jerseyhoya wrote:If we can pick up that seat, it'd put us 3 for 3 in the early Obama era, with us holding LA-4, Dollar Bill Jefferson losing too. That would be nice. We're going to need to make big strides this election to get people in place before redistricting if we're going to have any chance of retaking the House next decade.

I was at an event last night sponsored by VABADC where Joseph Cao was the keynote speaker. He had to leave early to attend a town hall meeting with his district, but from speaking to him, reading about him and hearing him speak (very friendly man, BTW), he sounds like a guy who is only a Republican because 1) he's Catholic and 2) he's Vietnamese. His policies aside from abortion are fairly moderate to almost left leaning. He's almost like a Bob Casey or Tim Kaine on the political spectrum.

I don't really have much to say, but I wanted to end all four of the top threads on the board.

Oh, I think I've mentioned that Michael Steele was in my dorm and in my freshman advisory group freshman year at Hopkins. His success doesn't surprise me at all and head of the RNC would seem to fit him like a glove He was always the type of person who could greet you and make you feel like you'd been best friends forever. Great smile, and in those days he looked more like Billy Dee Williams and less like Michael Nutter.

All right, this is starting to sound a bit creepy, so let me just say that he didn't really send off any intellectual fireworks, and I think he chose to fly a flag of convenience in going Republican. But in terms of bringing the party together I think he'll do a great job, based upon my experiences as a casual acquaintance more than 25 years ago.

lethal wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If we can pick up that seat, it'd put us 3 for 3 in the early Obama era, with us holding LA-4, Dollar Bill Jefferson losing too. That would be nice. We're going to need to make big strides this election to get people in place before redistricting if we're going to have any chance of retaking the House next decade.

I was at an event last night sponsored by VABADC where Joseph Cao was the keynote speaker. He had to leave early to attend a town hall meeting with his district, but from speaking to him, reading about him and hearing him speak (very friendly man, BTW), he sounds like a guy who is only a Republican because 1) he's Catholic and 2) he's Vietnamese. His policies aside from abortion are fairly moderate to almost left leaning. He's almost like a Bob Casey or Tim Kaine on the political spectrum.

I have no illusions that his win was an ideological victory for conservatism, but I mean, Kerry won his district 75-24%. He only won because his opponent was a criminal, so it's not the start of a trend, but we sure lost our fair share of seats in the past 3 years due to our members being crooks. It has been good to turn it around a bit.

Nate Silver thinks he's identified lessons for Obama from the stimulus debate:

1. Republicans have nothing to lose. Public perceptions of Congressional Republicans are also significantly down from their already-low levels since the stimulus debate began. But, the Republicans will gladly torpedo their own brand if it means taking Obama down with them. They are dangerous to him, in the way that a gang of rabid velociraptors is dangerous to a T-Rex.

2. Obama has to do the heavy lifting himself. Support for the stimulus dwindled when the Congressional Demorcats, who are not much more popular than their Republican colleagues, were charged with the job of selling it. The more Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the faces of the Democratic Party, the more Barack Obama's approval ratings will come to resemble those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

3. The benefits of "bipartisanship" are dubious. The public says they want bipartisanship, and a large majority of the public believes that Obama acted in a bipartisan fashion during the stimulus debate. And yet, his approval ratings fell significantly during this period.

Given the nature of Obama's campaign and the almost universally shared hope that we might move past the zero-sum scat-flinging political dynamic of the Clinton/Bush years, maybe he had to start with the olive branch or risk being seen as a hypocrite even by some who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, if this measure is perceived to not have done enough to reverse the slide, he'll have wound up with a bill smaller and weaker than he wanted, and the political cost from it not being perceived as successful will far outweigh whatever was gained by the effort at a more bipartisan tone.

