8/17: No Rest For The Weary

Is it just a coincidence that the two biggest election stories so far this month (CT and VA SEN) are in large part blog driven? Sure the placing of the CT primary in early Aug. helped, but instead of falling off the radar screen as it might have in the past, bloggers have only redoubled their interest on the race, moving their focus to DC where they can pressure Dems to force Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) out of the race. In VA the Blogometer wonders how much of a story Macacagate would be if not for the blogs. Without the ability to quickly distribute the results, would ex-Navy sec. James Webb (D-VA) even have a volunteer shadowing Sen. George Allen (R-VA) with a video camera? How much of Allen's post-incident spin was affected by the ability of anyone anywhere to view the video for themselves? We'll never know the answers to these questions, but it is definitely true that unlike DC, the blogosphere does not take August off.

BranfordBoy at My Left Nutmeg looks at 8/17's Quinnipiac Poll showing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) with a 53%-41% lead over cable exec. Ned Lamont (D-CT) and comments: "The poll is sure to strength Lieberman's already egomaniacal resolve to press on with his (hopefully) quixotic attempt to cling to power. It is also a wake-up call to those who believe Lawrence O'Donnell's Hollywood ending (Joe will drop out) or who think Joe is so vile that surely the majority of Connecticut voters will agree." Chris Bowers at MyDD, on the other hand, sees only progress. Under a "Lamont Cuts Lieberman's Lead In Half" header he writes: "Personally, considering the primary results and the vicious anti-Lamont narratives in the media, I thought that Lamont would still be behind by about 20-25 points. As such, I had been panicking to a few people behind the scenes earlier in the week that this poll could spell serious trouble. However, these numbers make me quite relieved as they still show a positive trendline."

Back in DC blogger inspired calls to Dem Sen offices are having an affect. Natural Born Killers producer and progressive activist Jane Hamsher at firedoglake passes on an email from reader Bob: "I think that between Kos and Firedoglake readers we rang their phones off the hook today and spokesmen for Feinstein and others who have committed are begging me to get an update out there so that their boss's tepid endorsements will get them off the hook." Hamsher goes on to urge reader to pressure Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to rethink her support of Lieberman in light of Bush's Katrina response (video of Lieberman on Fox "defending King George's divine right to appoint any useless crony he saw fit even in the wake of Katrina" included).

Mcjoan at DailyKos reaches back to 1953 for a historical argument in favor of showing Lieberman the door: "The Independent, Oregon's Wayne Morse, had recently left the Republican party, but he assured party leaders that he would vote with them to organize the Senate under Republican control. ... Morse realized that his defection would cost him his seniority on the Armed Services and Labor committees, but he believed that his eight years of Senate seniority entitled him at least to remain on these prime committees. Consequently, he was unprepared for Majority Leader Robert Taft's decision that he be removed altogether from the Labor Committee - his most prized assignment."

Bowers also picked up on a Arkansas Times Blog report of awkwardness from a Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) event: "I was at a "Brown Bag" Question and Answer lunch today with Sen. Pryor in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I asked him the question, "How can you be a member of the DSCC, with a mission to elect Democrats to Congress, and at the same time support Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont?" The room got very quite. With a smile on his face he said, "Don't ask me to be consistent."

Matt Stoller at MyDD is none too pleased with Nick Confessore's 8/16 New York Timesarticle on Lamont's campaign. Stoller sees no good reason for quoting Dem strategist Donna Brazile: "Why is Confessore quoting Donna Brazile? She is not from Connecticut, she knows nothing about the race, and she is a corporate consultant who lives in DC." Stoller would have preferred the story consisted of "a discussion of Lieberman's meltdown, his alienation of Senate Democrats, his use of Enron lobbyists to raise money, the lack of talented consultants available to him now, his 'loser' mantra, the collapse of his support among Democratic voters, or any other storyline."

CT Blog has video of Lamont's 8/16 Hardball appearance where "Matthews gave Ned a thumbs for correctly stating the details of the Iraq Liberation Act while slamming Lieberman spokesgoon Dan Gerstein for being "dead wrong" on the issue."

The right side of the 'sphere is still picking at Lamont's 8/16 Wall Street Journalop-ed . Greg Pollowitz at National Review Online hits Lamont for forgetting "the part about when he decided to run his business as a non-union operation" and for criticising outsourcing while his cable co. partnered with Vonage which "outsources a ton of their operations."

