Sadly, Cook's data were collected and analyzed BEFORE the spineless Democrats caved once again to Bush. I really doubt that this advantage would hold if the polling were done this week (or anytime thereafter).
Posted by KathyP at August 7, 2007 04:52 AMBush stole two elections. Who here does not believe that? Myself, I unsubscribed from the Dem party two years ago and became an independent.
Posted by kebmodee at August 7, 2007 05:19 AMKathyP, I agree. I have spent a long time explaining to my young nieces and nephews (all nine of them) about why they should vote Democratic vs Republican. At the moment, I feel that everything I have told them about the Democratic Party is questionable and indefensible.
Posted by Judith at August 7, 2007 05:26 AMHmm. Independent. The party of Joe Lieberman.
Posted by iamcoyote at August 7, 2007 05:33 AMThought this was interesting.
Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in their defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars.
All of that is perfectly understandable, incidentally. The traumatizing incidences Sullivan points to did, in fact, happen. Hillary was pilloried for a bit of offhand feminism, and eventually forced to apologize. Her health care plan was shredded, and contributed to the worst Democratic losses in a generation. She was forced to largely recede from public life, and assume a more traditional, subordinate, spousal role.
You don't live through such experiences without scars, without lessons. Some say those lessons will make her more effective in office. Possibly true. But there's also an argument to be made that those were the wrong lessons, that they are less applicable now, that they will lead her astray, that they have ingrained a reflexive caution during a moment that calls for boldness. Hillary's approach to politics often seems predicated on survival, with accomplishments to be jammed in-between the cracks. Her actions are not those of someone who trusts in her capacity -- or even sees it as her goal -- to change the ideological tenor of the country.
There's an argument to be made that she's right. I'm just not convinced.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2007
It's an interesting chart, but I agree with Judith and kebmodee that the 2004 election, if votes had been properly counted in New Mexico, Iowa, and Ohio, would have gone the other way.
It might be more useful to look at the rate of change of opinion in the weeks leading up to the election. Opinions changed rapidly in 2006, just before the race. If one were to program electronic voting machines to undercount Dem votes on election day in specific races, one might have to know twelve or twenty weeks in advance how the race is likely to turn out. If opinion changes quickly as one nears the election, the programmed undercounting could prove insufficient to throw the race.
Posted by steve at August 7, 2007 06:15 AMDems are a huge disappointment; Reid and Pelosi ought to enjoy their brief careers. What else can we expect with people from Nevada and San Fran?
Kathy and Judith are correct in their assessments of the current nightmare. What's awful is that our rescuers don't seem to give a Goddamn about us!
Doomsday has arrived and many of us don't even realize it.
Many people, including my family, neighbors, friends and friends of friends are so disgusted nobody is supporting any of the cookie-cutter corporate candidates for 2008.
Loserman is a Repug not an Independent. He gives independents a bad name.
Posted by JohnT at August 7, 2007 06:33 AMKathyP, Judith, Henrietta,
No doubt the Democratic leadership (Pelosi and Reid) proved to be such a major disappointment on FISA. However, I have a very different perspective on the whole debacle. If Republicans had taken the same kind of defeatist attitude over their own legislative and judicial losses in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, they would have never built the kind of formidable power structure and right-wing judiciary they have since then. A majority of Democrats voted against the egregious FISA bill but there was a significant minority that voted for it. The lesson for me is not to lose faith in the Democratic party but to work to elect better Democrats and kick out the odious ones who bring shame to the progressive movement. Anyone who thinks this is going to happen in a matter of weeks or months or even a few years is living in a fantasy land. You can't change an entire Congress in such a short period. You have to work systematically to change it over a period of a decade or two.
I anticipate that I may not get much support for this view here, but I'm very much a long term thinker on these matters and I refuse to concede defeat at every milestone that reveals the cowardice of a minority of the Dem party. Lasting change requires a very strategic approach and hard work. If we are going to give up at every major disappointment then we don't belong in policy making or politics. The solution, in my view, is not to give up. It is to become smarter about how to bring about change.
Posted by eriposte at August 7, 2007 06:58 AMThat reminds me of a blackjack chart I used to use when counting cards in Las Vegas.
Posted by Slothrop at August 7, 2007 07:06 AMLasting change requires a very strategic approach and hard work.
Exactly, eriposte. And short term disappointments are par for the course. Giving up at the first sign of trouble guarantees backsliding rightward, too.
Posted by iamcoyote at August 7, 2007 07:06 AMThat reminds me of a blackjack chart I used to use when counting cards in Las Vegas.
Weren't winning much were you.
