Maybe Vermont Republicans have forgotten how to handle success?

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Confusing little presser the Republicans held at the Statehouse Friday. Confusing in a couple of fundamental ways. They’re already well on their way to a fatal overdose of hubris; they’re toying with an ill-considered attempt to grab the governorship, or at least undercut Peter Shumlin; and they still don’t know what the hell to do with Scott Milne.

I wasn’t there, but I’ve been told that Milne was actually in attendance, but wasn’t invited to speak.* Indeed, even as they slapped each others’ backs over a relative handful of legislative victories, they “didn’t mention Milne until prompted by reporters,” according to VTDigger’s Laura Krantz.

*Note: Per the Comments below, multiple attendees say that Milne was not present. I’ll accept their word for it.

They “didn’t mention Milne,” the man who might still become their leader, not to mention the state’s.

What… the… hell.

Also, even as they were ignoring the Miracle Man, they were boldly announcing their plans for legislation to dump Vermont Health Connect.

(Let me just pause and note what a Boehnerian idea that is: promising a bill to kill a Democratic reform, a bill they know will never pass, just for the sake of some political posturing.)

Uh, fellows, d’ya think maybe it’d be a good idea if you’d, oh, consult Scott Milne before you make your big plans? Especially since some of you, at least, are going to do what you can to overthrow historical precedent and install him as our next governor?

Presumably, if legislative Republicans get their way, it ought to be Scott Milne setting the agenda, not them. But what do I know.

In fact, according to Seven Days’ Mark Davis, there’s been virtually no communication between Milne and top Republicans since Tuesday. Or before Tuesday, either, since they gave him damn little help during the campaign, believing (like everybody else) that he was a radioactive loser.

As for overthrowing historical precedent, take a bow, top House Republican Don Turner and top Senate Republican Joe Benning. Both of them indicated that they would vote for Milne if the race goes to the legislature, in spite of 161 years of precedent that says the legislature always installs the top vote-getter, whether it’s a Republican (Jim Douglas, 2002) or a Democrat (Peter Shumlin, 2010).

And as I wrote earlier, the last time the #2 vote-getter was installed as governor, it was the result of a dirty backroom political deal between the #2 and #3 parties to take down #1. Kinda like if the Democrats and Progressives united to block a Republican who’d won a plurality. So I don’t think the stolen election of 1853 is the kind of precedent anyone should want to emulate.

While we’re on the subject, Mr. Turner: when the governorship was decided by the legislature in 2010, did you vote for Peter Shumlin? If so, you are a hypocrite and an opportunist.

On the other hand, there was the current top Republican officeholder in the state, Phil Scott, saying that he’d obey precedent and vote for Shumlin if he had to choose. Leadership, boys.

Milne and Turner and Benning have devised a new interpretation of the legislature’s role, by saying that each lawmaker should follow the electoral results in his or her district. Which is a brand-new idea that happens to coincide with their own short-term interests. Statesmanship, boys.

Tuesday was the first taste of victory the Republicans have enjoyed in quite a long time. It’s been more than a decade since they gained seats in the legislature, and six since they won the governorship. This sudden burst of success must be terribly disorienting. It’s obviously gone to their heads, and not in a good way.

Hopefully they can regain their balance and learn to use their hard-won scraps of political power in a positive way.

Mikey Pom-Poms has a sad

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Boy oh boy, us bloggers and Tweeters must have really gotten under Michael Townsend’s skin. Because normally, he and the other denizens of the Burlington Free Press like to pretend that no other news outlets actually exist. Except when another outlet screws up.

I can explain everything.

I can explain everything.

But today, the Freeploid’s Executive Editor and Chief Gannett Cheerleader sent out a burst of self-pitying defensiveness under the title “Editor explains changes at FreePressMedia.”

Which is a first in itself: Townsend feeling the need to explain things. Collars a bit tight? Knickers in a twist? Not enough oxygen in the Freeploid’s seventh-floor digs?

The first thing I need to do is correct misinformation swirling around on social media as we go through a significant staff reorganization.

Oh, those nasty evil denizens of Social Media!

