Pre-Election Predictions
How do I know? I only know what I read. I sense, however, that next Tuesday’s election may conclude more as a catastrophe than as a simple defeat for the GOP.
Big electoral waves tend to pick up energy in the closing days and hours of an election cycle. And the anti-Republican (as opposed to pro-Democratic) swell sure feels formidable. The bad news for the GOP is that despite its best effort, this election has indeed become nationalized.
With the exception of the Senate races in Tennessee and Missouri, the swing elections have become consumed by the issue of the war in Iraq. And that’s just become a plain, dead loser for the Republicans.
To at least hold as much of the core Republican base still intact, George W. Bush has found himself with no choice other than to take some very big and very public gulps of toxic Kool-Aid. Going out of his way to lavishly praise the two most divisive and polarizing figures in American politics– Rumsfeld and Cheney– can only be read as the most desperate of moves. Just who among swing independent, moderate voters is going to be swayed into the Red column by a public vow by Bush that he will grant tenure to these two jokers?
So? What will the final count be on election night?
I was surprised to read this final election prediction by the usually very cautious election-tracker Stu Rothenberg: Democrats picking up 35-40 seats, or more, in the House; winning 5-7 seats and likely the majority in the Senate; and 7-9 new gubernatorial seats.
Excessive exuberance? Or impending Republican crack-up?
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:25 am
The revelation of the prominent Colorado evangelical leader’s gay hooker/crystal meth weekends probably won’t help. They were right! God does exist!
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:33 am
“I only know what I read.”
Maybe you spend too much time reading.
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:17 am
I predict a shifting trend from recent elections: The person who gets the most votes will win.
November 3rd, 2006 at 9:28 am
Bush could have helped his cause considerably if he’d have fired Secretary of Defense Michael Brown.
“Maybe you spend too much time reading.”
From the perspective the writer of that quip brings here, I’d say that he’s right. Reading any form of non-partisan – or even moderately partisan – journalism these days, either daily or more extensive accounts, isn’t a very good idea for dead-enders. I fear the GOP is pretty much down to the ostrich wing of the electorate. The most aptly named online forum for dead-enders these dark days is “The Corner”.
(When I say “dark days”, I mean it. This election cycle, with it’s prospect of big wins, is not a happy event even for a partisan Democrat. Personally, I’d rather lose an election battling over traditional lib/con issues than win one because a fool of a President has, with deliberation, wrought the kind of deadly disaster we’re facing in Iraq. I didn’t feel this disgusted when Reagan, Bush 1 or Newt’s Congress took over. A Dem Congress is a necessary first step in bringing a reckless and corrupt cast of Beltway denizens to some accountability, but there’s no quick fix to what we’re facing and I’m convinced the whole mess will get a lot worse before it gets any better. I’m also disturbed by the fact that a sometimes reasonable sort like GMR, who has never struck me as rigidly programmed as his friend Woody, is still stuck in reverse and shows all of the symptoms of denial in his web offerings. I have yet to see anything serious confronting the reality on the ground in Iraq on his site. If the dead-enders have a plan or a perspective beyond total denial, I’d sure as hell like to see what it is. Every new stage of the war seems to explode every premise of what they’d just been shouting in our ear as God’s own truth, from WMDs to Purple Fingers to Iraqis “standing up”, yet they just chug on ahead like a legion of zombies, slandering anyone in their path as somehow less caring for our country, less informed – and, bizarrely, more partisan – than the band of annointed stalwarts. Pathetic and, frankly, pretty frightening.)
Oh…another thing. The Iraqi document dump website that Roger L. SImon, Senator Insantorum, et. al. fought for so that they could prove their “case” about Saddam’s WMDs has turned out to be a national security disaster. They just put up a bunch of documents siezed from Iraq that hadn’t been translated or vetted and guess what…some of them were from the pre-1991 nuclear program and went way beyond what Tim McVeigh’s even crazier brother or some guy in southern Pakistan with Internet access could already get by googling “atom bomb”. Nice work fellas. If you keep up the relentless insanity we really might get that Apocalypse so many on your side are wishing and hoping for. (Of course, rather than any reflection on why this stunt designed solely as the cause celebre of a bunch of increasingly desperate oddballs and amateurs was a bad idea, they’ll argue that it’s evidence of Saddam’s WMDs. Yeah…they’re as stupid as they are reckless and dishonest.)
