Vote Anti Incumbent

Amid anxiety over the nation’s course, support for Mr. Obama and other incumbents is eroding. For the first time, more people disapprove of Mr. Obama’s job performance than approve. And 57% of voters would prefer to elect a new person to Congress than re-elect their local representatives, the highest share in 18 years.

Rest of story

Way to go SC! We are proud of you.
State Rep. Nikki Haley resoundingly won the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial runoff late Tuesday, besting a four-term U.S. House member on a night when voters in several states demonstrated the continued strength of this year’s anti-establishment wave.

Mrs. Haley took one step closer to becoming the state’s first female governor and the second Indian-American governor in the nation. She withstood last-minute allegations of marital infidelity, as well as doubt sowed in some circles about the sincerity of her 1996 conversion to Christianity and the depth of her appreciation for the state’s Civil War history.

South Carolina voters also made history Tuesday by selecting Tim Scott as the GOP nominee to succeed U.S. Rep. Henry Brown in the coastal First District. Mr. Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, the son of the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, in Tuesday’s runoff by a 2-to-1 margin. If elected, as expected, in the GOP-leaning district against nominal opposition, he will be the first black Republican in Congress since Rep. J.C. Watts (R., Okla.) retired in 2003.

From WSJ http://bit.ly/aDyKTL

Slug: INCUMBENTS

Byline: Christopher Moraff, Philadelphia Tribune

Toward the end of 2006, as the looming financial crisis was gaining steam, Robert Fowler, a real estate broker from Duluth, Ga., decided he was fed up with politics as usual in Washington.  He didn’t very much like what the administration of George W. Bush was doing to his America; but more than that, he says, he didn’t like what politicians were doing to his America.  So, he decided to take them on. All of them.

Today, the website he started that year as a result of his frustration, www.anti-incumbents.com, serves as a clearing house for information and discussion on a trend that is receiving a lot of attention this election cycle.

Fowler’s site is one of at least a half-dozen online portals dedicated to incumbent bashing.  He says the sudden attention the issue has received among election watchers and the media has driven visitors to his site and reporters to his doorstep in an effort to get a grasp of exactly what’s going on.

A self-described independent who voted for Barack Obama, Fowler, 62, thinks it was the government’s handling of the financial crisis that led to the current round of anti-incumbency.

“I truly believe the financial crisis woke people up,” he said. “I think that was the thing, when they really got hurt… and unemployment went up, it hit home and people started paying attention.”

Like many of his fellow anti-incumbents, Fowler directs his anger more at Congress than at the White House. (In fact, he says there’s a good chance he’ll vote for Obama again in 2012).

In the meantime his goal is to convince as many voters as possible to “vote the bums out,” as he puts it, in upcoming midterm elections, on the belief that a sweeping change in Congress will send an important message to Capitol Hill that voters will only take so much.

“What we’re doing now is not working,” said Fowler.

At least some voters are taking that message to heart.  So far this year, in several high-profile primary races, congressional incumbents and establishment-backed candidates from both sides of the aisle got backhanded in spite of (or more likely because of) support from Washington.

Here in Pennsylvania, on May 28 Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter — a six-term incumbent who switched parties twice in his four-decade career — was soundly defeated by two-term Congressman Joe Sestak. Specter not only had the support of the state’s Democratic machine, but President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden had both stumped for the candidate.

On the same day in Kentucky, tea-party activist Rand Paul won that state’s GOP Senate primary, beating Secretary of State Trey Grayson by a wide margin despite Grayson having the support of Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a centrist Democrat from Arkansas, faces a runoff next Tuesday, June 8, against progressive challenger Bill Halter. Lincoln is seeking a third term in the Senate.

The press has wasted little time adopting the anti-incumbency frame and running with it. And while it’s hard to deny something is going on, the “runaway anti-incumbency” narrative is one that not everyone is completely buying.

Writing for Newsweek, Andrew Romano noted that in primary races held last Tuesday (June 1) in Alabama, Mississippi and New Mexico, only a single incumbent – Rep. Parker Griffith, a newly minted Republican who switched parties last year and enjoyed strong GOP support –lost to a challenger.

