Results

You can get the news lots of places, so I won't try to report much.

At the party I attended tonight, the host cracked open some champagne and the entire group tosted when Anne Northup conceded to John Yarmuth. Disclosure: I gave Yarmuth a small amount of my cash this election cycle.

I'm also intrigued by the Virginia Senate race, where Democrat Jim Webb is winning by about 2200 votes with 99% counted. Unfortunately, it's not looking good for Claire McCaskill in Missouri, with two-thirds of the vote counted (50-46). Jon Tester is doing well in Montana (54-44), but only about 28% of the votes are counted.

Harold Ford is down 50,000 votes in Tennessee, so I'm not sure why the networks haven't called it yet. With 94% counted, there must be a lot of Democratic votes remaining (otherwise they would call it) -- but I'm skeptical.

A 50-50 Senate means Dick Cheney breaks the ties.


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Filed as: 2006 midterms

Election predictions

I'm going to an election party tomorrow night (that's what Political Scientists do for fun) and am expected to weigh in on these races:

IN-09 Sodrel (R) Hill (D): Hill
KY-02 Lewis (R) Weaver (D): Lewis
KY-03 Northup (R) Yarmuth (D): Yarmuth
KY-04 Davis (R) Lucas (D): Lucas
AZ-Sen Kyl (R) Pederson (D): Kyl
CT-Sen Lieberman (I) Lamont (D): Lieberman
MO-Sen Talent (R) McCaskill (D): McCaskill
MT-Sen Burns (R) Tester (D): Tester
NJ-Sen Menendez (D) Kean (R): Menendez
OH-Sen DeWine (R) Brown (D): Brown
PA-Sen Santorum (R) Casey (D): Casey
RI-Sen Chafee (R) Whitehouse (D): Whitehouse
TN-Sen (*) Corker (R) Ford (D): Corker
VA-Sen Allen (R) Webb (D): Webb
House majority R D: Democratic + 24 = 227 - 208
Senate majority** R D: Democratic + 6 = 51-49

Yarmuth’s final score (score rounded up to two decimal places): 50.62

** Jeffords and Lieberman will be counted as D; 50-50 means a R majority


Post-election update: Apparently, I only had to select between R or D control of the House and Senate. Thus, I wasn't penalized for guessing that the Dems would merely pick up 24 House seats (it looks like they'll get 28, accounting for the fact that the Independent seat used to caucus with them).

So, I got 15 out of 16 correct (all but KY-04) and won the election pool!


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Filed as: 2006 midterms

The smoking gun...

...apparently involved ingesting some funky mushrooms.

The John Yarmuth campaign needs to make this clip central to the local congressional eleciton: See this Anne Northup clip from March 6, 2006. She was interviewed by WHAS-11's Mark Hebert.

In the clip (you have to watch a commercial first), Northup claims that Saddam became a haven for al Qaeda after Afghanistan fell. "The new port in the storm, the new country of choice...al Qaeda...Saddam Hussein made them welcome."

All lies, which we knew in 2002 -- and not even the neocons were going this far before the war. She's saying this in March 2006!

Oh, and she doesn't think Iraq was a mistake.

Hat tip to BluegrassReport.org.


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Filed as: Northup

Midterm election countdown: 23 days

It is three weeks and two days until the 2006 midterm elections. The latest issue of PS includes two different political science studies, using different methodologies, which conclude that the Democrats will pick up 22 seats in the House. Apparently, the latest polling also suggests a solid Democratic victory -- though it seems premature to talk of a "landslide."

Republicans, of course, are not going to roll over and play dead. As Karl Rove warned back in January, they see their trump card as terrorism.

I expect some effort in the coming weeks to raise the level of fear. Basically, they will return to their strategy that seemed to be working for them (well, President Bush's approval ratings increased anyway) around the fifth anniversary of September 11. Their message really was that Americans are "safer," but "still not safe."

As James Fallows implied in the September Atlantic Monthly, raising the level of US fear is all too easy:

Any of the dozens of ports, the scores of natural-gas plants and nuclear facilities, the hundreds of important bridges and tunnels, or the thousands of shopping malls, office towers, or sporting facilities could be the next target of attack. It is impossible to protect them all, and even trying could ruin America’s social fabric and public finances. The worst part of the situation is helplessness, as America’s officials and its public wait for an attack they know they cannot prevent.