The thing is that he's probably going to have this same dynamic in the Senate with every single big issue: 50-55 solid votes among the Democrats, 6-12 conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans who could go either way, and 35 automatic No votes. So maybe the real political key here was just giving as much love as possible to Nelson, Collins, Snowe, Specter, Lieberman (who's actually been pretty strongly in support, far as I can tell--maybe an acknowledgment that he represents Connecticut) et al, because he realizes he'll need them every single time.

Lieberman votes with you guys most of the time, he's just loud and obnoxious against you on foreign policy issues. It's like Chuck Hagel, except Democrats are righteous in their running Lieberman from the party, while Republicans are narrow minded by chasing Hagel from the senate.

jerseyhoya wrote:Lieberman votes with you guys most of the time, he's just loud and obnoxious against you on foreign policy issues. It's like Chuck Hagel, except Democrats are righteous in their running Lieberman from the party, while Republicans are narrow minded by chasing Hagel from the senate.

Well, and he didn't do jack squat with his oversight committee while Bush was running wild.

But the obnoxiousness had a lot to do with it. Lieberman just comes off as a jerk; I didn't think Hagel did. (The guy was in Vietnam; he has a right to be upset by dumb wars.) In general, my sense is that the hardcore right hates their deviants--the RINOs--more than the left has a problem with Nelson, Bayh, et al. Maybe it's just that "we" realize they're necessary.

No, it's just that you guys were losing for a long time, so you learned to stomach your moderates. Now your base is challenging people like Allen Boyd in an R +2 district. If you keep control for another cycle or two, Scott Kleeb will be challenging Ben Nelson in a Dem primary ala Laffey vs. Chafee, and Kos will be defending this because Nelson is expendable with the Dems having a 5 seat majority in the Senate. Soon thereafter, we'll retake the senate, and you'll wonder why you ran Nelson out.

The exception is you all hate Lieberman. Not that I blame you, but I always find it funny when a liberal remarks with surprise at how well Lieberman votes. He's a Democrat that likes bombing Arabs.

I think our exception should be Arlen Specter. I still feel good about rooting for Toomey in that primary and being crushed when he fell just short. I really dislike Specter.

jerseyhoya wrote:No, it's just that you guys were losing for a long time, so you learned to stomach your moderates. Now your base is challenging people like Allen Boyd in an R +2 district. If you keep control for another cycle or two, Scott Kleeb will be challenging Ben Nelson in a Dem primary ala Laffey vs. Chafee, and Kos will be defending this because Nelson is expendable with the Dems having a 5 seat majority in the Senate. Soon thereafter, we'll retake the senate, and you'll wonder why you ran Nelson out.

The exception is you all hate Lieberman. Not that I blame you, but I always find it funny when a liberal remarks with surprise at how well Lieberman votes. He's a Democrat that likes bombing Arabs.

I think our exception should be Arlen Specter. I still feel good about rooting for Toomey in that primary and being crushed when he fell just short. I really dislike Specter.

Perhaps we're saying the same thing: that parties tolerate their dissenters on the way up ("losing for a long time"), start to lose patience when they're at the top--because why not have a more "reliable" vote?--and then purge them in the decadent phase. The "base" asserts itself in power, and purifies the deviants, and loses power.

Or at least that was the Republican cycle. I'm not certain it will play that way for the Democrats, for two reasons: first, this is probably the most ideologically coherent Democratic majority the country has ever seen. Granted there's a good bit of room between Dennis Kucinich and Heath Shuler, but there was a lot more between Hubert Humphrey and John Stennis fifty years ago. These Democrats at least don't view the other as the embodiment of evil, and even agree on some things.

And while I think you've been on Daily Kos a lot more than I have, recently at least, my recollection is that he's actually a big-picture thinker who realizes that you have to allow for heterodoxy to sustain a majority... like Grover Norquist, who was very upfront about supporting Lincoln Chafee for re-election. Those sort of guys just want to win.