Hey wait, isn’t the Freeploid — er, sorry, FreePressMedia — in the midst of a headlong dive into social media-driven journalismism? I guess “social media” is a good thing except when it rises up to bite you in the ass.

He then denies “rumors and speculation that we are abandoning coverage in Montpelier.”

I don’t think anybody said you were, Mike. We just pointed out that you were shuttering your Statehouse bureau and lost your two Statehouse reporters when you told them they wouldn’t be covering the Statehouse anymore. See the difference?

I’m sure you will continue to cover the Statehouse. You’ll send a crew down from Burlington whenever you think there’s a sufficiently clickbaity story. But I’m equally sure you won’t have anyone there on a daily basis, and that will affect the quantity and quality of your coverage.

And this is an undeniable fact: the Burlington Free Press has de-emphasized Statehouse news over the past couple of years at least, concentrating more of its resources on its home base of Chittenden County. I’ve been expecting the departure of Terri Hallenbeck and/or Nancy Remsen for quite a while, because it’s obvious that the Free Press is publishing a lot less Statehouse news than it used to.

The Burlington Free Press used to be the number-one source for state political and policy news. It isn’t anymore, and it’s about to get significantly worse.

As Townsend says himself in his little counterattack, Statehouse coverage will come from an “accountability/watchdog” team whose responsiblities will be at “the regional and state levels.” They’ll have a lot of ground to cover, and only part of their effort will go to state-level news.

Indeed, considering the Freeploid’s stated focus on arts, culture and food, and its lack of dedicated Statehouse/political reporters, you could say that its new nickname ought to be “Seven Days Lite.” After all, Seven Days still has a full-time reporter on state politics and policy.

For those keeping score, that’s Plucky Weekly 1, Established Daily 0.

And meanwhile, the Freeploid’s Chief Content Whore — er, I mean, “business reporter” — Dan D’Ambrosio is spending his day reporting on the grand opening of the LL Bean store in Burlington. Five days after my Sunday Freeploid came wrapped in a plastic advertisement for the grand opening of the LL Bean store in Burlington.

Plastic: an ironic medium for a retailer with a green, outdoorsy image.

(Come to think of it, the plastic Bean Bag was an unsightly, almost illegible washed-out gray-and-white. Bean really got its money’s worth there.)

I guess I’m supposed to think the wall-to-wall coverage of a major advertiser is a coincidence. And continue to think so when I get my morning paper tomorrow and find a big fat article on the grand opening of the LL Bean Store in Burlington on the front page.

Much of Townsend’s column is devoted to explaining the changing media environment and the need of newspapers — sorry, media companies — to evolve. I sympathize. I get it. I don’t expect the status quo.

What irks me, though, and makes me critical of the Free Press in a way that I’m not of, say, the equally diminished Times Argus, is the following:

— A big part of the Free Press’ financial trouble arises from the fact that its profits are siphoned off to satiate Gannett investors.

— As I’ve said before, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The Free Press continues to occupy a dominant position in Vermont’s media landscape. As long as it does, there’s a lot less space for other sources to emerge and grow.

— The inhumane process that Free Press workers had to go through. Re-interviewing for their own jobs. Jobs “offered purely based on numerical ratings,” as Townsend himself put it.

In the words of Number Six, “I am not a number — I am a free man!”

— And, worst of all, the clickbait-driven approach to journalism, which extends so far as to require staff to rewrite stories after they’re published to goose the pageviews.

I can tell how much the criticism has gotten to Townsend, because he actually went so far as to name the reporters who’ve departed the Free Press. This is never, ever done in the media: you don’t want to give your audience any reason to miss the people who have gone.

But there, in print, are shout-outs to Sam Hemingway, Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen.

(He didn’t mention Lynn Monty, who refused to go through the “demeaning and degrading” process of re-interviewing, or Tim Johnson, who simply failed to post a high enough number.)

I can’t really blame Michael Townsend. Part of his job is to take Gannett’s chicken shit and convince us it’s chicken salad. But he is fair game for criticism, and his response fundamentally mischaracterizes the criticism.

Scott Milne takes it to the limit

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Before the election, when Scott Milne was sure he was going to lose, he was fully prepared to resume his humble life as a travel mogul and disgruntled developer. Indeed, his official schedule, as posted by his campaign last weekend, had him in travel industry-related meetings yesterday and today.

