Bush heart Rush : This is as yet unconfirmed, but I've heard from a few people that Bush has scheduled an interview with Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday. It must really be rally-the-base time.

Here We Go Again: Oh, boy. John Kerry. I hesitate to comment, since, judging by the blogospheric reaction so far, Kerry’s latest gaffe promises to be the most discussed episode of political history since the French Revolution. In any case, though, here’s what Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”

To which Republicans said: Thank you, sweet Jesus.

So, yes, it’s a fine day for Republicans, who’ve long been lying in wait, vainly praying for something to set off the right-wing Indignance-o-meter. And Kerry, as usual, has come through. The meter is on eleven. Time for a mid-game appraisal.

Let’s turn to Kerry’s original comments first. Was what he said so outrageous? Well, yeah. To imply that soldiers in Iraq are there because haven’t studied hard, done their homework, or made an effort to be smart is pretty offensive.

But—there’s a but—Kerry’s intention, according to his handlers, had been to say the following: “I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.” And, hey, I believe the handlers. It’s a weak, wooden joke—quintessentially Kerry-sounding. I’ve no doubt that he got handed a lousy joke and botched it further.

Of course, if you’re Kerry, the next thing you do is launch a comically inept campaign of damage control. Here’s the latest from JohnKerry.com, which tells us that John Kerry has “responded to Republican attacks and partisan efforts to distort his botched George W. Bush joke.” Partisan efforts to distort his botched George W. Bush joke? Is this English? What does it mean? Here’s my attempt to decipher it: partisan opponents of Kerry have taken a joke that Kerry messed up and made it seem like Kerry meant what he said as opposed to meaning what he meant to say. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, Kerry is acting like it’s Swiftboat II, pouring all the righteous rage missing in 2004 into fighting back against those who’ve had the nerve to highlight the foot in his mouth. Kerry may be a lovely fellow, but he’s a campaigning disaster, and Democrats on the Hill are entirely sick of him, as this funny and cruel piece by Mike Crowley highlighted a while back.

As for the GOP muck machine, it’s fair to ask if it’s being unfair, willfully deaf to what Kerry meant to say, etc. Well, of course. But this is standard campaign stuff. Republicans are about to lose control of the House—maybe even the Senate, too—and John Kerry has marched up to them and handed them a perfect gift that no sane politician of any party would ignore. Oh, those dirty GOP bastards—they opened it.

WAR ON GAY PROPERTY RIGHTS ... Virginia's same-sex ballot initiative may drive turnout in the crucial Allen-Webb Senate race. If passed, its implications may far exceed those advertised.

David Boaz, of the libertarian CATO Institute, has been publicizing an Arnold & Porter analysis (PDF) that found the amendment could throw a wrench in the courts' ability to enforce a wide spectrum of laws -- on domestic violence, visitation rights, powers of attorney, and custody rights -- where gay or straight unmarried couples are concerned.

Here's how:

The text of the amendment pertains not only to marriage but to recognition of any "legal status" between unmarried couples:

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.

According to the law firm Arnold & Porter, some laws (domestic violence laws, for instance) implicitly hinge upon such recognition:

“Legal status” is an extremely broad term, which has been defined as any combination of rights, duties, liabilities or other legal relations. Consequently, by its terms, the Amendment could prohibit the courts from “recognizing” or giving legal effect to legal arrangements that provide to unmarried people rights, obligations or protections akin to those available through marriage.

By nixing recognition of nonmarried household members, the amendment could:

Invalidate rights and protections currently provided to unmarried couples under Virginia’s domestic violence laws [and] prevent the courts from enforcing: private agreements between unmarried couples; child custody and visitation rights; and end-of-life arrangements, such as wills, trusts and advance medical directives, executed by unmarried couples.

This isn't just par for the course:

This exceedingly broad and untested language is the most expansive such proposal ever to have been put before the voters of any state.

Approval of the Amendment could cause significant disruption to settled legal rights, duties and protections in the Commonwealth, allow those seeking to escape their legal obligations elsewhere to clog our courts, and insert the courts into the private affairs of Virginians.

On the other hand, Virginia's attorney general has said the initiative would not have such far-ranging effects. I'm no lawyer, but neither is Arnold & Porter a fly-by-night firm. As Boaz told me, "When smart lawyers disagree, that's a good argument against passing a law."

That's also not a bad line for the Webb GOTV team.

The Rove Machine…All indications are that Republicans will be swept out of the House a week from today. Yet many Democrats are afraid to start dancing in the endzone for one reason: Karl Rove. The fear and fascination associated with this guy was highlighted yesterday in this Washington Post story which asks the question: Why is Rove so confident? Is he bluffing? Insane? Or does he know something nobody else does?

I sat through a panel discussion on the Hill today about the midterm election, and the answer is in:

He’s bluffing.

Rove’s defense of his optimism comes down to his heralded 72-hour, get-out-the-vote operation, which is supposedly miles superior to that of Democrats. At the panel talk, though, Mark Mellman, a campaign consultant with Democratic ties, pointed out that this claim of superiority is not based on any actual evidence.