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:09 am
One other thing – I’d really appreciate it if prominent Republican hypocrites – be they closet cases or “macho men” involved in ugly dating incidents and dysfunctional marriages – would do a better job of covering their tracks. I’m getting sick of their antics drawing attention away from more serious issues. The Democrats obviously have the right approach to this stuff (at least when minors aren’t involved) – a shrug, a smirk, a roll-of-the-eyeballs and TIVOing Letterman and Jon Stewart so you don’t miss the jokes. The GOP, because they’ve internalized a weird combination of hypocrisy and self-righteousness, insures that this stuff gets elevated to the level of catharsis. Booorrrrriiiing.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 am
A “The Buck Stops There” GOPer responds to the Doc Dump news:
http://tinyurl.com/uzf4d
The “Yes, We Really Are The Dumbest People On The Planet” blowhardsphere responds to same:
http://tinyurl.com/yfdxor
Words fail…
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:46 am
If anybody’s confused as to why Sen. Insantorum is not just a fool but a coward, based on his press release, the whole argument for putting thise docs up on a government website was because they were raw and hadn’t been translated or processed. Geniuses like Roger L. Simon and Sen. Insantorum wanted amateur translators to have the opportunity to pore over them and create a WikiIntel database because apparently there was too much stuff for the professionals to process quickly. The whole incident is bizarre at every level. But now this cowardly little shit wants to blame Negroponte, who argued against this stunt but was over-ruled by guessWho, for disseminating detailed info on building atom bombs. Go look at how this story is being played on Pajamas Media. These people are truly a grotesque gang of idiots, with not one iota of self-awareness, no capacity for responsible behavior or reflection and the combined intellect of a nest of termites.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:00 am
Newest addition to classic qualified denials: “I didn’t have sex with a man in Denver.” A statement guaranteed to have been made when there was no possibility of a follow-up question.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:22 am
Here’s the Times story – apparently the docs in question were in English and censored versions had been released before to weapons inspectors. There was an earlier flap when some chemical weapons cookbooks got posted. This is what you get when you demand an end-run around professional, non-politicized intelligence standards – which is, in fact, precisely what Dick Cheney had been feverishly engaged in to promote a “casus belli” against Iraq as far back as early 2002. A bunch of morons, with one of the most rag-tag, grotesque cheerleading squads in the annals of recent American political history.
http://tinyurl.com/ydueyl
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
The gay prostitute was just on local radio in Denver saying that he felt he had to “do the moral thing” and expose the preacher in order to influence the gay marriage ballot question coming up on Tuesday in Colorado.
I’ll leave the irony to you.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Reg has sort of said it all. I note that the audience over at FOX dropped by 25% last Q and even worse in the “Coveted” (by advertisers that is) Demo. Meanwhile CNN dropped 8% proving that trying to out FOX Murdoch is not a winning strategy. But MSNBC went UP 67% and Keith Olberman now has almost as many prime demographics as O’Reilly and Hannity. Might be a lesson there.
I’ll repeat my prediction: 42 seats in House and 7 in Senate.
Oh, and Stu Rothenburg ridiculed Dean’s “50 state” strategy and told Jerome Armstrong of MYDD and KOS that he was nuts for calling for contesting 80 or more seats. This round the Dems fielded candidates in 425 districts. Most since 1976. That went against the CW in DC that you wasted resources if you went outside of your “Battleground” districts. Gee, who’d of thunk it? The DC Kewl Kids didn’t know what they were talking about!
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:14 pm
According to a the latest New York Times/CBS News poll the Democrats are one point ahead (i.e. statistically even) among self-described evangelical Christians. This is pretty amazing. The only 2 groups where GOPers out-poll the Dems is among self-described Republicans (duh!) and conservatives…but a significant minority – 25% – of self-described conservatives prefer the Dems. Dems are 37 points ahead among young people (18-29), 30 points ahead among moderates, 27 points ahead among independents, 20 points ahead among women, 17 points ahead among seniors, 15 points ahead among men, 12 points ahead in the suburbs, 10 points ahead in the South and 6 points ahead in 2004 “red states”.
Karl Rove just may be in the process of achieving the realignment he’s been working on lo these many years.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:53 pm
RLC hits on a point that has been overlooked from the beginning of Howard Dean’s term as DNC chair. He picked up where his campaign left off doing what his campaign did best–locating and energizing local community leaders to step into political waters. He has recruited some of the best of these people to run for Congress, including a large number of Iraq veterans.
As the Repubs showed in 1994, there can be a synergism involved in a national campaign that networks 468 separate elections, and I think that must be happening among the Dems right now. I’ll say this for sure…the professional pols on both sides really know in their bones what is going to happen on Tuesday. You acquire a feel by who returns your call, who doesn’t, how many people are walking into HQ asking for signs or stickers….all that. The best the rest of us have is the polls, and the one showing a 15% preference of Dems over Repubs, along with the abysmal level of approval of Congress generally, indicates that the election should be approaching the level that the brilliant gerrymandering the DeLay crowd has done is going to backfire, and a series of seats that were designed to be immune “but not that immune” from Dem control could fall. I would guess that would be 30-40 seats on top of the 40 or so seats that are designed to be competitive.