My precious…

My precious…

But now that he came sooooo close, he’s starting to act like Gollum chasing after the Ring. He’s digging for any possible justification to not only avoid conceding, but to grab the governorship in spite of historical precedent.

I’m not saying he should give up. Not yet. He is well within his rights to delay conceding for now. We can wait until next Wednesday, when the vote will be certified. After that, if the margin remains under two percentage points, he should call for a recount if he wants.

After that, he needs to stop. He should concede gracefully and get on with his life, content in the knowledge that he followed his own path and far exceeded anyone’s expectations. He has no business twisting logic and Vermont history to justify an attempt to usurp the process.

Since he still hasn’t publicly addressed the voters he claims to care so deeply about, all we have is a statement from his campaign:

“It’s clear that 54% of Vermonters want a new Governor, and a new path forward” according to Scott Milne, after reviewing preliminary numbers in what appears to be the closest race in Vermont history.

Yeah, well, as I’m not the first to point out, 55% of Vermonters didn’t want Scott Milne to be their Governor, so that dog won’t hunt. What else ya got?

“We are gathering information for the requirements of a recount and weighing whether that is in the best interest of the people of Vermont, and we are looking closely at the legislative districts across the state on a district by district basis to determine which candidate won the most counties and legislative districts” said Milne.

Oh, so now you’re makin’ shit up.

There’s nothing in the state constitution that tells lawmakers how to elect a governo, when that task befalls them. But more than a century and a half of precedent says the individual with the most votes is chosen governor.

To illustrate how much precedent there is, the last time it was flouted, the Whig Party was involved. And our Statehouse had yet to be built.

Not to mention that it was a pure case of political chicanery, in which two lesser parties struck a deal to screw the first-place finisher (the Whig, as it happens). So I don’t think Milne wants to invoke that as a precedent.

No, he has the 1976 contest for Lieutenant Governor in mind.

Lawmakers last bucked a plurality vote in 1976 – in the Lt. Governor’s race – like now, the plurality winner- John Alden- faced confirmation by a House and Senate controlled by his own party.

“If we move forward, I expect Peter Shumlin has a good likelihood of facing the same fate as John Alden, and I will be Vermont’s next Governor” according to Milne.

What Milne conveniently omits is that Alden was facing legal trouble at the time. Shortly after his non-election, he was indicted on fraud charges and later convicted. It’s believed that enough people in the Legislature knew about it, that the vote went against him to avoid a huge embarrassment. (And I do hope that when Milne says he expects Shumlin to face “the same fate as John Alden,” he doesn’t mean criminal conviction.)

So that’s not a convincing rationale either. Not to mention, there’s a hell of a big difference between electing a Lieutenant Governor and electing a Governor, with all due respect to buckets of warm spit.

There’s also the inconvenient fact that before the election, Milne said that “he would concede the race if Shumlin won a plurality, and hoped Shumlin would do the same if the situation were reversed.”

Now, he says that wasn’t a statement of his position, it was a “challenge” to Shumlin to follow the will of the voters. And since Shumlin didn’t embrace his “challenge,” then Milne gets to take it back.

To be fair to Milne, he’s just kinda spitballing at this point, which is consistent with his behavior during the campaign. He hasn’t actually taken any of the actions he’s threatening to take. Indeed, his bottom line is that he will wait until the election is certified next Wednesday and then decide on his next move.

At that point, if he’s still in second place, he should do the right thing and concede. As his running mate, Phil Scott, said today:

Vermont’s newest pundit

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Er, that would be me.

I just got off the phone after spending almost 90 minutes on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show, looking back at the gubernatorial election, how we got it so wrong, and what it all means. There were a lot of great phone calls from all parts of the political spectrum, and Mark was (as always) a great host, gently guiding the discussion while allowing plenty of room for callers to drive the conversation.

I didn’t always agree with the callers, and I’m sure they didn’t always agree with me. But they were intelligent and thoughtful. They saw things from their own viewpoints and interpreted events accordingly, but they weren’t shrill or doctrinaire. It was a pleasure to spend time and share ideas with them.

