November 13, 2006

11/13: Help Control Bipartisanship: Have Your Party's Moderates Spayed Or Neutered

DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas rightly points to netroots' electoral success outside of cable exec Ned Lamont's (D-CT) defeat at the hands of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I/D-CT) (see Sens. elect Jon Tester (D-MT) and James Webb (D-VA) in the Senate alone) but it is also undeniable that Lieberman's primary defeat alone accomplished many of the same purposes his actual ouster would have. Kos describes Lieberman as "neutered" and notes that Lieberman's primary defeat prevents any future criticism of the party as playing as a "Democrats versus Democrats" story. Righty bloggers may poke fun at the netroots for backing another losing campaign, but the Blogometer bets that deep down they wish they Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the same box the left currently has Lieberman in.

GOP LEADERSHIP: What Ever You Do, Don't Listen To Us

Righty bloggers continue to push for new faces in the House GOP leadership race and are particularly unhappy with Rep. John Boehner (IN) assertions that he has the race wrapped up already. Right Angle Blog's posts a "Fire John Boehner and Roy Blunt" videoRobert Bluey notes: "Boehner might think he has this race won, but so too did Rep. Roy Blunt back in January when he was running for House majority leader. We all know how that race turned out."

Conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt alerts readers he is broadcasting from D.C. 11/15-16 and invites all candidates "to come to the studio and run through the topics." Hewitt also links to an NZ Bear item inviting readers to vote on questions they would most like to ask GOP leadership candidates. Among the most popular:

• Will the GOP support a "no earmark" policy. If not, why not?
• What is your position on immigration? Specifically: 1. Are you in favor of funding and building the 700 mile fence on the Southern border? 2. Do you support stronger enforcement of criminal laws and civil sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants? 3. Are you for or against an expanded guest worker program and how/when would you implement such a program? 4. Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants currently living in the US and, if so, what specific provisions do you support?
• Do you intend to stand strong to win the war on terror no matter where it takes us? Or do you plan on making our soldiers deaths be in vain?

RedState continued their full-throated support for Rep. Mike Pence's (R-IN) run for minority leader, posting a letter from Reps. Dan Burton (IN), Tom Feeney (FL), and Jeb Hensarling (TX) "imploring" their GOP colleagues to support Pence.

Right Wing News, however, wonders how much the GOP really ought to be listening to the righty 'sphere: "To tell you the truth, I think it would be a mistake for the GOP to pay as much attention to the right side of the blogosphere as the Democrats pay to the left side, in part, because the right side of the blogosphere is significantly less socially conservative and more libertarian than the base is as a whole. ... On the other hand, if the Republicans in Washington started paying more attention to the blogosphere, conservative columnists and mags, and conservative talk radio, I think that would be helpful because as the elections proved, as a group, we're a lot more in tune with what the conservative base thinks than most of the Republicans in Washington."

In other GOP leadership blogger endorsements, National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez supports Sen. Jeff Sessions (AL) for the Republican Policy Committee and Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham hopes the RNC nails down LG Michael Steele for RNC chair.

DEM LEADERSHIP: Raging Liberals Wanted

Lefty blog opinion on the Reps. John Murtha (PA)/Steny Hoyer (MD) race for maj. leader continues to be mixed. The hard core netrooters (Kos, the MyDD crowd, etc.) continue to voice neutrality while hinting at a strong Murtha preference (Jonathan Singer's latest: "I'm not wholeheartedly opposed to Steny Hoyer serving as Majority Leader"). AMERICAblog, however, describes Murtha's record on "issues that Dems hold dear" as "a very mixed bag" and voices concerns over Murtha's "ethics problems."

