Recently in Election 2006 Category

In a story unfolding last week that I'm behind on posting on, Dubya goes the bipartisan commission route to try to take the sting out of the brewing scandal over mismanagement at Walter Reed (and other military hospitals) that has already resulted in two firings and some contentious congressional hearings. "Good leadership should have taken these steps long ago, without prompting by a series of embarrassing news articles,' said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee's chairman[.]"

Good riddance to the do-nothing 109th Congress, which wheedled its way into the history books last weekend. (And sayonara also to Donald Rumsfeld, who closed up shop yesterday.) A word of warning to the Dubya White House: Don't expect the 110th to play as nice...

"From now on I'll be busy, Ain't goin' nowhere fast..." In what will hopefully amount to both a transformation in the debate over the war and a much-needed moment of clarity for the Dubya administration (alas, not likely), the Baker-Hamilton Commission officially releases its Iraq report (Exec Sum/Assessments). While perhaps vague on the details, it calls the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating" and argues that a "slide toward chaos" is a very real possibility (if, in fact, it hasn't already happened.) "Despite a list of 79 recommendations meant to encourage regional diplomacy and lead to a reduction of U.S. forces over the next year, the panel acknowledges that stability in Iraq may be impossible to achieve any time soon."

"'What we heard this morning was a welcome breath of honest, candid realism about the situation in Iraq,' Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said during a midday break." The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved Robert Gates, who helped his case considerably by admitting the obvious fact that Iraq's looking ugly, as Rumsfeld's replacement at the Pentagon yesterday. Among those impressed with Gates was Slate's Fred Kaplan: "I've been watching defense secretaries in confirmation hearings for 30 years, off and on, but I don't think I've seen any perform more forthrightly than Gates did this morning." Update: Gates goes through, 95-2.

"Look, someone told me she hasn't liked him since 1963, and it has had zero effect on how well they have worked together. We don't have to guess at this. We have seen it. They can and will work well together as we move forward." In what's being billed as an early but probably not-very-significant defeat (although perhaps it should be) for Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, her backing of her old friend John Murtha for Majority Leader seems to have backfired, as the Dem caucus instead chose moderate Steny Hoyer by almost 2-to-1. "'He had been doing the tough work,' said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). 'It's just mind-numbing -- all those fundraisers, the travel, sleeping in hotel rooms. It needs to be rewarded.'" Well, given Murtha's record on the ethics issue, I'm all for Hoyer too. Now -- please -- let's start concentrating our fire on the other side (And that goes for Carville (Emanuel) v. Dean as well -- be cool, James.)

Meanwhile on the GOP side, the House Republicans decide to stick with John Boehner for now. Great...he's seemed pretty incompetent so far, good choice. And over in the Senate, guess who's back? Think Strom...Yes, the GOP choose Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott as their go-to-guys, prompting a great line (which I'm paraphrasing) on The Daily Show the other night: "Lott's new job is the "Minority Whip"...he should take to that job like white on rice."

"An Ehrlich aide who agreed to discuss the strategy on the condition of anonymity said the purpose of the fliers was to peel away one or two percentage points in jurisdictions where the governor would be running behind. No one inside the campaign expected a strong reaction. But that's what they got." The WP delves into the sordid tale behind the dirty trick ballots passed around in Maryland last week. (Very Royce-Carcetti, no?) Particularly disappointing (and bizarre), it seems that actor Charles S. Dutton may have been involved in hatching the scheme, although he denies it.

"For the first time in 50 years, the party that controls both chambers of Congress is a minority party in the South. And in the last four presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has either garnered 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to win, or has come within one state of doing so before a single Southern vote was tallied. Outside the old Confederacy, the nation is turning blue, and that portends a new map for a future Democratic majority." In Salon, University of Maryland assistant prof. Thomas Schaller suggests the Dems should forget about the South. So, what happened to the 50-state strategy? As the critical importance of Senator-elect Webb's recent win suggests, the Dems write off any region of the country at their peril.

