Category: Elections

How Politics Are Supposed to Work

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Here’s something that I didn’t know, that Palm Springs, California, is the gayest city per capita in the United States.

So, when the homophobic police chief and DA decided to run entrap run a sting operation to harass gays, they both get forced out:

The June 2009 gay sex sting netted 19 public indecent exposure arrests, and disbelief and outrage have festered in this desert haven ever since.
This is Palm Springs, “the gayest city in America,” a gay tourist destination governed by an openly gay mayor and home to the sexually charged White Party, a dance and music festival that attracts tens of thousands of gay men every year.
………
The controversy reached a boil last June with the revelation that an officer involved in the sting was taped uttering a gay slur. It grew venomous in December when Police Chief David Dominguez, who had disciplined the officer, acknowledged that he too had made an “inappropriate comment” — also caught on tape.
………
It wasn’t enough. Dominguez abruptly announced his retirement last week.
………
Former Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco’s hard-line prosecution of the Warm Sands cases, which have yet to go to trial, rallied many in the Palm Springs gay community to pour money into his challenger’s campaign in the June election. Pacheco lost to Superior Court Judge Paul Zellerbach by 8,400 votes.

“I was told that on election night he was cursing my name,” [counsel of many of defendants, Robert] Tansey said.

It should noted that the police and DA claimed that there were extensive complaints, but they have been unable or unwilling to turn over that information to defense attorneys.

Palm Springs has been in decline for decades, with its recent status as a gay vacation destination being the only thing that is not turning it into Inland Empire, but the police, and the Republican (I Wikied it) DA decided that it was time for some gay bashing, and they discovered that the LGBT community has learned to vote.

Oops!

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Two potential reactions:


Whoever suggested that he rent out his house


My Reaction

Rahm Emmanuel has been struck from the ballot for the Chicago Mayoral race:

A state appeals court on Monday threw the Chicago mayor’s race into turmoil by ruling that front-runner and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel did not qualify for the February ballot.

Emanuel immediately responded that he would appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court and urged quick consideration. The ruling on Monday overturned decisions by a lower court and a Chicago elections board that allowed him on the February 22 ballot.

It appears that there is an exemption in the law for elected officials, but not for staff, and the fact that he had rented out his house was a major contributing factor.

That being said, I think that it is likely that it will be overturned on appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court, though I would prefer if the ruling stood, and Rahm has the  backing of the machine, so he still has a good chance of winning.

Republicans Are So F%$#ing Classy

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Wouldn’t you know it, “Jesse Kelly, the ex-Marine Tea Partyer who challenged Gabrielle Giffords,” is looking into the possibility of gearing up for a special election:

Kelly, if you don’t already know, has been taking heat since Giffords’ shooting for sponsoring a campaign event last year in which supporters joined him in shooting a “fully automatic M-16.” “Get on target for November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” the event’s announcement read.

It’s true that the M-16 event had no direct connection with Giffords’ shooting, and claims that it indirectly helped create a “climate” conducive to the shooting are dubious at best. Still, to many people, Kelly is now best known as the guy who encouraged supporters to shoot M-16s in the name of defeating a member of Congress who was, several months later, nearly shot to death. Politically, the association is toxic, and Kelly faces a formidable — maybe impossible — task in repairing the damage.

Thus, stories about him quietly looking into whether there might soon be a special election for Giffords’ seat are particularly damaging for him. Sure, the inquiry his campaign apparently made wasn’t actually that unreasonable. There were, after all, reports earlier this week that Arizona state law requires that Giffords’ seat be declared vacant if she’s incapacitated for more than 90 days. All Kelly may have done is make a discreet inquiry about whether this is true. (It isn’t; only the House itself can declare a seat vacant.) But, especially in the wake of the M-16 controversy, it looks terrible for Kelly to be seen making political calculations right now.

Actually, it doesn’t look terrible.

It’s par for the course for the ‘Phants.  It took them about 12 hours to politicize 911, after all.

Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Ass on the Way Out, Joey

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Joe Lieberman makes his retirement official:

Referring to Mr. Lieberman’s plan to forgo re-election, Bill Curry, a prominent Democrat who served with Mr. Lieberman in the State Senate, said, “It’s the first thing he’s done in 10 years to make Connecticut Democrats completely happy.”

I don’t really have much to add to this, except for the fact that Ezra Klein has clearly been assimilated by the Beltway Borg™, and has become yet another thought free spewer of conventional DC wisdom, since he is wondering if Joe Lieberman is some sort of Democratic Hero:

That [Obama’s disgraceful lobbying on behalf of Lieberman to keep his seat and seniority] kept Lieberman in the fold, and after Arlen Specter switched parties and Al Franken won his election, gave Democrats the 60 votes they needed to break a Republican filibuster against health-care reform. Lieberman’s behavior during the debate was often erratic and seemingly unprincipled. Among other things, he skipped the meetings where Democrats were trying to work out a compromise on the public option, and then he killed the Medicare buy-in proposal they’d developed — despite endorsing that exact proposal months before. In doing so, he doomed a great piece of policy, and by doing it at the last minute, endangered the rest of the bill, too. But the reality is that the legislation simply wouldn’t have passed without his vote. And after extracting his pound of flesh, he voted “aye.”

This ignores the fact that the Democrats really had 60 votes for only a few weeks, because Ted Kennedy was busy dying, and the displays of narcissism, petulance, self importance, and wounded pride that made Lieberman determined to inflict as much damage as possible while keeping his committee chairmanship.

If Lieberman could have found a way to vote “No”, and keep his position, he would have, because he was all about petty vengeance.

All I Want for Christmas*…

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Is for the rumors to be true, and for that ratf%$# Joe Lieberman not to seek reelection in 2012 to be true:

Amid growing speculation that he will not seek re-election in 2012, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s office said Tuesday afternoon that the Democrat-turned-independent will announce his intentions in Stamford Wednesday.

“You can bet the farm” that Lieberman won’t seek a fifth term in 2012, said a Democratic insider who is close to the 22-year Senate veteran. But neither Lieberman nor his Senate office would confirm that.

Please, oh please let this be true.

*OK, I don’t do Christmas, I am a Jew, and I have no intention of having my circumcision reversed. It’s a metaphor, dammit!

And While We Are Talking About People Upset with Obama

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At Crooks and Liar, they have thrown in the towel:

That does it. Obama needs to face a strong primary challenger. And no, I don’t care if it costs the Democrats the White House in 2012. Obama had a golden opportunity to have an actual victory — the first he’s had since he killed that fly back in 2009 — and he’s flushing it down the crapper. We cannot have this guy representing us anymore. He is too weak to lead.

While Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and the chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, is saying that we need a strong primary challenge from the left to save Obama from himself:

But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unequivocally commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support – as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success – this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate. Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he’s a goner anyway.

Note that both of these comments were before Obama’s sellout this evening.

Buh Bye Bean

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Melissa Bean has conceded the election to her Republican opponent Joe Walsh, and honestly, it makes me happy.

I’d feel different if she were the margin for control of the house, but she isn’t, and she is arguably the worst Democrat in Congress, because she sold her soul for campaign donations to the financial industry, and she was the most effective force on Congress for gutting financial regulations.

While she is (until January) was a member of both the Blue Dog and New Democrat Caucus, she was always about raking in the campaign dough from banks, pharma, etc. so that they can stay in office, which shades her more toward the New Dem side, as opposed to the Blue Dogs, who tend to be motivated more by their own misguided philosophy or a desire to appease constituents.

Give me an honest reactionary over a pseudo-moderate careerist any day.

In related news. Lisa Murkowski beat Joe Miller in her write-in bid.

In your face, Sarah Palin.

George Soros Implies Support for a Primary Challenge

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Or maybe not, since his people are walking it back a little bit:

According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is “used to fighting losing battles but doesn’t like to lose without fighting.”

