im going back some day
come what may to
blue(d) by you
just heard on msnbc that exit polls showed corruption and scandal was an even greater determining factor than the war in iraq. not that theyre mutually exclusive.
A new contract with America
GOP corruption and an unpopular war bring an end to Republican domination in Washington -- and leave President Bush answering to a new Democratic majority.
By Walter Shapiro
Nov. 8, 2006 | "This is not a Republican victory. It's not a Democratic victory. It's about the American people making a set of choices." -- House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich in Marietta, Ga., on election night 1994
Twelve years later, the American people have made another set of choices, erasing the once impregnable Sunbelt-based House conservative majority that Gingrich and his successors worked so hard to maintain. But corruption will do that to you -- the outright money-for-favors corruption that pointed two GOP incumbents toward prison, the see-no-evil corruption that caused the House Republican leadership to wink at Mark Foley's preying on congressional pages and, most of all, the corruption of the idea that Congress is an independent branch of government.
As Tuesday night slid into Wednesday morning on the East Coast, the breadth of the Democratic margin in the new House was more than 15 seats (too many races are still undecided for certainty). But the heavy emphasis of the television coverage on the dramatic and easy-to-follow Senate races (where the Democrats may be just a recount in Virginia away from a majority) diminished the magnitude of Tuesday night's seismic shift in the House. It is hard to remember that at the beginning of this year, the conventional wisdom was that computer-based mapping and cynical gerrymandering all but guaranteed the GOP stranglehold on the House, even in the face of the Iraq war and George W. Bush's plummeting polls.
Now when the 110th Congress convenes in January, Nancy Pelosi will be the first Democratic speaker in 12 years. She will also be the first woman ever to hold that post -- or to rank as high as third in the order of presidential succession. But more important than any specific Pelosi or party agenda (any serious attempt at major legislation would be vetoed by the lame-duck president) is the return of accountability to government and the end to the debilitating cycle of Democratic defeatism.
With no exit polls to shape the interpretation of House race results, any attempt to fully assess the meaning of Tuesday's vote is premature. Still, there were strong indicators that the Northeast has become as solid a Democratic bailiwick on the congressional as well as the presidential level as the red-state South is Republican. While two GOP-held House seats in Connecticut remain on the fence, it is conceivable that there might not be a single Republican from New England in the new House. Democrat Chris Murphy not only defeated 12-term incumbent Nancy Johnson in northwestern Connecticut's 5th District, but both New Hampshire Republican incumbents also went down to defeat. Few House upsets were as stunning as that of the unheralded Carol Shea-Porter, an under-funded grass-roots candidate dismissed as hopeless by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, upending two-term incumbent Jeb Bradley in New Hampshire's 1st District.
The Ohio River Valley also contributed to the Democratic victory margin, though in a less dramatic fashion than expected. The long count began Tuesday evening with three GOP congressmen going down to defeat in Indiana, along with five-term Republican Anne Northup, a survivor of prior tough races, across the river in Louisville, Ky. But in Ohio -- where the statewide Republican ticket of Sen. Mike DeWine and conservative gubernatorial contender Ken Blackwell went down to a smashing defeat -- the Republican turnout operation may have saved vulnerable incumbents Deborah Pryce (who holds the fourth-ranking post in the House GOP leadership), Steve Chabot and Jean Schmidt from premature retirement.
Still, Ohio was the rare exception as the Republicans learned that the House is not a home. The national Democratic sweep gave rise to two rival explanations. Either Karl Rove is a magician with a limited bag of tricks and he was finally hooted off the stage by voters who'd seen his act too many times before and craved something more than a campaign built around terrorism, taxes and traditional values. Or else Bush, with his can't-win war in Iraq, with his mystifying loyalty to Don Rumsfeld, with his stillborn domestic agenda and with the aura of played-out incompetence that hangs over the White House, was too much of a dead weight for any political strategist.
There is an element of truth to both theories, since the Republicans are devoid of new issues and Bush is is the same old out-of-touch president. Maybe Rumpelstiltskin could spin straw into gold, but not even the most artful Republican political manipulator could match that trick in a bad year like 2006. But the Democrats -- aided by the aggressive fundraising of Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate -- also deserve credit for seizing their opportunities rather than squandering them. The range of Democratic strategies to build a congressional majority can be captured by the story lines of two Democratic challengers who are now headed to Washington.
