"True Fairness In America"

Economic populism wins. About damn time.

(h/t Atrios)

Update: from the Wash Post:

Webb was nervous in front of large crowds, couldn't understand why people wanted to shake his hand and hated asking people for money. He even turned down checks from people he didn't think could afford to give up, as he called it, "their gas money."

I love this guy.

An open letter (jus cuz I feel like it)

Dear senators and representatives of the 110^th Congress,

As the buzz of last night’s champagne wears off and you start packing your travel bags for the grand ole trip to Washington, I have one humble request: please, for the love of God, do not mess this up. I know you have just undergone a pressure cooker of an electoral season and want to revel in victory, you have witnessed, battled and survived some of the grimiest tactics in smear and scandal in media, and even your campaign managers are feeling pretty smug; but you have to get over that— it’s time to put your game face on.

Let’s be honest: we squabbled and flip flopped our way into a horrible 2004 campaign and floundered alongside our republican legislators in the disoriented military quagmire that is Iraq. During our paralysis, President Bush co-opted confusion and twisted patriotism into costly military overextension (for which all but 21 of our own agreed to in 2002 if you remember). Then, we realized the true Conrad inspired hollowness of the GOP’s claims and proceeded to watch in horrified awe.

This can’t happen any more. We have the power and duty to act upon the DNC credo “Together, America can do better” and lead the country in a new direction. It’s going to be tough. After all, you’ve been going at legislating with a loser’s albatross for the past 12 years so your thinking caps may be a little rusty. Shake it off. Hit the books, the gym, whatever. Just get it together before January. We have a health care crisis, Iraq is hemorrhaging funds, and don’t think that Bush’s conciliatory language doesn’t mean that at first chance the Republicans won’t go for the jugular.

Voters sent Bush a message, but they also gave you a mandate: make change. Let’s see your offense. Don’t stall at the post. No amount of trash talk will impact the scoreboard; you have to DO something. So just do it. Take the ball, get down court, and make the crowd go wild with a slam dunk in the first quarter (say, a sensible two tiered health coverage plan or god forbid some type of improvement in our billion dollar blasé educational system). Look, Rumsfeld is out, so you have no excuse: fix Iraq, make us more secure, and don’t build a wall.

You’ve got the ball and you have two years to play. As President Bush said today, we need to “conduct ourselves in an ethical manner, work together to address the challenges facing our nation.” Whatever. Just get the job done. Let’s see a plan shining in social reform, responsible budgeting, and ethical, transparent government. Need I remind you that if you fail, 2008 will be a slaughter for the record books?

Together, we get can do better. Nancy Pelosi said in a speech today, “Democrats are ready to lead. We are prepared to govern. And we will do so working… in partnership not in partisanship.” Listen please, find a locker room and hash out the plan TOGETHER. No fiefdoms, no narcissist player drama. Get out there and win! Pelosi said it best, “Today we have made history. Now let us make progress.”

Thank you,

Concerned Democrat

Power

Feels kinda good, don't it?

(In case you're living under a rock: we've swamped the House, there are a number still too close to call/being recounted but it looks like our margin is going to come down somewhere in the low 30s; Senate still hinges on VA and MT, both of which are still being counted and trending ever so slightly in our direction; big gains in governorships and state houses; Republicans have not made a single gain of anything, anywhere. Phew!)

Keep your shirts on...

...we're almost there. 24 hours from now, we should already have a fairly good idea how things are shaping up. For the ardent election-watchers, Evans-Novak has a helpful chronological breakdown of when the various House races close (though don't bother with the actual analysis, it's startlingly bad. RI-Sen leans Republican? OK then.)

And of course, you can get the latest returns all night on WHRB, 95.3 FM in greater Boston and streaming live online, where Wes Oliver and I will be anchoring a full slate of programming. We begin at 6:30, break for the hockey game at 7, and resume coverage around 9:15. Watch for the appearance of our own Eric Lesser -- my only hope is that he can stay sober...

--

One word to those people who are panicking about the tiny late swings in the poll numbers, and you know who you are. That word is: chill. This is a natural correction that is to be expected, and exaggerated by the media (which wants nothing more than to cover a horse race). It has nothing to do with "momentum."

Remember, the vast majority of voters do not have the same slavish devotion to poll numbers as we do. Their understanding of the election, more often than not, boils down to this:

And they are not being demoralized or encouraged by whatever odd numbers McClatchy spits out on Saturday. People's decisions are based on the context of the whole election, and on the state of (gasp!) their actual lives. Which can only benefit us.

I'm off to do some last-minute GOTV phonebanking for Patricia Madrid. Tomorrow I vote here in Cambridge, and then do whatever Deval Patrick needs me to. If everyone else pitches in as well, we can -- and will -- take this country back.

See you in the new world.

It's Jesus' Fault?

"The Editors" at Poor Man raises a question I haven't seen before -- can/should the impending Republican collapse be blamed on the fundamentalist wing of the GOP? Riffing on Ross Douthat, "Editors" says no:

It’s not just that the “smart set” of non-theo Republicanism have been responsible for unpopular politics - they’ve been bad policies, bad ideas poorly executed, and they’ve seriously damaged the country in a way that, say, anti-gay marriage initiatives, the Terri Schiavo circus, and all the stem cell baloney have not and could not. [...]

