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 October 31, 2006
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. —Christopher Hayes 11:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. 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. —Christina Larson 5:31 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
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.
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. —Zachary Roth 10:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. —Rachel Morris 9:22 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. —Paul Glastris 9:15 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)October 30, 2006
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: Steve Chabot-R Republicans Winning Within the Margin of Error Incumbent: Mark Kirk-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? —Avi Klein 3:07 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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." —Rebecca Sinderbrand 10:10 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)October 27, 2006
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. —T.A. Frank 2:44 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
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. —Christopher Hayes 2:12 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)
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. October 26, 2006
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. —Avi Klein 9:12 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)October 25, 2006
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. October 24, 2006
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. —Debra Dickerson 4:12 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
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. —Christopher Hayes 12:56 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (5)
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. October 23, 2006
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. To read his argument without jumping through orange-logoed hoops, read Tom's piece in In These Times . —Christopher Hayes 10:27 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
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...) —Rebecca Sinderbrand 7:53 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 7:33 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. October 21, 2006
PURGE UPDATE : People For the American Way looked into the allegations of a voter purge in Ohio and say it's not true . —Christopher Hayes 10:27 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
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. A project of RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics called "Majority Watch" has been polling 54 competitive House districts--49 of which are currently held by Republicans--and currently characterizes 24 of these districts as strong Democratic, 8 as leaning Democratic and 5 ties. Leaving out the ties, that translates into a Democratic gain of 19-27 seats, depending on whether you choose to include the leaning Democratic seats or not--that is, into a Democratic House majority of 222-230 seats. Note, however, that some of the Majority Watch polls are a bit old and go back to the beginning of the fall. On the other hand, the sitaution in most of these districts has likely only worsened for the Republicans since that time. Over at Pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin look over all the available public polling on competitive House races and assess it as follows: Looking at the survey averages in districts with two or more polls available, we see Democrats leading beyond the margin of error in ten districts currently held by Republicans.... They also provide a compendium of all the available public polling on these races, a very useful resource. Chris Bowers, over at MyDD, compiles much of the same information on his House forecast page and assesses the overall data as indicating a Democratic gain of 21-28 seats, for a Democratic majority of 224-231 seats. To summarize, the available micro, race by race data indicate that, based on reasonable assumptions about the relationship between these data and election outcomes, the Democrats will probably retake the House this November--though nothing is certain and the size of a new Democratic majority could range anywhere from a few seats (e.g., 219-216) to thirty or more (e.g., 233-202). Perhaps the safest guess would be in the middle range between these two possibilities. The Senate. Turning to the Senate, Democratic chances also look good--though not as good as in the House and it is much easier to see them falling short here. Here are the Pollster.com last 5 poll averages for the seven most competitve Republican and one competitive Democratic race: Missouri, 46D-45R; Montana, 48D-41R; New Jersey, 46D-41R; Ohio, 51D-42R; Pennsylvania, 52D-41R; Rhode Island, 46D-40R; Tennessee, 45D-45R; and Virginia, 44D-49R. At this point, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana look particularly solid for the Democrats and they are breathing a sigh of relief for the widening lead Menendez is taking over Kean in New Jersey (see Tom Edsall's very good article on why this is happening). If we also allocate Rhode Island and Missouri to the Democrats, based on their current leads in those states, that would give the Democrats a gain of 5 seats, with a possible sixth and control of the Senate (assuming Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats) depending on whether Ford can beat Corker in Tennessee in the currently-tied race. That may well be how it all turns out. One more reason to count on a very exciting election night. —Ruy Teixeira 6:08 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
The NRCC sunk more than $8 million into three dozen races late yesterday. Topping the list? Negative ads aimed at Tammy Duckworth and Joe Sestak. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 10:21 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)October 20, 2006
UPDATE on the GOP's shrinking cash advantage: Karl Rove's campaign success has generally rested on creating an aura of inevitable dominance. That's obviously a bit tougher this cycle -- and as Greg Sargent points out, his bluff has just been called on the latest campaign finance numbers. The biggest surprise here is the whistleblower: Ken Mehlman. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 2:23 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
Life was hard for me as a child. I wore oversized glasses and cried easily. I wanted to be an athlete, yet was remarkably clumsy. As an orthodox Jew, I couldn’t eat at friends’ houses or ride my bike on Saturday. We didn’t even have a television, but to fit in I pretended I watched Knight Rider regularly. Yet all of this would have been somewhat tolerable if not for my family’s terrible reputation. In a town known for its radical politics, at a Jewish day school where Silent Spring was as much an authority as the Talmud, the Klein family was known for one thing and one thing only: we were Republicans... Yes, life is hard for a Berkeley Republican, but the Wall Street Journal reports that conservatives, at the university at least, are making a comeback. The College Republicans make up one of the largest student group on campus and have more members than their Democratic counterparts. Part of it, the Journal reports, is that liberal groups have splintered, while a surge of post 9/11 patriotism has driven many into the arms of the Republicans. I find both explanations lacking.
While the country is clearly looking to take a general turn to the left on Election Day, in one critical respect a few states may be lurching rightward. In Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and California, libertarians, in concert with the business community, have managed to put initiatives on state ballots that appear to be common sense solutions but are in fact extreme giveaways to the private sector from public coffers… There’s a rundown of the initiatives here, but the gist is simple. Libertarians are using the infamous Kelo Supreme Court decision, which allowed a city to invoke eminent domain in order to take private property and sell it to developers, as the justification for the initiatives. The proposed solution, though, is kinda like the Patriot Act: an ideological proposal just waiting for the right moment to be enacted. The plan introduces a “pay or waive” scheme: If any government regulation causes a person to lose property or profit — even potential, imagined profit — the government must either pay that person the value of that which was lost or waive the regulation. Washington’s measure is even retroactive back to 1996. Theoretically, a Washington resident could argue that he wants to build a nuclear power plant in his back yard, and state law is getting in his way. Therefore, the state must pay him the lost potential profit. States can’t afford to fend off all these challenges and so will end up waiving important regulations with regularity or paying out large sums of money – or both. The initiatives are dangerous because their language seems so innocuous and so easily pass if the public is ill informed. The scheme is already in place in at least one state, having passed in Oregon in 2004 as Measure 37. Measure 37 has been a disaster – see this report on it -- but once these laws take effect, they’re hard to get rid of.
Thanks to that huge September fundraising surge, Democratic campaign committees are heading into the homestretch just $10 million behind their Republican counterparts. Over the whole cycle, the Democrats have pulled in 27 percent more than they did during the last midterms, while Republicans are lagging their 2002 haul by about 10 percent. Money quote from Jeffrey Birnbaum's piece this morning: "The Republicans' extra $10 million is better than being behind," said Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. "But it may not be enough if you're playing defense, which Republicans are." And how. Over the past seven weeks, a whopping 93 percent of the NRCC's cash has gone to defending vulnerable Republican seats, not targeting Democratic ones. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 7:37 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)October 19, 2006
[Since President Bush just had lunch with Nancy Pelosi at the White House, we though this post would be worth revisiting - The Editors] If the Democrats do manage to take back the House this November, the White House will face a nightmare scenario: a Speaker named Nancy Pelosi, armed with subpoena power, directing her new committee chairmen to investigate six years of administration misdeeds. The president's advisers will scramble to come up with ways to put the Bush-Pelosi relationship on sounder footing. They'll no doubt suggest that the president invite her over to the White House, maybe for a nice one-on-one dinner, where they can talk things over. But I have another suggestion. I'm not sure it will work, and I don't think the president will actually do it, but it would be a gallant, classy gesture, and it sure couldn't hurt. The suggestion is simple: the president should visit Pelosi in San Francisco. This would be a dramatic move, because George Bush has never, as president, come to San Francisco... That's pretty amazing, when you think about it. Every president in the last 76 years has visited San Francisco. This one has not set foot, let alone left his heart there. Yes, San Francisco, the city I was born and raised in, is a liberal town. But so is New York (and why should that be a disqualifier anyway?). Yes, New York was the site of the greatest tragedy of 9/11. But terrorists still have the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid on their list of symbolic places to visit and destroy. And United 93 was a San Francisco-bound flight and the only example we have of heroic citizen action and sacrifice to prevent a larger catastrophe on 9/11. That flight had passengers and crew who called San Francisco home. While the president has visited Shanksville, Pennsylvania on numerous occasions, he has yet to come to a city that was directly affected that fateful day. Going to the crash site where the heroes of United 93 died without also honoring the city where they loved and lived requires rethinking. A visit here would honor that sacrifice to terrorism. Yet he's never come. Why? Perhaps it is because this is where 45 nations came together after WWII to sign the United Nations Charter in 1945. The founding of the UN - despite the institution's many, many faults - remains a constituent part of San Francisco history. The president recognizes the UN only for its ability to promote short-term US foreign policy goals and actions. In his good vs. evil policy framework, the slow-grinding, compromise-seeking UN is usually unable to come up with clear, binary actions to please its major financial (if at times defaulting) benefactor. Or maybe it is the gay thing. Yes, the city is known for its diversity and acceptance ("tolerance" in DC parlance). Some interpret this to mean promiscuity, and Mayor Gavin Newsom's early act to legalize gay marriage in the city has gained the city pariah status amongst the intolerant and the homophobic. But certainly a president who consorts with Mary Cheney can find it in his heart to make it to an American city where AIDS sufferers and the homeless deserve the same level of compassion as elsewhere. Any questioning of the president's motives has to include the city's clear opposition from the outset to the Iraq war. It was here that peaceful mass demonstrations shut down the Bay Bridge and continue to draw protesters to its coffee houses, squares, and civic offices. But a president who is so firmly committed to his Iraq policies and so clear as to their importance should be able to handle the few demonstrators guaranteed to protest his visit. A "decider," "war president," and leader does not cower in the face of opposition, but is strengthened by his willingness to confront and convince a strong body of opponents. The television images that would be generated by such an appearance would be lively, but if only crassly political calculations are made, then he would likely come out on top as any potential unruly or violent behavior would reflect much worse on the protesters. That he bypasses "Baghdad-by-the-Bay" during an election year is ok; I understand the exigencies of fundraising from his conservative base in the electoral enclaves that make up the central valleys of the state. But there have been plenty of off-years during which President Bush could have dropped in somewhere other than Stockton, San Jose, Fresno, or the exclusive golf communities of El Dorado Hills. President Clinton had many friends and supporters in San Francisco, so he visited regularly, but never ignored Miami, Dallas, or Oklahoma City. San Francisco has lost her sons in past and current wars, places its most important cultural activities at its War Memorial center, and served as the last point of departure for our forces who deployed to the Pacific theater during WWII. It is a beautiful city with captivating vistas and photo ready backdrops for any politician to exploit. Due to its earthquake vulnerability, it is a city that has advanced emergency plans and a relatively aware populace that stocks stores of water and keeps fresh batteries in its radios and flashlights. Container ships enter its bay around the clock and Coast Guard choppers and cruisers defensively go out to meet many of them before they cross the Golden Gate. In short, there is really nothing extraordinary to fear in this town. So why won't the president visit? He should. At the very least, out of respect. There's really nothing to be afraid of. Is there? —Markos Kounalakis 2:27 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (27)
THE PURGE THAT WASN'T Yesterday a Kossack posted a diary that got a lot of attention. Referring to a source on the inside, it alleged that in Ohio, GOP Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell had engineered a massive purge of Democratic voters from the rolls. The allegation was that Blackwell had sent letters from the SOS offices to thousands of registered voters who were presumed to be Democrats -- university students and apartment dwellers -- and if the recipients failed to respond to confirm their identity, they were scrubbed from the voter rolls. Obviously, if such a thing took place, it would be an outrage, and likely illegal... But I just spoke to the Randy Borntrager, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party who says it's almost certainly not true. "We're investigating it," he told me. "But it doesn't look like it's that credible. We can't find any examples of this supposed letter; we can't find examples of this supposed problem." Borntrager did point out a related issue. Each county in Ohio did send out a mailing to registered voters telling them their polling location. If those letters were returned to sender, then the voter in question will have to either vote provisionally or produce ID on election day. (From what I understand, from Borntrager, all voters in Ohio this year have to produce ID) This might cause problems for groups that move around a lot, like college students, but as long as people provide identification they shouldn't be disenfranchised. In our brief conversation, Borntrager was at pains to point out that no one should be discouraged or intimidated from voting, and they should take advantage of voting early, which Ohio has instituted state-wide this year. "We do not want people to be discouraged to go and vote early or on election day," he said. (Those who vote early by heading down to their local board of elections do not have to produce ID.) His wariness in discussing the issue is further evidence of the dynamic I pointed to earlier . For Democrats, when it comes to election protection issues, the more you publicize possible issues with voter integrity the less likely people are to vote, which means these issues usually don't get fully discussed till after the fact. The Ohio Democratic Party does have an election protection unit, with a hotline at 1-888-DEM-VOTE so if you're reading this and have run into problems you can drop a line in comments and/or give the hotline a call. —Christopher Hayes 2:15 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (8)
CLOSING THE SPREADSHEET GAP: MoveOn's got a pretty ingenious plan to harness the internet and its national membership to do voter contact in targeted races. —Christopher Hayes 12:19 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
The KKK: Brought to You by the DNC?: The sludge is so deep now, by the time Election Day arrives, we may all be preserved in the tarpits for future voters to find (if they’re stupid enough to want to). Up is down, left is right, and Martin Luther King was a Whig (see: the meme that will not die). Though the second link above provides a stomach churning snapshot, you won’t be able to believe the insulting filth that blacks, courtesy of the GOP, are flinging all over themselves and each other to further their reject agenda. Funny how the site and press releases prominently feature Chairman Herman Cain’s photo. We’s all Negroes here, boss. Yassuh. No lackeys, no sell outs. To the GOP’s credit, however, at least Schwarzenegger is trying to win over blacks and Latinos the old fashioned, decent way. And in Massachusetts, As well, the administration is to be commended for appointing and embracing an and his partner’s family as just that, a family. Good luck keeping that froth-mouthed base in line, Dubya. Might wanna hire a food taster.
