Here is a four-pack for another fine, rainy evening:
Hastert To Retire Early; Special Election for IL-14 Likely This is big news, and suddenly makes all of the attention the IL-14 Democratic primary has been receiving worth it:
An Illinois Republican source tells us former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) plans to resign November 6 this year instead of finishing out his term. This would create a vacancy and trigger a special election in the 14th District.
Under Illinois statute, the governor, Rod Blagojevich (D), would get to pick the date of both of the special general election and the special primary election (with separate ballots for each party). The general election would have to be within 120 days of the vacancy (meaning by early March, if the November 6 resignation date holds). February 5 is the date for Illinois's presidential and congressional primaries, and slating the special election -- either the primaries or the general -- on that date would save state money.
If the special election, or at least the primary for the special election, is held on February 5th, it will coincide with Super Tuesday. This would be dangerous for Democrats, because it means that campaign would be largely overshadowed by the Presidential contest online, thus removing an important element of national support. Then again, with Obama running for President, it should also mean very high Democratic turnout in the district. Overall, it is hard to say if this will be a net benefit or not. Prairie State Blue has more on the IL-14 campaign.
Democrats on Tuesday proposed putting on a 2008 ballot an initiative aimed at having California join the movement to elect presidents by popular vote. The initiative, if successful, also would head off a Republican effort to get some of California's electoral votes.
GOP consultants have proposed a separate initiative to change California's winner-take-all system of awarding its 55 electoral votes. Under this measure, electoral votes would be awarded by how congressional districts vote, which could benefit the Republican nominee in this state with more registered Democrats.(…)
A team of Democrats filed two virtually identical initiatives with the California attorney general's office Tuesday, a first step to begin gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to place either measure on the June or November ballot. (One version contains a clause stating that if both the Democratic- and Republican-backed initiatives make it onto the ballot, the one with the most votes would take precedence.)(…)
The national drive toward a popular vote would not scrap the electoral college system, but would require states to award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the most actual votes nationally. It would take effect only if states representing a majority of the electoral votes agree to the change.
Not only would this prevent Republicans from stealing 19-20 electoral votes outright, making it much more difficult for Democrats to win the presidency in 2008 and beyond, but this is a great step forward for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a plan which I have endorsed in the past even as North Carolina Dems successful took four, and possibly seven, electoral votes from Republicans.
Clinton Way Ahead In New Gallup National Poll
To no one's surprise, Clinton stays well ahead of Obama and Edwards in the latest Gallup national poll 468 Dems and Dem leaners, 8/13-16., MoE 5, 8/3-5 numbers in parenthesis:
Clinton: 48 (48)
Obama: 25 (26)
Edwards: 12 (13)
No on else above 2%
Time For Teacher Accountability
Given my background as a teacher and union organizer, I find concepts like merit pay for teacher's an appalling means of destroying teacher recruitment, especially in inner cities, not to mention punishing many people who work in one of the most difficult professions nationwide. However, there is one circumstance where I wouldn't mind a little merit pay for teachers. Bush Dog Melissa Bean is apparently the new role model for Democratic candidates:
Bean, a self-styled pro-business Democrat from a slice of Chicago's north and northwest suburbs long dominated by the GOP, has become an archetype for many of the congressional rookies whose victories delivered control of the House to Democrats last fall -- and whose fortunes in 2008 will determine whether the new majority lasts another two years.(…)
"She's a real role model for someone like myself, running in a Republican-leaning district," said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), a freshman who holds a top spot on the National Republican Congressional Committee's target list for 2008.(…)
Other Democrats followed suit across the country, winning seats long held by Republicans in areas where Bush cruised in his presidential victories. Bean mentored some of them, including Giffords, during the campaign.
'If she can do it, I can too'
"There's no question," Bean said in a recent interview, "that some of the candidates who ran in the last cycle said, 'If she can do it, I can too.'"
Holding up Giffords as a model isn't exactly compelling since, the NRCC abandoned the district to her on September 13, 2006. Would some of the other candidates Bean consulted include Diane Farrell, Lois Murphy, Linda Stender, Patricia Madrid, Mary Jo Kilroy, Victoria Wulsin, Christine Jennings, Teresa Hafen, and many of the other droves of Democratic women who lost close House elections in 2006? I mean, is there a way to take this as something other than an admission that Melissa Bean's instructions are at least partially responsible for the horrid performance of Democratic women in US House elections in 2006? It would certainly make a lot of sense, since moving to the right was not exactly the same winning strategy in 2006 that it might have been in 2004.