In southwestern Indiana, Brad Ellsworth -- the anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage sheriff of Vanderburgh County -- ran an anti-politics campaign against Republican misrule in Congress. In a district that Bush carried with 62 percent of the vote in 2004, Ellsworth virtually matched that margin (he got 61 percent) for the Democrats two years later. His hapless opponent was John Hostettler, a member of the Gingrich class of 1994, who ran shrill ads decrying Pelosi's "radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda." In a phone interview Tuesday night, Ellsworth's campaign manager Jay Howser explained the dramatic reversal: “I don't think it was an anti-Bush vote. I think it was an anti-Washington vote.”
Far different from hardscrabble southern Indiana are the plush Hartford suburbs, the summer-refuge-for-New Yorkers small towns and the old-time industrial cities of Republican Nancy Johnson's district in Connecticut. Chris Murphy, a 33-year-old state senator, also ran on a platform of change in Washington. But Murphy had a secret weapon -- the unpopular war in Iraq that Johnson never aggressively questioned. The challenger ran up such surprising majorities in the affluent, traditionally Republican portions of the district that it prompted Johnson to make one of the earliest concession speeches of the evening. As Dave Boomer, Johnson's campaign manger, put it after the votes were in, "Iraq was the big-time issue. It was head and shoulders above everything else."
No one is naive enough to believe that Bush will abandon his hard-line policies in Iraq just because the president suddenly finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Nor is it realistic to expect a narrow Democratic majority in Congress to rewrite American military policy. But after Tuesday's political upheaval, a heedless president is about to be forced to learn a civics lesson about checks and balances.
"aided by the aggressive fundraising of Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate -- also deserve credit for seizing their opportunities rather than squandering them."
That's a good article, thanks, but Walter Shapiro is a dick and gives short shrift to the netroots.
equal time for netrooters: (mydd)
Just A Step Forward--But What a Step!
by Chris Bowers, Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 04:58:17 AM EST
Here is where we stand right now:
* National Sweep. Democrats take the national majority in the House, Senate, Governors, and State Legislatures. The only thing Republicans have left--Bush--still sports a sub-40% approval rating.
* We won bigger than they ever did. Democrats look set to take the House, and with a larger majority than Republicans ever had during their 1994-2006 "revolution." We also won more Senate campaigns in a single cycle, 23-24, than either party has won since at least 1980.
* Republicans shut out: No House, Senate, or Governor pickups for Republicans. That breaks every record for futility. No one can ever do worse than they did this year.
* Geographic shift. This is the first time in 54 years that the party without a southern majority now has the House majority. Power flows to coasts. Tom Schaller utterly vindicated.
* Progressive Caucus Rising. Make no mistake about it--a member of the Progressive Caucus is now speaker of the House. Further, both Progressive caucus members who ran for Senate won easily, Sanders in Vermont and Brown in Ohio. And now, the Progressive Caucus will control half of all House committees.
* Blue District Victories. Wave of new conservative Democrats, my ass. Mark down House victories in NH-01, NH-02, NY-24, FL-22, PA-07, PA-08, IA-01, IA-02, CO-07, AZ-08, KY-03, CT-05, CA-11, MN-01, and NY-19. Now someone tell me again how the new wave of Democrats is overwhelmingly conservative with these districts and reps making up the majority of the new class.
* Netroots victories. Covered below.
* Republicans beaten at the top of their game. Republicans broke all of their fundraising and voter contact records this year. They had better maps than ever before. They had a better opportunity to pass whatever legislation they liked than every before. And they were still crushed.
* Many Democrats desperate to immediately lose majority. Some can't bash party's grassroots and left-wing fast enough in order to, supposedly, make themselves look better. Would rather improve personal position on Sunday talk show circuit than stay in power.
* We are just getting started. This is a big step, and much need vindication for our efforts. But it is still just a step. This is no time to start being risk-averse. We must continue to pursue the strategies that brought us here: silent revolution, fifty-state strategy, small donor explosion, progressive movement, we are all in this together.
* Lots of recounts and runoffs to go. As discussed below. Also, TX-23 and LA-02 await.
A big thank you goes out to every Democrat who didn't run against the Democratic Party in this election cycle. Those who stuck with us can share in the spoils. Those who didn't can stick it, and expect continuing retribution. The Democratic Party won tonight. If you ran from it, then you lost. Even if you didn't lose today, you loss is coming soon. Count on it.
