A good day for Democrats.
I'm slightly bummed about the impending Canadian election -- although I think Stephen Harper has every incentive to make sure it falls on January 16 and not over the Christmas holidays (that is, to make sure there are no non-confidence motions until the December 8 spending votes) giving us all a little more time -- so I'll focus on the good news from down south instead. The Dems won the New Jersey governorship handily, not that it was ever really in question (sadly, my beloved Congressman in absentia doesn't appear to be seriously in the running for Corzine's seat). That means that by a year from now, the Dems are going to have gubernatorial control over the mid-Atlantic region with Spitzer, Corzine and Rendell, all powerful figures, running New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania respectively. That's a powerful dynamic.
More impressively, the Dems have held on to the Virginia governorship, with their challenger, Tim Kaine, defeating Republican Jerry Kilgore*. Besides being good news for Mark Warner and bad news for George Allen in 2008, Kaine's come-from-behind win has another added bonus: the candidate is a (Catholic) opponent of the death penalty. He once argued in court in defence of a death-row convict that "Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County... even in the Spring Street Penitentiary [here]."
The idea that Dems couldn't win in southern states if they personally opposed capital punishment has long been a form of conventional wisdom in Washington, and probably a motivating factor in the Clintonites' sometimes overzealous enthusiasm for legislating the practice. Kaine has broken a taboo, always a good thing in politics. He also survived a long Republican campaign against his "liberalism" -- encapsulated in ads running at The Corner that featured his name alongside an image of John Kerry's head imposed on a sheep. ("A liberal in moderate's clothing" was the official, above-board explanation).
Arnold's California ballot initiatives also went down to defeat, though right now the worst of the four -- an anti-union bill to keep public-sector labour organizations from spending their revenues freely on politics -- is still too close to call. The LA Times writes:
But no amount of political spin can alter the perception that the governor, who a year ago seemed invincible, has suffered a staggering defeat. The logical message of this election for him is that voters want him to get back to the business of governing. But, of course, the trouble with holding this special election in the first place is that it will soon be followed by, well, the ordinary election season, depriving the governor and the Democratic leaders in Sacramento of time to catch their breaths or to pretend to hunker down to do some actual governing.
Sounds good to me!
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trent Lott's revenge fantasy against Bill Frist continues apace with delicious results. Lott alleged today that it was a Republican senator who provided the master leak to Dana Priest of the WaPo on those covert CIA prisons in Poland and Romania after an exclusive senators-only meeting with Cheney. This is not only humiliating to Frist and Hastert in the House but it also opens up the possiblity of the Repubs investigating themselves for leaking classified information.
Gulags are never funny. So I'm trying really hard not to giggle as I sit here typing. Mrrmmpphhh. Hrmmmphss. Snort.
But the most intriguing thing I read on the GOP's woes today was this NYT editorial. Yes, the Times editorials are pro-Democrat and liberal by American standards. But they're rarely this overt:
After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.
...The White House is in an uproar over the future of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, and spinning off rumors that some top cabinet members may be asked to walk the plank. Mr. Bush could certainly afford to replace some of his top advisers. But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.
...The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration's most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation...Mr. Bush cannot fire Mr. Cheney, but he could do what other presidents have done to vice presidents: keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm. Mr. Bush would still have to turn his administration around, but it would at least send a signal to the nation and the world that he was in charge, and the next three years might not be as dreadful as they threaten to be right now.
If I were a conservative, my blood would be boiling. The handwaving, unspecific criticsm of Bush's Latin America sojourn (he wasn't "energetic" and failed to get a face-saving-but-impossible-right-now FTAA pre-agreement, the editors complain.) The casual, blanket assertion that the Iraq War was "disasterous" policy. The silly "buck stops here, Mr. President" admonitions. The dumb advice to send Cheney to funerals. There's even a weird, context-free complaint that Bush was too dismissive of his opponent in the 2000 election since, well, he nation-builds too.