Over the summer, I spent a good chunk of time lunching in Richmond and sweating it out at Fredericksburg street fairs, taking a close look at the Virginia senate race. George Allen's prospects were already slipping, post flag-pin (and pre-Macaca), but there was one far-fetched scenario, I thought, that could rescuscitate his presidential fortunes: a repeat of his 2000 status as the man whose win singlehandedly (if temporarily) saved the Republican Senate. Of course, this summer a Democratic Senate takeover was still a longshot, and George Allen averaged a double-digit lead in most polls. I don't know if Allen's presidential dreams can survive the bruising they've taken this fall. But the rest of that insane scenario now seems to be falling into place, as Mike Allen points out here. Cash has been surging in to the state all month from both congressional campaign committees, but forget run-of-the-mill dueling dollars: today, the Virginia senate race features a rare same-day presidential fundraising matchup. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 10:15 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
Bob Ney's lawyer, answering questions about why the disgraced congressman has yet to resign his seat, says the reason has nothing to do with him needing the $3,176 weekly salary. Ney needs to wrap up some "odds and ends," including "a lot of mechanical stuff that needs to be done -- storage, archiving," William Lawler said. "I don't know why people don't accept his explanation at face value." You cynical, judgmental Americans. If you won't believe a bribe- October 18, 2006
Integrity Be Damned, They’ve Got Elections to Win: As the time til the election gets shorter, the pols farthest behind become more and more shrill and it’s no more dignified coming from black candidates than from white ones. I’m actually starting to feel a skosh of pity for the GOP’s trailing black candidates as their tactics become ever more desperate and their oft-lauded ‘values’ ever more threadbare. In Maryland, and trailing eight points in the polls, black Republican Michael Steele plays the race card and forces a pointless (some might even say niggardly) apology from a ranking white Democrat for describing Steele’s fealty to the GOP agenda as ‘slavish.’ Leaving aside the small matter of the GOP’s oft repeated rejection of the ‘race card’ except when played in their benefit, as here, it’s likely that Steele’s real problem with that description is its proof that his diligent efforts to camouflage his party affiliation so as to shanghai the black vote have been for naught. His only hope is to win the tug of war between black pride in one of their own and black glee at giving the GOP a meaty middle finger. In Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, trailing by almost twenty points, has been reduced to trying to ‘Foley-ize’ his opponent Ted Strickland with claims that he knowingly hired a staffer with a history of exposing himself to children. Way to implicitly demonize your own party, dude. And, whoa – this just in – Strickland’s a homo, too! Not that there’s anything wrong with it. So where are Blackwell’s hard core morals now that he’s trying to smear his opponent, a minister, with the child molester/lavender tar brush? Even those who would never vote for Blackwell could respect his moral fibre once upon a time. But now....
THE SPREADSHEET GAP In the post-broadcast era, elections are increasingly won and lost not on TV but in the cells of Excel spreadsheets. Those are where field directors keep track of voter contacts -- phone calls, canvasses, mail drops -- making sure they are hitting their targets, and talking to the poeple they need to talk to. Yale political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber have devoted themselves to measuring the impact of voter contact on turnout and have found it to be highly effective. (Their book Get Out the Vote is the "Moneyball" of field operatives.) In the age of post-brodcast politics, when audiences are splitting up into smaller and smaller niches , and the number of true independents is shrinking, the ability to talk to people face-to-face becomes more important. And whereas TV ads just require money, voter contact requires infrastructure, organization, and social capital. The GOP figured this out a while ago, and as the Hotline reports today, it's still the core of of their electoral strength. Pretty soon, we'll find out if the Democrats have (finally) caught up. —Christopher Hayes 3:09 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
HEADLINE DISCONNECT: Iraq is in such rapid freefall that editors writing headlines can’t even keep up with it. Either that, or there is such an unshakeable faith that there is not currently a civil war in Iraq among much of the media that it can’t be seen, even when it’s a few inches of copy away. This one, you have to see to believe… On the front page of this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle we read the headline: “U.S. may have weeks, not months, to avert civil war, adviser warns.” Then in the fourth paragraph we here directly from said adviser: "The civil war is already well along. We have no way of knowing if it's too late until we try a radically different course," said [Larry] Diamond, an expert on building democracies who is at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. How did “already well along” become “U.S. may have weeks, not months, to avert civil war”? Far from portraying things in Iraq as worse than they are, as conservatives charge, the U.S. media seems intent on holding on to an unrealistic view as long as it can. Not so for Diamond, a member of James Baker’s committee that is studying the situation in Iraq with plans to offer a solution – after the election, of course. Baker, though, has already said that the committee will rule out “staying the course” as an option. The conventional wisdom is that Baker will in fact wait until after the election to announce his cut-and-run-with-honor strategy, but I’m not so sure. The situation in Iraq might be so disastrous that it can’t be put on hold. At the same time, election prospects for Republicans may get so desperate that announcing a radical change in direction in Iraq might be the only card they’ll have left to play. —Ryan Grim 1:49 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
SOS More on those Secretary of States races I mentioned yesterday. —Christopher Hayes 12:22 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
BANANA REPUBLICANS: If you haven't heard yet, Ohio's secretary of state, Ken Blackwell, is considering disqualifying the Democratic candidate for governor, Ted Strickland, over a residence technicality (that seems, actually, not to be technically a violation). Blackwell is the same guy suspected of suppressing voter turnout in Ohio in the 2004 election. He's also Strickland's opponent... He has good reason to want Strickland off the ballot. Blackwell's getting hammered by almost 30 points. One can just imagine the thought process: Why have we been wasting our time trying to disqualify voters, when the real problem is the existence of the other party? The general take in the blogosphere is that the fact that Blackwell has the power to disqualify his opponent--he's actually delegated it to his underling, but whatever--shows that the system is inherently undemocratic, but the thinking is that Blackwell won't actually do it. He might not, but it's also worth pointing out that he hasn't ruled it out yet. —Ryan Grim 12:04 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
ECONOMIC POPULISM IS...POPULAR! Piggybacking off of Ryan's post, there's a strong belief in certain quarters that "class warfare" doesn't work. As Ryan points out, the data simply doesn't support that. I'll come back to this soon, but as just a single data point, look at Sherrod Brown's success in Ohio. (I know, I'm obsessed). He is, somewhat surprisingly, running away with his Senate race based largely on a camapign that is right out of Thomas Frank's playbook. —Christopher Hayes 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
Rebecca Sinderbrand and Kevin Drum have written interesting items about whether the David Kuo book (excerpts here) might suppress evangelical turnout. Kuo has now called for a Christian "fast" from politics. He says Christians should still vote but not do anything else... I find it doubtful that the book itself will suppress turnout but we have to keep in mind that this comes on the heels of the Foley scandal and a general growing dissatisfaction among evangelical voters. In fact, I would argue that IF evangelical voters stay home it will actually be because of none of these issue, but rather abortion. Abortion? Conservative pro-life Republicans have controlled government for many years and abortion is just about as available as ever. The White House chose to do little beyond the partial birth abortion ban, which is largely a symbolic issue. The anti-abortion forces will not likely have this much power again for a long time and it has not escaped their notice that Bush has done virtually nothing to really "change the culture" in the direction of abolition. Gay marriage is similar. It was a big deal in the 2004 vote but right after the election Bush stopped talking about it. That's when religious Christians started thinking they'd been used. Kuo's book is an insider validation of what they'd started to believe.
Earlier this week, Showdown noted that the RNC has been the one fail-safe element of the GOP campaign machine this year, as the NRCC and NRSC come under fire inside the Beltway. There's an obvious inverse corollary to this observation, which we didn't bother to make (Too long. Too involved. Too over-reported. Too... early). But now, low down in a post on Democratic finances, the Hotlineblog makes it for us.... "The RNC is proving to be an important cog to the Republicans' efforts to hold the House and Senate, particularly the Senate. It's been something that's gotten under the skin of Schumer and DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel. It'll be interesting to see if Dean's decision to go into debt will finally get Schumer and Emanuel off his back." This country hit two important and near-simultaneous milestones yesterday: the unofficial appearance of its 300 millionth resident, and -- in a bizarre coincidence -- roughly the 300 millionth media mention of this Democratic family feud. And here's 300,000,001: As a journalist, I really don't have a horse in this race, and it's way too early in the morning to dissect -- again -- the particulars, benefits and drawbacks of the 50-state strategy. I'm just offering a value-neutral observation here as we head into the home stretch: in the GOP, the campaign committees are in disarray, with the national party drawing kudos for picking up the slack. In the Democratic party, the campaign committees are so far getting the lion's share of the credit for the party's likely success, while the DNC has been forced -- unfairly or not -- into a defensive posture, still taking on intra-party critics almost as often as it does Republicans. You'd expect to see this sort of late-season sniping from a party sliding down to defeat, not one riding high in the polls. I don't think the fight will have any real impact on results, not this year. But it's still the story that just won't go away. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 8:17 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)October 17, 2006
The shock waves from David Kuo's tell-all have continued to rattle Washington. (For the latest, you can see some of the tantalizing excerpts on Beliefnet, and get Alan Cooperman's thoughtful take in today's Washington Post). Plenty of pundits and reporters have spent the past 48 hours trying to calculate what kind of effect this will have on conservative Christian turnout come election day: just how many might sit defiantly at home, unwilling to support a party that's failed them. Sounds like a fun parlor game... but count me out. Because when it comes to evangelical turnout next month, I think this book could actually be an answer to some (increasingly desperate) GOP prayers... My evangelical street cred, by way of background: my family actually isn't Christian, but my mother ended up converting to evangelical Christianity in the 1970s. So my sister and I spent most of our childhood immersed in the conservative culture of the inner-city gospel church. The staples of the approved media diet consisted mostly of terrifying/comical Tribulation flicks (all filmed in the era of, and with the production values of, the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- only with slightly less blood, and a lot more anti-Christ), and James Dobson, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, who were all daily fixtures in our lives and our living room. Until I left for college, most of the people I knew well were either blood relatives or evangelical Christians. So, unlike a lot of political reporters, when I want to get some insight on the mindset of the average evangelical voter, I don't just have to call on the usual media-savvy suspects (although: I do a fair amount of that, too). I can also call Mom. My mother is the nicest woman in the world -- the kind of woman who will literally give a stranger the food off her table, who feels actual guilt when she accidentally kills a ladybug. That kind of nice. She is also, however, the kind of woman who believes that the mainstream media should be approached with the same sort of skepticism Soviet readers used to use to digest Pravda; that, as a rule, journalists regularly distort, supress and misrepresent reality. (Of course, she doesn't believe I do any of these things, or that any of my friends do. But this is something she knows, like other people know the pope is Catholic, or the DH rule is a travesty.) She isn't alone: like millions of Americans, she may watch CNN for information, but she tunes in to CBN for the truth. It's a media environment where a handful of characters always wear white hats, a (larger) group are never to be trusted, and everyone else can be judged by their allegiance to one or the other. President Bush has worn a white hat ever since he rode onto the scene, and into my mother's heart; to the extent that David Kuo's revelations might give evangelicals reason to doubt the administration, they'd never use it as a reason to doubt the man. So, as a given, Kuo's story -- if it's believed at all -- wouldn't affect the way voters like my mom feel about the president. And the White House-based account definitely wouldn't have an impact on how they view the GOP-controlled Congress, which doesn't make much of an appearance in the book. So what sorts of questions does it raise in their minds? How about: Why did this come out three weeks before the election? Who's plugging this story? And: is there any reason to trust them? Here's your answers: This story -- which people they trust dismiss out of hand -- comes by way of a turncoat. Even if it is true, the words of some nameless White House aides, and a couple of missing numbers on a spreadsheet, aren't enough for to make them question long-standing frindships. Meanwhile: the fact that these charges are emerging in mid-October makes them feel manipulated. And sure, that kind of manipulation makes them angry -- but not at the Republican party. Maybe conservative Christian voters won't exactly set new turnout records this Election Day. But I doubt that will have much of anything to do with David Kuo. If there were a Venn diagram featuring people who get their news analysis from James Dobson, and people who are likely to both buy and readily believe the contents of this book, I think the population of that intersection could probably fit in my office here at the Monthly (with plenty of room left over for Republican Phish fans). I'm not saying that this new information might not eventually filter into the collective evangelical subconscious, and spark a fundamental reassessment of long-time loyalties (although: I highly doubt it). But I think the only possible ballot-box impact in the short term, if any, could be a rare bit of good news for Republican congressional leadership: Even the suspicion of an "October surprise" at work might be enough motivate some evangelicals who might otherwise have stayed home to turn out for the GOP. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 3:39 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (10)
A RISKY STRATEGY?... A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a strange piece ($) on its front page, advising Democrats not to use the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots as a campaign issue. The political graveyard, the piece says, is littered with the careers of Democrats who attacked the rich and were attacked for playing “class warfare.” Yesterday, the paper ran a story that counters that argument, sort of… The Journal reports that Michigan’s incumbent Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm had been trailing her Republican opponent, but has shot past him since making the focus of the race jobs and the economy. She’s done it an unusual way by Democratic standards, by larding Big Auto with tax breaks and subsidies in exchange for some assurance that they won’t lay off jobs. Countering its earlier front pager, the piece argues: “The Michigan governor's race serves as a reminder that, for all the attention to scandal and Iraq, the economy remains a factor, particularly in the Midwest, that can sting incumbents of both parties.” With that reversal in mind, it’s worth taking a look at the earlier warning to Democrats, headlined, “Democrats' Risky Strategy: Trumpeting the Wealth Gap,” with the subhed, “Tactic Could Alienate Voters.” Reporter Deborah Solomon doesn’t mention the two greatest periods of Democratic dominance, the New Deal or Great Society coalitions, which were built on nothing if not the exploitation of economic equality as a political issue. For the sake of argument, though, let’s say that the voting public today might have changed since then. The examples from contemporary politics that she does use, though, don’t go far to supporting her thesis. She points to Al Gore and his “people versus the powerful” campaign. “Some strategists say it failed because he didn't push it hard enough. Others say it failed because voters found the message polarizing,” she writes. Or, some strategists could say, it failed because the Supreme Court handed the vote to the guy who got half a million fewer votes than Gore did. As I remember it, Gore was trailing before he turned to the populist rhetoric, which then brought him back and gave him the popular vote victory that he achieved. She also cites the example of John Kerry. Because he didn’t actually use the strategy Solomon is saying doesn’t work, she points to his running mate, John Edwards, known for his “two Americas” stump speech. But again, as I remember it, we barely heard a peep from Edwards during the campaign. And more to the point—or to the counterpoint—it was that “two Americas” rhetoric that brought him from a long-shot in the primary to John Kerry’s prime challenger. Solomon then concedes the counter-example of Bill Clinton, who played up economic anxiety to his benefit. She also quotes Stan Greenberg saying that this type of politics works and that Democrats benefit when they use it. Recent survey data that she cites also makes a strong counterargument against her. Asked their chief economic concern, 26 percent pointed to gas prices and 24 percent to the gap between the rich and the poor. Another 7 percent pointed to unemployment, which is actually higher than the unemployment number. Only 6 percent cited taxes as a worry. Solomon’s argument turns out to be rooted in little more than wishful thinking. While crude attacks on the rich by themselves probably won’t serve as a narrative the country can get behind, the fact is that an awesome number of people are broke and heavily in debt. And there’s something about being broke and drowning in debt that Democrats can exploit: it sucks. To the extent Democrats can show they understand just how much it sucks, they’ll be rewarded by voters who know it all too well.
ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICANS BOOST GOP MODERATES ... After several years in which Club for Growth fundraisers, K Street-Project shenanigans, and anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives have come to define the GOP political machine, a growing number of old-school money men want their party back. And they can take their ambitions to the bank. As Bloomberg reports: A roster of donors that reads like a Wall Street Who's Who from 40 years ago is spearheading a fund- raising drive to elect Republicans they regard as moderates on Nov. 7. This could be bad news for Democrats' designs to win majorities in Congress by booting moderates. Money is expected to go to such Northeastern moderate Republicans as Lincoln Chafee, Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons, Martha Rainville, and Deborah Pryce. The group already showed its muscle this fall in helping Chafee over the top in a tough primary. On the other hand, if and when the Democrats do win majorities, they still need find some folks across the aisle to work with. —Christina Larson 12:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
It's the conspiracy meme that will not die. Just in time for Election Day, HBO is planning to air "Hacking Democracy" -- another look at America's continuing obssession with the mechanics of the franchise. Yesterday, Phil Keisling, the former secretary of state in Oregon, took a refreshingly incisive look (here, here and here) at the state of the American electoral system. (Lucky for us, Phil will be back to analyze developments on this front as the campaign shifts into the homestretch.) He observed that things are pretty bad -- but they're not necessarily bad in the ways conspiracy theorists assume they are. He makes a pretty convincing case, but for what it's worth, I'd like to add a quick thought here: This is American politics. The fact that something isn't true doesn't necessarily matter, as long as enough people believe that it is. I'm not playing the mushy-headed relativist here: when enough working class voters believed welfare recipients were living like queens, it didn't matter whether those fraud cases popped up occasionally, rarely, or not at all. What influenced their behavior as voters and citizens weren't the baseline facts involved; it was isolated, highly-publicized instances that sparked instinctive, emotional reactions. In the latest AP-Pew poll on voter interest this fall, one number popped out at me: six years after Palm Beach, only 45 percent of Democrats, and 30 percent of black voters, are very confident their votes will be counted. Massive vote fraud may just be the latest conspiracy theory fad -- but those numbers translate into a lot of tinfoil hat-wearing voters. Do the darkest of these views have any currency with a significant segment of the population? I don't know for sure. But HBO seems to think so. What does that mean for this fall? We can't say at this point... but polls in dozens of congressional races right now remain locked within the margin of error. Maybe the anti-status quo sentiment will sweep all those Democrats to victory. Or maybe -- just like in the CA-50 special election a few months ago, or the Rhode Island primary a few weeks ago -- the vaunted Republican turnout operation will manage to create a few Election Day outcomes that don't quite match the pre-vote survey data. Here's my guess: It won't really matter whether those results actually are legitimate. As long as voters don't believe that they are, those winners may find themselves in an increasingly toxic and unmanageable political environment. 
PARTY'S OVER?: Three thoughts that occurred during a weekend trip to the University of Colorado at Boulder: 1.) Is there a better-looking campus anywhere? 2.) Has an 0-6 team (as Colorado was before Saturday) ever looked so dominant against a 4-2 team (as the Texas Tech Red Raiders were)? The Buffs looked great. 3.) Are there still political parties in Colorado? Though the sample of radio and TV ads and lawn signs to which we were exposed was admittedly small, it was nonetheless striking that none of the five or six candidates for Governor and for Congress whose ads we saw made any mention of the political party to which the candidate belonged. Indeed, the only time a party affiliation was mentioned was in an attack ad, where a Congressional candidate was labeled, correctly enough, as a Democrat. This doesn't seem to be the case in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where candidates still seem to think there is an advantage in announcing the herd they're running with. Maybe it's a purple state phenomenon, something that happens where candidates are so intent on targeting an independent (or mushy) middle that they are reluctant to stand on one side or the other, and instead try to seem as though they are products of a political immaculate conception. It makes you wonder if we are heading into a world that will treat political affiliation the way people used to treat sex-something people practiced behind closed doors, and did not admit having in public. (This post is cross-linked at the Playboy blog) —Jamie Malanowski 10:02 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
Yesterday, the LA Times took a look at the race to save Rick Santorum in spite of himself. The Pennsylvania Senate campaign, wrote Janet Hook, is a "four-alarm fire for conservatives, who are bringing water buckets from all corners of the political world." And some of the soldiers defending this conservative Alamo come from the Pennsylvania Pastor's Network, a species of this cycle's hot political player: the 501 (c). It's yet another reminder of the new campaign reality this year: 527s -- the mostly liberal groups that dominated the 2004 campaign -- have mostly drifted out of the limelight since then, as Congress and the FEC have debated potential new restrictions, and Bush's re-election victory has forced many to fundamentally rethink their approaches. 501 (c)s have stepped into the gap, and it's not hard to see why. Last cycle, during the heyday of the 527, Washington Monthly's Nicholas Confessore observed that largely-unregulated 501 (c)s were the ideal vehicles for religious organizations and others (including groups organized under the restrictive 501 (c)(3) statute) who worried about their tax-exempt status. Plus, since they were nominally non-profits, donors got to stay safely behind the curtain. Focus on the Family and others figured this out in time for Bush-Kerry -- but some of the newest converts have come from far outside the pews. This fall, Progress for America -- the conservative group that savaged John Kerry two years ago -- has re-emerged as a deep-pocketed 501 (c)(4). Democrats may have lapped the GOP on 527s, but so far, they're not really in this race. 501 (c)s can't save every Republican this year, or even most of them. But the Casey-Santorum matchup -- which features more outside involvement than any other race in the country (by groups that favor the incumbent over Democrat Bob Casey by a margin of 4-to-1) -- is as good a test case as any of their potential. As their cash has poured into the state -- and in defiance of national and state trends -- Rick Santorum has somehow managed to chip away at Casey's lead (from solid double-digit margins to a 5-point gap in one recent poll). If the senator somehow, improbably, does manage to pull this one out, 501 (c)s will be one of the biggest reasons why. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 8:18 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)October 16, 2006
THE EVANGELICAL NEW GUARD ... When Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson left the White House, he hinted to Christianity Today that a changing of the guard was imminent within the ranks of evangelical leaders: I think there are lots and lots of young people, in their 20s to 40s, who are very impatient with older models of social engagement like those used by the religious right. Gerson added: They [younger evangelicals] understand the importance of life issues and the family issues, but they know the concern for justice has to be broader and global... At least a good portion of the evangelical movement is looking for leaders who have a broader conception of social justice. Signs of a developing schism emerged earlier this year when 87 movement leaders signed an Evangelical Call to Action on Climate Change, earning condemnation from the old guard likes of James Dobson and Charles Colson. The National Association of Evangelicals did not sign that call to action. But now its chief lobbyist, Rev. Richard Cizik, is on the road promoting the NAE's "Re:Vision" message, which aims at "broadening perspectives, inspiring action." Issues on the agenda range from North Korea human rights to air quality and biodiveristy, as well as pro-life and family values. —Christina Larson 7:14 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
Before reading this book , I would have agreed 1000% with Phil Keisling's first post about the implausibility of fraud. But now I'm not so sure. Suffice it to say that vote fraud, not necessarily systemic and conspiratorial but diffuse and haphazard, doesn't seem inconceivable, given how shoddy and decentralized our election system is. Fraud aside, the fact of the matter is that the last three elections have really been turn-out elections, and the GOP has won each contest on election day. Part of that has to do with superior organization, and more money, but part of it has to do with dozens of different obstacles Republicans have managed to throw up to stop reliable Democratic constituencies from voting: everything from the scrubbing of supposed felons off the voting rolls in Florida in 2000, to insufficient voting booths in black precincts in Ohio in 2004. This is a very grave problem, not to mention an insult to democracy. This year, a number of progressives are mobilizing to elect Secretaries of State with the understanding that they are the officials responsible for insuring the integrity and accessibility of the vote. But there's a catch 22. Even when Democrats learn of Republican machinations during the run-up to the election, they're loathe to publicize it because there's very strong evidence that doing so will suppress turnout among likely Democratic voters. The less confidence voters have in the integrity of their vote, the less likely they are to go through the trouble. So, Democrats can't talk about the problem in the run-up to the election, and then when it's over it looks like sour grapes if they whine about problems at polling booths, especially if, as has happened in the last few elections, they got their butts kicked. That's why it's incredibly important that should the Democrats win, they push hard for a package of election reforms, like those that Phil suggests . It's good policy and good politics. —Christopher Hayes 6:37 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
What would be the key attributes of a healthy voting system? First, it would minimize the impact of the biggest problem in elections – which isn't deliberate fraud, but garden variety human error. Talk candidly with elections officials, and they'll tell you that far more election "losers" are denied victory through mistakes and malfunctioning systems (technological and otherwise) than through fraud. (Al Gore literally lost thousands of Florida votes due to the infamous "butterfly ballot," designed by a Democratic county clerk). Such a system would also be simple and understandable – in order to maximize public trust and confidence. Press some DRE critics on what their "solution" actually looks like, and you quickly enter a world that only a 21st century Rube Goldberg would be comfortable in. While it would not pretend to make fraud impossible, such a system would also be designed to make outright fraud very difficult to execute, relatively easy to detect (especially before an election, vs. after), and exceedingly difficult to "scale" (i,e, involve huge numbers of votes). So when it did happen, it would tend to happen one voter at a time. Efforts to "organize" such fraud" would be increasingly detectable, the larger they were – and revealable before election day, not after. Not only would the "price" to be paid for such attempts be significant – e.g, felony prison sentences, terrible publicity – but the benefits would be seen as relatively paltry. Put another way, you'd want a system where only the stupid would be tempted to commit the crime of election fraud. The smarter operatives would calculate they'd get much bigger bang for their money and tarnished reputation from other skanky tactics (criminal as well as legal) – for example, securing illegal campaign contributions, putting money into deceptive, last minute advertising, push polls, and other skanky tactics. In fact, exactly such a system already exists, right under our noses. Even better, it's also a system that's proven its value in promoting an even healthier democratic system, one that's fortified by significantly greater voter participation. There's a far better idea out there: Vote By Mail. While common – and rapidly growing – in all 50 states, as absentee ballots, VBM is actually a profoundly innovative idea. Rather than force the voter to go to the polling place to get the ballot –in that sense, DREs reflect an "old" model – why not bring the ballot comes to the voter? Let the voter then decide how to return it, at an official site or through the mail (no photo ID required). Oregon passed its all Vote By Mail election law in 2000; it's also on the Arizona ballot this November. Because of vast amounts of absentee ballots, more than 80% of Washington state votes will cast ballots this way in 2006; in California, well over 50%. Can you, theoretically, "scam" vote by mail. Sure. Evidence it's happened in Oregon. None to speak of. Record turn outs? In the 2004 election, Oregon's voter turn out as a percentage of registered voters was 85% -- the highest in the U.S. on that yardstick. Even more dramatic is how vote by mail affects turn out in primary elections, which is now where most election contests for Congress are now decided, due to imbalanced demographics (and occasional gerrymandering). By Oregon standards, oiur primary turn out of just 39% last May was dismal. Looking at other states, it was arguably the highest in the U.S. (See Illinois at 21%; Pennsylvania at 19%, Texas at 10%, Virginia at 4%). Sadly, the national debate about HOW we should vote is still such a sad mix of fossilized thinking, laced with bipartisan paranoia. Not much we can do in the next 3 weeks to fix that – other than pray for one side or the other to win so big it won't matter as much. And then, the day after, start figuring this out like grown ups. —Phil Keisling 6:09 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
When constitutional scholars stay up late worrying, they often brood over what's called the State of the Union scenario. Just as the president is steadying himself for a thirtieth round of applause, a plane crashes into the Capitol dome, killing him, the vice president, the speaker, and the president pro tem, as well as a majority of the rank and file members. Two problems immediately present themselves: who is the lawful president, and how will the House function if it is unable to meet its constitutionally required quorum? Neither has a simple solution, and those the Congress has already adopted since 9/11 make them even worse. Today’s Washington Post reports on one of them: a 2003 rules change permitting the speaker to draft a secret list of successors. Under the scenario described above, such a person would not only be the most powerful person in a rump congress, he could also be the next president. And nobody would know his name until after the attack. The measure was adopted as part of a congressional effort to address continuity of government concerns. As I explain in this month’s issue, without a functioning House the president would likely turn to martial law, a period that would last at least four months until the states had arranged special elections -- far too long in this age of expansive executive power. The only solution, one suggested by the bipartisan Continuity of Government commission, is a constitutional amendment allowing governors to appoint temporary replacements if and when the speaker or his successor certified that one-third or one-half of the seats were vacant. For reasons explained in my piece -- mainly typical Jim Sensenbrenner obstinancy -- congress rejected this solution, preferring instead a half-hearted measure encouraging states to hold faster special elections. This, scholars agree, accomplished nothing. But the issue did prompt Dennis Hastert to consider his own mortality, thus the rules change reported today. Now, if the issue was simply who would take over the House leadership, a secret list of successors would be a worrisome but not anxiety-provoking development. But recall that the speaker is in the presidential line of succession, which not only means that his successor can become president -- it also means he can ‘bump’ any acting president below him in line. So, if in the State of the Union scenario Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, having waited out the speech in an undisclosed location, steps into the breach and takes control of the executive branch, the next surviving person on the speaker’s list could make a claim on the White House. And because there would be no leadership elections for at least four months, he could bide his time before making his move. Needless to say, the result would be a constitutional crisis that would make Bush v. Gore look like a traffic dispute. These scenarios offer no easy solutions other than transparency. Unlike business continuity planning, the point of continuity of government efforts are not just to ensure operational survival, but also to reassure a stunned populace that democracy has survived the attack. Should the American people learn, either immediately or some time down the road, that their new president was secretly chosen by a man no longer alive to account for his decision, it is doubtful they would feel so comforted. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi would agree, publicly.
The DSCC has been having some fun today with this morning's Adam Nagourney piece on the DeWine pullback. But forget Ohio: the larger story here comes by way of the quick, kick-'em-while-they're-down reference low in the release: "According to several new reports, officials at the RNC are unhappy with the NRSC and have assumed many of the functions that the Senate committee has traditionally filled. Historically, the RNC hasn’t run ads on behalf of Senate campaigns, leaving that task to the Senate committee. National Republicans have also criticized the NRSC for poor recruiting and low fundraising totals. Last year, the White House had to step in after it became clear that Senate recruitment was faltering under the NRSC." Sure, it's a slash-and-burn partisan release rehashing an old story. But trust me, at this moment, that graf could have been ghost-written by just about any Republican in Washington. It's easy to lose count of the number of promising GOP political careers already damaged or destroyed in this year's electoral earthquake, but for my money, one of the most tragic comedowns has been poor Liddy Dole's. When she took the NRSC gig, it seemed the obvious stepping-stone to Senate leadership, or maybe even another presidential run. But the internal griping started early -- months before the Times took notice -- and now the vultures are circling in earnest. How hard is it to find a Republican ready to tear apart some facet of party leadership? (i.e., Hastert and crew, NRCC primary diplomacy, Senate fundraising totals) Actually, at this point: it's harder to find one who isn't. So far, the RNC alone has managed to evade most of the finger-pointing. (Then again: voting hasn't started yet.) Besides national security and the war on terror, Republicans haven't had much luck running on issues over the past few cycles. Of course, they've more than made up the difference by excelling in the nuts-and-bolts of campaigning: fundraising, message-crafting and advertising, database-driven GOTV organizing. And as this year's bad news mounts, more and more Republicans are griping, publicly and privately, that the wheels have started coming off the cart in the first two categories, leaving the architects of the 72-hour strategy with a impossible load to shoulder. Can the GOP's nose-diving fortunes in the Senate really be pinned on Elizabeth Dole's leadership failures? Of course not. But forget the space between Chuck Schumer and a camera: The most dangerous spot in Washington these days seems to be between a Republican and... another Republican.