And now, we govern.
P.S. Carol Shea-Porter for DCCC chair!
Permalink :: 33 Comments
Tags: 2006 elections, progressive movement, Democrats (all tags)
Netroots Victories
by Chris Bowers, Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 04:28:48 AM EST
The media and the right-wing blogospehre used to brag aobut how Dailykos and MyDD candidates never won, even though they might have heard of Barack Obama, Stephanie Herseth, and Ben Chandler. Well, welcome to our new generation of victorious netroots candidates:
* PA-07: Joe Sestak
* PA-08: Patrick Murphy
* CA-11: Jerry McNerney
* MN-01: Tim Walz
* NH-02: Paul Hodes
* VA-Sen: Jim Webb
I would like to point out that when we picked these canddiates, none of them were top tier. In fact, I'm pretty sure that right up until the end most people thought Murphy, McNerney, and Walz would still lose. But they didn't.
And we picked up a bunch more "hopeless" races as well, that dramtically expanded the palying field, and came far closer than anyone thought woudl come:
* MT-Sen: Tester on the brink of victory.
* WA-08:Carcy Burner. Votes still being counted--outcome unclear.
* NC-08: Larry Kissell down by 400 votes, recount imminent.
* WY-AL: Gary Trauner down by less than 1,000 votes, race undecided.
* NY-29: Eric Massa not conceeding, down by less than 2%
* NJ-07: Linda Stender loses by only 2%
* ID-01: Larry Grant down by 5% with most votes counted.
* IL-10: San Seals loses by only 6%
And there is this hsitory too:
* CT-Sen: Ned Lamont shcoks world to win CT-Sen primary.
* OH-02: Still competitve in 2006. We fought when few others would.
There isn't a signle one of these races that was top tier when we picked them. We were trying to expand the battlefield. Even when we didn't win, we left a strong, local netroots scene in place for future challenges. The netroots page was an asotunding success, and it will be significantly responsible for our new majorities.
Well done, everyone. that may have been the best spent $1.5M by Democrats this cycle. You activism in these races to strech Republicans made a huge difference.
P.S. The "counter" to the netroots page, "Rightroots" lost every race they endorsed and raised funds for. No wonder they have taken the site down, and no longer list their endorsed candidates.
Update [2006-11-8 4:51:3 by Jerome Armstrong]:
Beefheads, just as I thought they would, here's the 1-20 'losers' they supported:
And just for the record, their sole victory came against Rahm Emanual's $3M+ selfish gambit. Had netroots-backed Christine Cegelis had just $500K of that amount and the nomination, instead of the machine-supported out-of-district-Duckworth, we could have defeated Roskam too.
pretty northeast centric despite connecticut which had a democratic govenor scandal to muddy up the waters even further. that delay pickup was the only flip in texas.
Full List Of Dem House Pickups
By Greg Sargent | bio
Here they are, all 26 of them:
* AZ-05
* AZ-08
* CO-07
* CT-05
* FL-16
* FL-22
* IA-01
* IA-02
* IN-02
* IN-08
* IN-09
* KY-03
* KS-02
* MN-01
* NC-11
* NH-01
* NH-02
* NY-19
* NY-20
* NY-24
* OH-18
* PA-04
* PA-07
* PA-10
* TX-22
* WI-08
And it could turn out to be 27, depending on the outcome of the pending recount of CT-02.
Update: A commenter points out that Dem Chris Murphy is hanging on to a 1,521-vote lead in PA-08 over GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick with 100 percent of precincts reporting. So the Dem pickup could reach 28.
OK, ONE MORE TIME ON THIS ONE. There is clearly a developing narrative -- let’s call it the Casey-Webb-Shuler narrative -- which suggests that Democratic victories this year are somehow the result of Democrats “running as conservatives.” Republicans, and conservative Republicans in particular, have an obvious stake in perpetuating such a narrative. But it is patently untrue.
Pull back the lens and what appears to be happening this year is a regional-ideological partisan correction in which Rockefeller-Ford Republicans are purged from the NE/NW Rust Belt, and prairie progressives pick off selected seats in the Far West. The regional realignment over the past 40 years, which slowly converted Dixiecrats into Republicans, has now entered its final stage, as voters north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi provide a countervailing response to the southern-led Republican majority.
