"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
DCCC On A Mission
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The DCCC is pointing out that currently the GOP is holding 61 seats in districts Obama won (14 of which were also won by Kerry in 2004), which will make it smoother for them to end up on the winning side of the equation in 2012. Maybe they should give their members-- and challengers-- lessons in remedial grassroots campaign strategy... if they can find anyone to teach it. "They're utterly clueless," one Democratic congressman told us. "All they know how to do is raise loads of money from industry groups and put up as many wholly ineffectual TV ads as they can afford... It's very profitable for the consultants, like your blog highlighted just after the election."
Democrats are weeding through November’s election returns to decipher which Members are the most vulnerable Republicans, beginning with those who won marginal districts. Among others, the committee will target Republicans who won districts President Barack Obama carried in 2008 and those who won with 55 percent or less-- the mark used as a ceiling for competitive races.
The bulk of the targets will be in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Texas. Here's a list of likely targets, listed in order of their winning percentage, from lowest to highest. The second number is the percentage by which Obama won the district:
Charlie Bass (NH)/48/56 Chip Cravaack (MN)/48/53 Blake Farenthold (TX)/48/53 Joe Heck (NV)/48/55 Quico Canseco (TX)/49/51 Joe Walsh (IL)/49/56 Ann Marie Buerkle (NY)/50/56 Renee Ellmers (NC)/50/53 Jon Runyan (NJ)/50/52 Tim Walberg (MI)/50/52 Robert Dold (IL)/51/61 Randy Hultgren (IL)/51/55 Dan Lungren (CA)/51/49 Dan Benishek (MI)/52/50 Mary Bono Mack (CA)/52/52 Steve Chabot (OH)/52/55 Sean Duffy (WI)/52/56 Richard Hanna (NY)/53/50 Nan Hayworth (NY)/53/51 Jaime Herrera (WA)/53/53 Dave Reichert (WA)/53/57 Scott Rigell (VA)/53/50 Bobby Schilling (IL)/53/56 David Dreier (CA)/54/51 Mike Fitzpatrick (PA)/54/54 Frank Guinta (NH)/54/53 Allen West (FL)/54/52 Lou Barletta (PA)/55/57 Chris Gibson (NY)/55/51 Pat Meehan (PA)/55/56 Reid Ribble (WI)/55/53 Steve Stivers (OH)/55/54
This is by no means a definitive list, even if the DCCC wants it to be. Much will involve local candidates' ability to gain grassroots traction. And there is a level of opportunism that could easily push districts not on this list to the fore. For example, WI-1 is chock full of popular, high-profile Democratic officeholders who have been waiting (and waiting) to take back Les Aspin's old district, which fell into the hands of Paul Ryan. Ryan's never been a credible opponent, because Democrats figured that the Wall Street favorite would eventually seek higher office. In 2012 he is likely to try to move to the Senate seat currently held by Herb Kohl.
Even more relevant for office-seekers will be the results of the big gerrymander reflecting the 2010 census. This will create opportunities for pickups on both sides of the aisle. We spoke with half a dozen defeated Democratic congressmen, all of whom said they will wait to see the newly redrawn districts before they decide whether or not to run again.
Many of the defeated Democrats were conservatives, especially Blue Dogs, and with former Blue Dog Steve Israel taking over the DCCC it is likely that Rahm Emanuel's policy of recruiting conservative and corrupt Democrats will be the order of the day, which will make it next to impossible for the Democrats to inspire any enthusiasm from their own grassroots. Ultra-conservative freshman Blue Dog Glenn Nye, for example, lost his Virginia seat to wealthy far right Republican Scott Rigell. Nye very much wants to run again, and he made many friends among lobbyists and industry groups that like having anti-consumer Democrats like Nye in Congress. If he can raise the money he needs to mount a comeback challenge, he's likely to try again in the hope that having Obama at the top of the ticket will turn out enough Democrats in 2012 to help his chances. This year Democrats just saw no reason to bother showing up in his district, since he tended to vote with Republicans on almost every contested issue.
Alan Mollohan is a longtime middle-of-the-road Democrat who tended to vote with his own party more often than not but drew a fanatically conservative primary opponent who took advantage of Mollohan's ethics problems. The conservative Democrat, Mike Oliverio, was beaten by a West Virginia Republican Party functionary, David McKinley, and Mollohan has already made it clear-- by deeds if not words-- that he's running again. Among the other Democrats already making noises about running for their old seats are Dina Titus (NV), Charlie Wilson (Blue Dog-OH), Bob Etheridge (NC), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Tom Perriello (VA), and Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL).
This week, in one of only two congressional races too close to call, Rep. Jerry McNerney was finally declared the winner in the 11th CD, a swing district east of San Francisco. His opponent, David Harmer, was having too much fun in DC, at the Republican freshman orientation week, to concede.
The latest ballot-tallying updates from the most populous part of the district showed McNerney, D-Pleasanton, again had widened his lead over Republican challenger David Harmer to a margin of 2,475 votes, or about 1 percent of the 237,808 ballots counted. The Associated Press reported fewer than 1,900 ballots remained to be counted.
