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Krugman Blogs

Facts, what a concept.

The Straight and Not Narrow: It’s quite strange how the magnitude of the Democratic victory has been downplayed. After the 1994 election, the cover of Time showed a charging elephant, and the headline read “GOP stampede.” Indeed, the GOP had won an impressive victory: in House races, Republicans had a 7 percentage point lead in the two-party vote.

In 2006, Time’s cover was much more subdued; two overlapping circles, and the headline “The center is the new place to be.” You might assume that this was because the Democrats barely eked out a victory. In fact, Democrats had an 8.5 percentage point lead, substantially bigger than the GOP win in 1994. Also, the new Democratic majority in the House isn’t just larger than any the Republicans achieved over their 12-year reign; it’s much more solidly progressive than their pre-1994 majority.

Of course, given that the Dems continue to behave like a minority party in Congress….

The Morning After

One progressive surveys the morning after:

It's as if the biopsy results just came back and you don't have cancer after all. You're not giddy, exactly, but you can finally take a deep breath and maybe let some of the tension drain out of your shoulders. The future remains uncertain but you can begin to imagine it as something other than relentlessly bleak.

Cheery bunch, aren't we?

Lamont Post Mortem

David Sirota explains why Lamont lost, and why some of the popular narratives of this loss should not be trusted.

51

Allen concedes. Does this mean we move from political Hell to political Purgatory?

And, yes, my predictions that (a) Allen would litigate and (b) the national party would encourage it both appear to be wrong. The report is that the national guys decided the case was unwinnable and didn't want two months of bad press. (But maybe my read of Allen wasn't all that far off?)

The action now moves to how many judges and how much evil legislation this administration can try to rush through the lame duck Senate. First up -- the warrantless wiretapping bill?

Webb Wins (Maybe)

The AP is calling it for Webb. I'm hearing he has a several thousand vote lead, and if that's true then I don't think Allen can overturn this, given Virginia's history of counts that stick.

I expected lawsuits nonetheless, but the rumor mill is strong that the national GOP wants Allen to pull out to get the election off the front page -- and to avoid the "sore loser" tag. I remain a little suspicious -- it sounds like the sort of Rovian head fake I've come to expect.

But suppose the news is right. What kind of Senator has Virginia got?

I supported Webb enthusiastically because Allen was so awful. And Webb's platform wasn't so bad given that he's a recent convert from the GOP. That said, he's a hard man to like; although much easier to respect.

In my optimistic moments I think Webb will be an interesting, if occasionally uncomfortable, Senator; perhaps even a free thinker a little in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan mode, although not so pyrotechnic in his public playing with ideas because Webb just doesn't seem as comfortable with people. A Senate full of independent principled intellectuals with real-world experience would be a fine thing. What happens when you throw one or two into the snake pit is harder to call.

Quick Links

• Netroots power
• Why anyone with a brain stem won't trust Bush when he talks about Texas-style bipartisanship
• Some interesting biographical information on SecDef nominee Robert Gates:

  Independent Counsel found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Robert Gates with a crime for his role in the Iran/contra affair. Like those of many other Iran/contra figures, the statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless, given the complex nature of the activities and Gates's apparent lack of direct participation, a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.

  Presumably the confirmation hearing will be rushed to have it happen in the lame-duck Senate, not one with a Democratic Armed Services Committee chair. If you want even more about Gates, have a look at the Senate debate on Gates's previous appointment in 1991.
• Video: Bush Admits He Lied About Rumsfeld For Political Purposes. [UPDATE: This, it turns out, hews to a familiar pattern.]

DSCC Statement on VA & MT

I have no time, so here, unedited and uncommented, is the latest DSCC statement:

Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.

Montana Vote Situation: Jon Tester leads Conrad Burns by approximately 1,700 votes (as of 11am EDT) and counting. In Silver Bow County (Butte), a Democratic stronghold, votes are still being counted but Tester is winning there with 66% of the vote. We expect to gain the majority of these uncounted votes and to add to Tester's margin.

Montana Process: When the counting phase is completed, a canvass will verify the vote tallies. That process could take as long as 48 hours, and must begin within three days and end within seven. Unless the canvass shows the margin to be within ¼ of 1%, there is no recount. As the loser, Burns would have to request the recount. When the votes are all counted, we expect to be outside that recount margin.

Virginia Vote Situation: Jim Webb is up by approximately 8,000 votes and once the provisional ballots are counted, we expect Webb's margin to increase. (Please note that VA absentees were included in the tallies from last night.)

Virginia Process: A canvass is underway to verify the results and we expect that process to finish within a day or so. To be in recount, the margin needs to be less than 1% and Allen (as the loser) would have to request it. Because of Virginia voting laws, the margin would have to be much tighter than it currently is to see any change in the outcome. Given the current margins, that is highly, highly unlikely.

Wow.

This really is a huge Democratic victory. As far as I can tell, not a single Democratic incumbent lost a governorship, or national legislative seat. Not. A. Single. One.

Democrats have a resounding victory in the House -- gaining about 30 seats even before the dozen or so too-close-to-calls get called. And this in the face of the routine gerrymanders.

The Senate hangs by two threads, one in Virginia, one in Montana. I don't pretend to grasp what on earth is going on in Montana, but if this is to be believed, there's a decent chance Tester -- one of the most attractive candidates this year -- will pull through. Virginia, I suspect, is going to be litigated whatever happens. Even if the Democrats were to lose both contests, a four seat gain is a big victory. And the Democrats will control the Senate after 2008 unless something very odd happens in the Presidential election which contaminates the downballot.

Potentially even more important in the long term are two tectonic shifts signaled by this election.

The first is that the GOP is being reduced to a predominantly Southern party. Democrats have a lock on New England and I foresee greater gains in the West. That makes the mid-west the major battleground -- and this election suggests that the mid-West may be reverting to its historically Democratic leanings.

The South is not as different from the rest of the country as it used to be -- although it is more evangelical -- so being Southern-dominated is not the albatross it once was. Nevertheless, regional dominance of any sort is not a recipe for national success. And evangelical dominance is not a national vote-winner in this Elmer Gantry moment.

The second shift is internal: the new model Democratic party is much more populist than it was last week. Just as the GOP has lost some of its nastiest and stupidest representatives (along, yes, with a few good ones) such as Tom DeLay (by resignation), "Count" Chocola, and Pombo, so too the Democrats elected to the House are by and large smart, insurgent, outsiders.

They are mostly anti-Iraq, (too?) suspicious of free trade, pro-consumer, and pro-health care. They tend libertarian on social issues, although the picture here is more mixed. They will help move the party caucus outside of the comfortable Beltway consensus which has threatened to dominate it. Many owe their elections to Howard Dean's 50-state strategy which was overwhelmingly vindicated in this election. Others owe their funding to the 'netroots' -- bloggers llike myDD, Firedoglake, and DailyKos. And they know it.