Other pundits have noticed the same thing. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, says that in spite of the media attention paid to Sestak’s defeat of Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, it’s a stretch to attribute the outcome to an anti-incumbent mood.

“You got a five-term incumbent who’s 80 years-old running against a vigorous opponent, a Navy veteran, in an environment where he switches his party,” Madonna said. “It just overwhelmed him and in some ways there was almost nothing he could do to stop him.”

He says the fact that the voters chose Sestak over Specter had more to do with the challenger’s “brilliant” television campaign and the fact that core Democrats never fully adopted Specter as one of their own. He goes on to point out that of the 224 Pennsylvania incumbents seeking reelection this year on both the state and federal level, only one, besides Specter, lost re-nomination.

But Madonna is careful not to write off the trend completely, he just seems to think it’s been blown a little out of proportion.

“As a generalized anti-incumbency in the primary we didn’t see evidence of it,” he said. “But I will admit that moving forward… do I think there’s some anti-incumbency, yes, do I think incumbents need to worry about the fall, yes, but it wasn’t as evident in [the primary] at this time.”

Anyway you slice it 2010 is shaping up to be the year of the challenger; by last count there are roughly 2,300 non-incumbent candidates seeking to fill 471 open congressional seats this year, more than any year since the mid-1970s.

Recent polling suggests they have a chance. A CNN poll, released on May 25, found 47 percent of the public is more likely to vote for a challenger rather than an incumbent running for re-election at the federal, state or local level.

An earlier poll, conducted in April by ABC News/Washington Post, found just a third of registered voters were inclined to re-elect their representatives to congress. And a Harris Interactive poll from May found that half of Americans (49%) say almost everyone in Congress, including their representative, should be thrown out.

“Anti-incumbent sentiment is as high in 2010 as it was in 1994,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland, referring to the year Republicans rode a wave of voter discontent to retake the House for the first time in 40 years.

But Fowler says while that might seem like a sweeping mandate, there’s a big difference between sentiment and action, the latter of which is harder to predict.

“People have a low approval rating of Congress, yet they still vote for their congressman – so that’s not going to work,” he said, “just because I don’t like your congressman, but I’ll keep voting mine back in.”

People are reluctant to vote out their representatives for a number of reasons, he says, ranging from money that senior legislators can bring to a state to seniority on committees that would be lost with a freshman congressman.  It’s of little surprise, then, that for the past four decades congressional re-election rates dropped below 60 percent just once. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that from 1964 through 2008, incumbents in the House of Representatives averaged a 93 percent re-election rate; members of the Senate averaged 83 percent.

Adding to the problem, critics say, is the unlimited number of terms a congressman can hold, which leads them to become so entrenched in their positions that politics becomes a profession instead of a calling.

“It seems the politicians have a lock on things and once people get voted into office it’s hard to get them out,” said Fowler, who says he supports placing limits on the number of terms a congressman can hold office.

Ironically, some on Capitol Hill are taking the first step in addressing that. In November 2009, echoing language in the 1994 GOP “Contract with America,” four Republican senators led by South Carolina’s Jim DeMint introduced a constitutional amendment that would limit the number of terms that a member of Congress may serve to three in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate.

DeMint said the amendment is needed because the power of incumbency has grown so great.

“Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians,” DeMint said in a statement. “I have come to realize that if we want to change the policies coming out of Congress, we must change the process itself.  If we really want to put an end to business as usual, we’ve got to have new leaders coming to Washington instead of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down.”

But Republicans shouldn’t get too comfortable. Numbers show that despite popular belief the greatest challenge to incumbents this year is coming from the right, with nearly twice as many Republican candidates seeking office as Democrats. For the most part the challenge is coming from conservative and Libertarian candidates like Rand Paul and Alabama’s N.C. “Clint” Moser, whose failed attempt last week to unseat four-term Republican Senator Richard Shelby was based on a platform so extreme he pledged to kick the United Nations out of New York.

