This is a good thing. Udall has a much better chance of winning the seat than the other serious candidate, Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez.
Hopefully, Pete Domenici will be replaced by a Dem.
Category: Elections
Signs of the Apocalypse: Bush DoJ Enforcing Voting Rights Act
When one considers how blythly the Bush DoJ signed off on Georgia’s poll tax voter ID law, the news that the department of justice is enforcing the laws is a bit surprising.
My guess is that Waxman has scared the hell out of them.
Kevin Drum is Correct, of Course
He was wondering as to what arguments would be made by the blogosphere might make to explain the Democratic Party successes in Virginia.
He list 9 alternatives, and finishes with this bon mot, which is one of the wisest things I’ve read this year:
Whatever the consensus turns out to be, I’m declaring right now that I think it’s wrong. And somewhere in my archives there will be a post to prove that I thought this all along.
This man is a Regular Nostradamus. I gotta make more predictions like this. Curmudgeons get all the prognostic props, you know.
Yesterday’s Election Results
- Kentucky: Corrupt Republican Ernie Fletcher crushed by Steve Beshear.
- Mississippi: Barbour wins convincingly. Not a surprise, as the Bush justice department has does its best to criminalize contributions to Democrats there, and FEMA has been doing their best to pump him up, at the expense of others states effected by Katrina.
- New Jersey: Basically a wash, but when one considers that the Republicans owned government in the 1990s, I think that the Talibaptists have lost this state for a generation.
- Maryland: The elections were in Baltimore City, but I’m not sure if there were even Republicans runnings. As to the Greens, I’ve never seen a group who claims to be liberal to be more dismissive of Black and Hispanic issues. The real election was in the primary.
- Virginia: Democrats take control of the state senate, and make major gains in the House of Delegates. (about 4 seats) It is particularly satisfying that Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, wife of wingnut US Congressman Tom Davis, lost in her bit for re-election to the State Senate.
Tom Udall Reconsidering New Mexico Senate Race
He had previously ruled it out, but now appears to be considering a run. As Domenici is retiring, this is a possible pickup, and it becomes a much more likely pickup with Udall in the race.
If he is half the man his father one, the only one eyed ex-NBA player ever in to serve congress, he’ll be one of the best guys in the senate.
Read Mo Udall’s autobiography, Too Funny to Be Presiodent.
DSCC Gunning For McConnell
It appears that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has decided to target Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Good. When the Republicans decided to target Tom Daschle in 2004, it crossed a line, and payback is not about making anyone feel good, it’s about making sure that when these lines are crossed, the people get slapped down.
As Sean Connery once said, They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!
You cannot make nice with these folks. If you want them to visit your grave every months, the only way to do that is because they are afraid that you will come up again.
This needs more than money, it needs balls. It needs to be nasty, and that includes a whispering campaign about the fact that McConnel separated from the army after 10 days, allegedly for giving another guy a hand job in the shower.
Republicans will never respect anyone else, but they are at their core cowards, and they can manage fear.
Pennsylvania is for F*&^ing Morons
Seriously, it’s un-bloody-believably stupid toto refuse to release the statewide list of polling places because of some non-specific concerns about “terrorist” threats. They claim that they are doing this to, “protect the public and the integrity of the voting process”.
This is the most basic sort of information for anyone who wants to coordinate any sort of state-wide effort.
If these guys were any stupider, they’d need someone to feed them.
Kerrey Not Running for Nebraska Senate
Good!!!
The Republicans made a decision in 1988 to cut Lowell Weicker loose, and we should do the same with Kerrey. He’s all too often on Fox News, he supports the war, and he wants to privatize Social Security.
We can do without him, and taking the hit on the seat is a small price to pay on this.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TalibanTX) Will Not Be Running for Re-Election
Tsongas Wins Special Election for Congress
Here.
Ut was closer than it should have been, a 6% spread in a solidly Democratic district, largely because Niki Tsongas, Paul’s widow, ran a lackluster campaign, and she had largely been installed by the local machine in the primary, which left a lot of bad feelings, though there are also a lot of people who had hoped that the Dems would get us out of Iraq by now too.
Repub Leaders Pressuring Doolittle to Retire
Too much corruption, I guess. His home got raided by the Feds this year, and he tried to blame his wife, who was his “campaign consultant”, and so pocketed something like a quarter of his campaign spending last cycle.
They are afraid that he will lose his his seat, as well he should.
Good for Barack Obama
Senator Obama has put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Elections Commission. The Republicans are threatening to filibuster any vote which is not up or down on all four nominees, and if there are no nominations, the FEC would have only two commissioners, and would not be able to do business.
Hans von Spakovsky is the worst person in the Bush administration with regards to suppressing minority votes, let me repeat: Hans von Spakovsky is the worst person in the Bush administration with regards to suppressing minority votes, in fact, he developed most of the voter suppression techniques used by the Bush administration and NO FEC is better than an FEC with him on it.
He is a very bad man, and he should not be allowed anywhere near any government bureaucracy, particularly one that is about free and fair elections.
John Edwards Proposals for Changes
Today In New Hampshire Edwards Outlines Agenda To Return The Power In Washington To Regular People
First indent is the Edwards bullet point, following are my assessments of pros and cons of the specifics
- Reforming Campaign Finance to Strengthen Small Donors
- Reduces maximum contribution from $2300 to $1000, and does matching only on the first $100, at an 8 to one ratio, so a $100 contribution nets $900 in funds, and a $1000 contribution nets $1900 in funds.
