A quick wrap of yesterday's election results:
The two governorships up for grabs, New Jersey and Virginia, both went Republican. I think the old "all politics is local" meme applied here and not opposition to Obama's slow to date performance on the domestic front. In particular Jersey where the incumbent governor was plagued with problems including proposing raising road tolls by 800% over thirteen years to pay down a huge debt -- when of course road tolls by law are supposed to go back into roads and not into general revenues.
Both congressional by-elections went to the Democrats. California 10 (the East Bay) was perhaps not too surprising. The big surprise was New York 23 where voters fought back against the Palin effect and elected a Dem for the first time in 137 years -- and oddly enough the Democrat was actually more in line with the conservative values of the Champlain Valley than the "Conservative" is!
Yeah, I'm happy about this, but also annoyed at how the right fought against itself falling into the same bad habits that divided the left in the States for years. I do think it's way past time for the US (like Canada) to have proportional representation or a preferential ballot. Could I vote for a Republican if I was in the States? Perhaps, provided he or she was the kind that Eisenhower and Ford were, not the current bunch of betards.
New York City: Mike Bloomberg won but with only 51% of the vote. He reported spent $86 million of his own money, for the Democrat to win 46% and who respected spending rules is nothing short of remarkable. Seven words for Bloomberg: WORLD TRADE CENTER, REBUILD IT AS WAS!
Finally, Maine: Medical marijuana was approved, and the ballot measure that would have overturned a law that allows gay marriage and also includes a refusal to marry a couple based on conscience -- was approved. That second one really doesn't make sense. In fact, a conscience law should have ensured the law could be sustained. As usual, there's an urban-rural split and I can only see a mass migration to cities so that the next time that this appears on the ballot gay marriage will be approved. On a compassionate level it doesn't make any sense to rip families apart like this. It just does not.
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