-9 has been trending less Democratic of late. It's the only district in NYC that gave Kerry a bigger percentage of votes in 2004 than it gave Obama in 2008, something we saw all over the South but not much anywhere else. You can't blame it all on the Hasidim and the Orthodox Jews of course. There are 49,522 Jewish voters in the district, 29,123 Asian voters, 40,566 Hispanic voters, 35,265 Italian voters, and 26,238 Eastern European voters (some of whom are Jews). Jews vote in very high numbers. There aren't all that many Hasidim in NY-9 though, not as many as Orthodox Jews, who do not take orders from rabbis about who to vote for. And it should be remembered that progressives were also eager to send Obama a message. Sunday night PPP released data, though, that showed Obama sinking the party.

Republican Bob Turner is poised to pull a huge upset in the race to replace Anthony Weiner as the Congressman from New York's 9th Congressional District.  He leads Democrat David Weprin 47-41 with Socialist Workers candidate Christopher Hoeppner at 4% and 7% of voters remaining undecided.

Turner's winning in a heavily Democratic district for two reasons: a huge lead with independents and a large amount of crossover support.  He's ahead by 32 points at 58-26 with voters unaffiliated with either major party.  And he's winning 29% of the Democratic vote, holding Weprin under 60% with voters of his own party, while losing just 10% of Republican partisans.

...Weprin has been much maligned as a candidate but he actually has positive favorability numbers too with 39% of voters rating him positively and 36% negatively.  Over the last few years there have been very few races we polled where a candidate had a positive net favorability spread and still lost.  If Obama's approval in the district was even 40% Weprin would almost definitely be headed to Congress. He's getting dragged down by something bigger than himself.

The issue of Israel does appear to be having a major impact on this race.  A plurality of voters-- 37%-- said that Israel was 'very important' in determining their votes. Turner is winning those folks by an amazing 71-22 margin. With everyone who doesn't say Israel is a very important issue for them Weprin actually leads 52-36. Turner is in fact winning the Jewish vote by a 56-39 margin, very unusual for a Republican candidate.  This seems to be rooted in deep unhappiness with Obama on this issue- only 30% of voters overall approve of how he's handling Israel to 54% who disapprove and with Jewish voters his approval on Israel is 22% with 68 of voters disapproving. That has a lot to do with why Turner's in such a strong position.

Remember a couple weeks ago when Cuban-American fascist Marco Rubio claimed Social Security and Medicare had made Americans weaker? These very foreign residents of NY-9 are as in tune with America as Marco Rubio-- i.e., not at all. This is a district that was once the heartland of the New Deal. Sad what happened to it.

Is It Too Late For Obama? Are Weprin And Marshall Warnings Of A Catastrophic 2012 For America?

Weprin's got the sleazy-looking little mustache

I grew up in what is now NY's 9th CD, a solidly Democratic Brooklyn district (which wanders into western Queens these days), which is also where Ken, Bernie Sanders, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandy Pearlman, and Chuck Schumer grew up. Even if the 6 of us still voted there, I don't think it would be enough to save the candidacy of David Weprin tomorrow, at least not according to the PPP data released last night, showing Obama's disapproval numbers just killing Weprin, who is losing 47-41. (Even 29% of Democrats want to send Obama a message. And the message is decidedly not what Obama's blinkered campaign manager, Jim Messina, termed a "Washington conversation.")

Radical right teabagger Bob Turner, who brags that he never met a tax loophole he didn't love, who wants to end Medicare and who is best known as the creator of Jerry Springer's trash TV show, looks like he'll be the first Republican to represent the district since Andrew Petersen's single term from 1921 to 1923. More recently the district was represented by Geraldine Ferraro, Chuck Schumer before he ascended to the Senate, and Anthony Weiner before the ridiculous texting "scandal."

When I was growing up, I don't even remember Republicans bothering to run serious candidates. Sometimes some rich Republican lawyer or realtor would run as a vanity candidate. In 2006 and 2008 there were no GOP candidates against Weiner. But something funny happened in 2008. Almost everywhere in the country-- except in the most viciously racist precincts of the Old Confederacy-- Obama was expanding on John Kerry's electoral results from 4 years before. But not in the 9th. Even in neighboring Republican Staten Island (NY-13), Obama did better than Kerry had. The only district in NYC where he did worse than Kerry was the 9th. Gore had beaten Bush 67-30%. Kerry had beaten Bush 56-44%. Obama dropped a percentage point down to 55%, at a time when other districts in the city were going up for Obama by 5 or 6%. At the same time, Weiner had only a third-party opponent and won with 112,205 votes, 93.1% of those cast.