I’m not saying this will happen, but I haven’t heard a coherent explanation why it could not. Well, Pat Buchanan has made the point that deals have been made with a number of [racial] minority members to create unloseable seats with huge Dem registration super- majorities. That certainly limits the “tipping” effect, or at least requires a much larger vote than it should to effect such a change.
The biggest problems the Dems face, however, and they are systemic, are the joint anti-democratic provisions of the electoral college and the fact that each state is allocated two senators, so California and New York square off evenly with Idaho and Alaska. Even with that, the Senate may be Democratic in the next term.
If I were a Democrat running in one of the relatively tight races, I would ask supporters and undecideds to close their eyes and envision a scene: with Dick Cheney at the Senate podium, holding the gavel, and casting a tie-breaking vote on Iraq or some other critical national issue, telling his opponents to “f*** off.” I would tell people that if they don’t want that scene to continue into 2007, that they have to vote for the Democratic candidate. Because it’s true.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
If you haven’t seen any clips from that new movie – forget the name – where the fake, clueless journalist from another planet runs around America interviewing wierd people and creating inadvertant humor, check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/y5dnqc
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:44 pm
And here’s the latest from Michelle Malkin…I mean our Secretary of State:
http://tinyurl.com/yfpbee
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:47 pm
PS to that last bizarre bit – God help us when creepy creatures like Andrea Mitchell and Andrew Sullivan have become our “voices of reason”…
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Forgive me for all of these posts, but this is just too-fucking-amazing.
The Mother of All Rats-Deserting-The-Sinking-Rats stories: I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a clever use of large doses of candor in the service of supremely dishonest and desperate ass-covering in my life.
http://tinyurl.com/ydgpdc
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:09 pm
First a correction – it was Chris Bowers not Jerome Armstrong that Rothenburg chastised for wanting to challenge in all those races.
Now as to what Reg just posted. I really think we’re going to see the long predicted (and long awaited) “conservative crackup” that everyone has been talking about for years.
Let’s see. The neocons – led by the Prince of Darkness himself Richard Pearle – have thrown in the towel and disowned this crew. The Evangelicals, stung by revelations of hanky panky in the ranks, want to declare jihad on gay Republicans. Traditional conservatives like AndrewSullivan fault the Party’s lack of fiscal disclipline and the paleos like Pat Buchanan rail against the party’s kowtowing to big business and illegal immigrants. And that is before the election!
You have to give Marc credit. He’s said for years that the “genius” of Karl Rove was somewhat overstated. I think these guys won’t know what hit them.
Of course they have two things going for them. They got a lot of really awful legislation passed. And they have a cowed media that will probably refuse to believe that its all over. That the Emperor is buck naked, that the man behind the curtain is a fraud. Pick your metaphor. But as long as people like Mark Halperin are considered serious players and we have out of touch types like “Dean” David Broder and Maureen Dowd cover the trainwreck (and praise “moderates” like Joe Lieberman) the GOP won’t have to worry about sniping from outside.
But, boy oh boy! Its going to be fun to watch them squerm!
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I wouldn’t be counting my chickens just yet. In most elections I can remember–back to voting for McGovern in 1972–reality has been less rosy than Dem expectations.
I’m still a registered Dem but plan to vote a straight Repub ticket.
We shall see.
November 3rd, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Sorry, I haven’t been able to get excited about the Dems regaining power since I was 13 years old.
They’ll convene some hearings to ‘find out how we got in this mess’, still sticking to thier ‘we were duped by faulty intelligence’ song and dance which is really an admission of stupidity since any literate 13 year old could have deduced that WMD and the Saddam-Osama link were bogus.
Thier ‘redeploy’ is just a ploy. I read today that the Iraqi army requests US forces to ‘escort’ them when they have to venture out into harm’s way. The Dems are not stupid (generally speaking) and they realize the US is in the mother of all quagmires. If US forces can’t keep the peace stationed in Iraq, how are they going to do it sitting in Qatar?
I suppose it would take a precocious teen to understand the calamity to US control of the middle east that the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq would represent. Iran filling the vacuum of war-torn Iraq, growing unrest among the Shia majority in northern Saudi Arabia, the bulk of middle east oil being sold in Euros to India and China – there will be no Commander-in-Chief, Repub or Dem, who’s gonna let that happen…
Given the numerous cross-over Dems, I doubt the ‘new’ congress will be able to pass even a token increase in the minimum wage.
Unless you have a hard-on for meaningless hearings and rhetoric, there is nothing to get excited about next tuesday. Sorry…
November 4th, 2006 at 1:46 am
“Unless you have a hard-on for meaningless hearings and rhetoric, there is nothing to get excited about next tuesday. Sorry…”
There is a tone of passivity to this comment that is also typical of many others here. What are the Democrats going to do is one question, what are YOU going to do is another. Those who vote for the Democrats have ways to make their voices heard, just as we did with the Democrats who brought us Vietnam. As I said before, the tolerance for American military deaths in Iraq is going to drop to near zero if the Democrats take both houses. Count on it.
