That’s true, but only in the sense that there was indeed a problem that needed to be fixed. That’s pretty much inevitable for anyone. Screwing up that badly, and going out of your way to piss of that many people, is not inevitable. It’s important to distinguish that he didn’t lose because he made hard choices that needed to be made for the sake of balancing the budget - he lost because, for example, during the process of negotiating a contract that everyone knew was going to be rough no matter what, he told teachers and other government employees to go fuck themselves (only slightly paraphrased).
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Well, this certainly isn’t the right thing. It’s self serving.
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Abercrombie has been in elected office since 1975. May I suggest that if you are “not much of a politician” after 39 years in office, then perhaps you are in the wrong line of work?
Abercrombie and Bitch.
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I blame his attire.
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Legislating and being an executive are two different skill sets, particularly legislating from a relatively safe district.
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According to Neil, his loss is not his fault…it couldn’t possibly be his fault!
Why is it with all these old pols, their loss is never their fault? It must be some “outside” influence!!
Yes Neil, people don’t like you!! So there, it IS your fault!
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That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.
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He and McDaniel should host a joint pity party, where they can cry if they want to.
Not when you lose by 35 points.
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I don’t know anything about Hawaiian politics or this election, but have to ask if this is an example of how undemocratic open primaries are? Open primaries typically serve to minimize the chance of “extreme” views winning in either party (although they can serve the opposite way). They are one of the few, if only examples, in America where nonmembers are allowed to vote in an organization’s election.
[quote]
“We couldn’t have figured out what the urgency was,” Walter Yoshimitsu, executive director of the Hawaii Catholic Conference, said. “If he had dealt with it in the regular session, there would have been more time.”[/quote]
More time for what? Denying equal civil rights to gay people?
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Well, he’s an interesting guy. Always a weird politician. He came to my junior high school in his Volkswagen bug when he was first running for office in the early seventies, and he looked like an old hippy then. Never seemed to have charisma, never seemed like a consensus builder. Though I agree with his politics, I could never really get the appeal…
Still, if you want to stay in office you should know how to form alliances, make friends, be careful whom you piss off and so on. In short, all what a politician’s job requires him to do. Granted, politicians can become a bit full of themselves (Cantor, anyone?) - and then they are usually voted out of office.
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Pretty sure it was more than a few who opposed Abercrombie because of the Inouye slap (though I agree there were many reasons not to like Abercrombie). I grew up in Hawaii (Kalaheo '79) and lived there till 2001 and, though I am sure things have changed since I left, the older Japanese core of the Democratic party loved Inouye and love honor and decorum and took that failure to honor his wishes REALLY hard. I know they are no longer the face of the party, but many of them are still around and they vote. Ige and the people who surround him were perfectly attuned to those voters. I know there are more modern segments within the party, but it’s hard to get anywhere once you’ve pissed off the old folks.
It wasn’t gay marriage. It wasn’t Senator Inouye’s followers. It was, pure and simple, mismanagement. Abercrombie was pretty good at attracting Federal $, but he was a very poor manager. His department heads all behaved as though they had no need to be open or communicative with the public. Under his administration, things became very private. When he was 1st elected, a treasure trove of young talented people came to work for him, and within months they all moved on. Projects were poorly managed, and unnecessarily delayed. His local manager here felt compelled to call and threaten people who posted critical comments.
Blaming the gay marriage factor is face-saving, and that’s OK, it’s a very human response. But it also is illustrative of the tone-deafness he has now become known for. He won’t earn any further elective office, it’s a shame to end a lengthy career this way. I suppose he’ll stay active unofficially within the party, hopefully he will be more effective in the background.
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Since David Ige voted for marriage equality in the Hawaii Senate, not mentioned in the article, Abercrombie’s claim is less than compelling.
I don’t quite understand the quote from the Executive Director of the Pedophile Protection Program. “We couldn’t have figured out what the urgency was,” Walter Yoshimitsu, executive director of the Hawaii Catholic Conference, said. “If he had dealt with it in the regular session, there would have been more time.” More time for what?
More time to manufacture outrage, more time to build up vacation leave for protests outside the capitol to make it look like the antis were greater in numbers than they actually were, etc. And yes, some of my co-workers did take time off from work to go down and wait in line for a full day to testify against marriage equality. Though it was interesting to contrast the generally polite (it’s hard to call it “respectful”, though some might use that word) opposition from Mormons like them to the outright vitriol and hatred that came from the evangelicals.
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We should choose representatives with:
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Closed primaries (The choice of a party by its members)
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Then an election to choose the top-two candidates overall.
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Then a runoff between the top two.
And ironically, Hanabusa is much more like Abercrombie than Schatz is. The Senate race was also almost entirely about personality rather than policy (people outside Hawaii trying to paint Hanabusa as a DINO notwithstanding, they are almost identical), and her attitude that “this seat is MINE, and it was stolen from me by this undeserving jerk” turned off a lot of people in much the same way as Abercrombie’s mouthing off.
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