Pundits—and Republican GOTV operatives—often point to Ohio as the crowning achievement of Rove’s on-the-ground genius. But look at the numbers, said Mellman. Between 2000 and 2004, Republican turnout increased in Ohio by 6 points. Nice work, Karl. But Democratic turnout went up 8 points.

So let’s recap Rove’s logic: Republicans, who are trailing by anywhere from a few to ten points, will make up all of this ground and then some based on a 72-hour ground game that hasn’t actually been shown to work better than what the Democrats have to offer.

Turnout’s important, but major studies have shown that turnout operations don’t have an impact of much more than 2.5 to 3 percent. (The increase in Ohio and other states, which was higher than that range, was a combination of more effective turnout efforts, population increase, and increased interest in the 2004 race.) And for the fun of it, let’s grant that Rove’s Election Day machine is twice as effective as the Democrats'. In that scenario, Republicans get a bump of 3 points and Democrats a bump of a point and a half—hardly enough of a plug to keep the levy from breaking.

So law student, blogger and ex-marine Mike Stark tried to ask George Allen some questions about his sealed divorce records and prior arrests after a campaign event today. What happened? Allen's campaign staffers pushed, shoved, and threw Stark to the ground .

Allen just shrugged it off and walked away. Class act, that guy.

A Steele Steal…This is very, very bad for Democrats. A significant group of black Prince George’s County Democratic leaders have endorsed Republican Michael Steele, who is also black. But that’s not why they endorsed him. The Democrat, Ben Cardin, is seen to have taken the county—rich with Democratic votes—for granted. Plus, he’s just an awfully bad, boring campaigner. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the Maryland senate race is not in play, but I’m not so sure…

In 2002, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend proved it’s not impossible for a Democrat to lose statewide by getting smoked in her race for governor against Republican Bob Ehrlich. The way a Democrat wins in Maryland is by taking Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, and Baltimore by wide margins, while not getting beaten too badly in the rural areas. If Cardin doesn’t crush Steele in Prince George’s, where Steele has been campaigning ferociously, he’s in serious trouble.

Strangely, though, Cardin may make up some of that loss in rural areas where some voters don’t want to cast a ballot for a black guy. The presence of Green Party candidate Kevin Zeese could help Cardin here: Instead of being forced to back a Democrat, these hardcore red voters can go for Zeese, who is also a candidate of the Libertarian Party and Populist Party.

Polls currently have Cardin up by about 10 points, but polls also showed Cardin with a similar lead against Kweisi Mfume going into election day of the Democratic primary. After massively outspending Mfume, Cardin managed to win by only three points. He just doesn’t come across as a fun guy to vote for and it seems a bunch of Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to do it. If that happens again on November 7, look for a shockingly close race in Maryland.

And if Steele is able to win, he has the type of personality that could make him a fixture in the senate, depriving Democrats for several terms of a seat that—at least by voter registration numbers—should be theirs.

If George Allen is embarrassed about his Jewish heritage -- recall that his mother worried he wouldn’t love her if she told him about it -- Katherine Harris is darn proud of hers, even though it exists only in her mind. Today’s Washington Post describes her as a pseudo-crypto-Jew, one who despite winning the Miss Pork Agriculture contest always wanted to be otherwise Chosen. "I can remember riding my bike to piano lessons and thinking about Israel," she said. "I thought I was adopted for a while."

But while she may not have any Jewish blood, she does seem to understand the Jewish literary tradition. According to the Post, Harris is writing a book detailing all of the iniquities she has suffered throughout her career. "I’ve been writing it all year," she said. "It’s going to be a great book." And considering that she takes Queen Esther as a role model, I’m inclined to agree. As readers may recall, the story ends with the evil minister Haman (boo! hiss!) hanged alongside his sons, while the king issues an edict permitting the Jews to rampage against their remaining enemies. It’s a brutal story, but perfect inspiration for a political tell-all. I, for one, will be waiting with bated breath, noisemaker in hand.

Correction: It was just too good to be true. Harris won the Miss Polk Agriculture contest, not Pork.

JIM-MENTUM...Yesterday, a CNN poll of the Virginia Senate race that showed Jim Webb leading George Allen by 4 points got Democrats excited. But the race has been volatile, so it was hard to know whether that result was a trend or a fluke.

Now we know: a Rasmussen poll released last night has Webb up by 5.

Looks like Allen's attempt to make an issue of Webb's fiction hasn't worked out so well.

There's a great piece in this morning's New York Times pointing out that the money and unsavoriness circulating in state legislative races is starting to resemble that of congressional campaigns. For instance, the Times interviews one Kevin R. Wiskus, an Iowa farmer and staunch Republican candidate for the state House who resigned from the party to protest its election advertising on his behalf. In particular, Mr. Wiskus was offended by a mailer telling voters that his Democratic opponent had defended a child molester (his opponent happens to be a public defender).

State races never get much sustained attention in the national media, but they're increasingly becoming a playground for both party organizations and interest groups wielding large sums of cash. That's partly because many interest groups -- like, say, the NRA on the right and Emily's List on the left -- have realized that you can often get more bang for your buck by pushing your legislative goals at the state level, rather than attempting to compete with the numerous moneyed interests jostling for congressional attention. And often, policy ideas or political trends that start in the states drift up to the national level anyway.