...McNerney, having secured his third term in the House of Representatives, leads Harmer in Alameda County by about 15.5 percentage points and in Santa Clara County by 8.2 percentage points.
Harmer leads McNerney by 0.15 of a point in Contra Costa County and by 3.6 percentage points in San Joaquin County; that latter number decreased from a 4.3 percentage-point lead as of Nov. 10. San Joaquin County is also where David Christensen, the American Independent nominee for the seat, fared best, with almost 7.1 percent of the votes cast; districtwide, he took about 5.2 percent.
McNerney first ran for Congress, against a very powerful and very corrupt incumbent, Richard "Dirty Dick" Pombo in 2004. McNerney didn't do very well-- scoring just 39% (103,587 votes) to Pombo's 61% (163,582). But McNerney-- and California activists-- sensed a path to victory in 2006 and McNerney never really stopped running. He was unquestionably the grassroots fave for the whole state of California and, primarily because Pombo was something of a caricature of a pollution-loving, sleazy pol, the race took on tremendous national significance. But before McNerney could get to a rematch with Pombo, there was a problem: Rahm Emanuel.
Inexplicably, the junior House Member-- who was widely loathed for his role in forcing enough Democrats to vote for NAFTA to pass what was basically a deadly Republican policy-- was appointed to head the DCCC. He set about recruiting corporate friend, conservative-oriented hacks like Tim Mahoney and Heath Shuler... from sea to shining sea. In California, Emanuel worked through conservative corporate shill, former stock trader and fellow New Dem, Ellen Tauscher in the neighboring 10th CD. Tauscher and Emanuel recruited a less grassroots-oriented, more corporate quasi-Democrat like themselves, Steve Filson, and then worked to drum up institutional support for him (including Nancy Pelosi) and cut off funding and support from McNerney. It was at that point that progressives started flocking to McNerney's banner in a major way. Local unions and the California Democratic Party supported him. Here's part of a post I wrote at the time:
... [U]nlike in many districts where their tactics have worked, Democrats in the 11th CD are too independent and feisty for them and have only pushed back harder against the anti-grassroots, anti-progressive, Inside-the-Beltway Democratic power elite. Filson's pathetic candidacy, despite all the big name Beltway-ites behind him, just has not taken off. McNerney just keeps getting stronger and stronger.
And today something really healthy for the 11th CD and for the California Democratic Party happened. The State Democratic Party Convention told Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Ellen Tauscher and all the other power-for-power's sake Democrats to go screw themselves, voting overwhelmingly to endorse Jerry McNerney. Party rules-- not the ones Emanuel ignores by declaring war on grassroots candidates everywhere in the country, but California Democratic Party rules-- require 60% of the delegates' approval to endorse a candidate in a contested primary. 75% of the delegates voted to endorse McNerney, making it unclear whether or not Emanuel and Tauscher will tell their puppet candidate to pack it up now.
In the end, Emanuel's ex-Republican shill, Filson, only managed to get 28.5% of the primary vote, a stunning defeat for the Inside-the-Beltway Establishment and a major victory for grassroots Democrats and progressives. At that point Emanuel and the DCCC lost all interest in CA-11 and, having forced McNerney to spend $300,000 of the $449,000 he had raised, abandoned him. Independent grasssroots PACs, like Blue America, stepped in, as did-- more importantly-- environmental groups like Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, Sierra Club, League of Conservation voters, and Clean Water Action. Pouting, Emanuel insisted McNerney had no chance to defeat Pombo. That proved to be a great incentive for progressives to work even harder. In the end Pombo spent $4,629,983 and McNerney spent $2,422,962. McNerney won 109,868 votes (53.2%) to Pombo's 96,396 (46.73%) despite separate campaign appearances by both George W. Bush and Laura Bush. It was one of the sweetest victories on a very good night for grassroots Democrats and progressives around the country.
McNerney had asked people in the district to make a choice. "Do we want more of Richard Pombo protecting Big Oil or do you want to join me and start down a path that leads to energy independence and clean air? Do you want a congressman who continues to subsidize Big Oil or do you want someone who's going to stand up and demand that the oil companies actually pay their fair share? Here in the 11th district, do we want to continue to send Richard Pombo to Washington to cut shady deals that make him and his powerful friends richer, or do we want to restore honesty, integrity and accountability to Congress?"
But then a funny thing happened after election. Jerry McNerney went from a progressive grassroots poster boy to... well... someone who's better than a Republican. He voted to continue Bush's Iraq war policies (then backed away from that position momentarily) and then just sank into a shocking series of positions that alienated virtually all of his most energetic grassroots supporters. By the 111th Congress his ProgressivePunch score was only 52.03, indicating he had voted slightly more frequently with Democrats on contentious, substantive issues than with Republicans. He never joined the Blue Dogs but he voted more conservatively than some of them, including all the California Blue Dogs, Mike Thompson (79.03), Adam Schiff (78.23), Loretta Sanchez (77.78) Joe Baca (68.03), Dennis Cardoza (60.16) and Jim Costa (54.62). In fact, McNerney slipped across the aisle to vote with the Republicans more frequently than any other California Democrat!
