I'm betting Edwards will sit comfortably on his ego f0r many weeks.
Edwards was my second choice in the Democratic primary
From the Political Wire:
Elizabeth Edwards Praises Clinton Health Care Plan
Elizabeth Edwards praised Sen. Hillary Clinton's health care plan on ABC News this morning, saying "I just have more confidence in Senator Clinton's policy than Senator Obama's on this particular issue."
Meanwhile, Time notes that Mrs. Edwards has joined the Center for American Progress which 'has been operating for the past two years as a kind of Hillary Clinton Administration-in-waiting.' Is an endorsement coming?
Showing posts with label Democracts winning in 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracts winning in 2008. Show all posts
Apr 9, 2008
Dec 9, 2007
Oct 8, 2007
The Republicans Are Going to Lose in 2008
[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the GOP’s pending defeat in 2008.]
Daily Kos has a pice from DemFromCT summing up some major problems for the GOP in 2008.
The point being the GOP will lose, big.
From DemFromCT:
****
As First Read notes today, "'Future of the GOP stories' are starting to hit critical mass". And why not? We have the WSJ reporting on disaffected business types and the Bush borrow and spend policies have alienated fiscal conservatives like Alan Greenspan.
Miss Laura covered the NY Times writing about the religious right and their issues (we are all values voters; they are the religious right).
The SCHIP veto doesn't play well with anyone, but especially moms and Latinos.
Add in the well-known and well-demonstrated homophobia of the modern GOP and actually, it looks like we are seeing the creation of a biphasic GOP core: rich old [outwardly] straight white guys and young childless Ayn Rand-style Objectivists.
"No one else is left," concludes DemFromCT.
****
And one could add decreased turnout for Republicans from three other demographics: Arab-Americans, rural Americans and western-state libertarians.
###
Daily Kos has a pice from DemFromCT summing up some major problems for the GOP in 2008.
The point being the GOP will lose, big.
From DemFromCT:
****
As First Read notes today, "'Future of the GOP stories' are starting to hit critical mass". And why not? We have the WSJ reporting on disaffected business types and the Bush borrow and spend policies have alienated fiscal conservatives like Alan Greenspan.
The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title. New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.
Miss Laura covered the NY Times writing about the religious right and their issues (we are all values voters; they are the religious right).
After the 2004 elections, religious conservatives were riding high. Newly anointed by pundits as "values voters" — a more flattering label than "religious right" — they claimed credit for propelling George W. Bush to two terms in the White House. Even in wartime, they had managed to fixate the nation on their pet issues: opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research ...What unites them right now is their dismay — even panic — at the idea of Rudolph W. Giuliani as the Republican nominee, because of his support for abortion rights and gay rights, as well as what they regard as a troubling history of marital infidelity. But what to do about it is where they again diverge, with some religious conservatives last week threatening to bolt to a third party if Mr. Giuliani gets the nomination, and others arguing that this is the sure road to defeat.
The SCHIP veto doesn't play well with anyone, but especially moms and Latinos.
Add the no-shows at a recent debate focused on minority issues:Of children who would have been newly eligible for SCHIP under the bill, at least one-third likely would have been Hispanic, Edwin Park, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said. About 40% of Hispanic children already receive health coverage through SCHIP or Medicaid, though many eligible Hispanic children are not enrolled, according to Park. He added, "Every day, there's going to be more uninsured kids in this country, and because Latino children in particular are much more likely to be uninsured, they will be disproportionately affected."
"I think the best that comes out of stupid decisions like this," said former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, is "that African-Americans might say, ‘Was it because of my skin color?’ Now, maybe it wasn’t, but African-Americans do say, ‘It crossed my mind.’"
Add in the well-known and well-demonstrated homophobia of the modern GOP and actually, it looks like we are seeing the creation of a biphasic GOP core: rich old [outwardly] straight white guys and young childless Ayn Rand-style Objectivists.
"No one else is left," concludes DemFromCT.