But this year, the bigger motivator is redistricting. All but a handful of state legislative bodies are responsible for drawing congressional districts (Iowa is the only one with an independent commission, which may explain why the issue wasn't a major focus of the Times piece). And as I detailed in a piece in our current issue, this year Democrats especially are thinking very strategically about winning the right seats to control enough state chambers to reverse their considerable losses from the last round of redistricting. (They calculate that they need to win just 50 out of more than 7000 seats to do this.) So far, the political winds seem to be blowing in their favor. It's not always remembered that in the Republican wave of 1994, the GOP swept not just Congress, but state chambers all over the country -- and until recently, it's been rarely noted that Democrats look likely to win control of the majority of state houses for the first time since 1994.

TOSS THE DYING... Over at The Corner, Kate O’Beirne and Rich Lowry report on conversations they’ve had with different (I presume) GOP operatives. The analysis, or perhaps the spin, that these operatives are putting out is that in assessing endangered House Republicans, it’s important to distinguish between the “stupid members” and the “tested veterans.” The former category includes people caught up in scandals of their own making, like Don “I didn’t choke my mistress” Sherwood, or members who simply didn’t prepare well for the coming storm. The latter includes veterans like Heather Wilson and Clay Shaw who have faced tough elections in the past and gutted them out. Point being that because of these veterans’ proven track record, the GOP may have more of a shot at holding onto the House than the numbers right now are indicating. I don’t know if I believe this analysis, but it’s an interesting distinction, if for no other reason than the toss-the-dying-out-of-the-lifeboat tone of it all.

Everybody Wants a Number...Democrats need 15 seats to take the House. How many will they get? Glad you asked...

Forty-one.

Over at Slate, two guys have been tracking House races using publicly available, nonpartisan polling. The page is filled top to bottom with good news for Democrats. In many of the races, the Democratic lead is within the margin of error, which scares pundits away from making firm predictions. But if every candidate who has a lead now—even a slim one, within the margin of error—wins, Democrats will pick up 30 seats (if you count Tom DeLay’s, for which Slate has no polling).

Another eleven seats are either tied or the Republican has a slight edge. If a massive wave breaks, all of those could come crashing the Democrats’ way.

Below is a list of Republicans who may be out of a job pretty soon. The ones in parentheses are retiring (or resigned or indicted) members whose replacement is losing.

Republicans Losing

Incumbent: Rick Renzi-R
Open Race—R (Jim Kolbe)
Incumbent: Richard Pombo-R
Open Race—R (Bob Beauprez)
Incumbent: Christopher Shays-R
Incumbent: Nancy Johnson-R
Open Race—R (Katherine Harris)
Open Race—R (Mark Foley)
Open Race—R (Henry Hyde)
Incumbent: Chris Chocola-R
Incumbent: John Hostettler-R
Incumbent: Mike Sodrel-R
Open Race—R (Jim Nussle)
Incumbent: Jim Leach-R
Incumbent: Mark Kennedy-R
Incumbent: Charlie Bass-R
Incumbent: Heather Wilson-R
Open Race—R (Sherwood Boehlert)
Incumbent: Tom Reynolds-R
Incumbent: Robin Hayes-R
Incumbent: Charles Taylor-R
Incumbent: Jean Schmidt-R
Incumbent: Deborah Pryce-R
Open Race—R (Bob Ney)
Incumbent: Jim Gerlach-R
Incumbent: Curt Weldon-R
Incumbent: Mike Fitzpatrick-R
Incumbent: Don Sherwood-R
Open Race—R (Tom Delay)
Open Race—R (Mark Green)

Tied

Incumbent: Steve Chabot-R

Republicans Winning Within the Margin of Error

Incumbent: Mark Kirk-R
Incumbent: Anne Northup-R
Incumbent: Geoff Davis-R
Incumbent Gil Gutknecht-R
Incumbent: Peter King-R
Incumbent: John Sweeney-R
Incumbent: Randy Kuhl-R
Incumbent: Thelma Drake-R
Incumbent: Frank Wolf-R
Incumbent: Dave Reichert-R

Yesterday on Meet The Press, Tim Russert asked Maryland Senate candidate Benjamin Cardin if he "would vote to cut off funding for our troops while the war's going on." When Cardin said he would consider using the appropriations process, Michael Steele jumped on him with all the self-righteousness the issue can evoke. "That is absolutely amazing to me," he said, "that you would vote for cutting off funding for our troops in Iraq; men and women who are putting it on the line every single day." As if the soldiers would somehow be forced to fend for themselves -- that one day their paychecks would stop arriving, and they'd have to scrounge Baghdad markets for food. This, of course, is not how these things work at all.

I don't know if this is a proper example of Lakoffian framing, but the phrase "cut off funding for the troops" intentionally confuses means and ends in order to avoid the issue of whether the war should continue. Soldiers are instruments of American policy, not the policy itself. We didn't go to war to benefit them, and we shouldn't continue or abandon it because of them either. Paul Glastris will surely think me hard-hearted for saying so, but the troops' well-considered views on the war are not any more relevant than those of other citizens. Yes, many soldiers would no doubt wish to fight it out until the end, to not feel as if their comrades had died in vain (whatever that means.) But are we now to feel worse about bringing soldiers out of war than we do about putting them in?