Predictably, progressives and activists who had helped propel McNerney into Congress in 2006, were not very enthusiastic about his race this year. He had stopped communicating with progressives entirely and told Bay Area activists to stay away from his campaign. They did. So did plenty of Democratic and left-leaning independent voters.
In 2006 McNerney beat Pombo's support in the district's exurban Republican heartland (San Joaquin County) by racking up big leads in the suburban counties more in sync with the Bay Area. While he only took 49% of San Joaquin, the biggest part of the district, he managed to win with 62% in Alameda, 54% in Contra Costa and 61% in Santa Clara.
In 2008-- with Obama 10 points ahead of McCain (and 9 points ahead of what both Gore and Kerry had done in the district)-- McNerney increased his vote significantly in his first reelection bid. He beat Dean Andal 164,500 (55%) to 133,104 (45%) and won in all four counties, including an unlikely 52-48% win in San Joaquin! He took 64% in Alameda, 56% in Contra Costa and 59% in Santa Clara.
This year, many Democratic voters just stayed home, disillusioned or disinterested. McNerney's percentage went down in every county and he didn't just lose San Joaquin County, but Contra Costa as well. McNerney scored 56% in Alameda, 48% in Contra Costa, 44% in San Joaquin and 52% in Santa Clara.
Harmer outspent him $1,945,407 to $1,752,441 (as of October 13, the last FEC report available), although they each raised about $2.5 million. The DCCC spent $1,031,192.02 attacking Harmer and AFSCME spent ad additional $149,998.80 against him. Harmer didn't get the mega outside spending explosions that could have done to McNerney what they did to Alan Grayson, Mary Jo Kilroy and Carol Shea Porter. Rove ignored the race and the U.S. Chamber only spent $415,184.00. The NRCC's Independent Expenditures in CA-11 only amounted to $357,843.59 and the Club For Growth came to the table with $65,148.88, just barely above what Defenders of Wildlife spent helping McNerney. A GOP anti-choice PAC (Susan B. Anthony List) put up $5,924.08 against McNerney while Planned Parenthood spent $47,911.30 defending him. What was missing was the enthusiasm and activism that money can't buy. It nearly cost McNerney the reelection. The closeness this time guarantees a major effort to defeat him in 2012. The GOP will recruit a strong opponent and make sure he is well-financed. If I were McNerney, I would be seeking to mend some fences with progressives right now.
UPDATE: Someone Knows The Answer To The Question In The Title
This is an e-mail I just got from a very knowledgeable insider who's never steered me wrong:
Jerry survived because he still had the activists working for him - no one wanted that right-winger to win.
His former Chief of Staff, Angela Kouters, who was a Rahm underling was the reason for his turn to the right in his first term in office. She was the one pushing the Blue Dog agenda. She chased off all of the people that got him there.
Well she left Jerry after that first term as it wasn't a good fit for either of them. She went to work for Glenn Nye and they were Blue Dogs to the extreme. Nye is such as asshole that after losing he still refuses to extend unemployment insurance for the 99ers even though he has nothing to lose, and hell he and Kouters might even need UI soon enough.
If you haven't seen this blog posting from a local blogger in Nye's district, it gives you a good overview of Nye and Kouters disasterous political positioning. Basically what she did to Nye, was what she was doing to McNerney, luckily they got rid of her, and Jerry was no longer going around co-sponsoring legislation on immigration from Tom Tancredo, etc.
Following The Money... Sometimes Right Down A Congressional Rabbit Hole
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Veteran populist Democrat Marcy Kaptur won her 15th House term on November 2, although she was outspent 4 to 1 by her opponent, Boehner crony and GOP Nazi Rich Iott. Iott was one of 15 Republicans who spent over a million dollars of his own in this election cycle. Only 4 of the big-spending Republicans won seats-- Rick Scott (FL- $75,000,000 or $29/vote), Scott Rigell (VA- $2,424,364 or $28/vote), Bill Flores (TX- $1,061,224, $10/vote, and Ron Johnson ($8,238,465, $7/vote). The rest, like Iott, lost, including Linda McMahon, who spent $46,600,161 of her own cash ($95/vote) and Meg Whitman, who burned through an eye-popping $175,000,000 ($57/vote). Iott's investment amounted to $20/vote.
In all Iott raised $1,893,012 to Kaptur's $529,047 (although she still has over $800,000 in her campaign chest for next time). Other than the money Boehner and Boehner's personal PAC gave Iott, virtually all of it came right out of his own bank account. When he isn't running around in an SS Panzer uniform-- or defending Nazis as "freedom fighters" on CNN-- Iott, a college dropout who inherited his adoptive parents' grocery store chain, is a passive investor in a variety of businesses, from making salsa to making films.
In 2008-- in a district where Obama beat McCain 62-36%-- Kaptur captured 74% against a less well-financed-- and less controversial-- Republican than Iott, Brad Leavitt (who also lost to her in 2006 by the same margin). In 2006 the final tally was 149,886 to 53,803. Then in the presidential election year the totals shot up to 222,054 to 76,512. This year, with a very motivated Republican base nationwide-- and a lot of press coverage over the Nazi stuff-- Iott's total went way beyond the GOP totals in 2006 or 2008 to 81,876, while Kaptur's vote plummeted to 117,890. But in a district that Democratic even that amount of money couldn't propel Iott to victory, especially not after the nazi story broke big.