Are the Democrats ready for the electorate to be reminded, selectively of course, about some of these facts?

Back in January, I offered what I still think is a good game plan for the Democrats. Talk about Iraq in a very blunt way.

If anyone from the John Yarmuth campaign is reading -- I think this could work to defeat Anne Northup as well.


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Filed as: 2006 midterms

2006 Election update

Tuesday was the primary here in Kentucky and I actually voted for the Democratic candidate who got the majority of the votes, John Yarmuth. The winner took nearly 54% of the vote.

If you don't know Yarmuth's name, he is the former publisher of the alternative weekly Leo newspaper, and widely viewed as the most left-leaning of the candidates. Andrew Horne, who finished second with a bit less than one-third of the vote (32%), was a "fighting Dem" former Marine who served in Iraq during both the Persian Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Yarmuth will now face five-term Republican incumbent Anne Northup in November. With Horne out, I'm not sure how closely national media will follow the race. The "fighting Dem" angle is gone.

What's left to cover? Well, Yarmuth's newspaper accepted "sexually explicit personal ads" and the conventional wisdom among some analysts is that Northup will try to tar him with that come November. And, of course, they'll comb his political columns in the paper.

Meanwhile, Yarmuth is going to try to link his foe to the Bush administration's failings: Iraq, Katrina, the budget deficit (perhaps), the Medicare drug program. etc. It's a long list, as my readers know.

And the Republican party in Kentucky may be in trouble -- what with the governor under indictment since last week.

Whether journalists are watching or not, the race will figure into the national scene because it is one of the few swing seats that some political observers see -- thanks to gerrymandering.

Indeed, some political scientists wonder if the Dems can win back the House even if they take the lion's share of the votes come November.

Matthew Shugart of Fruits & Votes, a political science professor who specializes in comparative electoral systems at the University of California, San Diego, has an interesting post you should read on congressional elections. Matthew presents a lot of data on past congressional elections and finds that parties winning a majority of the votes nationally tend to win the Congress. However:

Despite an overall tendency for seats to follow from votes in a fairly predictable way, it is clear that recent elections are deviating from the pattern. Every election since 1996 is above the trend. More to the point, in each House election since 1996, the Republican party has won a majority of seats on less than 50% of the vote. The only time that had happened before was in 1952. In 1996, as well as 1952, the Republican party did not even win a plurality of the House vote.

There's some additional discussion and the blogger/scholars basically concludes that 47% may be the threshold. If Republicans get less than that, they should lose the body regardless of factors like gerrymandering.


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Filed as: 2006 election

Northup's fight

I was interviewed for this story in the March 26 LA Times, but my quote was cut by an editor. I pointed out that the public "rallies 'round the flag" at the beginning of a war, but that effect declines over time as casualties mount.

Even in the heartland, Democrats suddenly see advantage on an issue that is usually considered a GOP trump card: national security.

Baron Hill, who hopes to unseat the Republican who represents this region of Indiana, said it used to be hard for Democrats to criticize the Iraq war without sounding unpatriotic.

"Not anymore," Hill said in an interview. "I think people are very skeptical now about what is going on over there, and you have more freedom to talk about Iraq."

A Fox News poll this month showed the war in a statistical tie with spending and taxes as voters' top concerns heading into election season. And 50% of respondents to a recent Newsweek poll said they would like to see Democrats take control of Congress; 34% said they would like to see it remain in Republican hands.

A fair amount of the story is about Anne Northup and her possible confrontation with Iraq war veteran Andrew Horne.



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"Pro-war" Democrats and the 2006 Elections

For many months, pollsters have demonstrated that public opinion is turning against the war in Iraq. About 60% of those surveyed by CBS News, over a period of many months, "disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq." At times, nearly 60% of those polled say the war was a mistake, and despite some fluctuations in the results, at least half the population seems to think that the US should never have gone to war in Iraq.