The Beast Wins...Lost in the speculation of 17 seats or 25 seats or 60 seats or one house or both is the profound nature of the shift about to occur.

Conservatism, in its contemporary sense, is a movement that is only seconds old by historical standards. Today’s conservatives trace their roots to 1964 and the Goldwater campaign, which didn’t, of course, bear fruit until 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, who conservatives credit with bringing their movement to the mainstream. It has been teetering between success and failure since Goldwater. The 2006 midterm wipeout could be seen as the blow that brings it down...

Reagan cut taxes, then followed it with an increase in government spending and an increase in taxes, which was followed by a tax hike by Bush the First. Largely due to defections from conservative ranks, Bush was tossed out of office. In 1994 Gingrich and his revolutionary crew did everything they could think of to cut government spending, but found themselves stuck between powerful committee chairs, interest groups, and voters—none of which actually wanted the sacrifices that went with spending cuts. The Starve the Beast philosophy—the idea that the only way to slow the growth of government was to slow its funding stream—began to take hold in conservative circles. It was the last chance for modern conservatism--the last idea. As it goes, so goes the fate of conservatism—unless they’ve got something else they haven’t shared with us yet.

From the beginning, Starve the Beast was a strategy based more on hope and faith than sound reasoning. The bedrock institutional entrenchment of government spending won’t magically go away just because we have a budget deficit. Sure, the argument for spending cuts is strengthened when the government’s in the red, but so is the argument for tax hikes. And then you’re back to square one.

Institutional power has won out over conservative hope. When Bush’s son—a man who seemed much more radically conservative than his father and fashioned himself a Reaganite—was elected, conservatives could be forgiven for thinking their program would finally be enacted, one way or another. Bush starved the beast, but a funny thing happened: The beast grew fatter. It turned out the beast doesn’t feed on cash alone. He’ll eat any type of currency or T-bond you’ve got.

With nearly unchecked control, the conservative movement—finally in power—not only failed to slow spending but rapidly increased it, while at the same time doing a lot of things that really wigged out your typical American voter.

Then, Bush invaded Iraq—not exactly a conservative thing to do. Lyndon Johnson learned the hard way that he couldn’t have both guns and butter, and Vietnam broke the back of liberalism. Bush and his ilk wanted guns and butter, too—they just wanted most of the butter to go to the top one percent. Iraq has ended that dream.

Where the Republican Party goes from here is anybody’s guess. It could easily become a regional party mired in the South, finally achieving the permanent minority status Republicans have always feared.

HOPE TRIUMPHS OVER EXPERIENCE... Sen. Mitch McConnell, bipartisan peacemaker. That’s kinda-sorta the thesis of the story in yesterday’s Washington Post by the paper’s congressional reporter, Charles Babington. If that idea strikes you as stretch, well, I agree.

McConnell, as you probably know, is a shoe-in to be the leader of the Republican in the Senate after November 7th, regardless of which party wins the majority. Babington presents the argument of “some congressional scholars” that because McConnell has been in the Senate much longer and knows a ton more about that body’s rules and traditions than the departing Senate Leader Bill Frist, that therefore McConnell and his equally-knowledgeable counterpart Harry Reid are likely to be “dealmakers whose top priority is legislative achievement.”

And what evidence is there that McConnell and Reid will reach across the aisle after the elections? Babington quotes Reid’s spokesman saying that the Senate Democratic leader phoned McConnell and offered to work next year on a “bipartisan basis” and that McConnell “expressed a similar desire and willingness.” Yet in the very next paragraph, in the only direct quote Babington has from McConnell, the Republican whacks Democrats for not supporting Bush’s privatization of Social Security.

Hmmmm. Why again should we expect that McConnell will act in a bipartisan manner? The answer, of course, is that we shouldn’t, because he never has. As The Washington Monthly’s Zack Roth detailed two months ago, a power-focused partisanship and a smirking indifference to legislative achievement is precisely what has defined McConnell’s entire political career. Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, Bob Dole, George Mitchell, and virtually all other previous Senate majority leaders were also consummate partisan players, but ultimately they used the passage of major legislation to keep score. McConnell, after 22 years in the Senate, has no great legislative achievement to call his own, and is widely known only for his vigorous attempts to block legislation—specifically, the McCain-Feingold bill. That Babington and his editors at The Post would put forth the possibility that McConnell will divert from this deep career groove is either an example of hope triumphing over experience, or evidence of that paper’s lingering unwillingness to accept, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that today’s Republicans play by a different set of rules.

Karl Rove's campaign success has rested on his ability to create an aura of inevitability. But that method is a tricky skill to master -- and over the past two weeks, as the storyline has shifted from whether the Democrats can recapture the House to just how overwhelming their victory will be, Republicans aren't the only ones edgy as the L-word makes its 2006 debut...