Matthew Yglesias admits his "instinctive sympathies lie with Hoyer's opponent, John Murtha" but goes on to utilize Keith Poole's DW Nominate, a quantitative analysis of all congressional votes, to conclude: "Murtha is consistently to Hoyer's right. Hoyer is pretty consistently to the right of the median Democrat, in with a bloc of people you might characterize as northern moderates. Murtha is further to the right than this bloc, in with a group composed mostly of southerners." but Yglesias adds: "A lot of intra-caucus politics, at the end of the day, have more to do with hard-to-disentangle personal ties rather than ideology -- Murtha and Pelosi have been close for a long time while Hoyer and Pelosi have been rivals. For example, the candidate for Whip associated with Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel, Diana DeGette is, as best I can tell, a raging liberal by pretty much any standard."

Arianna Huffington, however, is not conflicted at all. She not only supports Murtha for majority leader, but for TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year" as well. Also at the Huffington Post, Bill Press has audio of Hoyer claiming he has the votes on Press' radio show 11/10.

At The Plank, Michael Crowley handicapps the race after putative Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) Murtha endorsement: "Though it's a dramatic gesture, it still doesn't guarantee a Murtha victory. In fact, from what I can tell, Hoyer was probably in the lead before this weekend. What it does guarantee is that, should Hoyer prevail anyway, the bitterness between him and Pelosi will be far worse than we've seen before--to the point where the House's top two Democrats may be virtually unable to work together, I suspect. The vote will be late this coming week. ... Her letter does not include an exhortation for other members to follow suit and makes clear she is responding to a request from her old friend to take a position--a hint of passivity."

BLOGGERS VS. BELTWAY: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Seeking to quell intra-party fighting over credit for 11/7, DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas begins a post "Dear Everyone Who Thinks They Singled-Handedly Won the Last Election" and reminds the DLC, DCCC, DSCC, the netroots, 527s, and big dollar donors that "They are not the source of all good in the world. Or all evil." Not on Kos' nice list "know-nothing pundits in DC and the DLC."

Kos also announced that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) "has been neutered" since "If he leaves the caucus for short-term gain, he loses all leverage and power and harms his long-term interests. Yet he doesn't stay in the caucus as a Democrat, but as an independent. And in that capacity he can criticize the Democratic Party all he wants without it being a story of "Democrats versus Democrats". He can flirt with Bush without it being a case of bipartisanship."

Not everyone in the netroots was prepared to live-and-live-let-live with beltway Dems. Reacting to a Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "You have to save the party from not drifting too far over," quote in the New York Postfiredoglake 's Pachacutec writes: "I realize there's a lot of push back online in the last day or so to do kumbayah in the party, to paper over history. ... But just to give him a bit of background about why I say trust is an issue, let's talk a little bit about his DSCC Senate Dem consigliere, Chuck Schumer." Pachacutec goes on to list twelve reasons not to trust Schumer including:

• Discouraging grass roots Paul Hackett over Sherrod Brown, even though we generally like Brown (there is a bad taste over his Military Commissions Act vote, and some seem unable to forgive him).
• Selecting Casey as a cautious pick in PA against the weak Santorum. Casey is good on economic populism but has the minority national view on choice.
• Working against Tester in the primary, before getting on the bandwagon in the general election.

MyDD's Matt Stoller was unamused by Clinton strategist James Carville's suggestion that ex-Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) replace DNC chair Howard Dean: "I honestly don't get this. How exactly are they going to push Dean out? Aside from spreading nasty rumors and cutting off big donors, which they've been doing for years, what leverage do they have on Dean? I'm not defending Dean's tenure, I'm just curious why these people seem to think that they can oust him. What do they know that I don't? Or do they just think that the world works through dishonest rumors spread in the CNN green room?"

Lawyers, Guns, And Money's Scott Lemieux was moved to sully Carville's Dem credentials by pulling out this Carville quote form 2000: "At a time when politics seems moribund, Zell would bring energy. When people are looking for heroes, Zell's the real thing. And when Democrats need someone who's not afraid to open up a can of whupass on the radical right, they need look no further than Zell Miller."

