| May 31 | Crumble, Crumble |
| May 30 | Glug Glug |
| May 25 | ?-? '12 |
| May 23 | Democrats Might Not Win All 50 States? Oh Noes! |
| May 23 | Local Democracy Corps Polling |
| May 19 | |
| May 18 | Nedrenaline |
| May 17 | Believe, Part II |
| May 16 | |
| May 4 | Friday Latin American Round-up, Chinchilla Blogging, & Shuffle! |
| May 4 | Elsewhere |
| May 3 | Podcasting Liberally |
| May 1 | Signs I'm (Thankfully) Not Getting Old |
| May 1 | There's a Reason I Stick To the Numbers |
John McCain just snubbed Brian Bilbray (R-CA 50), cancelling a planned appearance at a fundraising breakfast. This all started because Bilbray criticized McCain's immigration plan. Meanwhile, Francine Busby is running ads touting her support for the bill. This is a brilliant grab of the center; Busby has now positioned herself as a "McCain Democrat" while leaving Bilbray out in the cold. Meanwhile, someone has been working to attack Bilbray from the right as well. It may not be enough—this is a heavily Republican district after all—but it's great stuff.
It's tempting to have Democrats run a lot of ads in support of John McCain, which may be good in 2006, but may make life very hard in 2008. Should McCain win the primaries, it would be to be very hard to run the "John McCain, Just Another Politician" campaign after the party just spent months touting their support for his ideas.
Drinking Liberally, this Tuesday & every Tuesday, at the Montlake Ale House. 2307 24th ave E, 8pm until whenever.
This week we have a commemorative T-shirt to give to Matt, the bar owner. Stop by for a nice photo op.
While considering the coming Democratic dominance of the Governor's mansions, I was struck by the difficulty of answering this question:
If Democrats win in 2008, who are the potential Republican Presidential nominees in 2012?
Seriously, it's slim pickings. Democrats will likely control the entire Northeast Corridor until 2010. Even if Arnold does win in California, he can't run for President. Right now, the GOP Governor's of Missouri and Indiana are so unpopular that they'll probably lose in 2008. Likewise for Ernie Fletcher (R) in Kentucky. That leaves the Governors of AL, GA, MS, SC, VT, UT, ID, TX, CT, and FL. If we assume the GOP stays pro-life, we can eliminate Jodi Rell (R-CT) and Jim Douglas (R-VT). That leaves Charlie Crist (R-FL) as the most likely name, though Haley Barbour certainly has the connections to run if he wants to. In the Senate, Chuck Hagel (R-NE) will still be young enough, as will people Sam Brownback (R-KS), Kay Bailey Hutchsion (R-TX) or John Cornyn (R-TX). But most senators—George Voinovich, John Warner, Pat Roberts, etc.—seem primarily interested in being senators, not running for president. That leaves members of Bush's cabinet, who will of course have a Bush problem. Only Colin Powell and perhaps Condi Rice could recover from it.
Like I said, there aren't a lot of candidates to choose from, and you have to stretch to make the case for several of them. Except there's one more name I've left out. He has the connections, name recognition, and following within the Republican party to win the nomination. He's a certain two-term retiring governor of Florida.
Go ahead, I'll give you a minute to pick up the pieces of your exploding head.
...
...
So who's it going to be? Discuss in the comments.
Kos paints a terrific picture of the opportunities for Democrats to take back a dozen Governor's mansions this year, then bemoans "the problem's we'll continue to face in the Deep South". I'm all for a permanent Democratic supermajority, but this is getting silly.
Pop Quiz: Name the six states that gave their electoral votes to Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Pop Quiz II: Name the four states that gaive their electoral votes to Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948.
Answers, and the rest of this post on the flip.
Via MyDD, the Democracy Corps has some more data on the question of just how competitive certain marginally competitive House races have become. The news is mixed. PA-07, where Joe Sestak is challenging Curt Weldon, shows modest movement towards Democrats; Weldon's support has droped from 58% to 55% among those who have an opinion. NJ-07 shows regression, as Mike Ferguson has increased his share of the vote from 57% in '04 to just over 60%. OH-01 has the most change, which isn't that surprising given the terrible ratings of both George Bush and Bob Taft in Ohio right now. Steve Chabot earns 54%, down from 58%, of those who know who they'll vote for in November.
Of course, none of these results factor in undecided voters, who currently make up between 7% and 12% of the voting public in each district. But they're not terribly encouraging. If every district moved exactly 8 points towards Democrats (the best result of these three district-level polls), they would gain around a half dozen seats in the House. At least in these districts, voters have not yet abandoned Republican Congressional members wholesale. It will take more work to dislodge the allegience to local Republicans.
It's a good thing that Lamont's first ads are running in May, when more people watch television, even if it's further away from the primary date. Building name recognition and buzz are what's important at this point. Too bad he couldn't get on the air before the Grey's Anatomy finale. Maybe he'll run a couple during the last episode Idol this spring.
Watching these ads, it's clear that Bill Hillsman (who wrote ads for Paul Wellstone's first campaign, Jesse Ventura, and Ralph Nader—hey, two out of three ain't bad)thinks about campaign advertising differently than most political ad-makers. The Lamont ads are geared to make you remember them, and talk policy just long enough that you have a idea of what Ned Lamont (and Joe Lieberman) stand for. Why Hillsman doesn't do more political ads is beyond me.
