August 28, 2006

8/28: Virtual Straw Better Than Real?

Despite a shaky track record for predicting the final nominee, sometime next year the MSM and a slew of '08 hopefuls will descend on IA for the first '08 straw polls. The rest of the nation may not care a wink, but for hardcore observers (that means you) the results are at least a snapshot of each candidate's momentum and organizational competence. On line, however, straw polls are conducted almost every month. The frequency of these contests allow for a greater sense of momentum, and the technology allows for a more detailed picture of where each candidates support is coming from, and where it might go once that candidate is forced out of the race. The results from GOP Bloggers 8/25-27 '08 straw poll are a great example of on line straw poll potential.

GOP Bloggers conducted their latest online '08 straw poll over the weekend. Compared to their July numbers, the biggest winners were ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, ex-NY mayor Rudy Giuliani, and MA Gov. Mitt Romney. Sen. George Allen's (VA) '08 hopes were "devastated" by the macaca incident. The straw poll asks readers which '08ers are "acceptable" or "not acceptable" and allows readers to select their top choice. Only Allen, Gingrich, Giuliani, and Romney have net positives (Sen. John McCain (AZ) has the 3rd highest neg net rating at 33%).

Machiavel at RedState observes:

• The Macaca incident has clearly devastated Allen's numbers in the blogosphere, his stronghold. ... Once undefined, he has now been defined in a hugely negative way, dropping to fourth with 11.5% support.
• Who's the new conservative "it" candidate? Newt! The conservative mantle has shifted to Newt over the last few months. He got a huge boost last month for being all over the Israel-Hezbollah war.
• Giuliani and Romney show positive movement. There's a consistent pattern of Romney and Giuliani momentum among a few of the bigger blogs participating in the poll. Among RedState readers, Romney moved up a net 10.9% and Giuliani a net 10.8% in acceptability. On RealClearPolitics, Romney moved up 18.9% to Giuliani's 12.5%. On Blogs for Bush, Giuliani moved up 22.8% and Romney was up 14.8%.
• McCain supporters love Giuliani and Giuliani supporters are pretty fond of Romney. A handy reference should either of the two offline frontrunners falter.

The final first choice results looked like this:

Giuliani 24.6%
Gingrich 21.1
Romney 12.8
Allen 11.5
Tancredo 6.7
McCain 6.4
Hagel 2.8
Brownback 2.5
Huckabee 1.5
Frist 1.1
Pataki 0.3

Lefty bloggers took note of their blogger brethren preferences. Under a header "GOP bloggers lining up behind Gingrich as insurgent" Jerome Armstrong at MyDD writes: "They don't have the first-choice numbers from a month ago, but in August, the net movers (compared to the phone polling done) shows the candidacy of Gingrich is alive on the net; that Romney is gaining traction; Giuliani is having the strongest online/offline crossover; and McCain is trailing Tancredo in online support."

Zack Exley at DailyKos sums up lefty blogger reaction to Hotline On Call (go team!) reports that ex-Howard Dean aide Nicco Mele has promised to work for Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) Straight Talk America PAC:

I'm friends with Nicco, I really love the guy, and his dance with McCain doesn't change any of that. But here's the deal: McCain has a credible chance of convincing large numbers of uninformed liberals that he is compatible with a progressive agenda. ... Therefore: when folks jump up to help McCain achieve this, there's got to be a price -- even when they're friends of ours. That doesn't mean we stop being friends with them, or that we do anything mean. It just means don't let them have it both ways when it comes to politics and business. Democratic consultants and figureheads need to know that going off to work for McCain means losing their place in the rising Democratic tide.

HAGEL: First They Came For Specter, Then They Came For Chafee...

Adam C at RedState notices that Sen. primary challenges are "en vogue recently" and predicts that Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) will lose his GOP primary should he run for re-election in '08. Adam C writes:

Sen. Hagel has the same negatives (in a mirror image way) as Sen. Lieberman. He hails from a rather conservative state and he has a record of disloyalty that upsets activists. He is obviously contemplating running for President as the Pacifist Republican in 2008 which would leave his seat open. If he decides to run for the Senate, I expect some conservative will challenge him. ... And after 2-4 years of hearing Sen. Hagel spend his time and effort denigrating the U.S. military efforts in the Middle East and the War on Terror, NE GOPers just might follow their hearts to a primary challenger.

