Blag the dog

Nice to see that Illinois is continuing to distinguish itself in the area of good government, or lack thereof. Rod Blagojevich--say it three times, fast!! And we thought Obama was a funny name.

Well, this confirms that Patrick Fitzgerald, who showed us what a pack of liars Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff were, is nonpartisan and very tough on corrupt politicians. We no doubt will see more "What did Obama know and when did he know it???" breathlessness and guilt-by-association bs, but as the complaint and Fitzpatrick makes clear, Blagojevich was fuming over the Obama camp's lack of corruption.

Still, this is a ugly mess and an embarrassment to Democrats. This guy can't go to jail fast enough.

He’s a Socialist! He’s George Bush! He’s Left! He’s Right!

I don’t tend to put a lot of Fox News clips up on the site; the network has basically become Pravda for Republicans, a propaganda outlet that dabbles in news reporting.

But this clip is interesting because it shows how conservative pundits have been reduced to sputtering, babbling incoherency by Obama’s decision-making.

In this case, they are trying to square their false premise (Obama is a big scary Leftie who wants to make the United States a Socialist paradise) with the very pragmatic, competency-based decisions he has made about his cabinent.

Look, those of us on the left have known all along that Obama is not a Far-Left Radical. Everything about his record and style suggests a relatively mainstream progressive who is cautious, practical, and a consensus-builder.

And so, no, Fox news analysis panel, we are NOT freaking out when he picks Clinton (who used to be a Far Left Radical to Fox News types, until she was the only alternative to Obama—hmmm, that’s curious, isn’t it? Funny how they all talk like she’s some kind of conservative soul mate now) or Robert Gates.

Liaason’s suggestion that progressives have so much to be pleased with that they’re willing to cut Obama some slack is a reasonable statement, but the basic truth is the majority of those on the left did not suffer from this delusion that Obama was The Most Liberal Evah.

When Fox News is struggling to align its talking points with reality instead of parroting the Bush Administration line, that’s change I can believe in.

Political Blogging, so 2008 ...

Now that the election is over, I admit to having a bit less motivation to keep posting here on The World's Most Dangerous Political Blog (TM).

I mean, sure, it's kind of exciting that Obama picked Hillary to be SoS (ooooh! Will they get along?? Will they fight?? And What About Bill??!?) but really, for a layperson like me, posting about transition teams and vote recounts and auto industry bailouts just doesn't have the same thrill as the ol' horserace that we enjoyed for the past two years or so.

So maybe I'll dial back a bit with the blogging. Maybe I'll start reviewing movies (looking forward to The Day the Earth Stood Still!). Or maybe once BO takes office there will be enough big issues (he does have a pretty big mess to clean up) to keep me interested. We'll see. And of course, reader input always keeps things more lively. I'd be interested in knowing what you think of the transition so far...

In the meantime, for old times sake, here's a funny video featuring Sarah Palin!

David Brooks Gets Obama a Pillow

David Brooks is nominally a conservative columnist who went through the motions of being, well, somewhat supportive of John McCain during the election season.

But it’s pretty clear that Brooks is taken with Obama’s emphasis on being smart and competent. I don’t know if you could say he’s in the tank for Obama, but he’s certainly not one of the dwindling number of conservatives who are still talking about socialism or whether Obama’s going to church enough (no joke, there’s a story in Politico about this).

Here are some of his comments on the Obama cabinet:

“Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.

As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.

First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.

Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.

Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his postpartisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.

Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she has demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign-policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic. (It would be great to see her set of interests complemented by Samantha Power’s set of interests at the U.N.)

…

Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.”

They’re … Aliiiiiiive …

Just a random thought: for conservatives, the upcoming Obama Administration may look less like a Team of Rivals and more like Dawn of the Dead.

Look at the names being floated: Tom Daschle at HHS. Hillary Clinton at State; or Bill Richardson. Al Gore as some kind Global Warming Czar. Gen. Wesley Clark has been mentioned as a candidate for Defense Dept.

Not that Clinton or any of the others don’t have meaningful employment now. But Sec. of State, for example, is arguably much more powerful a position than one of a hundred Senators.

It’s too simplistic to say that this is the Clinton Administration, resurrected (… or is it?). But I think it’s clear that a number of Dem heavy hitters are getting second acts in the new Obama Administration. I would be surprised if we didn’t see at least one or two prominent Republicans as well. But a certain feeling of déjà vu is probably unavoidable.