****
And one could add decreased turnout for Republicans from three other demographics: Arab-Americans, rural Americans and western-state libertarians.
###
Sep 11, 2007
Cole: Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?
Cole is simply the best:
Despite what the pundits will say, I fear the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the Hill Monday and Tuesday is not a turning point, does not give Bush breathing room, and is largely irrelevant.
To any extent that what they do in Iraq ends up making a real positive difference, Petraeus and Crocker will likely be doing the Democrats a big favor, not Bush, who won't be in office much longer.
The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush's watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009. If they could, this drawdown would be the best option. Certainly, that is what a majority of Iraqis thinks, according to the new BBC/ABC poll.
But the answer is: No. The Democrats cannot get the troops out of Iraq because they cannot overturn a Bush veto in the House of Representatives, and because they cannot overcome the need for a consensus of 60 senators in the Senate. Some Democrats, such as Joe Lieberman, oppose a rapid withdrawal. And the likelihood that 11 Republican senators will suddenly become withdrawalniks between now and November, 2008, is negligible.
The testimony of Petraeus and Crocker may marginally reinforce the will of the Republicans to stay the course, but I do not think it is decisive. In all likelihood, the Republican senators would have continued to block their Democratic colleagues from doing anything really dramatic, anyway.
If the Democrats cannot prevail in withdrawing before Bush goes out of office (and they cannot), and if they then rapidly draw down the troops on taking office in 2009, they face the real prospect of a "Gerald Ford meltdown" of the sort that occurred in 1975 when the North Vietnamese and their VC allies took over South Vietnam.
You will note that Ford only served a couple of years as president and lost his election bid to a relative unknown named Jimmy Carter. Although economic stagflation and the stain of Watergate contributed to his defeat, I think the spectacle of the debacle in Indochina harmed Ford a great deal. The United States lost a war, and lost out to its ideological rival in an entire subcontinent of Asia in the midst of the Cold War. That would cause at least some Republicans to stay home in 1976, a sure way for Democrats to win an election.
Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam? Yes. I just do not see evidence that either the new Iraqi political class or the Iraqi security forces are likely to have the maturity to avoid a conflagration when the US military withdraws.
There are three major wars going on in Iraq: 1) for control of oil-rich Basra, among Shiite militias and tribes; 2) for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunni Arabs and Shiites; and 3) for control of oil-rich Kirkuk in the north, between Kurds on the one side and Arabs and Turkmen on the other.
Gen. Petraeus believes that the Sunni-Shiite struggle for Baghdad is the central struggle, and that if it cannot be calmed down, nothing can be accomplished. His main energies have been put into reducing violence in Baghdad itself, in which he has succeeded to a limited extent (i.e. getting violence back down to summer, 2006, levels instead of astronomical January 2007 levels).
The successes in Baghdad are ambiguous, not clear-cut. The year 2006 was particularly bloody, so getting to that level is not satisfactory. The reduction in statistics on sectarian violence has not prevented hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs from being ethnically cleansed (mainly displaced) from Baghdad, turning it from a city that was 65 percent Shiite into one that is 75 percent Shiite and rising. The Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar, whether they hate "al-Qaeda" or not, say in interviews that they support the withdrawal of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front from the al-Maliki government, precisely on the grounds that al-Maliki is entangled with the Shiite militias that are displacing the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.
Further, Gen. Petraeus has frankly admitted that whatever successes he has had in Baghdad militarily (and he has had some there) have not yet translated into solid political gains in Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. He continues to entertain hopes that they will be so translated, but all he can proffer us in this regard is exactly that, hopes.
Petraeus's perspective ignores the over-all rise in civilian deaths in 2007 compared to 2006, and pays no attention to Shiite-Shiite violence in Basra and Karbala. He also codes the Arab attack on Yazidi Kurds as an "al-Qaeda" act of violence. In fact, it was part of an ethnic struggle for control of land and oil in the Iraqi north that is just as destabilizing, potentially, as is the battle for Baghdad. He points to Iraqi security forces policing provinces such as Muthanna and Nasiriya in the Shiite south. It has to be acknowledged, however, that those provincial security forces are dominated by the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which was trained and may still be being partially funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are in an ongoing struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, also Shiite but more Iraqi nativist.