So when establishment Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel join forces with Republican commentators to explain how the Democratic vote was really quite conservative, take it for the spinning and wishful thinking that it is. Because while far from powerless, the establishment wing of the Democratic party just got significantly less relevant. And they know it too. They just don't want us to know it.

Update. Some data:

27 Democratic Gains
AZ-05 Harry Mitchell v. Hayworth
AZ-08 Gabrielle Giffords (Kolbe open)
CA-04 Jerry McNerney v. Pombo
CO-07 Ed Perlmutter (Beauprez open)
CT-05 Chris Murphy v. Johnson
FL-16 Tim Mahoney (Foley open)
FL-22 Ron Klein v. Shaw
IN-02 Joe Donnelly v. Chocola
IN-08 Brad Ellsworth v. Hostetler
IN-09 Baron Hill v. Sodrel
IA-01 Bruce Braley (Nussle open)
IA-02 Dave Loesback v. Leach
KS-02 Nancy Boyda v. Ryun
KY-03 John Yarmuth v. Northup
MN-01 Tim Walz v. Gutnecht [Yay!]
NH-01 Carol Shea-Porter v. Bradley
NH-02 Paul Hodes v. Bass
NY-19 John Hall v. Kelly
NY-20 Kirsten Gillibrand v. Sweeney
NY-24 Michael Arcuri (Boehlert open)
NC-11 Heath Shuler v. Taylor
OH-18 Zack Space (Ney open)
PA-04 Jason Altmire v. Hart
PA-07 Joe Sestak v. Weldon
PA-10 Chris Carney v. Sherwood
TX-22 Nick Lampson (DeLay open)
WI-08 Steve Kagen (Green open)

2 Democrats Leading but NOT Declared

CT-02 Joe Courtney v. Simmons - UP 200 with 97% in
PA-08 Patrick Murphy v. Fitzpatrick - UP 1500

2 Democratic Incumbents Not Declared BUT are Ahead

GA-08 Jim Marshall - UP 1800 with 99% in
GA-12 John Barrow - UP 3300 with 96% in

Headed to a Runoff

LA-02 Jefferson v. Carter - 30% v. 22%
TX-23 Bonilla v. Rodriguez - 48 v. 21%

Democrats Behind But Not Declared

NM-01 Madrid down 1300 w/ 99% in
OH-02 Wulsin down 2200 w/ 100% in
OH-15 Kilroy down 1300 with 100% in
PA-06 Murphy down 2400 with 100% in
WA-08 Burner down 2700 with 31% in
WY-AL Trauner down 800 with 99% in

Democrats Elected in Safe Seats

FL-11 Kathy Castor
GA-04 Harry Johnson
HI-02 Mazie Hirono
IL-17 Phil Hare
MD-03 John Sarbanes
MN-05 Keith Ellison
NJ-13 Albio Sires
NY-11 Yvette Clark
OH-06 Charlie Wilson
OH-13 Betty Sutton
TN-09 Steve Cohen
VT-AL Peter Welch

Virginia

At present, the Virginia election is a nailbiter, but one in which Allen has retained a lead for some time. There's now 4.3% of the precincts remaining to be counted, and Allen has a lead of some thirteen thousand votes. That's almost, but not quite, too much for Webb to overcome given that the missing votes seem to be in Arlington, Craig, and Fairfax counties.

The incredible thing is that the Green candidate (who?) has gotten over 1% of the vote -- almost twice the margin now separating Webb and Allen. Shades of Ralph Nader all over again.

In addition, the margin of victory will be well within the margin of theft and voter suppression.

Vote Democratic Today

Images swiped from Needlenose. Click each picture for a larger image

Find Your Polling Place

Today is election day in the USA.

Here's an easy way to find your polling place.

Two Views of Lieberman

I can't quite decide if this video is funny or not. I sort of lean to "not," although it has an undeniable evil cleverness:

I think the "Lieberman as stalker" metaphor does capture how some progressives feel about him, fairly or not.

But I suppose my view is more closely reflected in this video:

The Military's Scream

I've said before that there's something disturbing when the spooks start trying to undermine their civilian masters by leaking against them or otherwise. Even when I agree with the spooks.

And I have to say more or less the same thing about the news that the Army Times, the Air Force Times, and the Navy Times are all running an unprecedented editorial tomorrow -- the day before the election -- calling for the ouster of the Secretary of Defense.

On the merits, they are right of course, but late to the party. And a great part of our military predicament appears to be due to the promotion of a clique of yes-man generals, and the sidelining of those with the guts to stand up to demented requirements of Rumsfeld and the (now, too late, repentant) neo-cons.

But the merits are not in doubt. The issue is the politics. This coordinated editorial will be seen as representing the voice of the officer corps. And why not? Rumsfeld is killing their troops, sending them in meaningless circles -- taking and abandoning cities -- without a strategic plan that anyone can understand.

The service magazines are technically private. But they will be seen, as they have been for at least two generations, as speaking for their readers. Their readers have more sense than their leaders, and have no great desire to keep being herded over the cliff.

So while I agree with the sentiment, it's not a happy moment, not at all. This is bad for discipline, bad for morale, bad for the country. The trouble is that the service papers may have correctly decided that silence might have been even worse.

This deserves to be devastating in Tuesday's election.

Let's hope the long-run consequences are not devastating in a different way.

TPM Cafe Does Latest Ads

Miss your discourse.net ad fix? Visit Political Ad Bonanza! View Them All Here, From Cute To Vicious.

Risk of Voting Machine Hack at Center of CA SecState Ad

But for its length, surely one of the top ads of the year, deployed in the CA Secretary of State race:

There's also a different, shorter, but also good, ad on the same theme in the MN Secretary of State race.

Vote Democratic

It's official -- Iraq is rushing towards chaos. This was certainly avoidable by not invading; and probably avoidable by actually bothering to plan for the aftermath of military victory over the Iraqi army.

Click the picture for a larger image.

Ask George Allen a Question, Get Beat Up

A first-year law student at the University of Virginia tried to ask George Allen some questions the senator didn't like. So three big guys with Allen stickers on -- staffers? -- beat the guy, wrestled him to the ground, and nearly put his head through a glass door.

This news account on YouTube calls it a "fight" but if you look at the video the victim did nothing but ask questions -- all the violence is on the Allen team side. Click below to see for yourself:

The shirts are not brown, but the spirit is there. I wonder if there's any connection between the Allen staff's frayed tempers and the latest poll, showing Webb at 50% and Allen at only 46% -- within the margin of error, but Webb's first lead nonetheless. [Update: Actually there are four polls now showing Webb ahead, but all within the margin of error.]