This transformation is occurring at the Senate, House, and gubernatorial levels. Indeed, because Rust Belt Republicans will be replaced by progressive Democrats, regardless of the final 2006 results, both chambers of the 110th Congress will become more progressive among the growing shares of Democrats and more conservative among the shrinking ranks of Republicans.
Some factoids and trends to consider:
* In a Rust Belt realignment, NE/MW districts alone provided a sufficient number of Democratic seats to give Pelosi a new majority. CT, NY, PA and NH provided 9 flipped seats; OH, IN, IA, KS, MN and MN added another 9 to that total. Most of these are not conservative Democrats unseating arch-conservative Republicans, but progressive Democrats knocking out moderate Republicans. Of 96 GOP-held seats in the NE/MW, the capture of (at least) 18 seats produces a turnover rate of 18%.
* Though there are exceptional cases like NC’s Heath Shuler, the vast majority of House Democratic nominees are pro-choice progressives running on anti-war, anti-Bush themes. Of the Democratic nominees in the 58 most-competitive House seats, only nine were self-described pro-lifers, according to research compiled by Media Matters. All supported embryonic stem cell research, all supported increasing the minimum wage, and all opposed privatizing Social Security.
* For the first time in 52 years in the House, and only the second time in 52 years in the Senate (presuming Tester and Webb hold), the party with a minority of southern seats in that chamber nevertheless holds the majority party chamberwide. House Democrats flipped just 5 of 91 GOP-held seats in the 11 Confederate states plus KY, OK; that’s a flip rate of just 5%. If Harry Reid gets his coveted sixth seat in VA, Reid’s 50-plus-Sanders majority will be 90 percent non-southern senators (45 to 5). These are distinctly non-southern caucuses, especially since many of the returning southern House Democrats come from majority-minority districts.
Though it is sometimes worth reporting counter-trend and unusual stories, such as those of winning pro-life Democrats like Casey or Shuler, anecdotal exceptions and man-bites-dog storylines misrepresent the larger picture. Any suggestion that Democrats are winning by acting like conservatives or “Republican lite” candidates is simply false. Indeed, the big irony of this election is that the more conservative elements of the Republican congressional caucuses will survive, while GOP moderates pay for their party’s rightward shift.
--Tom Schaller
the sanctity of every vote is suddenly a very attractive notion to conservatives.
via kos:
The DSCC released this statement on the two uncalled races:
Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.
Montana Vote Situation: Jon Tester leads Conrad Burns by approximately 1,700 votes (as of 11am EDT) and counting. In Silver Bow County (Butte), a Democratic stronghold, votes are still being counted but Tester is winning there with 66% of the vote. We expect to gain the majority of these uncounted votes and to add to Tester's margin.
Montana Process: When the counting phase is completed, a canvass will verify the vote tallies. That process could take as long as 48 hours, and must begin within three days and end within seven. Unless the canvass shows the margin to be within ¼ of 1%, there is no recount. As the loser, Burns would have to request the recount. When the votes are all counted, we expect to be outside that recount margin.
Virginia Vote Situation: Jim Webb is up by approximately 8,000 votes and once the provisional ballots are counted, we expect Webb's margin to increase. (Please note that VA absentees were included in the tallies from last night.)
Virginia Process: A canvass is underway to verify the results and we expect that process to finish within a day or so. To be in recount, the margin needs to be less than 1% and Allen (as the loser) would have to request it. Because of Virginia voting laws, the margin would have to be much tighter than it currently is to see any change in the outcome. Given the current margins, that is highly, highly unlikely.
i noticed while watching the president mock karl roves efforts that they had called montana for tester.
sad that liebermans vote is the one that puts them over the top. fucker has more power than ever it would seem. the feel bad story of the election.
More power but a lot of bad will and cyber-activists watching every move he makes for the rest of his career. We just keep the pressure on till his anger makes his head explode.
By the same token, how fast before he starts actively trying to sink net neutrality?
i think he knows he got spanked. let that be a lesson to all of them.
|
come what may to
blue(d) by you
- dave 11-08-2006 4:14 pm
just heard on msnbc that exit polls showed corruption and scandal was an even greater determining factor than the war in iraq. not that theyre mutually exclusive.