We certainly have to get a lot smarter about DREs; they won't disappear overnight. So requiring Voter Verified Paper Trails" (VVPTs in the parlance) is a darn good idea. But there's no quick fix there, either. At a recent hearing on a bipartisan bill sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va), there was wide agreement about hving VVPTs – and no consensus on just what kind of a system would be least problem free. The fear over DREs is largely – though not exclusively -- a Democratic The notion that widespread voter registration fraud exists is a As for voter registration fraud, I'll use my home state of Oregon. We In a decade, we've had about a dozen complaints of illegal And think this one through, people. Say I'm an illegal immigrant, Oh, and sure, it's a terrific idea to knowingly register to vote – Even if this happens, now and then, should we be "burning the village For example, Georgia and Arizona passed laws to require photo ideas to But these laws are unhinged from the reality of today's elections – Now, at the polling place, we're taking extra time (longer lines, Brilliant, Sherlock. To "fix" a phantom problem, let's create a huge Fortunately, federal courts have moved quickly to strike down this What's really going on? I'm a Democrat, though I'm often at odds with But on this one, I think the motive's pretty clear. On average, Cloaked in high-minded rhetoric about the terrible, terrible impact of But Democrats' have their own blinders. While improving DREs with Which starts with understanding this fundamental truth: Elections, by This certainly sounds paradoxical. But there's a genuinely useful All "healthy" adults carry with them dangerous viruses, bacteria, and Except in extraordinary circumstances, we don't try to eliminate these What kills the bad stuff, also kills good stuff. To kill every last Good medical practice is to scale and match our treatments, to the Contrast the essential elements of this metaphor to the certainty of It cannot – and most important, should not – be done. The key with 
TILTING AT HEADLINES: My latest worry concerns the dominant headlines leading up to the election. It now seems clear that the Democrats will make significant gains. But a late break in the news in favor of Bush could deprive them of majorities in the House or Senate, or both. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey had the momentum going into the last weekend. But – just when peace in Vietnam seemed at hand – the South Vietnamese torpedoed the Paris peace talks. The result was a victory for Richard Nixon – who, it later developed, had encouraged the South Vietnamese to back out. Then, in 1980, Carter and Reagan went into the final weekend neck and As late as 2000, Karl Rove was said to be convinced that Bush had lost Events already seem to have conspired to keep the Democrats' strongest A few days later came publication of a shocking upward revision in the In those cases, I'm sure what happened was not deliberate. And it's
UNHOLY WAR: The closer the election gets, the more even we godless types are beginning to believe the end is nigh, with Ohio sitting right at about metaphysical Ground Zero. Flush from their part in launching President Bush to the White House on a rocket fueled by homophobia, the religious right there is locked and loaded for a ‘by any means necessary’ takeover in a way that ought to give even the most ardent evangelical pause. Ironic that it’s left to us non-believers to wonder if these folks have forgotten that they supposedly worship the Prince of Peace and not the Prince Who Wants to Rip America to Pieces. The only bright light here is that their fervor has finally awakened the religious left to fight back and mention that we might have one or two problems equally, if more pressing, than who schtups whom. And that no group has a monopoly on morality. These days, what with the cowering of the religious left and the swaggering, near fascism of the religious right, the only way I’m able to retain much respect for religion is by remembering the believers in my life who humble me with their quiet example (my mom, the Catholic priests who ecumenically ministered to the ghetto full of poor black southern Baptists I grew up in). But hope abounds: however much Ohio voters may sincerely oppose gay marriage, abortion and Janet Jackson’s offending breasts, it looks like they’re getting the message that they’re being played. —Debra Dickerson 1:31 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (5)
“Election fraud!” Its specter seems to haunts the political landscape. Partisan Democrats and Republicans alike see all sorts of dark, dangerous creatures lurking in the shadows, ready to go bump in Election night. Here’s the Democrats’ biggest bugaboo. This November, nearly 30 million voters are slated to vote electronically – on Direct Recording Election (DRE) machines manufactured by Diebold and others. What if some diabolical (read: corporate and/or Republican) hacker figures out how to steal thousands (or millions!) of votes, in key Congressional districts? What could we do – and would we even ever know? And Republicans? They’re seemingly terrified vast hordes of Democrat-leaning voters will take advantage of open voter registration laws (read: illegal immigrants). As Oregon’s Secretary of State (and chief elections official) from 1991-99, I’m anything but cavalier about the integrity of our electoral system. It was my job to ensure the fairness and integrity of our election system. And people are people; they sometimes cheat. On occasion, they even get away with it. Are DREs vulnerable to hacking? Yes, and unacceptably so, which is why I’m very happy they’re practically unknown in Oregon. (We do all elections, entirely vote-by mail – more on that later!). Is it possible for illegal aliens to register to vote, show up at the polls, and cast a ballot? Of course it is. But far too many otherwise rational people, on both sides, seem to be embracing that last resort of conspiracy theorists: “The absence of evidence, isn’t necessarily the evidence of absence!” This atmosphere of “Mutually Assured Paranoia” could produce a flurry of accusations and lawsuits, post November 7th, that might make Florida 2000 look tame by comparison. But even if we avoid that – for example, by one side winning by enough margin to make the close, contentious races irrelevant to the “Who’ll control Congress” debate – it’s already clear that the real loser may be the essential element of our entire democratic system, which is participation. Personally, I hate DREs. I’m still mystified why so many elections officials embraced them so quickly and enthusiastically. A recent news reports that some DREs can be manipulated with hotel room utility keys is just the latest eye-rolling example of their vulnerability. It’s not that DREs are more vulnerable to garden variety mistakes, screw-ups, and human error than other systems. It’s that such mistakes are even harder to detect, and then fix, in real time – and the consequences of such mistakes are so much bigger. (In that regard, I liken them to the voting world equivalent of nuclear power plants). Now, DREs may well screw up on a significant, even grand scale this fall. But that’s why I keep focusing on that word “fraud.” Fraud, by definition, is engineered to produce a specific result. Human error is just – well, error. While it’s certainly no consolation to the individual candidate, to “lose” due to a machine error, let’s not see villains where there aren’t any. But is there any proven case that a DRE has actually been hacked, and vote totals successfully manipulated for partisan purposes? There have been plenty of screw-ups, power outages, programming errors, bogus counts, etc – not to mention lots of tantalizing theories on the internet. (Ohio, 2004, Kerry really won…..). But: proven fraud, affecting one major election contest? (OK, I know this is a blog – so hit me with your best shot, folks!). —Phil Keisling 12:47 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (10)
Big news out of Ohio. Today's NY Times reports that the NRSC is throwing in the towel on Ohio senator Mike Dewine. Here's the most important graf: The decision about Mr. DeWine’s seat came after recent internal polls showed Mr. DeWine’s Democratic challenger, Representative Brown, jumping to a large lead. Mr. Brown’s surge came despite a barrage of Republican advertisements intended to portray him as weak on national security — the very line of attack that had given party officials confidence earlier this year that Mr. DeWine would be re-elected. This is telling on a number of levels. Brown was one of the most outspoken opponents of the war in Iraq from the very beginning, and voted against it. Clearly, the GOP thought they were going to hang that around his neck. But having opposed the Iraq war now gives a politician more credibility on security and defense. Not less. An important lesson. —Christopher Hayes 11:54 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)
To start off your week, check out Mark Blumenthal's take on party I.D. breakdown by generation, linked to that fascinating -- though oddly-timed -- New York Times feature yesterday. (I guess the news cycle's gotten so fast, the dead-tree, paradigm-assessing election post-mortems will now appear a couple of weeks before the actual results). For your reading convenience, here's a sum of the sum of the Week in Review piece: if you came of age during any Republican presidency since FDR, you're more likely to vote Republican than the rest of the country. Unless, that is, you became a voter anytime during the current Bush presidency -- in which case, you're more likely to vote Democratic than any other segment of the population. (The assumption -- contrary to popular belief -- is that we do tend to stick with our youthful voting patterns). The statistics experts can have fun picking this one apart; the rest of us, like certified number-expert Mark, will be entertained by the cool graphic. October 15, 2006
On ABC this morning, This Week took a look at the mounting tide of Obama-mania. A couple of weeks ago, the grassroots hysteria officially passed ’04 Wes Clark levels; now, it’s hovering somewhere around Colin Powell ’95 book-tour territory. In the past month, the senator’s checked off the stations of the modern meta-campaign: the Jennifer Senior profile, the Oprah endorsement, the Jon Alter column. Now, he’s gotten the Joe Klein treatment on the cover of Time. One of the panelists (I think it was George Will) made the point that senators since John Kennedy who’ve managed to snag their party’s nomination – Goldwater, McGovern (somehow, Bob Dole didn’t make this list) – represented major movements within their parties; in his view, Obama is still something of an “empty vessel” for people’s hopes and dreams. It’s true, Barack Obama’s approach doesn’t have a lot in common with either of those two candidacies. Both depended on marginalized, issue-driven party members successfully storming the national party apparatus. Obama's popularity seems to spring instead from the more bipartisan, personality-driven appeal that drove John Kennedy’s run – the last time a sitting senator actually won the White House. October 14, 2006
One more intriguing note from today's Post: Could Democrats be hot this year because they're... hot?
A quick follow-up to yesterday's post: Everyone's been talking about David Kuo's insider account of the administration's condescending view of conservative Christians, and whether it will have any effect on the relationship between evangelical leaders and the White House, or on voter turnout next month. Today, on the eve of the latest Liberty Sunday (which falls just a few hours before the official release date of Kuo's book), the Washington Post takes a 1,000 word look at the situation, and decides that Republicans are in the clear. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 1:48 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)October 13, 2006
PARTY-SWITCHING: Not just for Dems anymore? So says the National Journal: "[L] osing the House might be just the beginning of the House Republicans' troubles: The post-1994 political era has demonstrated that a congressional caucus newly relegated to minority status continues hemorrhaging long after Election Day.... [I]f the Democrats retake the House this November 7, the self-serving calculus used by a generation of Southern politicians in defecting from the Democratic Party may well begin to make sense for nail-biting, blue-state Republicans across the Northeast and in parts of the Midwest as they begin to ponder a future without chairmanships, a future weighed down by the drag of a socially conservative, Southern- and Western-based national party." Makes even more sense when you consider that the Clinton-era, DLC-dominated Democratic party was a far more hospitable home for caucus-bolting conservatives than the current Republican party is for its swing-state moderates. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 7:22 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
NBC reports that federal prosecutors are investigating a camping trip Jim Kolbe took in 1996 with two teenage pages. Fine. At this point nothing surprises me. But one of the pages involved isn't talking to the press. Is it because he respects the criminal justice system and doesn't want to prejudice the investigation? Or because he doesn't want to be embarrassed in front of his friends and family? No and no. "I don't want to get into the details," he told NBC. "I just don't want to get into this... because I might possibly be considered for a job in the administration." A federal investigation is looking into serious crimes and he refuses to answer questions? It's one thing to tailor your resume for the position desired, but this is just showing off. —Avi Klein 6:53 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
A week ago, the New York Times decided that "Evangelicals Blame Foley, Not the Republican Party" for the current scandal, based on interviews with a few dozen locals down in Pat Robertson country. So you can imagine the shock when we got a look at the latest Gallup poll, which shows a massive drop in conservative Christian support for the Republican party (from a 23-point advantage this summer to a dead-even split right now). Gallup's editor-in-chief, Frank Newport, says the most likely explanation is the Foley affair. I can hear you, sitting in front of your screen right now, wondering: Hey, who's right here? Respected national newspaper of record, or respected national pollster of same? I'm so glad you asked. After a solid week of checking in with evangelicals, I'm going to take the bold stand here and say... they both are. (Hey, I'm always one for the tough calls). The Times piece was most interested in whether the morality factor could somehow wind up tarring the GOP with the same sinful brush as the page-chasing congressman. But that was never really the central issue here; in my experience, evangelicals aren't overly prone to guilt-by-association. (I know the howls that will greet this assessment -- and sure, it's loaded with a few very important partisan caveats -- but I stand by it). However... evangelical support for the GOP this cycle always seemed as shaky as, say, a congressman headed to rehab. Values may be the deciding factor for a lot of conservative Christian voters, but if Republicans aren't coming through on issues two through ten on their list, eventually, something's got to give (and their list, in general, looks a lot like the rest of the electorate's). A Pew poll months before the Foley mess hit the headlines already noted a general softening of evangelical approval of the GOP's performance. The question, then, isn't what's making these voters head for the exit now. It's why they stuck around for so long. The evangelicals I've spoken with don't blame House leadership for Mark Foley's actions. And most don't believe -- yet -- that Hastert, Reynolds and the rest knew about or condoned his behavior. For them, the issue isn't immorality. It's incompetence. In their view, the current scandal gives the impression that Republicans are somehow incapable of safeguarding traditional values -- more evidence that no matter how much they promise conservative Christians, the GOP just can't deliver when it counts. This means that it doesn't matter what Foley did, or whether evangelicals believe congressional leaders knew about it; if you're someone who thinks their ignorance wasn't deliberate, the party comes out looking pretty powerless here. Even worse for the RNC: this line of thinking removes the remaining rationale for evangelical voters' artificially-inflated support of the party, at least for this cycle. It's impossible to overrate evangelicals' importance to Republican electoral prospects: it isn't just their votes, but their volunteer power, that keeps the party competitive. Will these conservative churchgoing voters suddenly race to turn out for Democrats next month? I'm going to go out on a limb here (again with the brave position-taking!) and say: not so much. But -- almost as damaging for Republican chances -- it may mean a good percentage of them won't turn out at all. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 4:12 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)
SCHWEITZER WATCH ... This afternoon at the National Press Club, in a speech ostensibly about energy policy, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer also held forth on the American dream; our best and brightest and bravest in the Middle East; Islam as a faith of families; the American imperative to produce the best-prepared and best-educated workforce in the world. He also had some laugh lines about his dog. The man’s got his eye on somethin’. —Christina Larson 3:58 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
SANDERNISTAS? Tying in to Rebecca's post here: Looks like Vermont Republican Charlie Bass may have crossed the line. Primary not-so-charming quote: "Bernie Sanders and his ‘Sandernistas' can go back to taxi-driving in the Bronx of New York City where they came from to begin with." And there's more. (I see others have noticed this flub already, but I can still take pride in the directness of my source--Vermont's Valley News, thanks to link from a subscriber.) UPDATE: Well, them's the perils of blogging. I called Charlie Bass a Vermont Republican when, in fact, he's a New Hampshire Republican. Thank you, Judah, for catching the disgraceful slip. YankeeDoodler provides a glorious thing: a YouTube of the event. —T.A. Frank 3:44 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (6)
So -- no shocker here -- Vermont is about to send a Brooklyn-born socialist to the Senate. Here's the surprise: it looks like there's a decent chance the House seat he's vacating could be filled by... a Republican. Now that's a swing state. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 2:07 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
With their party on the ropes due to the Foley scandal, Republicans have been trotting out the old canard about Democratic support for the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Pat Buchanan, for instance, said recently on the Joe Scarborough show that Nancy Pelosi was a NAMBLA supporter, and offered as proof her alleged participation in a gay rights parade that included the group. (The story was originally reported in the American Spectator.) “If she‘s been marching with pedophiles, is she credible standing up there saying, I‘m shocked, shocked that some Republican is after 17-year-old pages?” Buchanan asked. Pelosi wasn’t there to defend herself, and Scarborough was so taken aback by the charge that he was unable to follow up effectively. But when the issue came up again in last night’s "nasty" debate between Republican incumbent John Doolittle and Democrat Charlie Brown, Brown had a ready response, the Sacramento Bee reported: "At one point, criticizing the challenger over Brown's membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, Doolittle went as far as to suggest that Brown was supporting a notorious sex ring. He said the ACLU had protected the interests of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. "'Mr. Doolittle knows more about man's love than I do with his support of Congressman Foley,' Brown fired back." The retort has a whiff of homophobia about it, but it’s nice to see Democrats fighting back, isn’t it? UPDATE: Full name of NAMBLA corrected to North American Man/Boy Love Associaion —Avi Klein 11:04 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (5)
Start Spreading the News... CQ's latest update on New York's competitive congressional races, released late yesterday, was another brutal bit of news for the GOP (John Sweeney's race, for instance, was reclassified from "Leans Republican" to "No Clear Favorite"; earlier, Foley-scarred Tom Reynolds' seat was deemed "Leans Democratic.") This morning, E.J. Dionne piles on with the big-picture Friday the 13th take for Empire State Republicans. It's a gloomy view for the party of Rockefeller that's just about hardened into CW by now, but for this native New Yorker, the kicker here is... the kicker. Even with a bet-hedging question mark, the close of this column may mark the first instance in my lifetime that the old saying "As New York goes, so goes the nation?" has appeared in a political context. (And somewhere, Hillary Clinton is smiling over her morning coffee.) —Rebecca Sinderbrand 8:04 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)
LIBERTARIANS SHRUGGED ... Are "Libertarian Democrats" a rare breed, an invasive species, or a political myth? Kos, Kevin, and Yglesias have each weighed in, with varying degrees of skepticism. It's worth pointing out, however, that the Cato study released today, "The Libertarian Vote," which found 10-20 percent of voters to be libertarians, wasn't talking about Ayn Rand aficionados, per se. Most voters who hold libertarian views don’t identify themselves as libertarian, though many of them would say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.” With that definition in mind, this next figure from Cato makes more sense, and also more sense to follow-up on: Polls find that Libertarians preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72 to 20 percent, but Bush’s margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 over John Kerry. Congressional voting showed a similar swing from 2002 to 2004.—Christina Larson 12:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3) October 12, 2006
You may recall that once upon a time, before the congressional pages, the Woodward book, nuclear testing in North Korea, and the spectacle of the sinking ship that is J. Dennis Hastert, this election was supposed to be all about immigration. It’s not getting much national attention right now, but around the country numerous Republicans are still gamely attempting to make the subject the central focus of their races. But although many in the GOP remain convinced that border security is one of their few winning issues, campaigning on immigration is proving to be as fraught with pitfalls for Republicans as the party’s legislative efforts were earlier in the year. One problem is that running on immigration inevitably exposes the GOP’s messy intra-party divisions. President Bush, for instance, is sending the kinds of mixed messages that have characterized his stance on the issue all along. Last week, at a White House event for Hispanic Heritage Month, he again called for a guest-worker program. At other, non-Hispanic events, he’s been resolutely silent on the subject, which at best muddies the GOP’s message, and at worst invites sniping from fellow Republicans. More importantly, it’s still an open question whether immigration is really the trump card that many Republicans think it is. Even Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chief author of the House bill, has conceded that immigration won’t do much to win support from swing voters and persuadable Democrats. In fact, it’s possible that the issue may actually damage Republicans, not help them. One GOP pollster told me earlier this year that if Republicans failed to pass meaningful immigration legislation, it would showcase their own incompetence rather than their stance on border security. Contrary to popular belief, there’s evidence to suggest that an enforcement-only platform doesn't translate into easy success at the polls – and more than one conservative polling firm has found that Republicans preferred a bill that included a guest worker program over no major bill at all. This week, Democracy Corps released some interesting polling arguing that Democrats actually hold an advantage over Republicans on immigration if they pair a tough position on enforcement with criticism of the GOP’s failure to date to pass major reform. With that in mind, you can probably expect to see more feisty exchanges like this one.