The other big-spending House candidates had varied results. Car dealer Tom Ganley spent more and also had a personal scandal, when two women reported that he sexually molested them. One, a campaign volunteer and devout Christian right-wing mother of four, is suing him for attempted rape. His $2,213,417 (out of $2,646,969 raised-- $29/vote, as it turns out) didn't do him much good either, even though it was about double what incumbent Betty Sutton spent. In 2006 Sutton won-- in an open seat-- with 129,290 votes (61%) to 81,997 against a wing-nut who got 81,997 votes. Two years later-- with Obama beating McCain 57-24% in the district-- Sutton beat another Republican 189,542 (65%) to 104,066 (35%). This year all Ganley's millions couldn't save him from the rape scandal and the big GOP enthusiasm surge only brought him 92,608 votes (45%), not enough despite a very significant drop off in Democratic turnout (115,331), similar to what we saw nationally as the Democratic base gave its own confused party a big thumbs down.
The two million-dollar-plus Republicans who did win, were both in more GOP-friendly territory. Scott Rigell spent $2,757,983 and $2,424,364 came from his own personal wealth. Blue Dog Glenn Nye, who worked very, very hard to turn off the Democratic base in his district for the past two years, voting far more frequently with the Republicans than with the Democrats on key issues, only spent $1,583,453. (The DCCC spent another $788,447.63 on negative TV ads against Rigell.) Nye won the seat in 2008 from GOP backbencher Thelma Drake 141,857 (52%) to 128,486 (48%), Obama beating McCain 51-49% in a district Bush won by healthy margins against both Gore and Kerry. This year only half of Nye's voters bothered coming to the polls for him (70,306) and he only managed 43%, many Democrats correctly understanding that he was working for the same corporate interests that the Republicans work for against their families and completely unworthy of their votes.
The other big GOP self-funder running for a House seat who won was Bill Flores in a very red Texas district between Dallas and Houston that the GOP has been trying to win for years. Although Democratic presidential candidates don't even get one-third of the vote here, conservative Chet Edwards was reelected in 2006 93,198 (58%) to 64,617 (40%) and in 2008 134,592 (53%) to 115,581 (45%). This year, Flores successfully deployed his cash to capitalize on Republican enthusiasm and Democratic lack of enthusiasm. It was a slaughter, Edwards only getting 62,926 votes (36%) to Flores' 106,275 (62%). This is now a safe Republican seat. Flores spent almost exactly what Edwards did-- $2,537,226 (1,061,224 from his own pockets) to $2,533,771. But Edwards was one of the 39 conservative Democrats voting against the healthcare reform bill, helping to guarantee an anemic turnout among base Democratic voters. His overall ProgressivePunch score on contentious, substantive issues was 53.28 this session, meaning he voted with the Democrats about the same number of times he voted with the Republicans, a strategy that worked for him in past years, but not this time when Fox and Hate Talk radio had Republican voters riled up and looking for blood and many Democratic voters felt they had no reason to bother voting. A flood of outside money on behalf of Flores plus his own cash doomed Edwards and ended his congressional career permanently.
Here's some George Carlin to think about today. But whatever conclusions you come to-- and you're free to come to any, of course-- personally I don't think any Wall Street executives (or the politicians they own), should be executed without fair, speedy trials first:
UPDATE: Frank Rich Wants To Know Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?
Rich has a great column in the Sunday Times and I'll take a few excerpts in the hope you'll want to click the link and read the whole thing.
In the aftermath of the Great Democratic Shellacking of 2010, one election night subplot quickly receded into the footnotes: the drubbing received by very wealthy Americans, most of them Republican, who tried to buy Senate seats and governor’s mansions. Americans don’t hate rich people. They admire and often idolize success. But Californians took a hearty dislike to Meg Whitman, who sacrificed $143 million of her eBay fortune-- not to mention her undocumented former housekeeper-- to a gubernatorial race she lost by double digits. Connecticut voters K.O.’d the World Wrestling groin-kicker, Linda McMahon, and West Virginians did likewise to the limestone-and-steel magnate John Raese, the senatorial hopeful who told an interviewer without apparent irony, “I made my money the old-fashioned way-- I inherited it.”
To my mind, these losers deserve a salute nonetheless. They all had run businesses that actually created jobs (Raese included). They all wanted to enter public service to give back to the country that allowed them to prosper. And by losing so decisively, they gave us a ray of hope in dark times. Their defeats reminded us that despite much recent evidence to the contrary the inmates don’t always end up running the asylum of American politics.
The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election-- those who take far more from America than they give back. They were not on the ballot, and most of them are not household names. Unlike Whitman and the other defeated self-financing candidates, they are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down.
