"bipartisanship" is already rampant in Washington, not rare. And, in almost every significant case, what "bipartisanship" means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree. That's how so-called "bipartisanship" manifests in almost every case.... That's "bipartisanship" in Washington:
She cites her vote against cloture on DADT as a blow for bipartisanshio whereas it was coming to heel for the DeMints and Enzis who dominate the Republican world of the Senate.
Lest we forget, Progressive Punch"s latest lifetime scores list only two Senate Republicans who vote "liberal" in the crunch even 20% of the time (the two Maine ladies), and only three others who manage a crucial liberal vote between 10 and 20% of the time. Those other three would be Scott Brown, the retiring Feorge Voinovich and John McCain who managed a zero rating on clutch votes in 2009-2010. So as of January 2010 the GOP "moderates" will pretty much formally consist of Collins, Snowe, and Brown.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the rush to compromise is barely slowed. Just 17 Democrats have a clutch vote of 90% or more; 42 reach the 10% threshold vs. 5 Republicans. Of course, 26 compromise at least 20% of the time on crucial votes including that awful Harry Reid (see article) vs. the lonely Maine Ladies on the GOP side. They may be lonely in their own caucus but the bizarre interpretation of the 60 Rule makes them the most sought after dance partners in the land (clunky jewelry and horned rimmed glasses forr Collins have no effect).
Oh yeah. As I mentioned recently, Republicans have never had 60 popularly elected Senators. The last time they reached 60 was in the 61st Congress, exactly 100 years ago (1909-1911). Back then, William Howard Taft was President, there were 92 Senators and 46 states, and state legislatures selected the Senators. They did reach 60% once when Harding was President. That's it.
Collins and Ben Nelson did more to warp the Stimulus to uselessness than anyone else in Congress. She thinks she's a national treasure and so does Versailles. They are both wrong. (Note to movie fans, the Maine Senator Brewster who was "owned" by Pan Am in "The Aviator" lost his next election. Where's Howard Hughes when we need him?).
* "Call any vegatable, and the chanes are gooooood... that the vegatable will respond to you." -- Frank Zappa.
Yesterday, Senate Republicans prioritized human life over anti-abortion grandstanding and confirmed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. When the world totters on the brink of a pandemic, slow-walking the future health secretary begins to look unseemly.
In the grown up world, honorable and reasonable people may initially disagree but eventually compromise upon a collective review of empirical evidence. It was in this spirit, that the nascent Obama administration reached out to Republicans with respect to their proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which finally passed both houses of congress yesterday.
I've been exploring the League of Conservation Voters and how it makes endorsements. One of the consistent criticisms is that single issue endorse Republican moderates when these people take votes to put Republican extremists in leadership positions. This criticism disputes how these single issue groups create checklists as prioritizing the wrong values; for instance, Alito and Roberts are not on the LCV scorecard, and they should be since their judgments affect the environment in very significant ways.
Still, I wanted to look at something slightly different, which is whether according to their own criteria the League of Conservation voters is fair to Democrats. The LCV scorecard is the major scorecard for the environmental movement, this is their measure of how friendly to the environment a candidate is, a selection of key votes that set goals for the large and sprawling set of green groups. So one would expect them to treat all candidates the same and judge them strictly according to votes (with some wiggle room based on the type of district). If you are a Democrat and the LCV endorses a Republican, too bad, the Republican is good on the environment and LCV looks at politicians without fear, favor, or partisanship. We wanted to test whether that's actually how LCV operates.
Here's how we went about understanding the real criteria for the LCV. Adam Terando compiled LCV scores for all endorsed Republican and Democratic candidates. I excluded all but the endorsed incumbents in general elections, so that there's an apples to apples comparison. We then compared scorecards of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Basically, what the data suggests is that LCV has two sets of standards, one for Democrats, who have to meet a certain bar for support, and one for Republicans, who have to meet a lower bar for support.
Democratic Mean LCV lifetime score: 88 Republican Mean LCV lifetime score: 66
+22 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2008 score: 68 Democratic Mean 2008 score: 85
+17 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2007 score: 81 Democratic Mean 2007 score: 93
One of my consistent themes on OpenLeft has been the tendency of progressive advocacy groups to help Republican candidates or conservative Democratic candidates when there's an alternative in the race. There are many reasons why they do this, and today it happened again. Kate Sheppard has a piece on the League of Conservation voters endorsing Republican Susan Collins. LCV is the most important environmental group when it comes to politics; it is actually the 'political arm' of the environmental movement, set up as a collaborative venture among all major green groups to go after bad votes on the environment.
It's curious then that LCV helps Republicans. The full list of LCV endorsements is here, and includes such odious figures as Chris Shays, who has a relatively low lifetime environmental score and is running against progressive Jim Himes, and Chris Smith, the near white supremacist running against progressive Josh Zeitz in NJ-03. There are many races where the non-involvement of the DC environmental community is a signal, such as WA-08, where the Sierra Club decided not to endorse, after endorsing Darcy in 2006.
