Elections Blog

Our good friend Tom Maguire alerts me to a great personal triumph: the “Nutroots®” craze has spread to the NY Times (though, alas, without the proper attribution)…

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Now, don’t think I’m being coy here, because this number is truly horrific, but bear with me:
The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 U.S. invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq’s sectarian bloodbath.
The toll, and the accompanying article, are [...]

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Well, it was inevitable…every time I click through to a lefty source, whether it’s homegrown rag the Austin Chronicle or nationwide propaganda machine “Democracy Now!”, I’m confronted with that damn Lancet study with its assertions that 700 Iraqis a day have died violent deaths because of the invasion over a period of 3 years. I didn’t [...]

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From Morton Kondracke:
Having failed to convince fellow Republicans of the merits of comprehensive immigration reform, President Bush now faces the even more difficult task of defending free trade against protectionist Democrats.
A tide of populism, protectionism, nationalism and xenophobia is washing over the country, fueled by right-wing radio talk show hosts, CNN firebrand Lou Dobbs — [...]

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In an article that talks about Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to move the congressional Democrats towards the center (and an article that spends almost an entire page talking about committee chairs without mentioning the Hastings-Harman dustup), we find the following buried nugget:
House Democratic leaders have extracted a promise from the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary [...]

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I hope you’re all sitting down for this.  It seems that TIME Magazine covered both the 1994 and 2006 elections, and they used entirely different covers!
It gets worse: the entirely different group of reporters, artists, and editors covering this entirely different election in an entirely different era reached entirely different conclusions!
Now if that’s not worthy [...]

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…and it should come as no surprise at all that the next salvo comes from the hacks at firedoglake:
I was on a blogger conference call with Harry Reid the other day.  He asked what structural, organizational improvements the Senate Dems could make to improve coordination with the netroots activist community.  I told him it was [...]

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And that’s no surprise at all.  You don’t have to go very deep into this Gail Collins special to realize just how morally bankrupt the once-proud Grey Lady has become:
The Democrats will not be able to savor their victory for long. Americans are waiting to hear if they have any good ideas for how to [...]

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It’s the smartest move of his political career…Senator Russ Feingold, no doubt internalizing the push to the center that brought the Democrats back into Congressional power, has taken his hat out of the 2008 ring:
Feingold, 53, conceded that he faced long odds of winning the nomination.
“It would have required the craziest combination of things [...]

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…be sure to visit the all-new Kos Kingdom. Yes, that’s right, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is branching out in high style. Decision ‘08 reader Marcus M. (not to be confused with the aforementioned Markos) was there for the opening day ceremony and brought back this wonderful picture of the festive crowd.

Can’t you just feel [...]

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Contra the ridiculous assertion by Kos that Lieberman has been ‘neutered’, he is, in fact, at the peak of his power:
The midterm elections provided radical left bloggers with, among many other results, their worst nightmare on Tuesday. They had succeeded, earlier in the campaign year, in helping defeat Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in [...]

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Was Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy a stroke of brilliance, or did it cost Democrats an even larger margin in the House? That’s the question behind a raging post-election controversy. Ryan Lizza of The New Republic:
Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the [...]

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…was the conspiracy theorist.  Anyone recall these words by the wife of Norman Lear pre-election?
…When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are [...]

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Obviously, the two parties and the respective candidates came out on one side or the other last night, but what about some less apparent victors and vanquished?
First, the victors: the pundits and pollsters.  The overwhelming consensus among professionals in both camps was that the Democrats would win…big.  If Charlie Cook’s constant refrain of a ‘wave’ [...]

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The guys and gals at the Weekly Standard have their picks up: for the most part, they’re disastrous; no one gives the Republicans the House, and quite a few give the Democrats the Senate, too…
Meanwhile, AJ and Dean Barnett say they smell an upset of epic proportions (Barnett says Republicans wil run the table in [...]

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Rich Lowry on the internal Republican polling…
Shock of the day: Kos doesn’t like Lieberman, and vice-versa (hilariously, Kos takes offense because Lieberman called DKos the leading left-wing blog; apparently Markos thinks he’s in the mainstream.  Bonus hilarity for complaining about Lieberman’s thuggish tactics (heard any Rape Gurney Joe jokes lately, Markos?))… 
Second shock of the day: massive Democratic [...]

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I’m flabbergasted at the callousness of the following, from a post entitled, “What Are The Democrats Doing About The November 5th Saddam Verdict?”:
We have 140,000 soldiers in the middle of a country which is spiraling out of control. More American troops died in Iraq this last month than in any month for more than a [...]

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Matt Stoller just can’t figure out why Joe Lieberman has such a big lead:
This race in Connecticut is puzzling.  The Q-poll is mostly nonsense.  It was completed last night at 9pm, with the Q-poll director Doug Schwartz pretending as if the second debate, which ended an hour earlier, figured into the results.  I don’t know [...]

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Notropis, in the midst of a thorough, multi-post look at the problems with the Lancet survey:
According to the article, 80% of the deaths identified in the survey were confirmed by the presence of a death certificate. That’s a good thing. That helps A) to make sure that some deaths aren’t counted multiple times as being [...]

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The Smoking Gun has the documents, and provides this helpful summary:
Air America Radio today filed for bankruptcy, listing liabilities in excess of $20 million and assets of only $4 million. The Chapter 11 filing by Piquant LLC, the radio network’s parent company, was made in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The list of Air America’s [...]

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