ROMNEY: Thanksgiving Already

IA GOP blogger Caucus Cooler reports on MA Gov. Mitt Romney Commonwealth PAC chairman Doug Gross' appearance on "The Insiders." CC reports: "Gross predicted that Rudy Giuliani "would not get in the race unless McCain got out" and would likely "not run for President." He said that if Rudy were to enter, it would likely be at the very end of the campaign and he would ride in on his white horse. Gross reasoned that would give caucus goers less time to "vet" Rudy, and realize how liberal he is on social issues. ... He also said that Romney's poll numbers in Iowa probably wouldn't shoot up for a while citing Thanksgiving 07 as "plenty early."

Robert Schlesinger at The Huffington Post takes a minority opinion on who the DNC's new '08 primary schedule benefits the most:

While the rise of the blogosphere, netroots and Internet politics are very exciting, money still makes politics go. And more to the point here, money let's politicians go. To wit: The ground war (grass-roots organizing) and the air war (TV) in the first round of caucuses and primaries will cost more this year since it will take place virtually simultaneously in two states in distinct parts of the country. And bopping the candidate around those four states? The price of jet fuel isn't dropping, in case you haven't noticed.
Broadening the primary, making it more national -- this only benefits the candidate with deep bank accounts. And while Mrs. Clinton has a host of potential problems, being cash-strapped won't be one of them.

Over at TPM CafeM.J. Rosenberg looks at the 8/25 HRC/cable exec Ned Lamont (D-CT) meeting and sees encouraging growth on HRC's part:

In fact, dispatching [Howard] Wolfson to an antiwar campaign to unseat an old Clinton friend is pretty remarkable. Gutsy move by Clinton. I've never been a fan, and am deeply put off by her AIPAC stand on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but this indicates that she is capable of change. God knows she's smart enough to change. Anyway, it is good news for anti-Iraq war Democrats.

BLOGGERS VS. BELTWAY: Mmmmmm, Warmed Over Second Term Clintonism

DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel did not make any new friends in the blogosphere with his "Explain to me how two Democrats running is bad" quote from 8/27's New York Times on the impact of Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) independent run against cable exec Ned Lamont (D).

Natural Born Killers producer and progressive activist Jane Hamsher at firedoglake writes: "But do you really believe Rush Limbaugh or Fox News or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity talking every day about how great Joe Lieberman is will energize Democrats in November? Because I have to say I have a tough time seeing this, Rahm. I really do." Down with Tyranny sees two possibilities: "Boss Rahm is as stupid as he's pretending to be" or "Boss Rahm is being disingenuous, and in fact is every bit as comfortable as GOP Joe with the Republicans' maintaining control of the House." Atrios honored Emanuel as his " Wanker of the Day."

Meanwhile Emanuel's book The Plan: Big Ideas for America continued to get a chilly blogger reaction. Ezra Klein writes: "Incidentally, I've flipped through The Plan a bit, and I doubt I've ever seen a book with a subtitle so deeply misleading. This is warmed over, second term Clintonism at its incrementialist."

Matt Stoller at MyDD surveys the Emanuel wreckage and forwards his own beef: "Fair enough, though I'm annoyed for a slightly different reason. I just don't see Democratic campaigns doing well. They aren't putting Iraq front and center, and it's not clear to me that the will exists to take on the right clearly and honestly. You can look at the generic Congressional balloting all you want, but it won't mean anything unless campaigns around the country decide that it's in fact a good thing to be a Democrat."

Chris Bowers at MyDD acknowledges fate tempting but still feels its important to ask "with chances that Democrats will actually win control of at least one branch of congress now very real, what should we do once we are actually governing?" Bowers answer:

My first reaction would be to pass a series of bills that Bush could not possibly veto, such as a real minimum wage hike and earmark reform. Then, I think we should move into passing popular legislation that Bush will probably veto, such as rolling back the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, fixing the hideous Medicare bills, and global warming initiatives. From that point on, it is time to investigate, investigate, investigate, especially when it comes to all things Iraq. Don't impeach or censure right away, but keep saying that all options are on the table (thus drawing more attention to the investigations without it seeming like revenge for Clinton). Also, we need to make John McCain vote against a lot of things that are popular and progressive too.