God I wish Kos would grow up already

I’ve been visiting Daily Kos today, and it’s a nonstop whine-fest over there.

Senate Democrats today decided Joe Leiberman would not be harshly punished (by losing his chair of the Homeland Secuity committee) for campaigning for McCain and saying some pretty bad things about Obama during the campaign.

This follows Obama’s lead, observers say, and is part of his no-grudges, bipartisan approach.

It’s not going over well with the lefty blogs. Kos in particular is posting some very bitter and profane comments, kind of playing the cliche of the foul-mouth, extremist blogger to the hilt.

These guys have always had it in for Lieberman, with a ferocity that I never have quite understood. I don’t like Lieberman’s position on the Iraq war, or the fact that he supported McCain, but I would think the Democratic Party is big enough to tolerate one guy who steps out of line. (To be clear, the Dem Party is, demonstrably, big enough… but the lefty bloggers, not so much.)

Much of Lieberman’s positioning about the war is due to a (I believe misguided) sense of needing to protect Israel, and I’m not about to fault his motivation there, even if I disagree with his conclusions and positions.

Listen, in this last election, Obama put the Democratic Party in position to be the majority party in this country for the next generation at least. You’d think if he says go easy on Lieberman, the partisan bloggers could cut him a little slack. You’d be wrong, apparently.

Obama’s entire campaign was built on Americans working together despite their differences. He said from the beginning he wanted to bridge some of the political divides and not keep up this tit-for-tat partisanship. The average American is sick of this kind of infighting. How Kos or anyone else can be surprised at this turn of events is pretty hard to figure.

But hardcore partisans always tend to gripe about compromise. In this case, though, I think they should just accept this outcome and get over it. Hopefully they will.

So that's why we saw Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers a million times on our TV sets...

Lefty blog Crooks and Liars captures this little nugget of election analysis. From Fox News’ Sheppard Smith, no less.

“DiPaolo:...the MSM being so in the tank for Obama...

Smith: Oh, please. That's preposterous. The MSM reflected what was happening in this nation. It did not drive it. The blogs didn't drive this movement, the media didn't drive this movement. Barack Obama did not lose this election. It was his to lose. It was not John McCain's to win. The Republicans had no shot unless the Democrats gave it to them and they didn't and to blame the media is a cop out and ridiculous....

DiPaolo: The MSM has been liberal since its inception. It's years and years of pounding...

Smith: How did George Bush win twice?

DiPaolo: I don't know. Karl Rove is a genius.”


And there you have it. “I don’t know.” If the media has a liberal bias why is the entire AM band of the radio home to raving right-wing attack dogs like Rush Limbaugh? I don’t know. If the media has a liberal bias why do cable news networks put conservative hosts like Dobbs and Beck and O’Reilly on in prime time? I don’t know. If the media has a liberal bias why is MSNBC the only place where you can find any liberals who aren’t doormats to people like Sean Hannity? I don’t know.

Maybe the media doesn’t have a liberal bias. You can argue that newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post tend to be liberal on their editorial pages, but so what? Conservatives have their editorial pages (Wall Street Journal, Washington Times) as well.

Journalists—and I don’t include cable news pundits in that term—have a job to do. They are trained to do it without injecting their personal opinions. There is a lot we can criticize our modern media about, and we should, and we should hold them accountable every single day if they mess up or let some bias slip in. But to continue whining and complaining about liberal media bias when the majority of our TV and radio pundits are white male conservatives seems a little ridiculous to me.

Fox News was in non-stop Attack Obama mode for the past six month and it did nothing but freak out a bunch of people who were going to vote Republican anyhow.

If I were to give a piece of advice to conservatives on how to stop losing elections, I would say: Fire Your Media. Fox, Rush, O’Reilly, Rove, and whole happy gang are a bunch of delusional ideologues who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on their sizable asses. They are telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. And you have lost the majority of American voters along the way.

Pelosi!! The Musical

I'm officially agnostic on Nancy Pelosi. I don't know enough about the workings of the US House of Representatives to say with certainty whether she's a good Speaker or bad.

But because she's come up a lot in some conversations I've had recently, I thought I would pass along this article from Politico:

"As Pelosi enters her third year as speaker, by any measure, she has become the most powerful woman in U.S. political history and is now preparing to wield her gavel in a way that few, if any, recent speakers could match. Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution, pales in comparison. Pelosi is being mentioned by observers in the same breath as the legendary Sam Rayburn and Tip O’Neill, although she has yet to assemble a legislative record to match theirs."