- dave 11-08-2006 5:17 pm
A new contract with America
GOP corruption and an unpopular war bring an end to Republican domination in Washington -- and leave President Bush answering to a new Democratic majority.
By Walter Shapiro
Nov. 8, 2006 | "This is not a Republican victory. It's not a Democratic victory. It's about the American people making a set of choices." -- House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich in Marietta, Ga., on election night 1994
Twelve years later, the American people have made another set of choices, erasing the once impregnable Sunbelt-based House conservative majority that Gingrich and his successors worked so hard to maintain. But corruption will do that to you -- the outright money-for-favors corruption that pointed two GOP incumbents toward prison, the see-no-evil corruption that caused the House Republican leadership to wink at Mark Foley's preying on congressional pages and, most of all, the corruption of the idea that Congress is an independent branch of government.
As Tuesday night slid into Wednesday morning on the East Coast, the breadth of the Democratic margin in the new House was more than 15 seats (too many races are still undecided for certainty). But the heavy emphasis of the television coverage on the dramatic and easy-to-follow Senate races (where the Democrats may be just a recount in Virginia away from a majority) diminished the magnitude of Tuesday night's seismic shift in the House. It is hard to remember that at the beginning of this year, the conventional wisdom was that computer-based mapping and cynical gerrymandering all but guaranteed the GOP stranglehold on the House, even in the face of the Iraq war and George W. Bush's plummeting polls.
Now when the 110th Congress convenes in January, Nancy Pelosi will be the first Democratic speaker in 12 years. She will also be the first woman ever to hold that post -- or to rank as high as third in the order of presidential succession. But more important than any specific Pelosi or party agenda (any serious attempt at major legislation would be vetoed by the lame-duck president) is the return of accountability to government and the end to the debilitating cycle of Democratic defeatism.
With no exit polls to shape the interpretation of House race results, any attempt to fully assess the meaning of Tuesday's vote is premature. Still, there were strong indicators that the Northeast has become as solid a Democratic bailiwick on the congressional as well as the presidential level as the red-state South is Republican. While two GOP-held House seats in Connecticut remain on the fence, it is conceivable that there might not be a single Republican from New England in the new House. Democrat Chris Murphy not only defeated 12-term incumbent Nancy Johnson in northwestern Connecticut's 5th District, but both New Hampshire Republican incumbents also went down to defeat. Few House upsets were as stunning as that of the unheralded Carol Shea-Porter, an under-funded grass-roots candidate dismissed as hopeless by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, upending two-term incumbent Jeb Bradley in New Hampshire's 1st District.
The Ohio River Valley also contributed to the Democratic victory margin, though in a less dramatic fashion than expected. The long count began Tuesday evening with three GOP congressmen going down to defeat in Indiana, along with five-term Republican Anne Northup, a survivor of prior tough races, across the river in Louisville, Ky. But in Ohio -- where the statewide Republican ticket of Sen. Mike DeWine and conservative gubernatorial contender Ken Blackwell went down to a smashing defeat -- the Republican turnout operation may have saved vulnerable incumbents Deborah Pryce (who holds the fourth-ranking post in the House GOP leadership), Steve Chabot and Jean Schmidt from premature retirement.
Still, Ohio was the rare exception as the Republicans learned that the House is not a home. The national Democratic sweep gave rise to two rival explanations. Either Karl Rove is a magician with a limited bag of tricks and he was finally hooted off the stage by voters who'd seen his act too many times before and craved something more than a campaign built around terrorism, taxes and traditional values. Or else Bush, with his can't-win war in Iraq, with his mystifying loyalty to Don Rumsfeld, with his stillborn domestic agenda and with the aura of played-out incompetence that hangs over the White House, was too much of a dead weight for any political strategist.
There is an element of truth to both theories, since the Republicans are devoid of new issues and Bush is is the same old out-of-touch president. Maybe Rumpelstiltskin could spin straw into gold, but not even the most artful Republican political manipulator could match that trick in a bad year like 2006. But the Democrats -- aided by the aggressive fundraising of Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate -- also deserve credit for seizing their opportunities rather than squandering them. The range of Democratic strategies to build a congressional majority can be captured by the story lines of two Democratic challengers who are now headed to Washington.
