I’d missed this Pew report from a little while back. It’s music to my ears, even if the numbers reflect winger blogs as well as liberal ones. Here are some choice parts:

-31% of Americans used the internet during the 2006 campaign to get
political news and information and discuss the races through email.

-Relatively young broadband users say the internet is a more important
political news source than newspapers.  Read more 

You probably know how I much I dig Tom Schaller, and his most recently discussion with the FDL gang just shows how much cool, class and intellect he’s got. I can hardly believe such a lucid mind is employed by the Academe /I keed, I keed/.

His key point is pretty simple: racist people in the South are the reason Republicans have locked it up in recent years, and no amount of pandering to them will make them vote Democratic. Obviously not all Southerners are racist, but so long as there are enough of them in Southern states to form a voting bloc, the South will remain Republican.

The discussion over there hit all the important points about strategy, so I won’t repeat them here. But I had a couple of questions that I didn’t get to ask, having been on the phone when it took place. What do you think: are the DLC and a large group of the Democratic consulting class racist?  Read more 

And people tell me I’m a raving, foam at the mouth, drama queen?

When that happens, our movement will destroy itself, and our government will be as unresponsive as ever. Our work will have been for nothing. We can’t allow that to happen.  Read more 

It won’t surprise you at all, but guess what’s likely to be one of the last acts of the 109th Congress? eVote Fraud ’certification.’ Brad’s got more:

With Christine Jennings (D) contesting the results of Florida’s 13th congressional district race in court, “it is increasingly likely that the contest for the open Florida 13th district seat could end up before the House Administration Committee, which has oversight over federal elections,” reports Roll Call.

Here’s the process: if a candidate contests the race before the committee, “two majority members and one minority member” investigate and then the committee recommends a course of action. “That recommendation is voted on by the full panel and sent to the House floor for consideration just like any other bill that is reported out of a committee.”

“Because the Democrats do not take control of the House until Jan. 3, it is likely that any investigation by House Administration would be launched while Republicans are still in charge — meaning the GOP will have the 2-1 majority on the investigating committee. But by the time the full House would be asked to seat the new Member, the Democrats would be in the majority.”  Read more 

Refresher Course #1
Refresher Course #2
Refresher Course #3 with quote:

After the Republicans have admitted to a thumping, why is it that the only one complaining on the Democratic side is James Carville, who today in addition to trashing Howard Dean, praised the RNC, the outfit that brought us the racist ad that defeated Harold Ford, James’ supposed candidate for Chair? Perhaps he’s not aware that under Dean in this midterm election the DNC has raised record cash —- all hard dollars — including three times as much from major donors, eight times as much online and made a $30 million investment in the ‘06 cycle, three times as much as the DNC put into the last midterm. Not to mention we made an $8m overhaul of our voter file which was successfully used in 47 states and through the 50 state strategy invested in states like Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana and Montana where we had critical victories on Tuesday.

Time to shut your stupid, jealous, whining, insignificant hole. But of course, he won’t:

Democratic strategist James Carville says his party should dump Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic Party because of incompetence.  Read more 

This is one of the best and most complete recitations of why Rahm sucks goats that I’ve read since the elections. Save it, and throw it in the face of everyone who parrots the “victory for centrists” and “moderate mandate” crap. Here are some highlights:

The failure of Emanuel’s strategy can be demonstrated by the numbers. Of the 21 “first wave” picks announced on April 27th, only nine have been declared winners, with one (Joe Courtney in CT-02) holding a 170 vote lead over the incumbent, and three others losing by 1400 (Madrid, NM-01), 2700 (Kilroy, OH-05) and 3600 (Burner WA-08) votes in races that are still considered “too close to call.” Four of Emanuel’s “first wave” picks lost by over 10,000 votes (Busansky, FL-09; Lucas KY-04; Derby NV-02; and Cranley, OH-01).

