Will Obama's Coattails And A Democratic Landslide In Iowa Drag Down King And Latham?

It wasn't a surprise in 2006 when progressive Democrat Bruce Braley won the open seat in IA-01 (Davenport, Dubuque, Waterloo). Although DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel was unenthusiastic over Braley's unambiguous opposition to the Iraq war, the DCCC gave him the green light and his victory over right-wing loon Bill Whalen was convincing (55-43%). On the other hand, the victory next door, in IA-02 (Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Burlington), where Dave Loebsack squeaked by 30 year veteran Jim Leach, was one of the political shockers of the cycle. It was a Democratic year and Chet Culver's 100,000 vote margin in the gubernatorial race helped both Braley and Loebsack, each of whom has gone on to distinguish himself as among the better Democrats in the House.

Today's Des Moines Register doesn't mention any House races, let alone IA-04 (Tom Latham vs Becky Greenwald) or IA-05 (Steve King vs Rob Hubler). The Register story is, in a general way, about Mcpain, pointing out that the margin of victory in a brand new local poll shows Obama thumping McCain by 17 points. This morning I heard McCain on TV, delusional, insisting, shrilly, that Iowa is a battleground state he would win. Even if he improves his standing in the next 2 days-- and Palin's scheduled appearance in Dubuque on Monday is likely to do more harm than good for their ticket, it is unlikely he'll get to even 40%.

Obama's lead in the poll is almost three times what his average lead is nationally.

So much for Iowa being a "battleground" or "tossup" state this time.

In fact, the poll indicates a Democratic landslide may be in the offing in Iowa. The poll shows Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin beating his Republican challenger, Christopher Reed, by 57 percent to 31 percent. If Harkin wins by a margin like that - 26 points - it would be his biggest margin in his five general election campaigns for the Senate.

...Such poor numbers threaten to have a demoralizing effect among Republicans and an energizing one among Democrats. If Democrats smell victory and head to the polls while Republicans are in a funk and stay at home (as happened in the 1974 Watergate election), then Obama's landslide could bury other GOP candidates down the ballot.

And who would that be? There are only two Republican House members left in Iowa and both have strong Democratic opponents this year, though neither is on the lists the Cooks & Schnooks & DCCC make up as targets. Iowans, on the other hand, have shown in the past they make their own targets. The Register recommended that voters retire King as an embarrassment to the state and lauds Becky Greenwald's leadership potential as the right choice in IA-04. Iowa polls close late (10pm EST) and the only races we'll be looking at by then are in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California. But if Hubler and Greenwald do manage to dislodge King and Latham, America will have, by then, taken a step towards the real systemic reform to our government that grassroots Democrats want so badly and that Republicans and odious Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party will do all they can to prevent. A short clip from the Register explaining why they think Rob Hubler is the right choice for IA-05... and for America:

For Many GOP Members Of Congress John McCain's Campaign Has Been A Career-Ending Tragedy

Dick & Tim-- helping turn PA bluer

Ever since McCain clinched the GOP presidential nomination and marched right into Denny Hastert's congressional district to campaign vigorously with Jim Oberweis for the seat Hastert was giving up, a shudder went up the spine of Republican incumbents. An unknown Democratic challenger, Bill Foster, straight from a bitterly fought primary that he only won by a few votes, should have been an easy target for McCain and Oberweis. The district is overwhelmingly Republican (R+5) and exactly the kind of district Republicans have to win if they are going to stay nationally relevant and not just fade away into the party of the old slave holding states and the Mormons. But instead of McCain's first victory, early March saw the beginning of a nightmare vision for the GOP about what kind of a disaster McCain's coattails were going to be for them. And it just got worse from there.

McCain's coattails were also toxic in Baton Rouge, in another very red district's special election, and then in a Mississippi district where Democrats normally don't even bother to run (R+10). It seems like every single day the rearview mirror, Inside the Beltway prognosticators are-- as usual-- trying to catch up with reality in the "real America" (everything to the west, north and south of the Beltway) by changing their ratings, which generally started out as 2 or 3 Democratic gains in the Senate and 8 or 9 net wins for the Dems in the House. Cook and Schnook and Rothengeek and the rest of them seem to be willing to declare a seat leaning to the Democrats when the Republican gives a concession speech. They're a joke and I expect that on Wednesday they will make fairly accurate predictions for a Democratic landslide in both houses.

Today's Washington Post deals with the delicate subject-- in a one industry company town-- of John McCain's coattails, by claiming that his struggle in traditionally Republican states is "complicating the already tenuous reelection prospects of some congressional Republicans." Moderate suburban districts are breaking for Obama and vacated Republican seats plus embattled GOP incumbents are looking mighty blue 6 days before the election.