Given the way politics about national security and foreign policy are framed in the US, members of the media would probably be surprised to learn that a plurality of respondents say that "the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq."

Politically, for now, the most important finding is this: 85% of those surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll January 6-8, 2006, replied that "the stituation in Iraq" would be extremely or very important to their "vote for Congress this year."

Election contests are not really on the public's radar yet, but the Denver Post recently (December 28) noted an interesting and simple Democratic strategy -- put an Iraq war veteran on the ballot:

More than 30 Iraq and Persian Gulf War veterans have entered congressional races across the country as Democrats, hoping to capitalize on their military experience to topple the incumbent Republican majority.

In my home district, five-term incumbent Anne Northup is being challenged by Andrew Horne, a Marine Reserve officer who "spent months working with Iraqi security forces and helping with reconstruction and humanitarian efforts."

Wait, before anyone gets too excited, note that the Dems tried something like this in 2004 at the very top of the ballot.

It didn't lead to the results they wanted. Republicans called Senator John Kerry a flip-flopper for voting "for the war" in October 2002, but then later criticizing its prosecution. Kerry had a tough time explaining his vote for the $87 billion before his vote against the $87 billion. And his fate might have been sealed in August 2004, when he said he'd still have voted "aye" even after it was quite apparent that Iraq had no threatening WMD or operational ties to al Qaeda.

So much for the idea that a military veteran can assure electoral success in an election dominated by national security issued and foreign affairs.

I'm confident many Republican strategists are planning to use a similar ploy in 2006.

In October 2002, remember, 29 Democratic Senators and 81 Democratic House members voted for Joint Resolution 114, which was entitled "To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq." Not all of the "pro-war" Democrats will be up for re-election in 2006, thanks to a scattering of retirements and previous electoral losses. And, because of six year terms, only one-third of Senators stand for election every two years.

Still, dozens of Democrats up for re-election in 2006 voted for the Iraq Joint Resolution and this apparently bipartisan act will provide ammunition for all Republicans against all Democrats. Indeed, the early signs are that Republicans are prepared to use this fact as a stick with which to beat Democrats over the head.

Congress had access to the same intelligence, the President and other members of the administration claim. They also boast that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq, as he posed (allegedly) an ongoing threat to American security.

In short, Republicans argue that the war was an honest mistake, if it was a mistake, because the intelligence was flawed. Moreover, it wasn't a significant error because 9/11 "changed everything" and America has to be prepared to eliminate its enemies even before they fully develop. Iraq had the ability to make weapons of mass destruction and it was lead by a strongly anti-American despot who could have linked to terrorists at any time. Conclusion? Only weak-willed Democrats would continue to fret over a decision made three years ago. Decisive and strong leaders have to shrug off their mistakes and move on to the next fight, which appears to be Iran.

Even though the situation in Iraq is a mess, and the Bush administration is largely to blame for the American presence there, few war critics are overtly embracing a complete anti-war message and calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Many fear civil war and/or state failure, which is entirely reasonable. Nonetheless, a nuanced anti-war message is hard to sell in politics. As I've explained before, that typically works to the advantage of Republicans.

• What can "pro-war" Democrats do to combat the likely Republican strategy in the 2006 election?
• How can Democrats be against the war, without appearing weak?

Well, arguably, George W. Bush provided an electoral answer in the 2000 foreign policy debate with Al Gore. Debate moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates about the circumstances when the US should use military force.

MODERATOR: ...I figured this out; in the last 20 years there have been eight major actions that involved the introduction of U.S. ground, air or naval forces. Let me name them. Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. If you had been president for any of those interventions, would any of those interventions not have happened?

After running through the list for Vice President Gore, Lehrer turned to then-Governor Bush and asked him what he thought about his father's military intervention in Somalia:

MODERATOR: Somalia.

BUSH: Started off as a humanitarian mission and it changed into a nation-building mission, and that's where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nation paid a price. And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow the dictator when it's in our best interests. But in this case it was a nation-building exercise, and same with Haiti. I wouldn't have supported either.