Only three of Emanuel’s picks received support by the two largest ActBlue organizations (Murphy, PA-06; and Gillibrand, NY-20 both supported by Blue America, with Burner supported by NetRoots.) At least three of the DCCC’s “first wave” picks were against incumbents who were directly implicated in the Abramoff scandal (Hayworth, Taylor, Sweeney), and a fourth (Nick Lampson) was running against a write in candidate for Tom Delay’s old seat. (Lampson did not run for Delay’s unexpired term, but his Write-In opponent received more votes in that contest than Lampson received in the general election.)  Read more 

Um, Hoss: Tell that to Jennings.

Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country.

More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.

That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate — a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.  Read more 

Ach. No, my head doesn’t hurt. But someone for the love of Durga tell me why I have to have my Woman’s Friend (the bitch) on election night. Yes, I’m so blue I bleed for democracy.

So what did I learn, on my first night of officially being part of the Beltway Cocktail Party circuit? Money. It’s all about money. And free food. People here seem to equate power with how much food and drink, and how fancy, an organization can provide. Good liberal groups I like: good but not fancy fare. Slick insider/media organizations I hate: chi-chi all the way. Gay people: fabulous, as always. But again with the money. You could hear what wasn’t spoken out of a sense of being polite, as if it were shouted. Everyone was thinking about the new alignments of money; who’s asking for it, who’s giving it away, and who gets to spend it.  Read more 

Looking good, Billy Ray. Ruy has some more to say. At this point, I think there is little purpose to reviewing additional last minute polling. Either the methodology is sound, and we should expect races to reflect the numbers as of this weekend, or the majik faeries of the evoting ether will prove to us once again not to trust our lying eyes.

Really, it seems that simple to me. New voting machines, by year, nationwide by county map. Type of voting machine, nationwide by county map. Keep it handy, kids. Tuesday will be at the very least, interesting.

I feel shitty for not posting this a month ago, doubly so because I recently spoke with a friend who didn’t quite understand the deadlines and bullshit between him and casting a ballot; my friend may not be able to vote this year because of it. Anyway, I voted today. I sent off my absentee ballot with all that “we guarantee it will get there and by a specific date” stuff, I consider the extra postage well spent. I’ve bitched and moaned and griped about our Scary Voting Machines here for years, so I won’t remind you, except to say that you shouldn’t pop the champagne just yet. As always Brad will tell you why. Check him out if you haven’t lately. If the Democrats are sitting around counting chickens and committee chairmanships, they’re stupider than I thought. But you, gentle reader, are smarter than that. You know as well as I do: there’s nothing Rove won’t do to win, and all it takes is one carefully selected precinct’s worth of “unforseeable problems” to turn an entire state. I hope all of you used your absentee option this year. I know I feel better for doing so.  Read more 

On caveat is important before I get all gloaty. I listened to the C-Span panel on this report, and the author of the study was quick to note: what young voters say they’ll do and what they do end up doing are often two different things. Think of the abstinence reportee, who’s had anal sex and received a blow job in the last week, but worrying about parental views, claims to those asking, “Yes! I’m a virgin.” That said, this Harvard study is chock full of good news. Highlights include:

— 2 —
President George W. Bush gets “C-” grade on seven key issues. Asked to grade
President Bush at the half-way point of his second term on seven key issues facing
America – the campaign against terrorism, education, the environment, jobs and the
economy, health care, illegal immigration, and the war in Iraq – the President averaged a
“C-” grade, with the War in Iraq (D+) earning the worst mark of all. The President did
not earn a grade higher than “C” on any of the seven issues. When asked their thoughts
on the job George W. Bush is doing as President, sixty-eight percent say they disapprove
while only thirty-two percent approved.  Read more 

A very smart person and I argued recently about the idea that Dems with big war chests should be spreading the love around to close House and Senate races in the name of party unity. Smart Person told me, no, that’s not what needs to happen now, because the close races are conservative Dems, and progressives want them to lose. But there’s not concensus around the net on this.