Which leads to the question of where the tea-party movement fits into the anti-incumbency trend.  For the most part, people like Fowler have a tacit respect for the reactionary nature of the movement, but they chafe at the movement’s apparent extremism and the fact that it has been co-opted by the right.

“We Independents thought the tea parties were a good idea until the Republicans claimed them as their own,” said Fowler. “They would like to think it’s only the current administration we are protesting and we are on their side. That is how they are trying to position this.”

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The conservative blog thepatriotcaucus.net has an overview of the candidates for office of Governor of Georgia who are running as Republican candidates and sizes them up to see who would be a conservative-minded Governor.  The blog post is interesting to read.  Interestingly the post includes a frank assessment of Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine. 

“Several scandals and questions of objectivity have followed John Oxendine throughout his tenures as Insurance Commissioner.  Previously, state election commission investigations revealed that Oxendine, who wields regulatory power over all insurance companies in Georgia, received $120,000 during a reelection campaign through 10 Alabama-based political action committees set up by Donald V. Watkins, a director of Admiral Life Insurance Co. of America and State Mutual Insurance. Both companies are headed by prominent businessman Delos “Dee” Yancey III and are run out of the same building in Rome.  The problem (and John has no excuse to have not known about it since he was up for another reelection) is that individual PAC contributions are limited to 12,000 per person.  However, since all of these PAC contributions were funneled into one account controlled by a single businessman, the $120,000 contribution was illegally obtained.  Per the Atlanta Journal Constitution , the Ox campaign initially denied any wrongdoing, but announced within a few weeks, that they were returning the money.  (Oops, caught red-handed and tries to “buy” his way out).

Another “awkward” incident for John occurred in August, 2009.  His father, Judge Oxendine, hired Wayne Reece, a political consultant and fellow board member (with the Judge) of the Warm Springs Rehabilitation Development Fund to work on John’s campaign, at the tune of almost $400,000 that was later discovered to be allocated from the WSRD fund.  The WSRD Board determined that both John Oxendine and Wayne Reece tried to conceal the payments.  Another “awkward” scenario (in my opinion) lies in the fact that Ivy Oxendine (John’s wife) has been working with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBS of GA), worked her way up to the corporate office in Atlanta and has served as President of the Middle Georgia Association of Health Underwriters as well as State board member of the Georgia Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.  Kudos go out to Mrs. Oxendine for a successful career.  However, my dilemma is in John’s track record as regarding investigations and fines of insurance companies within Georgia.  With a little research, you will note a pattern where John Oxendine has extended fines against insurance companies in excess of any fines (and they are very few; look for yourself) levied against BCBS of GA.  A little favoritism?; hard to honestly call without some direct evidence, which is truly tough to dig into without strong inside sources.  However, it is my opinion, based on the scandals referenced and the “awkward” situations during John’s tenure as IC, that principles are not his best suit and that is a personal attribute that I demand of my legislators at all levels.”  from blog thepatriotcaucus.net

Ethics commission seeks info in Oxendine probe - AJC.com

I have read these type comments about John Oxendine before but they seem to be coming more often. I think he may be another Sonny II type governor, but I surprised to see the conservative blog be so frank about one of their candidates.

The headlines today are: Tuesday’s primary results spoke loud and clear: Voters from both parties are frustrated and this is an anti-Washington, anti-establishment year.

Going on:  On the busiest primary night of the year, any doubt about just how toxic the political environment is for congressional incumbents and candidates hand-picked by national Republican and Democratic leaders disappeared.  The key thing here is that it is neither Republicans nor Democrats only, it is an anti-incumbent mood which is turning in to action at the polls.  Just when I thought this may never happen, it is happening.  Have Americans finally woken up.

The results are clear:

Pennsylvania voters fired Sen. Arlen Specter. The former-Republican-turned-Democrat was seeking his sixth term and had the backing of President Barack Obama. He lost to Rep. Joe Sestak, who spent three decades in the Navy before entering politics and ran as an outsider.

Arkansas voters forced Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a run-off. She, too, had Obama’s support. Considered among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats this fall, she now faces a run-off against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter — who was backed by unions and progressives — for the Democratic nomination.