Veterans Day

PE Obama and Tammy Duckworth at a Veterans Day ceremony.

TPM surveys the carnage...

It is very easy to get caught up in the "echo-chamber" aspects of political blogging. This video from Talking Points Media certainly is one-sided, edited to bring up the most negative spin on where the Republican Party stands right now.

But this is still a pretty amazing video.

Readers, conservative or not, are welcome to put their 2 cents in in the comments section.

Mod Lang Endorses Barack Obama for President

Now THAT’S a maverick move.

Obviously, I never had to “endorse” Obama because I was “in the tank” for the guy from early on. Also, thanks to John McCain, I’ve developed a new love for “air quotes.”

OK, seriously, what should we talk about today?

I was thinking this morning of the low point of my day on Tuesday. We were frantically trying to get the house ready for the party. I had just gotten back from running out to buy ice and a few last minute supplies.

On our answering machine was a recorded message from the chair of the Obama campaign in Minnesota. He said that the vote was turning out to be much closer than expected in this state and the campaign was urgently asking people to meet at such-and-such a place to do last minute door knocking.

Then I checked some of the blogs and found that nationally, an email had gone out from the Obama campaign saying that several states were much closer than expected and they were calling for volunteers to do last-minute phone banking.

I almost started hyperventilating. The rational part of my brain knew that I shouldn’t panic, but after one election night where we thought Gore had won it, only to have it taken away, and another where the exit polls initially looked very good for Kerry, I couldn’t help but think, “It’s happening again.”

Of course, both here in Minnesota and nationally, the polls did not end up being closer than expected. I suspect both cases were simply tactics to motivate potentially complacent Obama supporters to get out and vote. Tall guy suggested that perhaps the Minnesota camp’s goal was to squeeze a few more Franken votes out of D districts. I guess they shoulda squeezed harder.

Anyhow, it made me pretty jittery there for a while. I didn’t really start to calm down until they called Pennsylvania.

Want to talk some more about the election?

I thought so.

Congratulations to eft, who almost precisely nailed the final percentage of the popular vote. Eft predicted a 53-47 final margin, the actual result was 52-46. None of us (eft, tall guy, moi) called the states/electoral counts exactly right, but I will take credit for thinking big in one of my two "final" predictions, which called it 375-163 for Obama. The final electoral count will probably be 364-174, if Missouri (Red), Georgia (Red), and North Carolina (Blue) end up the way they're leaning right now.

And who really thought Indiana would turn Blue???? (Blue Indiana, for one.)

I heard a lot of griping about the polls among McCain supporters, about how they are unreliable. McCain lost by 6 points, most polls were in a 4-8 point range (favoring Obama) at the end. No Bradley effect, and as in 2004, the final polls were pretty close to the final result. Rasmussen got it exactly right, and several others were very close.

The Democrats did not pick up the number of Senate and House seats that many predicted. This was not a "wave" election like 2006, although it clearly was a very good year for the D's. So we haven't suddenly become a nation of liberals. But the last two elections suggest we are not exactly a conservative country either.

Good, let's lose the labels and get something done.

Climbing the mountain

Got to bed about 1:30 am last night. I was hoping to hear a result on the Coleman/Franken race, but at that point Coleman was up about 80 votes (!!) and it was clear it wasn’t going to be called any time soon. So I went to bed.

Got up about 7 am thanks to our early-rising 2-year-old (and 7 am is really sleeping in for him.) And strangely, I didn’t feel too bad. Started cleaning up the party stuff while listening to NPR.

One thing that struck me about Obama’s speech last night was how somber and restrained it was. I loved the (subtle) references to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Sam Cooke. But overall, this speech was not a celebration. He obviously knows that all the work, all the fighting against stereotype and distrust and tribalism has just been prelude. Now he has to lead a nation.

I thought he did a masterful job of reaching out last night to all Americans. But there are some who heard it differently. A conservative woman I know told me today she is distraught because she heard Obama has said his first act will be to sign an executive order legalizing partial birth abortions. And that he has said he wants to redistrubute wealth.

I asked her if she thought his speech last night tried to extend a hand to people like her who didn’t support him. “No,” she said.

It’s an example of what President Obama will face. Rumors, myths, misinformation campaigns, and a segment of the electorate determined to see the worst in him, determined not to give him a break. No wonder he was somber last night. The hard work hasn’t yet begun.

Live Blogging from election night party 3

Things winding down here as the reality of President Obama sinks in.

