State v. National

I would like to first preface this blog post by saying I do not support a lot of President Obama's policies. However, I still think he is a good person trying to make some important changes. Also, it is not my intent to offend anyone with this post.

And that leads me to today's blog of annoyance:

Tuesday's gubernatorial races, the media craze surrounding them, and the references made to President Obama.

For those of you who have no connection to the outside world, or don't know what "gubernatorial" means (heh, heh, it sure is fun to say/type though!), there were two governor races voted on this past Tuesday -- one in New Jersey and one in Virginia. The main talking points were the tight race in NJ, which has had a Democratic governor for a long time, and the huge lead the Republican candidate in Virginia had -- a state that had gone to Obama in the 2008 election.

Now, President Obama did some campaigning for both the Democratic incumbents -- and rightly so, being a Democrat. Obviously you want as many of your party in influential positions throughout the nation as you can get. But even with his strong backing, both states went to the Republicans (an almost unheard of event in NJ!).

Now, much of the media, especially FoxNews (and now a collective cringe), jumped on this outcome as possibly a hit against the president's policies and questioning if this was a hint of the 2010 Senate/House races.

**Ok, I want to interject here that I watch FoxNews alongside CNN and I also read the NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal. Just want to make clear there is no bias or anything here. Pure opinion.**

Now, here is where I get annoyed. The media keeps trying to tie in the outcome of these gubernatorial races with President Obama's policies. They keep asking the question, "Is this an indication of the voters turning back from supporting Obama as a result of some of the policies he is suggesting?" (More or less the standard question). Well, first off, these are STATE races based on STATE issues. It is my firm belief that Obama's policies had little to do with the way the voting went in NJ and Virginia, especially NJ.

In NJ, it was more or less a choice between the lesser of two evils. And after the whole corruption scandal recently, the voters decided on a change, even though the margin of victory wasn't huge.

In Virginia, a long-standing "purple" state, voters decided to go with a Republican governor again after not being satisfied with the job done by the Democratic incumbent. No real surprise here, in my opinion.

The crux of this annoyance is how the media kept harping on how the outcomes of the state elections reflected a snub on President Obama. In my opinion, voters were more concerned about the issues in their respective states at this point in time -- jobs, taxes, etc. Yes, Obama has been working on national issues concerning this, but at this point in time, the voters were focused on state issues -- what was going on right at home.

So, it is just annoying to me to read and listen to the news constantly questioning the president on issues on the state level!