I don't want to get too excited, but this smells suspiciously like blood-in-the-water editorializing, the sort of thing Beltway liberals really believe but only start saying in print when they think it's very safe. Are we finally witnessing the fruits of implosion and the seeds of reallignment? Will Eric Alterman and Paul Krugman be vindicated? Is it even possible that Judis and Teixeira were right afterall? Sweet, sweet thoughts...
*A lazy-ass disclosure: I cribbed both the above links from Washington Monthly's blog.
More impressively, the Dems have held on to the Virginia governorship, with their challenger, Tim Kaine, defeating Republican Jerry Kilgore*. Besides being good news for Mark Warner and bad news for George Allen in 2008, Kaine's come-from-behind win has another added bonus: the candidate is a (Catholic) opponent of the death penalty. He once argued in court in defence of a death-row convict that "Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County... even in the Spring Street Penitentiary [here]."
The idea that Dems couldn't win in southern states if they personally opposed capital punishment has long been a form of conventional wisdom in Washington, and probably a motivating factor in the Clintonites' sometimes overzealous enthusiasm for legislating the practice. Kaine has broken a taboo, always a good thing in politics. He also survived a long Republican campaign against his "liberalism" -- encapsulated in ads running at The Corner that featured his name alongside an image of John Kerry's head imposed on a sheep. ("A liberal in moderate's clothing" was the official, above-board explanation).
Arnold's California ballot initiatives also went down to defeat, though right now the worst of the four -- an anti-union bill to keep public-sector labour organizations from spending their revenues freely on politics -- is still too close to call. The LA Times writes:
But no amount of political spin can alter the perception that the governor, who a year ago seemed invincible, has suffered a staggering defeat. The logical message of this election for him is that voters want him to get back to the business of governing. But, of course, the trouble with holding this special election in the first place is that it will soon be followed by, well, the ordinary election season, depriving the governor and the Democratic leaders in Sacramento of time to catch their breaths or to pretend to hunker down to do some actual governing.
Sounds good to me!
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trent Lott's revenge fantasy against Bill Frist continues apace with delicious results. Lott alleged today that it was a Republican senator who provided the master leak to Dana Priest of the WaPo on those covert CIA prisons in Poland and Romania after an exclusive senators-only meeting with Cheney. This is not only humiliating to Frist and Hastert in the House but it also opens up the possiblity of the Repubs investigating themselves for leaking classified information.
Gulags are never funny. So I'm trying really hard not to giggle as I sit here typing. Mrrmmpphhh. Hrmmmphss. Snort.
But the most intriguing thing I read on the GOP's woes today was this NYT editorial. Yes, the Times editorials are pro-Democrat and liberal by American standards. But they're rarely this overt:
After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.
...The White House is in an uproar over the future of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, and spinning off rumors that some top cabinet members may be asked to walk the plank. Mr. Bush could certainly afford to replace some of his top advisers. But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.
...The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration's most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation...Mr. Bush cannot fire Mr. Cheney, but he could do what other presidents have done to vice presidents: keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm. Mr. Bush would still have to turn his administration around, but it would at least send a signal to the nation and the world that he was in charge, and the next three years might not be as dreadful as they threaten to be right now.
If I were a conservative, my blood would be boiling. The handwaving, unspecific criticsm of Bush's Latin America sojourn (he wasn't "energetic" and failed to get a face-saving-but-impossible-right-now FTAA pre-agreement, the editors complain.) The casual, blanket assertion that the Iraq War was "disasterous" policy. The silly "buck stops here, Mr. President" admonitions. The dumb advice to send Cheney to funerals. There's even a weird, context-free complaint that Bush was too dismissive of his opponent in the 2000 election since, well, he nation-builds too.
I don't want to get too excited, but this smells suspiciously like blood-in-the-water editorializing, the sort of thing Beltway liberals really believe but only start saying in print when they think it's very safe. Are we finally witnessing the fruits of implosion and the seeds of reallignment? Will Eric Alterman and Paul Krugman be vindicated? Is it even possible that Judis and Teixeira were right afterall? Sweet, sweet thoughts...
*A lazy-ass disclosure: I cribbed both the above links from Washington Monthly's blog.
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