THE VOTERS I spoke to outside the faux-colonial-style City Hall here yesterday wanted Democrats and Republicans to work together, for the good of the country.
As if to prove their goodwill, campaign workers for Democratic incumbent Jim Moran and his Republican challenger Patrick Murray chatted happily in the crisp autumn weather outside the polling station, next to the tape labelled “No Campaigning Beyond This Point”.
Just across the Potomac river from the nation’s capital, Alexandria’s old town is filled with twee boutiques and restaurants and well-groomed, ageing white people. Its veneer of consensual politics evaporated in seconds, however, when the Republican candidate met Democratic voters.
Patrick Murray has just retired as a US army colonel after 24 years in the military. While greeting voters, Murray spoke about his 2007 tour of duty in Baghdad’s “Green Zone”, then talked of American small businesses that “had the ground pulled out from under them” by the Obama administration.
For two years, Murray said, business owners have been paralysed by uncertainty. They didn’t know whether the Bush era tax cuts would be extended, or by how much healthcare premiums for employees would go up. He didn’t mention that Republicans blocked the extension of tax cuts by insisting the richest 2 per cent of the population be included.
Two of Obama’s unkept promises created uncertainty for business, Murray complained. The “cap and trade” climate change Bill would have increased energy costs, he said. And the Employee Free Choice Act would have allowed unions to organise more freely. Obama never mustered a majority for either, and both pieces of legislation will be dead in the water if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House of Representatives.
Charlie and Susan Davis, a retired US Airways pilot and the retired manager of a student travel company, arrived to cast their ballots. The Congressional candidate thought he sniffed Republicans. Had Charlie been a military pilot? Murray guessed correctly. The two men discussed the relative merits of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
Susan Davis put a stop to the bonhomie. “I gotta tell you, we love Jim Moran,” she blurted out in front of Murray.
Murray looked hurt and angry. “If you love debt and the deficit, vote for him then.”
“We don’t blame Moran,” Susan said . . . “You put it in a very dark way. That’s not what we’re about. It was the Iraq war that put us in this mess.”
“We spent more in the stimulus Bill, which did nothing,” Murray retorted. The Iraq war cost “only” $700 billion, he continued, while Obama’s stimulus was close to a trillion. Actually, I interrupted, the Recovery Act was $787 billion, and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the true cost of the Iraq war is close to $3 trillion.
Murray looked daggers at me, and his assistant asked for my e-mail address, so he could send me some documentation.
Susan Davis raised her eyes to the sky. “Yeah. Right,” she said. By this time, the animosity between her and Murray was so palpable you could have cut it with a knife. “Some of that stimulus money is coming back to us,” she said. “We’re not going to get anything back from Iraq. We wrecked that country, and many people are dead.”
“That’s your opinion,” Murray said coldly, turning to seek more promising voters.
A majority of Virginians voted for Barack Obama in 2008 – the only time in the Republican state’s history that it chose a Democratic president. Bob Stevenson (62), an export financier, wore a red Patrick Murray sticker on his coat.
A Republican, Stevenson voted for Obama because “There was no way in hell I’d vote for that woman [Sarah Palin] to be vice- president, not because she’s a woman; because she’s an idiot. I don’t know what possessed John McCain to choose her as a running mate.” If Palin is the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, Stevenson said, “I’ll move to Canada”. For him, yesterday’s election had nothing to do with Obama. “Moran has been elected 10 times; that’s 20 years.
“People talk about term limits, but nobody does anything about it. Moran’s a rubber stamp Democrat. He’s not an independent thinker.”
“Every day for me is a referendum on Obama,” said Magee Whelan, a middle-aged attorney who bears the names of her grandparents from Wexford and Cork. “I am most definitely opposed to Obama’s policies.” It was “amazing” that Virginia voted for Obama by a 6.3 percentage point margin over John McCain. “Virginia showed its regret by electing Robert McDonnell (a Republican) a year ago today,” she added.
Susan Agusti (57), a retired management consultant, was voting for Moran “because he supports Obama, whom I support. I’m a real split-ticketer, but I like Moran better than Murray. I want to give Obama as much support as possible . . . Yes, this is a referendum on Obama.”