November 4th, 2006 at 2:04 am
Let me put it another way: It’s during times like these that the blogosphere becomes the wankosphere. What the Democrats do depends largely on what you are doing. That has always been true, whether it was Vietnam or the Civil Rights movement or whatever.
November 4th, 2006 at 6:51 am
It’s interesting that Watters, in his pragmatic cynicism, comes to the same well worn conclusions as our host.
Even if you accept the overblown premise that “Democrates voted for the war”, it’s a bit of a strech. First, said Dems would have voted for it only as a means of removing Hussian, and could have expected a prompt withdrawl once said was accomplished. Is it your posistion that bad intellegence WASN’T hyped? And if they were stupid to go along with it, is it meaningless to put THAT on the record as well?
And just for the record, many voted “against the war” using the tit for taters own critera. I would expect there is a relative or two of a dead or injured American soldier who might not find such hearings “meaningless” if ultimatly frustrating. It is there due.
Not to mention every other non-stupid American, who has been bullshitted and ripped off.
November 4th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Balter:
Would you please explain the logic behind the inverse proportionality of Dems in congress vs American military deaths?
November 4th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Oops:
…vs tolerance of American military deaths
November 4th, 2006 at 10:25 am
For those concerned that the shift in control of Congress is just cosmetic consider the following. Nearly half the Democratic members of the house will also be members of the “Progressive Caucaus”. The Committee Chairs will be some of the most liberal in the joint and they control what gets heard and what doesn’t.
And what of those others, like Casey in PA or Webb in VA considered “moderate” by some and “Conservative” by others? It is true that Casey is anti-abortion and Webb opposes gun conrol and affirmative action. But both are apalled by American trade policy and support national health insurance. Both feel that the middle class (which is what we called the working class these days) has been getting screwed by the elites. On immigration, while Webb would strengthen the border, he also want severe sanctions on employers exploiting undocument labor. There is a good article about Webb in this week’s NEW YORKER that puts him him squarely in the progressive camp on economic issues with liberals like Sherrod Brown and that’s where Democrats used to win elections.
No, these days, its the Republicans that have become the social activists with their anti-gay, anti-immigrant, theocratic and anti-women ways. When a party counsels 29 year olds to not have sex and has economic “Club for Growth ” types advocating the elimination of Social Security you know they have gone over the deep end. And that is why, in Kansas this year, nine GOP office holders have switched parties and are running as Dems this year and the Democratic Governor is cruising to a second term. That’s what’s the matter with Kansas.
Got to love the “lifelong registered Democrat” who is voting the straight Republican Ticket. Bet you call the talk shows too cause I hear this all the time. Sorry, no one believes you.
November 4th, 2006 at 10:41 am
>No one believes you.
Ho-hum. A typical personal slam I get in discussions from those to the left of me.
My friends believe me. Some are upset that I have changed; some are wondering why I dont’ switch my party affiliation.
As to the latter, it’s part inertia and part hope–hoping that the Dems will develop a center strong on national security that I can vote for again.
November 4th, 2006 at 10:44 am
“Would you please explain the logic behind the inverse proportionality of Dems in congress vs tolerance of American military deaths”
Okay, I think I have cut and pasted this the way that Watters wanted it to read. However, I am not sure what he is saying. If he is saying that the tolerance is higher the lower the number of Democrats, then it follows that the tolerance will be lower once there are a greater number of Democrats. Or perhaps he is saying something different. Whatever he is saying, it sounds neither relevant nor cogent. Perhaps he can come back and dazzle us with another puzzle. Meanwhile I find more sense in rlo’s comment above. I am no Democrat, but a Democratic victory in both houses sends a message, as they say, and in this case a very loud one.
November 4th, 2006 at 11:21 am
“And that is why, in Kansas this year, nine GOP office holders have switched parties and are running as Dems this year and the Democratic Governor is cruising to a second term….”
Well, Sebelius is “cruising to a second term” here in Kansas, but largely by tapping the ex-head of the Kansas Republican as her running mate for Lt. Governor. Even more important, the DLC member Sebelius has racked up millions in special interest monies.
Like nearly every state in the country, there is a profound split in the Republican Party that has divided Evangelical Republicans and the “Get the government out of our lives” fiscal conservatives. BUT, I think that it is dangerous for the Democrats to base their future on dividing their adversary. It is a short term fix.
Suffice is to say, Kansas is most definitely not trending blue….