My own expectation is that unless Iraqi politicians become far more canny and powerful during the next two years, then when the American forces withdraw, the ethnic and sectarian militias will fight the three wars (Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk) to a conclusion. It will likely be a bloody war similar to that in Afghanistan in the 1990s. With the Americans not around, it is possible that large militia forces will fight set piece battles.
There is also a danger of the neighbors being drawn into a big proxy fight in Iraq (including the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Turks).
Neither outcome is inevitable. If al-Maliki learns how to cultivate the Sunni Arabs as well as Petraeus has been (and if the Sunni Arabs will accept it from al-Maliki, which is not assured), then he might be able to draw them into his orbit just as King Feisal did in the 1920s. Al-Maliki's government is said to have $10 bn. in oil revenue that it refuses to spend; that could buy some loyalty.
Likewise, the US, the Europeans and the Arab League could work hard diplomatically to avoid a proxy war among the neighbors, and it might be avoided. I am heartened that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran seem intent on continuing to dialogue, and to avoid tensions reaching a fever picth between the two countries. If the US had any sense, it would be warmly encouraging this diplomacy, not trying to get the Arabs and Israelis to gang up on Iran.
But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.
In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.
It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.
But life is unfair.
So what can the Dems do to avoid being made the fall guy this way?
They could try to legislate stronger US diplomacy aiming at ensuring peace between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran even if there is sectarian violence on a greater scale in Iraq. They could resist the temptation to demonize Iran or to push it onto a war footing with threats or even bombings.
As for Iraq itself, the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions. It is a slim reed to hold onto, as they recognize.
But from the moment Bush went into Iraq, Americans were screwed. And that includes the Democratic Party, which is being set up to take the fall.
I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.
###
Despite what the pundits will say, I fear the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the Hill Monday and Tuesday is not a turning point, does not give Bush breathing room, and is largely irrelevant.
To any extent that what they do in Iraq ends up making a real positive difference, Petraeus and Crocker will likely be doing the Democrats a big favor, not Bush, who won't be in office much longer.
The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush's watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009. If they could, this drawdown would be the best option. Certainly, that is what a majority of Iraqis thinks, according to the new BBC/ABC poll.
But the answer is: No. The Democrats cannot get the troops out of Iraq because they cannot overturn a Bush veto in the House of Representatives, and because they cannot overcome the need for a consensus of 60 senators in the Senate. Some Democrats, such as Joe Lieberman, oppose a rapid withdrawal. And the likelihood that 11 Republican senators will suddenly become withdrawalniks between now and November, 2008, is negligible.
The testimony of Petraeus and Crocker may marginally reinforce the will of the Republicans to stay the course, but I do not think it is decisive. In all likelihood, the Republican senators would have continued to block their Democratic colleagues from doing anything really dramatic, anyway.
If the Democrats cannot prevail in withdrawing before Bush goes out of office (and they cannot), and if they then rapidly draw down the troops on taking office in 2009, they face the real prospect of a "Gerald Ford meltdown" of the sort that occurred in 1975 when the North Vietnamese and their VC allies took over South Vietnam.
You will note that Ford only served a couple of years as president and lost his election bid to a relative unknown named Jimmy Carter. Although economic stagflation and the stain of Watergate contributed to his defeat, I think the spectacle of the debacle in Indochina harmed Ford a great deal. The United States lost a war, and lost out to its ideological rival in an entire subcontinent of Asia in the midst of the Cold War. That would cause at least some Republicans to stay home in 1976, a sure way for Democrats to win an election.
Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam? Yes. I just do not see evidence that either the new Iraqi political class or the Iraqi security forces are likely to have the maturity to avoid a conflagration when the US military withdraws.
