The Next Hurrah

Why a Gonzales resignation is not enough

by Kagro X

It now seems all but inevitable that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be forced to resign his position over the growing scandal surrounding the political strong-arming of U.S. Attorneys around the country. Resignation, even in supposed disgrace however, is insufficiently punitive to members of an "administration" that has made a practice of employing prominent Republican recidivists left over from what should have been career-ending scandals like Watergate and Iran-Contra.

But resignation as a punishment also fails to fit the crime. You may rest assured that apologists for Gonzales, Bush and Rove (whose involvement also seems obvious) will insist that there is no "crime" here, because the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys is within the president's prerogative. True, as far as it goes. But what clearly ought not to be is the political manipulation of federal investigations to bolster the electoral prospects of Republicans, and damage those of Democrats and other rivals. This is the sort of activity that's so obviously and fundamentally wrong that nobody has yet taken the time to devise a statute to address it. Instead, it occupies the space of a general crime against the Constitution, a subversion of our very system of government, and precisely the sort of crime for which the founders gave us the remedy of impeachment. That's what "high crimes and misdemeanors" are all about. It's not about lawbreaking at altitude.

Proving Bush's Irrelevance: Veto Override

by emptypockets

Last month I argued the path to stem cells lies through Missouri. The election results there would decide whether we would be able to override Bush's veto on stem cell research.

We won both the important votes there. Missourians are sending Claire McCaskill to the Senate armed with a strongly pro-research agenda and they amended their Constitution to guarantee protection of stem cell research. Not only does McCaskill's victory bring us one vote closer to an override in the Senate -- it sends a signal to Republicans that if they don't support stem cell research, they will be replaced by Democrats who do.

2007 is the year when Republicans in Congress will have to choose between joining the bipartisan majority that wants to fund stem cell research as the American public demands, or abandoning bipartisanship and joining Bush in blocking key medical cures and keeping on playing politics with science.

Our fight is still uphill. In the Senate, we needed four more votes. We picked up pro-research seats in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, and Virginia, but we lost one in Tennessee (where pro-research Frist is replaced by anti-research Corker). That leaves us one vote shy of an override.

We're going to have to ask Senator-elect Bob Casey to reconsider whether he thinks embryos that are going to die anyway are equal to grandparents with Alzheimer's and children with diabetes. Democrats and his fellow Pennsylvanian Arlen Specter ought to talk with him honestly and frequently about this issue.

Similar conversations should be held with John Sununu, who faces re-election in 2008 and is one of the vanishing New England Republicans. (Norm Coleman and John Cornyn are also up for re-election in 2008 and come from states where the other Senator is pro-research.)

In the House, by my most recent count about 16 anti-research Republicans have been replaced with Democrats (the arithmetic is fuzzy: the anti-research Bonilla in TX-23 may yet lose his seat, also I'm presuming most of the 16 new Democrats will be pro-research). In any case we still need about 30 more House votes for an override.

Flipping 30 anti-research votes in the House is possible. Going from democraticavenger's excellent 2008 House targeting list, I see 23 anti-research Representatives who received less than 55% of their vote, 12 more anti-research Representatives from districts where Kerry got at least 45% of the vote, and another 4 Representatives who may be in trouble for other reasons.

That gives us 39 "targeted for '08" Representatives whose anti-research votes we may flip. They can see that blocking stem cell research is a lost cause politically -- Americans support it, the votes have been there in Congress for years, and Bush will not be in office forever (although it may seem that way). They can join the bipartisan majority and support research or they can further risk their seats and stall research just 2 more years.

For too long "being bipartisan" has meant "Democrats enabling Bush." It is time to make clear that embracing Bush, on either side of the aisle, means giving the finger to bipartisanship -- embracing Bush just means more blocked votes, more failures by the extreme right, and more ignoring of the popular desires of the American mainstream.

What being bipartisan really means is rejecting Bush and joining the bipartisan majority that supports stem cell research. Former red-state Missouri has shown that support for research transcends political boundaries. Nancy Pelosi intends to bring a stem cell research bill in the first 100 hours of her term as Speaker. It is time to ask Republicans in Congress to stop playing politics with science, to reject Bush and to embrace bipartisanship, and to support stem cell research by overriding the President's veto.