I think we all need a little time to absorb this.

McCain's speech was dignified and gracious. We all commented on how we would've liked to see *this* John McCain run for President. But the reality was he had a tremendous uphill climb from the start. He stuck to what was tried and true in politics. In other years, against other opponents, it might've been enough.

But I think it's safe to say politics have changed. Along with the country.

And no matter what they tell you, change is good.

Live Blogging from election night party 2

It's just before 9, and we've already had someone throw up. Of course, that someone was 7 months old. ("That's awfully young to be drinking," said one wag.) Things are looking very good for Obama, still too soon to call the Franken and Tinklenberg (of the Fightin' Tinklenbergs!!!) races.

Live Blogging from the election night party

7:40

About 30 peopl in our living room right now, not counting kids, and there are a few of them! A lot of buzz. I was pretty anxious earlier but feeling better now that two nets have called PA for Obama. I wish CNN would get on the ball. Early word is encouraging for Franken. Probably shouldn't jump to conclusions.

We bought a ton of food and beer. And everybody keeps bringing beer. A good problem to have.

I voted

A crisp autumn day in Minnesota. Clouds have moved in since but when I got to the community building next to our public park, the sun was still shining. Leaves were hitting the group with a crackling sound, toddlers were playing in the park. A dad with an "I voted" sticker sat and watched his kids.

I had been listening to Al Green on the way there: "Love and Happiness."

"Love can make you do right," Al sang.

There were no lines. I'd heard about long lines there at 7:30am but although the polling place seemed nearly full I didn't actually wait at all.

"Unh. Unh. Ahhh," Al sang.

The poll workers were helpful, and not as uniformly elderly as they have been in the past. One told me that as of 11:15 am they had seen more than 1,000 people vote. In the 2004 election, a total of 2,200 people voted at that location.

"Hey hey hey," Al sang.

I looked at the ballot. Filled out the ballot. Looked at it a moment more. We've been waiting a long time for this.

"Walk away with victory," Al sang.

Predictions!

Well, the call for predictions didn’t get overwhelming results but two hardy souls ventured their guesses. Sorry I didn’t get these up sooner, full comments can be found at the “Call for Predictions” post.

Eft predicted:

“Obama-53%
 McCain-47%.

AZ will go red bc nearly every state backs their own. (Except for TN and Gore in 2000.) CO will surprise the pollsters and go red bc they're more conservative than they like to admit.
NV will go blue bc it's a state that doesn't mind taking a gamble and MT will join them just to rebel a bit.
For the toss-ups: FL, MO, and IN will go red. (IN can't change, MO will be close, and FL will vote for the candidate closest to their average age.)
ND, OH, and NC will go blue. (ND will align with the rest of the Upper Midwest, OH will glom along with PA, and NC will tip to Obama...barely.)

The two hottest races in NC are for the governor and the US Senate. It seems it's all about change, so the governor will be McCrory (R) and the US Senator will be Hagen (D). McCrory will unseat the anointed one bc the present D administration is rife with scandal. Dole will be out of the Senate bc of her pandering to the conservative base-they want some changes too.”

Eft gives Franken a thumbs down on taking the Senate seat from Coleman.

The tall guy says:

“Obama 49% McCain 47% with 3% going to libertarians and greens.
Electorial Obama gets about 300.

Congress will increase with some more democrats in the house, I don't think they get to 60 in the senate, but close. Lieberman changes parties anyhow.

Franken squeaks in. MN thinks they are not ready for him, but after a couple of years find out he's a better policy guy than they would have thought. He's not all red meat for the base as everyone believes, and all the old satire that is getting flung back at him is hard to bring back up 6 years later.”


I would agree that if Franken gets in he will probably be a pretty good Senator. Not sure he can do it though. I’m a fan and even I thought twice about voting for him.

What are you seeing?

I'd be interested to know how things are looking to readers TWMDPB (TM). Long lines? Partisan displays? Did you get free coffee?

Election Day

Well, it's finally here.

Of the six daily tracking polls I'm looking at, only one has Obama under 50 percent. McCain's highest number is 46.

RCP has Obama leading in Ohio, Penn., Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada. McCain leads in N. Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri. Hard to believe that states like IN and GA are in play.

Polster.com's final poll average puts Obama at an 8 point lead, 52 - 44.

It's a beautiful day in Minnesota, warm and sunny. Big lines at the polls, I'm hearing. Win or lose, I love election days.