“We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

……

While Soros’s comment gave some attendees the impression that he’d cheer a primary challenge to the president, the point, sources say, was different. Rather, it is time to shuffle funds into a progressive infrastructure that will take on the tasks that the president can’t or won’t take on.

“People are determined to help build a progressive infrastructure and make sure it is there not just in the months ahead but one that will last in the long term,” said Anna Burger, the retired treasury secretary of SEIU. “Instead of being pushed over by this election it has empowered people to stand up in a bigger way.”

“There was frustration,” said one Democratic operative who attended the meetings. The main concern was about messaging. I think they are frustrated that the president isn’t being more direct. But I did not get the sense that anyone’s commitment to the progressive movement was wavering… The general consensus is that support has to move beyond being about one person and more about a movement. I don’t know if we’ve moved beyond there.”

So, it could be that Soros is saying that he thinks that liberals should disassociate themselves from the Obama political operation, and go back to funding people 3rd party political operatives, because you can’t trust the Obama team to fight for you, or to fight period. (true)

It’s been well known that the Obama administration, and the associated political operation, has been tremendously hostile to 3rd party political operations, both out of a need to micromanage the message, and because of their ceaseless focus on process at the expense of results.

I think that the message, particularly as put forward by a billionaire, is a shot across Obama’s bow.

I think that there was the intention to tell the Obama White House that if they kept trying to veal pen and defund independent groups, then there is a billionaire out there who is willing to dump a significant chunk of change on making his life difficult in 2012.

For myself, I support a robust primary challenge.

Obama’s weakness, and his eagerness to please the malefactors in this situation (do nothing Republicans, dishonest bankers, etc.) while casting his behavior as liberalism could cripple the party, and the solutions that our country needs, for decades to come, much as Herbert Hoover crippled Republicans and conservatism for a generation.

The difference is that Barack Obama’s PPUT (Post Partisan Unity Schtick) is a refutation of liberalism, while Hoover’s activities were an endorsement of conservatism.

Oklamoma, Where the Dumb Comes Sweeping Down the Plains

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So, someone decides to ban “Sharia Law,” in Oklahoma, which will almost certainly be overturned, someone already has a claim that it invalidates his will in violation of the First Amendment, but the constitutional amendment, which intends to, “prohibit state courts from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases,” also has the effect of banning the 10 commandments:

[U of OK Law Professor Joseph] Thai said the ballot measure “raises thorny church-state problems as well” and could even affect a state judge’s ability to consider the Ten Commandments.

“The Ten Commandments, of course, is international law. It did not originate in Oklahoma or the United States,” Thai said.

Morons.

Both the politicians who place demagoguery above observing their oaths of office, and the voters who pulled the lever for this crap.

Now, the Blue Dogs Have Lost Joke Line

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At Time, Joe Klein is saying that the devastating Blue Dog losses are their own damn fault:

This year, however, I do feel that there is an argument that, to an extent, the Dogs brought this on themselves by being penny-wise, dogpound-foolish. The argument goes like this: a larger stimulus package might have helped the economy recover at a faster clip, but the Dogs opposed it on fiscal responsibility grounds. A second argument: the public really has had it with Wall Street, but the Dogs helped water down the financial regulatory bill, gutting the too-big-to-fail provisions. There is real merit to both points. If the stimulus had been bigger and the financial reform package clearer and stronger, the public would have had a different–and, I believe, more positive–sense of the President’s agenda.

Yes, when Democrats are bitch slapping the Democratic agenda, the whole party looks week, and voters hate to vote for weakness.

H/t Kevin Drum.

Just Desserts

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Bummer of a birth mark, ConservaDems

In looking at the elections, there is a trend here:

While a part of this is that liberal Democrats tend to have safer seats, though one of the Blue Dog losers, Gene Taylor, had polled at more than 75% in prior elections, what this is about is the fact that the Blue Dogs and the New Dems created the groundwork for this.

When people thought that they had to vote against Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, it was because the Blue Dogs gave credibility to this Republican talking point by campaigning against her too.

When people complained that the Congressional Democrats were in the banks pockets, it was because the New Democrat Coalition was in the pockets of the banks, and trading loopholes for campaign contributions.