Following on a widely-discussed article by Kos about the so-called libertarian Democrats, a new Cato [PDF] study finds “the libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it.” Duly noted, and there is some evidence that the political strategists have done so as well. "The West is prime, fertile ground for Democrats," Bill Richardson recently told the Denver Post, which pointed out that, although “It is a nostrum of politics that a switch of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have made John Kerry president in 2004 … a swing of 63,500 votes would have given the Democrats Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.” Those interested in reading more should check out David Weigel’s Reason profile of Idaho Republican congressman Butch Otter, now a candidate for governor... The article, from the November issue, isn't yet online, so I'll summarize. In his early political career, Otter loudly proclaimed his opposition to anti-marijuana and anti-pornography laws. As a congressman, he was one of three Republicans to oppose the Patriot Act. Yet when political necessity called for it, he has been willing to go against his better judgment, voting in favor of the Medicare drug benefit, the flag burning amendment, and to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. Just this week he came out against the state’s controversial Proposition Two, which would require governments to treat as eminent domain takings any land-use restrictions that reduce a property’s resale value. Weigel’s main point is that, even in Idaho, libertarian politics has its limits, the main one being the movement’s close association with the Republican party. The idea of a committed libertarian Democrat, on the other hand, seems absurd –- the national party (for good reason) is committed to higher taxes and bigger government, and libertarians vote their pocketbook. But on issues of privacy and personal choice, the Democrats may be able to make some inroads. And this brings us back to where we started: a small but significant bloc of voters just aching to be wooed. Go to it, Idaho Dems!
THE WAR IN THE SOUTH : A propos what I was saying yesterday about the effect of Iraq on voters in Red America, check out this new poll that shows opposition to the war growing in the South, where it is now equal to other regions in the country. (ht Sirota ) —Christopher Hayes 4:56 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
FOLEY DOUBLE-STANDARD?: On right-wing radio, talking points on the Foley scandal keep coming back to the idea of a double-standard between Mark Foley's sexual harassment of pages and Gerry Studds' affair with a 17-year-old male page that was uncovered in 1983. The argument goes that Foley stepped down, while Studds stayed on, and Democrats, therefore, are hypocrites in their outrage. In the latest Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer reiterates the point and asks, "Am I missing something?" Well, Charles, good of you to ask (and sorry you had to resort to an embarassing article in order to get a proper response from me). Hope I can help. (And please forgive me if others have made similar points--I can't read everything.) First, to take your side for a moment, I might concede that what Studds did was arguably worse, since the affair was actually physical. So, yes, Studds had done something decidedly sleazy. But let's review what you might be missing. First of all, Studds was not alone in being discovered. He was part of a naughty duo. That year, Republican Congressman Dan Crane was discovered having had an affair with a 17-year-old female page. (I see you neglected to mention Crane, who must have slipped your mind.) The two men were censured together--a great bonding experience, probably. So did Crane step down? Certainly not. He ran for reelection, with GOP acquiescence, and lost. That's what happens when you're a mediocre legislator who touts his family values but proves to be a hypocrite. What, then, of Studds? Well, he ran again, too--and won. His constituents forgave him. Why? Well, apparently, he was a good legislator. For another thing, Studds' affair wasn't recent: it had taken place ten years earlier--in 1973. (If Foley's misdeeds had been from ten years ago, he'd probably weather this storm.) Finally, the page victim (now 10 years older) brought to testify about Studds expressed affection for Studds, not resentment. None of this is to say that I think Studds was swell to bed a down young kid in 1973. I certainly don't think Studds would have survived the scandal if his misdeeds had been recent when they were unearthed. Yeah, it was sleazy. But was it worse than Crane's actions? Explain the double standard to me again, if you will. Finally, ahem, there were no signs of a Democratic cover-up in 1983, and there do seem to be such signs now. People apparently frown upon such dissembling. Anyhow, hope this answers your question, Charles. Feel free to contact me directly anytime, if you're ever hestitant about putting your name to a daffy argument.
Today, the President comes to my neck of the woods in order extend a bit of "support" for the embattled Dennis Hastert and to campaign for local Republican congressional candidate Peter Roskam . Roskam's a state senator who represents a part of suburban Chicago that lies in the 6th congressional district. (Currently represented in Congress by the retiring Henry Hyde.) For decades this swath of suburban Chicago was bedrock Republican territory but over the last decade or so that's started to change. But one of the few bright spots in the last election, was the victory of Melissa Bean, a small businesswoman who managed to unseat Republican Phil Crane, then the longest-serving member of the House. Hyde's district is adjacent to Bean's and there the Democrats are running Tammy Duckworth , an Iraq war veteran who lost both her legs when the helicopter she was piloting crashed. It's been a pretty brutal race so far, and polls show it neck and neck. But taking the longer view, Illinois'6th congressional distrct is exactly the kind of place where the Democrats' future lies. As Tom Schaller argues in his recent book, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South , Democrats need to focus their energy and resources most tightly on the "low-hanging-fruit," the seats that lie in the Northeast and Midwest, where demographic trends are pushing politics to the left. He points out that a big part of the Republican dominance in the last several years has been the methodical way they've targeted and then knocked off Southern Democrats. It's hard in an election to separate out flukes from trends, but if Duckworth wins this election, I think it's going to sit squarely in the latter category. —Christopher Hayes 1:27 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
Today’s Washington Post has an interesting article about the Hastert staffers at the heart of the Foley scandal – interesting not only for the inside look it provides at the close relationship between chief of staff Scott Palmer and deputy chief of staff Mike Stokke (they live together), but also because it seems to have been sourced mainly by staffers eager to exonerate those two long-time Hastert loyalists at the expense of counsel Ted Van Der Meid. Van Der Meid is vulnerable, it seems, because he was behind the failed effort to change the House rules to allow Tom DeLay to stay on as majority leader after he was indicted earlier this year. And under the traditional bureacratic law of last hired first fired, he is the natural target. Who’s really to blame? I can’t say, in part because the story doesn’t really explain what Van Der Meid is said to have done, and there were so many reports circulating about Foley that it seems a bit much to place it all on one staffer. But the story does provide a great example of the tremendous power staffers wield nowadays on the Hill, and quite often the more important the job, the more anonymous they are. “For an institution replete with glory seekers, Hastert's inner circle has been virtually invisible to the outside world,” the Post reports. Not so much anymore, I’d say. Check out TPM for pictures of all the main players. Palmer is a particular suprise. For some reason my mind's eye had conjured up a slick thirty-something year old, not the "John Grisham film 'heavy'" Josh Marshall describes.
WARNER OUT: So says Ryan Lizza and the Hotline. That's pretty surprising. Maybe he didn't feel like pouring millions of dollars of his own money only to get pummeled by Hillary? Let the search for the next anti-Hillary begin! —Christopher Hayes 11:17 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)October 11, 2006
The “Values” That Make All the Difference: Given the dearth of worthy black commentary at the national level, I was pleasantly surprised to read columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee’s sensible analysis of the oft-invoked difference between the progress of native-born blacks versus that of West Indians. Any student of black humor has often heard jokes about hard working Jamaicans et al: ‘him have tree jobs, mon’ is common shorthand for a hard working brother who won’t let ‘the man’ keep him down. Rather than attribute the difference in the relative outcomes of the two groups to the worthlessness of native-born or -descended blacks (you can dress it up, but that’s what it usually comes down to) versus the industriousness of immigrant blacks (you know, the ones white folks don’t have to feel guilty about), she makes a few sensible observations that resonate more deeply the more you think about them... In discussing the newly reported phenomenon of black immigrant progress, Weathersbee writes, “Now, according to The New York Times, the median yearly income of black households in Queens, at nearly $52,000, surpasses that of whites. When it comes to counties with more than 65,000 people, that claim puts it in a class by itself. Apparently, this accomplishment was driven not only by the growth of two-parent black families, but by black folks who aren’t from around there.” Mostly, that would be black immigrants from the West Indies. Her sensible analysis strips away the vitriol of subconsciously guilty whites and the defensiveness of subconsciously embarrassed blacks by making a few simple points: that, whether they should or shouldn’t, those from third world countries expect little in the way of social services and ferociously value the educations that are denied them back home. They accept corruption as a given and do-nothing (at least for them) governments; they accept that they’ll have to work ‘tree jobs’ to survive. Better than life in the Kingston slums. Native blacks are neither dumber nor lazier, their expectations are just higher given that whole Civil Rights Movement thing. What seems like sloppy seconds to us looks pretty main course when your point of reference is the Tonton Macoutes. Too bad the GOP is relying on far right black candidates and ‘values’ like homophobia, abortion and anti-Hispanic bigotry to convert blacks. Blacks like the hustling entrepreneurs that Weathersbee talks about would be a much easier, much less divisive sell to blacks too secretly afraid, too filled with tired 60s rhetoric, to risk trying to escape their destinies. It will be very interesting to watch as black immigrants from the Indies and Africa come into their own politically in the next decade or so. —Debra Dickerson 6:02 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)
ALL ABOARD THE BANDWAGON... There’s a stat that I’ve seen cited before, that I can’t seem to find now, that says that about a fifth of American voters choose their candidate based on who they think is going to win the election. Forget the war, forget the economy, folks want to pick a winner. People don’t like to be on the side of the loser, which mostly explains candidates’ relentless opining that there’s no way they could possibly lose their race. Maybe that’s what keeps those undecideds undecided for so long: they’re waiting to see which one looks like a winner. The way things are going so far, with Democrats being hailed as the favorite by every poll and every pundit from the right to the left, they should get the added bonus of those voters who are driven by little more than their desire to be on the winning side. And who’s so pure as to say the Democratic tent doesn’t have room for these last-minute bandwagon jumpers? For Democrats to take the House and Senate, a number of toss-up races have to break their way. If voters are convinced by Election Day that those seats will in fact break toward Democrats, then, thanks to the strange calculus done by a large chunk of voters, they will do exactly that. Call it the pundit-fulfilling prophecy. (If any readers know the stat I'm talking about, post it in the comments section.) The Republican Party has argued for months that 2006 is different than 1994 because that year they caught the Democrats off-guard. This time, they say, they know they’re in trouble and have the time and money to respond. That’s true, but Republican strategists aren’t they only ones that have been tipped off to the coming Democratic wave. The undecided voter has also gotten the memo. If they want to pick a winner, it’s pretty clear which party they need to get behind.
