Corbett won my county with 66%. I was prepared for it to be more lopsided.

The bigger shocker was Hogan's win in MD. No one really saw that coming.

Wolf won Centre county with 57%, Clinton county with 53%, and Cambria county with 54%. All counties containing or adjacent to Penn State. The rest of the middle of the state was red.

And, not totally related to anything, but can I just say how goddam sick I am of people STILL writing letters and editorials and stuff in the local papers about how the NCAA needs to "give Joe back his wins"? A few local candidates actually had that as part of their platforms.

Perry County is very, very red. Has been and always will be. Cumberland County is usually red, but there are pockets of blue. Corbett won there with 58%, which is much lower than expected. Dauphin County is a mixed bag. Harrisburg leans D, but Corbett won the county in 2010 with 60%. Wolf won it yesterday with 55%. I'm just glad Linda Thompson didn't win the House seat she was after. She was a disaster for the city of Harrisburg as mayor, and it wouldn't have been any better in Congress.

And, not totally related to anything, but can I just say how goddam sick I am of people STILL writing letters and editorials and stuff in the local papers about how the NCAA needs to "give Joe back his wins"? A few local candidates actually had that as part of their platforms.

It's a thing down here too. Like we don't have bigger things to worry about.

This is priceless: Josh Malina and his pranks on West Wing: [link]

can't say I've seen victory laps. The closest I've seen to "victory laps" is hearing people say that we've made a lot of progress, but we have a long way to go. I do think it's fair to say that the economy is a lot better today than it was when President Obama took office. But that's like saying it's better to be on crutches than in a full body cast.

OK, but even "made a lot of progress" really is a victory lap. 70% of the population feels they are no better off than they were in 2008 personally. And something like 80% of 90% of those with kids feel those kids will have it worse than they did. "Progress" that leaves out that many people can't be called "a lot". And statistics show that people answering those surveys are overly optimistic. Only about 10% of the population today are better off than they were in 2008. 90% are the same or worse. It is not really progress if the economy subjectively is not better for 70% of the population and objectively is no better for 90%

I'm not saying this election result is not awful. And it is not only the people who did not turn out but the people who voted for higher minimum wages, grass legalization, but still voted Republican. But I also think the Democratic candidates and the professional campaigners who get paid the big bucks need to take some of the blame. Bland emptiness apparently does not trump energetic evil.

The Democrats (I mean the national candidates and the campaign professionals) mostly decided to pivot away from "inequality" to "opportunity". That sure worked out well. And going further back, the President (and his employee the Attorney General) decided it was more important to prosecute whistle blowers than rogue bankers and financeers. It was the executive that failed to enforce bailout terms so that almost nobody could get a mortage modification. Note also that the executive decided to do QE (basically a complicated way of printing money to give to bankers) rather than using the same authority to print money to give away to ordinary people. Leaving aside whether that was good policy (I think it wasn't) it was lousy politics.

Sure people stupidly fail to vote, and more stupidly vote against their self-interest. So be angry at that if you want. But send some of that bitterness and anger towards the national leaders inside the Democratic party who blow elections because they are too in bed with a lot of the same people who the Republicans represent.

the one casino measure didn't pass just because the one news story I heard about it convinced me it has such a narrow scope and is the end of such a long process already that it really ought to have been rubber stamped

I *very* reluctantly voted against it because it was so heavily backed by interests in Las Vegas, IIRC. (I did my research a couple weeks ago, so of course I can't remember now. Stupid brain.) I'm happy the water bill passed, less happy that the rainy-day fund passed.

So I'm thinking about applying to be on an affordable housing working group for my city. I'm worried that it will be too much of a time commitment and/or meet somewhere really inconvenient. But those are both dumb reasons not to even apply, right? Presumably my job will be less wacko shortly.

I wish like hell the Democrats had done more victory laps. The Republican congressional candidates mostly ran not against their opponents, but against a debt-increasing, job-killing, big-spending Obama that was a completely fictional construct. The Democrats were so busy running against Obama that no one called the Republicans on their lies.

Considering that Republicans were largely responsible for stripping away the regulations that would have prevented the financial meltdown, do you really think they would have done more, Typo? The Obama administration has at least put some regulation back in place.

Also, quantative easing is not "printing money." Increasing the monetary supply to the banks is the last weapon the central bank has to shore up the economy when interest rates are as low as they can go. There is no mechanism to print money and hand it out to ordinary people. Doing anything like that would have to go through Congress, and you can imagine how that would go.

The biggest problems with the economy are that the banks are swimming in money, but, against their own interests, aren't lending it, and corporations are swimming in money, yet aren't hiring or raising salaries. What would you suggest the President do about that?

t hits the like button for Ginger