There are three major wars going on in Iraq: 1) for control of oil-rich Basra, among Shiite militias and tribes; 2) for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunni Arabs and Shiites; and 3) for control of oil-rich Kirkuk in the north, between Kurds on the one side and Arabs and Turkmen on the other.
Gen. Petraeus believes that the Sunni-Shiite struggle for Baghdad is the central struggle, and that if it cannot be calmed down, nothing can be accomplished. His main energies have been put into reducing violence in Baghdad itself, in which he has succeeded to a limited extent (i.e. getting violence back down to summer, 2006, levels instead of astronomical January 2007 levels).
The successes in Baghdad are ambiguous, not clear-cut. The year 2006 was particularly bloody, so getting to that level is not satisfactory. The reduction in statistics on sectarian violence has not prevented hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs from being ethnically cleansed (mainly displaced) from Baghdad, turning it from a city that was 65 percent Shiite into one that is 75 percent Shiite and rising. The Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar, whether they hate "al-Qaeda" or not, say in interviews that they support the withdrawal of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front from the al-Maliki government, precisely on the grounds that al-Maliki is entangled with the Shiite militias that are displacing the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.
Further, Gen. Petraeus has frankly admitted that whatever successes he has had in Baghdad militarily (and he has had some there) have not yet translated into solid political gains in Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. He continues to entertain hopes that they will be so translated, but all he can proffer us in this regard is exactly that, hopes.
Petraeus's perspective ignores the over-all rise in civilian deaths in 2007 compared to 2006, and pays no attention to Shiite-Shiite violence in Basra and Karbala. He also codes the Arab attack on Yazidi Kurds as an "al-Qaeda" act of violence. In fact, it was part of an ethnic struggle for control of land and oil in the Iraqi north that is just as destabilizing, potentially, as is the battle for Baghdad. He points to Iraqi security forces policing provinces such as Muthanna and Nasiriya in the Shiite south. It has to be acknowledged, however, that those provincial security forces are dominated by the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which was trained and may still be being partially funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are in an ongoing struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, also Shiite but more Iraqi nativist.
My own expectation is that unless Iraqi politicians become far more canny and powerful during the next two years, then when the American forces withdraw, the ethnic and sectarian militias will fight the three wars (Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk) to a conclusion. It will likely be a bloody war similar to that in Afghanistan in the 1990s. With the Americans not around, it is possible that large militia forces will fight set piece battles.
There is also a danger of the neighbors being drawn into a big proxy fight in Iraq (including the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Turks).
Neither outcome is inevitable. If al-Maliki learns how to cultivate the Sunni Arabs as well as Petraeus has been (and if the Sunni Arabs will accept it from al-Maliki, which is not assured), then he might be able to draw them into his orbit just as King Feisal did in the 1920s. Al-Maliki's government is said to have $10 bn. in oil revenue that it refuses to spend; that could buy some loyalty.
Likewise, the US, the Europeans and the Arab League could work hard diplomatically to avoid a proxy war among the neighbors, and it might be avoided. I am heartened that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran seem intent on continuing to dialogue, and to avoid tensions reaching a fever picth between the two countries. If the US had any sense, it would be warmly encouraging this diplomacy, not trying to get the Arabs and Israelis to gang up on Iran.
But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.
In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.
It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.
But life is unfair.
So what can the Dems do to avoid being made the fall guy this way?
They could try to legislate stronger US diplomacy aiming at ensuring peace between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran even if there is sectarian violence on a greater scale in Iraq. They could resist the temptation to demonize Iran or to push it onto a war footing with threats or even bombings.
As for Iraq itself, the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions. It is a slim reed to hold onto, as they recognize.
But from the moment Bush went into Iraq, Americans were screwed. And that includes the Democratic Party, which is being set up to take the fall.
I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.
###
Sep 6, 2007
The Republicans Are Going to Lose, Right
[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the Republicans’ pending defeat in 2008.]
Yes.
Ohio Trending Blue
The ultimate Swing state is looking good for Democrats. Clinton holds solid leads over all Republicans in a state marred Republican corruption and scandal.