Stirling Newberry at TPM Cafe advises the new Dem majority to "act like outsiders who just came into town" and to immediately start holding hearings on Bush administration malfeasance.

Meanwhile, Adam Hanft at The Huffington Post looks at Dems recent crusade against Wal-Mart and comments: "you can bet a case of Sam's Choice that it's a bad idea." Hanft offers five supporting arguments:

• 1.It brings up the worst of the old lefty imprint. I'm not the first to say this, and I hope I won't be the last. Bashing America's largest company is redolent of a messianic extremism that will not bring back the Reagan Democrats.
• 2.It's hypocritical. There are a lot of companies who are worse corporate citizens than Wal-Mart, whether it comes to health insurance coverage or being the agent of child labor around the world, or energy policy.
• 3.It's a distraction from the real work the Democrats need to do in creating a coherent narrative.
• 4.It's not even the best way to address the widening income gap.
• 5.It's too late. Wal-Mart has seen the green light, even Al Gore has praised their environmental commitment and embrace of sustainability. Geez, they've even joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

The News Blog hits back with the case against the low-price leader:

• It supports Republicans. The vast majority of their political support goes to the GOP.
• It is virulent anti-union. It spends millions to prevent the unionization of their stores. It is clear that in North America, stores that unionize will be closed. Which is why Wal Mart hasn't opened in New York.
• It's expansion plans have drawn repeated grass roots opposition in blue areas like Chicago and New York. Chicago just passed a forced hike in the minimum wage for Wal Mart.
• The cost of health care by the miserable insurance Wal Mart has provided has created legislative action.
• Wal Mart is a miserable corporate citizen, who's gained such a bad reputation that they have to now make minor concessions to public outrage.

Maura at My Left Nutmeg looks at 8/25's New York Timescoverage of cable exec Ned Lamont's (D-CT) attempt to link Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) with the Katrina disaster and argues the Times left out an important detail: "I'm not sure whether the Lamont campaign didn't hit Lieberman directly on this or whether Medina didn't pick up on it, but what is totally missing from this article is the critical information that Joe Lieberman presided over the 2002 Senate confirmation hearings for Michael Brown and enthusiastically supported his confirmation as Deputy Director of FEMA."

Joejoejoe at DailyKos has a more in depth look at Lieberman's role in FEMA's transition into DHS, including: "Lieberman ignored the advice of many Democratic experts and pushed ahead with his own vision for DHS. People of good will can disagree but shouldn't the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and later Ranking Member do some kind of operational oversight to ensure his vision was actually being fulfilled? Sen. Lieberman did no such thing. Just a week before Daalder's prescient testimony Sen. Lieberman confirmed Michael Brown as Deputy Director of FEMA in a 42-minute rubber stamp abomination of a hearing."

At The Huffington Post, Bob Geiger looks at blogger pressure on Senate Dem Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to strip Lieberman of his committee assignments and counsels for cooler heads: "Joe needs to go -- and quickly. And, while many of the calls for harsh action from Reid may be righteous, bloggers castigating him for not stripping Lieberman of his committee assignments ... are simply wrong and not reporting accurately on what is or is not within Reid's authority. ... Based on that procedural construct, Harry Reid can't just unilaterally, or even by a closed vote of the Democratic caucus, strip Lieberman of his committee assignments."

Still looking for ways to force Lieberman out of the race, DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas asks Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to apply the pressure necessary to dry up Lieberman's money supply: "One of Lieberman's supposed sources of money is Steve Rattner, the NY financier married to former DNC finance director and top Hillary fundraiser Maureen White. It's probably one of his last Democratic-based sources of money. ... Now I don't pretend to know the ins-and-outs of the gazillionaire scene in NYC, I can't imagine anything more boring than that, but Hillary controls a lot of money in that town. And even if she can't pull Rattner out of Lieberman's pocket, she can put pressure on his circle as well. Hillary is the queen bee of NY politics these days.