- Pros: Reduces the effect of big donations and bundling of donations.
- Cons: The Supreme court may find the $1000 limit excessive. Additionally, the problem of money in politics is driven by costs, specifically one cost, the cost of advertising on over the air television. Seeing how we, the public, own the airwaves, it makes a lot of sense to add airtime for candidates to the mix for broadcast licenses.
- Ending the Unique Power of Lobbyists
- Would prevent lobbyists from making campaign donations, and from bundling donations. Would extend the ban on lobbying after leaving government positions to 5 years. Add a “constitutional” line item veto. Increasing disclosure requirements for lobbyists.
- Pros: Disclosure is good, as is an extended period between government and lobbying jobs.
- Cons: Prohibiting lobbyists from making political donations is flat out wrong. It’s more restrictive than the limitations on active duty military. Definition of lobbyists is a difficult thing. A “constitutional” line item veto would likely require amending the constitution, which is unlikely, at best.
- Strengthening the Voice of Ordinary Citizens
- Requires a voter verifiable paper ballot. Allow election day registration. Eliminate felon disenfranchisement. Give DC residents a congressional representative. Fight voter suppression. Have a biennial national town hall of over 1 million people working together to solve problems.
- Pros: The voting proposals are good. Getting DC a representative is good.
- Cons: DC really should be a full state. It has twice as many people in it as Alaska or Wyoming. The biennial national town hall is just silly. It sounds like a Grateful Dead concert.
- Promote Open and Democratic Media
- Require that real public interest obligations be a part of all broadcast licenses. Require net neutrality. Universal broadband by 2010. Make media ownership more difficult.
- Pros: All good ideas.
- Cons: Getting this done will be tough. In terms of universal broadband, I believe that this will require some level of government ownership of the “last mile” of wire to the house, which is how it happened in Japan and Korea, but this will be nearly impossible to accomplish in the current political/social environment in the United States.
The only one I truly disagree on is the ban on lobbyist contributions, which I think is just plain wrong. Everyone should be able to contribute, but it is rather blue sky.
Senate My Approve no FEC Nominations Over Voter Suppression Criminal
Hans von Spakovsky, the Bush administration’s point man on illegal voter suppression at the DoJ, has been nominated as a member of the Federal Elections Commission.
Democratic senators, with Feingold and Obama taking the lead, have said that he is not acceptable, and the Republicans are blocking any vote on any other nominees unless they are all voted on at once.
Bush could theoretically make recess appointments, but he’s already cut a deal with Harry Reid not to make recess appointments after Reid announced plans to keep the Senate in session with local members to prevent this.
The problem is that quorum for the FEC is 4, and without these approvals, they would have only two members.
Fred Wertheimer, states it thusly:
Either one of those scenarios is “fraught with potential danger,” Fred Wertheimer, the executive director of the nonpartisan watchdog Democracy 21, told me.
If the FEC were crippled, that would be bad, he said, creating a situation where outside groups funded by millionaires (like the Swift Boat Vets) could run amok in a campaign year. “That would be a license to steal and to completely ignore campaign finance laws.”
But if the commission were stocked with the president’s appointees, that would be much worse. “You could have an agency that leaves one party free to do whatever it wants, while raising concerns that the other party is breaking the law.
“The whole fight at the Justice Department over the firing of the U.S. attorneys has arisen over misusing the criminal justice system in order to influence political results…. Now, if you don’t get some legitimate form of a commission ready to go for the 2008 election, you face the same danger, except with far greater stakes involved, mainly the presidency, the Senate and House — who wins and who loses.”
I tend to agree that no FEC would be worse than an FEC run by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
At least both sides would have an equal opportunity to break laws with no FEC.
One note, look at his picture: 
, he really does look like those photographs of those 30 something SS camp guards one sees in history books.
Obama Opposes Voter Suppression Guru
My worry about Barack Obama is that sometimes I get the sense that he, “Likes to please people too much,” something that Ernest Gruening said of Hubert Humphrey, but his stand against Hans von Spakovsky, who has been extensively involved in what are likely illegal voter suppression activities, and their coverup within the DoJ, as a member of the Federal Election Commission, is a good sign.
Letting “Clever” Hans von Spakovsky on the FEC would be like allowing Colonel Sanders to be on the board of the Chickens as Pets society.
Donna Edwards for Congress (MD-4)
Another endorsement for the primary in a true blue district (MD-4 will go Democrat until the apocalypse).
She ran against Al Wynn in the primary last year, and almost beat him.
Wynn is pro-War, he voted for the energy bill givaway to Exxon et al, he’s a bad guy, and may have stolen the last election (voting machines from his stronghold delivered votes days late).
Go to her siteDonna Edwards for Congress”, and check her out.
Democracy for America has officially endorsed her.
Senator Ben Nelson (DINO-NE) Can Go Cheney Himself
Ben Nelson told the committee chair that he would vote to approve Hans von Spakovsky for the Federal Elections Commission, so he was passed to the senate for a full vote.
“Clever Hans” is the Bush Administration’s minority voter suppression guru. Specifically:
- attempted to intimidate Justice Department employees
- stifle their appeals
- single-handedly disenfranchise thousands of Arizonans
- Overrode his staff to approve the Tom Delay redistricting.
- Overrode his staff to approve the Georgia
Poll Taxvoter ID plan - Gave false testimony (later modified in written answers) to the committee about it