Over at RedState, Crank takes Lamont's "the bottom line means everything" line and writes: "The purpose of government is to protect the rest of society, enabling private citizens to make money and do all the other good things of life. Once you treat government like an enterprise with value and profit motives unto itself, you head down a very dark path."

On Call's (go team!) report on the excrement origins of Sen. George Allen's (R-VA) "macaca" nickname for a ex-Navy sec. James Webb (D-VA) campaign volunteer assuaged no one on the left. SusanG at DailyKos: "Umm. Okay. I guess it's time to put that little incident behind us. "Shithead" seeming so much more ... senatorial and all. Keep on talking, guys." Michael Crowley at TNR: "So Allen would have us believe that "macaca" is a wacky nickname combining "mohawk" (even though the Webb staffer in question really doesn't have one in the typical sense) and a word (caca) which English-speakers rarely use--and which just happens to be a racial slur in a language Allen speaks? That's some coincidence. Even if you accept that Allen was "only" calling the guy a shithead instead of a monkey, a friend asks: "Is that a defense--or an allegation"?"

Meanwhile, Webb Netroots Coordinator Lowell Feld at Raising Kaine has video of Webb taking the high road at a volunteer party at Webb HQ: "Let me say one more thing about that incident: it does not represent the greatness of the people who live in that part of southwest Virginia. It does not."

On Call's story didn't impress many on the right either. Right Wing News: "We're talking about anonymous sources here, but the explanation rings true. Either Allen heard a staffer use that word in reference to Webb's aide and just repeated it without catching on to what the "caca" portion was in reference to or he knew what "caca" meant and was trying to be cute, but didn't realize that "macaca" was actually a real word and that it had the potential to get him in trouble. Either way, Allen should have known better."

Matt Lewis at Right Angle Blog argued from personal experience that the "welcome to America" line was taken completely out of context: "The first time I met George Allen was in Wakefield, VA in 2000. He was running for U.S. Senate. When I told him I was from Maryland, Senator Allen smiled and said, "well, welcome to America." Of course, he said it in jest. He was smiling and as gracious as could be, and, in truth, it struck me as simply being part of his usual shtick."

Back on the left SusanG at DailyKos expects some major league help for Webb's beleaguered fundraising: "Leaving the entertaining but regrettably R-rated version of George Felix Allen Junior news, it looks like Bill Clinton has committed to doing some old-fashioned fundraising for Jim Webb. Expect that $6 million edge to dry up pretty quickly with Clinton on the case and George Felix Allen Junior's explanations - and those of his Republican "friends" - rolling out by the hour."

Gerry Daly at CrossTabs looks at a Strategic Vision poll showing Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) with a 42%-40% lead over state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R) and comments: "As usual, New Jersey voters are taking their own sweet time in deciding. ... While a lot of attention is being focused on the GOP's vulnerability in the Senate, there remain a few seats currently held by Democrats which are in play. In general, the Democrats currently have the advantage in those races (such as here, and in Maryland, and in Washington, and possibly in Michigan), but the leads are small enough that a few percentage points swing in the national mood could create a very different picture than folk are now anticipating."

Howie Klein introduces firedoglake readers to Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-13) as "a tower of strength when it comes to all the issues that matter to grassroots progressives outside the Beltway." Other highlights include:

• He spits in the eye of the lobbyists and corporate criminals who corrupt our entire political system. He has been one of a handful of congressmen who has consistently fought back the encroachments of Big Pharma as they're unquenchable greed and penchant for corruption have all but wrecked the American health care system.
• When Bill Clinton and the odious DLC (a branch of the Republican Party inside the Democratic Party) were pushing the corporate agenda, Sherrod stood up to them and fought back. He led the battle against "free" trade (and tried to make people understand why FAIR trade is better) and he battled Clinton and his reactionary allies on NAFTA and on PNTR with China as hard as he battled Bush and the same reactionaries greedballs on CAFTA.
• Similarly, Sherrod was in the front lines fighting Clinton's catastrophic welfare "reform" proposals and his misguided DOMA legislation.

DavidNYC at Swing State Project celebrates the success of netroots candidates moving up the Hotline's House Race Rankings: "Chuck Todd's newest House race rankings are available here. Five netroots candidates make the list (previous rankings in parens):

15 (26) Patrick Murphy
16 (17) Joe Sestak
19 (24) Darcy Burner
46 (--) Paul Hodes
50 (49) Jerry McNerney

David comments: "Hodes is back after being dropped from the previous list. And bullish jumps for Burner and especially Murphy."