[Update (2): More details at The Carpetbagger]

[Update (3): Sen. Allen's reaction to the incident? "These things happen."

I guess that is true, especially when the candidate is one who says stuff like, "Let's enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whining throats."

The victim, incidentally, is named Mike Stark. In addition to be a 1L at UVa (whose graduates include... Senator Allen), he's a former Marine, and has a blog.]

Fighting Back

It's been pretty depressing to see the slime tactics proliferating in this campaign. And while there's no question that both sides are going negative, there's one side that's going ugly, and making stuff up. And that is our desperate GOP, the party that sees its monopoly on power possibly slipping from its grasp. In Tennessee, in Virginia, in Missouri, in many other places, it's not at all pretty right now.

On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.

At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.

...

The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.

At least in Virginia, Jim Webb is fighting back against George Allen's smears.

And Michael J. Fox responds to Limbaugh's attack on Fox's McCaskill commercial.

Overall, though, I think Democrats still haven't fully adapted to the new realities of smear and jeer politics.

Race to the bottom? Or is there some way to struggle to the top?

Wes Clark Steps Up in the Invisible Primary

There are two elections going on simultaneously in the Connecticut Senate race. There's Lamont v. Lieberman of course, but there's also the first round in the invisible primary for the 2008 presidential election. The invisible primary is the one where would-be candidates compete for the love, energy and money of party activists who they hope will propel their candidacy forward before the rest of the world really starts to notice.

Wes Clark took a big step forward in that primary today by making this effective ad for Lamont:

Few of the other possible candidates have done much beyond a token appearance, and almost none have done any Lieberman-bashing, even though he refused to respect the result of the party primary. Wes Clark shows here not only that he's tough, but that he's a party player. The activists will like that.

The First "W" Is Missing

I am not now and have never been a professional journalist. For a while, however, I was a pretty serious amateur, ending up as News Editor of the Yale Daily News. Back in the day, perhaps because we didn't know any better, we believed in traditional news gathering and reporting: the "six W's" -- Who, What, Where, When, Why and (W)How Much.

How odd, therefore, to read so much of the coverage of the dust-up over the RNC's racist ad in the Tennessee Senate race, and to find that the very first "W" is missing.

First, a quick review: The national Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, Ken Mehlman proprietor, paid for a rather unsubtle racist ad in the Tennessee Senate race. Like much of the old south, the racist vote is small than it used to be, but still far from negligible, and it seems the GOP's Nixonian "southern strategy" still lives. Times have changed, though, and rather than accept it, many public figures, including to their credit several (mostly retired) Republicans, balked.

So Mr. Mehlman was asked to explain himself on national TV. His answer was breathtakingly disingenuous. He personally saw nothing wrong with the ad, it's fair he first said, so what's the problem? (Today's spin version, heard no NPR, is more cautious -- some of his friends don't like it and he (now) respects that).

In response to requests that the GOP pull the ad, Mehlman stated that he lacked the power to do so: the ad was an "independent" expenditure by an arms-length body created to act independently of Mehlman's Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the national GOP, and the local GOP Senate candidate, Robert Corker (who also asked that the ad be removed).

Strangely, no one in the media seems to have asked for the name of the person Mehlman believes is responsible for the ad and presumably would have had the power to pull it. Who is in charge of the independent expenditure unit? Who are these rogue figures who would ignore a call by Mehlman to pull the ad -- had one in fact been made (it wasn't)? Who are these shadowy figures who would run a supposedly supportive ad in the teeth of a call by the local candidate to pull it?

"Who" -- the first "W" -- is missing. And if we knew who we might know something about just how independent they really are.

And speaking of missing W's -- where's George W. Bush on all this? Has he condemned this ad? Why not?

UPDATE: See what W's spokesperson, Tony Snow, had to say, via Media Matters.

Jim Webb Does a Good Commercial

Since I previously knocked Jim Webb's advertising, it seems only fair to point out that this time he's done a good one.

Or, rather, Mark Warner does a good one for Jim Webb.

Speaking of Jim Webb, here's an effective ad produced by Lars Sandvik, a Washington ad-maker who doesn't usually do political ads and isn't part of the Beltway consultant mafia. He did it for free, on his own, without consulting the Webb campaign. Now the question is whether anyone will find the money to put it on TV.

Incidentally, the ad is designed to be customizable at low cost -- all you have to do is change the handle if the pitch fits another candidate.

Bottom line: even if Jim Webb himself isn't the best TV performer, he's got the right sort of friends. (And, the latest poll shows Webb with a narrow lead over Sen. George Allen, 47% to 44%. But as this is something of an outlier from all the other polls that show Allen ahead, I'm not going to believe it until I see it confirmed at least once, maybe twice.)

Cute Ad

Many of this year's best political ads seem to feature children.

Googlebombing the Election

I just can't resist this invitation to Googlebomb the election.

Happy clicking!

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Voting Machines vs. Democracy

Mighty suspicious, given that they've known about this problem since last week, but still can't fix it.

Some Voting Machines Chop Off Candidates' Names - washingtonpost.com

U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.

...

Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only -- or "James H. 'Jim' " -- on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.

Although the problem creates some voter confusion, it will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly, election officials emphasized. The error shows up only on the summary page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting the button to cast their votes. Webb's full name appears on the page where voters choose for whom to vote.

If the summary page has no value, they wouldn't use it. Consequently, I can't see on what grounds anyone could say this is an irrelevant error. (I will agree it's not as bad as messing up the actual voting page, but even so...)

Couldn't they shelve the machines and use paper ballots?

Another Tasteless National GOP Ad

How's this for nasty negative advertising:

Aide may have misdialed phone sex line A Democratic congressional candidate accused in a political ad of billing taxpayers for a call to a phone-sex line said an associate may have misdialed the number while trying to reach a state agency.

The ad that began airing Friday shows Democrat Michael Arcuri leering at the silhouette of a dancing woman who says, "Hi, sexy. You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line."

But Arcuri's campaign released records showing the call two years ago from his New York City hotel room to the 800-number sex line was followed the next minute by a call to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. The last seven digits of the two numbers are the same

On the one hand you have to be kind of amazed at the attention to detail in opposition research that was capable of ferreting out this call from phone records.

On the other hand, you have to be appalled at the sleaze of running with it.

The ad's sponsor, the National Republican Congressional Committee, stood by the 30-second message. Spokesman Ed Patru insisted it was "totally true"...

While I Slept

So far, I've spent the majority of this weekend asleep. I've been battling some sort of bug for well more than a week, and at best I was holding it to a draw. So this weekend I tried to sleep it off. When I do 14-hours of sleep in a day (two naps and a long night), that means not much blogging. So here are a collection of links to things that accumulated while I was in the land of nod.