The apparent McCain drag on congressional races comes as voters increasingly cast blame on Bush and Republicans for the crumbling economy and at a time when the GOP's national party committees have little financial resources to defend an increasing number of House and Senate seats that are in jeopardy.

"McCain is just running so poorly now. He's collapsed in some districts. It's brutal out there for Republicans," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent Rothenberg Political Report.

The environment has created the potential for gains by the Democrats that could leave them in control of the Capitol for years.

Democrats hold a 51 to 49 edge in the Senate when the two independents who caucus with them are factored in, and a 236 to 199 House majority. Rothenberg predicted that Democrats will pick up 27 to 33 House seats, and make gains of six to nine seats in the Senate. The Cook Political Report, another independent political forecaster, suggests that Democrats will net 23 to 28 House seats, and pick up seven to nine Republican-held Senate seats.

That would have been an astute observation in late August. If Cook were on the ball he would have said "Democrats will net 30 to 40 House seats."

Does anyone pay attention to these blinkered forecasters? The DCCC and NRCC consider them the holy grail, media frames the coverage of races through the prism they offer, and their impact on big donors is immense. Otherwise, they're inconsequential.

Many political observers are talking about the career-ending balloting coming up for John Sununu (R-NH), Steve Pearce (R-NM), Robin Hayes (R-NC) and Ric Keller (R-FL) but I want to talk about two races that none of the pollsters or pundits ever mention and that have been largely flying under the radar. This morning the most influential newspaper in Iowa, the Des Moines Register shocked the political establishment by rejecting 7-term incumbent rubber stamp Tom Latham and endorsed a grassroots Democrat for his seat, Becky Greenwald. Cook and Schnook must be scratching their head and scurrying around for a map that shows where Iowa's 4th CD is.

Iowa's 4th District has a chance to make history. This state has never sent a woman to Congress, but should do so this election.

Becky Greenwald, a Democrat from Perry, has not made that point the main emphasis of her campaign. She calls herself a candidate who "happens to be female." But she also happens to be a woman with potential to be a leader in Washington.

[The Register also endorsed progressive Democrat Rob Hubler in the 5th district and urged Iowa voters to retire hysterical extremist goon Steve King.]

The other race I want to bring up, though, is even further under the radar than either of the Iowa races. Southwest Pennsylvania's 18th CD was gerrymandered to find every potential Republican voter south of Pittsburgh and put them into a safe district for Tim Murphy. But the district (R+2) isn't safe enough for someone with as terrible a rubber stamp record as Murphy has amassed since first taking office in 2002. Just look at this Iraq voting record; it could have been accrued by Dick Cheney! But I bet no one outside the district-- especially no one Inside the Beltway-- knows that there might be an upset brewing inside.

Steve O'Donnell is a progressive Democrat with a shot-- albeit a longshot-- to be Tuesday night's jaw dropper. Murphy has tried to stay under the radar himself and he's tried, despite his record, to sound like a moderate and keep his distance, at least publicly, from Bush and McCain. But his approval rating is only 34%, something that would have him on the critical list if the DCCC was paying attention. Registration has changed so drastically in Pennsylvania that there are now 60,000 more registered Democrats in PA-18 than registered Republicans! And it's an economically hard-hit part of the country with very strong anti-Republican sentiment.

Labor is behind O'Donnell in a big way and his pro-choice, single payer healthcare, out-of-Iraq positions are in sync with what voters actually want. Meanwhile the FBI is investigating Murphy as another dirty Republican Culture of Corruption crook:



Murphy was named one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress by CREW and he's continued taking immense sums of money from the special interests he serves in Congress, like Big Oil, Halliburton, Wal-Mart and many of the worst players in the mortgage crisis and Wall Street meltdown.

If O'Donnell comes close, the DCCC will be weeping to activists next year for screwing up-- like they're doing this year for screwing up Larry Kissell's race in 2006. But he can win, especially if McCain and Palin keep campaigning in Pennsylvania.


UPDATE: ET TU, SHAYS?

Chris Shays is a self-serving hack from a blue district in Connecticut who manages to stay in office by distancing himself from his right-wing voting record at election time. This year, up against an energetic and much smarter opponent, Jim Himes, it looks like Shays' old tactic isn't working. So instead, the Chairman of McCain's campaign committee in Connecticut has come up with an interesting new strategy: attacking McCain, when he's on the ground... and groping for a break.

"He has lost his brand as a maverick," Rep. Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican and co-chairman of the McCain campaign in that state, told the Yale Daily News in the latest criticism. "He did not live up to his pledge to fight a clean campaign."