It's not clear to me just how much one can learn from the results of the Pennsylvania primary. Especially in cases where one party has a contested primary and the other doesn't. But the results show deep problems for the GOP.
Take PA-04. In 2004, Melissa Hart won with 63% of the vote. Last night, she drew only 36.8% of the vote, while the two Democrats in the race combined for 63.2% of the two-party vote. Or PA-05, where John Peterson won with 88% in 2004, but only got 60% of the ballots against a candidate with no website or FEC filings. In PA-08 Patrick Murphy (D) and his primary opponent earned 55% in a district where the Republican won with 56% in '04. PA-03 features a rematch of the last election, where Phil English (R) beat Steven Porter (D) 60-40. This year Porter leads 51-49. In PA-18 Dems combined for 61% in a district that Tim Murphy (R) won with 63%.
Sadly, Joe Sestak (D) couldn't gain much traction against the odious Curt Weldon, earning only 33%. Perhaps he should get a more Google-friendly surname. And Lois Murphy (D) and her primary opponent combined for only 46% of the vote while Jim Gerlach earned 54%.
I'm still worried that the generic polls don't mean that much. Maybe everyone in Connecticut says they will vote for a Democrat, but then Chris Shays runs some ads and they say to themselves "Hey! I like Shays. He's my kind of Republican. I'll vote for him." But the Pennsylvania results suggest that's not happening. The party will matter more than the candidate this cycle. The only question is how much it will matter.
Phase one of the "Deploy Guns and Badges" strategy is out in force. And if The Note has anything to say about it, we're in for a long ride as the DC press corps laps up a well-executed dog-and-pony show.
Let me say that I dare the White House political team to follow this strategy to its completion. If Josh Bolten thinks getting Bush to ride around on an ATV at the border is going to improve his approval rating, he needs to go back and look at Bush the Elder's campaign in 1988. I hear some guy running for President wanted to look "tough", so he got into a tank and rode around. It didn't go so well. The problem is, nakedly planned photo-ops only work when your favorable rating is above 60% and people want to see the President. When you're in the gutter, you usually have to do something to get out of it.
Drinking Liberally, this Tuesday and Every Tuesday, at the Montlake Ale House, 8pm
The major international news from Latin America continues to be the focus in Mexico on US immigration policy, and the fallout from Bolivian President Evo Morales's decision to renationalize the country's oil production:
Chinchilla blogging and Shuffle! on the flip.
I've been guest blogging at Ezra Klein's this week, while he's on vacation. Here's what I've come up with so far:
Watch this space for the next edition of Podcasting Liberally, where we make fun of Bill Frist's gas tax rebate, consider whether or not gun control means hitting your target, and deal with other questions of the day.
At some point I mention that we could improve Explorer fuel effeciency to 28 mpg adding only $800 to the sticker price. My source is this report from The Oil Drum, writing up the Association for the Study of Peak Oil's 2005 conference. Search for "Jason Mark" to find the quote, or check out Jason Mark's power-point deck.
I sometimes catch my self having nanny-state thoughts about, say, the value of school uniforms or moralizing about gratuitious sex and violence in TV and film (where the problem is really that that the sex and violence crowds out more interesting content). In the back of my head, the fourteen year-old version of Nick Beaudrot remembers thinking all of these policy ideas were silly, and being frustrated that politicians treat children as uncontrollable little brats who all have to be monitored as though they're practically criminals. I recall hoping that someday politicians would respect kids' ability to make decisions for themselves and stop mandating see-through backpacks, metal detectors, and good music. When I find myself getting close to flip-flopping on those questions, the fear of "growing regular" in my old age strikes.
Thankfully, the insanity of NYC public school's banning the posession—not use, but posession—of cell phones on school grounds has brought me back to reality. Twelve year-old kids are perfectly capable of following directions, and if you just said to them and their parents "you can have a phone, but you have to leave it off during school hours", they'll pay attention.
Jay Rosen's response to my observations on his Tony Snow column hilights one of the difficulties of blogging. Because blog authors are more easily identified with their articles than traditional print journalists (and are thus closer to op-ed columnists, though hopefully reality-based op-ed columnists), it's easy to mistake the opinions of sources for the opinions of the author. Rosen himself, of course, never opines on the "meaning" of Snow's hiring, but points to others who have their own speculation and the White House official line that Snow signals a new era of press relations. Outside pundits like David Gergen (quoted towards the end of the Rosen article) and David Broder (quoted in the "After Matters" section) seem skeptical.
I implied otherwise, that Rosen also thought would and allow "more complete information", as Broder calls it. If anything, he points out the opposite: "The [Bush] regime seems to have concluded that if more of the story is withheld it has increased freedom of maneuver in dealing with the enemies of freedom. That regime could be strengthened with a slicker Tony Snow out front."
The lessons learned here are that quoting your sources can easily force you to read them properly, and that bloggers, while we need not adopt all the conventions of traditional journalism, do have to learn to be careful if it's going to be taken seriously.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 09:00 02 September 2006