My big takeaways are:

— People are smarter than the likes of me give them credit for. One of the structural drawbacks of being a writer or reporter or politician is that you live in your own little world. I do my writing from my home office. Reporters spend the vast majority of their time in their offices. Reporters and politicians spend their time talking to each other. Sure, politicians hit the road and press the flesh. But that’s a small part of what they do.  Our perspectives are skewed by how and where we spend our time and who we talk to.

— Governor Shumlin’s biggest problems are that he’s seen as out of touch, and as a bad manager. And that’s job one, whether you’re a liberal or a conservative: take care of business. Get the roads plowed and the cops on the beat and the teachers in the classrooms. Spend the people’s money wisely and well. If you do that, people will reward you, no matter what your ideology.

His out-of-touchness was a constellation of things: the outside travel, the fundraising from corporate interests, his habit of saying whatever he thinks his current audience wants to hear.

Look at the people who’ve won respect in Vermont. People like George Aiken and Dick Snelling and Bernie Sanders and Jim Douglas and Pat Leahy and Phil Scott. Ideologically, they have very little in common. But they are seen as honest brokers who care about doing government well and taking care of the people as best they can.

Governor Shumlin was brilliant during and after Tropical Storm Irene. He has been far less effective in the day-to-day business of government. The continued failure of Vermont Health Connect is the single biggest thing, but there’s also the problems at the Department of Children and Families and the failure to address rising school costs and the failed IT contracts (which was also a trouble spot for Jim Douglas, but Shumlin hasn’t fixed it).

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few other things. But the point is, if the voters entrust you with public office, you have to carry out the office’s duties effectively. That’s the most important thing. Especially if you’re a liberal who wants government to do more. People will go along with you if they think you’re doing a good job.

And pretty much nobody, on the left, right, or center, thought Shumlin was doing a good job.

— By contrast, Scott Milne, for all his faults (in some ways, because of his faults), did seem authentic. He was a real person, warts and all. He was open to new ideas from all sides, and his primary focus was to make government work well. In many ways, he was the perfect anti-Shumlin.

That’s the message I got over and over again on the radio this morning. Well, there were many messages, but those are the big ones. It was informative, and it was a lot of fun. Thanks to Mark, his listeners, and WDEV for giving me the opportunity.

She’s spinning so fast, she’s gonna explode

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DarcieThis is incredible, even by the standards of Darcie “Hack” Johnston.

She’s gone full Orwell on the election returns, which once again revealed her consistent wrongness. I’ve heard that she’s a nice person who’s always accessible and capable of turning on the charm,  especially with the media. But she’s just plain wrong. All the time.

She managed Randy Brock’s campaign to an embarrassing defeat. And this time, she managed Dan Feliciano to a disastrous 4% finish. Remember, in July and August this guy was widely believed to be a stronger candidate than Scott Milne. Who, lest we forget, outpolled Feliciano by a better than 10-to-1 margin.

But Johnston is desperately spinning the results to make herself look better. Or, should I say, less of a train wreck. From the Freeploid’s (sadly departing) Terri Hallenbeck:

Johnston… said she had no regrets pushing Feliciano as a candidate even though she was surprised at how well Milne did.

“It was never evident to me that Scott Milne had a chance to win,” she said.

This ace political strategist admits she missed the Milne trend. And, in retrospect, who does she credit for Milne’s showing? She and her candidate.

…she said Milne could have done more to prevail over Shumlin. She contended he was late to pick up on the problems with Vermont Health Connect and offered a split message on government-financed health care when he said he would consider it down the road if it worked elsewhere.

Okay, now that’s amazing. She says the candidate who got 45% of the vote should have been more like the guy who got 4%? I guess so. Plus, according to Johnston, Mr. Four Percent was actually the driving force behind Milne’s surge:

She argued that some voters would not have come out at all but for Feliciano. She also contended that Feliciano’s stance on health care helped generate supporters for some Republican legislative candidates who also hammered that issue, including Valerie Mullin, who ousted Democrat Mike Fisher, chairman of the House Health Care Committee.

Uhh, Darcie? (And, I hate to say it, Terri?)