The level of interest in this year's campaigns outpaces 1994 levels. Midterm voter participation usually hovers around the 40 percent mark. Anything higher is usually bad news for incumbents... if challengers mount a credible turnout operation (more on that later). —Rebecca Sinderbrand 2:47 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (6)
This is has been mentioned before, but it really drives me around the bend. Whenever backed into a corner over the abject failures in Iraq, Bush's response is always: "The world is a better place without Saddam in power." In today's press conference, Bush trotted this out once again, and it's a maddening rhetorical tactic. It's hard to argue that the world would be a better place with Saddam in power, but since we're dealing with counterfactuals, I wonder if we polled the 600,000 Iraqis who've died as a result of the US invasion if they'd agree. I happen to think the world would be a better place without Bush in power, but I don't support any country invading the US to try to make that a reality. —Christopher Hayes 1:18 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (16)
Now that Foleygate has, at least, for the moment, died down a bit and we enter the final month of the campaign, it's probably worth pointing out that there is one issue that remains the single most important both substantively and politically: the ongoing strategic and moral disaster in Iraq. Conservatives like to point out that the "liberal elite" are disconnected from the military, and the fact is that in a lot of ways that's largely true. For that reason, I think it's easy for said elite to overlook just how important Iraq is to voters around the country. Polling data shows it's weighing heavily on voters minds, and this article in the Times ($elect) gives a pretty good flavor of why. —Christopher Hayes 12:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
MY GOODNESS: Noam Scheiber at TNR's Plank has an embarassing tidbit about the Bushies and North Korea. —T.A. Frank 12:32 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)
Blame Bill: The consensus among experts seems to be that neither Democrats nor Republicans will necessarily get a boost from NoKo’s nukes. But it looks like the GOP, eager not to be caught on the defensive, is going on the offensive. According to John McCain, this week’s explosions were the result of the policies of—Bill Clinton: “I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration’s policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure.” In preliminary defense of McCain, I’ll admit that he was howling throughout the nineties about our policy towards North Korea (not that I'm persuaded McCain would have devised a superior one). But it might be time to look at the calendar. It’s October, 2006. That makes it about, oh, six years since Bill Clinton has been in office. In that interval, Republicans like Richard Lugar have been begging the Bush administration to do something—anything—about North Korea. (“The risks are too immediate and the stakes are too high,” Lugar warned in 2003, for example.) To which the response from Bush seems to have been, in effect, “We are doing something. Just look at my middle fingers.” Now, I’m all for blaming Bill Clinton for the events of today. I’m very upset, for instance, that Bolthouse Farms turns out be shipping contaminated carrot juice. If Clinton hadn’t picked Greenspan to serve another term, maybe the Fed wouldn’t have lowered interest rates in the late nineties, which means that maybe Bolthouse Farms wouldn’t have expanded and built another plant in 1999, which means that maybe it would have found it easier to practice quality control. At the same time, six years does seem like a pretty decent amount of time to ponder what you didn’t like about your predecessor’s policy and, well, come up with your own. Maybe this whole bomb thing will prompt some reflection along those lines. Better late than never.
MOM, APPLE PIE, AND BODY BAGS: It was grimly unsurprising to read the following in a New York Times book review a few weeks back. In The Coming Draft, former Marine and Georgetown professor Philip Gold writes, “…[t]he Army is living, people-wise, from paycheck to paycheck, and is only one lost paycheck away from disaster. …Recruiting efforts are half-hearted. Despite recent, much-needed improvements in its advertising campaigns…incentive is not what it could be.” That’s putting it a tad mildly, wouldn’t you say? Given all the gripping features on young quadruple amputees and the horribly maimed moldering at Walter Reed, we all knew it was just a matter of time before we’d simply run out of crazy, dumb, heroic young bodies to feed into the futile canons of Iraq, right? And then yesterday I was shocked straight up in my chair, Raisin Bran dripping onto my lap as I read that, “[o]ne year after the Army failed to meet its annual recruiting goal by the widest margin in two decades, the Pentagon is to announce this week that the ground forces, and the rest of the military, all reached their targets for recruits in 2006.” They did? Really? Back in my GI days, we never missed an opportunity to dismiss all top-level decisions as FUBAR even before we knew what they were, but I have to color myself impressed by the determined nimbleness and common sense of the measures undertaken to wage a war opposed by nearly all the top brass. In a nation riven by fear and growing self-loathing about its foreign affairs, only the Navy and Air National Guards failed to meet their targets, coming in at ‘only’ 87 and 97 per cents respectively. Hot damn. Give a GI a pot of vile coffee and a PX with cheap cigarettes and he will git ‘r done! The only way I can imagine folks volunteering for today’s military (poverty notwithstanding) is a combination of their belief in the future and their trust in those of us who wield mere pixels and votes to get them the hell out of there before they lose either their lives, their limbs, or their honor. Enter: Mom. As proof that I’d never make a living as a political analyst, I can’t seem to separate in my mind news of the military’s meeting it’s recruitment goals from news that married women are abandoning the GOP. Kids keep running toward the fight, any fight as long as its America’s, while Moms go face off with the bullies who started it. The combination of the economy, Katrina, gas prices, and GOP abetted social inequity has simply proved too much for the June Cleavers of America and they may well help the rest of us force the drunken DC teenagers to end the loud party that’s gone on too long. Good thing that Moms don’t give a damn about glory, at least not at any price. —Debra Dickerson 9:18 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12) October 10, 2006
State of the Race Update Over the weekend, I put up a lengthy post on "State of the Race: The Macro and the Micro", which provided my basic take on how the campaign currently looks, based both on macro (national) and micro (race-specific) indicators. There isn't much new micro data, but the release of four new national polls (CNN, USA Today/Gallup, CBS/New York Times and ABC/Washington Post) yesterday allows for some updating of the macro indictors--updating that is all bad, bad, bad for the GOP. Generic Congressional Vote. In these four polls, Democrats averaged a 17 point lead over the Republicans. That pulls Charles Franklin's trend-based estimate of the Democratic advantage up to 13 points. Bush Approval. These four polls averaged 37 percent approval for president Bush. Charles Franklin's trend estimate has consequentially been pulled down to 38 percent. Congressional approval. These four polls averaged 28 percent Congressional approval. Party Favorability and Preferences. In the Gallup poll, Democrats in Congress are favored over Repubicans in Congress on health care (+37), gas prices (+26), corruption in government (+21), the economy (+21), the situation in Iraq (+17), immigration (+13) and even moral standards in the country (+7) and terrorism (+5). In the ABC/Washington Post poll, the Democratic party is favored over the Republican party on health care (+33), ethics in government (+19), the economy (+17), immigration (+13), the situation in Iraq (+13) and even the US campaign against terrorism (+6). Believe me, this just scratches the surface of all the bad news in these polls for the GOP. If these macro sentiments are driving the micro situation farther toward the Democrats--which they likely are--the GOP is indeed in very big trouble. No wonder Charlie Cook observed in his latest column: "Four weeks is a lifetime in politics and the tide still could shift. But for Republicans to salvage their majorities in the House and Senate, quite a bit would have to change." Stay tuned. We shall see if the GOP gets those changes...or whether these polls foreshadow a disastrous election day for the Republicans. —Ruy Teixeira 7:59 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)
SILVER LINING: Christina is a bit too kind to Stan Jones, in my opinion, though she may not be aware of the Montana Libertarian's place in medical lore. He first ran for Senate in 2002, and voters in the state found his campaign style a little off-color, literally. Fearful that Y2K would bring a shortage of antibiotics, he had decided in 1999 to begin dosing himself with colloidal silver, a cure-all touted by alternative medicine quacks as effective against AIDS, hemorrhoids, enlarged prostate, and every other malady under the sun. For a man planning to hit the campaign trail, this was a regrettable mistake. As many suffering fools have learned, long term use of silver-based products leads predictably to argyria, a disease that in the modern age can only be described as ridiculous. The most noticeable symptom? The skin turns blue. "People ask me if it's permanent and if I'm dead," he said at the time. "I tell them I'm practicing for Halloween." If voters appreciated anything about the spectacle, it was Jones's thoroughly Western can-do attitude: Instead of buying the nostrum at some hippie-dippy health food store, he made it himself in his kitchen by running charged, silver-coated wires through a glass of water. "I had no idea what concentration I was making," he later recalled. I don't know about Christina, but Jones sounds to me like the last guy who should be handling firearms.
LIBERTARIANS AGAINST CONRAD BURNS ... Jon Tester, the Montana state senator vying for Conrad Burns' U.S. Senate seat (latest polls show Tester leading by 7 percentage points) has launched TV ads (video) that cast the Patriot Act as an assault on personal freedoms, with a Big Sky twist: “It [the Patriot Act] lets federal government agents search our bank accounts, medical records, even our gun sales – for whatever reason.” Nice shot of the young man in blaze orange hunting gear. Last night’s debate between Montana's senate candidates was dominated by the Patriot Act. Sparks flew when libertarian candidate Stan Jones went after Burns for supporting the law: "I'm sorry, (senator), you're telling me that I'm guilty of being a terrorist first," Jones said to Burns. "You've turned our legal system upside down. I have to prove my innocence. We have to turn this thing off." Usually when libertarians and gun-owners take offense at allegedly being treated as criminals, their target is liberal “gun-grabbers.” In this case, advocates for civil liberties on the left and personal freedoms on the right have found a common enemy, in Burns and the Patriot Act. And just in time for hunting season, to boot. Pheasant season opened last weekend in Montana, and deer and elk seasons open in late October. Expect fields dotted with bright orange vests and the sound of barking dogs. If hunting raises your hackles, well, I’ve said my piece about hunting and tradition and conservation here. Bottom line: A day in the field with a dog, or family and friends, shotgun or rifle in hand, remains a source of tradition and local pride in Montana, where 24 percent of the population hunt. —Christina Larson 4:26 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (9)
Political reporters love nothing more than a good bellwether. (OK, sure, a sex scandal ranks pretty high up there, too. But I'm strictly talking horse-race coverage here.) Around this time of year, journalists get an irresistible urge to find the state/race/voter that defines the campaign year. Taken to its logical extreme, this means a lot of time spent looking for the swingiest voter on the swingiest block in the swingiest precinct in the swing state that will decide the election. For instance: two years ago, I found mine in Hudson, Wisconsin. He was a reluctant Bush voter, and his name was Ed. (Hi, Ed.) In small doses, this sort of thing is actually a pretty useful exercise. Choose wisely and you wind up with a decent case study -- an easy-to-follow storyline that can help explain the dynamics of a complicated national picture.... Of course, if you are going to do this sort of thing, you've got to do it right: find a district evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, where it looks like national issues may prove decisive, featuring two candidates (fairly low on personal drama and ethical woes) whose stands, for the most part, mirror their party's defining policies. There are plenty of good candidates this year -- and you'll hear a lot more about them over the next few weeks (and not just from me). But a good a place to start is in Colorado's 7th district, which drew a good bit of the early bellwhether buzz this year: Iraq is an issue, and voter interest is high. With a month until the election, Democrat Ed Perlmutter leads Republican Rick O'Donnell by 6 points. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 4:23 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
I was all ready to point out the difference in star power between presidential and midterm celebrity stumpers (i.e., instead of Bruce Springsteen, Ohio gets Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, and the funny kid from the O.C. You know: the future Brenda Walsh's boyfriend.) Then I read this. That's $3 million. For a challenger. I'm not saying it's all Dylan McKay. I'm just saying. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 3:47 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
I'm no expert, but -- wouldn't now be a good time for that October surprise? —Rebecca Sinderbrand 3:29 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
Conrad Burns is already having plenty of difficulty holding on to his Senate seat. See here and here and here. And also here. Today Roll Call adds to his troubles, with a long piece detailing Burns’ relationship with an outfit called the Inland Northwest Space Alliance (INSA), which is now the subject of an FBI investigation. Burns steered more than $8 million in earmarks to the INSA, supposedly to create jobs and make the Big Sky state a hub for space-related industry. However, INSA seems to have been a much more modest operation, according to Roll Call: “…the bulk of INSA’s activities centered around education programs for school children, ranging from demonstrations of microgravity environments to an “exhibit” in which participants could have their picture taken “in space.” —Rachel Morris 1:23 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (3)
Interesting numbers in the latest ABC poll (fair warning: it's a pdf). It leads off with the Foleygate hit the GOP is taking -- but for my money, the real news comes just a bit further down... Two years ago, married women picked Bush over Kerry by an 11-point spread, and a GOP-led Congress by nine. Two months ago, they were evenly split between the two parties. Today: they favor Democrats over Republicans, 53 to 42 percent. What's selling these women on the Democratic party? (And no, it isn't Mark Foley....) "Focusing on the war in Iraq helps Democrats with married women. Nearly three in 10 of them now call it the single most important issue to their vote, up from two in 10 last month. It’s moved from a three-way tie (with economy and terrorism) to their single top issue." The Democrats may not have a plan on Iraq; but they aren't identified with a plan voters have already rejected. For married women -- whose support provides a major chunk of the Dems' current lead -- that may be enough... —Rebecca Sinderbrand 1:09 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
OUT OF OPTIONS: George Allen had an answer ready when AP came calling about certain stock options the senator had failed to report on Senate disclosure forms: "I actually got no money out of Xybernaut. I got paid in stock options which were worthless." This, ethicists noted, was immaterial. The point of disclosure is to ensure that an elected representative does not make public decisions based on private interest. Stock options that are worthless one day may be extremely valuable the next if certain earmarks are made or regulations eliminated. But now it turns out that the options for the Chantilly, Virginia-based wearable computer manufacturer were far from worthless after all. Bloomberg reports today the options were at one point worth $1.1 million, and although their value quickly plummeted, in 2001 they were still worth $71,500. It was that year, Bloomberg further reports, that Senator Allen wrote to the Army on Xybernaut's behalf -- exactly the kind of behavior the disclosure rules are intended to shine light upon.
SOMETHING I DIDN'T KNOW: From today's Washington Post: —Paul Glastris 10:38 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (6) October 9, 2006
John Hood at NRO’s Sixers blog met over the weekend with various professional conservative types and came away with a sticky feeling:
Over at The Fix, Chris Cillizza has weighed in on that devastating ad from Democrat Chris Carney, running in Pennsylvania's 10th district. You might remember, the spot takes aim at incumbent Don Sherwood (of alleged mistress-choking fame); according to recent polls, the Republican is a month away from losing a district that gave President Bush 60 percent of the vote last time around… It’s not just that the ad is so good – and you can judge for yourself here – it’s the double duty it pulls, thanks to headlines of the past two weeks. The spot, in which a Republican assails Sherwood’s personal morality, actually began running before the Mark Foley scandal hit the news (Rep. Sherwood’s extracurricular activities had already drawn the thumbs-down from area voters.) Watch it again on this side of the Foley scandal, you can't help thinking: replace the name “Don Sherwood” with “Mark Foley”, tweak the details, and for the most part, it’s an ad you can see Democrats running in any district represented by a member of the House leadership. I wouldn’t be surprised if, eventually, they did.
GRASPING AT STRAWS: Big news out of Florida (no thanks to the rest of the liberal media, which ignores Katherine Harris’s press releases as if they were knock-knock jokes being told by somebody else’s five year-old): The supposed self-destruction of the Harris campaign has freed up Democratic dollars for more competitive races in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and elsewhere. The polls had shown Nelson running away with it by double digits. Now Harris is leading. What happened?