One of the sleaziest strategies in this election has been the unsubtle use of the race card by the GOP in the Tennessee election. The Democratic candidate, Harold Ford, is black, his opponent is white, and time and again the Republicans have made a very big deal of Ford being around or dating white women. Thus, the big push early in the campaign about Ford being at some party (when single) that had (white!) Playboy bunnies. And national Republican party issued a press release about Ford having gone on a date with a (white) college sophomore when he was a single thirtysomething. The national Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee has paid for an entire web site just to push the Ford and white women angle -- while all the time saying it's a "values" issue (that a single man went on dates?)

And now, the TV commercial -- using at least some actors posing as voters -- that really lays on the sleaze:

Despicable.

Push-polling season begins. And the GOP thinks the winning smear issue is ... Mexicans swarming over the border.

Joe Sestak, Democratic Congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, responds to attempt to Swift Boat him.

Great patriotic song.

US troops in Baghdad have had enough: "not an infantry mission anymore" and "worthless" "wasting our time".

Heavy-handed political commentary from Olbermann.

Heavy-handed humor: Too stupid to be President.

Tough McCaskill Ad

It looks as if the party that wins two out of three of Missouri, Virginia and Tennessee might have a majority in the Senate.¹

Democrats have a tiny, uncertain, lead in Tennessee. Virginia looks leaning GOP, despite everything revealed about the incumbent. So that means the pressure is on in Missouri. Here’s one of the hardest-hitting ads I’ve seen in a long time, starring Michael J. Fox, for Claire McCaskill, running against incumbent Jim Talent.

¹ To get a majority the Democrats must pick up six seats. The assumption is that Democrats retain New Jersey & Connecticut (in some form or other), gain in Rhode Island, Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Of these, Montana and New Jersey seem the least safe bets.

CT Senate Race Gets Exciting Again

Matt Stoller, Debate Train to Crazy Town has the scoop on what's happening in Connecticut. Basically, Lamont's campaign made errors after he won the primary. They coasted, rested, recharged, lost the initiative. Lieberman surged, taking some Democratic votes and all the Republican ones.

But all of a sudden, thanks to the first three-way debate, and to the second five-way debate, both marked by an inspired no-holds-barred performance from the Republican candidate, it's a horse race again, as the GOP voters have a reason to come home; and if they do that means squeezing Lieberman. So anyone could win.

You know you're in an incredible political environment when you're at an event where egomaniac Ralph Nader is wandering around, and not only is no one paying attention to him, but Ralph Nader himself doesn't even expect anyone to pay attention to him. That was the scene earlier today in Hartford, CT, where five candidates went at each other, or mostly at Joe Lieberman, for the Senate nomination in a debate. I wasn't feeling so good about this race a few weeks ago; it had stagnated, and the polling reflected that and will still reflect that for a week or so. Today, I think there was a decisive shift both in the dynamic of the race and in the tone of the political environment.

It's not that Lamont has overperformed, or that Joe has melted down, it's that Connecticut Election 2006 has gone off the deep end. It's not your normal white picket fence suburban election, with attack ad facing attack ad. No, this is more like a white picket fence election that suddenly gets bored with life and decides to live in the forest, take a bunch of LSD, trout-fish naked, and taunt a bear cub before ending its life suddenly and with total and inexplicable resolution on November 7. Well not really, but there's no analogy that I can think of summarizing what's going on. What has happened is that Joe Lieberman competed in a Democratic primary, lost, and is now competing in a Republican primary, and is losing again. Meanwhile, Lamont is finally picking up renewed steam and getting back on track as a candidate. There's energy here, real energy.

All in all, it was an impressive, serious debate, and I don't think you could look at it as anything but a clear victory for Ned Lamont and Alan Schlesinger. Alan Schlesinger says he's getting in money now, and he's going to go on TV. I actually think Alan's Perot-style message is quite resonant, and that in a totally freakshow moment he could pull enough votes from Lieberman and Lamont to eke out a weird 37% victory. That's not likely, but it's in the realm of the possible. ...

... I think it's pretty clear that the anti-establishment wave that's collapsing Republicans all over the country is beginning to crumple Lieberman, just in time. Alan Schlesinger is the first candidate I've seen who is genuinely tapping into the frustration grassroots conservatives feel with their party, because he's very clearly not supported by the establishment or even President Bush. As a result, Lieberman has to now make the electability argument to conservative voters, and that's never an easy place to be since it makes your message more complicated.

Low-Commitment Canvassing

Daily Kos lets Eli Pariser explain MoveOn's Call For Change:

Basically, it allows people to log onto www.callforchange.org from their home computers and then phone target voters in the 30 top House and Senate races around the nation. Our goal is to make 5 million phone calls to inconsistent voters who lean Democratic - we recently passed 1.5 million.

Our members chipped in millions to allow MoveOn to buy the most up-to-date lists, acquire consumer data, and use micro-targeting to ensure that every call is maximized. We used the Busby and Lamont campaigns to test our program and make it a good user experience. After Busby, a Yale study compared our phone program to others and found that it boosted turnout the most.

Part of the reason we designed the program the way we did was to make it work for parents and others who've want to chip in but only have 20 or 30 minutes free to volunteer at the end of a long work day - not just the super-activists. Also, folks in areas without competitive races or who live in rural areas far from campaign offices no longer have to be excluded from GOTV.

Canvass without leaving home!

What Matters in Kansas

What's the Matter With Kansas? is the title of a book by Thomas Frank which argues that working-class voters in the American heartland have been duped into voting against their own financial interests by a clever and tactical appeal to so-called "values" issues.

Well, here's a straw in the wind, one that suggests the winds have changed. Via Daily Kos, a look at an editorial by Steve Rose in the Johnson County Sun in Overland Park, Kansas:

As we prepare ourselves to make political endorsements in subsequent issues, I can tell you unequivocally that this newspaper has never endorsed so many Democrats. Not even close.

...

But I could not help but put in perspective a more global phenomenon that has led us to re-evaluate our traditional support for Republicans....

The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

What does to-the-right mean?

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti-stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education....

But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.

Abraham Lincoln was right?

Planted Questions

Crooks & Liars says that this is a great ad. And boy are they right:

The Song That Keeps on Giving

It's the "Had Enough" Song -- being customized all over the country. Here's the Ned Lamont/Joe Lieberman version:

Ned Lamont Uses Lieberman's Own Words Against Him

This, on the other hand, is a pretty good ad:

This one is pretty good too, although not as good as Steele's anti-scare tactics ad.

