Ted Stevens Loses Senate Re-Election Bid

JakartaDean writes "Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that 'Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.' It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."

Comments

I'm amazed

[Swordopolis]

that it got this close. I figured this would be an absolute stomping after Senator Tubes became a convicted felon.

Re:I'm amazed

[andytrevino]

Yeah -- essentially what this result means is that those Alaskans who cast their vote for Stevens would rather vote for a shamelessly corrupt convicted felon than for a Democrat.

Most of the time, I'm with 'em. ;)

(though, to be fair, he would have probably resigned and been replaced with a better candidate by appointment or special election, had he won.)

Re:I'm amazed

[omeomi]

what would have been "stunning" would have been if Stevens survived.

Well, I don't know about "stunning"... Is there anything left that our elected leaders can do that would really "stun" the American public?

Re:I'm amazed

[deathy_epl ccs]

Is there anything left that our elected leaders can do that would really "stun" the American public?

If one of them were to turn out to be decent and upstanding, that would utterly shock us.

Re:I'm amazed

[DavidTC]

Afuckingmen.

I've started calling them 'borrow and spend' Republicans.

Look, I'm a progressive guy, and things like some sort of national health care make sense to me. But I can see how reasonable people would disagree.

It's my job to get people in that would demonstrate that those people are incorrect, and it's other people's job to stop me, and we can behave rationally as we disagree.

Meanwhile, I think our 'larger than the entire rest of the world combined' military budget is perhaps slighty to large unless there's some alien menace we don't know about, and I'll disagree there.

But there is a place the Republican have not been behaving rationally: Taxes.

Incoming must match outgo, period. This isn't debatable, this isn't some reasonable disagreement, we must take in as much as we spend, on average. (Year to year we can fiddle with that, overtaxing in a boom and undertaxing in the recession, but whatever.)

And yet Republicans constantly pretend the amount of tax is government policy that they disagree on. That we're having some sort of fucking rational debate whether or not we should tax people enough to run the damn government!

They do this because they, if you can't see my signature, want to 'drown the government in the bath tub'. They are attempting to cripple the government so badly that it can't actually run social services.

You know what 'crippling the government' is, in my book? Treason

Re:An Alaskan's perspective

[HW_Hack]

""After all the billions you've brought to your state, who could possibly begrudge you $10,000 here or there? Heck, you DESERVE it!""

Corruption is like pregnancy ... nobody is just a little pregnant. Whats his name Duke Cunningham (who used to be a Top Gun pilot) also found guilty corruption etc.

A lot of "good" can be washed (down the tubes) by a little bad.

Re:An Alaskan's perspective

[Comatose51]

It's rare to have such nuanced views on Slashdot. As much as I wanted Stevens out of the Senate, your perspective on him is quite believable. The world isn't black and white or good vs. evil. People are often shades in between. It doesn't help our understanding of the world to type cast someone or see only one perspective/side of a person, a nation, or an issue.

It is indeed sad to see someone with such a long service to fall to such lows.