Connecticut conservatives are furious and many are swearing off support for Shays. "I know he always votes the right way when we really need him," said a Republican elected official in Fairfield County, who asked to remain anonymous, "but this is the last straw. He's just so treacherous and hypocritical. We all know McCain is going to lose but does that mean you kick him in the teeth on his way down. Christopher Shays owes Republicans an apology."

Who Are The Worst Members Of Congress-- The Best Electoral Targets?

Club For Growth (of corporate power)

There are endless ways to measure this and plenty of strategies to answer the question. Normally I consult members' voting records. It's an imperfect way to do this but, sprinkled with a little sense, it really is the best way to figure out the worst of the worst. At that link above, if you scroll down to the bottom of the list-- bottom of the barrel-- you'll find the worst of the worst. Problem is, most of these reactionary lunatics are in backward districts filled with people just like them. Many don't have any real opponents. One of those tied for worst, Steve King of Iowa, does have a great-- if longshot-- opponent this year, Rob Hubler. So do Mike Pence of Indiana, Thelma Drake of Virginia, John Kline of Minnesota, Tom Feeney of Florida, Henry Brown of South Carolina and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina.

But among those at the bottom of the barrel are five who actually look like they are facing defeat in 2 weeks:

Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)

Coincidentally, the most extremist of the Republican Party front groups, the neo-fascist Club for Growth, has endorsed three of these arch-reactionaries this week: Bachmann, Shadegg and Garrett. According to the National Journal's House Race Hotline, "when the Club, who normally likes to just play in GOP primaries, endorses an incumbent, you know GOPers are worried." The Club is a good contrary indicator and it's not a bad idea to put money behind the opponents of these incumbents. Among the best candidates running anywhere-- regardless of who they're running against-- are Mark Schauer (MI-07), Vic Wulsin (OH-02), and Dennis Shulman (NJ-05) all Blue America candidates and Bob Lord (who can be helped out here).

The new issue of Time Magazine has their startlingly superficial look at a dozen Hot Races, including Linda Stender's battle against right wing nutcase Leonard Lance (NJ-07), nominal Democrat Alice Kryzan's fight with rightist Chris Lee for the open NY-26 seat, Jim Gilmore's likely slaughter by moderate Democrat Mark Warner in the open Virginia Senate race, a reprise of the biased, pro-Reichert garbage hit piece by pseudo journalist Amy Sullivan on how the netroots is hurting front runner Darcy Burner (WA-08), Charlie Brown's homegrown campaign against lunatic fringe carpetbagger Tom McClintock (CA-04), Suzanne Kosmas' likely defeat of the corrupt Florida hack Tom Feeney (FL-24), the Mississippi race pitting two worthless reactionaries-- so-called Democrat Travis Childers and Republican Greg Davis-- against each other again (MS-01), the unlikely race between come from behind Becky Greenwald against GOP hack Tom Latham (IA-04), a spectacular race pitting one of this year's congressional superstars, Martin Heinrich against Bush's closest New Mexico ally, Darren White (NM-01), the laughable race between arch-conservative Democrat Mike McMahon and GOP hot dog vendor Bob Straniere in Staten Island (NY-13) to replace convicted GOP congressman Vito Fossella, Mary Jo Kilroy's march to victory over right-wing kook Steve Stivers in Columbus (OH-15), and the Senate race in Minnesota pitting moderate Democrat Al Franken against Bush rubber stamp Norm Coleman.

If Time wanted to be relevant, the race they should have covered is this one.

And this morning there are more CQPolitics congressional race ratings changes-- each one dire for the GOP. We all saw this coming: after unmasking herself on national TV, crazy right wing extremist Michele Bachmann's chances of winning re-election have dimmed in MN-06. Since Bachmann shot her mouth off, Blue Dog Elwyn Tinklenberg has been given over a million dollars by outraged Americans to help him get rid of Bachmann-- on top of which, the DCCC is running another million dollars of ads against her.

The best news of the day, though, came in Orlando, where top Blue America endorsee, Alan Grayson, is now seen as the clear winner against corrupt Bush rubber stamp Ric Keller. A victory for Grayson, which now appears likely, will mean there is another person in the House with a Paul Wellstone quality of fighting for American working families against the power of the deadly combination of Big Business + Big Government. In two weeks, the best news of the night could well come of FL-08.

Suzanne Kosmas is also now favored to beat another extremely corrupt Republican radical, Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) in central Florida (the 24th CD). After trying to tough out the accusastions that he had been taking bribes from Abramoff, Feeney "took the unusual step of apologizing to his constituents in a paid ad this summer, labeling the trip a 'rookie mistake.' Yet the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board noted the Abramoff flap in its recent endorsement of Kosmas.

