The First Rule of Politics
... is that "all politics is local." It's true. With a few key exceptions (namely issues like abortion that transcend politics), the important political games play out at the local level. The national scene would not look the way it does, and most House of Representatives seats would not be safe, if local election district boundaries were not so tortuously drawn so as to pry neighbor from neighbor.
Politics is local, which makes heavy breathing about how the Virginia governers' race and the defeat of the Governator's ballot initiatives more than a little silly. Yesterday's elections weren't really about George Bush, except in a vague sense. They were about thing that matter to Virginians, Californians, Jersey Devils, Pennsylvanians, and Mainers. On more hot-button issues, like whether or not to let gays become more than just "butt-buddies" (thanks, South Park!), Maine and Texas voted their local preferences and came out on opposite sides of the issue. In Pennsylvania, a town purged their school board of crypto-creationists, while the state of Kansas opted to embrace the teaching of intelligent design in science classes (sadly, no word on whether the Exalted Spaghetti Monster is part of the curriculum.)
It's almost as if we live in a country made up of a large number of semiautonomous bodies that jealously guard their regional values and identities or something!
All yesterday proved is that Democrats can rule a Republican state well, that people care more about their sidewalks, neighborhoods, and children than they do national agendas, and that the New York Times continues to suck wind.
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I thought the first rule of
I thought the first rule of politics was "the laws of Cher-ma-ny."
No wait, no that's something else.
Wait, wasn't the first rule of politics, "don't get into knife fights?"
Erm, no...that was the first rule of knife fights.
Wait, wasn't the first rule, "A politician may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm"?
No, no that's robots.
Are you sure the first rule is "all politics is local", and not "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed"? Or "every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it"?
Huh, no, Newton.
I think you might be right.
"It’s almost as if we live in
"It’s almost as if we live in a country made up of a large number of semiautonomous bodies that jealously guard their regional values and identities or something!"
Almost...
The first rule is never bring a knife to a gunfight.
I am disappointed but not freaked out or anything that Kaine won the election down here in VA. But if he raises taxes, I'll start getting pissed. The VA state legislature remained solidly republican, so there's little chance that he'll have the opportunity to get all whacky and shit.
Divided government is probably one of the best checks and balances out there.