When people complained that nothing was getting done, it was because the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats were slowing things down, because the Blue Dogs and the New Dems wanted time to get insurance company and banking lobbyists geared up and donating.

When they claimed that the stimulus did not work, they validated the Republican storyline.

To a very large degree, they validated the Republican attacks, and weakened legislation and policy, and contributed to the losses that we saw.

In fact, if these folks had held on, which was their argument for their positions, that it made them more electable, Nancy Pelosi would still be speaker in January.

Payback is a bitch, ain’t it?

It is best to remember what Harry S Truman said:

Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.

I’d much rather have a Democratic majority in the House, but I think that they are marginalized.

Let’s keep it that way.

I’m Not Sure if It Was the Elections……

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But after my morning election summary was posted, I got sick.

I ended up worshiping the porcelain alter, and that IPA that I bought by way of a condolence drink did not taste as good coming up as it did coming down.

Still went to work after everything settled down. I’ve had this reaction to stress since I was 7 years old.

It hits when I’m stressed, and then I relax.

And yes, it kind of sucks.

Crap.

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So the lost the house, ironically largely because of the actions of the Senate and a former Senator (Obama). Lots of good things made it through the House only to die in the Senate with an assist from the complete apathy of the White House.

If the Dems retake the House in 2012, and Obama is reelected, the lesson here is that taking the initiative without movement from the White House and the Senate, you will get gigged again, and again.

It looks like Murkowski won in Alaska, as “Write Ins” got a plurality, only they haven’t started counting the write-ins yet. That only happens after a full tally, and if the total number of write ins are enough to win under Alaska law.

As to the bad news:

  • Alan Grayson lost his bid for reelection. It’s a pity, we need Democrats with guts.
  • Rand Paul will be battling Tom Coburn for craziest muthaf%$#er in the Senate.
  • Heath Shuler won. Normally, I wouldn’t root for the other guy, even if they are the rankest of Blue Dogs, which Shuler is, but as a Washington Redskins fan, I have a bit of residual hostility about his expensive washout in the NFL.
  • It appears that Republicans are will not be relegated a minor party status in Colorado for the next 4 years, because Dan Maes barely cleared the 10% hurdle.

The good news:

  • The Blue Dogs and New Dems appeared to take the brunt of the losses.
    • This is more than simple churlishness on my part. While the economy is clearly the proximate cause of this debacle, the perception that both parties are in the thrall of the banks, a perception which is entirely true for the Blue Dogs/New Dems who worked tirelessly to castrate financial reform and foreclosure relief. It is appropriate that those Democrats who sold the party, and the country, down the road for fat-cat campaign donations bear the brunt of voter wrath.
  • Harry Reid defeats Sharron Angle. Now that he’s won, could we please elect someone else as Democratic leader? He is hapless and hopeless, and he is the luckiest person tonite for having to run against nut-job Angle, or perhaps 2nd luckiest after Chris Coons, who ran against Christine O’Donnell.
  • The Senate margin is large enough that Joe Lieberman won’t be able viably threaten the Democrats with crossing the aisle.

A random thought on the loss of Alexi Giannoulias: Choosing someone as the nominee, even though they spent years running a bank that was then on the edge of failure, (It has since failed) just because they are basketball buddies with Barack Obama, is a really stupid thing.

As a final note, that whole idea of using Google searches to estimate final votes? It does not appear to be validated by the results.

For a quick view of the races, I would suggest going to the Talking Points Memo Election Center.

I still have not gotten results on the Tapeworm Initiative.

Anecdotal Reports of High Turnout

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Hopefully, this is good news for Dems, but I am not making any predictions, as I stated this morning.

I am so glad that I voted early on October 22 though.

The reports are of a lot of people waiting in line to vote.

I’m not going to be following this stuff on the cable networks.

Basically, I’ll look at web based tickers, because I don’t want to listen to the damn pundits.

