Bad economic policy decisions made by President Obama and congressional Democrats came back to haunt them during the 2014 midterm elections. The National Journal,
No truer words were ever spoken then when President Obama told a Northwestern University audience last month, “I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot, every single one of them.” Civics and political-science textbooks have long told us that midterm elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent president and his party. Yet every time a midterm election comes up, there seems to be a certain amount of denial that occurs, though wishful thinking is probably a more accurate term. The “out” party wants a nationalized election, while the “in” party expresses complete confidence that it can effectively “localize” the elections instead.
However, to the extent that elections are about any single issue, far more often than not that issue is the economy. Although some Democrats were content ito recite the improvement in the unemployment rate—which has dropped below 6 percent—and how many consecutive months the economy has created 200,000 or more jobs, in reality this election was not about the unemployment rate per se or what any economist says about how the economy is doing. Rather, it was about how Americans feel the economy is doing. The fact is that most Americans do not believe the economy is doing better. Specifically, they do not think their personal economy has yet recovered.
During mid-term Congressional elections (i.e. in years divisible by two but not four), the President’s party tends to lose seats in Congress. If a mid-term election happens during the sixth year of a President’s time in office, the President’s party will almost always lose seats in Congress. The last two such “sixth-year” elections when the President’s party gained Congressional seats were 1998 and 1822. For 1998, we all recall why: a gang of adulterous liars abused their powers to impeach a popular president for his private actions, and we the voters punished them for it at the election. Among the victims of this self-inflicted impeachment fiasco was the once-promising career of then-Rep. Rick White, who lost his job (to Jay Inslee) representing the First Congressional District of Washington.
How ordinary was the 2014 election? There was no change of party in any of the ten Congressional seats supplied by the state of Washington. Not much of a local Shift there, and maintaining the status quo in a year of expected change doesn’t say much for the challengers.
On the flip side, passage of I-594 may indeed signal the start of a nationwide shift — to rational regulation of firearms winning over the NRA’s fear-mongering and bullying.
Dream on. I-594 passed for the same reason Inslee was elected, King County liberals. Hardly the start of a statewide shift, much less nationwide. We all know you Capitol Hill liberals are afraid of guns, you don’t need to keep hammering the point. How was your last monorail ride?
You might want to check the actual elections results. Here is a cogent summary:
In the case of I-594, it was a lot of [conservative] voters. The measure won some hardcore Republican territory. It transcended the typical urban/rural divide, which typically fades from blue to purple as you progress from inner suburbs to exurbs. In the case of I-594, the Seattle-Tacoma area has nearly zero suburban precincts opposing I-594. Those that did were overwhelmingly in fairly rural environments — places like the Puyallup-area South Hill, with large land parcels and the occasional horse stable.
As for I-594’s supporters being “afraid of guns,” well:
I-594 won a lot of unconventional territory — even military bases, where early results have it over 60 percent.
(The monorail works just fine. It covers the distance in about one-tenth of the best time ground transportation can do. That’s why we here in Seattle always vote for more grade-separated mass transit!)
The historic passage of the monorail initiative (historic defined by you as winning the popular vote) promised monorail service to all parts of Seattle. It won by a wide margin. Then people figured out it was unworkable, expensive and would probably never be fully built. It then died a quiet death. People will figure I-594 is vague, unworkable, unenforceable, makes felons out of law abiding citizens, be a huge burden on the DOL (They’ll need lots more staff as they’re currently 6 mos. behind processing CPLs) and does ZERO to keep guns away from criminals. it will then join the monorail on the dung heap of history.
… historic defined by you as winning the popular vote…
No, you’re confusing me with the anonymous writers on this site, who keep gushing on and on and on about the election results they do like. Passage of I-594 was historic because no restrictions on gun purchases had ever been enacted by popular vote.
About the city-wide monorail, if you look at the tangled tale of its demise, you’ll find a lot of elites working to kill it. It passed several votes, and should have been built. As I mentioned, the existing monorail works just fine.
As for the rest of your statements concerning I-594, please quote from the actual text of the law. Otherwise, what would be your plan to keep felons from buying firearms after a licensed dealer refuses to sell? That’s probably the main reason I-594’s critics talk about it in very vague terms, while we supporters happily quote from it.
I’m not confusing you with any anonymous writer unless said anonymous writer hijacked your screen name. What, are you Nancy Pelosi?