There's something funny going on in Connecticut. The polls show Lieberman is ahead of Lamont -- either a lot or some, but more than a little. But Lieberman is having some kind of personal meltdown. He's running around contradicting himself in ways that are transparently obvious, trivially easy to show they are contradictory to what he said sometimes only days earlier. For example about Rumsfeld (total about face), about his position on the Hastert investigation. And then there's his yukfest about torturing Democrats.

Is it panic? Denial? Contempt for the voter? I have no idea. Maybe it has something to do with this:

Jim Webb's Latest Ad: Not as Good As I'd Wish

Jim Web has a new ad today, half attack ad on Allen, quarter defense, quarter pander-positive.

Latest Allen TV Ad

The Washington Post's Marc Fischer thinks George Allen's latest commercial is economical with the truth: George Allen's Zen Ad: Can You Be Misquoted If You Were Never Quoted? It's a nasty ad, and might be effective unless the counter-story gets out. An example of how money can tell in the last weeks of a campaign.

Incidentally, a commentator on Fischer's blog has a real zinger: Senator Allen "isn't so much an empty suit, as an empty sheet."

The real question is whether Webb's lawyers are going to ask stations to take down the ad on the grounds that it is simply false. Not that half of them would care. (I see that the DSCC has issued a press release, but that's not the same thing.)

Jeb Bush in the Closet

Joshua Micah Marshall had a great little item about Republicans on the run. In it he quotes this item about Jeb Bush's visit to Pennsylvania to prop up the doomed campaign of Sen. Santorum, as reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Mr. Bush had been walking in the area near the T-station and the incident happened spontaneously when about 50 pickets "tailed him and stayed with him and went into the Wood Street station."

. . .

Mr. Grove said a Port Authority canine unit was called in to help with crowd control. Two officers used their tasers to stun two protesters who "were asked to leave, but did not go," Mr. Grove said.

The tasers he said were empty of the cartridges that supply a more powerful charge.

"It was a very tense situation. They were very close to the governor and shouting on top of him."

As a precaution, the governor was ushered into a T-station supply closet and stayed there until the crowd left.

Josh Marshall closes by saying that "When I said Republicans were on the run, this isn't quite what I had in mind."

To me, though, the amazing part of the story is a reporter saying that Jeb Bush was in the closet.

Get Your George Allen Fix Here

A lot has been going on in Virginia. Turn out that my line (borrowed from an old T-shirt about Ed Meese) that Sen. George Allen is a pig just pre-dated the discovery that he's an ethnically half-Jewish pig whose own mother was afraid to tell him about his ancestry for fear of his reaction. But Sen. Allen says don't worry, he eats ham sandwiches.

For that, and many other things, the George Allen campaign is hurting. Here's a good round-up of the latest. It begins like this:

"Some of this I've brought on myself."

That's it. That is the entirety of what Sen. George Allen had to say to Virginia voters last night about the several controversies that have dominated the campaign in the past few weeks. This, the senator's campaign had announced, was going to be "an unprecedented two-minute statewide television address reaching out directly to Virginians." Finally, it seemed, Allen was going to explain "macaca," and his angry, defensive reaction to the public revelation of his Jewish heritage, and the various ugly accounts of his use of racist symbols and words over the years.

But no.

Jim Webb raised $3.5 million in the last reporting cycle, which is a lot less than Allen has, but much more than Webb has seen until now, and enough to get some serious media. (Allen has a cash mountain, but his staff didn't release recent fundraising numbers, suggesting it's maybe not going so great recently.)

The most interesting thing in the Post blog linked above is that the Allen campaign is working on shoring up its base, not contending for the swing voters. That's a very defensive move and heartening, given that the two most recent polls show a tie and an Allen lead. I wonder if Allen's polls tell a different story?

Lamont Demonstrates Weakness

When it comes to that serious gut-check moment, Lamont shows that he's just not tough: he's willing to negotiate with terrorists. View it and weep:

Actually, this is a good commercial, but not a great one: the takeaway line is about negotiations; the issues discussed are mostly things that are state-level not federal. But it does help define the candidate as a good guy.

No Fear

National Democrats are scared of making a fight against excesses against national security because they think that someone will call them weak. What they don’t understand is that they look weak when they don’t fight; and that Karl Rove is going to call them terrorist sympathizers anyways.

Tester, who showed a fuller range of emotion in the course of the evening, probably found a sound bite moment in response to a Burns charge that he is “soft on terrorism.” Tester, Burns said, “doesn’t understand this enemy” and would weaken the Patriot Act. “Let me be clear,” Tester shot back sharply. “I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it.”

The Burns people thought they had a great gaffe and ran with it, producing the classic candidate as horror-film monster advertisement with grainy pictures and scary music. It’s pretty awful, but here it is:

Tester, to his credit, isn’t backing down one inch and is airing this reply:

Obligatory sanity disclaimer: There are actually some pretty good things in the Patriot Act as well as some really bad things. On balance I’d rather not have it, but the best outcome would be surgery rather than euthanasia.

Allen Stories Everywhere

This is getting just plain weird. In the last 24 hours the Allen campaign has descended from off-message-frenzy and damage control to deep inside Bizzaro Land.

Item: The Allen campaign unveiled a tough commercial regarding Webb's comments opposing the admission of women at the Naval Academy -- in 1979. Indeed, there's not much doubt in my mind that Webb was something of a sexist pig back then. His record as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, however, suggests a changed man.

Item: In an effort to blunt all the awful stories about Sen. Allen's racist past by playing "you're another," the Allen campaign dug up a guy who has the sort of story you wouldn't believe while drunk:

Allen campaign officials to direct a reporter to Dan Cragg, a former acquaintance of Webb's, who said Webb used the word while describing his own behavior during his freshman year at the University of Southern California in the early 1960s. Webb later transferred to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Cragg, 67, who lives in Fairfax County, said on Wednesday that Webb described taking drives through the black neighborhood of Watts, where he and members of his ROTC unit used racial epithets and pointed fake guns at blacks to scare them.

"They would hop into their cars, and would go down to Watts with these buddies of his," Cragg said Webb told him. "They would take the rifles down there. They would call then [epithets], point the rifles at them, pull the triggers and then drive off laughing. One night, some guys caught them and beat . . . them. And that was the end of that."

Cragg said Webb told him the Watts story during a 1983 interview for a Vietnam veterans magazine. Cragg, who described himself as a Republican who would vote for Allen, did not include the story in his article. He provided a transcript of the interview, but the transcript does not contain the ROTC story. He said he still remembers the exchange vividly more than 20 years later.

Note that Cragg says that he contacted the Allen camp before going public; they either encouraged him or didn't try to stop him. This sort of garbage is the action of a desperate flailing campaign. Webb's response (via a spokesperson), quoted in the Washington Post, is priceless: "In 1963, you couldn't go to Watts and do that kind of thing. You'd get killed. So of course I didn't do it. I would never do that. I would never want to do that."