Chris Bowers at MyDD, however, is not happy with Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and the DLC's Bruce Reed for their new book "The Plan." Bowers writes: "Wow. In just a few paragraphs, Reed and Emanuel manage to reinforce virtually every anti-Democratic narrative in existence. We have no new ideas, we don't stand for anything, we are equally to blame for polarized politics, we have been taken over by the angry left, conservatism is the only good ideology, Democrats won't do any better, our predecessors expanded government too much, and maverick John McCain is the only hope for unifying this country. And so our national image as a party is completely destroyed. ... Don't read this book. Stay as far away form it as you can. It may very well succeed in wiping out any and all progress we have tried to make on anti-Democratic media narratives for the past couple years."

Se. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) did little to endear herself to Arianna Huffington with her prediction in 8/16's New York Times that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) "had more than a 50-50 chance of winning re-election." Huffington writes at HuffPo: "Since when is it Hillary's job to go around giving odds on Senate races? Sure, she said she'd abide by the results of the primary and endorse the nominee. But what else could she say? ... The only appropriate response to the Lieberman/Lamont race for a Democratic leader is to work to help create the conditions necessary for Lamont to win. ... Things to put on her to-do list could be: doing everything she can to encourage Lieberman to drop out, and using her list to fundraise for Lamont as John Kerry is doing."

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) was on The Young Turksradio show 8/16. Responding to a Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) statement that the cable exec Ned Lamont (D-CT) backed Kerry plan would strengthen the terrorists Kerry said, "That's scare tactic bunk. It's an unfortunate statement from someone of Joe's quality and I regret it."

Kerry also received kudos from Atrios for sending "out a fundraising email, with link to actblue-style direct candidate donations, for Lamont, Akaka, and Menendez, with the pitch being about their willingness to "tell the truth about Iraq."

Leon H Wolf at RedState doesn't think social conservatives ought to be mollified by ex-NY mayor Rudy Giuliani promises to appoint strict constructionists to the bench. Wolf writes: "In the first place, the record of Presidents who have made a similar commitment to appoint constructionist judges in the absence of a personal commitment to the pro-life cause has not been stellar. However, assuming arguendo that Rudy could be trusted to appoint Emilio Garza to replace Justice Stevens, and Roe fell, that would not by any means be the end of that particular story. Immediately into Congress would come a bill, sponsored by the Democrats, to write the basic tenets of Roe and Casey into codebooks. ... What is needed, at that point, is a President with the personal pro-life convictions, and the long-range foresight to have the willingness to veto such a bill, and the strength to realize that things are going to be okay in the long-term. Bottom line: Rudy is not that candidate."

Conservative Bush critic Andrew Sullivan notes "no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic" and "no evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent." Sullivan concludes: "I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration. Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson."

Lefty bloggers picked up on Sullivan's thoughts and admitted to harbouring similar feelings. Talking Points MemoJoshua Micah Marshall : "I'm not ready to say the London bomb plot is another bamboozlement. It at least seems clear the Brits were involved in a serious investigation. But even this case now seems to be turning out to be less than met the eye. And there are real grounds to question whether Bush and Blair jumped the gun for reasons other than counter-terrorism. We'll see." Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly: "As little a year or two ago I would have rolled my eyes at the idea that even the timing of the arrests was politically motivated, let alone the possibility that the plot itself was being exaggerated. But today? I don't know."

On the right John Podhoretz at National Review Online jumped at the chance to settle old scores: "Andrew Sullivan appears extremely eager - desperately eager, hysterically eager - to believe there was far less to the British terror plot than meets the eye. Why? I suspect because of the news stories yesterday suggesting that it was broken up in part due to the use of torture in Pakistan. If that is true, Sullivan's passionate project over the past two-and-a-half years to declare torture everywhere, at every moment, and in every circumstance unacceptable goes up in smoke."

In none conspiracy thoughts on the war, Josh Marshall argues that the London plot exposes Iraq as distraction in the larger war on terror: "On the basic ground of 'Is fighting in Iraq helping reduce the threat of terrorism at home?' the answer is clearly 'No'. ... And yet, I wonder if this recent terror scare out of London may have actually driven that point home in a new and more resonant way. ... It now seems that even this London bomb plot may not be all it's cracked up to be. But it did give me a moment of that gut level fear. And in that moment, as much as I've thought what I've thought about Iraq, I'm not sure I ever felt as clearly how completely beside the point Iraq is from the real threat we face of deracinated Islamic radicals (in the Muslim world and sprinkled about the West) trying to perpetrate mass terror attacks."