About the city-wide monorail, It doesn’t matter who killed it or why. It was a historic passage of an initiative by a wide margin of popular vote that kinda didn’t happen.
My plan to keep felons from buying firearms AFTER a licensed dealer refuses to sell? News flash: Felons are already barred from possessing guns. They don’t go to gun stores, get turned down and then say “I’ll go to a gun show ’cause there’s that loophole” Felons buy their guns from OTHER FELONS. I-594 isn’t about background checks, it’s about registration/confiscation. If I go to an FFL on Monday to buy a gun then go to the same store Tuesday to buy another gun, why do I need another background check? Has anything changed in 24 hours? The only thing that changed is the government now knows I have one more gun to confiscate when they deem “necessary” but it’s merely background checks you’re after. Right…
Biff, there is absolutely nothing “historic” about Seattle’s voters passing a civic-improvement initiative; over the past fifteen years, we re-built the city’s public entire library system, enacting the necessary legislation via popular vote. That the various monorail proposals eventually got killed is a bad thing, but it has nothing to do with I-594.
Felons are already barred from possessing guns.
And until I-594 goes into effect, there is no legal mechanism to stop a felon from buying a gun at a show, because background checks are not yet required of gun-show sales.
They don’t go to gun stores, get turned down and then say “I’ll go to a gun show ’cause there’s that loophole”
Why not? It’s a very easy way to obtain a gun.
I-594 isn’t about background checks,
It is very explicitly about background checks. Read it sometime.
Has anything changed in 24 hours?
I don’t know. Did you shoot someone with the first gun during the day after you bought it? The prospective seller may not know, hence the requirement to perform the second check.
It sounds like the background check itself is your issue, not I-594’s expansion of it. I invite you to begin a state-wide campaign against all background checks. Good luck with that.
Being afraid of guns, you have never been within a country mile of a gun show so you don’t have the slightest idea who goes to them or how easy it is to make a purchase. Not a clue.
You bought into the big lie Bloomberg/Gates/Hanauer paid to have put in your mind. But it “feels good”. Liberals will always vote for something that “feels good” regardless of it’s merits, faults, enforcement, costs or other intentions of the authors. Think of the kids. That’s the correlation with the monorail. The difference between the two is the monorail was a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream with no chance of being paid for while I-594 is a Registration/Confiscation scheme dressed up in background check clothing. You don’t get to be a billionaire by being stupid and they know if the ads they paid for sold this as their dream registration/ confiscation scheme it would have never passed. See your fellow traveler Jonathan Gruber’s thoughts re: Obamacare.
They count on the stupidity of voters and this time they duped enough to get the camel’s nose under the tent.
Again, you’re hopelessly wrong on my view of background checks. I favor non-sale specific background checks. I would get checked out and get a card “OK for firearms #XXXXX exp. 11-17” with online verification so if I did “buy a gun one day and shoot somebody the next day” (nice liberal hyperbole) my cert would be revoked. But this scenario doesn’t fit with gun-grabbing billionaires, their paid-for stooges and unpaid saps. They would have no idea who to confiscate them from for their gun free utopia
Look, I get that you opposed I-594, and we know the reason it passed was the reason given by its supporters: closure of the gun-show loophole. Repeated attempts to wish this away by claiming that this loophole wasn’t exploited, or doesn’t really exist, have already failed, so why bother repeating them? Ditto your silly claim about proponents of I-594 being afraid of guns; that last one is especially amusing, given how voters residing on military bases voted for I-594 at an even higher rate than did voters statewide.
You bought into the big lie Bloomberg/Gates/Hanauer paid to have put in your mind.
I never saw a single ad for I-594. I based my support for it on the results of similar laws in other states. For example, Missouri in 2007 eliminated background checks, and in 2008 recorded the largest number of murders in the entire 2000-2012 period. From 2001-2007, Missouri’s murder rate had declined, and the national murder rate as well. The national murder rate continued to decline after 2007. Given how firearms account for the majority of murders in our country, what should we conclude?
I favor non-sale specific background checks.
Well, that’s not the system we have now, and we’d still have our current system whether I-594 had passed or not, so complaining about passage of I-594 does you no good. Again, you are free to file an Initiative with your idea, and/or to petition our legislature to adopt it. (And if you do either, please continue to yell as loudly as you can about “gun-grabbing billionaires,” because that really makes you sound reasonable. Trust me on this.)