In head-to-head matchups, Ohio voters said they favored Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, over former New York mayor Giuliani, 47 percent to 40 percent.
The same candidates were tied in an Aug. 8 poll by Quinnipiac University.
In other matchups, the latest poll found that Clinton topped Arizona Sen. McCain, 46 percent to 41 percent; and she also beat former Tennessee Sen. Thompson, 49 percent to 37 percent.
Democrats open huge lead in generic congressional ballot
by kos
Rasmussen Reports.
Generic congressional ballot
Democrats 50 (47) Republicans 32 (37)
Another interesting datapoint, from the subscription-only internals -- most "moderates" see the Democratic Party as representing their ideology.
Funny how "moderate" voters view Democrats, not Republicans, as the mainstream "moderate" party, no matter how much conservatives may have fooled themselves otherwise.
Republican Forecast: Cloudy
Party's Woes Go Beyond Bush as It Bleeds Support Among Key Groups
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON -- For Republicans hoping the 2008 campaign will bring a fresh start after the troubled tenure of President Bush, there are sobering signs: Evidence indicates that the party's problems with the American electorate are much bigger than the president and won't go away when he leaves office.
Recent voter surveys, including private polling done by a leading Republican strategist, suggest a broader erosion of Republicans' appeal. In particular, three groups crucial to Mr. Bush's goal of a "permanent Republican majority" are drifting away: younger voters, Hispanics and independents.
The reasons include the Iraq war, conservatives' emphasis on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research, and a party-led backlash against illegal immigrants that has left many Hispanic and Asian-American citizens feeling unwelcome. The upshot is that Republicans face structural problems that stem from generational, demographic and societal changes and aren't easily overcome without changing fundamental party positions.
Longtime Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio this year conducted an exhaustive survey of his party's voters to update one he did in 1997. He found that the party is significantly older and more conservative than it was a decade ago. That, he says, suggests a Republican Party
increasingly at risk of being seen "as very old-fashioned, very old ...
Bad news just keeps on coming for the Grim Old Party
September 3, 2007
ROBERT NOVAK
During the summer, a female acquaintance of mine in her 70s who had been a faithful Republican was solicited by a GOP cold caller as a previous contributor to the party. Not this time. She informed the fund-raiser that President Bush's position on immigration was the last straw. She would not give the Republicans another dime -- not now, maybe never. So, she told him, "Stop calling me!"
That rebuff, commonplace in today's Republican fund-raising, puts a human face on the Federal Election Commission's cold statistics. They show a commanding Democratic lead over Republicans in raising money for the 2008 elections. Such an unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a contributing cause of the melancholy suffusing the Grand Old Party as Congress reconvenes after the August break.
… But never before have I seen morale within the party so low. While Republican support for an unpopular war has remained remarkably strong, almost all non-war news during the dreary August recess has been bad for the GOP.
The week before Labor Day, when nothing of importance was supposed to happen, brought bad news for the party just as it appeared nothing worse was possible:
• • The disgrace of Sen. Larry Craig, a former member of the party leadership, is all the worse because several Republican senators and Senate staffers were not a bit surprised. That raises two questions. If so many people knew Craig was an accident waiting to happen, why was he not eased out of office? How many other examples of scandalous behavior are known but hidden?
• • The decision by Sen. John Warner, announced Friday, not to seek a sixth term from Virginia at age 80 was no surprise but still a disappointment. Former Gov. Mark Warner, no relation and a Democrat, is an overwhelming favorite to win in Virginia next year. Republicans privately estimate that this will be one of four Senate seats they will lose in 2008, giving Democratic leader Harry Reid a real working majority.
• • Rep. Rick Renzi announced he would not seek a fourth term for the highly competitive Arizona northern district that could go Democratic. That represents a double whammy for Republicans. Renzi, investigated by the FBI for receiving an alleged kickback in a land transaction, is but one of at least half a dozen House Republicans under federal inquiry. In addition, a growing number of scandal-free GOP incumbents representing contested districts are heading for the exits. That depresses meager hopes for restoring a Republican majority in the House.