GOP FIELD: The Bizarro Kucinich Campaign

Right Angle Blog's Robert Bluey has straw poll results from over "four hours of voting" at the Virginia Conservative Convention:

Newt Gingrich 31% Mitt Romney 14% Sam Brownback 12% John McCain 12% Mike Huckabee 8% Rudy Giuliani 7% Duncan Hunter 4% Bill Frist 3% Chuck Hagel 1% George Pataki 1%

IA's Caucus Cooler adjusts their IA caucus primary winner odds including:

• Romney with a slight edge over McCain, thanks mostly to McCain's snubbing of Iowa in 2000 and Romney's headstart from an organizational standpoint.
• Pataki moves up a notch from 7-1 to 13-2. They had a very good grassroots operation going on in Polk County that we're sure helped them with the grassroots. Kudos to Team Pataki.
• Giuliani also creeps up a notch as rumors of his announcement get louder in Iowa. His staff talked with a number of Iowa operatives during Rudy's whirlwind Nussle tour. Rudy goes from 8-1 to 15-2.
• Duncan Hunter is a solid conservative and he's an avowed hawk. He is the chairman of the House armed services committee so he has credibility on foreign affairs. He also has been known as a poor fundraiser, not a good quality in a Presidential candidate. Someone close to Hunter in Iowa told us that it would be like the inverse of the Kucinich campaign

Finally, the MI Cooler notes that Tradesports saw post-11/7 bumps for McCain and falls for Romney.

BLOGGERS VS. BELTWAY: It's Lou Dobbs World, And We're Just Lucky Not To Be Deported From It

Many lefty bloggers are linking to SirotaBLOG's refutation of MSM assertions that Dems won 11/7 by running "Democrats pretending to be Republicans." Sirota argues: "Dobbs-style populism, along with opposition to the Iraq War, was the overwhelming theme of the 2006 elections." Sirota reminds readers "To be sure, I go after Dobbs for his refusal to comprehensively address immigration in a way that actually deals honestly with the problem" but goes on to conclude

But all in all, there is no denying that if Democrats want to hold a governing majority for the foreseeable future, they cannot continue to deny the populist outrage seething all over the country and highlighted by Dobbs book. They cannot continue to listen only to the former Clintonites now on K Street. They cannot continue to listen only to executives on Wall Street. They cannot continue to openly brag about how close they are to corporate lobbyists. They must see election 2006 for what it was: a mandate for economic populism and a battle cry against the hostile takeover of our government and against the War on the Middle Class.

Striking the same note Daily Kos' DemFromCT notes "unfettered free trade is as dead as John Bolton's nomination" The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum doubts "Democrats are going to focus much on social issues anyway in the upcoming congressional session. Instead, they're going to focus mostly on the Iraq war and on economic issues, where there's a considerable amount of common ground among all Democrats, new and old."

Suggestions for a larger Dem agenda are beginning to pour in from the lefty 'sphere and they include:

• At the top of Democrats.com's Bob Fertik list of 140 items: "Habeas Corpus: restore access to courts for all prisoners of the U.S."
• The Huffington Post's Shayana Kadidal wants to make sure no NSA surveillance legislation includes immunity for phone companies involved in wiretapping.
• The Reality Based Community's Steven Teles wants Dems to glow slow on investigations while The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum just wants a return to a "normal level of oversight."
• TPM Cafe's Reed Hundt warns Dems not to become the "eat your spinach" party and writes: "No, I'm not arguing for irrationality and for wild-eyed spending, but the way D's lost in 1994 was to insist too hard on raising too much tax revenue while doing too little to improve the quality and amount of public goods."
• Matthew Yglesias argues Dems should stay away from social issues and concludes: "This, however, is also the reason why groups seeking progressive social change can ill-afford to abandon the judicial process in favor of a single-minded focus on electoral politics."