I Haven’t Followed Out of State Initiatives Much

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But this one in Washington State is prize:

Ballot Measure Summary
This measure would require the Seal of the State of Washington to be changed to depict a vignette of a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the lower intestine of a taxpayer shown as the central figure. The seal would be required to be encircled with the following words: “Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every tax payer.” The illustration would be selected from submissions submitted by taxpayers.

Just when you thought that the silly season could not get any sillier………

H/t DC at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.

No Predictions from Me

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My record sucks, and I will take Abraham Lincoln’s advice, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

But I will leave you with a political quote on the horror that is Republicans the man who best understood horror in the 20th century,* Howard Phillips Lovecraft:

As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

H/t Fafblog for the quote, which is being circulated by movie director, and Lovecraft fan, Joe Dante.

*Or at least pre Holocaust, since I believe that it fundamentally redefined horror in the Western world by putting the lie to the myth of man’s moral progress..

Oh For F%$#’s Sake, Pick a F%$#ing Fight!

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In the face of what are likely to be very large legislative losses tomorrow, the Obama administration is busy trying to find more ways to capitulate to Republicans in the vain hope that they will be nice:

With Republicans poised to gain ground in Tuesday’s elections, the White House is losing hope that Congress will approve its plan to raise taxes on the nation’s wealthiest families and is increasingly focusing on a new strategy that would preserve tax breaks for both the wealthy and the middle class.

According to people familiar with talks at the White House and among senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, breaking apart the Bush administration tax cuts is now being discussed as a more realistic goal. That strategy calls for permanent extension of cuts that benefit families earning less than $250,000 a year, and temporary extension of cuts on income above that amount.

The move would “decouple” the two sets of provisions, Democrats said, and focus the debate when tax cuts for the rich expired next year or the year after. Republicans would be forced to defend carve-outs for a tiny minority populated by millionaires, an unpopular position that would be difficult to advance without the cover of a broad-based tax cut for everyone, aides in both parties said.

“The concept of ‘decoupling’ is a hot topic right now,” said one senior Democratic aide.

And the Republicans will demand permanent tax cuts for the rich pigs, including the near total elimination of the inheritance tax, unless I miss my guess.

How many f%$#ing times do you have to lead with a compromise, and get a “no” before you realize that you cannot negotiate with the barbarians at the gate?

You want to pick a fight because you can, and because raising taxes on people making more than $¼ million a year is both good politics and good policy.

It allows you to set the agenda, choose the time and place of conflict, and it mobilizes your base.

This, “Can’t we all just get along/Kumbayah” crap has ill served the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and the whole country.

An Interesting Take of the Delphi Method

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The Delphi Method is that people in aggregate make better predictions than the experts.

This can apply to a group of experts, or it can apply to a large sampling of the general population.

Well, someone just applied this methodology by using Google searches:

Google has published details of the levels of search interest for political candidates as election day approaches. But there seems to be little clear connection between Google hits and the ballot box.

The main advantage the web has for tracking patterns is the sheer number of people using it. For example, it sounds insane that anyone wanting to find the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) website would do anything other than try ufc.com as their first tactic. Yet the number of people who search for “UFC” and related terms in the days leading up to a pay-per-view event is nearly always a good indication of how many people will buy the event. The reason is that even if only a tiny fraction of people actually have to search for the term, it still adds up to enough people that variations over time are measurable.

Does this work for politics? Well, here’s the current levels of Google search interest among web users from the relevant state in three notable Senate races, along with predictions for the winner from polling analysis site fivethirtyeight.com (source of the image above). The first figure shows each candidate’s current share of the total searches for the listed candidates, while the second is the predicted share of the vote.

Florida: Marco Rubio 45.4/44, Charlie Crist 32.9/32, Kendrick Meek 21.7/24

Nevada: Harry Reid 54.4/47, Sharron Angle 45.6/50

Pennsylvania: Joe Sestak 51.1/48, Pat Toomey 49.9/52

I have no clue as to whether or not this is a valid technique, but if it is, Reid will be reelected, and Sestak will beat Toomey.

I guess that we will find out tomorrow, but I am inclined not to believe that this is a valid predictive technique.