Kentucky voters tapped tea party darling Rand Paul to be the GOP nominee for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Jim Bunning. In doing so they rejected Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who was the favored candidate of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s most powerful Republican.

See the rejection of the Republicans as well as the Democrats and know that this is anti-incumbent not just anti other party, which is normally the case.  This is a wipe the slate clean, let’s start with some fresh faces idea. It’s outsiders over insiders.  Throw the bums out,  as the slogan goes.  The feeling is, getting all new people in may be our only hope.

The Republicans may be chanting take our government back, but that is not exactly what is happening.  People are mad and angry.  They see that Wall Street big business and big Government do take care of themselves, without regard for the people or main street, an no party should get a pass. With the uncertain economy, voters are turning to the polls to register their frustration with how things are going.  Voters seem to be understanding that it is not just Republicans or Democrats that will solve our problems, but maybe a new kind of politician, one who listens to the people would be a good start.

source: cleveland.com

I just watched Senator Chambliss of GA on CNN’s State of the Union program.   When asked if we should now take up Financial Reform, Senator Chambliss thinks now is not the time.  Seems we might  hurt business and besides we shouldn’t increase the size of government.  He doesn’t like regulations.   Then Ms. Crowley asked Senator Chambliss isn’t he afraid the public will view the Republicans as friends of Wall Street and against Main Street?.  Chambliss says of coarse not.

It is obvious Senator Chambliss is interested in protecting Wall Street and doing everything in his power to delay taking up financial reform.   Even everyday citizens know what fraud has and is occuring on Wall Street.   I was talking about how underhandled Goldman Sachs is for years.  Then you heard on the nightly news, this just out, now we learn Goldman Sachs may have been invoived in fraud and scamming investors.  Really?

Senator Chambliss is the same guy who denied we were in a recession, well after everyday citizens knew it and we hurting very badly.  He just said “define recession” and acted like he didn’t have the foggist idea that we were in a meltdown until well after the fact.

It is time for Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia to be replaced.  Being a citizens of Georgia myself, I will support his opponent.  We can’t afford to have Chambliss around for another term.

Barron’s magazine it their twice a year poll of big money mangers asks “Do you expect the Republicans to recapture control of the Senate, House of Representatives, both or neither in the November 2010 mid-term elections?

The big money managers polled replied “Neither” as the mostly likely.  Only 14% think the Republicans would recapture the Senate and only 26% think the Republicans will recapture the House.

However looking further down the line, when asked “Do you expect President Barack Obama to win re-election in November 2012, only 35% replied Yes, and 65% replied No.

The final question of Politics was “Who will be the Republican candidate for November 2012?  Mitt Romney is the choice of35%, Sarah Palin on 5%, and Mitch Daniels 4%.

This is interesting poll results from the big money managers.   I don’t know if they have a good track record in political predictions or not, but I know a lot of money is riding of the politics and they seems to know their money.  Article.

More Anti Incumbent

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientiest at Emory University makes the point that congress is very unpopular, even more so than President Obama whose approval rating has dropped, but still hoovers around 50%.  But in December only 5% of Americans approved the job that Congress was doing. That was still better than the 19% approval for the previous Congress.

He goes on to say the Congress is usually less popular than the president and frequently much less popular.
He continues: Discontent with Congress appears to reflect a widespread perception of the legislative process as complicated, inefficient, and corrupt. Americans find it hard to understand how Congress works and most of the information that they get about Congress from the media tends to be negative—focusing on partisan conflict, controversies, and scandals. But voters don’t blame their own Senators or their own Representative for these problems.

Therein lies the problem of why don’t we vote out incumbents if we don’t approve of the job they are doing.  We don’t like your Senator but we still vote for our Senator who represents us.  We are right you are wrong.

They tend to see their own Senators and Representatives as the rare good apples in an otherwise rotten barrel. Maybe that is because they reflect the views of the population in your area.

That explains why, despite the low ratings that Congress usually receives, reelection rates for congressional incumbents have remained very high—averaging around 95% for House incumbents and 80% for Senate incumbents over the past three decades.

Read more of Mr Alan I. Abramowitz article.

