Blog Focus On Election Day 2009
Blog Focus is Technorati's daily roundup of the top stories as told by the bloggers of the world. Each day five posts, no matter how popular or nascent, will be selected by editors to portray a general unscientific reaction to discussion points around the 'Net.
Hey, elections. Those happened yesterday.
Is this you voting? If not, it's a heck of a facsimile.
• Newsweek | The Gaggle — So why did Creigh Deeds lose Virginia? Daniel Stone says not to use this as a microcosm for the Obama administration. Deeds didn't help himself much with his campaign, but "There’s a weird tradition in Virginia – a state that always elects its governors the year following presidential elections – that the executive mansion goes to the party that just lost the White House." Stone mentions the last four elections following this pattern, and it actually dates back to 1977.
• Box Turtle Bulletin — The same-sex marriage law in Maine was overturned by voters yesterday, leaving Gay Christian Network executive director Justin Lee wondering why a progressive state would do this. His advice? "Anti-LGBT faith leaders want us to think this is a contest between faith and us. Don’t believe them. There are plenty of devoutly religious Americans who support the LGBT community, and we need to engage them and make sure they’re part of the discussion."
• Michelle Malkin — As to Doug Hoffman's loss in NY-23 to Democratic candidate and Republican-supported Bill Owens, it was an end to a rather telling cross-section of the two-party system as it pertains to their constituents today. "NY-23 is a victory for conservatives who refuse to be marginalized in the public square by either the unhinged left or the establishment right."
• Urban Houstonian — Houston could elect its first openly gay mayor if Annise Parker wins the majority. She and Gene Locke will be part of a runoff election next month, but the choices defied conventional logic. "[I]f you asked someone anywhere in the United States to pick the two runoff candidates in a mayoral election in Houston that featured a white guy, black guy, a lesbian or Hispanic guy, they’d probably pick the white and Hispanic guys." Perhaps the cursory predispositions of minorities' chances at elected positions are starting to vanish.
• New York Magazine | Daily Intel — Mayor Bloomberg was elected to his third term, but the headline says it all. Nobody's impressed by his "wildly expensive five-point victory." Hey, I'm sure Bloomberg's 100-year-old mother is quite proud of it!