"This was a big deal. Certainly, it was the end of George W. Bush's radical experiment in partisan governance. It might have been even bigger than that: the end of the conservative pendulum swing that began with Ronald Reagan's revolution." Despite starting off well here, TIME's Joe Klein reads the 2006 election as a call to centrism. Hmm. Well, maybe...I suppose we're still parsing the results. Nevertheless, I'll confess to being somewhat irritated by TIME's "centrist" cover after last week's historic rout of the Republicans, so I went ahead and ginned up my own, one I find more fitting for recent events (and, of course, that is more apropos for this blog.) Procrastination, thy name is Photoshop.

"'My job is not to be a prognosticator,' he said. 'My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, "We're going to lose." I'm looking at the data and seeing if I can figure out, Where can we be? I told the President, "I don't know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control."'" Um, you do? It's the Election 2006 post-mortem y'all have been waiting for: Karl Rove discusses the results of the midterms, and while he correctly cites the war and the GOP's considerable corruption problem, he still doesn't seem to get the big picture. Fine with me...Rove, just keep doin' what you're doin'. It worked splendidly. Update: More here.

Word is it was in the works back in August...still, add RNC Chair Ken Mehlman to the list of Dubyaites soon-to-be out of a job. Good riddance.

"'They did this to protect themselves, but they couldn't protect us?' another Republican aide said yesterday." According to Patrick O'Connor of The Hill, many GOP officials are absolutely livid about the timing of the Rumsfeld resignation. "For them to toss Rumsfeld one day after the election was a slap in the face to everyone who worked hard to protect the majority." Meanwhile, the rest of us have to figure out how to trust this president when even he admits he openly lied to everyone about Rumsfeld's fate (not that he was garnering a lot of confidence these days anyway.)

"I never saw a real enthusiasm on the Republican side to begin with. There's none on our side." The next GOP casualty of the 2006 elections? If the Dems can hold off a vote through the lame-duck Congress, it might just end up being UN rep John Bolton. "The White House formally renewed its request that the Senate take up Bolton's nomination. But Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said they continued to resist Bolton's confirmation and 'he is unlikely to get a vote any time soon.'" Update: To his credit, outgoing Senator Lincoln Chafee, who earlier announced his opposition to renewing Bolton, is sticking to his guns and siding with the Dems against Dubya on the issue. So Bolton looks to be gone in December...Koo koo kachoo.

"A source close to Allen also told CNN that the senator 'has no intention of dragging this out.'" It's (semi)-official: AP and Reuters declare Webb the winner in Virginia, thus yielding a Democratic Senate. Excellent! "[A] Webb aide told CNN that he plans a formal news conference Thursday morning to declare victory." Update: Now, it's really official: Allen will concede this afternoon.

Remember when Boehner and the GOP banked on their widespread corruption not playing on Election Day? Well, they chose poorly. Among the many seats lost by the GOP last night were those of Abramoff flunkies Conrad Burns, Richard Pombo, and Bob Ney, notorious friend-of-pages Mark Foley, the recently-FBI-implicated Curt Weldon, mistress-beater Don Sherwood, and the fatcat architect of it all, Boss DeLay. (Surviving the corruption purge: the Foley-connected Tom Reynolds, Duke Cunningham's replacement, Brian Bilbray, and -- though a runoff hopefully won't shake his way -- corrupt Dem William Jefferson.)

"Alas, poor Brit, it was too much for him to bear in the end, I'm afraid. You almost had to feel sorry for the guy...I said almost." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir evaluates last night's election coverage on FOX News. I admit, I also switched over to FOX in the late hours just to revel in all the sweet, sweet schadenfreude. I'm forced to concede, though, that their graphics were much better than CNN's -- you could actually tell how many House seats Dems were picking up all night over the needed 15, while CNN dropped that ball as soon as the Senate got tight. At any rate, for angry right-wing teeth-gnashing, nothing on FOX topped Stephen Colbert's hilarious speel last night at the end of the otherwise middling Midterm Midtacular (Click on "Stephen Quits," in case you missed it.)