• • Most of the dwindled contingent of Republican governors have abandoned conservative principles to embrace the Democratic-sponsored extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program to people who are neither children nor poor. Only three -- Indiana's Mitch Daniels, Mississippi's Haley Barbour and South Carolina's Mark Sanford -- resist the lure of federal dollars.
Given these multiple developments, the melancholic Republicans yearn for a leader. The party's many presidential candidates pretend that George W. Bush does not really exist, not mentioning his name during debates. But none has inspired the party faithful. Front-runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to social conservatives who were the core of Republican success for more than two decades. This situation explains the interest in Fred Thompson as a savior.
Mitt Romney approached the calamitous atmosphere last week by asserting that Sen. Craig, until last week his Idaho state chairman, is part of the capital's corruption that only a real outsider -- specifically, the former governor of Massachusetts -- can cure. Past candidates have succeeded in pointing to corruption in Washington, but always by the opposite party. The Republican Party's next leader faces a more complicated problem.
###
Yes.
Ohio Trending Blue
The ultimate Swing state is looking good for Democrats. Clinton holds solid leads over all Republicans in a state marred Republican corruption and scandal.
In head-to-head matchups, Ohio voters said they favored Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, over former New York mayor Giuliani, 47 percent to 40 percent.
The same candidates were tied in an Aug. 8 poll by Quinnipiac University.
In other matchups, the latest poll found that Clinton topped Arizona Sen. McCain, 46 percent to 41 percent; and she also beat former Tennessee Sen. Thompson, 49 percent to 37 percent.
Democrats open huge lead in generic congressional ballot
by kos
Rasmussen Reports.
Generic congressional ballot
Democrats 50 (47) Republicans 32 (37)
Another interesting datapoint, from the subscription-only internals -- most "moderates" see the Democratic Party as representing their ideology.
Funny how "moderate" voters view Democrats, not Republicans, as the mainstream "moderate" party, no matter how much conservatives may have fooled themselves otherwise.
Republican Forecast: Cloudy
Party's Woes Go Beyond Bush as It Bleeds Support Among Key Groups
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON -- For Republicans hoping the 2008 campaign will bring a fresh start after the troubled tenure of President Bush, there are sobering signs: Evidence indicates that the party's problems with the American electorate are much bigger than the president and won't go away when he leaves office.
Recent voter surveys, including private polling done by a leading Republican strategist, suggest a broader erosion of Republicans' appeal. In particular, three groups crucial to Mr. Bush's goal of a "permanent Republican majority" are drifting away: younger voters, Hispanics and independents.
The reasons include the Iraq war, conservatives' emphasis on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research, and a party-led backlash against illegal immigrants that has left many Hispanic and Asian-American citizens feeling unwelcome. The upshot is that Republicans face structural problems that stem from generational, demographic and societal changes and aren't easily overcome without changing fundamental party positions.
Longtime Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio this year conducted an exhaustive survey of his party's voters to update one he did in 1997. He found that the party is significantly older and more conservative than it was a decade ago. That, he says, suggests a Republican Party
increasingly at risk of being seen "as very old-fashioned, very old ...
Bad news just keeps on coming for the Grim Old Party
September 3, 2007
ROBERT NOVAK
During the summer, a female acquaintance of mine in her 70s who had been a faithful Republican was solicited by a GOP cold caller as a previous contributor to the party. Not this time. She informed the fund-raiser that President Bush's position on immigration was the last straw. She would not give the Republicans another dime -- not now, maybe never. So, she told him, "Stop calling me!"
That rebuff, commonplace in today's Republican fund-raising, puts a human face on the Federal Election Commission's cold statistics. They show a commanding Democratic lead over Republicans in raising money for the 2008 elections. Such an unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a contributing cause of the melancholy suffusing the Grand Old Party as Congress reconvenes after the August break.
