November 28th, 2006
Having “skin in the game” does make a difference. If more of the political elite had skin in the game we would, undoubtedly, see a lot more of this:
Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.
At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.
Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.
UPDATE: The Washington Post covers the same incident:
If the exchange with Bush two weeks ago is any indication, Webb won’t be a wallflower, especially when it comes to the war in Iraq. And he won’t stick to a script drafted by top Democrats.
“I’m not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall,” Webb said in an interview yesterday in which he confirmed the exchange between him and Bush. “No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.”
In the days after the election, Webb’s Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill went out of their way to make nice with Bush and be seen by his side. House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat down for a lunch and photo opportunity with Bush, as did Democratic leaders in the Senate.
Not Webb, who said he tried to avoid a confrontation with Bush at the White House reception but did not shy away from one when the president approached.
Semper Fidelis.
November 26th, 2006
Right after the Democratic party regained control of the House and Senate after twelve years of abysmal Republican domination, many mainstream media types pushed the idea that conservatives had won the election for Democrats. However, as noted here, that is just one more myth about the 2006 elections.
Additionally, even though the mainstream media and establishment insiders in DC refuse to acknowledge that, in fact, the Democratic party, with a generally liberal agenda, won the election; it is encouraging to read that one of the old DC insiders, the Dean, as some call him, is coming around to the reality that what we saw this past November 7th, 2006, was nothing more than a Democratic tsunami. The Dean, David Broder, writes:
Buried in the news of the national Democratic midterm election victory was an even more dramatic power shift in the state that has become famous as the site of the first presidential primary in each cycle.
In the words of veteran New Hampshire Republican leader Tom Rath, it was "beyond historic" when the Democrats took complete control of the handsome state capitol in Concord for the first time since 1874.
[...]
New Hampshire was not alone. Iowa, whose presidential caucuses come even earlier than the New Hampshire primary, also elected a Democrat as governor and saw both houses of its legislature flip to the Democrats.
Democrats now control both houses in 24 states; Republicans do so in 16; and nine states have split control. (Nebraska has a nonpartisan unicameral legislature.)
These numbers become more important as we approach 2010 and another census, which will provide the raw material for the next round of line-drawing for congressional and legislative districts. If Democrats can maintain their legislative advantage along with their new 28-22 lead in governorships, they will be in the driver’s seat on that redistricting.
[...]
The force of the movement spared no one. Peter Spaulding, a longtime member of the Executive Council and a leader in John McCain’s victorious 2000 New Hampshire primary campaign, lost his seat to a 71-year-old opponent who barely made any effort and who was vacationing in Belgium when the election returns came in. Dozens of longtime citizen-legislators, serving part time for $200 a term and rarely having to bother to campaign, found themselves voted out of office.
"The only successful Republicans were the ones who were not on the ballot in 2006," such as Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu, Rath said.
November 26th, 2006
Our democracy at work:
After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nation’s voting system, this month’s midterm election revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts.
[...]
Voting experts say it is impossible to say how many votes were not counted that should have been. But in Florida alone, the discrepancies reported across Sarasota County and three others amount to more than 60,000 votes. In Colorado, as many as 20,000 people gave up trying to vote, election officials say, as new online systems for verifying voter registrations crashed repeatedly. And in Arkansas, election officials tallied votes three times in one county, and each time the number of ballots cast changed by more than 30,000.
[...]
Accusations of missing ballots and vote stuffing were not uncommon with mechanical voting machines. But election experts say that with electronic voting machines, the potential consequences of misdeeds or errors are of a greater magnitude. A single software error can affect thousands of votes, especially with machines that keep no paper record.
[...]
In Arkansas, Florida and Pennsylvania, the questions were about the voting machines themselves. In addition to the Sarasota issue, which may have been caused by a software problem, there were similar problems in the Florida counties of Charlotte, Lee and Sumter. In those counties, said Barbara Burt, vice president and director for election reform at Common Cause, more than 40,000 voters who used touch-screen machines seemed not to have chosen a candidate in the attorney general’s race. But since one candidate won by 250,000 votes, the anomaly has been generally overlooked.
On election night in Arkansas, officials discovered that erroneous results had been tallied in Benton County. After retabulating the votes, they announced that the total number of ballots cast had jumped to 79,331 from 47,134, which meant a turnout of more than 100 percent in some precincts. After a third tallying, the total dropped to 48,681.