November 4th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Uh, that should have read “ex-head of the Kansas Republican Party”
November 4th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I don’t mean to imply that Kansas has just turned into New York or (shudder!) San Francisco but the very idea that a Democrat could be a shoo-in for reelection and bring a lot of ex-GOP officeholders with her suggests just how extreme and out of the touch the Party has become there. Fact is a lot of people who are conservative have no use for the manic tilt of the current Republican Party and for those of us of a certain age it reminds us of how easy it was to portray the McGovernites – incorrectly in my opinion – as dangerous loonies.
Look those feelings can last as Mr Well’s approval of GOP efforts to make us more secure attest. I note that those noted left-wingers at “Military Times” call Monday for Rumsfeld to receive the “Order of the Boot.” So things are changing.
November 4th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Michael Balter
Re: “I’m not sure what (Watters) is saying”.
I just wanted to know what you based YOUR following statement on:
“…the tolerance for American military deaths in Iraq is going to drop to near zero if the Democrats take both houses. Count on it”.
Wall:
There was sufficient refutation of all of the Bush administration’s pre-war lies appearing in the MSM months before the bombs started falling – most of it sourced to the CIA. Non-stupid Americans didn’t buy the hype or the bullshit.
November 4th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry”.
T.S. Eliot
November 4th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
>Non-stupid Americans didn’t buy the hype or the bullshit.
Actually I find that my friends and I who support the Iraq War are more than able to handle our side of debates with those who oppose. And as one anti-war friend said, “Just because you win all the arguments doesn’t mean you’re right.”
True enough. But it’s not a good indication that the antis are right either.
This conceit on the anti-war side that anyone who disagrees must be stupid makes for large blind spots.
November 4th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
I wouldn’t call you stupid but “willfully ignorant” seems about right. I would be interested in what aspect of this war you see going well? If you are arguing that it is not going well now but we have to win I’d like to know what “winning” means and what resources you think required to accomplish that.
I recall that in 1954 Ike sent Gen. Matthew Ridgeway to Vietnam to determine what would be necessary to prevail there if we wanted to intervene. The answer was so great a price that Ike passed.
So I want to know what price you would pay to prevail in Iraq?
(and by the way, please tell me why the current crew is competent to get us there. Fewer and fewer people seem to think they are)
November 4th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
“This conceit on the anti-war side that anyone who disagrees must be stupid makes for large blind spots.”
Maybe it was all of the grotesque name-calling and insinuations about our patriotism or willingness to pursue an aggressive strategy against bin Ladenism that the pro-war types engaged in against their critics that made so many of you sound stupid. I had my fill of that garbage early on and determined that the pro-war types were more often than not running on hot air, false assumptions and self-serving conflations of the anti-war arguments so they wouldn’t have to seriously debate the pros and cons of the war in terms of our national security. I don’t know who your friends are, but I’m confident I could rip any pro-war argument into shreds without having to take a deep breath. I find that the dishonesty of pro-war types, particularly in the reversion to straw men, bait-switch and moralistic reductionism is more often than not quite stunning. Earth to hgwells – the pro-war argument isn’t “winning” in the real world, and that’s all that matters. War isn’t a debate. Maybe it’s your anti-war friends who aren’t terribly bright. I’ve talked to plenty of muddle-headed, inarticulate people on both sides of this issue. I’ve also seen plenty of very articulate, well-educated pro-war types who are proving to have been very, very stupid in their claims and their assumptions. As for the anti-war side’s alleged “blind spots”, if I had been a supporter of this administration I’d remove the phrase from my vocabulary for, at least, a decent interval.
What I’m really wondering, and rlcicero addresses this, is what substance you might offer. What we’ve heard so far are some pretty measly spitballs and a large dose of self-satisfaction.
November 4th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
And David while this isn’t a Kansas story I think its indicative of the troubles the GOP is having since allowing the loony Religious right to take over. Kate Harris, our favorite candidate from FL is publically calling for the conversion of the Jews for Christ. And, of course in CO, Marilyn Musgrave informs us that the greatest problem afflicting our fair land is gay marriage. Is it any wonder that lifelonmg Republican Conservatives are scratching their heads?
November 5th, 2006 at 2:38 am
reg writes: “What I’m really wondering, and rlcicero addresses this, is what substance you might offer.”
You won’t get much.
Today I read an op-ed saying that Iraq was a mess, and a failure, but the decision to invade was nevertheless correct. An analogy was made to betting–if the odds were in your favor, but you lost, it was still the correct decision.
On what did this writer base his belief that the odds favored us in Iraq? Pretty simple: the strategy of a strong military stance against tyranny works better in the long run, even if it fails here and there along the way. The dice just weren’t with us, this time. That’s all.
What a basis for policy! What can you do with it? Set up a map of the world as a dartboard, throw darts at it every few years, and invade whichever countries you hit that happen to be run by tyrants?