Christmas in November continues for the reality-based community: Along with recent editorials in the Army Times, the Dem's Election 2006 takeover claims another high-profile GOP victim in Donald Rumsfeld. He'll be replaced by former CIA chief Robert Gates -- an old papa Bush hand and current member of the Baker-Hamilton commission -- for Dubya's last two lame duck years. Dubya claimed in his press conference that Rumsfeld would've been gone regardless of the election returns...I'm not sure I buy that. Still, this is a very welcome move -- one that should've happened years ago.

And another GOP scalp (chalk this one up to Foleygate): Dennis Hastert -- who's inexplicably the longest-serving Republican Speaker in US history (Joe Cannon is 2nd) -- is leaving the Republican congressional leadership. Current contenders for his position include former Majority Leader John Boehner, Mike Pence, Eric Cantor, and Joe Barton.

Shady, harrassing "robocalls", voter intimidation in Virginia, sketchy-acting electronic voting machines: yes, folks, it's Election Day in America, and the frantic GOP are up to their usual bag of tricks. In the inimitable words of Baltimore Deputy Commissioner for Ops Bill Rawls: "American Democracy. Let's show those Third World %@#$ how it's done."

Regardless, each side has had their November Surprise (for the Left, Haggard's hypocrisy; for the Right, Hussein's hanging), and now -- at long last -- it's showtime: Time to show "the decider" what we really think of him.

For what it's worth, I can now personally guarantee at least one vote for the not-particularly-embattled Spitzer/Clinton/Rangel/Cuomo ticket. I even used an old-school levered voting machine, so mine should more likely than not get counted.

Predictions? Of course, I'd like to venture a 1994-like tidal wave, but I've been burned by too many election nights in the past. So I'll play it relatively safe...the Dems win the House, picking up 18-22 seats, and gain four seats in the Senate: Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (So long, Santorum!) It looked like control of the Senate might've hinged on the Allen-Webb race in Virginia, but now that Harold Ford seems to have faded in Tennessee (one has to wonder how much Corker's gutterball ad helped him), a Dem Senate looks really unlikely. Still, I'd love to be surprised in both states.

Obviously not winning the House at this point would be a grievous blow for the party. But, whatever happens tonight, it has to be better than the last midterms.

The last two times I posted exit polls here (in 2000 and 2004), I've been led astray, but if I see anything good from the Senate races, I'll post it below. In the meantime, the NYT has a quality election guide here, and there are a couple of good explanations of what to look for tonight here and here. On this end, I and several of my friends who've been burned over the last few election nights together will be huddled around the TV, yearning to breathe free. Hopefully, at long last, it'll be our night.

Even in early voting, it seems, the shadiness is rampant: Looka collects a few dismaying articles about the voting machines tending to prefer Republicans this year, regardless of what voters may want. (Sound familiar?) How hard can it be, people? In twelve-odd-years of using them, I've never had an ATM screw up or misreport a transaction. If we can do it for twenty dollar bills, we can do it for the franchise.

"Historically, the major parties in America have yoked together the most disparate groups for long periods. The New Deal Democrats were a party of Northern liberals and Southern segregationists. But once Lyndon Johnson committed the Democrats to civil rights for African Americans, the white South up and left -- a process that took 40 years to complete but that left the Democrats struggling to assemble congressional and presidential majorities and that converted the Republicans into a party where Southern values were dominant. Now the non-Southern bastions of Republicanism may themselves up and leave the GOP, seeing it as no longer theirs." The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson sees potential for a realignment of northern moderates come Tuesday. Well, let's hope. Chafee looks like toast (and he's acting like it, too), but there are still a lot of undecideds -- between 15 and 20% -- in that Rhode Island race. And, lest we forget, our very own president, much as he'd like us to think otherwise, is a scion of the North as well.