There was even bad news for the crumbling Republican Party in Wyoming, where the at-large House seat being abandoned by crazed KKK advocate Barbara Cubin now looks like it will go to Democrat Gary Trauner instead of another GOP clone, Cynthia Lummis.

In an upstate New York district (NY-25), Dan Maffei is so far ahead of a listless Republican nonentity, Dale Sweetland, that the race is all but over. The district has been edging blue and Maffei has outraised Sweetland 4-1.

And, finally, in Oregon's one open seat, voters are completely rejecting a far right extremist loon, Mike Erickson, in favor of a moderate Democratic state Senator, Kurt Schrader. It has all been steeply downhill for Erickson, an anti-choice fanatic, when his Republican primary opponent accused him of gross hypocrisy for paying for at least one abortion for a girlfriend. He's not likely to break 40%. Schrader has nearly a quarter million dollars left to spend and Erickson has barely $40,000 on hand.

Meanwhile a new poll in Alaska is reporting that Congress' King of Pork, Don Young, is going to lose his
House seat-- by a lot. Ethan Berkowitz is up 51-43%!

Please help Alan Grayson put this new ad up on TV starting today:




UPDATE: REPUBLICAN PARTY IS WORRIED

Politico has a list of the ten incumbents the GOP is most worried about (based on their phone-banking operations). #1 is Robin Hayes (NC), who is now denying his denial about saying Democrats hate people who like God. The man has actually lost his mind. Others on the list:

Dave Reichert (R-WA)
Joe Knollenberg (R-MI)
Don Young (R-AK)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Tom Feeney (R-FL)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Jon Porter (R-NV)
Phil English (R-PA)
Randy Kuhl (R-NY)

DANCING IN THE STREETS WITH DIVISIVE IOWA CRAZY, STEVE KING

Way at the bottom of the barrel of congressional rankings, you find the worst of the worst, the extremists and fanatic who have crossed over into dangerous territory and are flat out anti-American. Iowa has one of those, Congressman Steve King. He is in the rarefied company of deranged kooks like Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Dan Burton (R-IN). These are the zeroes, members who believe completely in their own distorted, super-ideological vision of a fascist America. When it comes to the tough substantive votes, not one has ever strayed from the insane to join their colleagues to try to make America function better. Steve King is a hard core lunatic. We asked Matthew Grimm, a proud resident of Iowa, to tell us what is up with the deranged man his state sends to the House of Representatives. Matthew's report:

That Steve King (R-Crazy) said what he did on Friday over the airwaves of KICD in Spencer, IA, is not, in and of itself, the most odious aspect of Republican Party thinking in the 21st century. King actually deserves some props for articulating the cartoonish, ascendancy-based worldview held by too many of the party's rank-and-file, but kept obfuscated from too many others by placebo talking points of "family values" and War of Tactics.

King could only have been more true to his party and constituency, in western Iowa and linear-thinking right-wing fear-motivated reactionaries everywhere, if he had just called Obama a “nigger.”

For the congressman bespoke the purer, too often unspoken doctrine that has crashed and burned in the last seven years, and that is the real issue to be weighed in this year’s election cycle: the notion that, in America, there is an Elect, a proper, stolid class of people given divine dispensation to rule by fiat and caprice. Notwithstanding the pluralism upon which our Republic bases its most fundamental function, notwithstanding even that conservatives’ own dogma conflates “liberty” with individuals being judged on their own merits, no, King has stripped off the Emperor's Brooks Brothers to reveal SS jackboots underneath. King, refreshingly if creepily, minces no words: if you do not conform to the "optics"-- his word-- of the 43 European descended white men who have heretofore served as chief executive, you are unfit for the position. Unless, he says, you show yourself a good boy and toe the Massuh's line.

Let's go to his own words, as reported at the Spencer Daily Reporter, and sent out over the airwaves by KICD, with video evidence posted over at CrooksandLiars:

I'm gonna say something here that I haven’t said in public, but I think it’s time to start thinking about.

I don’t wanna disparage anyone because of their race or their ethnicity or their name, whatever the religion of their father might have been-- [but] I’ll just say this then: If you think about the optics of a"Barack Obama" potentially getting elected president of the United States, and I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world, what does it look like to the world of Islam?

And I will tell you, if he is elected president, the radical Islamists, and the al Qaeda and radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11. Because they will, they will declare victory in the war on terrorism. They will say the United States has capitulated, because we will be pulling our troops out of any conflict that has to do with Al Qaeda anywhere. And additionally it does matter, his middle name does matter, it matters because they read a meaning into that the rest of the world, that has special meaning to them, they’ll be dancing in the streets because of his middle name, they’ll be dancing in the streets because of who his father was, and because of his posture that says pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict. So there are implications that have to do with who he is, and the position that he’s taken.