November 21st, 2006
After the recent elections where Dems recaptured the Senate and House after 12 years of being in the minority we’ve seen the GOP bickering over what went wrong. This cartoon does a great job of capturing the GOP mood:
November 20th, 2006
Time.com has a put together a handy list debunking the top five myths of these past elections:
MYTH: Joe Lieberman’s victory proves the netroots don’t matter.
REALITY: The netroots had some key victories.
MYTH: Democrats won because they carefully recruited more conservative candidates.
REALITY: Democrats won because their candidates were conservative about their message.
MYTH: The losses Republicans suffered this election were no different than what you usually see in a President’s sixth year in office.
REALITY: Redistricting minimized what might have been a truly historic shellacking.
MYTH: The election was all about the war.
REALITY: It’s the dishonesty, stupid.
MYTH: Republicans lost their base.
REALITY: The base turned out, they just got beat.
Here are some fun excerpts:
The Netroots Had Some Key Victories
[I]n the midst of a Democratic wave, the netroots candidates failed to sweep, causing some pundits to claim that the netroots’ influence continues to be overstated: “The Netroots Election? Not So Fast,” editorialized The Nation. When Rick Perlstein tried, in The New Republic, to claim the election as a netroots triumph, Ryan Lizza replied in the magazine’s blog that in addition to having the netroots’ support, winning candidates also had the national Democratic party to thank, as it “dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races.” What’s the real takeaway? Of the 19 candidates that three of the biggest liberal blogs (Daily Kos, mydd.com and Swing State Project) raised money for, eight of the candidates won. This improves on the blogs’ record from 2004, when Daily Kos picked out 16 campaigns to strongly support and raise money for, all of which lost. This cycle, bloggers may have been most strongly linked to Lamont, but they actually donated more money to Jim Webb of Virginia.
Democrats Won Because Their Candidates Were Conservative About Their Message
Washington will see an influx of unorthodox Democrats: congressmen-elect Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana are pro-life and pro-gun. But liberals won in some relatively conservative areas as well, and often after being largely ignored by national Democratic strategists. In the House, they include Kentucky’s John Yarmuth (who supports universal health care and affirmative action), New Hampshire’s Carol Shea-Porter (she was once escorted out of a Bush event for wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt) and Dave Loebsack (an anti-war liberal academic) in Iowa. The same is true of the Senate, where the new Democratic members include Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, a socialist.
Redistricting Minimized What Might Have Been A Truly Historic Shellacking
Republicans spent most of the year boasting about how the redistricting of the past decade had made them all but bulletproof. Absent those new district lines, says the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, “it could easily have been 45 or more.” And there are other results that break with past patterns, Ornstein adds. Democrats did not lose a single seat — a feat the party had not accomplished since 1922. Even in the Republican sweep of 1994, the G.O.P. lost four of its open seats to Democrats. What’s more, the wave swept all the way down the ballot — for instance, handing the New Hampshire House to the Democrats for the first time since 1922.
It’s The Dishonesty, Stupid
74% of voters surveyed in exit polls ranked corruption and ethics as important in determining their votes; by comparison, 67% said that about Iraq. The lack of progress in Iraq helped nationalize the elections, but multiple scandals (Abramoff, Foley) appear to have driven home an urge for massive change.
The Base Turned Out, They Just Got Beat
[T]he White House’s political director Sara Taylor, the difference between base turnout in 2002 and 2006 is within the margin of error. And independent exit polls show the same percentages of voters who called themselves “evangelicals,” “white born-again Christians,” “weekly church-goers,” “Republicans” and “conservatives” as in 2006 as in 2004. “The base turned out,” says Taylor, “but independents made up a larger share of the electorate and they broke very heavily Democratic.”
My favorite debunked myth is the one about the influence of the grassroots and how we’ve used the web to make our voices heard. I’m tremendously enthusiastic about what we’re building, and can’t wait to see the impact that we’ll have in two years — and in the time in between. Additionally, while I’m nervously anxious about seeing the results of our newly elected Congressional majority (given the mess that Republicans left behind), as a Democratic Party supporter you just gotta feel good about the opportunities before us and the possibility of a permanent Democratic majority.
