NYT's Gail Collins Sneers at Idea That Statewide GOP Victories Mean Anything for Obama

The New York Times offered a post-election column to match Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post in its aggressive insistence that the election results meant absolutely nothing, especially to Barack Obama. In a Wednesday article -- mockingly titled "Hark! The Voters Speak!" -- Gail Collins said Creigh Deeds was a rural buffoon, and Jon Corzine was an urban nightmare:

Although there is no way to deny that New Jersey and Virginia were terrible, horrible, disastrous, cataclysmic blows to Obama’s prestige. No wonder the White House said he was not watching the results come in. How could the man have gotten any sleep after he realized that his lukewarm support of an inept candidate whose most notable claim to fame was experience in hog castration was not enough to ensure a Democratic victory in Virginia?

New Jersey was even worse. The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted.

They would not rally around Corzine even when the president asked them! Really, what good are coattails if they can’t drag an unlovable guy from a deeply corrupt party into a second term?

Like other liberals, Collins said the Congressional races were the only ones that mattered to Obama: "We have a dramatic saga story line brewing here, and I do not want to mess it up by pointing out that Obama’s party won the only two elections that actually had anything to do with the president’s agenda. Those were the special Congressional races in California and upstate New York."

Collins began her column from Cincinnati by mocking anyone who would see implications for Obama and the Democrats moving forward with absurd examples:

In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going.

Really, I don’t see how else you can interpret it. Ohioans were looking forward to the lower insurance costs that would come with a robust public option, and if the president can’t deliver, they’re planning to pay their future medical bills with their winnings at the roulette wheel.

Also, people here in Cincinnati rejected a proposal that would have made it harder for the city to expand mass transit. Obviously a repudiation of the entire cash-for-clunkers initiative.

Like Marcus, Collins really hates the idea that anyone might take these statewide GOP victories in states Obama won in 2008 and suggest that Democrats might want to trim their liberal sails a little before the midterms.