I don't really have anything to say about Kerrygate, except, well, is it Tuesday yet? Way to stick your foot in it, Senator. But, really, is this all you guys got? Is this all you can conjure, Rove? The whole GOP media onslaught about it reeks of desperation (as do the gutterball ad campaigns), and, hey, I don't blame them: times are desperate: "'So many different kinds of scandals going on at the same time, that's pretty unique,' Zelizer said. 'There were scandals throughout the '70s, multiple scandals, but the number of stories now are almost overwhelming.'"

Breaking news: Rush Limbaugh is a fat junkie asshole. But you might've already known that.

It's true in the West, it's true in the Southwest, it's even true among the reddest of the red. And, in perhaps the final straw for the GOP this November, a new poll puts independents breaking for the Dems 59%-31%. Yes, y'all, it looks like a wave is coming...(provided, of course, Diebold doesn't ride to Dubya's rescue.)

As Medley pointed out yesterday, Dubya and the GOP are now "cutting and running from 'stay the course.'" Instead, Tony Snow tells us, "What you have is not 'stay the course' but in fact a study in constant motion." And that motion, folks, is a full-out freefall. As even Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted yesterday, "We're on the verge of chaos" And, frankly, that's being charitable.

"But if the list is for real, it's evidence of presidential dereliction of duty, and perhaps an outright threat to national security. Two books a week is an uphill battle for a graduate student whose responsibilities don't even include showering. For a president, who lives at work, reading and comprehending two serious books a month takes a Herculean effort." (Hey, I shower!...um, most days.) Slate's Bruce Reed discusses Dubya's newfound love for books, suggesting that his recent reading contest with Karl Rove is part of the reason why things have gone so astray of late for this president. Well, call me old-fashioned, but -- My Pet Goat notwithstanding -- I'd usually rather see Dubya with his nose in a good book than see him make any more lousy world-threatening decisions. Besides. Dubya dug himself in this hole long before 2006...some healthy book learnin' might've done him right earlier in his tenure. Hey, at the very least, he might've locked down that whole pesky Shia-Sunni thing.

"'The Democrats are going to gain somewhere between four and seven seats,' said Stuart Rothenberg, author of an independent newsletter that tracks campaigns nationwide." The WaPo surveys recent trends in the battle for the Senate, concluding that a Dem takeover is still eminently possible, if not yet probable. "Of the battlegrounds of Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri, [Rothenberg] said, 'They need two of the three, and they have a pretty good chance' of winning them."

Another GOP scandal? Oh, why not. This time, the culprit is California Republican longshot Tam Nguyen, who apparently was the mastermind behind 14,000 letters sent to scare immigrants from the polls. "Written in Spanish, the letters advise recently registered voters that it is a crime for those in the country illegally to vote in a federal election, which is true. They also say, falsely, that immigrants may not vote and could be jailed or deported for doing so, that the federal government has a new computer system to verify voter names, and that anti-immigration organizations can access the records." Nguyen has said he'll stay in the race against Democratic congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, even though his own party is disavowing him.

For the increasingly factious and terrified GOP, it's second verse, same as the first: Terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11...

Wasting no time after signing the godawful terrorism bill into law, Dubya tells the US District Court that it has lost jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions filed by Gitmo detainees. "What's being blocked and what the government is opposing tooth and nail is the most simple thing of all: a hearing before a district court judge,' said Jonathan Hafetz, who handles many detainee cases for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. 'The government will do anything to prevent Guantanamo detainees from being able to present evidence in court.'"