Valerie Mullin lost.

She finished in fourth place, behind Mike Fisher, in spite of the fact that Mullin outspent her opponents. And put out a last-minute mailer falsely accusing the Democrats of plotting a Medicare takeover. The candidate who unseated Fisher, Fred Baser, is a widely-respected moderate Republican who refused to take part in the Johnston/Mullin health care bashing.

I don’t know whether the factual error was Johnston’s or Hallenbeck’s, but it’s a clear example of Johnston’s “black is white, war is peace” analysis of the election.

And if, after all this, Johnston is still taken seriously as a campaign consultant — if any candidate hires her ever again — well, there are no words.

Look, I’ve got nothing personal against Johnston. I just hate to see someone rewarded, over and over again, for brazen incompetence. And taken seriously as a political figure in spite of her repeated cluelessness.

The biggest winner of the Vermont election

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You can probably guess. It’s Lt. Gov. Phil Scott.

Not just because he cruised to an easy victory over Dean Corren. Not just because he leaves the campaign with almost $100K in cash on hand for whatever he wants to do next.

Not just because the decks are clear for him to be a very dangerous candidate for Governor in 2016.

No, on top of all that, there’s this: the results of the election ought to cement his control of the Vermont Republican Party. The true believers ought to be marginalized by the impressive success of Scott Milne as a moderate Republican candidate and the dismal failure of their pet project, Dan Feliciano.

Hey, remember when two of the VTGOP’s top four officers, Brady Toensing and Mark Snelling, openly supported Feliciano in the Republican primary? Brady Toensing and Mark Snelling were the two holdovers from the Jack Lindley era who retained their offices last fall in a patched-together compromise with the Phil Scott people.* At the very least, their views ought to take a back seat. At the very most, Scott and party chair “Super Dave” Sunderland ought to feel free to replace them with more like-minded people.

*Correction: I mischaracterized the VTGOP’s leadership race last fall. Toensing was not a holdover from the previous admin; originally, according to Paul Heintz, the conservatives wanted Toensing as chair and David Sunderland as vice chair, while the Phil Scott camp wanted them switched. In the end, the party unanimously went with Scott’s pairing. 

And, lest we forget, prominent conservatives Wendy Wilton and John McClaughry also jumped into the Feliciano lifeboat, only to see the S.S. Milne sail on blissfully without them.

And if there’s any justice, this ought to be the death knell for Darcie “Hack” Johnston as a serious political voice. She piloted Feliciano’s campaign straight into the Randy Brock Memorial Iceberg. As far as I can tell, she represents nobody but herself. Her true-believer approach to politics is a proven loser, a dead end for the VTGOP. She might keep on being quoted in the media because she’s an easy get, but as a political strategist? Nope.

For all his faults as a campaigner, Scott Milne succeeded where nobody has since Jim Douglas: he convinced a lot of centrists, independents, and even Democrats to abandon their standard bearer. Part of that is circumstance; a lot of it is a loss of faith in Governor Shumlin; but it also had to do with a Republican candidate who was not an ideologue, who even entertained the notion that some Democratic ideas might be acceptable.

Future Republican candidates would do well to learn the art of public speaking better than Milne, but they would also do well to follow the moderate Republican playbook.

And that’s the biggest win of all for Our Lieutenant Governor.

So what happened with the polls?

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Ah, the opinion polls, with their oft-trumpeted 4% margins of error.

Well, they missed the Governor’s race by a lot more than that, didn’t they?

The consensus, such as it was, gave Governor Shumlin a 12-point edge. Right now, the Associated Press has him at 46.4% and Scott Milne at 45.4%. Feel free to check my math, but I think that’s a margin of one percent. 

The polls were off by almost 11 percentage points.

The difference? Virtually every undecided voter went for Scott Milne. Which is unheard-of; usually, the undecideds don’t all go stampeding in one direction.

Plus, the Associated Press is reporting that Vermont had a record low turnout. The Democratic GOTV machine just couldn’t overcome the broad disaffection with the current administration, and the widespread belief that this election wasn’t close, which made it easier to stay home.

So, Milne got a larger chunk of a smaller electorate.