Shays Is Alone - Courtney Wins The Recount in CT-02

by DemFromCT

Due to the Category 5 election in New England, which threw out R House members from NH and CT, Chris Shays is now the only GOP member ifrom the House from my favorite region of the country. Joe Courtney has won the recount in CT-02, making CT 2 for 3 in firing Republicans (Chris Murphy ran an excellent campaign to beat Nancy Johnson in CT-05).

When the final nine of the district's 65 towns had completed their recounts, Courtney still clung to a margin of roughly 90 votes over Simmons — even slimmer than his 167-vote lead on Election Day that made the race one of the closest in the nation, and the tightest in this eastern Connecticut district since 1994.

One day after recounts resulted in several large swings of momentum, Courtney's lead held relatively steady Tuesday, with none of the remaining towns reporting anything other than incremental changes in their results.

With the completion of a recanvass in the town of Ashford shortly before 9 p.m. — in which the challenger picked up a single vote — the recount effort was complete, cementing a Courtney victory of about 90 votes, according to town officials and results released by the office of Secretary of the State Susan L. Bysiewicz.

Outside of New England, the tsunami wasn't as great, but we're clear in our opinion: New Englanders don't care for the party of Bush, even if Poppy lives in Maine.

VOTE BY REGION

TOTAL	Democrat	Republican
Northeast (22%)	63%	35%
Midwest (27%)	52%	47%
South (30%)	45%	53%
West (21%)	54%	43%

Enjoy tomorrow's Majority Leader vote, but don't lose sight of the Big Picture. The Minority Leader vote has far more significance. When all is said and done, the GOP will either move back toward the middle, or continue their efforts to be the Southern Conservative party... and even in the South, they will not be unchallenged.

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Hoyer v. Murtha, from another angle.

by Kagro X

Me, I don't care much either way. And that's good, because I also have no say in the matter. The House Democratic Caucus has the call here, and it's even more of an insider's game than the DNC Chairmanship was -- which, by the way, I should say I'm still a bit stunned that outsiders appear to have influenced to some degree. Then again, it's probably also worth noting that I think the tide changed for Dean when Murtha backed him for the job, though I'm still not so sure it wasn't a sort of back-handed endorsement.

But rather than express a preference between Hoyer and Murtha, I'd like to examine what it is that made him a contender. We all know what has made Steny a contender: years of ladder climbing and steady fundraising. That's what fuels leadership races, and we might as well admit it.

What's driving Murtha's candidacy, obviously, is his outspokenness on Iraq, and the assistance he lent to House candidates on the stump. But the key to this race may lie in looking at whom he helped.

Elections Have Consequences

by DemFromCT

This from Gallup:

Democrats Have Upper Hand for the Moment

Majority want Democrats rather than Bush to have the most influence

A new USA Today/Gallup poll reflects very positive positioning for the Democrats in the minds of the American public -- at least for the moment. Americans are almost twice as likely to have a favorable opinion of Democrats as they do of Republicans, and a strong majority says they want the Democrats in Congress to have more influence over the direction of the country than President Bush.

Additionally, Bush's job approval rating, now at 33%, is just two points away from being the lowest of his administration.

Who Should Control?

Data from the weekend USA Today/Gallup poll ratified the basic results of the election: Americans want Democrats to be in control.

Asked who they want to have more influence over the direction the nation takes in the next year, Americans by a two to one margin said the Democrats in Congress rather than Bush.

While we debate the nuances of the exit polls and this group of voters, or that candidate's positioning ofr 2008, let's not miss the forest for the trees. Elections have consequences, and this election puts enormous pressure on the Bush WH that even the media can't gloss over. Suddenly Democrats have a platform, and that means they have a voice.

Bush Faces New Calls to Shift Policies On Mideast

New Pressure as President Meets With Iraq Study Group

President Bush came under new pressure yesterday at home and abroad to alter his policies in the Middle East. British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed for a broader Arab-Israeli peace initiative to help stabilize Iraq, while the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee pledged to take a hard line on seeking early troop withdrawals.

Bush offered little indication that he is planning to adjust his approach, telling reporters gathered in the Oval Office that "the best military options depend upon the conditions on the ground" in Iraq. The president also met for more than an hour with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) and other members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which is looking to chart a new course in the war.