Even as recent focus on the GOP's turnout operation makes for a few unpleasant '04 flashbacks down at the DNC, several consultants that work closely with party leadership have told me over the past few days that there have also been a handful of nervous discussions about the current flood of Democratic landslide predictions. The worry is that expectations have been set so high, anything less than a 20 or 25-seat pickup may be assessed by the media -- and spun by Republicans -- as a disappointing result for Democrats. Sure: a year ago, this is a problem the party would have killed for. And if current polling trends hold, none of this will matter. But if the Democratic party does find itself assuming control of Congress with a whisper-thin margin, some say that this perceived "weakness" might help rally the battered GOP leadership, and make for a failed legislative session leading into the '08 cycle.

As one consultant put it: "This isn't the White House, and I'm not Karl Rove. Maybe we could turn a two-seat win into a mandate. But I'll feel a lot better with ten."

Pundits have been giving George Allen a hard time for running one of the most incompetent campaigns in recent history, but a new poll shows that he may have been swimming upstream from the beginning. Rural voters, who favored Bush in 2000 by sixteen points and by nineteen points in 2004, have swung into the Democratic camp.

A new poll by the Center for Rural Strategies shows rural voters favoring Democratic candidates for the Senate by four points, and favoring Democratic House candidates by a whopping thirteen. It was rural voters, you may recall, whom Allen was trying to butter up with his "Macaca, welcome to the real America" comment.

The reason? Rural Americans, whose children service disproportionately in the infantry, are fed up with the war. Although twenty-eight percent in September cited it as the top issue driving their vote, by October (one of the deadliest months so far) that number had leapt to thirty-eight, with sixty percent saying we should leave Iraq by next year. Moral issues, meanwhile, hardly registered as a driving force, with more than twice as many listing economic concerns as their leading charge to the next Congress.

This is obviously good news for the Democrats, who have been struggling in recent years to brush off their reputation as urban elites, and bad news for Republicans who have been relying on rural turnout to hold on to their majority. The big question, however, is whether Democrats can hold on the gains they've made this year. No doubt the war will remain a pressing issue no matter what they do, but Democrats can grab the initiative by focussing on economic issues. I'd start with a push on the minimum wage. It might still face a presidential veto, but it sure would help rural voters realize which side their bread is buttered on.

MICHAEL J FOX AND RUSH: Bradford Plumer at TNR makes some impassioned, and valid, points about the swiftboating of Michael J. Fox.

ON THE GROUND: I don't mean to be a downer to the exuberant Democrats out there, but I do want to inject a little bit of caution. The latest round of polls show a number of races tightening and a whole host of 'em are neck and neck. That's unlikely to change in the next week and a half, and so the much-discussed "ground game" is likely going to determine the outcomes. Bush, himself, said as much recently, boasting that the GOP has a "fantastic grass-roots organization to turn out the vote." Sure, it's a boast, but there's some truth to it.

To oversimplify, there's two ways to do "get out the vote" (GOTV) operations on election day. The first involves calling and/or knocking on the doors of those voters who you already know are supporting your candidate. (Generally called "pluses" in the argot of field operatives). These folks have been identified by your campaign over the previous months and have told you consistently they are with you. You need to make sure you get them to the polls. Then there's what's called a "blind pull." To do a blind pull, you use past voting history, polling data and, in the GOP's case, consumer data to find demographic groups -- the elderly, Latinos, gun-owners -- who are favoring your candidate by a significant margin. On election day you go to the doors of folks that fit this demographic description and remind them to vote, betting that even though you don't know who they are voting for, their demographic profile weighs in your favor.

But good GOTV isn't made in the last few weeks. To have the most effective GOTV operation you need a lot of investment ahead of time. You need good data to help you identify voters who are likely to be with you, and a lot of volunteers and paid canvassers to make the calls and knock on doors over the course of the campaign to gather the maximum number of pluses, and then do the "knock and drag" on election day. Volunteers are hard to get without some kind of pre-existing organization -- local Democratic clubs, churches, meetups -- providing them. And, of course, you need money.

Well, suprise, surprise, in a lot of the country, the Democrats don't have much organization, and up until recently, a lot of candidates didn't have much money. In fact, in one fiercely contested battleground state, I've heard the DCCC is running its own field operation because they don't trust the state party to do even a minimally competent job.

Whether Democrats win or not, rebuilding robust local organizations that can turn out voters is possibly the single most important strategic objective over the next few years.

Splat...“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Bush said yesterday. The New York Times now has the story atop their Web site and the Post has a piece about religious conservatives cheering the ruling — not because they like it but because they think it’ll fire up their base. “Pro-traditional-marriage organizations ought to give a distinguished service award to the New Jersey Supreme Court,” a top Christian conservative told the Post. What they really ought to do is come up with a better label than ‘pro-traditional-marriage.’ That’s a little clunky, don’t you think?

But the real issue here is that the New Jersey court didn’t legalize gay marriage. All it did was say that gay couples have the same legal rights—hospital visitation, inheritance, etc.—that straight couples have. It’s unclear—as journalists like to say—how that “raises doubts about the institution of marriage.”

It’s also unclear how Rove can get the Christian conservative army marching against the specter of civil unions. If that’s the branch the Republican Party is grasping for as it falls alongside the cliff, Wile E. Coyote style, then they’re likely to meet the same fate he always does.