The Americans I’m talking about are not just those shadowy anonymous corporate campaign contributors who flooded this campaign. No less triumphant were those individuals at the apex of the economic pyramid-- the superrich who have gotten spectacularly richer over the last four decades while their fellow citizens either treaded water or lost ground. The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007-- up from less than 9 percent in 1976. During the boom years of 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent’s pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose.
It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income over $200,000 a year (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples). The resurgent G.O.P. has vowed to fight to the end to award this bonanza, but that may hardly be necessary given the timid opposition of President Obama and the lame-duck Democratic Congress.
To Chris Van Hollen, Boehner Is Just A Profitable Piñata-- Not The Disaster He Is For Working Families
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I got a call the other day from a frustrated Democrat in a red state who works on the Democratic Party's coordinated campaign effort for the state. He was fuming because he feels the DSCC and DCCC come into his state to raise money by talking about how bad extremist Republicans are, collect a bunch of money and then instead of using it in the state, use it to bolster conservative Democrats elsewhere. We've been talking about that for a while here at DWT, presumably why the guys called me. Yesterday, Greg Sargent, who might not be aware its something people Outside-the-Beltway think about, touched on it in an interesting column in the Washington Post about DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen. Sargent confirms what we've been saying: the Establishment Democrats create bogiemen to run against-- Boehner is the example in this case (and always a good one)-- but have no intention of defeating him, only in scaring and suckering money out of concerned voters, which can then be used to reelect the very Democratic Blue Dogs who vote with Boehner against the Democratic agenda! Van Hollen doesn't want to lose his good parking spot and fancy office with a view.
Van Hollen said the DCCC would advise Dem candidates to seize on Boehner's speech.
"The Boehner speech is Exhibit A that they want to take a U-turn back to Bush policies that failed," Van Hollen said of Republicans. "We will be using it to encourage our candidates to draw a clear distinction between continuing on the road to recovery or turning back the clock to the failed Bush economic agenda."
Van Hollen added that Boehner's speech-- which presented an extension of the Bush tax cuts as a panacea but added few other policy prescriptions-- had only helped Dems by giving them a target, because it would enable Dems to present the election as a choice, rather than just as referendum on them.
"No longer is the Republican plan a blank slate," Van Hollen said. "Their proposal is Bush economics on steroids. By making that clear, he has sharpened the choice in these races. What he's proposing will provide ammunition for our candidates."
When I pointed to evidence this message isn't sinking in-- a recent polling memo circulated by Dems found only 25 percent believe the GOP wants a return to Bush policies-- Van Hollen didn't respond directly. "Boehner's speech opened up greater opportunities to have that conversation," he said.
This morning, the NRCC announced that they will be amplifying Boehner's call for Obama to fire Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, by pressuring Dem candidates to say whether they agree. But Van Hollen dismissed this strategy as a transparent stunt.
"People will see that as pure political gamesmanship," Van Hollen said. "If they focus on just that piece it will demonstrate that they lack any seriousness. The Geithner Summers piece is obviously a political effort at distraction."
Is Boehner a monster? Absolutely. But Van Hollen and his ilk don't give a rat's ass. Ditto for Paul Ryan, another dreadful character they are working hard to demonize but not defeat at the polls. Ryan, in fact, is in a blue-trending district, filled with high profile Democratic state politicians, a district Obama won in 2008, but the DCCC drove Paulette Garin out of the race and had her replaced with a sad and implausible patsy, exactly who Ryan would have chosen to run against had he been able to pick. There's a very different situation in OH-08, where Boehner, who's never had a competitive race before, is up against a fighting Democrat, Justin Coussoule.
The DCCC (and DNC) constantly beg loyal Democratic voters for money to "fight Boehner," but they refuse to even acknowledge Coussoule is running. As you probably know, Blue America is trying to support Coussoule's run and, with your help, we've got our second billboard and our second TV ad up now. Van Hollen and Wasserman Schultz have been hostile but thank God for Ed Schultz, who's helped invigorate grassroots Democrats from Butler to Mercer and everywhere in between.
As Coussoule is showing voters in southwest Ohio, the selfish and greedy Big Business policies Boehner has been pushing for his entire two decades at the public trough have hollowed out the American economy and hollowed out the middle class. He's, first and foremost, a low-wage fanatic. His trade policies-- he pushed NAFTA and everything remotely like NAFTA and even tried making them worse for American workers-- have been catastrophic for our country. Now he's running around the country shrieking, "Where are the jobs, Mr. President," and the DCCC should be helping Justin Coussoule to run around OH-08 asking "Where are the jobs, Mr. Congressman?"
One of the sharpest economic minds writing about trade policies in the country is Dave Johnson at Campaign For America's Future. He covered this ground pretty well this week with a post called Boehner Trade Plan: Go Back To Disaster. Before getting into Boehner's anti-family trade policies, Johnson looked at the overall economic approach he took in his Big Speech on Tuesday:
In the speech Boehner said we have an "economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending." But according to FOX News' Wall Street Journal, yesterday the CBO reported that "the impact of the stimulus program estimated ... the plan lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points." In addition, the Washington Post reported, "The CBO said the act also increased the nation's gross domestic product by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent in the second quarter, indicating that the stimulus may have been the primary source of growth in the U.S. economy."