Finally, Greg Sargent at TPM Cafe calls attention to Lieberman's continued "Contortions On Iraq" outlined in an 8/27 Hartford Courant op-ed and goes on to state Lamont's Iraq position:

Ned Lamont supports the plan advocated by senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold, which calls for a phased withdrawal over the next year. But Lamont has also indicated that in the interests of party unity, he'd also be supportive of an open-ended phased withdrawal, if his party deemed that the better way to go. That's actually a flexible position -- it's a preference for withdrawal within a year, but tempered by a willingness to draw out the withdrawal over a longer period if that's what his party's consensus dictates. It's not solely a rigid commitment to a single arbitrary date.

TPM Cafe's Greg Sargent looks at favorable MSM coverage of Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey (R) and asks: "When is the national press corps going to descend on Rhode Island? When will Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert and other bigfoot national pundits bemoan the fact that "sensible" and "courageous" moderate Chafee may have no place in his party? When will we start hearing dire warnings that the GOP risks being captured by its extreme right wing? When?"

DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas reports that the UVA Law student that disrupted a Sen George Allen event at the (R-VA) Staunton, VA Holiday Inn is a regular DailyKos diarist and adds: "And the monkey and banana suits are brilliant, with the potential of becoming as iconic as the Kiss Float in Connecticut if local activists adopt the stunt."

As part of an ongoing series, Extreme Mortman gets Cook Political Report Publisher Charlie Cook to identify which blogs he uses to cover the '06 elections:

Now getting closer to the actual question, my favorite political sites are politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com and mysterypollster.com for polling analysis. News aggregators I use are Drudge, Realclearpolitics and Taegan Goddard's politicalwire.
Larry Sabato and David Wasserman down at UVA do a great job with crystalball too.

In terms of races, I only check in with the blogs once or twice a week, don't have time to do it any more often than that. Everything I've mentioned above totals hundreds of pages of reading each week. On the left, it's easier: Daily Kos, MyDD and Swingstateproject all have pretty good discussions of races. There is a lot of cheerleading by various people posting but useful insights can also be found.

It's harder on the right, because while there are plenty of right-of-center political sites, freerepublic.com for example. Not many have conversations about specific contests - redstate.com is the one that stands out. I've heard the theory that since the left is out of power, they are more focused on the individual races needed to get back in power. On the right, much more of the conversation is about political topics, but not individual races. That sounds plausible to me. Presumably whenever conservatives lose power, their focus will shift as well.

The bloggers got my attention last summer when they spotted the special election in Ohio's second district as getting competitive before anyone in DC did. While many political bloggers are wrong far often more than right, they credentialed themselves as worth looking at just because I hate being wrong about anything.

Yes But No But Yes sympathizes with Mel Gibson over his love for Dewars (but not for anti-semittism) and goes on to offer his 20 worst Hollywood career moves including

• After seven seasons of helping build Late Night with Conan O'Brien into a cult comedy hit, sidekick Andy Richter leaves to pursue an acting career. Hey, that Andy Richter controls the universe show lasted a while, didn't it?
• After five seasons, Shelley Long leaves the cast of Cheers to pursue a career in film. Her first project after leaving the show, Troop Beverly Hills makes 5 million at the box office. Shelley should be the spokesperson for Bad Career Choice Magazine, as her case is always the one mentioned when it comes to poor tv-to-movie decisions. Cheers lasted six more seasons, but Shelley did go on to make The Brady Bunch in the White House, so who's laughing now?
• Craig Kilborn leaves The Daily Show after three seasons to host the CBS Late Late show. Then leaves the CBS show to shift to a career behind the scenes as a writer. Hey look, a two-time winner. I'll bet you forgot Craig Kilborn was the original host of the Daily Show. But if he left the late night gig to be a writer, why has he taken supporting roles in Shaggy Dog and The Benchwarmers.

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

Posted by Conn Carroll at August 28, 2006 12:31 PM