“I never saw a single ad for I-594” Really? Were you on a mountaintop in Nepal meditating? Emerging only long enough to search for statistical anomalies that support your position, I’m sure. If you were anywhere in Washington from August on, there is no way you could go through your day without seeing several because your bosses paid to totally saturate the media with the big lie, emotional, tugging at the heartstrings. I bet you never saw a single one, neither did anybody else. Everybody based their vote on careful research and the reasoned position that it merely closes the gun-show loophole. With whoppers like that, you need to seek a job with the Obama administration, you’ll fit right in.
Were you on a mountaintop in Nepal meditating?
There was no need to go that far. Nobody in Vancouver, B.C. (to name just one of the foreign cities I visited in August) cared about Washington State’s politics; in another foreign city, they thought “Washington” meant our national capital.
… to search for statistical anomalies that support your position,
Yes, I actually did some research on the issue before I voted. You’re free to do research yourself, such as looking at both the FBI’s violent-crime statistics, and state figures on violent crime. It’s all easily available on-line. (I get the impression you already know you won’t like what you’ll find, hence your lack of such effort.)
And, since you haven’t presented any data at all, your empty claim of “statistical anomalies” is just so much more meaningless garbage.
… the big lie, emotional, tugging at the heartstrings.
Anything in there as silly as “gun-grabbing billionaires”?
(You might want to stop watching so much television. It does not appear very beneficial for you.)
Everybody based their vote on careful research and the reasoned position that it merely closes the gun-show loophole.
Citizens who reside on military bases — you know, a population which voted to pass I-594 by an even larger margin than did the rest of us — just don’t know anything about obtaining, using, or transporting weapons, right?
Citizens who reside on military bases were just as susceptible to being duped by the big lie as you. Just because somebody lives on a military base doesn’t make them an expert on weapons. In my entire time in the military, I officially field stripped an ACP once and fired 5 rounds from an M-1, both in basic training. (Sorry, gun talk probably sounds like a foreign language to you. I took apart a scary looking pistol and shot 5 bullets from a scary looking rifle) My MOS didn’t require weapons.
You didn’t submit any data either so your claims are also meaningless garbage.
All this is just hot air anyway. If this piece of crap hasn’t been repealed or struck down when I consider my next purchase, I’ll simply do my shopping out of state. I come from a large family, spread out around the country. I never have liked the Washington gun show scene anyway, too many people with nametags saying “I’m a felon and was turned down at a gun store”. As long as it’s unloaded and in a locked case, my new gun can fly into SEATAC with me, 100% legal. I’ve done it. Then when “merely closing the gun show loophole” becomes confiscation, your billionaire overseers won’t know what I’ve got to confiscate. Better mention that at the next staff meeting, get started drafting a puppies and kittens initiative to station jackbooted thugs at all points of entry, so they can search for any illegal .45 caliber kittens coming into your gun-free utopia.
You didn’t submit any data either so your claims are also meaningless garbage.
Here are the recent annual murder statistics for Missouri. (The murder statistics are in an Excel file, second link on the page, “Violent Crimes by Year”.) The law requiring universal background checks for handgun purchases was repealed in 2007, so 2008 was the first year without those checks:
2001 399
2002 348
2003 319
2004 369
2005 417
2006 384
2007 382
2008 474
2009 402
2010 435
2011 385
2012 390
The FBI statistics for murder, for the latter years of the same period:
Weapons 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Total 14,224 13,752 13,164 12,795 12,765
Total firearms 9,528 9,199 8,874 8,653 8,855
Handguns 6,800 6,501 6,115 6,251 6,371
While the murder rate nationwide dropped after 2008, Missouri’s murder rate increased dramatically, immediately after the law requiring background checks was rescinded. That’s a pretty clear co-relation, suggesting background checks reduce violent crime.
Just because somebody lives on a military base doesn’t make them an expert on weapons.
You claimed I-594 passed because voters were “scared of guns”. It passed by a larger margin on military bases than it did statewide. Was this because citizens who reside on military bases are more “scared of guns” than are the general population?
As long as it’s unloaded and in a locked case, my new gun can fly into SEATAC with me, 100% legal. I’ve done it.
Just be sure to follow all federal transport regulations when doing so. It would be more than a little ironic if your groundless beliefs about I-594 led you to violate very real federal laws.
Sorry, gun talk probably sounds like a foreign language to you.