Boehner also said that "each dollar the government collects is taken directly out of the private sector." This is the old "taxes take money out of the economy" argument, which is intended to trick people into thinking that the money just disappears instead of being used to pay for the schools, courts, agencies and infrastructure that enable businesses to thrive and drive the country's prosperity. If you think that President Eisenhower's spending on the Interstate Highway System "took money out of the economy" you really need to see someone about your problems and not take them out of the rest of us.
Taking direct shots at democracy, Boehner complained about "big government"-- namely We, the People making decisions instead of a few wealthy corporate owners making decisions for us-- and said, "As Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, recently said, "You'd really be amazed at how much government you'd never miss." Boehner really has a problem with this whole "We, the People" thing.
As for Boehner's approach to trade... it's been devastating to Ohio and it's been devastating to the United States in general. Look at the chart up top showing the U.S. trade balance in advanced technology since Boehner was first elected until now. This is Republican economics-- creating a low wage economy that works well for a few wealthy families and screws everyone else. This is why Americans banished the Republicans from power for 4 decades starting in the 1930s. But they're back and Boehner hasn't learned a thing. As Johnson points out, "he called for 'passing free-trade agreements' with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. He doesn’t mention what is IN these agreements, only calls for passing them." They were conceived of during the Bush administration and are even worse-- if you can imagine-- than the devastating NAFTA agreements. Boehner's idea of "free trade" would only accelerate this:
[T]hese "free trade" agreements create a worldwide race to the bottom, allowing companies to bypass the protections that democracies fought to provide for their citizens, pitting exploited, low-wage workers against citizens in democracies, forcing wages and standards ever lower.
These "free trade" agreements need to be reviewed and reformed, so they protect wages, the environment., worker's rights and small businesses around the world. We have a chance to lift each other up instead of push each other down. In February I wrote about Whirlpool closing a refrigerator plant in Evansville, moving the jobs to Mexico where workers are paid $70 a week. The problem is that Mexican Workers Paid $70/Week Can't Buy Refrigerators! If they were paid decent wages, we could sell things we make to them, while they sell things they make to us. But if we follow Boehner's trade ideas everyone just gets poorer and eventually the economy stops.
Oh, wait, we DID follow Boehner's trade plans, and everyone DID get poorer, and the economy DID stop! But a few of his buddies got really REALLY rich. So he wants to do more of that.
This speech by Boehner is just more calling for a return to the policies of the past: we’ve been seeing the trade deficit soaring in the last few months, as the economy tries to go back to old economy. China is 96% of our trade deficit. Boehner saying lets go back to the path we followed when we were borrowing $2 billion a day, it took away 2.8% growth in 1st quarter, sapping the recovery. This notion that Boehner calling for continuing course shows a perverse blindness to changes country has to make.
Do Van Hollen and Wasserman Schultz not get this? Try "not care about this." How do I know? Well, they are actually encouraging the same reactionary anti-Choice, antigay, anti-healthcare, pro-Wall Street Blue Dogs who habitually vote with Boehner to run ads against Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic agenda! (Greg Sargent broke the specifics on this one.) They're spending the millions of dollars they suck up by scaring voters about Boehner to reelect conservatives like Jason Altmire, Bobby Bright and Glenn Nye who vote with Boehner as a default position. Now look at the ads Altmire, Bright and Nye are running. The DCCC are spending over two million dollars on these three clowns and won't even give Justin Coussoule a dime!
Glenn Nye-- Few Disappointments, Since There Were Never Any Expectations
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This weekend we looked, sadly, at Tom Perriello's failed balancing act between his attempts to do the right thing-- he was one of the only red-district freshmen who voted for cap and trade, and he did vote for the healthcare bill-- and his attempts to curry enough favor with GOP extremists to stay in office. Congressmen who live in fear everyday, though, rarely make inspiring leaders, something many of us thought we saw in Perriello the candidate. That's why so many grassroots and netroots activists supported him, and that's why so many are disappointed and disillusioned by his decision to go back on his word to protect reproductive choice for women and vote for Stupak's disastrous anti-choice amendment, a Trojan Horse the GOP managed to inflict on the House Democratic caucus.
Today's CQPoliticscompares Perriello's approach with that of a far more straightforward Virginia conservative, Glenn Nye. Upon election, Nye joined the Blue Dog caucus and never made any pretense about being a progressive. Another red-district Virginia freshman, his voting record is considerably worse than Perriello's. Perriello's dismal 39.22 ProgressivePunch score almost looks reasonable next to Nye's 25.49, barely above Republican Ron Paul's 25.31. Nye is a charter member of the Boehner Boys. The only Democrats in the House who have voted with the Republicans more frequently than Nye are hard-core reactionaries Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Scott Murphy (NY), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL) and Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-AL). Unless teabaggers split the Republican Party in their districts, Childers, Bright and Griffith have virtually no chance to be re-elected next year. Like Nye, they have assiduously followed a Creigh Deeds loser strategy: alienating the Democratic base while courting unimpressed Republicans.