THE "BACK OFF" THING: Today's AP has a headline that's a classic example of the misery of being a public official when the press has decided to get you. Answering a question about timetables for withdrawing from Iraq, Donald Rumseld said: "Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty. So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult, that honorable people are working on these things together."

The AP headline? "Rumsfeld tells war critics to 'back off.'" Hmmm. And the Yahoo link carries of photo of Rummy stridently pointing his finger.

Fair? Hardly. Out of context? Absolutely. (Note my attempt at a Rumsfeldian cadence here.) Pleasing? Well...you bet.

It seems almost quaint now to remember that in the 2002 midterms, Medicare was a really big deal. Anxious to wrest the issue away from Democrats, many Republicans ran on a promise to provide a market-based drug benefit. The following year, the GOP infamously rammed its bloated prescription-drug bill through the House in a late-night orgy of arm-twisting. In our current issue, Barbara T. Dreyfuss has a fascinating story exposing the role played by several Abramoff cronies in this sordid episode. She explains how disgraced lobbyists like Tony Rudy and Ed Buckham helped marshal a group of dubious nonprofits—funded heavily by the pharmaceutical industry—to pressure lawmakers to support the bill.

Back then, Republican leaders like Tom DeLay saw the prescription-drug bill as a way to shore up the senior vote. By this September, however, millions of seniors had slipped into the bill’s notorious “donut hole” (in which their coverage stops but they still pay premiums). Seniors are an especially important bunch in midterms, as they usually turn out in higher numbers than the general population. All this begs the question: will the prescription-drug bill backfire on the GOP?

So far, the answer seems to be ‘no.’ Earlier this year, Democrats planned to make the flawed bill a major campaign issue. But in the intervening months, that message got buried by the immigration debate, the deteriorating situation in Iraq, and of course, the seedy avalanche of Foley IMs and other assorted GOP scandals. Strategists for both parties concluded that that Iraq overwhelmingly outweighed healthcare and Medicare among most seniors. In Florida’s 22nd district, Democrat Ron Klein has attacked Republican Clay Shaw for supporting the legislation, but even in a seat that encompasses Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, that tactic probably won’t prove decisive to the outcome.

In fact, in one very important way, the legislation may actually aid Republicans—not with voters, but with donors. Democrats have promised that if they win the House, they’ll immediately seek to abolish the provisions of the legislation that prevent bargaining for cheaper drug prices. With that prospect looking increasingly likely, a panicked pharmaceutical industry is throwing millions of dollars in campaign contributions at endangered Republicans like Jim Talent, Mike DeWine and Rick Santorum, according to the Wall Street Journal (read it free here). The pharma industry funded a Chamber of Commerce TV campaign earlier this year supporting Republicans who voted for the prescription-drug bill, and has also bankrolled a get-out-the-vote mailer for the Chamber that will hit mailboxes in the campaign's last days. In Pennsylvania, the brochure depicts “a gray-haired woman in a sweater chatting with her smiling pharmacist” and “a picture of Mr. Santorum… superimposed on a spreading oak tree in full autumn glory.”

Big Swinging Appropriators: One of the big issues is the Montana Senate race is Conrad Burns' unflagging efforts to haul home as much pork as possible -- $2 billion worth by Burns' account. The Billings Gazette looked at the claim and was forced to agree, though it noted that, of the $246 million Burns said he has brought to Butte, "more than half -- about $117 million -- went to entities that employed former Burns staffers as lobbyists."

The Gazette piece is the first installment in a two part series -- it seems Montana's other senator has some bragging of his own to do: "Sen. Max Baucus says he has delivered more federal money to Montana than Burns has," explains an editor's note. No word yet on whether they'll be using a calculator or a tape measure to decide the winner.

The Green/Blue Alliance...Things were already looking tough for Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, what with his flip-flopping on Iraq—which he insists isn’t really flip-flopping—and the strong challenge by Democrat Diane Farrell. Over the weekend, the going got tougher, as Green Party candidate Richard Duffee dropped out of the race to team up with the Democrat in opposition to Shays. "We decided to have a strategic alliance with the Democratic Party because we believed this was the quickest way to achieve peace in the Middle East," Duffee’s treasurer said. Shays won by about 14,000 votes in 2004…

The Green Party expects it can deliver about 1,300 votes to Farrell, which seems a reasonable guess in terms of its past performance. In return, Farrell will push to have Greens included in future debates and, more importantly, will owe her victory, at lease partly, to the Greens, which gives them a free pass to walk into her office (pretty much) whenever they want.

I called Green Party senate candidate Kevin Zeese, who’s running in a sort-of tight race in Maryland, and asked him if he had had any similar discussions with Democrat Ben Cardin. “I don’t see Cardin as someone I can make a deal with,” he said. “Cardin is a reliable corporate Democratic vote. He’s not gonna change the course of the country.”

Cardin voted against the Iraq war resolution, Zeese said, but has since voted consistently in support of the war. Zeese added that he’s in an unusual situation, and that even if he wanted to make a deal, he couldn’t, because he’s also the nominated candidate of the Libertarian Party and the Populist Party, many of whose members would rather vote for the Republican than Cardin if they weren’t voting for Zeese.