The current health care issues are large.  Uncovered people and high health care cost are a problem.  Well there is an even larger problem coming when baby boomers get a little older and need retirement homes,  assisted living facilities and then nursing homes.  It is going to be a even larger problem than the current health care problems.  Senior care and nursing homes are not something that can be put off.  When a 85 year old person that lives alone has a stroke and cannot talk, walk or raise their arm, they simply cannot live by themselves anymore. It is not an option.  Many times there is not going to a person to give care and the hospital will have to transfer the person to a nursing home.  That happens now but with the huge numbers of boomers now moving past age 60, there will be a huge increase in the need for facilities for personal care in the not too distance future.

Major news outlets are reporting that the anti-incumbent movement is growing. No kidding?

I started Anti-incumbents.com back Sept 5, 2006. At that time, I saw many of the things everybody and his brother now sees.  I saw the government spending, the crooks on Wall Street and the government intermingling, the stupidy of George Bush, the war mongering of the US, the big business and government on the same team to screw over the people.  I was getting really mad and wanted a change.  But here in Georgia, my friends though I was going crazy.  They would just look at me with a puzzled concerned stair. They had not idea what I was talking about or why I was concerned.

Fast forward to now.  The same people who had no clue why anyone could be so angry, now ironically are some of the most upset and angry. So why is that?  Well I think the financial crisis did puncture their illusion that everything was doing fine.  They lost money on Wall Street.  The other thing is that they lost the election.  Most were Republicans.  They are mostly upset with the financial hit they took and are now vocal because they don’t mind blaming the other party is who now in power.  Are they anti-incumbents?  Not really.  They are anti the other party.  Yes, they are upset with their own party for obvious reasons (they are loosers), but for all their talk, would not blink in voting them back in, even the same people if given a chance.

So coming from Sept 2006, a time people thought I was getting upset for nothing, to now and seeing everybody and his brother shouting from street corners about the FED, the falling dollar, the Goldman Sachs crooks, the government / corporation revolving doors - well I just have to chuckle.  At least people are concerned.  Will they do anything meaningful about it.  I doubt it.

WSJ.com - WASHINGTON—Coming off one of the most difficult weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has beefed up his political staff and is expected to deliver an uncompromising State of the Union address. Aides said Sunday that the White House wasn’t making any abrupt policy shifts, even as the message was retooled to focus more sharply on job creation.

Comment: Let’s see his resolve at this critical point. Obama blew the confident of many of his supports by going along with the same old things even though he was elected on change. He tried to be nice to opposition in hopes of getting along and some compromise. That didn’t work for him.  So what’s next?  I think the State of the Union address on Wednesday will be telling.

I came across this site, We Are Change Atlanta and see they also have a channel on YouTube for We are Change Atlanta.  Watch the video on their Youtube channel about Vaccination laws in Georgia / Swine Flu / Take Action.  I did already have the vaccine myself but agree with them that governments should not force citizens to have it.  The video is excellent and I encourage you to see it and sign up for their channel.  It is not only about this one issue but others also. They are keeping an eye on government actions and making them accountable, and that is a good thing.

Vote Out Incumbents Democracy, (VOID), is a group of volunteers from all the major political perspectives from conservative to liberal, who believe our political system is corrupted far beyond what political parties were intended to be, and their corruption has in turn made our government corrupt. This corruption has eroded the principles of our democratic republic which founded our nation. Supporters and volunteers hail from all around the United States.

Comment: Void in my opinion has the best commentary on why we should vote out incumbents. When I started this blog back in 2006, VOID was already around and has been consistent in their efforts to bring this problem to people’s attention. I respect their non partisan efforts as it gets beyond the back and forth bickering in the two party game that is in place to keep us from the real change needed.  VOID’s Director, David R. Remer, writes some great editorials about why we should vote out incumbents and I plan to posted of some these on this site and especially on our Anti Incumbents twitter account.

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Oregon, Washington, the Netherlands and Belgium are the only jurisdictions in the world where laws specifically permit euthanasia or assisted suicide. Now I understand Montana has done with same with a recent court case.