The People Have Mumbled
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
We were so excited about that special Congressional election in upstate New York. Finally, a chance to find out whether the nation really approves of what Barack Obama has been doing!
You cannot figure these things out with tea leaves or polls. Just ask the Republicans in Washington. They certainly would be giving Obama more help if the country really demanded it. But what if the people who said nice things about the president to the pollsters just liked Michelle’s vegetable garden?
And who better to set us straight than the residents of a nearly 200-mile-long district that was gerrymandered so carefully for the G.O.P. that it wound up looking like an outline of Bart Simpson doing a swan dive? Or perhaps a designer boot with fire coming out of the toe.
The Republicans were desperate for some sign that the tide had turned on Obamamania. They all rallied around their party’s candidate, James (A Proven Record) Tedisco, even though for a long time Tedisco muddied the waters by refusing to say how he would have voted on the stimulus package. He is the longtime minority leader of the State Assembly, a job that requires all the quick-thinking and decision-making capacity of a fishing warden in the Gobi Desert.
(More here.)
NYT
We were so excited about that special Congressional election in upstate New York. Finally, a chance to find out whether the nation really approves of what Barack Obama has been doing!
You cannot figure these things out with tea leaves or polls. Just ask the Republicans in Washington. They certainly would be giving Obama more help if the country really demanded it. But what if the people who said nice things about the president to the pollsters just liked Michelle’s vegetable garden?
And who better to set us straight than the residents of a nearly 200-mile-long district that was gerrymandered so carefully for the G.O.P. that it wound up looking like an outline of Bart Simpson doing a swan dive? Or perhaps a designer boot with fire coming out of the toe.
The Republicans were desperate for some sign that the tide had turned on Obamamania. They all rallied around their party’s candidate, James (A Proven Record) Tedisco, even though for a long time Tedisco muddied the waters by refusing to say how he would have voted on the stimulus package. He is the longtime minority leader of the State Assembly, a job that requires all the quick-thinking and decision-making capacity of a fishing warden in the Gobi Desert.
(More here.)
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