Item: And if that wasn't strange enough, four -- four! -- independent sources (not part of the Webb campaign) have come forward to say ... I can't believe I'm typing this ... George Allen likes to spit on women's feet. I've got to wonder if this is relevant to his fitness to hold public office. It tends to show he's odd; mean, even. And perhaps in these days of personality politics those who live by the nice guy image can fairly die by it.

You do have to wonder if we couldn't somehow raise the tone just a little bit here.

Another Day, Another Witness On Sen. Allen and Racial Slurs

Her name is Pat Waring, she's 75 and lives in Maryland, and I believe her. She says she remembers the day vividly that some kid was throwing around the "n word" in a loud voice ... a kid who grew up to be a Senator. See the video via Hardball with Chris Matthews, Woman says Allen used racial slur repeatedly or via YouTube.

One reason I believe this story is that I remember how shocked I was the first time I heard a live person (as opposed to a film) refer to blacks as "niggers", in the early 70s -- in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

Oh Deer

Senator Allen now has a deer problem.

The story begins a couple of days ago, when a former college teammate, R. Kendall Shelton, now apparently a respected radiologist in North Carolina, told an almost incredible story about how he and Allen and another teammate had gone deer hunting, and,

After the deer was killed, Shelton said, Allen cut off the doe's head, asked for directions to the home of the nearest black person and shoved the head into that person's mailbox.

...

"I have no doubt George was a racist in the early 1970s," said Shelton, who described himself as a former Democrat who is registered as an independent. "I couldn't care less if George was a Democrat or a Republican. He shouldn't be in public office."

Others who knew Allen in the same era have come to his defense, although most have current ties to him or the GOP. Still others are, apparently, afraid:

Two other former U-Va. athletes also said they recalled Allen using racial epithets frequently in college. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared the effect of coming forward on their livelihoods and families.

The deer-in-the-mailbox story has radicalized a hitherto apathetic segment of the citizenry: the people most likely to open a mailbox. Allen is now in the sights of Letter Carriers for Truth.

Stick a fork in him?

Great Ad for Tim Walz

Via Firedoglake, a pointer to this pitch-perfect ad for Democratic Congressional Candidate Tim Walz, running in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District.

One for the textbooks. If it makes you want to open your checkbook, here's the link (warning: slightly slow site). (Bonus Walz video.)

Just Deserts

Sen. George Allen's racist past is finally coming home to roost.

And challenger Jim Webb has just unveiled a very effective commercial. Not flashy but it plays to Webb's strengths.

MD Senate Ad Battle

Volley by GOP candidate Michael Steele, with a very cute ad designed to blunt criticism (and to obfuscate his party affiliation).

Smash return by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Gas Prices Dropping Just Before an Election? Hmmm.

Nieman Watchdog, The closer the election, the lower the price of gas,

Gil Cranberg says this correlation should galvanize the press. He wants to know, among other things, whether prices are dropping in countries that don't have upcoming elections.

...

Q. Did George W. Bush's buddies in the oil industry contrive to lower gasoline prices to help him (and themselves) in the fall elections?

I looked for guidance from three people knowledgeable about oil markets and put this more-neutral question to each: Is there possibly a link between the drop in gas prices in this country and the coming election?

One said flatly no, it's just due to lower demand now than during the driving season.

Another said he was puzzled by the drop because people he trusts tell him it is not due to, or cannot be explained by, a comparable drop in crude oil prices.

The third had a similar reaction, noting that, in the past, when the price of crude oil dropped, the price of gasoline took much longer to come down. He said that price of gas customarily declines with the end of the driving season, "but not as sharply as it has in the last few weeks and certainly never went down faster than the price of crude, as it has."

The latter two respondents, independently, referred me to Peter K. Ashton, a long-time consultant on petroleum issues who has testified on gasoline pricing before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Ashton's response to the same question:

"As an economist, I cannot speculate on the politics that may be involved, but my recent research suggests that the recent drop cannot be explained by the drop in crude prices or the change in inventories alone. From an economic standpoint, therefore, it certainly raises questions in my mind as to whether the high prices we saw this summer were in any way justified by market fundamentals. I do not believe that they were. To the extent that prices are now declining more than market fundamentals might dictate suggests to me that a decision has been made to reduce prices back to levels that might be considered more in line with the forces of supply and demand. Whether that is a politically motivated decision is up to others to decide, not me! Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the prices we witnessed this summer could not be justified by the market."

Political Ads: What Works, What Doesn't

For reasons I can't articulate in my current jet lagged (and lost-luggage) state, this moveon.org ad trying to blunt the GOP's Rovian exploitation of 9/11 just doesn't seem that effective -- even though I agree with it:

Do you agree? What's wrong with the first one?

Advertising I Like

I love funny campaign ads, and this independent campaign ad attacking Sen. Burns by the Public Campaign Action Fund is pretty funny.

Experts Agree: Sen. Allen is a Pig

I've been a politics junkie since I was twelve and I've never in my life heard of such a blatant Senatorial amendment heist right in plain sight on the floor of the self-styled world's greatest deliberative body:

George Allen STEALS an Amendment! Washington, DC -- U.S. Senator George Allen today stole a Department of Defense appropriations amendment written, printed and prepared by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill), and then announced the amendment as his own, moments before Durbin was prepared to introduce the amendment on the Senate floor.

Update (Sept. 6): If you have a very strong stomach, read Sen. Allen, Lose the Noose, a meditation on what nooses mean in Virginia, and what we can infer from the fact that the future Senator chose to hang up a noose as a decoration in his law office.

Perhaps Not What Thurgood Marshall Would Have Chosen

The political bloggers are having a nice chuckle about the continuing and well-deserved pain being inflicted on Sen. George Allen for his on-camera racist remark. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The latest two chapters are that the Senator undercut his own apology by saying that "no one cares" about the issue -- it's all the media's fault -- and now by feeling compelled to turn down an award for "Leadership" offered by Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund

But wait a minute: how on earth did it come to pass that the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund ever came to offer any sort of honor to such a notorious champion of the Confederate flag?

I'm pretty sure if Justice Marshall were alive today he'd have something earthy to say about it.

More Dirt on Sen. Allen

Gov. Dean called Sen. George Allen unfit for public service. Here's more evidence that he is.

And I think modern Virginia has gotten to a point where overt racism is a real political disadvantage.

Sen. Allen Moves to Steps Three and Four

Having failed to defuse a media typhoon by first swearing at reporters, and then second claiming that the boss didn't know what he was saying (see That's a Defense?), Sen. Allen moved on to step three, the non-apology apology. (And also the non-denial denial.)