But the GOP sensed a change, and in 2010, at the height of teabag-mania, they ran the self-financing Turner. The result, at a time when disappointed Democrats began staying away from the polls, was a victory for Weiner, 67,011 (60.8%) versus 43,129 (39.2%) for Turner. Although other Republicans have scored more votes than Turner in past elections, no one had ever scored a bigger percentage of votes. The GOP saw an opportunity. Would Democrats who were disappointed in 2010 also be disappointed in 2011? Late polling shows that's exactly what's going to happen. (According the the PPP, even the large Jewish population is ready to vote against Weprin-- 56-39%-- to give Obama the finger.) It looks like Democrats are demotivated and plan to just not vote tomorrow.

The Republican candidate is in a strong position heading into Tuesday’s special election in the heavily Democratic Congressional district formerly represented by Anthony D. Weiner, according to a new poll released on Friday.

Fifty percent of likely voters in New York’s Ninth Congressional District supported the Republican, Bob Turner, compared with 44 percent who supported his Democratic opponent, Assemblyman David I. Weprin, according to the poll (pdf), conducted from Tuesday to Thursday by the Siena Research Institute.

The gap between Mr. Turner and Mr. Weprin lies within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. But the poll, which was conducted by telephone of 886 likely voters, suggests that Mr. Turner, who sought to frame the race as a referendum on President Obama, has managed to turn what was expected to be a coronation for Mr. Weprin into a highly competitive contest.

The Ninth Congressional District, which includes portions of Brooklyn and Queens, has three registered Democrats for every one registered Republican. Last year, Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, defeated Mr. Turner by nearly 22 percentage points. But the poll found considerable disenchantment among likely voters: 74 percent said the country was headed in the wrong direction, and only 43 percent had a favorable impression of Mr. Obama, compared with 54 percent who viewed the president unfavorably.

I doubt Obama ever needed much persuading, but his first-- and now his second-- chief of staff (first Rahm Emanuel now William Daley) insisted that he govern as a center-right compassionate conservative. Emanuel is famous for having predicted he could screw over the aspirations of the Democratic coalition because they had nowhere else to go. He was probably shocked when they showed where else they had to go last November: nowhere, all right-- they didn't vote. And it looks like their disdain for Obama and his center-right governing philosophy will cost Democrats the 9th District tomorrow as tens of thousands of progressives sit it out again.

Saturday the NY Times pointed out that Democrats are increasingly worried that the Emanuel/Daley strategy is failing and that their hope that the Republicans will nominate a presidential candidate so extreme and so unpalatable (someone like Bob Turner?) that Democrats will just hold their collective nose and reelect Obama. It isn't working out that way. Even worse than Obama losing, "Some in the party fear that Mr. Obama’s troubles could reverberate down the ballot into Congressional, state and local races," a big turnaround from when "Democrats had entertained hopes of reversing losses from last year’s midterm elections."

Instead of going for a populist, New Deal approach, conservatives in the Democratic Party are doubling down in their anti-working family, pro-Big Business, Republican-light stance. As I pointed out earlier, Nevada party bosses actually shoved a Blue Dog down the rank-and-file's throats and will lose the special election in NV-2 tomorrow.

“In my district, the enthusiasm for him has mostly evaporated,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon. “There is tremendous discontent with his direction.”

The president’s economic address last week offered a measure of solace to discouraged Democrats by employing an assertive and scrappy style that many supporters complain has been absent for the last year as he has struggled to rise above Washington gridlock. Several Democrats suggested that he watch a tape of the jobs speech over and over and use it as a guide until the election.

But a survey of two dozen Democratic officials found a palpable sense of concern that transcended a single week of ups and downs. The conversations signaled a change in mood from only a few months ago, when Democrats widely believed that Mr. Obama’s path to re-election, while challenging, was secure.