"By himself, Cunningham had no authority to or ability to award a contract to MZM...[He] needed to secure the cooperation, or at least the non-interference, of many people: the appropriators and authorizers in Congress...the various Department of Defense (DOD) officials responsible for execution of the money...and officials of the agencies for which the contracts were to be performed. This was a lot of people to persuade, cajole, deceive, pressure, intimidate, bribe or otherwise influence to do what they wanted." A new report by the House Intelligence Committee delves into Randy "Duke" Cunningham's bribery operation on the Hill (or at least, it does what it can given that the GOP, acting sketchy as usual, refused to subpoena Cunningham. Can we please get a little oversight up in here?)

"Lame Duck" Dubya and his man behind the curtain, Karl Rove, may be "inexplicably upbeat," but John McCain is apparently contemplating suicide. Meanwhile, Dems Carville and Greenberg suggest breaking out the party credit cards, while the bellwether state of Ohio sours on the GOP completely. Only 20 days left until Election 2006...

As threatened in the past, Dubya has apparently signed a new National Space Policy that heavily emphasizes the weaponization of space. "Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy 'kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy' and has a 'very unilateral tone to it.'"

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else...It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States." Agh! File this one in the Tom DeLay loves NASA department: Right-wing freakshow and self-proclaimed Tolkien fan Rick Santorum invokes Lord of the Rings to justify Iraq. Sorry, Senator...you can't Wormtongue your way out of this one.

"'Everyone would appreciate it if you would contact Ken only and not others here at the WH,' reads one message to Abramoff from Bush advisor Karl Rove's assistant Susan Ralston, 'because they just forward it to him anyway.'" Salon's Mark Benjamin takes a gander at Casino Jack's man in the White House, Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman. "More than once, Abramoff asks for a favor, Mehlman fulfills the request, and then one of Abramoff's wealthy Indian tribe clients sends a political donation to a GOP cause."

Another week, another GOP scandal. This time, it involves Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon, whom the FBI is now investigating for lobbying improprieties involving the business of his daughter and political ally Charles Sexton. "The investigation focuses on Weldon's support of the Russian-managed Itera International Energy Corp., one of the world's largest oil and gas firms, while that company paid fees to Solutions North America, the company that Karen Weldon and Sexton operate." And, if that weren't enough, the House Page Board is now looking into veteran congressman Jim Kolbe for a camping trip he took with former pages in 1996, adding further to the increasing number of once-safe GOP seats now in contention in three weeks. Update: More on the Weldon investigation and Kolbe allegations.

A new minority staff report by the Senate Finance Committee concludes that "[f]ive conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, 'appear to have perpetrated a fraud' on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff." Among the organizations called out are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (sheah), an outfit created by Norquist and former Dubya Interior Secretary Gail Norton, whose office was already waist-deep in ill-gotten Casino Jack loot. (In fact, Abramoff's point person in Norton's office was CREA's president, Italia Federici.)

Update: In related news, Abramoff flunky Bob Ney pleaded guilty today to conspiracy and making false statements (without, mind you, resigning his seat in Congress.) While he didn't speak with reporters, Ney's written statement noted that the "treatment and counseling I have started have been very helpful, but I know that I am not done yet and that I have more work to do to deal with my alcohol dependency." Ok, one more time, people. Alcoholism means you drink too much. It does not mean that you bilk the public, indulge in bribes, or send teenagers dirty IMs.

"Before I liberate the speaker so he doesn't have to stand up here for that long, Speaker, I want to say this to you...I am proud to be standing with the current speaker of the House who is going to be the future speaker of the House." Hmm...I wouldn't be so sure. As Dubya bequeaths a "heck of a job, Denny" upon an increasingly embattled Hastert, the GOP moneymen are nevertheless hedging their bets, and are pulling cash out of several races around the country to try to hold the (Maginot?) line in Ohio, Missouri, and Tennessee. The financial "jousting will continue into the final days, but what is clear at this point is that Democrats are playing very little defense in the House and the Senate."