(This also explains Lieberman--almost any other Democrat from Connecticut would be "better" from an issues standpoint, because it's a solid blue state--but not Specter. As with Collins and Snowe in Maine, right now he's one of a very few Republicans who can win in that state.)

The second reason is that it takes another party to pick up the pieces as the first one sheds or craters. Absent a serious re-examination and an effort to solve the problem I mentioned 10 or so pages back in this thread, the Republicans aren't going to snap up disaffected Democrats again. There isn't another southern-Dem cohort ready to switch; the ideological sorting is finished. Maybe it's too early to see this, and/or maybe it is happening with the Douthat/Salam crowd starting to tap at the window. But right now I think it's as likely that some new centrist party shows up when (not if) the Democrats falter, as that another Republican Party led by someone like Palin comes back into power.

I think Jim Webb is an interesting example of what I'm talking about. He's changed his mind about what party he belongs to twice--both times when the Movementarian crowd took things too far. When the Republicans get away from their Ann Coulters, and when the Democrats start getting too close to their David Sirotas, probably is when things will flip again.

You're right that it's not a great comparison due to the electoral makeups of the states. I just really dislike Specter. I think my original comparison of Lieberman to Hagel works better. Nebraska is one of the two or three most GOP states in the country, and the one GOP senator from there was a self indulgent fixture on the Sunday morning talkshow circuit talking shit on his commander in chief. I don't care if he singlehandedly won WWII, Korea and Vietnam, that sort of disrespect to the leader of the party and country pisses the shit out of me. Luckily he knew he was going to lose in the primary, so he left. All the while, he was voting with us almost all the time. It was his attitude that made him unacceptable.

Also I understand what you're saying about kos having a wider vision than some of the purer ideologues, and I don't think he would support Kleeb against Nelson in 2010, but if you guys don't lose anything from your majority over the next two and a half years and Nelson casts a bad vote or two, I can see the entire online Dem apparatus turning on him like the conservative blogosphere retardedly backed Laffey in 2006.

jerseyhoya wrote:No, it's just that you guys were losing for a long time, so you learned to stomach your moderates. Now your base is challenging people like Allen Boyd in an R +2 district. If you keep control for another cycle or two, Scott Kleeb will be challenging Ben Nelson in a Dem primary ala Laffey vs. Chafee, and Kos will be defending this because Nelson is expendable with the Dems having a 5 seat majority in the Senate. Soon thereafter, we'll retake the senate, and you'll wonder why you ran Nelson out.

The exception is you all hate Lieberman. Not that I blame you, but I always find it funny when a liberal remarks with surprise at how well Lieberman votes. He's a Democrat that likes bombing Arabs.

I think our exception should be Arlen Specter. I still feel good about rooting for Toomey in that primary and being crushed when he fell just short. I really dislike Specter.

If Red State is any guide, it seems the "base" would rather have 30 "real conservatives" in the Senate than a majority that includes a couple of moderates.

I don't think the Dems are even close to that yet. You don't hear calls for getting rid of Blanche Lincoln, a total waste of space in the Senate, who I've pledge to never vote for again. Almost without hesitation, I'd vote for Huckabee over Lincoln, such is my ire. Of course, the Republibaptists will probably go ahead and nominate someone so profoundly horrible like Jim Bob Duggar that I'll go ahead and vote for Lincoln anyway, breaking my pledge.

jerseyhoya wrote: I don't care if he singlehandedly won WWII, Korea and Vietnam, that sort of disrespect to the leader of the party and country pisses the $#@! out of me.

why? serious question.

How can you care so passionately about elections if you overlook one of the key reasons why they're conducted in the first place - that is, as an imperfect, temporary, limited-scope, mechanical resolution of ongoing indecision amongst competing interests?

Dissent whether self-indulgent or not seldom has disrespect as its primary driver, if for no other reason that anyone disposed to be self-indulgent tends also to shy from sticking their neck out (thus risking comfortable opportunities to self-indulge).