“The frustrations are real,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who was the state chairman of Mr. Obama’s campaign four years ago. “I think we know that there is a Barack Obama that’s deep in there, but he’s got to synchronize it with passion and principles.”

There is little cause for immediate optimism, with polls showing Mr. Obama at one of the lowest points of his presidency.

His own economic advisers concede that the unemployment rate, currently 9.1 percent, is unlikely to drop substantially over the next year, creating a daunting obstacle to re-election.

Liberals have grown frustrated by some of his actions, like the decision this month to drop tougher air-quality standards.

And polling suggests that the president’s yearlong effort to reclaim the political center has so far yielded little in the way of additional support from the moderates and independents who tend to decide presidential elections.

“The alarms have already gone off in the Democratic grass roots,” said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, who hopes the president’s jobs plan can be a turning point. “If the Obama administration hasn’t heard them, they should check the wiring of their alarm system.”

Obama has entrusted his reelection efforts to Jim Messina (AKA- Rahm Emanuel Jr.), a Machiavellian clown with only the most superficial political skills and no dedication whatsoever to core progressive values. He told the Times the criticism was largely a “Washington conversation." Is it a "Washington conversation" in NV-2 or NY-9?

Pete DeFazio scoffs at the idea: “I have one heck of a lot of Democrats saying, ‘I voted for him before, don’t know if I can do it again.’”

Republicans Want MORE Unemployment, Not Less

Like I explained yesterday, Obama's speech, rather than a bold New Deal kind of clarion call to real action, was a mishmash of mostly Republican ideas that could possibly create a little momentum around the edges of the economic chasm the corporate politicians of both parties have created for the country. But, predictably, the Republicans won't even get behind this! As Obama headed out to Richmond-- a small sliver of which is in Cantor's predominantly suburban/exurban district-- the Republican House Majority Leader said the GOP could get behind a few of the ideas-- slicing up "entitlement" programs and cutting corporate taxes-- while rejecting the whole package.

"I certainly would like to see us be able to peel off some of these ideas, put them on the floor, vote them across the floor and get the senate to join with us so we can actually get something to the president and make some progress as quickly as possible."

The last thing in the world Cantor and his right-wing cronies want is for Obama to go to the people with the plan and start a fight. No doubt Cantor was focused on how the local media in his district would be covering Obama's visit to Richmond when he said "This is my objection to the message that was delivered tonight. The message was: either accept my package as it is, or I will take it to the American people. I would say that that’s the wrong approach. What we’re here to do is try to transcend differences, not let them get in the way in the areas we can make progress on."

Even after Cantor's politically inept shrieking about holding up hurricane and earthquake relief funds-- in the wake of an earthquake and hurricane in his own district-- he is unlikely to be defeated in a virtually all-white district specifically gerrymandered to safely elect Republicans. Bush won with 61% there both times and even McCain managed to win with 53%. Cantor was reelected in 2008 with 63% and last year with 59%. But what he could lose is the House majority-- and his job as Majority Leader. If Obama can persuade enough swing voters and disappointed Democrats that he wants to fix the economy and the Republicans are blocking him-- as they are-- it is likely that even if the GOP wins the Senate-- almost a foregone conclusion-- they'll lose the House.

Obama's package could only be seen as in any way controversial for conservatives if they are only focused on narrow partisan goals rather than on the needs of the country. As much as progressives are, once again, disappointed in Obama's half-assed attempts to get the job situation fixed, these are, after all almost ALL Republican ideas. And they are geared to create almost 2 million new jobs and grown the economy by 2%. With 14 million people unemployed that's a step in the right direction-- for America... but a step in the wrong direction for Republican politicians focused solely on power and on defeating Obama next year at the polls. They don't want any jobs created. They want their fascist ideology shoved down America's throat. Period.

A completely deranged teabagger, Bob Turner, could be the vehicle for Democrats in a Brooklyn-Queens district-- the one I, as well as Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders grew up in-- that they're fed up with Obama. NY-9 hasn't elected a Republican since one termer Andrew Petersen... in 1921. But the special election to replace Anthony Weiner Tuesday is now favoring Turner by 6% (according to a new Siena poll). Obama's approval rating there-- where he won an anemic 55% in 2008-- is only 43%. A Turner victory Tuesday would certainly bolster Cantor's and Republicans' resolve to go for broke.