Alright, that’s a little scattershot. How about this: draw one of those maps that reflects some parameter, like population size, median income, number of tse-tse flies per capita or whatever, but for this purpose base it on some index of tyranny, like “percentage of the population killed annually in large scale massacres perpetrated (directly or indirectly) by the country’s central government in recent times”. Of course, the chances of hitting Sudan rather than Iraq would have been far greater. The chances of hitting a lot of places would have been far greater.
We’ve got to face it: the case for war was a calculation. We were told that the calculation was based on certain factors (of which Saddam’s tyranny was one). I’d like to see somebody’s spreadsheet model showing why Iraq was the optimal target. From what I can tell, by the administration’s lights, we should have invaded Syria: it harbored terrorists, had (and I think still has) a chemical WMD program that concerned Israeli defense analysts a lot more than anything going on in Iraq, and it’s run by jerks.
I don’t think you’ll find any invasion priorities that make much sense until you include oil in the picture. As Dubya said not so long ago, we can’t afford a middle east oil supply run by a bunch of Al Qaeda sympathizers. Powell said it long before that: we’re in there because we need a stable Middle East oil supplier, friendly to us. Whatever the truth is, I don’t think it has anything to do with a formula in which tyranny is the dominant criterion.
November 5th, 2006 at 3:38 am
“I just wanted to know what you based YOUR following statement on:
“…the tolerance for American military deaths in Iraq is going to drop to near zero if the Democrats take both houses. Count on itâ€.”
Thanks to Ed Watters for confirming my impression that he does not understand that the midterm elections are a referendum on Iraq. That seems widely understood by most others on both left and right. The rest follows logically, and of course I am making a prediction of the future based on that understanding. We shall soon see if I am right.
November 5th, 2006 at 3:50 am
EXCESSIVE EXUBERANCE!!Dems too busy kidding ass to take advantage of this political fallout.Marc,I wish internet gambling was still legal, Dems are not going to take back either house.
November 5th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Yes, Turner, even if you have the stomach to plow through Hitchens, he liked the idea of our controling the Iraqi Oil so the Saudis would have to clamp down on thier homegrown terrorists(his rather back door invasion/9-11 linkage), and yet mentioning Oil seems to drive certain people (like our host) crazy.
An interesting question is weather this pragmatic appoach to Oil reserves can legitimatly go with all that flag waving, Nation building, Demcracy spreding ho hah. Well, I’m sure Liberty Dad is great guy to have a beer with at the cook out….
November 5th, 2006 at 8:39 am
The average loss of house seats in a mid-term election of the second term president over the last 90 years has been 33. The max loss was 71 in FDR’s 1938 second term mid-term. So I wouldn’t call a 15 seat gain by the House in 2006 a mandate for anything MB, unless it reaches at least well above the average….don’t you think?
I know in the left-wing world MB lives in it will be a mandate in any case because…..well it just should, because well….it just feels right, and well….everyone he knows reinforces his ‘feelings’.
MB and Saddam have another reality problem to deal with. The purple-finger-of-fate moves on with Saddam getting his. And MB having to be exposed to……eeeeks, that horror of capital punishment for another human. How so cruel and unusual. How so crude and ‘cultureless’. How so lacking of any feelings for a fellow human.
How so right and ‘just’ for his 300,000 victims and their millions of family and friends. No, there will be no three hots a day, no medical care, no legal library, TV, computer, marriage, conjugal visits, interviews and books about his ‘feelings’ and methology to further punish his victims and their society.
No, Saddam is going to get his neck stretched. One can only hope they screw up the knot so his fucking neck doesn’t break, This way they can try again and again and again, up to 300,000 times.
Naw, there is no god.
November 5th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Jim R., Kevin Drum has a good response to your party-line post. Here it is in its entirety:
RAISING THE BAR….Having essentially conceded defeat, the latest conservative game is to pretend that even if the Democrats pick up 20 or 30 House seats on Tuesday, it’s no big deal. Charles Krauthammer: “Since the end of World War II, the average loss for a second-term presidency in its sixth year has been 29 House seats.” Ann Coulter: “The average sixth-year midterm election, like this year, is much worse for the president’s party, which typically loses 34 seats in the House.”
“Nice try, guys, but here’s the reality. Up through the 70s, big swings in House elections were common, but in the last 20 years there’s only been a single year with a big swing (1994). Aside from that, the average change has been less than five seats. You can see the same thing if you look only at sixth-year midterms:
1958: 49 seats
1966: 47 seats
1974: 49 seats
1986: 5 seats
1998: 5 seats
See the trend? In the two sixth-year midterms since 1980, only five seats changed hands. There are plenty of reasons for this, including improved gerrymandering, huge money imbalances, and increased self-segregation. More here if you’re interested.