The Green Party isn’t known for its ability to cooperate with Democrats. The front in Connecticut must be among the first such alliances, if not the first. However, in 2004, the Green presidential candidate, David Cobb, pledged not to campaign in swing states, a move that infuriated many die-hard Greens. But in the absence of proportional voting, it seems Connecticut Greens think the best way for them to influence public policy—in this case, hastening the withdrawal of troops from Iraq—is to work with Democrats, not against them.

A party divided against itself? Seems black and Latinos have bones to pick with the GOP. When my 78-year-old, Democrat-to-the-bone mother calls confused by the White House’s public embrace a gay ‘family’ (i.e. our new global AIDS ambassador and his partner) while calling itself conservative, you know the GOP has some serious ‘splainin’ to do. Latinos are upset about the Republican plans to fence Mexico off while conservative and religious blacks are fuming because federal dollars promised for faith based initiatives have yet to appear. Kuo’s bombshell book certainly hasn’t helped matters, painting the party as, shall we say, less than respectful toward black religious leaders. All in all, the GOP’s got a whole lotta alterations to make if it's going to construct that Big Tent its after.

If there was one predictable outcome of the whole Mark Foley episode, it was that Democrats were certain to pick up his seat. State law prevented Foley's removal from the ballot, and just last week a Florida court enjoined poll workers from posting signs instructing voters that ballots cast for the disgraced congressman would be transferred to Republican Joe Negron.

A story in today's Palm Beach Post suggests it won't be as easy as Democrats had hoped.

Early voting began yesterday, and Republican voters seem very aware that they should select Foley if they really want Negron. Jeb Bush has written a letter to voters explaining the issue, and Republican activists have been standing outside polling places distributing fliers to the same effect. "We wouldn't have voted for him if we thought it counted for Mark Foley," said one voter. "But Republicans are spreading the word." These efforts, no doubt, will ramp up as Election Day approaches, and with the GOP willing to spend $1 million to hold on to this traditionally Republican district, it looks like its going to be down to the wire. Stay tuned.

THE UNPOPULISTS: Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to Sherrod Brown on the phone for a few minutes as part of a conference call. In this cycle, Brown is the poster child for how to run a successful campaign based on economic populism. He happens to be running in the state of Ohio, where the manufacturing base has been decimated by globalization. So it's a good fit, and the campaign that he's running wouldn't necessarily work in Connecticut or Alabama.

That said, what Brown's doing isn't rocket science. He's running against price-gouging by oil companies, price-fixing by drug companies, trade deals that benefit corporations but not workers, and for a higher minimum wage. All of these issues happen to be very, very popular. But in recent years, Democrats have really shied away from economic populism, at least in rhetoric if not in substance.

This is something of a paradox. Drug companies are very unpopular. Oil companies are very unpopular. There is an overwhelming sentiment among the electorate that corporations have too much power, that working people are getting the shaft and that trade deals in the NAFTA/CAFTA mode make things worse. So here you have a wellspring of public sentiment that lines up pretty well with Democrats' core agenda and beliefs, and yet what you get from most Democratic candidates is small bore hedging.

The classic explanation for this is that Democrats are as dependent on corporate cash as anyone else, so they are trapped between pleasing the electorate and pleasing their donors. This always seemed a bit too pat for me, but I had an eye-opening conversation the other night with a corporate lawyer that shed some light on how this works in pratice.

This lawyer's a good guy, very smart and a Democrat in the DLC mode. His law firm routinely invites in candidates to give their spiels and raise cash. The lawyer was telling me that a certain aspiring mayoral candidate came in and completely "alienated" the attorneys who'd come to hear him speak by starting off with a criticism of the trend towards privatizing city services and local roads. Of course, the law firm where he was speaking happens to be drawing a significant portion of its income from a massive privitization deal they're working on, and needless to say, the lawyers there weren't so enthusiastic about hearing this candidate criticize it.

So, the candidate made a gaffe. But then I thought about the fact that any candidate is going to have to visit dozens of law firms, who are going to have dozens of clients, from drug companies to oil companies to contractors trying to win bids on privatization, and at each one, the candidate is going to have to try to remember what third rail not to touch. It becomes a whole lot easier to just scale back your rhetoric altogether, stick to the small-bore and hope you don't piss off or "alienate" the folks who write the checks.

Are the ‘natives’ are already restless?

Five minutes in, and black GOPers are already flexing their muscles and demanding some r-e-s-p-e-c-t. Given how hard the GOP has been harping on the Dems' benign neglect of its black base (on which subject you get no argument from me), one might have thought they’d be protecting their flanks a tad better. While both of these offerings are short on specifics (the second annoyingly so), they makes one wonder if either party is prepared to take blacks seriously now that blacks seem poised to do so themselves. Don’t you just love the smell of napalm in the morning?

As an aside, props to the black GOPers who’ve long been forwarding stuff to me and who continue to do so even when it doesn’t make them look so good.

THE COMING NOR'EASTER : Tom Schaller writing today behind the Times Select wall on the geography of the Democrats' prospects:

Of the 60 House seats most likely to switch to the other party this year, according to the latest rankings by Chuck Todd, editor of the National Journal’s “Hotline” political tipsheet, 53 are held by Republicans and just seven by Democrats. Where are they? Although 39 percent of incumbent House Republicans are Southerners, only seven of their 53 imperiled seats — a mere 13 percent — are in the South. Three of those seven are in Florida, the decidedly least Southern of the Southern states.