Let’s take the most recent Castleton Polling Inistute survey, reported on Oct.12.

gubernatorial-race

From Oct. 12 to last night, what happened? Governor Shumlin lost a sliver of his support while convincing no undecideds. Scott Milne gained a whopping ten percent by nabbing all the undecideds and poaching nearly two-thirds of Dan Feliciano’s supporters.

What does that say? It says that Governor Shumlin lost the middle, in spite of all his triangulating. And he lost ALL of the middle. And, I suspect, a fair bit of support on the left, who either sat out the Governor’s race or made a protest vote for Milne or a write-in. (Doug Racine, anyone?)

Or just stayed home, not feeling motivated to re-elect Shumlin and feeling (falsely) secure in the knowledge that their absence wouldn’t make much difference in what was thought to be a Democratic cakewalk.

A few numbers, submitted for your consideration

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Note: This is a thorough update of an earlier post. I’ve switched from VPR’s numbers to the Secretary of State’s unofficial numbers. The SoS has fewer precincts reporting, but for some reason the VPR returns don’t include the Auditor’s race. I wanted to include Doug Hoffer, so I went to the SoS numbers to provide a consistent base.

 

Which of these things is not like the others?

142,010

122,424

120,298

119,630

105,725

86,808

No, this is not a trick question. The answer is 86,808.

And where do these numbers come from, boys and girls?

They are the vote totals for the six victorious statewide Democratic (and Prog/Dem) candidates.

The first is Auditor Doug Hoffer, who had no opponents on the ballot. After that we have Secretary of State Jim Condos, Treasurer Beth Pearce, Congressman Peter Welch, and Attorney General Bill Sorrell.

And then, badly trailing the field, is Governor Peter Shumlin.

Thinky pain.

Thinky pain.

If you look at those numbers, you have to conclude that the fundamental truth of this election was a repudiation of the Governor.

To be sure, the strength of the competition has a lot to do with the numbers. But consider this one bare fact: roughly 33,000 Vermonters cast votes for Peter Welch and refused to do so for Peter Shumlin. To put it another way, tens of thousands of Vermonters cast straight-ticket Democratic votes except for Dean Corren and Peter Shumlin. 

And today, that’s not the kind of company you want to keep.

On top of all that, while this was a good election for Republicans in the legislature, it wasn’t a tsunami or anything. The Republicans did well; they are still on the short end of lopsided partisan divides. Governor Shumlin barely held on against an underfunded neophyte, but the Dems and Progs were victorious in roughly 60% of House races and nearly two-thirds in the Senate.

By far the biggest loser, aside from Dean Corren, was our (presumably) re-elected Governor. This race was partly a thumbs-down on Democrats in general; but far more than that, it was a rejection of Peter Shumlin’s governorship.

Money can’t buy me love

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"I'm not dead yet!" said a soft, muffled voice.

“I’m not dead yet!” said a soft, muffled voice.

The race for Governor of Vermont had all the makings of “Bambi Vs. Godzilla II: The Re-Flattening.” Scott MIlne was a badly underfunded candidate who ran a goofy, error-filled campaign, while Peter Shumlin was the consummate political pro with a huge bankroll and a far stronger party apparatus.

And yet, here we are in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, and the race is technically too close to call. Shumlin’s almost certain to finish first, but with an embarrassingly small margin. This election is a crippling blow to his dream of single-payer health care, and to whatever his hopes were for the rest of his political career. No longer is he the guy who outsmarted a tough Democratic field and Brian Dubie in 2010, romped to re-election two years later, and built a fundraising operation the likes of which had never been seen in Vermont; he is now, and forever will be, the guy who spent nine hundred thousand bucks and almost lost to Scott Freakin’ Milne, who now looks like 2014’s answer to Fred Tuttle. Which would put Shumlin in the role of Jack McMullen, ugh.

The lessons of that Beatles lyric will also have to be learned at Democratic Party headquarters, where much money was spent and a lot of smart people were paid to run a campaign machine capable of overcoming all the obstacles in their path. Myself, I put a lot of stock in that operation, and I was wrong. The Dems have some serious soul-searching to do. How could they have such a strong grassroots organization, and yet be so out of touch with the grass roots?