No need to apologize; your premise remains as false as it was during all of the previous times you asserted it. But, by all means, keep hammering on that empty chamber. (ZOMG!!!1! An analogy about firearms, from a liberal! It must not have happened!)
This is the best you’ve got? This is what you based your carefully researched vote on?
According to your numbers, the median for those years is 392 which is 6.49/100,000 (a far more accepted metric than raw numbers) In 2008 it increased “dramatically” to 7.84/100,000 then dropped off again to below the median in 2011. Dramatic? Hardly. Like I said, It’s an anomaly, a blip. I can see why you had the weepy woman be vague in your ads.
2008 was also a particularly murderous year in Chicago (home to some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country and sporting a murder rate in the high teens/100,000) Highest in an 8 year span. Using your twisted logic, it must be because Chicago thugs got turned down at a gun store, heard there was no background checks in Missouri, went there for their weaponry and offed some people while they were there.
You claimed I-594 passed because voters were “scared of guns” I claimed no such thing. I said you and the rest of the Capitol Hill liberals were afraid of guns. I said I-594 passed because enough LIVs bought into the big lie brought to them by Bloomberg/Gates/ Hanauer.
“keep hammering on that empty chamber” Never heard this lame analogy before. Are you trying to say dry fire?
The average alone doesn’t tell you whether the change has significance; the deviation does. For the entire period, 2001-2012, the standard deviation is 39.7. 474 murders is therefore (474-392)/39.7 = 2.06 standard deviations from the average; that’s hardly a”blip”.
Where did you get the population figures for Missouri? Was there a census conducted in each of those years, or was each figure an estimate? What’s our confidence in each estimate? (But, dividing a number by a much larger number makes it looks smaller, I’ll give you that.)
2008 was also a particularly murderous year in Chicago…
So what? A city is not a state. I-594 is a state law, so we look for comparisons to other states.
You claimed I-594 passed because voters were “scared of guns” I claimed no such thing.
Here’s what you wrote:
Check the 43rd LD (you know, Capitol Hill, where you’re afraid of guns) 91% for. That’s why it passed.
Just as a city is not a state, Capitol Hill is not the entire 43rd LD. Among other places, It also includes the University of Washington. Now, if you want to say UW students are “scared of guns,” you might be onto something there. How many gun massacres have schools endured of late?
“keep hammering on that empty chamber” Never heard this lame analogy before.
(I got tired of the ol’ “shooting blanks” cliche.) I wasn’t using gun-range terminology — the shock would’ve been too great for you — so I described in mechanical terms what would happen if someone just kept pulling the trigger without checking whether the firearm was loaded or not. Just like you keep insisting people you’ve never met and do not know are “scared of guns.”
This is the best you’ve got? This is what you based your carefully researched vote on?
That’s rich, coming from someone who has repeatedly claimed the backers of I-594 have confiscatory intent, never once having cited any evidence of any kind whatsoever.
You might want to check the actual election results. Check the 43rd LD (you know, Capitol Hill, where you’re afraid of guns) 91% for. That’s why it passed. King County always dominates statewide elections
More from the article:
I-594 broke the Cascade Curtain.The much-vaunted Cascade Curtain, the imaginary line separating liberal Western Washington from conservative Eastern Washington, is a bit overplayed. There are plenty of Republican areas out West, and some Democratic strongholds in the East. Nonetheless, on an issue like gun rights, the perception is that the East-West divide is irreconcilable.
Not totally. It’s true that current results show I-594 passing only three Eastern counties — Spokane, plus narrow victories in Whitman (Pullman) and Asotin (Clarkston). However, many of the losses aren’t landslides. I-594 didn’t lose by much in Walla Walla or Yakima counties, and seems to have won both namesake cities. It also is essentially tied in Richland, a staunchly Republican city. Finally, even some smaller towns like Adams County’s Othello — visited by occasional violence — are easily approving the measure.
But, if it makes you feel better to call military service members and their families cowards, I guess you’ll continue to do so.
Wow, you and history remember Bill differently, history must be wrong though.
What in my recounting of Republican Congressional over-reach in 1998 was incorrect? It was the only time in the entire 20th Century when the President’s party gained Congressional seats in the sixth-year election, and it was very much about impeachment. The Republicans very much wanted to impeach President Clinton, and we the voters very much did not want them to do so. The record is very clear on these points.