Conversely, of those seven Democrats Todd lists as potentially in jeopardy (despite their party’s strong tailwinds), three are in Dixie. A smattering of Democrats are positioned to win in places like Florida, North Carolina and Texas. But, as The New York Times’ Jeffrey L. Austin reported last week, Georgia is home to two of the “rarest breed” of candidates this year: the “at-risk Democrat.”

As for those vulnerable Republicans, most are located within what I call the 4D Rectangle — a block of states formed by connecting four cities — Duluth, Minn.; Dover, N.H.; Dover, Del.; and Des Moines, Iowa. Many incumbent Republicans in this rectangle represent districts that, in the last two presidential elections, were carried by either John Kerry or Al Gore, or only narrowly by George W. Bush.

To read his argument without jumping through orange-logoed hoops, read Tom's piece in In These Times .

With just two weeks until Election Day, Democrats should brace themselves for... the peace offensive? Nothing's impossible, but there's (at least) one big problem with the idea that we can expect a sudden, Nixon-style policy shift on Iraq: So far, all the reporting I've seen seems almost entirely based on a spate of wishful thinking from harried GOP consultants.

(On the other hand: the thought, low down in the piece, that we may see a late break with the White House on Iraq policy by Republican party elders -- now, that sounds like a legitimate trial balloon if ever I heard one...)

Per Ryan's post: For more on the Democrats' plan to take back the states -- and control of the redistricting process -- check out the great piece by Rachel Morris in this month's issue of Washington Monthly.

STATE POWER…With political analysts focused on the fight for the House and the Senate, a movement of major importance at the state level has largely been missed. This morning, USA Today takes a look at state races and notes that Democrats will most likely surpass Republicans in the number of states they control outright -- by which we mean holding the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature. In the long-term, the importance of absolute control of state politics is difficult to overstate…

First off, you’ve got your gerrymandering, which, as Tom DeLay has taught us all, doesn’t necessarily have to wait for the census report. Plus, the party that controls the state’s power sets the political tone, which impacts the presidential election in that state as well as voters’ political consciousness. The article points out that holding state power allows a party to develop good candidates, much like a minor-league farm system. This election season has shown the importance of recruiting; the best platform and political conditions don’t mean much if the candidate is a hopeless stiff.

And let’s not forget, state politics has importance beyond who controls the U.S. Congress: That’s where many of the laws that impact our daily lives are made. Howard Dean’s much maligned plan to build the Democratic Party in all 50 states isn’t looking like such a crackpot move anymore.

PURGE UPDATE : People For the American Way looked into the allegations of a voter purge in Ohio and say it's not true .

State of the Race Update II

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to post an update on how the campaign's unfolding. I'm tempted to say: it's just like I said before....only more so! But what fun would that be? So here's a round-up of where things stand.

First, the macro-indicators......

Presidential Approval. Bush's approval rating continues to go down. Charles Franklin's latest trend-based estimate now stands at 36 percent, a substantial decline since late August/early September.

Congressional Approval. Congressional approval continues to run very, very low. In the latest Gallup poll, approval of Congress was only 23 percent. And in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Congressional approval was a stunningly low 16 percent.

Generic Congressional Contest. Charles Franklin's latest trend-based estimate has the Democrats' advantage at 13 points. Knock 5 points off that to compensate for the typical overstatement of the Democratic advantage in this question and you still have a substantial 8 point Democratic lead in the Congressional vote. If that lead holds on election day, that would obviously be good for the Democrats, though how good in terms of actual seat gains is a matter of considerable debate. Or, to put it more bluntly: we just don't know.

Voter Enthusiasm. Pew has just released an extensive study that documents what many other polls have shown: Democrats are much more enthusiastic about voting this year than Republicans are. In that study, 51 percent of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting this year, compared to just 33 percent of Republicans.

That's a bit on the macro situation. But how are things playing on the micro, race by race situation where, of course, the election will be played out and actual political gains accrued?

The House. Analysts universally agree that more and more seats are coming into play. Charlie Cook, for example, now has 43 GOP seats classified as competitive (6 more than he had last week), including 25 he rates as toss-ups and three as leaning Democratic.

Democracy Corps recently surveyed voters in roughly the same set of GOP-held districts that Cook classifies as competitive (they included a few more not on Cook's list) and found signs of what they call a "Republican meltdown" in those districts. They found:

Democrats are ahead by 4 points overall in the named Congressional vote (49 to 45 percent) [named vote means the actual candidate names are given to respondents; in the generic vote the Democratic lead was actually 10 points--RT]; indeed, they are ahead by 2 points (48 to 46 percent) in the bottom tier of presumably safest seats.

This vote represents a dramatic change in the state of the race over the last two weeks. The end of the Congress — with the increased pessimism and anger about Iraq and the Foley scandal and subsequent partisan brawl — has moved voters to shift their assessments of the parties and their votes. The 1994 election broke at the end; this one just broke. The shift is evident on every indicator — party, Bush, war, intensity and morale.

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