Stories like that don't happen in a vacuum. We're a week out, and while Bush remains President and C-in-C, the terrain has shifted both in DC and in the media. All of a sudden there's new ideas and new directions on the table. Whether they're obvious or brilliant or unworkable, the election is already beginning to pay dividends. Making the most of it is the next set of tasks, and knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em remains an art form. Nonetheless, for the moment, the public wants Democrats to do what they're doing, and there's no harm in letting Republicans know that about, say, every hour.

More Post-Election Analysis

by DemFromCT

As the Republican defeat (everyone agrees it was, even those who disagree about the rest) seeps into the marrow of politicians, pundits and citizens, the Meaning Of It All continues to be debated. While we know there'll be a GOP civil war between those who want to retake the middle and those who want to tack hard to the Right, the winning moves won't be apparent until 2008. however, the foundations are being built now. Chuck Todd:

Turnout for the Republican base was good. Maybe not great like '04, but decent enough to hold some districts that I thought would fall in a wave (like those three seats in Ohio that the GOP somehow held).

Dems were only going to win Ohio-01, Ohio-02 and Ohio-15 with some deflation in the GOP turnout. But the base was there. What killed various Republican candidates everywhere else was their inability to woo the middle.

There was a time when I believed the Angry Independent wasn't going to vote in '06 because Democrats hadn't made a compelling case for change. If that had turned out to be the case, Republicans would have been safe in the Senate and certainly would have held the House losses to less than two dozen. But a combination of events, possibly triggered by the Mark Foley scandal, awakened the Angry Independent.

There is an important lesson for the GOP to learn when studying these returns. When a political party gets shellacked, the intra-party feud becomes dominated by the base, not the moderates. The base will swear, in this case, that the party needed more true-blue conservatives running, or that it should have been more conservative in its congressional governance. And then these losses would have been avoided.

There are some shreds of truth in that thinking, but the GOP will only isolate itself even more if it takes a turn to the right. Republicans will not regain the majority if they continue to grow away from the inner-suburban voter. Missouri and Virginia, for instance, sent that message loud and clear.

If congressional Republicans turn to the right, they risk creating more problems for themselves in the two battlegrounds of this country: the Midwest and the West. But I think there's a good chance that cooler heads will prevail for the GOP, and that they'll direct their ire toward the proper place: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Well, they've already started with blaming the WH for the timing of Rumsfeld's departure. And as for trying to play to the middle, this WH seems incapable of that.

More On The Media Narrative Of The Election

There will be a great deal of uncertainly, flux and bloviating in the media, especially on air, as the election results sink in. There's air time to fill. There's conflict to gin up (the media loves conflict, which is why the cable news networks are interviewing so many immigration opponents this weekend - comity and bipartisanship doesn't sell). And there's a fundamental misunderstanding of who the Democrats are, which we've been better about explaining than they have.

One reasonably on-the-mark article appears today in the Financial Times, via MSNBC (more accessible). The idea of populist politics (fair trade vs. free trade, for example) is not lost on the authors.

Defeated Republicans have found solace in the fact that many of their victorious Democratic opponents are "social conservatives". They point to James Webb, who surprised everyone by winning the bitter and close Senate race in Virginia on Thursday, giving his party a majority of one in the upper house tom complement its decisive victory in the House of Representatives.

However, neither Mr Webb nor the majority of the Democratic freshmen who won elections this week can so easily be fitted into that category. Punching the air and holding up the dusty boots of his son who is serving in Iraq, Mr Webb told cheering supporters in Arlington that his election was as much a vote for economic fairness as it was for a change of course in Iraq.

Many of us have noted the media discussion about how "conservative" the new crop is. Compared to who? Che? Mao? Hugo Chavez?

Election Analysis

by DemFromCT

There are some interesting post-mortems about the Big Picture that are worth preserving and reviewing so that we begin to understand what happened. Sure, we have an idea, but it's important to learn the right lessons. For example, from Gallup (free today):

An analysis of Gallup's final pre-election poll data shows that the Democratic victory in Tuesday's House elections was because of a rising Democratic tide that lifted support in almost all key subgroups. In addition to solid support from their core constituent groups such as liberals, nonwhites, women, urban residents, and older Americans, Democrats also owe a significant debt to independent voters, who tilted strongly in their direction. Whites and those who are married -- groups that usually favor the Republican Party -- were evenly divided in their vote. Democrats did better among rural voters, a change from previous voting patterns.