"'Voters are tying both of these scandals together,' said Paul A. Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists, a lobbyist trade group in the capital. 'First with Abramoff and now with Foley, corruption has risen to play a big role in this election. It disappoints me, but it's happening.'" It disappoints you? As the lobbyists lament, it appears Foleygate has brought ethics in government back into focus as a central 2006 campaign issue, despite the GOP's earlier banking on Casino Jack fading from memory. And, worse still for the Republicans, it seems the so-called "values vote" won't save them this time 'round.

655,000 deaths in Iraq?! A new report by Johns Hopkins researchers puts the number of fatalities from Dubya's Baghdad debacle at over twenty times what other sources such as Iraq Body Count have been reporting (making it roughly comparable to the fatality rate in Darfur.) Dear Lord, can that really be right? (Also noted at Ed Rants.) Update: The study's author explains its methodology.

"Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime." As Dubya rejects bilateral talks with N. Korea, Slate's Fred Kaplan puts the lie to John McCain's recent attempt to carry water for the Bushies on the Korean nuclear issue. "McCain's version of history goes beyond 'revisionism' to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened."

"So, here we are. The two major powers in this confrontation are led by blunderers; the provocateur is a chronic miscalculator. It doesn't look good." Oh, so there's the WMD: As John Bolton pushes for aggressive sanctions at the UN against the Kim Jong-Il regime, Slate's Fred Kaplan parses several ugly scenarios that could unfold after North Korea's nuclear gamble on Monday (the same day, coincidentally, that South Korean Ban Ki-moon won official Security Council backing to replace Kofi Annan. Looks like he'll be working overtime right out of the box.) By the way, if you're keeping score at home, Dubya & co. now seem to have grievously mishandled all three prongs of the "axis of evil" trifecta. Sigh. That's great, it starts with an earthquake...

One small piece of consolation in this increasingly dark, troubled world: A new post-Foley Gallup poll puts the GOP in an absolute freefall: "Democrats had a 23-point lead over Republicans in every group of people questioned -- likely voters, registered voters and adults -- on which party's House candidate would get their vote. That's double the lead Republicans had a month before they seized control of Congress in 1994 and the Democrats' largest advantage among registered voters since 1978." Moreover, two other polls by CBS News/New York Times and ABC News/Washington Post confirm that an electoral rout may now be in the making.

"Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left. The epitaph for the movement that started when Newt Gingrich and his forces rose from the back bench of the House chamber in 1994 may well have been written last week in the same medium that incubated it: talk radio." As Foleygate continues to conflagrate and the FBI looks for answers, a TIME cover story wonders if the Republican Revolution of 1994 is dead. Yep.

"The cut-and-run phrase is an effective political weapon...It is also a very dumb phrase...As one Republican congressman put it recently: 'Reality has been suspended for a moment. Republicans cannot speak out publicly on this issue right now.'" With even Republicans making dour assessments of Baghdad these days, Slate's John Dickerson makes the obvious points against Dubya for the "cut-and-run" garbage he indulged in last week.

"The social conservatives are frustrated with what's going on...We have heard disappointment and disenchantment. The level of commitment isn't as fierce as it ought to be." Another Foleygate update: As another GOP staffer backs up Kirk Fordham's account of telling Hastert about Foley in 2003, the NYT reports that the scandal has put at least five more GOP House seats in play, and gay Republicans begin to fear they'll end up the scapegoats of it all. "I'm just waiting for someone in a position of authority to make this a gay issue." Update: With new revelations from Representive Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), the Foley-clock moves back to 2000.

"As a former Abramoff assistant, Ralston played intermediary between the lobbyist and Rove. The congressional report found 66 Abramoff contacts with the White House, more than half of them with Ralston. In addition, Abramoff's lobbying colleagues contacted Ralston 69 times." The Casino Jack affair claims another White House victim in Rove deputy Susan Ralston, who, it was recently discovered in a House report, made the mistake of accepting Abramoff swag -- choice tickets and such -- without paying for it. Illegal, no doubt, but somehow I suspect her procuring courtside Wizard tix is the least of the Abramoff-related corruption going on in Karl's outfit.