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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."
Well, the local vote doesn't rest so much on the personal qualities of a candidate so much on his ability to bring pork to his district. Having been convicted on things like having a piece of furniture in his home won't impress votes who depend on the pork for their jobs that much. And from what little I drained from the tubes on the topic, Mr. Stevens was an expert at getting quality output from them pork tubes.
Besides, he doesn't stand alone, and it dozen't only happen in the US. In Japan a few years back an MP got convicted, did jail time, got out and got promptly re-elected, despite the national media turning him into a sort of laughingstock. Similarities: he was from the northern, relatively unpopulated and cold part of Japan, and he was a "pork expert".
So, it is either the pork, or the ice. You decide.
They're at least somewhat orthogonal I thought? I'm not American so sometimes I can have really skewed views of how things work down there, but I don't see either as junior to the other. They have a very different set of responsibilities and privileges.
Regarding why she'd want to run... from up here I'd heard some rumblings about how Palin might have some executive experience, but a stunning lack of information about the rest of the country. Said persons then went on to suggest that some senate experience would be good for her if she wants to be involved in the 2012 race, get her some additional exposure out-of-state and some experience in Washington(being a maverick outsider renegade is all well and good, but some knowledge of how things work in Washington isn't entirely bad).
I'm not sure how many millions of Americans this would carry weight with, but these two seemed to think it'd be a splendid idea.