If he were strong on national defense and said I’m gonna go over there and we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna win and we’ll come home with a victory, that’s different, but that’s not what he said. And they will be dancing in the streets if he’s elected president, and that has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this global war on terror.

There you go. If-- if-- you Uncle Tom-up and adopt the beshitted line of the master race, you just might get away with being "Barack Hussein Obama." Interesting bit of logic. You might be eligible get a seat at the table where people hate and dehumanize you for what your parents named you and what you look like, King says, but only if you show yourself you can be just as lordly, condescending and dehumanizing towards the "help" serving you the meal.

If you've ever wondered why so many of the African-American talking heads on the news channels come up as Republican "pundits" or "strategists," in starkly inverse proportion to the numbers of black Republicans that actually exist in the world, this would explain it-- wouldn't it, Ron Christie? J.C. Watts? Alan Keyes? Armstrong Williams?

Through the Republican filter, Horatio Alger only rises to his fabled success by becoming as big a dick as J.P. Morgan. The 14th Amendment granted you all rights of citizenship, as long as you can pay the poll tax. Americans want freedom and democracy for Iraqis, as long as they privatize all industry and cede their oil revenues to our robber barons or, as Coltergeist long ago suggested, convert to Christianity (you too, btw, Jews!). We, the proud and noble practitioners of the American experiment, cheer your seeking opportunity and your pursuit of happiness, as long as the fruit of your labor kicks back to the porticoed manor house.

Get uppity, however, and you're just Kunta Kinte.

This, 5th District, is what you say to the world as long as you keep sending dutiful goons like Steve King to Washington. Some of you know it, some of you thuggishly embrace your xenophobia, like one Leah Cauthron, who commented on the Daily Reporter's website, "Way to go Steve King for finally saying what others are afraid to say."

Indeed, what's in a non-European name for Republicans is, very simply, "Other," or in more proper Christian parlance, "infidel." King's intimations that Obama's ascent would send secret code to his Muslim brotherhood was not lost. Another commenter, a "cj" from Nevada, cheered thusly:

Mr. Kings comments are right on the money... Stupid Americans feel Obama's middle name and Muslim background, mean nothing. Well, as King maintains, it sure does mean something to other Muslims in the world, as well as many here in the United States. His father was a radical Muslim, and he grew up worshipping the Koran in Indonesia and elsewhere. He still associates with religious zealots and radical anti-American Marxists, to this day. Read his writings and books, and educate yourselves. Listen carefully to the vile spewings that regularly come from the face of his Socialist, racist and anti-American partner/wife...

King thinks he can get away with this kind of crap because he is, conventional wisdom says, untouchable in Iowa's western 5th District. It said the same thing about another longtime Iowa Republican, Jim Leach, a far nobler, more thoughtful congressman, whose 30-year incumbency we nevertheless ended here in the 2nd District on Nov. 7, 2006, sending a humble college professor Dave Loebsack to the Congress. King has in fact done the 5th District a great service in showing his and his party's true-ish stripes, maybe, hopefully breathing real life into the erstwhile longshot Democratic candidacy of Rob Hubler, a humble Navy vet and a Presbyterian minister.

Go ahead, 5th District reactionaries, call Obama what you really want to call him, and let's us together paint another Iowa district blue. Republicans everywhere, seriously, scrap the H-word, and start using the N-word. Let's have that conversation, let's weigh the actual notions of lordly primacy impregnated in your fear-based codespeak. Then let's see how much beyond your established troglodyte 19% you win for your Godly White Elect come November.

-Matthew Grimm

I want to add a little something. What Matthew describes goes beyond just IA-05 or even Iowa. I called my sister yesterday and wound up in a long phone conversation with my brother-in-law. They live in New York City (kinda... Staten Island) and he's a retired truck driver, injured and with a life now obsessed with legal battles to get medical coverage. He intimated to me that he doesn't trust Obama. He's bought into every right-wing talking point spewed over Hate Radio but it goes beyond that. He said when he saw Obama on stage with Oprah he knew something was up. "Oh? What?" I asked. He wasn't 100% sure what it was but he knew it was a "Black Thing" and they want... revenge. I bet he'd voted for Steve King in a heartbeat.

Do you think Rep. King was watching this before he mouthed off the other day? When Marvin Gaye and Bill Stevenson wrote it, they had a song in mind that would bring people together in unity. Maybe Steve King needs to listen more closely and think about his own divisiveness.