Oh, another thing: it really makes me smile that Jerry Brown will be the governor of California again. Not just because he’s a Democrat, but also because I just love to see people achieve second acts late in life. Perhaps it’s my fear of death or my fear of getting old, but I really like the fact that a 72-year-old man can look forward to governing the largest state in the country for the next four years. It gives me the warm fuzzies.
Author Archives: Tin Man
Tom Periello’s Loss
It was a bummer to see Tom Perriello lose in Virginia’s 5th District — not that it was a surprise, given the national mood. But I have a special interest in Virginia’s 5th, because it contains Charlottesville, where I went to school and spent eight years, and I particularly liked Perriello, who took the district back for the Democrats two years ago: he’s my age, and he’s wonky and smart, with an Ivy league background. He seemed like such an uncharacteristic representative of southside Virginia, which makes up the majority of the district, the largest Congressional district by area in the state. He was a particular favorite of Obama’s, too.
He won 80 percent of the Charlottesville vote last night and 57 percent of the surrounding Albermarle County vote, but he lost the race overall, 50.75 percent to 47.05 percent.
More about Perriello’s loss from the Cavalier Daily (UVa’s newspaper) and the Daily Progress (Charlottesville’s newspaper).
Why the Dems Kept the Senate
Here’s why the Democrats kept the Senate tonight:
And to ensure that the Senate could protect the people against themselves, the Framers armored the Senate against the people. …
And around the Senate as a whole there would be an additional, even stronger, layer of armor. Elections for senators would be held every two years, but only for a third of the senators. The other two-thirds would not be required to submit their record to the voters (or, to be more accurate, to their legislatures) at that time. This last piece of armor made the Senate a “stable institution†indeed. As a chronicler of the Senate was to write almost two centuries after its creation: “It was so arranged that while the House of Representatives would be subject to total overturn every two years, and the Presidency every four, the Senate, as a Senate, could never be repudiated. It was fixed, through the staggered-term principle, so that only a third of the total membership would be up for re-election every two years. It is therefore literally not possible for the voters ever to get at anything approaching a majority of the members of the Institution at any one time.â€
— Robert Caro, Master of the Senate
If all 100 senators were up for election every two years, the Republicans would have romped tonight. But two-thirds of the Senate is immune to public repudiation in any particular election.
By the way, the link above takes you to the entire first chapter of Caro’s masterpiece. Essential reading if you want to understand the U.S. Senate.