HUGE WIN FOR TESTER-- MORNING AFTER PRIMARY RESULTS

My first look at the Montana results at THE MISSOULIAN were pretty encouraging. With 5 Democrats and 4 Republicans (including incumbent Conrad Burns) vying for the seat, Jon Tester had more votes than the other 8 combined. Meanwhile the live election bloggers at Left In The West reported that early voting from Helena broke 3 to 1 for Tester. Every early indication was that the progressive, populist, Tester, was completely slaughtering the DLC hack, Morrison. Tester was even kicking his ass in what analysts claim are Morrison strongholds. I jotted a note, "This race is over and it's only 8:30PM Pacific Time. The netroots, grassroots and progressives have their first big victory over the Inside-the-Beltway scum for 2006. The DSCC and DLC were behind Morrison and delivered bupkes." Tester had nothing going for him but his impeccable integrity, a great record of accomplishment and a populism that appeals to real people (and frightens hack politicos and their Big Business allies). Now comes the big battle-- Tester taking on Jack Abramoff's biggest Senate bribe-taker, right-wing loon Conrad Burns. The DWT ACT BLUE Page helped Tester win the primary. Now we should help him defeat one of the absolutely worst senators in the whole country.

David Sirota, whose brilliant book, HOSTILE TAKEOVER, opens with him trying to get back to Montana on a screwed up airline, has a really great analysis of what happened there last night-- and what it means to the Democratic Party and the country. Short answer: bye-bye Conrad Burns and look out Inside-the-Beltway power establishment. "Tonight is a terrible night for Conrad Burns, not only because one of his primary challengers got almost a quarter of GOP votes, but because Democrats now have Jon Tester carrying the flag against him. Burns barely eked out a victory last time against Schweitzer-- then an unknown first-time candidate. Now, severely damaged by his connections to high-profile corruption scandals, Burns is facing a Schweitzer-style populist-- but one who is better-known than Schweitzer was during his dark horse Senate bid in 2000. It's Tester Time-- and that means Burns' days in the Senate are numbered."

The two late states, Montana and California had the most exciting-- and important-- races but there were 6 other states around the country that had primaries today. There were no hot races in New Mexico. South Dakota Democrats were looking for the best challenger for the anti-choice wingnut incumbent, Mike Rounds, and Jack Billion took it away, handily.

Alabama Democrats and Republicans made sane choices in their primaries for Governor. The Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Lucy Baxley over crooked ex-Governor Don Siegelman and Republicans endorsed the mainstream conservative Bob Riley over psycho-Nazi Roy Moore (the ex-Chief Justice religionist nut), also by a lopsided margin. Iowa's 3-way Democratic primary led to victory for Chet Culver, as expected by most observers.

The only vaguely interesting race in Mississippi was a challenge by somewhat Republican-friendly Chuck Espy to decidedly not Republican-friendly incumbent Bennie Thompson. It's a heavily Democratic district-- winning the Democratic primary means 2 years in DC-- and the GOP urged their supporters to re-register temporarily as Democrats to vote for Espy. They fear Thompson. And Thompson completely kicked Espy's ass.

And in New Jersey there was basically one contested primary (with a pulse), for the seat vacated by ex-Congressman/now Senator Bob Menendez. The NJ Democratic Party machine was behind Albio Sires and he beat the insurgent Democrat, Joseph Vas. The Republicans had some messiness in Bergen County-- a county whose Party Kean needs to be functional if he's doing to have even a chance against Menendez in November. It looks like it won't be.

Anyway, as I headed off to bed in time to watch THE DAILY SHOW, about a quarter of the California statewide vote had been counted and it looked like all the preferred candidates were winning, especially Debra Bowen. It was also apparent that McNerney was maintaining his tremendous margin and that even Francine Busby's narrow loss in CA-50 had a silver lining, since she made the Republicans pay very, very dearly-- as much as $5 million-- for what was always considered a very safe Republican seat. In 2004 she lost by 22%; this time she lost by 4.5%-- and she gets another chance in November, having won the Democratic primary. Independents broke solidly for Busby, perhaps as much as 9-1, but the low turn-out hurt her chances. She still managed to hold Bilbray under 50%. (By the way, if the 18% shift in CA-50 is carried forward through the whole country in November, the Republican majority in the House will be reduced to the pitiful rump it deserves to be.)

A little aside: while I was waiting for more California votes to come in, I walked over to the TV and skipped around the dial. Not one English-language TV was even mentioning returns or elections. Two Spanish language stations were carrying results.

Let's look at the California results. The billionaire DLC patsy, Steve Westly, lost to solidly progressive Phil Angelides. Westly ran the most destructive and negative Democratic primary I've ever seen in my life and he turned off hundreds of thousands of voters with his blitz of viciously negative anti-Angelides ads (which Angelides was forced to answer in kind). I'm so glad he lost and wasted so much of his own money. He really sucks. The state race I was most concerned about-- for Secretary of State-- was decisively won by Debra Bowen. That should signal a death blow for Republican vote counting fraudmeisters Dielbold. As expected Jerry Brown won his race for Attorney General without breaking a sweat. I have a dream that he'll be Spitzer-like.

About 13% of Democratic primary voters sent a message to Dianne Feinstein that they weren't happy with her performance, but she didn't have any credible opposition. It also looks like quite a few Democrats who voted just didn't bother to vote in the Senate race.

The most important congressional race in the state yesterday-- and the nation-- pitted progressive grassroots candidate Jerry McNerney against Inside-the-Beltway shill Steve Filson. The people of CA-11 told Rahm Emanuel, Ellen Tauscher and the corporately-oriented creeps in their anti-democratic clique where to get off. In the 3-way race, McNerney took 52.5% of the vote and the DCCC puppet took 28.6%. This was a resounding victory for the grassroots, not unlike the more high profile Tester win in Montana.

Marcy Winograd's heroic effort in CA-36 drew nearly 40% of the vote against entrenched incumbent Jane Harman, giving her the scare of her political life. Expect to see her less eager to shill for Bush and the GOP corporate agenda in the future. My bet is we won't hear her bragging that she's "the best Republican in the Democratic Party" again.

A quick look at the other congressional primaries around the state. Two big shocks: Cynthia Rodriguez Matthews edged out Russ Warner in CA-26 and she will face Dreier again. Most people were not even aware she was running again! And in CA-02 Arjinderpal Sekhon (the 2002 candidate who was trounced back then) beat Bill Falzett-- 55.6 to 44.4-- and will face off against right-wing nutcase Wally Herger in November in this extremely Republican district. As expected, Charlie Brown won his 3-way primary and will face John Doolittle in November unless Doolittle is in prison by then. He is likely to continue campaigning even if he is indicted-- which looks more likely every day-- before November. Progressive Lynn Woolsey (CA-06) walked away with 66% of the vote after a spirited challenge from the even more progressive Joe Nation. In the 5-way race to challenge prime Republicrook Duncan Hunter (CA-52), John Rinaldi was the overwhelming victor. (More on him soon.)

In the 2 other Winograd-Harman-like L.A. races where anti-war candidates were challenging established Democrats who supported Bush's war policies in Iraq-- CA 28, where Charles Coleman was beaten by Howard Berman and CA-29, where the even more conservative Adam Schiff beat Bob McCloskey-- low-key, un-funded campaigns with almost no voter awareness led to dismal results.