Happy news:

Senate Republicans with enormous campaign war chests are refusing to transfer significant amounts of money to help fellow Republicans who are cash-strapped and face defeat in the final weeks of the campaign.
The stinginess alarms some of the Republican Party’s top campaign strategists, especially because it is in such stark contrast to the millions of dollars that Democrats have transferred to their candidates in need.  Read more 

He better hope I don’t run into him while I’m in town. Seriously. I don’t know if this counts as a form of vote suppression, stupidity, or that create your own reality shit Republicans are so good at. But whatever the case, I swear I’ll give him a fat lip in Valerie’s name if I cross his path.  Read more 

The slightly verbose Mr. Newberry has put up a charmingly romantic response to a new and bold declaration by a group of unabashed liberals, and the short version is, “we’re liberal, we’re angry, and we’re going to save Constitutional Democracy whether our conservative detractors like it or not!”

The comments there are also endearingly typical of the disorganization and disunity of the left, in which I find myself agreeing with ‘both’ kinds of posters- talk is cheap, but this kind of talk is great. It’s got me thinking about the future, and what progressives should be doing.  Read more 

Offered without comment:

Perhaps the biggest danger to Republicans in the wake of all these bad polls is that their volunteer base, so critical to victory in 2004, won’t put their heart in their work. If volunteers become convinced that Republicans will lose control of Congress, what incentive do they have to work hard?

If you’re ever read a profile of Ken Mehlman, you know he is obsessed with metrics. For him, one of the most important sources of data is a weekly e-mail his political team prepares called the “Weekly Grassroots Report.” It meticulously records the work of tens of thousands of volunteers in targeted states, counties and congressional districts across the country. The data summary allows the RNC to determine which states are meeting goals and which states are falling behind.

The RNC declined to share the most recent report, which was issued Monday. But two independent sources who saw last week’s report professed to be surprised: not only was their no drop off last week, 12 states broke new voter contact records.  Read more 

Dammit, I really need to get ready for tonight’s blogger gathering in the wild north of this state, but friends keep pulling me back into the ethertubes. Fucking great post by Skippy:

via katieallisongranju (didn’t susan st. james and jane curtain star in that?) via mcjoan at dkos: a kansas editorial (by steve rose, chairman of the johnson county sun) explaining why the publicans suck:

in the 56 years we have been publishing in johnson county, this basically has been a republican newspaper. in the old days, before the republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional republicans. that is, we happily endorsed jan meyers for congress, bob dole for u.s. senate, nancy kassebaum for u.s. senate; virtually every republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative democrats george and bob docking and john carlin.

the point is, i can name on two hands over a half century the number of democrats we have endorsed for public office.

this year, we will do something different.  Read more 

It’s Saturday and I’m feeling conversational (too bad our numbers drop off on the weekend, eh LB?) Anyway, for those loyal readers out there, I’ve got a question: How are you feeling about the elections?

Here is one of many, many posts circulating about how Things are Looking Up for Democrats all over the country. At our party, I spoke with some informed folks who believed the outlier for Democratic gain is as high as forty seats. I also spoke with some informed people who believe the mess we saw in places like Maryland is only the merest foretaste, and that we should be prepared for some really “surprising” results.

So what do you think?  Read more 

There aren’t a lot of hard numbers in this typically lame piece from the WaPo, but it is close to what I think. You heard it here first: there’s a really good chance that the Republicans will retain control of both houses this fall. Why? I can think of a couple of reasons.

First off, the Dems have been just pathetic in their GOTV efforts. I have read several posts from smarter people about how the Dems have utterly failed to take advantage of movements and trends this year, a prime example being the way in which the national Dem leadership failed to mobilize and coordinate with pro-immigration groups. Have you heard any prominent Democrat speak about turning that enormous bloc into registered Democrats? Neither have I.  Read more