A few moments later, Bush elaborated on his view of nation-building:

I thought the best example of a way to handle the situation was East Timor when we provided logistical support to the Australians, support that only we can provide. I thought that was a good model. But we can't be all things to all people in the world, Jim. And I think that's where maybe the vice president and I begin to have some differences. I'm worried about overcommitting our military around the world. I want to be judicious in its use. You mentioned Haiti. I wouldn't have sent troops to Haiti. I didn't think it was a mission worthwhile. It was a nation building mission, and it was not very successful. It cost us billions, a couple billions of dollars, and I'm not so sure democracy is any better off in Haiti than it was before.

So, Democrats, there you have it.

It's OK to support a well-intended military mission -- and then reject it later because the "mission changed" to "nation-building." The costs of attempted democratization are high and the benefits are often dubious. The President's views on Haiti were widely shared and an updated Iraq version might well resonate with voters.

If liberal hawks supported the Iraq war in 2003 because they genuinely feared WMD and al Qaeda, so be it. To oppose the war now, run some clips of Governor Bush explaining the circumstances when it is acceptable to change one's view.

Moreover, Dems can claim that they want to save the military. The burgeoning threat from Iran proves the need to have a military not bogged down in a political backwater by insurgents (and "dead enders") who don't have weapons of mass destruction.


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Election: countdown to 2006 midterms

Tuesday was election day and many Democrats are smiling because New Jersey and Virginia elected new governors from their party. Of course, the outgoing governors were also Democrats, so these results were not exactly earth-shattering.

There are much bigger fish to fry.

If the 2006 midterm elections could have been held on Tuesday, Democrats apparently would have reclaimed the Congress. From ABC News:

Indeed, 55 percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say they'd like to see the Democrats take control of Congress in 2006. And if the election were today, registered voters would favor the Democrat in their congressional district by 52 percent to 37 percent.

I've already received an email from a blogger working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wanting me to link to his attack on Louisville's Representative Anne Northup.

Northup is a shrewd politician and I doubt that many of these attacks will stick. She survived accusations that she was a Newt Gingrich crony, so current efforts to link her to Tom DeLay are probably insufficient to topple Northup -- even if she is among the top ten recipients of cash from DeLay's PAC.

It is kind of interesting that she received a score of ZERO from the National PTA on education issues in 2003-2004. Then again, Mitch McConnell got the same score and he's had little difficulty winning in this state.

The same is true of the ZERO score Northup (and McConnell) received from the Disabled American Vets.

In fact, it would appear from the scores that the test votes selected to make the ratings were highly partisan issues that completely split Republicans and Democrats. I think it's a bad measure if a substantial portion of the respondents receive 0 and many more receive 100.

Would you trust a grade school test for your child if the likely outcomes were all or nothing? I'd suspect the motives or actions of the teacher, wouldn't you?

Tim Saler, the blogger for the DCCC, mentions that Northup supports private Social Security accounts -- as a means of "reforming" the program. True, Northup and other Republicans might be vulnerable on that issue.

Then again, after a lot of talk, nobody actually did anything to change Social Security for the worse. And many people embrace the Republican fantasy, supported by their sleight of hand -- preservation of current Social Security benefits with the addition of private accounts.

Naturally, I believe Saler is correct that Anne Northup should lose because of her politics, but he is missing the elephant in the room.

Most importantly to me, the piece doesn't mention Iraq at all, though the constituent mail I've received from Northup's office continued to tout the threats from Saddam Hussein's Iraq long after it became clear that these were greatly exaggerated.

Republicans are in decline because Iraq is a disaster. Her 2006 Democratic challenger needs to point out that Northup has used incredibly poor judgment supporting a war that is killing a few soldiers every day or two, draining American economic resources, and making America both hated and feared around the world.

Moreover, the war is likely increasing the threats to the US by motivating new terrorists and hastening the proliferation incentives of states like Iran and North Korea.

To me, that's a winning issue because it is vitally important. What is more central to a nation than the question of war and peace?

Bike to Work Week

Avery in for Rodger again.