OUR LIBERAL MEDIA: For some reason, The New York Times decided that the best use of its op-ed page yesterday was to serve as a forum for political operatives and pundits of both parties to offer short-term campaign advice on how their side can win in November. On the Republican side, the result, for the most part, was a banal reprise of your typical tired GOP talking points -- sample suggestion from Ari Fleischer: Say Democrats will raise taxes. But a couple of the assertions were so cynical or misleading as to deserve a little closer scrutiny. Lisa Schiffren, identified as a former speechwriter for Dan Quayle, announces that, in the interests of winning a midterm election, "it's time to project strength abroad." How to do that? "Mr. President, send a lot of troops to Iraq. Next week. Squash some insurgents." Let's give Schiffren the benefit of the doubt and assume that she sees her advice as both good politics and good policy. But anyone who still thinks that our problems in Iraq can be solved just by sending more troops and squashing more insurgents really doesn't deserve to be offering advice on anything. Later, Schiffren writes: "[Democrats'] recently clarified position on domestic security is that we shouldn’t wiretap terrorists, but must read the e-mail correspondence of gay congressmen." A lie. As everyone paying attention understands, Democrats think we should get a warrant before doing wiretaps, not that we shouldn't do them. This is not a difficult distinction, though the Times editors seem unwilling to insist that their contributors make it. Maybe the most aggravating line comes from Jay Heiler, a chief of staff to former Arizona governor Fife Symington. Heiler writes: "A serious word of caution to celebratory Democrats: Our tragicomic capital city is low enough in public esteem these days to bring down all players and drive away all kinds of voters. And while Mr. Foley is a Republican, the electoral Rorschach test on sin and morals skews rather against the left. For us the thing is a shame, but for them it’s more or less a policy." Heiler is now on record saying that stalking teenagers over the internet (what else could "the thing" refer to?) is "more or less a policy" for either "the left" or for Democrats. This really sounds more like something you'd see from one of the dumber people in Instapundit's comments section. I guess it's encouraging that this kind of thing is the best they can come up with. —Zachary Roth 12:46 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (17)
HE'S BACK!: There’s a lot happening in the world of politics right now, lots of continuing storylines with a thousand moving parts: Foleygate, Iraq, the apparent slow suicide of the Allen campaign. But for my money, the most underplayed story of this cycle so far has to be the re-emergence of Dick Cheney as a public figure, as the VP takes the trail with a familiar, slash-and-burn speech, largely focused on national security. It’s a red-meat, base-stirring pitch, not really meant for the public at large. I haven’t traveled with the vice president this cycle, but based on the published highlights, the speech is, for the most part, a golden oldie -- a redux of the same national security themes that brought home the votes last time around. (i.e., The president is "protecting America" while Democrats push "reckless" policies, a "strategy of resignation and defeatism." Those are all actual excerpts you could have probably guessed yourself… One of these days, some genius will create a Madlibs Dick Cheney security speech.) Peter Baker had a great takeout this weekend on the VP road show. Just as in 2004, the Democrats are using Cheney’s speeches as rallying points for their own base. The question is whether or not the vice president’s pronouncements still carry the same weight in his own party... October 7, 2006
State of the Race: The Macro and the Micro Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to looking at the outlook for this year’s Congressional elections. One is the “macro” approach, where one looks at a variety of national indicators to gauge the mood of the electorate and how that’s likely to affect the incumbent and challenging parties. The other approach is the “micro” approach, which assesses how each individual House and Senate race is likely to turn out, and aggregates up from that level to assess the likely gains and losses of the two parties. The two methods can tell different stories and, indeed, this spring that’s just what they did. The macro story suggested that the GOP was in terrible shape and likely to get swamped by the Democrats in November. Indeed, by these macro-indicators, as Charlie Cook pointed out at the time, the GOP was at least as badly off as the Democrats were at that point in the 1994 election cycle. The micro story was different, however. Looking at individual races, it was hard to see where the Democrats could pick up enough seats to take back the House, while the Senate looked almost impossible. But that was then. This is now and now the macro and micro data are aligning and pointing in the same direction: big trouble for the Republicans and a good chance that they could lose not only the House—which looks better than 50-50 at this point—but also the Senate. Let’s review the relevant data, starting with the macro indicators. Right Direction/Wrong Track Right before 1994 election, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal (NBC/WSJ) poll had this critical indicator of the public mood at 55 percent wrong track/27 percent right direction. Today, the same poll has this indicator at 58 percent wrong track/29 percent right direction. Generic Congressional Contest In polls concluded this week, Democrats averaged a 14 point lead among registered voters in the generic congressional contest. Charles Franklin’s model-based trend estimate looks to be about a 12 point lead for the Democrats, judging from the chart on his site. Even assuming the generic question overestimates Democratic support by 5 points (Charlie Cook’s rule of thumb and the average difference between Gallup’s final poll among registered voters and the actual election result), that still gives the Democrats an average lead of 7-9 points. The Democrats are also running even larger leads among independents in the generic Congressional ballot–typically 6-7 points higher than their overall lead. Thus, if the Democrats’ “true” overall lead is now about 8 points, then their true lead among independents is probably 14 or 15 points. With that in mind, consider the following. As far back as I can get data (1982), the Democrats have never had a lead among independents larger than 4 points in an actual election, a level they managed to achieve in both 1986 and 1990. Indeed, since 1990, they’ve lost independents in every congressional election: by 14 points in 1994; by 4 points in 1998; and by 2 points in 2002. So, even leaving questions of relative partisan turnout aside (and I suspect the Democrats will do better, not worse, in this respect in 2006), the implications of a strong Democratic lead among independents in this year’s election, if it holds, are huge. Generic congressional data also tend to show substantial shifts away from the GOP among a wide range of Republican-leaning groups, including some of their strongest base groups. For relevant data, see the October 3 Democracy Corps memo “Key Targets for November” and Friday’s Washington Post article, “GOP’s hold on Evangelicals Weakening”. Presidential Job Approval According to the Hotline, the average approval rating for Bush in this week’s polls is 38 percent approval/56 percent disapproval (Charles Franklin’s trend-based estimate has his current rating a couple of points higher). By comparison, Clinton’s average approval rating right before the 1994 election was 46 percent/45 percent. Congressional Job Approval The Hotline’s weekly poll average for Congressional job approval is now 28 percent, with 65 percent disapproval. Right before the 1994 election, Congress’ job approval stood at 24 percent (according to the NBC/WSJ poll). This indicator is not just bad for the incumbent GOP in general, but there are reasons to believe this is a key indicator of potentially large seat swings. As a Gallup report on Congressional job approval and the election notes: During recent midterm election years, low congressional approval ratings have been associated with greater shifts in the partisan composition of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the five elections since 1974 in which Congress' approval rating was below 40%, the average net change in U.S. House seats from one party to the other was 29. In the three midterm elections in which congressional approval ratings were above 40%, the average change was five seats.... The fact that both congressional and presidential approval ratings are low does not bode well for the Republican Party. The current situation is similar to the political environment in 1978 and 1994, when Democrats controlled both the legislative and executive branches -- which were both unpopular. Those elections resulted in net losses for the Democratic Party of 11 and 53 seats, respectively. Party Favorability and Preferences According to a Gallup report based on data collected before the Foley scandal, Republicans are now running a considerable favorability deficit. The public rates them 42 percent favorable/53 percent unfavorable, compared to a 54 percent favorable/40 unfavorable rating for Democrats. The latest Pew poll finds the Democrats preferred 55-27 on “more concerned with people like me”, 48-28 on “can bring about changes the country needs”, 44-34 on better managing the federal government and 41-27 on governing in a more honest and ethical way. And the public believes, by 41-27, that the GOP is more influenced by lobbyists and special interests. On issues, the latest Ipsos-AP poll reports the following. Registered voters prefer Democrats over Republicans by 58-27 on health care, 53-31 on Social Security, 52-27 on gas prices, 51-36 on the economy, 50-37 on taxes, 48-38 on Iraq, 44-35 on same-sex marriage, 44-36 on immigration and 41-25 on political corruption. Most amazingly, Democrats are even preferred by 43-41 on terrorism and by 43-41 on protecting the US. (Note: the just-released Newsweek poll also finds the Democrats ahead—this time by 44 percent to 37 percent-- on which party is trusted more to fight the war on terror.) The Micro Situation As these data suggest, there is precious little in the macro indicators that suggest anything other than a bad election for the GOP. But macro indicators don’t determine elections, voters in individual races do. And it is here that the big changes have taken place. In the spring, one could look race by race and it would be hard to see where the Democrats could make the necessary pickups to translate macro sentiment into a victorious election. But now you can. While there is a lot of data available in a lot of different places on House races, Chris Bowers of MyDD provides a useful summary of competitive races tiered by likelihood of going Democratic and including the latest polling data, where available. This provides the raw material for thinking about how races might fall and lead to the net gain of 15 seats Democrats need to take back the House. The key thing to keep in mind is that the races near the top of Bowers’ chart appear highly likely to go Democratic (including, of course, a new entrant to this category, Mark Foley’s FL-16 seat). These races alone should take the Democrats within a handful of seats of retaking the House. After that, less probable races have to fall the Democrats’ way, but there are enough of these that average performance in these districts should put the Democrats over the top (i.e., if two races are 50-50 for the Democrats, those odds say that, on average, the Democrats should pick up one of these two seats). And historical experience suggests that in a “wave” election like this one, the party favored by the wave—the Democrats this year—may do far better than average in races that now appear 50-50. Turning to the Senate, the math here is simpler. The Democrats must take all five of the most vulnerable GOP seats (Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island) plus one of two other seats that have been considered less vulnerable but still competitive (Tennessee and Virginia) plus lose none of their own. Alternatively, they could lose one of their own (the obvious candidate here is New Jersey), but then they’d have to win all seven of the GOP seats just mentioned. This is a tall order and last spring it seemed virtually impossible; it was not clear how strong Democrats would be in the top five races and the Tennessee and Virginia races looked like real outside shots. Now things look different. The Democrats must still run the table in the manner described but the outside shots now look quite plausible and chances in the top five look good to very good. Here are the last-five-poll averages from the very useful site, Pollster.com, run by Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin: Missouri (McCaskill-Talent), 44-45; Montana (Tester-Burns), 49-43; Ohio (Brown-DeWine), 45-42; Pennsylvania (Casey-Santorum), 49-39; Rhode Island (Whitehouse-Chafee), 44-40; Tennessee (Ford-Corker), 45-43; and Virginia (Webb-Allen), 42-48. In addition, in New Jersey (far and away the Republicans’ best chance for a seat pickup), Democrat Bob Menendez now leads Republican Tom Kean by 43-41. So, in a wave election, all the raw materials are there for these seats to all or almost all break in the Democrats’ direction-- an outcome with plenty of historical precedent—leading to a switch in control of the Senate. That doesn’t mean it will happen (chances still look poorer than in the House for a switch of control and are probably less than 50-50) but it easily could happen, something most observers would not have said earlier in the year. What Lies Ahead One month ‘til election day! What we would all like to know, of course, is whether this situation is liable to get better, get worse or stay the same for the GOP. On the stay the same or get worse side of the argument, start with the fact that this is a heavily nationalized election, which is a big disadvantage for an unpopular incumbent administration and Congress. To cite some representative data, the latest Pew poll found voters saying national issues, rather than local issues, were most important to their vote by a 51-23 margin. And 39 percent said they are thinking of their vote for Congress as a vote against President Bush. Analogous figures going back to 1982 show that this level of anti-president voting has never been surpassed—indeed, there are no figures before 2006 that are even close. The Foley scandal should, if nothing else, keep the spotlight shining on the failures of the Bush administration and GOP Congress. Changing the subject back to local issues, already difficult, has just become even harder. But it could be much worse than that. Two of my favorite political observers, Charlie Cook and Chuck Todd (editor of the Hotline), termed it respectively a possible “inflection point” or “tipping point” in the campaign, creating serious momentum toward the Democrats as we move toward election day. Already, we know that almost everybody (78 percent in the latest Time poll) has heard of the Foley scandal and that they strongly believe a GOP cover-up is going on (64-16 in the same poll). But it could take awhile for these effects to be fully felt. In the Pew poll, which concluded on October 4, there was no difference in the Democratic lead (13 points) in the generic Congressional contest before and after the Foley news broke. A more extensive review of recent data by Mark Blumenthal also finds no recent change. On the other hand, an October 7 story in The New York Times suggests that the Foley scandal is already tipping some races where corruption or related issues have been important in the Democrats’ direction. And the just-released Newsweek poll does have Bush’s approval rating down to 33 percent, a new low in that poll. So we shall see. But the biggest problem for the GOP remains Iraq. Even before the Foley scandal broke, the string of Iraq-related bad news and revelations (the loss of Anbar province in Iraq, the NIE conclusion that the Iraq war has made the war on terrorism harder, the Woodward and Powell books and their documentation of Bush administration failures) had halted some modest momentum in the GOP’s direction. Now Iraq is increasing in importance to voters’ Congressional vote intentions—and is clearly the top voting issue—even as pessimism on Iraq deepens. In the new Newsweek poll, 64 percent believe the US is losing ground in Iraq and 66 percent say the war in Iraq has not made the country safer from terrorism. On the get better for the GOP side of the argument, there are limited possibilities. One, of course, is some unforeseen event that allows the GOP to change the subject. Not much one can say about this other than it could possibly happen. Then there is the vaunted GOP turnout machine (but polls have generally shown Democrats more enthusiastic about voting this year and the Foley scandal seems likely to have a further negative effect on GOP voting enthusiasm) and their ability to spend a lot of money in the last days of the campaign. This may be their last and only hope of avoiding a very bad election. The Democrats, however, will not be standing idly by while the GOP tries to muscle their way out of bad situation, so it should be a very interesting last several weeks. October 6, 2006
I had a phone conversation with a friend who works in politics who relayed to me a veteran political operative's take on the House Foley scandal. What follows is a speculative transcript of a conversation between Tom Reynolds (or John Boehner or John Shimkus) and Speaker Dennis Hastert about the possibility that a member of the Republican caucus was attemping to seduce congressional pages. REYNOLDS: Denny, it looks like Foley's playing grab ass with the pages again. HASTERT: Goddamit! Tell Foley to cut that shit out! Sounds about right to me. —Christopher Hayes 6:58 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)
TILTING AT DEMOCRATS, PART II: Since I’m usually on the side of my critics in this case, they can be sure I understand where they’re coming from (although I must say, a few of them seem to take a step or two in the direction of self-righteousness.) The most compelling replies were from latts and trublu, who say you may have to use torture, but that shouldn’t make it legal. The interrogator who uses it, and the president who authorizes it, should be prepared to defend themselves. I agree, but my original point still stands... In rare cases, torture may be the only alternative, just as latts points out, an illegal action is the only alternative for the father driving 100 miles an hour to get his desperately sick daughter to the hospital. But one way many of my critics are mostly wrong is when they argue torture doesn’t work. True, it does not work in the case of forced confession, as we’ve learned from the many black prisoners victimized by Southern sheriffs. But it can work where it is used to elicit verifiable facts – facts that the interrogator, in contrast to the Southern sheriff of the old days, has an urgent interest in verifying. Then the witness knows that if his answers are false, the interrogator is going to find out. This is why intelligence agencies compartmentalize: so that one agent won’t be able to reveal facts about another. The agencies know that, unfortunately, anybody can be made to talk. Again, I share my critics’ horror of torture. I just wish they – and Democratic leaders – would face reality.
SORRY, BOSS... We're probably going to see a bunch of stories in the next few weeks open with a sentence constructed something like this one from Roll Call today: “National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.), who was considered a safe bet for re-election just a few weeks ago, was trailing his Democratic challenger in the first public polls released since the scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) broke out.” Reynolds smoked the challenger, Jack Davis, by 12 points just two years. Reynolds has so far insisted that he's blameless in the Foley affair because he informed his “supervisor”-Denny Hastert--about the disturbing e-mails he saw. What Reynolds doesn't seem to get is that Hastert is not his boss-his district's voters are. And by a margin of eight points, they seem to think he screwed up.