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias and Kausfiles all address the chances of a Dem congress working on immigration reform. Drum concludes: "In other words, Mickey may be right. Democrats have bigger fish to fry and may be happy to avoid a fight by putting immigration on hold for a while. Ditto for Bush. My guess? It's time for a bipartisan blue ribbon commission!"

IRAQ: Half-Bakered Solutions Not Wanted

Lefty bloggers are applauding Dem calls for a timetable to withdraw all American troops within a year and are wary of the Baker commission's upcoming report. On Sen. Carl Levin's (D-MI) timetable call MyDD's Jonathan Singer writes: "I like this bold step ... Instead of waiting for the Iraq Study Group -- an unelected group of former bureaucrats -- to come back and provide the Bush administration cover for making changes in strategy (whether the White House ends up doing so or not), the Democrats are clearly paying heed to the American people in calling for a beginning to the redeployment of American forces."

AMERICAblog looks at Washington Postreports that Baker commission member ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) is "cajoling" Dems "to sign on to a plan that falls short of a phased troop withdrawal" and warns: "This is a trap. ... If the bipartisan group can't come up with a real plan, a good plan, the best plan, then let the Republicans in the group come up with their own wacky plan that will fail. ... The last thing Democrats need is to hand George Bush some bipartisan approbation of his failed Iraq policy so that, in the future, he can say we all own Iraq, warts and all. We all don't own Iraq, it's his disaster, his failed state. And nothing we try is going to work because it's already too late - Iraq is lost. Bush had his chance, and he failed."

On the right, National Review Online's Rich Lowry congratulates the New York Times for moving "to the right of the Bush administration" when they call for "at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on Baghdad streets." Power Line's Paul Mirengoff hopes the Baker commission avoids "consensus for consensus sake." And Captain's Quarters tells readers the administration views Robert Gates "not as a dramatic shift but as a course correction."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Myth Busters

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum looks at exit poll data from '04 and '06 House races and debunks three '06 myths:

• Myth #1: It was the youth vote that pushed Democrats over the top. Nope. In 2004 Dems won 55% of the youth vote. This year they won 60%. That's a swing of 5 points, exactly the same as the overall nationwide swing in favor of Democrats. In fact, it's actually worse than that: the number of young voters (age 18-29) decreased from 16% of the electorate in 2004 to 12% of the electorate in 2006. This means that in 2004 they amounted to 8.8% of the total Dem vote, compared to 7.2% in 2006. The youth vote was a fizzle.
• Myth #2: Democrats won a third of the white evangelical vote. I have no idea where this one came from. In 2004 Dems won 25% of the white evangelical vote. This year Dems won 28%. That's a swing of 3 points, which is actually a bit less than the overall Democratic swing. Turnout was about the same both years. Bottom line: Nothing happened here.
• Myth #3: Democrats won by running conservative candidates. A few high-profile Democratic candidates had conservative views on certain issues (Casey on abortion, Tester on guns), but overall the newly-elected Dems look a lot like the current Democratic caucus. And the exit polls back this up. In 2004, Democrats got 17% of the vote from self-described conservatives. This year it was 20%. As with evangelicals, this is less than the overall nationwide swing. Conservatives are still solidly supporting the Republican Party.

LEST WE FORGET: Fremont Cyborgs Vs. Oakland A's

The Jaunt notes a few ways the Oakland Athletics planned Fremont, CA ballpark will differ from their current home:

• Fans will swipe electronic tickets stored on cell phones.
• Fans will view instant replays at their seats with laptop computers.
• Digital advertising displays will be able to switch images based on the buying habits of the people walking by through data embedded in their cell phones.
• Wireless access

The Jaunt concludes: "Laughingstock? Possibly. Laughing all the way to the bank? No question. The opportunity to finally be able to bring your artificially inseminated cyborg neuro-child to its first ballgame without fear of a frowning society...priceless."

Posted by Conn Carroll at November 13, 2006 12:15 PM

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