Since that didn't work, we are now on to step four, the pathetically unpersuasive explanation:

I also made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely false.

Sounds like Step Two all over again to me.

That's a Defense?

Senator George Allen has a notoriously dubious history, one that pretty strongly suggests that he's some kind of racist. Given that history, what is one to make of his explanation for yesterday's antics?

You can see the film of Sen. Allen making at least a xenophobic if not racist comment about an aide to Democratic challenger Jim Webb -- the clip is embedded in the Washington Post's description of the gaffe, Allen Quip Provokes Outrage, Apology. S.R. Sidarth, a volunteer with the Webb campaign, was dogging the Allen campaign when Sen. Allen called the him a "macaca" -- presumably a derogatory reference to either his dark skin or his Indian ancestry.

OK. That's pretty dumb. On camera. But what really caught my eye was how the Allen campaign reacted to reporters' questions.

Step one: "Allen's campaign manager dismissed the issue with an expletive and insisted the senator has "nothing to apologize for."

Step two: when it becomes clear this isn't going away. Issue a statement described as an apology:

"Not many people in southwest Virginia would think it is derogatory," Griffith said. "I didn't have a clue what it meant, and I doubt Allen did, either."

George Allen not only admits he doesn't have a clue, he admits he says stuff he doesn't understand.

Nah. Looks to me that the George Allen of old -- the guy who used to affect a racist redneck persona, the guy who kept not just a Confederate flag but a noose in his office -- got down to southern Va. and let down his hair. He relaxed among the good ol' boys -- Mr. Sidarth was the only dark face in the crowd -- and let it rip.

Ha!

Conn. Senate Race Still Likely to Have a Democratic Winner:

CQPolitics.com has analyzed Tuesday's stunning primary upset of Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman by political newcomer Ned Lamont, and has determined that the seat is highly likely to be held by a Democrat when the 110th Congress convenes in January.

Is the Democratic Party Still a Party

52-48 in favor of Lamont with about 98% of the votes counted.

I just saw the Lieberman concession speech -- and all I can say is "Sore Loserman" indeed. Didn't even sleep on announcing as a third party candidate.

And his concession speech was sanctimonious and hypocritical: accusing Lamont of "insults instead of ideas" -- not to mention the Rovian claim that Lamont (!) is part of the "old politics" that has made Washington what it was.

So here's my question: When a candidate loses a party primary then announces that he will run against the party's nominee, will the Senate Democrats let him keep their seats on committees, or will they replace him with a real Democrat?

Keep in mind that losing the primary will not help Lieberman's poll numbers. And that a lot of independents haven't gotten to know Lamont yet. He'll do well with moderates -- for healthcare and against the war.

And if it turns out that Lieberman's claim that his web site was hacked turns out to be incompetence instead -- that will really help label him as a man of the past.

Amazingly Great Political Ad

This new ad from Ned Lamont is really great.

Jon Tester and the New Democratic Party

Swing State Project burbles happily about Jon Tester's stunning win in the the Montana Senatorial primary:

Wow. What a fantastic showing of broad support for Jon Tester tonight. From longshot to upstart to competitor to steamroller, Jon Tester has, without a doubt, scored an absolutely stunning victory in Montana tonight. On Dec. 31, 2004, when Swing State Project dropped his name for the first time, few could foresee that Tester, an organic farmer from Big Sandy, could absolutely wallop one of the most popular and well-funded Democrats in the state, Auditor John Morrison, and do so without slingling mud, without creating an intra-party rift, or without a massive warchest. Jon Tester accomplished what he did today by getting people to genuinely like him, which is a damn rare thing in politics these days. And that's exactly how he's going to convince Montana voters that he should be the next Senator from Montana.

The rebirth of the Democratic Party begins in Big Sky Country.

Meanwhile, Tester faces incumbent Conrad Burns in the general election. Burns is the Senator most deeply implicated so far in the Abramoff scandal.

Leiberman's Record

My old friend and Yale Daily News colleague Paul Bass skewers Sen. Leiberman ... just by reminding us of the man's record in office.

What if Katherine Harris Were Running for Senate?

OK, since the horrible video I blogged earlier has apparently taken down all of YouTube, here's an alternate horrible video hosted elsewhere. This one isn't quite as horrible, but it's pretty darn bad: The Rejected Katherine Harris Campaign Video!.

Not for the weak, or even the strong (I didn't make it to the end, as my flesh started to creep out of the room).

Lamont Clears Hurdle to Get on Ballot

He needed 15% of the convention delegates to force a primary for the Senate seat now held by Sen. Joe Lieberman (R-Ct), and despite serious arm-twisting by the city machines, Ned Lamont got a third of the votes. The party discipline was stronger in big towns, plus some of them used winner-take-all to allocate delegates, which I suspect explains why small towns provided most of Lamont's vote -- and means this total under-represents his true strength (which will only grow).

So the primary is on. Lamont could actually win it, too, although I suppose the odds are still against him.

GOP in Trouble in Florida

St. Petersburg Times Online -- The Buzz: For GOP, Perilous Polling:

Florida Republicans could be in deep trouble this cycle. Consider:

--When asked whether they'd prefer Republicans or Democrats to control Congress after November's elections, 48 percent said Democrats and 38 percent said Republicans. Only 20 percent of independents wanted Republicans in control.
--Not even Jeb Bush could beat Bill Nelson at this point. In a hypothetical matchup 48 percent supported Bill Nelson and 44 percent Bush. Back in November, the same pollster found Bush beating Nelson by 5 percentage points.

And -- yes! -- Harris stays in the race.

Patriot (Act) Games

As far as I'm concerned, all the coverage of the congressional games about how many months in the temporary extension of the Patriot Act (complete with controversial bits) ignores the aspect which interests me most. Take, for example, this Washington Post article, House Passes One-Month Extension of Patriot Act. Nowhere does it mention that the Senate's move from a three months to a six months struck terror into the ranks of both parties in the House.

It's possible of course that the article doesn't mention this terror because it does not exist, but I bet it does. It's only logical. And that explains why the House GOP has cut the extension to one month: because they are afraid of their constituents. And it explains why the House Democrats have meekly gone along: because they are afraid of their constituents too.

See, six months from expiration brings us to June, which uncomfortably close to the next congressional election. The GOP doesn't want hard questions being asked them about 'why did you vote to spy on me, Congressman'. But the House dems don't want attacks about 'why did you vote against catching terrorists' or the like. So both parties in the House have decided it's in their self-interest to get this over with as fast as possible.

They two parties represent different groups of areas, so it's theoretically possible that both parties are broadly right about their own constituents. But that would be weird indeed.