Posted by Seven of Six at August 7, 2007 07:19 AMI predict that 08 will be either,the last two-party election or the first real multi-party election.
Posted by Kevin at August 7, 2007 09:40 AM"If Republicans had taken the same kind of defeatist attitude over their own legislative and judicial losses in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, they would have never built the kind of formidable power structure and right-wing judiciary they have since then."
Eriposte, on one level, I understand your assessment and agree that a defeatist attitude is not only unproductive, but in some cases, destructive. On the other hand, this is not the 60s, 70, and early 80s. During those decades we were not fighting for the very survival of a Democracy in this Country. While those who are politically corruption and ideologues have always been with us, never has it been so widespread and deeply rooted in the opposition Party. This is not the America of a few years back, when one had the luxury of waiting and working to make changes in the system. There is a crisis in the Country, and perhaps the Democrats don't see the crisis as I do, or fear the future as I do. It's like watching a football game and cheering for the team, except the team doesn't seem to want a victory as much as you do. (I know, I know, poor sports analogy, but you get my drift).
Posted by Judith at August 7, 2007 11:24 AM"I predict that 08 will be either,the last two-party election or the first real multi-party election."
Kevin, you may be right. As far as I am concerned, everything rides on this election, and I do mean everything.
Posted by Judith at August 7, 2007 11:31 AMPerhaps Judith.....
The top ten advances towards tyranny in the United States during the tenure of the Bush administration, from the Patriot Act to the latest expansion of the illegal eavesdropping surveillance program.
1) The USA Patriot Act
The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used against American citizens. Here is an archive of articles that disproves both of these fallacies.
The Patriot Act was the boiler plate from which all subsequent attacks on the Constitution were formed.
2) Total Information Awareness
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database," infamously wrote New York Times writer William Safire, announcing the birth of Total Information Awareness, a kind of Echelon on steroids introduced a year after 9/11.
TIA was not canned, it was simply removed from the newspaper, renamed and continues to operate under a guise of different programs.
3) USA Patriot Act II
The second Patriot Act was a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganized the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command.
The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship.
4)Military Commissions Act
Slamming the final nail in the coffin of everything America used to stand for, the boot-licking U.S. Senate gave President Bush the legal authority to abduct and sexually mutilate American citizens and American children in the name of the war on terror in passing the Military Commissions Act and officially ending Habeas Corpus.
There is nothing in the "detainee" legislation that protects American citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured.
5)John Warner Defense Authorization Act
The Bush Junta quietly "tooled up" to utilize the U.S. military in engaging American dissidents after the next big crisis, with a frightening and overlooked piece of legislation that was passed alongside the Military Commissions Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which greased the skids for armed confrontation and abolishes posse comitatus.
6)Illegal Domestic Wiretapping Program
"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials," reported the New York Times on December 16, 2005
The secret warrantless spying program was a complete violation of both the 4th Amendment and FISA.
7)Expansion of Illegal Domestic Wiretapping Program
Not content with now being lawfully allowed to force ISP's and cell phone companies to turn over data about customers without a warrant, the Bush administration is pushing for even more authority to spy on American citizens, and has already been handed a 6 month window within which to impose any surveillance policy it likes, and for that program to remain legal in perpetuity.
The administration has a 6 month window in which to impose any surveillance program it chooses and that program will go unchallenged and remain legally binding in perpetuity - it cannot be revoked. Under the definitions of the legislation, Bush has been granted absolute dictator status for a minimum of 6 months.
If he so chooses, and so long as it's implemented within the next half year, Bush could build a database of every website visited by every American - and the policy would be immune from Congressional challenge even after the "surveillance gap" legislation reaches its sunset
8)Martial Law Presidential Decision Directive 51
New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed earlier this month without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.
9)Destruction of the Dollar
Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has predicted a global economic crash within 24 months - unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded "no,".
Stiglitz caused controversy in October 2001 when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies. Stiglitz agreed that the process of hijacking and looting key infrastructure on the part of the IMF and World Bank, as an offshoot of predatory globalization, had now moved from the third world to Europe, the United States and Canada.
10)Amnesty & The North American Union
The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations has finally been reported on by mainstream news outlets.
The framework on which the American Union is being pegged is the NAFTA Super Highway, a four football-fields-wide leviathan that stretches from southern Mexico through the US up to Montreal Canada .Coupled with Bush's blanket amnesty program, the Pan American Union is the final jigsaw piece for the total dismantling of America as we know it.
Posted by Kevin at August 7, 2007 07:40 PMKevin, you need to post that again in the next Open Thread.
Posted by Judith at August 7, 2007 08:44 PMOkay
Posted by Kevin at August 8, 2007 05:50 AM