Bottom line: Thirty years ago a pickup of 25 seats wouldn’t have been that big a deal. Today it is. If Dems win that many seats, it really will be a historic victory.
November 5th, 2006 at 9:41 am
That Vanity Fair snippet is unbelievable. I especially liked Ledeen’s ridiculous accusation that, “the most powerful people in the White House are…. women who are in love with the president.” And his list of four names include the castrated Harriet Miers and the powerful policy advocate Laura Bush. And he fails to mention the two most powerful people: Cheney and Rumsefeld. Don’t just blame the President, blame the women. They’re really the ones who screwed this up. Otherwise, Iraq’d be a model neoliberal democracy by now.
And the most common excuse given by this gaggle of cowards: it’s the President’s fault. There weren’t enough neocons running the show (Wolfowitz, Libby, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are forgotten) and that’s why Iraq has been lost (that’s right, folks, it already happened. Now we’re just figuring who’s gonna take the fall.). It’s good to finally know that the problem wasn’t know-nothing evangelical appointees in important posts or the preference for loyal idealogues over competant and experience beaurocrats or the policy in general. It was a lack of neocons. Weird how not a single neocon ran for office, yet they assumed their extremely ambition (and arrogant) foreign policy goals could be foisted upon our nation in exactly the manner they saw fit.
Ugh. That article makes me sick for about a thousand reasons.
November 5th, 2006 at 10:30 am
“So I wouldn’t call a 15 seat gain by the House in 2006 a mandate for anything MB”
I’m going to overlook Jim R’s insinuation that Saddam and I are allied in some way, because it is just another sign that he has totally flipped out over the past weeks. As for what a Democratic victory will mean, it is neither for Jim R nor I to say. What I am predicting is that is that since the elections are a referendum on Iraq, the political pressure to retreat from this disaster from Americans themselves will be irresistible sooner or later and probably sooner. Jim R’s beef may well turn out to be with his fellow Americans and not with me or the Democrats. That’s George Bush’s problem right now too.
November 5th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Let me add one more thing while I am at it. If the Democrats take back both houses of Congress–and I think they have to take back both if Bush’s power is to be broken–true believers like Jim R will continue to insist that it means nothing at all. In other words, they will insist on maintaining the same fantasies and denial that allow Bush to get up in front of audiences and continue to insist that we are “making steady progress” in Iraq and all the other nonsense we hear daily. In doing so, the deniers will become more and more irrelevant to the point that we will simply cease to listen to them while reality and the world pass them by. I have just enough faith in the American people to think that once they wake up from their nightmare they will chart a better course. That is what happened during the first generation after Vietnam and that is what I would hope and expect to happen this time around.
On a related matter: by confessing all, Ted Haggard is obviously hoping for forgiveness and redemption in the long run. It may come, but too late for Tuesday’s election. For some reason the Bush team’s timing is all out of whack this fall.
November 5th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Damn Mavis, I thought you’d be in church this morning.
Ok, I’ll admit I got my data from Ann, after sharing a pillow and cigarette. I remember it occurred to me at the time why she went all the way……..back 90 years ago for her data. But under the circumstances, I figured I owed her. If you think she’s a freak in public, you ain’t seen her get her freak on in private. Let me just say, I believe there is an argument for god afterall. And if Ann wants me to, I’ll be in church next Sunday. Time your comments accordingly guys.
Now, thanks for that extra data regarding how things have changed, with gerrymandering and all. It sounds like a valid point. I’ll look into it. I want to give the left all the mandate they will need to justify their second Vietnam white flag.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:20 am
“their second Vietnam white flag.”
How about a plan for Iraq, JR. Let me know which direction you think our guns should be aimed and which faction of Islamic crazies armed to the teeth you think we should wipe out ? Or should we just focus on the infiltration of the police and military we’re training ? Really curious just how you propose to fight fiercely and come up with a win.
Your guys have screwed your country royally with this reckless, needless war. Nothing has been beneath them in the effort to rationalize failure. Keep trying to blame the debacle on Democrats. It’s about all you’ve got. And it obviously ain’t much.
Thanks, pal, for tearing our country apart, bleeding a foriegn land in pusuit of a delusional, sitting on your hands while our troops make the ultimate sacrifice while their leaders’ bask in their own incompetence and for substantially weakening the U.S. militarily and in the eyes of the world…again. Somehow, though, I don’t think the “stabbed in the back” gambit will work very well this time. Too many rats deserting the sinking rats and no chance of implicating Democrats in actually conjuring up or managing the Iraq invasion/occupation. This one’s on you. You’ve got two choices – fly your white flag proudly or keep trying to explain this mess to growing numbers of Gold Star mothers. I think the contempt will diminish over time as regards the white flag. Not so sure about the other alternative.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:22 am
that would be “delusion”, not “delusional”…although “delusional delusion” doesn’t really seem like overkill the more full-blown this ugly thing becomes.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Oh, and since I do believe in torture; yes her legs really are as long as they look, and her blond hair does fall loosely across perky breasts, and she does believe women were made to serve men, and oral sex can only be performed properly by those who believe this and truly love Jesus.