… But never before have I seen morale within the party so low. While Republican support for an unpopular war has remained remarkably strong, almost all non-war news during the dreary August recess has been bad for the GOP.
The week before Labor Day, when nothing of importance was supposed to happen, brought bad news for the party just as it appeared nothing worse was possible:
• • The disgrace of Sen. Larry Craig, a former member of the party leadership, is all the worse because several Republican senators and Senate staffers were not a bit surprised. That raises two questions. If so many people knew Craig was an accident waiting to happen, why was he not eased out of office? How many other examples of scandalous behavior are known but hidden?
• • The decision by Sen. John Warner, announced Friday, not to seek a sixth term from Virginia at age 80 was no surprise but still a disappointment. Former Gov. Mark Warner, no relation and a Democrat, is an overwhelming favorite to win in Virginia next year. Republicans privately estimate that this will be one of four Senate seats they will lose in 2008, giving Democratic leader Harry Reid a real working majority.
• • Rep. Rick Renzi announced he would not seek a fourth term for the highly competitive Arizona northern district that could go Democratic. That represents a double whammy for Republicans. Renzi, investigated by the FBI for receiving an alleged kickback in a land transaction, is but one of at least half a dozen House Republicans under federal inquiry. In addition, a growing number of scandal-free GOP incumbents representing contested districts are heading for the exits. That depresses meager hopes for restoring a Republican majority in the House.
• • Most of the dwindled contingent of Republican governors have abandoned conservative principles to embrace the Democratic-sponsored extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program to people who are neither children nor poor. Only three -- Indiana's Mitch Daniels, Mississippi's Haley Barbour and South Carolina's Mark Sanford -- resist the lure of federal dollars.
Given these multiple developments, the melancholic Republicans yearn for a leader. The party's many presidential candidates pretend that George W. Bush does not really exist, not mentioning his name during debates. But none has inspired the party faithful. Front-runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to social conservatives who were the core of Republican success for more than two decades. This situation explains the interest in Fred Thompson as a savior.
Mitt Romney approached the calamitous atmosphere last week by asserting that Sen. Craig, until last week his Idaho state chairman, is part of the capital's corruption that only a real outsider -- specifically, the former governor of Massachusetts -- can cure. Past candidates have succeeded in pointing to corruption in Washington, but always by the opposite party. The Republican Party's next leader faces a more complicated problem.
###
Sep 2, 2007
The Republicans Are Going to Lose, Right
[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the Republicans’ pending defeat in 2008.]
An attorney friend (similar to my sister and brother-in-law and actually a lot of Americans) raising two children who is among the busiest human beings whom I know would ask me during the 2004 presidential campaign for reports on whether Bush would get beat by the democratic nominee. [We both hoped so.]
So, I would offer my analysis (too long and often borrowing from Roy Teixeira) that would always end in his “So, Bush is going to lose, right?” Or, something like: Who is voting for this idiot?
The friend, like a lot of Americans, had the idea that Bush might run up trillion dollar debts, drag on a war and an occupation, stack the courts with liberty-hating rightwingers and inflict damage to the environment and education, social security, Medicare (and basically every aspect of government).
He also found it difficult to believe that anybody could vote for such an intellectual dolt as Bush, and yet was fearful that many Americans of the Iraq-caused-911, evolution-is-wrong, the-gays-are-coming, and blacks-and-browns-oughta-stay-in-their-place variety would indeed vote for Bush.
Putting aside the fact that I blew my 2004 prediction (though evidence does point to the election being stolen in Ohio and Florida), this is the first of a recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses that the Republicans will lose in 2008:
GOP Faces Growing Peril In 2008 Races
Senate Prospects Dimming
By Jonathan Weisman and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com Staff WriterSunday, September 2, 2007
A Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the resignation of scandal-scarred Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).
Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner's retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them -- in Virginia and Colorado -- are prime targets for Democrats.
With former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey possibly waiting in the wings, Republicans are anxiously watching to see whether Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will retire. And two more Republican seats open for reelection -- in Wyoming and Idaho -- would be occupied by unelected appointees, John Barrasso and Craig's replacement.