It is far more likely that one of these parties is wrong about what their voters think. Which? I think here, the Democrats are wrong: the GOP has much more to lose on this issue. The six month extension struck me a brilliant stroke by Reid et al, another sign that he's running rings around Sen. Frist. I'm sorry to see it being reduced to a month; the only bright spot is that with the holidays, and the NSA scandal, that may not help matters for the GOP much at all.

Something Cheerful?

Memo to self: must not get hopeful again.

But, but, but, MyDD :: Democratic Independence Grows is actually plausible. And served cold too.

Who Will Run Against Ros-Lehtinen? (All Politics Is Local)

There's a Late Byzantine feel to America these days: corrupt leaders stealing what they can, infrastructure crumbling, people dying in the (flooded) street, distant losing wars far away, governmental torture, waste, fraud, internecine disputes among the leadership.

When the levee broke, and any illusion one might have of even minimal competence in this administration washed away with it. I lead a privileged life, not least because I have tenure in a law school, which gives me both the time and the obligation to think about how we can organize our society so we live better. But it doesn't take that luxury to understand just how badly the United States has been abused by the people currently in power. How, I keep wondering, can I most effectively stand up for decency, for a government that makes lives better, that protects the weak, children, the elderly, that stands for something better than torture and cutting taxes on multi-millionaires today so that we can incur more debts that inevitably will become taxes borne by my children tomorrow?

I live far from the centers of power. How then to respond to this mess in Washington from out here in the hinterland? I think it's primarily a function of temperament. Some people will dream or plot revolution; some will join cults. Many will say it's hopeless and cultivate their gardens. Others will turn to drink. And some others will do something a little more productive. Me, I'm a pretty moderate and bourgeois guy at heart. The system hasn't been bad to me, and while I see warts in it, I also see virtue. I especially like American ideals of freedom and justice, of a government of laws, of protection of liberty (and yes, thus of property), of a mutual commitment to live and let live so that each can engage in his or her own pursuit of happiness. It's our leadership's colossal failure to live up to those ideals, to be even half of what we could be, to instead be such a lead weight on the nation, that gets me so steamed. I'm not your cultist or revolutionary. I don't have a green thumb. And I can't really hold my liquor all that well. That leaves electronic pamphleteering and organizing.

I'm aware that one of the biggest reasons we're in such a pickle is that we have serious problems with our electoral system. It's not just that money talks much louder than it should; nor is it simply that most of the major electronic media outlets are owned by radical right-wingers. Several are transparently managed in a politically biased manner which relies on a combination of lies, distraction. and suppression of inconvenient people and facts. Combine all that with the terrible voting system and, perhaps worst of all, serious systematic gerrymandering and you get the Congress we have: a body in which the large majority of members are elected for life, or nearly so, at least so long as they truckle properly to the sources of re-election cash.

But if you persist in caring, and you won't drown your sorrows in a bottle, nor host clandestine meetings, politics is the only game in town.

The great Saul Alinsky instructed us that if you want to change something you start where you are. Where I am is Florida's 18th Congressional District--the district once represented by the late great Claude Pepper. And indeed, the situation is especially dire here in Florida. (And I don't just mean the voting machine problem.) Although we are the classic 50/50 state when it comes to the voting public, we are anything but a 50/50 state in either our congressional delegation or in the state house. No, the district lines are artfully done, and ensure a substantial Republican majority in the statehouse and in Congress (only the US Senate delegation is 50/50 -- can't gerrymander that!). Plus, the Democratic Party in Florida is not as aggressive as it could be: it frequently doesn't even field a candidate against entrenched incumbents in safe seats.

Under Florida law, if no one files to run against incumbents, they are declared the winner when the filing period closes. That of course means they are free to raise money and campaign for other candidates, and also can save a fortune in election expenses. Not fielding even a sacrificial lamb weakens the rest of the Democratic ticket. Our local incumbent ran unopposed in 1998, and in fact hasn't had a really serious opponent since 1992.

So I began researching what it takes to run for Congress, just because it would be nice to know, in case I ever ran into a likely candidate.

The short answer as to what is needed -- besides, perhaps, taking leave of your senses -- is that it takes either about $9,000 to pay the filing fees, or about 5,000 signatures on petitions from voters in this district (1% of 250,000 registered voters = 2,500 times the double you need to make sure enough of the signatures are valid).¹ What that gets you here in Florida's 18th congressional district, is the chance to run in a district that starts in Key West, a long drive south, and runs in a little strip right through my neighborhood in Coral Gables, continuing on to points north of me. Republicans outnumber Democrats among registered voters by about 2:1. Cuban-Americans, traditionally a seriously Republican constituency, predominate politically. Even though we have more than 100,000 social security recipients, even though our Congressperson couldn't bring herself to criticize Bush's plans to gut Social Security, this district is not likely to make anyone's top-ten list of likely Democratic pickups. Indeed, if it's not on the top-ten list of safe Republican seats, it must surely be close to it.

To ice the cake, incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has about $1.3 million in campaign cash on hand according to the most recent report that I could find online. She is also reputed to be the Representative most favored by the Church of Scientology, an endorsement that presumably ensures a national fund-raising base and a cadre of very highly motivated campaign operatives.

In the last election, one Samuel Martin Sheldon (this one?) ran as the Democratic candidate. He raised $11,883, spent $11,882. (I wonder what happened to that last dollar?) He got 35% of the vote. Ileana raised $876,886 and spent $859,083, leaving her $1.5 million on hand at the time (wonder what she's done with that $200,000 since then?).

I read that the Democratic establishment wants to make it a race in every congressional district. I think that's a good idea, a great idea, a necessary idea. I volunteer to help the right candidate. I wonder, though, who if anyone is planning to run? Are the local and national Democratic political establishments working to find a credible candidate to take on the job of sacrificial lamb? What sort of resources the DCCC. and the DNC are offering to bring to the table if we had a good candidate? Howard Dean, are you listening?

Not that we're going to win -- but maybe we could make her spend it all this time.

1. There is an alternate, less expensive, procedure by which you file to be a write-in candidate. Florida has a really bizarre rule that votes for write-in candidates will be ignored unless the candidate has filed by the same deadline as a regular candidate. Write-in candidates who file don't get on the ballot, but they get votes for them recorded. The major consequence of having a write-in candidate file to run is that it prevents an otherwise unopposed candidate from being declared the winner without the formality of an election. But since the otherwise unopposed candidate is still the only name on the ballot, the election remains little more than a formality.

Hostage to Fortune: 2006 Election Forecast

Live dangerously: I predict the GOP will do badly in the 2006 federal elections. The signs are there.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t have obvious implications for the 2008 elections. I don’t think Hilary Clinton would be a good candidate, in part because I don’t think she’d be a good President. And so much depends on who the nominee is.