In southwestern Indiana, Brad Ellsworth -- the anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage sheriff of Vanderburgh County -- ran an anti-politics campaign against Republican misrule in Congress. In a district that Bush carried with 62 percent of the vote in 2004, Ellsworth virtually matched that margin (he got 61 percent) for the Democrats two years later. His hapless opponent was John Hostettler, a member of the Gingrich class of 1994, who ran shrill ads decrying Pelosi's "radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda." In a phone interview Tuesday night, Ellsworth's campaign manager Jay Howser explained the dramatic reversal: “I don't think it was an anti-Bush vote. I think it was an anti-Washington vote.”
Far different from hardscrabble southern Indiana are the plush Hartford suburbs, the summer-refuge-for-New Yorkers small towns and the old-time industrial cities of Republican Nancy Johnson's district in Connecticut. Chris Murphy, a 33-year-old state senator, also ran on a platform of change in Washington. But Murphy had a secret weapon -- the unpopular war in Iraq that Johnson never aggressively questioned. The challenger ran up such surprising majorities in the affluent, traditionally Republican portions of the district that it prompted Johnson to make one of the earliest concession speeches of the evening. As Dave Boomer, Johnson's campaign manger, put it after the votes were in, "Iraq was the big-time issue. It was head and shoulders above everything else."
No one is naive enough to believe that Bush will abandon his hard-line policies in Iraq just because the president suddenly finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Nor is it realistic to expect a narrow Democratic majority in Congress to rewrite American military policy. But after Tuesday's political upheaval, a heedless president is about to be forced to learn a civics lesson about checks and balances.
- dave 11-08-2006 5:25 pm
"aided by the aggressive fundraising of Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate -- also deserve credit for seizing their opportunities rather than squandering them."
That's a good article, thanks, but Walter Shapiro is a dick and gives short shrift to the netroots.
- tom moody 11-08-2006 5:33 pm
equal time for netrooters: (mydd)
Just A Step Forward--But What a Step!
by Chris Bowers, Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 04:58:17 AM EST
Here is where we stand right now:
* National Sweep. Democrats take the national majority in the House, Senate, Governors, and State Legislatures. The only thing Republicans have left--Bush--still sports a sub-40% approval rating.
* We won bigger than they ever did. Democrats look set to take the House, and with a larger majority than Republicans ever had during their 1994-2006 "revolution." We also won more Senate campaigns in a single cycle, 23-24, than either party has won since at least 1980.
* Republicans shut out: No House, Senate, or Governor pickups for Republicans. That breaks every record for futility. No one can ever do worse than they did this year.
* Geographic shift. This is the first time in 54 years that the party without a southern majority now has the House majority. Power flows to coasts. Tom Schaller utterly vindicated.
* Progressive Caucus Rising. Make no mistake about it--a member of the Progressive Caucus is now speaker of the House. Further, both Progressive caucus members who ran for Senate won easily, Sanders in Vermont and Brown in Ohio. And now, the Progressive Caucus will control half of all House committees.
* Blue District Victories. Wave of new conservative Democrats, my ass. Mark down House victories in NH-01, NH-02, NY-24, FL-22, PA-07, PA-08, IA-01, IA-02, CO-07, AZ-08, KY-03, CT-05, CA-11, MN-01, and NY-19. Now someone tell me again how the new wave of Democrats is overwhelmingly conservative with these districts and reps making up the majority of the new class.
* Netroots victories. Covered below.
* Republicans beaten at the top of their game. Republicans broke all of their fundraising and voter contact records this year. They had better maps than ever before. They had a better opportunity to pass whatever legislation they liked than every before. And they were still crushed.
* Many Democrats desperate to immediately lose majority. Some can't bash party's grassroots and left-wing fast enough in order to, supposedly, make themselves look better. Would rather improve personal position on Sunday talk show circuit than stay in power.
* We are just getting started. This is a big step, and much need vindication for our efforts. But it is still just a step. This is no time to start being risk-averse. We must continue to pursue the strategies that brought us here: silent revolution, fifty-state strategy, small donor explosion, progressive movement, we are all in this together.
* Lots of recounts and runoffs to go. As discussed below. Also, TX-23 and LA-02 await.
A big thank you goes out to every Democrat who didn't run against the Democratic Party in this election cycle. Those who stuck with us can share in the spoils. Those who didn't can stick it, and expect continuing retribution. The Democratic Party won tonight. If you ran from it, then you lost. Even if you didn't lose today, you loss is coming soon. Count on it.