It's Bike-to-work Week.
The average Louisvillian spent 42 hours stuck in traffic in 2003, which means that even as Americans are the most overworked people in the industrialized world, we add a week per year to that miserable work life just sitting in traffic. Meanwhile, Congress has just passed a gargantuan and retrograde highway bill, and the media can't be bothered to say anything about it except that it's larger than the president wanted. James Inhofe, the Senior Oklahoma senator most infamous for arguing on the Senate floor that global warming is a hoax, is the chair of the relevant committee and a strong supporter of the bill.
Meanwhile, Louisville's Member of Congress, Anne Northup, wants to build more, and wider, highways, as well as two unaffordable bridges over the Ohio River, so as to extend the number of lost hours from 40 to 50 or beyond.
Yes, the fact is, when it comes to roads, the "Field of Dreams" rule applies: "If you build it, they will come." More roads = more time stuck in traffic.
The automobile is what Ivan Illich called a radical monopoly. As a social institution, as a tool, the automobile is a disaster. It has worsened the problems it was designed to solve, and disabled us from finding alternative solutions to those problems.
Bike-to-work week is a small, individual way to rehabilitate oneself, to limit the radical monopoly's power over one's life, and to stop wasting time and money stuck in traffic. Ultimately, the problem is obviously structural and goes way beyond individual choice. But if we want to preserve human life in anything like the form we now know it, we'll have to declare independence from mega-industry and help to cause some healthy micro-macro-micro feedback loops. So in the spirit of bike to work week, here are some resources.
1. Find your local bicycle club. Here's the Louisville Bicycle Club.
2. Find out what your city is doing to encourage non-fossil-fuel based transit, and get on their backs to do more. Here's Louisville's rather pathetic first attempt.
3. Help build a "Locally Integrated Food Economy" to cut down on the number of miles your food has to travel to get to your plate, and reverse the corporatization/consolidation of agriculture.
4. The Earth has 1.7 biologically productive hectares per person. That's your ecological benchmark. Find out how you're doing relative to the benchmark, and do something about it. Remember that it's not just survival, but eco-justice, at stake.
5. Not convinced? What if I told you that there's probably a 40% chance that we are going to experience civilization-altering, catastrophic climate change, and even possibly what's known as "runaway" climate change. How high does that probability have to be before precautions are in order?
Which brings me back to Anne Northup, the 3rd District Member of Congress. How far in the sand is her head? She doesn't even have an entry for environmental problems on her issues page. One would think she represented the cleanest city in the country. But alas, she represents the dirtiest city in the Southeast. Check out the American Lung Association's "State of the Air 2005" report.
N.B. full disclosure: I don't bike to work, I walk to work. Same principle.

Weather Vanes

It's always interesting to dig back through news archives to find interesting (read: foolish) statements made by politicians. If political winds change, you can almost certainly find remarks by elected officials that sound really stupid in retrospect.

In any case, I wonder how many Republican House members said something like this when campaigning for office in 2002?

"Without a doubt, Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime posed an immediate, direct threat to the United States."

Of course, Republican Representative Anne Northup wrote those words to her constituents in May 2003! Since a columnist for the Louisville Courier Journal, David Hawpe, has quoted this statement at least three times since July, I think there's a good chance it will come up in the 2004 elections.

Northup, by the way, represents a fairly Democratic district and thus accumulates a big election war chest because she needs it to retain her job.

The Presidential candidates are not immune from this "gotcha" game either. Consider Howard Dean's old and embarrassing comments about the Iowa caucuses, for example.

Oddly enough, on perhaps rare occasions, politicians sometimes come off sounding smarter in the past than they do in the present.

In the January 4 Washington Post, E.J. Dionne cited an interesting quote from one of the Democratic candidates for President, made on October 5, 2002:

"I don't think we should pretend that protecting the security of our nation is defined by turning our back on a century of effort . . . to build an international structure of law," declared the antiwar candidate to an Iowa gathering on Oct. 5, 2002. Bush's critics had an obligation to dissent and raise doubts, he said to loud applause. "We need to understand that you have to ask those questions now, because you don't go to war as a matter of first resort; you go to war as a matter of last resort."

It turns out that these words of wisdom came from Senator John Kerry -- mere weeks before he voted for the Iraq war resolution in Congress.

If Kerry had voted differently, do you suppose he'd be a favorite in New Hampshire?