The Crazy Jesus People have a problem with science and liberalism and modernity, but that problem is basically psychological - the modern world makes it hard to hold on to comforting beliefs about this omnipotent fellow named “God” - who looks a lot like you, incidentally - waking up 6,000 years ago and creating the world from nothing and helpfully recording it all for posterity. You can fix the psychological problem with a gesture, some display of authority and power and relevence that makes the CJPs feel respectable - force kids to pretend to beg favors of this “God” person before class, for example - and that’s pretty much all they want out of politics. Other Republicans have different kinds of problems with science and liberalism and modernity - financial concerns, political concerns, foreign policy concerns - and these problems are real world problems, and fixing them requires taking control of the day-to-day workings of the government. And, when this stuff doesn’t work as planned, and it turns out that you are a half-educated dipshit with a head full of Ayn Rand and hairplugs, it requires a scapegoat. Blaming liberals and scientists and Teh Gay has a broad-based appeal; but, should old alliances no longer be benificial, you can blame the Crazy Jesus People, too.

Quite right. Just as we cannot let the commentariat and the Republican intellectuals save their credibility by pegging Bush as a liberal (Digby's favorite topic), we also cannot let them slough their problems off onto the religious wingnuts. It is conservatism itself that has failed America, and liberals like us have to remember that.

A Country Boy Can Survive

New poll numbers ("precious... my precious...") from LATimes/Bloomberg tonight. The shocker is that they have Webb leading Allen 47-44 -- yes, yes, "woo-hoo" & so forth, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Three points. That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee.

What I want to focus on is the question of urban vs. rural voters. Ron Brownstein, in his shit analysis (sorry Ron, I love ya, but you know nothing about polls and you should not be writing about 'em), makes this contention:

Democrats are within range of capturing a Senate majority, but face potentially decisive resistance from rural voters in three critical Republican-leaning states... Among rural voters in Virginia, Talent led McCaskill, 56% to 37%. Allen topped Webb, 60% to 33%, and Corker dwarfed Ford, 62% to 27%. The large suburban population in northern Virginia places Webb in a better position to overcome these disadvantages than his Democratic counterparts in Tennessee and Missouri. But all three face a tough climb to victory if they do not improve their performance among these voting blocs by election day.

(Emphasis mine.) ---Let's break this down a little: Ron contends that A) Democrats are struggling among rural voters and B) that this will hinder their progress. I'll examine each in turn, and show why they're both quite incorrect, after the jump.

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"At Long Last, Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?"

Paul Krugman's latest column (free copy here) is a doozy.

So if the Democrats win, they’ll probably have a substantial majority. Whether they’ll be able to keep that majority is another question. But be prepared to wake up less than four weeks from now and learn that everything you’ve been told about American politics — liberalism is dead, whoever controls the South controls Washington, only Republicans know “the way to win” — is wrong. (Are we seeing the birth of a new New Deal coalition, in which the solid Northeast takes the place of the solid South?) [...] The best guess is that the permanent Republican majority will end in a little over three weeks.

Of course, let's not put the cart in front of the horse here. Nothing has been won yet. The MyDD guys would have a conniption fit at this. But there is a real possibility that we are in the throes of a major, almost revolutionary, election cycle; and we'd be remiss not to spend at least a little time looking at it in broader context.

In twelve years of Congressional control, and six years of complete triple-branch hegemony, the Republican Party took complete control of public discourse and the public policy. It was a foregone conclusion that any GOP government would be able to pull whatever levers it wanted, but when Democrats were miraculously in power (Clinton, the Jeffords Senate) they had to tread on eggshells. It was the era of Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Bill O'Reilly setting the tone; not since 1951 and Joe McCarthy had there been such incredible mounds of unimpeachable self-righteousness pouring from Washington and our TVs. Republicans were the natural governing party, forever.

And if we are to take Krugman, or any one of the innumerable election handicappers, at their words, that era is finished. Cue the trumpets! -- after the jump.

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Entropy

NYT:

“It was not a graceful exit,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, as events swirled on Friday.

No shit.

What has happened to the Republicans? The last week of their congressional session was supposed to be a high point -- where they pulled out all their legislative sucker-punches, rope-a-doping the clueless Democrats as they began to roar back towards November victory. The storyline would be the same as always, those intrepid GOP power players regaining their characteristic mojo off the back of national-security issues, and all would be right with the world. You could feel The Note writhing in anticipation.

(Seriously, does anybody still read that garbage? It's become the most vapid, idiotic, senseless repetition of Beltway blather that you can get on the Internet. At least the newspaper pundits put their sycophantism in vaguely serious, intellectual terms -- I swear to God, if Mark Halperin cracks one more joke about the "Daddy Party" or the "Gang of 500", I'm going to find him and kick him in the nuts.)

Anyway. After the jump, we'll see how wrong they were, and how the Republican position has disintegrated.

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