Thursday, November 5, 2009

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!

2 comments:

  1. I live in NJ so this was a direct hit for me. I hated my choices and to pick it one to give my vote to was very difficult. Christie is a Republican and I dont mind saying I am registered as one, but I dont always vote that way, but that's my party of note. But I did not want to vote for him. He spoke out against public school having pre-school classes even special ed and my little guy is in the preschool special ed class at the local school. He says public funding for preschool hurts the private preschool industry. He said that insurance companies should not be forced to cover routine mammograms for women and well child visits for children. He is very anti gay equal rights. He is looking to have the family leave act in NJ done away with. So there was no way I could vote for him when with all that the only thing he said that I could get behind was cutting taxes, which would be nice. Then there was Corzine who has raised taxes a lot during his term but was for all of the above. But he was also tainted by many of the corruption things that went on here. I was thinking of giving him my vote but wasnt sold. Then there was Dagget the independent. He was for all the things Christie was against but also for lower taxes. I knew he wasnt going to win but I felt like I wouldnt feel dirty voting for him...And I was right, he didnt win. Christie won by less than 100,000 votes. Dagget got just over 100,000 votes...Anyway I am glad the nasty ads are over

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  2. Oh and I forgot to say, I agree that what happens in state elections is really more personal to people than a national so they dont always vote the way they do for Pres. It should not be a slight against Obama (not important if I like him or not) but it says people are thinking about their own back yards and there personal lives in a smaller scale than the national elections which also covers global political issues.

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