And now, we govern.
P.S. Carol Shea-Porter for DCCC chair!
Permalink :: 33 Comments
Tags: 2006 elections, progressive movement, Democrats (all tags)
Netroots Victories
by Chris Bowers, Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 04:28:48 AM EST
The media and the right-wing blogospehre used to brag aobut how Dailykos and MyDD candidates never won, even though they might have heard of Barack Obama, Stephanie Herseth, and Ben Chandler. Well, welcome to our new generation of victorious netroots candidates:
* PA-07: Joe Sestak
* PA-08: Patrick Murphy
* CA-11: Jerry McNerney
* MN-01: Tim Walz
* NH-02: Paul Hodes
* VA-Sen: Jim Webb
I would like to point out that when we picked these canddiates, none of them were top tier. In fact, I'm pretty sure that right up until the end most people thought Murphy, McNerney, and Walz would still lose. But they didn't.
And we picked up a bunch more "hopeless" races as well, that dramtically expanded the palying field, and came far closer than anyone thought woudl come:
* MT-Sen: Tester on the brink of victory.
* WA-08:Carcy Burner. Votes still being counted--outcome unclear.
* NC-08: Larry Kissell down by 400 votes, recount imminent.
* WY-AL: Gary Trauner down by less than 1,000 votes, race undecided.
* NY-29: Eric Massa not conceeding, down by less than 2%
* NJ-07: Linda Stender loses by only 2%
* ID-01: Larry Grant down by 5% with most votes counted.
* IL-10: San Seals loses by only 6%
And there is this hsitory too:
* CT-Sen: Ned Lamont shcoks world to win CT-Sen primary.
* OH-02: Still competitve in 2006. We fought when few others would.
There isn't a signle one of these races that was top tier when we picked them. We were trying to expand the battlefield. Even when we didn't win, we left a strong, local netroots scene in place for future challenges. The netroots page was an asotunding success, and it will be significantly responsible for our new majorities.
Well done, everyone. that may have been the best spent $1.5M by Democrats this cycle. You activism in these races to strech Republicans made a huge difference.
P.S. The "counter" to the netroots page, "Rightroots" lost every race they endorsed and raised funds for. No wonder they have taken the site down, and no longer list their endorsed candidates.
Update [2006-11-8 4:51:3 by Jerome Armstrong]:
Beefheads, just as I thought they would, here's the 1-20 'losers' they supported:
And just for the record, their sole victory came against Rahm Emanual's $3M+ selfish gambit. Had netroots-backed Christine Cegelis had just $500K of that amount and the nomination, instead of the machine-supported out-of-district-Duckworth, we could have defeated Roskam too.
- dave 11-08-2006 5:53 pm
pretty northeast centric despite connecticut which had a democratic govenor scandal to muddy up the waters even further. that delay pickup was the only flip in texas.
Full List Of Dem House Pickups
By Greg Sargent | bio
Here they are, all 26 of them:
* AZ-05
* AZ-08
* CO-07
* CT-05
* FL-16
* FL-22
* IA-01
* IA-02
* IN-02
* IN-08
* IN-09
* KY-03
* KS-02
* MN-01
* NC-11
* NH-01
* NH-02
* NY-19
* NY-20
* NY-24
* OH-18
* PA-04
* PA-07
* PA-10
* TX-22
* WI-08
And it could turn out to be 27, depending on the outcome of the pending recount of CT-02.
Update: A commenter points out that Dem Chris Murphy is hanging on to a 1,521-vote lead in PA-08 over GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick with 100 percent of precincts reporting. So the Dem pickup could reach 28.
- dave 11-08-2006 6:08 pm
OK, ONE MORE TIME ON THIS ONE. There is clearly a developing narrative -- let’s call it the Casey-Webb-Shuler narrative -- which suggests that Democratic victories this year are somehow the result of Democrats “running as conservatives.” Republicans, and conservative Republicans in particular, have an obvious stake in perpetuating such a narrative. But it is patently untrue.
Pull back the lens and what appears to be happening this year is a regional-ideological partisan correction in which Rockefeller-Ford Republicans are purged from the NE/NW Rust Belt, and prairie progressives pick off selected seats in the Far West. The regional realignment over the past 40 years, which slowly converted Dixiecrats into Republicans, has now entered its final stage, as voters north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi provide a countervailing response to the southern-led Republican majority.