Where Gore and Kerry had badly lost Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, Obama beat McCain 51-49% and helped Nye score a stunning 52-48% upset over reactionary backbencher Thelma Drake. He now represents Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach. The enthusiastic Democrats who turned out for Obama and Mark Warner are unlikely to bother coming to the polls in 2010, and Nye is on the short list of Democrats most likely to lose his seat.
Perriello and Nye are taking different tacks in their voting behavior and campaign styles as they prepare to seek re-election against vigorous Republican opposition.
Perriello has been more of a populist and risk-taker in his votes and public statements. On closely divided votes, he has sided with his party more frequently than Nye even though Perriello’s district, located in the mostly rural Southside area of the state, backed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election and Nye’s district, a more geographically compact area in and around Virginia Beach, backed Barack Obama.
Perriello last year won the 5th District seat by 727 votes over Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. in what was one of the closest House elections of the 2008 cycle, while Nye won in the 2nd District by the more comfortable margin of 5 points over Republican Rep. Thelma Drake.
Nye has been running a more traditionally independent campaign that puts some distance between himself and the national party. He’s bucked Democratic leaders on some high-profile votes. Their House votes diverged most recently-- and most notably-- on the health care bill the House narrowly passed Nov. 7. Perriello voted for the bill, a rare Democratic freshman from a McCain-voting district who backed it, while Nye was among the 39 Democrats-- most of them from politically competitive districts-- who opposed it.
...“Nye is really trying to ensure that his voting record is more consistent with what he considers to be the views of the district than of the national party, and I think he’s setting the framework for an election where he’s going to run as kind of an independent person, not someone beholden to party,” said Robert Holsworth, a Virginia political analyst who runs the Web site Virginia Tomorrow.
Holsworth said Perriello, by contrast, is “really setting up an election strategy based on his constant communication with his constituents.”
“He comes home regularly. He holds town halls, public forums by the dozens. He is really trying to be extraordinarily visible in the district,” Holsworth said.
In an interview over the summer after he voted for the cap-and-trade bill, Perriello said that “when I’ve cast a vote that I think is going to be unpopular, I don’t hide behind it-- I go out and I talk about it and make my case and let the chips fall where they may.”
After he voted for the health care bill, the National Republican Congressional Committee pounced on Perriello, issuing a statement shortly after the vote that his “political career was pronounced dead” because of “political malpractice.” The NRCC has described a vote for the health care bill as a “career-ending vote” for Perriello and other politically vulnerable Democrats.
By being among the Democratic no voters, Nye shielded himself from the tough criticism that GOP leaders leveled at Perriello. Still, Republican businessman Ben Loyola, one of Nye’s two major challengers, criticized the lawmaker’s vote against an anti-abortion amendment to the health care bill that passed with the backing of Perriello and 63 other Democrats.
There's nothing Nye or Perriello could do-- short of joining the GOP-- that will make Republicans happy... and even if they became Republicans, they'd then have to face the ire of teabaggers. This morning CQPolitics also looked at the Nye-like voting record of Blue Dog Frank Kratovil, a Maryland Boehner Boy with little chance at re-election for the same reasons. Alan Grayson should offer classes to Democratic freshmen: Political Backbone 101.
Glenn Nye, much safer with a fourth rate GOP opponent
The GOP had high hopes that state Senator Ken Stolle would challenge Blue Dog freshman Glenn Nye for his Norfolk, VA-based congressional seat. Nye beat freshman right-winger Thelma Drake soon after Drake took over for another Republican wingnut, Ed Schrock, a viciously anti-gay sociopath who was caught soliciting young men on a phone sex line in 2004. But Stolle analyzed the situation and told the NRCC "thanks but no thanks," sticking them with a wealthy 4th rate used car salesman, Scott Rigell, who is widely viewed as having no realistic chance to win the seat, even though he plans to waste a tremendous amount of money trying.
Although the local GOP establishment, led by Drake, to whom Rigell, has donated enormous sums of money, are behind him, he'll have to get by a motley array of 4th and 5th tier candidates for the Republican nomination before facing Nye. A bunch of retired military vets-- Chuck Smith, Bert Mizusawa, Ben Loyola and Ed Maulbeck-- are probable entrants and a Virginia Beach Republican Party operative, Kenny Golden, also wants to run.
Rigell had been a major financial supporter of Ed Schrock's but he's widely viewed as a sleazy opportunist who spread his money around to anyone he thought might help him. Last year he gave to Mitt Romney, John McCain and Barack Obama. The local party just wants the cash and they know there's no realistic shot at defeating Nye anyway. Candidate Chuck Smith, who is being opposed by most local Republican Party officials because of his race, has a good analysis of the likely outcome of a GOP bloodletting in VA-02:
Another Republican Party Recruitment Disaster In The Making-- Illinois
Blue Dog Nye beats rabid Republican Drake in VA-02
First some good news: rubber stamp and arch-reactionary Thelma Drake (VA-02) just conceded. The extremist imbecile who took over the southeast Virginia seat of Ed Schrock after he accidentally left his closet door open and then decided to resign from Congress so he could "spend more time with his family," is unlikely to ever be heard from again. The new congressman is Glenn Nye, a middle of the road Democrat.