In terms of issues, my diagnosis is that the Democrats (and the Progressives) misread the electorate, failing to address the issue of the year — property taxes. There was a fatal degree of hubris in the Shumlin Administration’s continually trotting out fresh issues, all of which were worthy of attention — but which diverted the government away from the lunchpail concerns of real folks.

You know, all those people who get to vote.

Property taxes were #1 on that list. And the Democratic majority was seen as unwilling or unable to tackle the issue.

Aside from property taxes, the second biggest problem (in my humble and sometimes dead wrong opinion) is the feeble economic recovery, featuring endless stagnation for the working and middle classes. This is not Governor Shumlin’s fault; it’s the way America’s economy is going. But he gets credit when times are good, and takes the blame when they’re not. Times are still tough for a lot of Vermont voters. I’m not sold that Vermonters favor the Republican prescription of cutting taxes and regulation, but they do have to see some tangible benefits from a Democratic administration.

Finally, if 2012 showcased Peter Shumlin’s good side — the solid helmsman who kept things running after Tropical Storm Irene and steered Vermont on his chosen course — then 2014 showed him at his worst: the all-too-polished politico who says whatever he thinks people want to hear, who can’t be trusted, who’s not nearly as good at day-to-day operation as he is at crisis management, and who is, frankly, seen as arrogant and unwilling to listen to those who disagree with him.

Scott Milne was, literally and figuratively, the anti-Shumlin. He got a lot of votes merely because he was Not Peter Shumlin. But beyond that, his extreme lack of polish — which seemed to be a fatal flaw — actually made him seem authentic, especially in contrast to Shumlin, the political animal. That’s why I compare him to Fred Tuttle.

But the avatar of out-of-touch liberalism was Dean Corren, the spectacularly failed Prog/Dem candidate for Lieutenant Governor. He qualified for public financing, which gave him enough money to run a competitive race. And he failed to come anywhere close to Cass Gekas’ late-starting, underfunded campaign in 2012. Corren had good ideas, but again, they were untethered to the everyday concerns of voters. It was the worst possible year for a rather prickly Progressive policy wonk with blue-sky ideas on energy and health care. And Phil Scott was his worst possible opponent.

I’m sure somebody will accuse me of lipsticking the pig here, but this could turn out to be a very good thing for the Democrats. It ought to kick the complacency out of them, and the hubris out of the governor’s office. They’ll have to take a serious look at how it all went wrong and try to fix it. If they do, they can reform and refocus themselves without the usual necessary step of actually losing power.

On the other hand, we could be in for a period of infighting, mutual recrimination, and descent into actual defeat in two years’ time. One thing’s for sure: a lot of potentially good Republican candidates sat this one out because they thought there was no chance.

They won’t make that mistake again.

Yep, I was wrong.

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dunce-cap-599x320Yesterday’s elections turned out to be a lot more favorable for Vermont Republicans — or, to put it more accurately, unfavorable for Vermont Democrats — than I thought.

My fearless, not to mention feckless, predictions were:

— Governor Shumlin would easily clear the 50% barrier.

WRONG! As of early Wednesday morning, he still has a mathematical chance of losing to Scott Milne, and there’s no way he’ll get 50%.

— Dean Corren would come closer to unseating Lt. Gov. Phil Scott than Cass Gekas did two years ago, finishing in the mid-40s.

WRONG! Scott cruised, with better than 62% of the vote. Corren was depantsed AND wedgied, finishing with a mere 36%.

— Republicans would have to be satisfied with a bare minimum of legislative gains.

WRONG! They took two Senate seats and at least seven in the House. A couple of races are still hanging, and they might even reach Phil Scott’s seemingly rose-colored projection of double-digit gains.

I wasn’t completely shut out. The Republicans failed to mount serious challenges in the Washington and Orange County senate contests, and Dan Feliciano stumbled to a very poor finish. He couldn’t even gain automatic ballot status for the Libertarian Party.

But those are mere bagatelles. On the big races, I was as thoroughly depantsed as Dean Corren.

And now I learn from my mistakes, or try to. Explanations in my next post. But first, where’s that crow pie? I’ve got a hankering’ for some crow pie!