"Leadership" is overated anyway.

jerseyhoya wrote:Lieberman votes with you guys most of the time, he's just loud and obnoxious against you on foreign policy issues. It's like Chuck Hagel, except Democrats are righteous in their running Lieberman from the party, while Republicans are narrow minded by chasing Hagel from the senate.

Yes, Hagel is an excellent analogy to Lieberman. Since they both obviously care primarily about foreign policy, perhaps they should just switch parties. I'm sure each party views their guy as awfully sanctimoneous and hypocritical in his speech and actions.

And, I also don't see Specter as being at all like Lieberman or Hagel. And I gotta say, and you can discount this as coming from an active Dem to whatever extent, but Toomey was my Congressman, and he truly is an ass. I have a new Republican Congressman, Charles Dent, who unfortunately doesn't vote all that differently from Toomey, but is at least a nice guy, rather than an arrogant ass. Not saying Toomey isn't smarter than Dent.

Yeah, I agree that Hagel/Lieberman is a pretty solid comparison. Both of them seemed more interested in the approval of "the other side"--Fox News producers surely had Lieberman on speed-dial--than keeping faith with their party or even their constituents.

My personal sense, as I mentioned above, is that Hagel comes by it a bit more honestly, but granted that's probably to some extent a matter of personal taste and/or partisan leaning.

allentown wrote:And, I also don't see Specter as being at all like Lieberman or Hagel. And I gotta say, and you can discount this as coming from an active Dem to whatever extent, but Toomey was my Congressman, and he truly is an ass. I have a new Republican Congressman, Charles Dent, who unfortunately doesn't vote all that differently from Toomey, but is at least a nice guy, rather than an arrogant ass. Not saying Toomey isn't smarter than Dent.

toomey was my congressman as well. leaving his voting aside, why do you feel he was arrogant?

gr wrote:

allentown wrote:And, I also don't see Specter as being at all like Lieberman or Hagel. And I gotta say, and you can discount this as coming from an active Dem to whatever extent, but Toomey was my Congressman, and he truly is an ass. I have a new Republican Congressman, Charles Dent, who unfortunately doesn't vote all that differently from Toomey, but is at least a nice guy, rather than an arrogant ass. Not saying Toomey isn't smarter than Dent.

toomey was my congressman as well. leaving his voting aside, why do you feel he was arrogant?

I had that view when he was our Congressman, being in the room with him multiple times and listening to him speak. I guess I wouldn't have phrased it quite that starkly, however, until listening to and reading his explanations for his RINO hunting. As a Dem, I did not necessarily mind or feel threatened by the RINO hunting as it frequently led to more Dems in the House and Senate. It was just the notion of him setting himself up as the oracle of purity who got to decide who was and who wasn't a true enough Republican to be allowed to stay within the party.

I know we've kind of moved on from Daschle, and apparently this has been making its way around the internet but I hadn't seen it till tonight.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdrp8vIoofA[/youtube]

Wow.

jerseyhoya wrote:I know we've kind of moved on from Daschle, and apparently this has been making its way around the internet but I hadn't seen it till tonight.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch.v=rdrp8vIoofA[/youtube]

Wow.

I saw this on TV within the past week or so, don't remember exactly where.

The Daily Show I think ran that Daschle ad as its "Moment of Zen" one night last week. Apt...

I don't watch TV news anymore apparently. Nothing more informative/current events related than Pardon the Interruption for me.

jerseyhoya wrote:I don't watch TV news anymore apparently. Nothing more informative/current events related than Pardon the Interruption for me.

The awful thing about PtI is that it takes the dynamic of "Crossfire" or "The McLaughlin Group" and uses it to talk about the Cowboys. Both those guys are fairly decent sportswriters, but I can't stand them as TV "personalities." In Kornheiser's case, if I ever killed someone on a Tuesday in autumn, I'd seriously consider using his MNF contributions as an insanity defense.