This transformation is occurring at the Senate, House, and gubernatorial levels. Indeed, because Rust Belt Republicans will be replaced by progressive Democrats, regardless of the final 2006 results, both chambers of the 110th Congress will become more progressive among the growing shares of Democrats and more conservative among the shrinking ranks of Republicans.
Some factoids and trends to consider:
* In a Rust Belt realignment, NE/MW districts alone provided a sufficient number of Democratic seats to give Pelosi a new majority. CT, NY, PA and NH provided 9 flipped seats; OH, IN, IA, KS, MN and MN added another 9 to that total. Most of these are not conservative Democrats unseating arch-conservative Republicans, but progressive Democrats knocking out moderate Republicans. Of 96 GOP-held seats in the NE/MW, the capture of (at least) 18 seats produces a turnover rate of 18%.
* Though there are exceptional cases like NC’s Heath Shuler, the vast majority of House Democratic nominees are pro-choice progressives running on anti-war, anti-Bush themes. Of the Democratic nominees in the 58 most-competitive House seats, only nine were self-described pro-lifers, according to research compiled by Media Matters. All supported embryonic stem cell research, all supported increasing the minimum wage, and all opposed privatizing Social Security.
* For the first time in 52 years in the House, and only the second time in 52 years in the Senate (presuming Tester and Webb hold), the party with a minority of southern seats in that chamber nevertheless holds the majority party chamberwide. House Democrats flipped just 5 of 91 GOP-held seats in the 11 Confederate states plus KY, OK; that’s a flip rate of just 5%. If Harry Reid gets his coveted sixth seat in VA, Reid’s 50-plus-Sanders majority will be 90 percent non-southern senators (45 to 5). These are distinctly non-southern caucuses, especially since many of the returning southern House Democrats come from majority-minority districts.
Though it is sometimes worth reporting counter-trend and unusual stories, such as those of winning pro-life Democrats like Casey or Shuler, anecdotal exceptions and man-bites-dog storylines misrepresent the larger picture. Any suggestion that Democrats are winning by acting like conservatives or “Republican lite” candidates is simply false. Indeed, the big irony of this election is that the more conservative elements of the Republican congressional caucuses will survive, while GOP moderates pay for their party’s rightward shift.
--Tom Schaller
- dave 11-08-2006 7:06 pm
the sanctity of every vote is suddenly a very attractive notion to conservatives.
via kos:
The DSCC released this statement on the two uncalled races:
Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.
Montana Vote Situation: Jon Tester leads Conrad Burns by approximately 1,700 votes (as of 11am EDT) and counting. In Silver Bow County (Butte), a Democratic stronghold, votes are still being counted but Tester is winning there with 66% of the vote. We expect to gain the majority of these uncounted votes and to add to Tester's margin.
Montana Process: When the counting phase is completed, a canvass will verify the vote tallies. That process could take as long as 48 hours, and must begin within three days and end within seven. Unless the canvass shows the margin to be within ¼ of 1%, there is no recount. As the loser, Burns would have to request the recount. When the votes are all counted, we expect to be outside that recount margin.
Virginia Vote Situation: Jim Webb is up by approximately 8,000 votes and once the provisional ballots are counted, we expect Webb's margin to increase. (Please note that VA absentees were included in the tallies from last night.)
Virginia Process: A canvass is underway to verify the results and we expect that process to finish within a day or so. To be in recount, the margin needs to be less than 1% and Allen (as the loser) would have to request it. Because of Virginia voting laws, the margin would have to be much tighter than it currently is to see any change in the outcome. Given the current margins, that is highly, highly unlikely.
- dave 11-08-2006 7:38 pm
i noticed while watching the president mock karl roves efforts that they had called montana for tester.
sad that liebermans vote is the one that puts them over the top. fucker has more power than ever it would seem. the feel bad story of the election.
- dave 11-08-2006 10:11 pm
More power but a lot of bad will and cyber-activists watching every move he makes for the rest of his career. We just keep the pressure on till his anger makes his head explode.
By the same token, how fast before he starts actively trying to sink net neutrality?
- tom moody 11-08-2006 10:21 pm
i think he knows he got spanked. let that be a lesson to all of them.
- bill 11-08-2006 10:30 pm