Guess that would leave most of you guys deprived….no?
November 5th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I also want to state clearly for the sake of JR, that I think this defeat of the U.S. in it’s aims for controlling and reshaping Iraq, if not in our image into somethiing that we would consider “suitable” – essentially pacifying it into an American ally and “liberating” (or privatizing) it’s oil fields for the world market – will have some very negative consequences for us and the region. It already has in terms of giving al Qaeda a boost and a cause celebre that, despite the barbarism of their strategy, plays pretty well among many potentially more moderate Muslims outside of Iraq. There is some potential to avoid this and embark on a “grand strategy” of damage control, but it would require an entirely different team at the very top, so it can’t possibly happen with these mooks. And, as I said before, it’s on you. This war shouldn’t have happened. It was a reckless gamble, rationalized with the thinnest of “national security” evidence. Not to mention a dangerous distraction from an already existing mission which was far from fully accomplished, as we see in the headlines and in bin Laden’s gloating taunts. I can barely express my anger over this, strictly from the perspective of an American who would like to see an effective and successful counter-strategy to bin Ladenism. The combination of grandiosity, reductionism, incompetence and arrogance demonstrated by this “team” has done more damage to the country in it’s inept, crackpot and opportunistic response to 9/11 than bin Laden himself did on that day. Also, on the level of basic domestic security procedures, they’re still leaving us ass out and absurdly vulnerable. I’m almost convinced they want another big attack in order to regain the now-tattered trappings of power that they’ve shamelessly misused and abused for five years.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:50 am
“oral sex can only be performed properly by those who…truly love Jesus”
The Gospel According To Ted Haggard
November 5th, 2006 at 11:50 am
JR – when your not ranting about “white flags”, you’re funny.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Wait a minute…I thought “Ann” was a dude, a drag queen satirist.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I right on this. I’m seeing you in a whole new light Jim.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:56 am
OT, but I can’t resist.
Ted Haggard: “There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life,” he said.
Frankly, for anybody as obviously neurotic and screwed up as he is, I would suggest suicide as an alternative preferable to launching a national crusade of hatemongering against other gay people who aren’t consumed by self-hatred and shame. This guy’s public life is equivalent to a light-skinned black person who could pass successfully enough to become a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Now he asks for forgiveness. I don’t think so. Burn in hell, asshole.
November 5th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Oh yeah…the NYTs magazine article online about Chalabi is another great chapter in the “Rats Deserting The Sinking Rats” story that appears to be blossoming into a tawdry pulp novel.
November 5th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I see that over at the HUFFINGTON POST David Frum is complaining that VANITY FAIR misquoted him for partisan reasons. Did someone get to him or has the author of “Axis of Evil” just re-ratted?
November 5th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
The party of ‘send more troops to die in Iraq’ will win big…the liberal left will be ecstatic.
November 5th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
“There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life,†he said.”
Even more food for thought, from the same letter as the quote above: “Dr. James Dobson, Pastor Jack Hayford, and Pastor Tommy Barnett….They will guide me through a program with the goal of healing and restoration for my life, my marriage, and my family.”
Is it really possible to fix or “heal” something like this? I’m not sure this is the same thing as a broken arm, or an engine leak.
November 5th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Dear Michael Balter
Agreed: the main issue in the upcoming elections is Iraq.
My question to you was(and I’m not sure I really care anymore), your statement which I quoted makes it seem that you believe Dem control of both houses will cause tolerance of American military deaths to decrease. I don’t see how one can cause the other, that’s all. Are you sure you have your syntax correct?
November 5th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
“Is it really possible to fix or “heal†something like this? I’m not sure this is the same thing as a broken arm, or an engine leak.”
You underestimate the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. With the Lord, all things are possible. There was even this coke-sniffing, draft-dodging, potty-mouthed alcoholic who was suh a huge embarrassment to his family that he was even written off as a ne’er-do-well by his own mother. But then he surrendered his soul to Jesus. And now he’s clean, sober, and (as only a kind of frosting on the cake, mind you) President of the United States.
(Well, he surrendered his soul to somebody, anyway. That’s the important part.)
November 6th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Here’s a prediction. The electorial bad news started a little south of the border with the return of Danny Ortega. As Billmon says, even if you don’t like Ortega its great to see the Nicaraguans stick all that US bullying (and money) up Ollie North’s ass!
May 1st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Hot Arab Girls…
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June 29th, 2007 at 5:32 am
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February 2nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
blond ambition…
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