In their wallowing, Republican operatives feel doubly aggrieved by the Foley fun because they think it’s blocking them from getting their message out. If they could only get back to talking about the war and national security, they think, then cowering voters might duck and dodge their way to the polls and return them to Washington with a slim majority. The problem with that lament, of course, is that it’s wrong. The first thing the Foley mess blocked was coverage of Condi Rice blowing off CIA Director George Tenet, who sought an urgent meeting with her two months before 9/11 but was dismissed. Now it’s getting in the way of Republican Sen. John Warner’s announcement, via Hotline, that the U.S. should think about getting out of Iraq. “I assure you, in two or three months, if this thing hasn't come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function, I think it's a responsibility of our government internally to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take?" Warner said. "And I wouldn't take off the table any option at this time.” We can be pretty sure that this “thing” will not have “come to fruition” in two or three months. And if U.S. intelligence estimates are to be believed, the level of violence will have increased in that time. Too bad that Foley is preventing them from getting their message out on Iraq. Because, after three and a half years of war there, voters are probably curious exactly what the plan is.
I'd thought that all the "juicy bits" of Bob Woodward's State of Denial had already been excerpted, picked over and discussed. But last night, reading the excerpt in Newsweek , this caught my eye. Explaining why the US has failed to defeat the insurgency, Rumsfeld tells Woodward: There's something about the body politic in the United States that they can accept the enemy killing innocent men, women and cutting of people's heads, but have zero tolerance for some soldier who does something he shouldn't do. Is it me, or this is a pretty offensive slander against American voters? The US Secretary of Defense thinks that the we "accept" the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent Iraqis civilians. And, with our preening, soft-minded insistence on human rights and such, we just won't allow our government to give our soldiers the go ahead to start decapitating innocent people. Because then we'd win this thing easily. Coupled with another Rumsfeld gem in the book -- when he says the entire system of US government "makes competence next to impossible" -- it's pretty clear that not only does Rumsfeld have contempt for American voters, but actually, and more distressingly, for democracy itself. Something voters might want to think about when going to the polls. —Christopher Hayes 12:28 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)
TO QUOTE BARBRA STREISAND... : Even dyed-in-wool Republicans must have laughed this week when two of their leaders pulled out the tiredest of excuses to cover themselves from embarrassing admissions. First Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice said she didn't remember the CIA Director telling her in July 2001 that Al Quada was bent on attacking the US. That dodge lasted about half a news cycle, until records showed that the meeting did indeed occur. Then just a couple days later, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said he had no recollection of anybody warning him about Mark Foley's emails to pages. Memories, may be beautiful and yet
ICEBERG AHEAD?: This town is full of gloomy Republicans these days; on my way down H Street a couple of hours after the Hastert press conference, I ran into one of them, a young veteran of half a dozen races since high school, including the last Bush campaign. He's been biding his time till 2008 in the lucrative lobbying-industrial complex over on K Street ("Gotta stop renting someday," he says.) I asked him: in his opinion, would congressional leadership changes now could make a difference for Republican prospects this fall? "Sure," he said. "Like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic probably made for a smaller splash." Dennis Hastert may have thought his Thursday statement struck the perfect note of stalwart defiance -- but a little something may have gotten lost in the delivery. Because what Republicans actually heard, according to this GOP operative, was something along the lines of: "OK, everybody. On my mark... time to panic!" (Apparently, FOX News picked up on the message, too.) —Rebecca Sinderbrand 9:57 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)October 5, 2006
There aren't many congressional institutions that will come out of the Mark Foley affair looking quite as good as they did a week ago. But there is one Republican-led group has the potential to look even better: the House Ethics Commitee. Watching their press conference after they met to figure out the course of the Foley investigation, I had to keep reminding myself that last year, this group was the well-deserved poster child for congressional dysfunction... A reminder, in case you've repressed that episode: Back then, Dennis Hastert had given the pink slip to the commitee's chair, Joel Hefley, for overseeing rebukes of Tom DeLay. Democrats were naturally less-than-thrilled with more disciplined party-line attitude of the new chair, Doc Hastings -- even before he threw precedent to the wind by insisting on a partisan staff director for the panel. A cold war ensued, and the committee was paralyzed for months during an extraordinarily inconvenient (or convenient, depending on your political perspective) period. That was then. OK, so they're still not exactly breaking out the warm hugs and campfire songs. But at the post-session newser, the group seemed almost... cordial, and -- at least, for the length of their joint press conference -- a potential island of relative sanity in the center of the biggest tsunami of crazy to hit Capitol Hill in a good while. They also seemed, at least to my ears, relatively chatty (for what is usually, by Washington standards, a pretty tight-lipped panel). Of course, one thing they wouldn't say for sure was whether their focus on the institutional failings at work in the scandal meant one of the dozens of subpoenas they planned to issue was headed for Dennis Hastert's hands. So -- on an obviously unrelated note -- here's a fun fact for all you history buffs out there: from what I remember (no, not personally), over the past four decades, only two House speakers have found themselves at the center of the ethics panel's investigations. Those would be: Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright. UPDATE: Just to be clear: No, I don't think Doc Hastings has somehow morphed into a picture of moderate reason. But we're talking about a committee that was basically out of commission for the better part of last year because of partisan cage matches over staffing issues (more than that, sure, but that was the ostensible issue). Now, in the middle of a political deathmatch, they're able to hammer out the outlines of an agreement to investigate alleged GOP congressional incompetence during a single closed-door session -- and announce it jointly? A week ago, nobody I know would have put smart money on that... which was, I think, the point I was trying to make. The fact that the two parties were able to share the same stage doesn't mean they're going to link arms and start singing Kumbaya -- who knows if this era of good feelings will even outlast the weekend. But I think, by any definition, what we have here so far is what passes for a congressional success story these days -- and if they actually manage a speedy, relatively thorough investigation, then it may actually mark the lone real accomplishment of the session.... —Rebecca Sinderbrand 9:44 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (5)
IN TOUCH WITH THE VOTERS: Pennsylvania Republican Don Sherwood, facing the heat for cheating on his wife and allegedly choking his mistress during a massage, stretches the limits of good taste with his new apologi-ad: "While I'm truly sorry for disappointing you, I never wavered from my commitment to reduce taxes, create jobs and bring home our fair share." Is this the political version of “I was thinking of you the whole time I was doing it”? Poor woman. There she was thinking Don was going to leave his wife and run off with her, while the whole time his mind was with his real love, the voting public. This might explain the vigorous rub-down: he was just steamed over the alternative minimum tax. —Avi Klein 6:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: Rebecca's post reminded me of a point that's come up before in regard to President Bush. Saying that you "take responsibility" for something, and using the phrase "the buck stops here" may be enough to get the news media to write headlines that say you're taking responsibility. But it's not the same thing as actually taking responsibility in any kind of real, meaningful adult way. To do that, you have to be willing to examine, in a serious-minded way, what you did wrong and why. However much blame you think GOP leaders deserve, Hastert didn't come close to doing that this afternoon. The nearest he got was "Could we have handled it better? Could the page board have handled it better? In retrospect, probably yes." But he continued to insist that GOP leaders "dealt with it immediately." Equally, saying "I'm deeply sorry this has happened" is apparently enough to fool the news media into thinking you've apologized. But once you get beyond the age of 6, it doesn't count as an actual apology. Just saying.
For most of us, the top story right now is the fact that Dennis Hastert is going to take responsibility for the Foley scandal. Red State has a different take on the news of the day. Check out their top story at this moment for a bit of conservative nostalgia: a headline that manages to take on unions, civil service rules and the 'Nanny State', all in one fell swoop. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 3:59 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (8)
IT'S NOT EASY BEIN' GREEN: The uphill climb for Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum got a bit steeper yesterday as the state Supreme Court booted the Green Party candidate from the ballot... He was some 9,000 signatures short of the ridiculously high requirement of 67,000 – all of them having to match Just south of the Mason-Dixon, though, another Green is solidly on the Any third—and fourth and fifth—party run is a tough sell, but this one On Tuesday, Zeese accomplished something his old boss never could: The
BLOOD IN THE WATER: The sharks are circling Hastert. First John Boehner went out of his way to place the blame for the whole Foley incident on him. Then Roy Blunt questioned his competence: "I think I could have given some good advice here, which is, You have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of. You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to.” Boehner has a history as a coup plotter.
Later today, we should have an answer to at least one of the swarm of questions surrounding the Mark Foley mess: Will competing leaks from panicked GOP congressional flacks will start a few minutes after today's closed meeting of the House ethics committee ends -- or will they kick off with some decent Blackberry action from inside the session itself? Meanwhile, there's at least one Republican congressman with the guts to openly ask the tough questions on Capitol Hill, and demand testimony under oath from elected officials: what did they know -- and when did they know it? Patrick McHenry of North Carolina (profiled here by Benjamin Wallace-Wells) has come forward to demand immediate sworn statements... from Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel. Well, as it turns out... yes. So I guess that means at least two Foley answers today. —Rebecca Sinderbrand 8:56 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)October 4, 2006
The 1000% Solution No one should be surprised to see the Republican leadership sinking in its own quicksand. Congress simply wasn’t built to withstand a major scandal. What does surprise me is how long the White House waited to try to manage such a lethal political disaster. The Bush White House has made a habit of ignoring policy fiascos until they become political ones. From Michael Brown’s Katrina to Tom Scully’s Medicare bill to Republican resumes in Iraq, the administration always botches policy the same way, by asking hacks to do a wonk’s job. But scandal management is the job every hack lives for. Unlike detailed policy problems that actually require solutions, scandals are straightforward political problems that just have to be managed. The Bush crowd would be hard-pressed to name a domestic problem that has actually improved on their watch, but from Karl Rove on down, they’re very proud of their political achievements and survival. While the White House no doubt spent the weekend burning up the phone lines to Capitol Hill, the president waited four long days to add his voice to the “shocked, shocked” Republican chorus. By then, nobody cared what Bush thought about Foley. We just wanted to see how close to 1000% of his support he would place behind Hastert. Bush praised Hastert as a father, friend, and wrestling coach. On the Tom Eagleton scale, that’s 700% and rising. Rove and the White House know that the Foley affair is a losing battle, and you don’t have to be a hack or a wrestling coach to know somebody has to take the fall before they’ll get back in this match. The fact that Bush praised Hastert must mean he’s confident the Republican caucus will take the Speaker down for him. Mark Foley asked for the good kiss goodnight. But Bush may have given the kiss of death to Denny Hastert. 
COUNTING THE WAYS: Really, could Foley-gate be any more delicious for Democrats? Consider:
It's #2 that's really making me enjoy this. If Republicans would just shut up about the whole thing, it probably would have lost most of its steam already. The feeding frenzy we're seeing is the sight of Republicans themselves chewing each other's legs off. —Kevin Drum 5:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (32)
INSIDE FOX NEWS … Last night I ran into someone who works for FOX News at an embassy party. Curious about the vibe in the midst of Foleygate, I arched an eyebrow. “Been busy lately?” “You mean about the anniversary?” (FOX News is now celebrating its 10th.) His answer seemed entirely earnest. Different way of defining big news, I guess. UPDATE: FOX really hasn't been paying attention to all Foley details.
Want to see the five nastiest campaign ads so far? Lou Cabron believes he's found them. —T.A. Frank 4:23 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)
A FRIEND IN NEED IS RIPE FOR THE PICKING: Ah, the joys of full membership in the polity -- the chance to sell your soul to the devil in the name of your community. Yesterday, I blogged about black homophobia in the service of the GOP's expansionist agenda. Today, boys and girls, the twenty pieces of silver: power and lucrative funding of blacks' pet programs as payoffs for either remaining Dems or for embracing Republicans. The GOP has two blacks running for Governor and one for the US Senate, not to mention Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. Black leaders around the country have been demanding significant concessions in exchange for continuing to support all the white boys their party gives them to vote for. The Dems even rejiggered the primary schedule to spotlight the importance of the minority vote in the South and Southwest were they are so populous. All this is no more than blacks' long overdue, uh, due from the party and the ideals it has so long cleaved to. But how to gauge blacks' growing embrace of Republicans and, more importantly, what they do with their newfound access? Rudely jarred from their reasonable racial inertia where its black base was concerned (what, y'all gonna vote for Trent Lott?), the Dems have been falling all over themselves trying to mollify their newly popular, long ignored homies. Local pols and state leaders are demanding, and receiving long withheld funds and offices. DNC leaders like Barney Frank and Donna Brazile are finally making the party realize that it has to do more talent scouting and mentoring of black candidates; in Maryland and Massachusetts, black candidates Kweisi Mfume and Deval Patrick were thoroughly dissed as their party dithered about even acknowledging their existence, let alone whom to endorse. The Republicans have come calling too. In today's Washington Post, Courtland Milloy introduces us non-Virginians to Benjamin J. Lambert III, a black state Senator. A lifer in his state's politics, he also notably managed the campaign which made Douglas Wilder Virginia's first black governor since Reconstruction. A solid brother, right? So why's he all of a sudden George Macaca Allen's new best black friend? Because, George has apologized. He said he understands the plight of African Americans and their sensitivities regarding the Confederate flag. He said he was going to do much better. I say, Let's give him a chance. No you didn't Senator. You said, Gimme a half billion federal dollars to save dying historically black colleges. The sell your soul, twenty pieces of silver shots were just that -- cheapish shots. Politics is an ugly game and no inner city kid getting the support he needs to excel at a HBCU gives a damn how the school stays open. I truly feel Lambert when he counters detractors' claims that he's a Tom with What have they done to keep a school open? I'm just getting a head start on my nostalgia for the days when our exclusion from power kept our hands clean.
GOTV TRIES GOING VIRAL ... Facebook, the online social-networking site that's hotter than dormcest on many college campuses, today kicked off a campaign in conjunction with Rock the Vote to let voters register online. Facebook launched in 2004, now has 9.5 million users, and registration is free with a university email. Once you join, you create a personal profile listing all things you like and want to be identified with (bands, books, cult movies, pet causes), what one college senior calls "basically a trading card of your personality." Next you rack up a list of a bazillion online friends who also link back to your page. You can all see each others' profiles, affirm your soulmate status (dude, you like the Ramones!), and strive to outflank in hipness quotient. Trends spread quickly. So, if Facebook's new sponsored group, "We Will Rock the Vote" -- which links to online voter registration page -- catches on, it could boost the elusive "youth vote" before the '06 midterms ... in years past an electoral yawn. That's the hope, anyway, of Rock the Vote's Hans Riemer, whom I just got off the phone with. The youth vote, you might remember, was big news in 2004, when the percentage of 18-24 year-olds who voted jumped 11 percentage points. —Christina Larson 1:28 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)
JUST SAY IT: In today's Washington Post, Peter Baker reports on a speech President Bush gave yesterday, in which he declared: "If you don't think we should be listening in on the terrorist, then you ought to vote for the Democrats. If you want your government to continue listening in when al-Qaeda planners are making phone calls into the United States, then you vote Republican."As Baker goes on to note: "Critics of the surveillance program have not argued against listening to terrorist phone calls but say the government should get warrants from a secret intelligence court." In the real world, then, we would describe what Bush said as a gross mischaracterization of the Democrats' position. Here's how Baker describes it: "Bush's language, though, characterizes Democratic positions through his own prism."Through his own prism. As anyone who's been reading blogs over the last few years knows, this reportorial inability to call a spade a spade is nothing new. And this probably isn't the worst recent example you could find. But it's worth pointing this stuff out every time, because that's the only way it'll improve. —Zachary Roth 12:42 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
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