Some of the other House races are more critical because they pit genuine progressives against right-wing extremists. And then there are still some Senate races not determined yet. This morning's CQPoliticswent through them all.
Last night I was a guest on Air America, talking about these races. The very first question was about the "closeness" of the Merkley-Smith Senate contest in Oregon. But it really wasn't that close. Unlike in Minnesota, say, where, only 236 votes (of 2.8 ballots cast) separates Al Franken and Norm Coleman, "closeness" wasn't the issue in Oregon. It was just a matter of slow counting. With 91% of precincts now counted, Jeff Merkley took 816,276 (49%) votes and incumbent Gordon Smith only had 764,540 (46%)-- not a blowout, but not a worth a recount either, especially since the 9% of uncounted precincts are all Democratic-leaning. Smith conceded yesterday.
Now in Minnesota we really do need a complete and thorough recount. And, despite Coleman's silly huffing and puffing-- he leads by the 236 votes-- it is legally mandated. The recount starts after November 18, will take at least a week or two and that doesn't rule out further legal challenges, especially if a sore loser like Coleman doesn't get what he wants.
Georgia is more clear cut. No one got a 50% majority so there is a run-off on December 2. Incumbent wingnut Saxby Chambliss has 49.8% of the vote and Democrat Jim Martin has 46.8%.
Republicans contend that Chambliss would have the advantage in a runoff, arguing that Democrat Martin, who is white, would have difficulty generating the kind of huge turnout among the black constituency-- more than a quarter of the state’s population-- that came out in strength for Barack Obama. But the cash-rich Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has pledged to pour money into Georgia to back Martin if the race goes to a runoff, and Democratic strategists argue that Republican voters may be deflated by their party’s setbacks and are less likely to return to the polls in less than four weeks.
A lot may come down to whether or not President-elect Obama is willing to push hard for Martin. I'm guessing he won't and Martin will lose.
The Alaska Senate race may well have been fixed, as we discussed earlier, but there are still 55,000 votes to count. Convicted felon Ted Stevens-- who is also facing expulsion from both the Republican caucus and the Senate itself-- leads Mark Begich (according to what looks like the tainted results) by 3,300 votes of the 200,000 or so cast. If he's declared the winner and is then expelled, Alaska would then get a 90 day appointee courtesy of Sarah Palin, followed by a special election 90 days later-- unless we sell Alaska back to the Russians or rescind statehood.
And then there will be the interim appointments (2 years) to fill the Illinois and Delaware Senate seats being vacated by Obama and Biden-- both being made by Democratic governors.
Over on the House side, there are more undecided races. Last night we looked at the CA-44 (parts of Orange and Riverside Counties) where Ken Calvert insists he's the winner and says he doesn't care about any final vote count. Unfortunately for Calvert, most of the tens of thousands of uncounted votes are from Riverside County, the part of the district that supports Bill Hedrick, although there are plenty of hard right areas in Orange County with uncounted votes as well.
Way on the other end of the state, provisional and absentee ballots have to be counted in CA-04, where extremist maniac Tom McClintock leads Charlie Brown by 644 votes.
Louisiana's arcane election system will chose two House members-- one for LA-02 (New Orleans) and one for LA-04 (McCrery's old Shreveport-centered district in the northwest part of the state-- on December 6. Democratic incumbent, William Jefferson, still awaiting trial on corruption charges, and reactionary anti-choice so-called "Democratic" candidate Paul Carmouche are both favored. Nothing to look forward to in either case.
In Ohio's 15th CD (Columbus) there is a very tight contest to replace GOP rubber stamp Deborah Pryce, between Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy and Republican Steve Stivers. As of this morning Stivers seems to be ahead by 146 votes (out of 290,000 cast), although there are still plenty of votes to be counted next week.
Yet to be counted are provisional ballots, which won't be tallied for 10 days; the military and overseas absentee ballots postmarked by the time the polls closed Tuesday and received by Nov. 14; any domestic absentee ballots postmarked by Monday that are received by Nov. 14; as well as any of the estimated 5,000 absentee ballots with errors that voters correct by Nov. 14.
Kilroy's campaign predicted that those ballots would melt away Stivers' lead. Provisional ballots, often cast by younger voters and new residents, tend to skew Democratic.
"We are confident that when the Board of Elections completes their work that Mary Jo Kilroy will be declared the winner given the number of ballots that have yet to be counted in Franklin County," Kilroy spokesman Brad Bauman said in a written statement in the afternoon.
In Maryland's first CD right-wing loon Andy Harris trails Blue Dog Frank Kratovil by 1,882 votes. The state will count absentee and provisional ballots next week but the Blue Dog is expected to winwon. Big whoop!
From the progressive perspective there are two other crucial House races outstanding: VA-05 where Tom Perriello is leading corrupt wingnut Virgil Goode and WA-08 where counting is extremely slow. In the Virginia race, all the ballots and counted and Tom is ahead by 648 votes but Goode refuses to concede and may have to be dragged out of his office in chains. In Washington there are still a quarter million votes to be counted, mostly in parts of the district that lean Democratic but it could take a week or even longer before the final results are in.