Opposition to the Iraq war appears to have helped the Democratic cause. Although supporters and opponents of the war voted about equally for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, the fact that opponents outnumbered supporters made Iraq a net-plus for Democrats. In general, it appears that Democratic efforts to get out the vote played a significant part in the win, because those who were contacted by Democrats and urged to vote for Democratic candidates strongly supported Democrats, even if they were also contacted by Republicans.

Why Gallup? It's not the rich body of exit poll data you can see below, but they came closest to predicting the turnout and final generic vote.

The Next Open Thread: Turnout

by DemFromCT

So many things to talk about. How about this from Gallup?

Democrats Shrink Republican Turnout Advantage

The Democrats went toe to toe with the Republicans in voter turnout on Tuesday, a switch from previous midterm elections, when Republicans held a comfortable advantage in the percentage of their voter base coming out on Election Day. The extent of underlying popular support for Democratic candidates for Congress (evidenced by a strong lead among registered voters) would have likely delivered a majority of seats in Congress to the Democrats even if they had trailed Republicans in a more typical turnout pattern. But by trimming the Republicans' usual turnout advantage, the Democrats enhanced their seat gains considerably.

According to Gallup's final pre-election survey, a similar proportion of Republicans and Democrats were poised to vote on Tuesday: 45% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats. This two-point Republican edge is smaller than the seven-point turnout advantage enjoyed by the Republicans in the two previous midterm elections, and the nine-point GOP advantage seen in 1994.

What do you want to focus on? The Senate? Bush and Rummy and the new guy? What?

They May Not Be Your Father's Democrats, But They're NOT Republicans Lite

By Mimikatz

As many have noticed (and here), there is an effort afoot to stress that the Democrats elected last night are "really just Republicans" paraphrasing Candy Crowley, or at least more conservative than the old-style Dems.  Clearly, this is wrong on three counts at least:  One, the Dems believe in governing, not simply taking power at all costs, like the GOP.  Two, they really believe in democratic government, at least more than the GOP.  They will never behave like the GOP in power because they value policy and process more.  Three, they really are refinding themselves as the party as the common folks and the common good. 

One of the best analyses is from Chuck Todd, who notes that we now have four regional parties, the Northeast liberal/moderates, the Southern conservatives, the Midwest populists, and the Western libertarians.  This is, of course, an oversimplification, but it has a great deal of truth.  But obscured in much of the talking head chatter is the fact that many of the Dems elected last night, even if they are socially conservative, like Heath Shuler, or sympathetic to the military, like Jim Webb (assuming his victory holds), are also economic populists.  Sherrod Brown is liberal on both counts, as is Sheldon Whitehouse.  It was the most conservative Dem challenger, Harold Ford, who went down to defeat.   The majority of Dems elected last night do not worship on the altar of big business and rigged markets and "free trade" that is neither.  They do not favor privatizing Social Security or otherwise shredding the safety net.  They favor helping the middle class, not the wealthy.  In a word, they clearly are not Republicans in disguise, even though some share many of the more socially conservative attitudes of their constituents.

Moreover, the Dems owe their victories above all to the public's opposition to the War in Iraq.  That is what drove many people to the polls,  That, plus Katrina and corruption, is what outraged the middle.  Look at the victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.  The lock-step GOPers went down to defeat over Iraq all over the  country.  An yes, many House freshmen realize that they have a target on their backs, but then so do the GOPers who narrowly dodged defeat last night. 

The Dem leadership  won't be ego-driven overreachers like Newt Gingrich.  They are too smart for that.  They know they have to deliver what they can.  But they understand who brung them to DC, and they will pay attention to the middle as well as the base.  They may not be your father's Democrats, but thery certainly aren't Republicans.  If they were, they wouldn't have won.

UPDATE:

Bush capitulates already.  Rumsfeld out as Secretary of Defense, to be replaced by Robert Gates, former head of the CIA, member of the Baker-Hamilton Commission and close to Bush's father.  His Dad's people are coming in to pick up the pieces.  Now we know why Cheney went hunting.