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line summarizes a lengthy deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives Peter Wehner email response to George Will's 8/15 op-ed "The Triumph of Unrealism." Highlights include:

• Wehner's first point is that the Middle East was not stable prior to the Bush administration and, in fact, past Middle East policies were unsustainable.
• Wehner next produces a series of past statements in which Will took the position that the Middle East was far from stable and that the status quo there was not acceptable.
• Next Wehner turns to Will's contention that only "intellectual contortions" can "sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism." Wehner responds that the world's leading terrorists (not noted for their intellectual contortions) have declared Iraq to be the place where the "Third World War is raging" (Osama bin Laden) and "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era" (Ayman al-Zawahiri).
• As to Will's embrace of John Kerry's belief that the war on terrorism is primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation, Wehner counters that law enforcement, while obviously important, is imperfect and therefore not enough. As evidence, he cites successful terrorist attacks in Madrid, Riyadh, Amman, Bali, London, and elsewhere.
• Wehner concludes: "The status quo in the Middle East was a downward spiral of oppression, officially-sanctioned conspiracy theories, economic stagnation, growing radicalism, and an ideology of violence. Mr. Will's kind of "stability" and "realism" -- a kind of world-weary belief that nothing can be done and so nothing should be tried -- would eventually lead to death and destruction on a scale that is almost unimaginable. He wants what never was and cannot be: stability and peace anchored in oppression. His brand of "realism" is divorced from both reality and history. It ought to be rejected."

Mystery Pollster uses the first hand account of a "reader/reporter" Melanie to examine possible causes for Dem skewing of exit polls. MP posts her report from 8/8's CT SEN primary:

The poll person was a young guy, maybe 20 - looked like a college student (tall, a little messy, scraggly hair, very diffident). I think he had some sort of ID around his neck or clipped to his pocket, but I didn't notice what it said (he was in the midst of a discussion with the woman running the voting site about where he could be set up - she said she had just gotten a faxed letter from someone giving this young guy permission to be there, wherever he wanted to be as long as he didn't interrupt anyone, so she told him he could stay out of the sun - he was about 5 feet from the door of the site).

MP writes: "Melanie's experience gives us a unique window into the real world challenge of trying to select voters randomly as they exit a polling place. She happened to overhear the interviewer's most important interaction of the day, the one that enabled him to stand just outside the door of the polling place. Had he been forced to stand farther away, his ability to sample exiting voters randomly would have been severely compromised. The post-election report provided by the two companies that conducted the 2004 exit polls (Edison Research and Mitofsky International**) showed that errors in John Kerry's favor were more than twice as large (-12.3) when interviewers were forced to stand 100 feet or more from the door of the polling place than when they could stand right outside the door (-5.3, p. 37)."

MP further notes that Melanie's report came at 9 am which meant the poll taker probably had to contact his supervisor to produce the fax allowing him to move closer to the poll. MP guesses this caused the pollster to miss 105 of the days sample. MP also reminds readers that the pollster "looked like a college student" with "messy scraggly hair" and a "diffident" attitude. MP asks: "Now dear reader, ask yourself what you might guess about the politics or personality of that interviewer. How would you react to an approach from such a person? Is it possible that your choice -- whether you make eye contact, approach with interest or walk briskly in the opposite direction -- might have some relationship to your politics?"

LEST WE FORGET: It's Hard Out There For A Straight Man

It's obvious form this video that Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) is in on the whole Daily Show/Colbert Report joke. This only makes his recent unflappable Daily Show appearence, posted at RedState all the more impressive.

The Hotline is looking for a Virtual Intern (three hours, five days a week) to assist in daily compilation of Blogometer updates and assist on special projects. Applicants must consider themselves regular consumers of blogs, be familiar with nationally read blogs from across the spectrum; know how to use blog search engines/aggregators (such as Technorati and Memeorandum); be able to quickly analyze and synthesize developments in the news as well as summarize ongoing blog activity with brevity, clarity and accuracy. Excellent writing and time-management skills are also a must.

This is a "virtual" position, so as long as you have always-on Internet access, Firefox, a plain text editor, and a pulse (i.e. actual presence in DC not necessary) you can apply. As with every Hotline position, we don't expect our writers to not have an opinion, we just expect them to keep it out of their work. Interested applicants should send their resumes to ccarroll@nationaljournal.com