"The state of the playing field looks very good, even in places where we didn't expect it to look good, even in deeply red states," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Things could change, but if you did a snapshot, we're going to have a good year."
"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Sour Americans hungry for change as election '08 approaches
By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers
DES MOINES, Iowa — A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country's course.
Most lean left, a U.S. population more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.
Still, some want to turn farther right, demanding that the country fence off its Southern border, expel illegal immigrants and rein in a federal government grown fat under a Republican government they now dismiss as incompetent.
One thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They're deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There's virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton's in 2000.
The yearning to chart a new course is national:
Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.
Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.
The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s — dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.
The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.
"People are very unhappy, very unsettled,'' said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.
Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.
2008 will be a great election for Democrats in the Senate.
Red Dawn
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online Post date 08.31.07
Overall, the Democrats will have an advantage in 2008 in having to defend far fewer seats than the Republicans. Only twelve seats held by Democrats will be up compared to 22 for Republicans. And several of those Republicans were elected during the peculiar post-9/11 circumstances of the 2002 election, when President Bush used his immense popularity and the threat of a terrorist attack to boost the chances of several Republican underdogs.
An attorney friend (similar to my sister and brother-in-law and actually a lot of Americans) raising two children who is among the busiest human beings whom I know would ask me during the 2004 presidential campaign for reports on whether Bush would get beat by the democratic nominee. [We both hoped so.]
So, I would offer my analysis (too long and often borrowing from Roy Teixeira) that would always end in his “So, Bush is going to lose, right?” Or, something like: Who is voting for this idiot?
The friend, like a lot of Americans, had the idea that Bush might run up trillion dollar debts, drag on a war and an occupation, stack the courts with liberty-hating rightwingers and inflict damage to the environment and education, social security, Medicare (and basically every aspect of government).
He also found it difficult to believe that anybody could vote for such an intellectual dolt as Bush, and yet was fearful that many Americans of the Iraq-caused-911, evolution-is-wrong, the-gays-are-coming, and blacks-and-browns-oughta-stay-in-their-place variety would indeed vote for Bush.
Putting aside the fact that I blew my 2004 prediction (though evidence does point to the election being stolen in Ohio and Florida), this is the first of a recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses that the Republicans will lose in 2008:
GOP Faces Growing Peril In 2008 Races
Senate Prospects Dimming
By Jonathan Weisman and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com Staff WriterSunday, September 2, 2007
A Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the resignation of scandal-scarred Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).
Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner's retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them -- in Virginia and Colorado -- are prime targets for Democrats.
With former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey possibly waiting in the wings, Republicans are anxiously watching to see whether Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will retire. And two more Republican seats open for reelection -- in Wyoming and Idaho -- would be occupied by unelected appointees, John Barrasso and Craig's replacement.
"The state of the playing field looks very good, even in places where we didn't expect it to look good, even in deeply red states," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Things could change, but if you did a snapshot, we're going to have a good year."
"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Sour Americans hungry for change as election '08 approaches
By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers
DES MOINES, Iowa — A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country's course.
Most lean left, a U.S. population more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.
Still, some want to turn farther right, demanding that the country fence off its Southern border, expel illegal immigrants and rein in a federal government grown fat under a Republican government they now dismiss as incompetent.
One thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They're deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There's virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton's in 2000.
The yearning to chart a new course is national:
Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.
Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.
The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s — dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.
The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.
"People are very unhappy, very unsettled,'' said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.
Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.
2008 will be a great election for Democrats in the Senate.
Red Dawn
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online Post date 08.31.07
Overall, the Democrats will have an advantage in 2008 in having to defend far fewer seats than the Republicans. Only twelve seats held by Democrats will be up compared to 22 for Republicans. And several of those Republicans were elected during the peculiar post-9/11 circumstances of the 2002 election, when President Bush used his immense popularity and the threat of a terrorist attack to boost the chances of several Republican underdogs.
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