I have a small research project going to look at their endorsement procedure with a bit more rigor. One interesting nit is that the group has made most of its endorsements over the past few months, but only released its scorecard for 2008 today (as opposed to a rolling scorecard). Another nit is the vote choices in the scorecard (the 2005 version leaves out the Alito and Roberts cloture votes), but I'm not really going to go there.
If you have an hour or so and want to help out with a bit of relatively easy research, drop me an email at stoller at gmail.com or leave a note in the comments.
... Thanks Adam Terando for grabbing the ball and running with it. If you want to help out, email me.
On Friday, the anti-war group Vote Vets put out an ad in Maine that harshly criticized Republican Sen. Susan Collins' support of the war. The spot, which had $200,000 behind it and was narrated by a veteran, hit the Senator for being complicit in the wasting of federal dollars and lives in Iraq.
"Sen. Susan Collins just stood by and let all of this happen, and still is," says Iraq War veteran Alex Cornell du Houx. "I gave 100 percent in Iraq. I can't afford to give Iraq any more. Call Susan Collins and tell her we want our money back."...
"As the target of weeks of relentless false and negative attacks aired on TV and radio by allies of Senator Collins, Tom Allen knows that distortions such as these ads have no place in this race," said Carol Andrews, Allen's communications director. "Congressman Allen is the candidate in this race who three months ago set a standard for positive communications pleas from third parties. He asked Senator Collins to join him in that effort. That request was refused."
I didn't like Tom Allen when he went after bloggers in 2005. He's part of that wanker class. I hope he defeats Susan Collins and would vote for him if given the opportunity, but I can see why Maine voters wouldn't want to put him in the Senate.
Iraq legislation is moving through Congess, as I blogged earlier. Here's Jay Inslee, on the floor.
"I came across, a few weeks ago, some work that some citizens had done to provide an exit strategy from Iraq. This plan is called a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. ... Here is a plan that has considerable parallels to the amendment we will be allowed to offer to finally have some responsible plan to end the war in Iraq. A meaningful timetable, a statement about permanent bases, meaningful requirements for not overburdening our military. It's time, simply, for Congress to act."
He's discussing amendment 2, which passed with 227 yes votes, and includes a variety of provisions that are in the Responsible Plan, including cracking down on contractor fraud, anti-torture provisions, and more diplomatic initiatives.
The Senate is going to pass Iraq funding shortly, with restrictions according to The Hill's Manu Raju.
This is the kind of brutal local press against Susan Collins that is extremely difficult to beat back. It's a local news story on how, as Chair of the Senate Government Reform Committee, she did no investigating of Halliburton or Iraq contractors.
VoteVets broke the story that the VA is failing to diagnose veterans with PTSD in order to save money.
Obama reacts to the California Supreme Court decision:
Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.
So states should make their own decisions, but also, he'll fight for civil unions? Ok. Marriage equality will probably happen during his term, it's just going to require work and organizing.
More interest in Josh Segall, House candidate in Alabama.
Now the Ron Paul revolution, as his supporters call it, is experiencing a second wind. Paul took 16 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, his best primary showing yet, and has surpassed 1 million votes in the GOP contest. Ron Paul Republicans have started roiling local party organizations, taking control of state conventions and running for public office, all without much coordination from their leader.
One of the Ron Paul Republicans who actually has the congressman's endorsement is B.J. Lawson, a fellow Duke Medical School alumni running for the House of Representatives from North Carolina's 4th Congressional District. Lawson won his May 6 congressional primary with more than 70 percent of the vote, despite his opposition to the Iraq war and criticism of the Bush administration's free-spending ways.
Of course, there's this little problem.
Paul had to retract his endorsement of a Ron Paul Republican who was improperly vetted and turned out to be a white supremacist.
Max Blumenthal went to MS-01 and checked out the attack ads against Travis Childers. Here's what he found.
Trends in Maine continue to strengthen for Democrats and weaken for Republicans in an environment that isn't rosy for GOP around the nation. Recent national research conducted by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner shows 70% of respondents saying our nation is on the wrong track. In Maine, we're seeing much the same in recent internal polling with dissatisfaction reaching 69%.
This bodes well for Maine Democrats and for Tom Allen in his challenge to Susan Collins in 2008.
Just last week Maine Democrats won three of five special elections in the State House, boosting the number of seats held by Democrats to 90 of 151, two of which are held by independents. Democrats haven't held 90 seats in more than a decade.
Recent polls reflect Tom Allen's steep climb over the next year, but they also illustrate Susan Collins' vulnerability. Not only are national and state wrong track numbers bad news, abut her job approval and favorability ratings - now in the mid to high 50s, -- have fallen by double digits over the past couple of years and are lower now than Lincoln Chafee's were the day he was defeated by Sheldon Whitehouse.
Tom Allen has the time and the fundraising strength to win. Third quarter fundraising results of almost $670,000 pushed Tom Allen's cash on hand to $2,112,801.40, compared to Susan Collins' $3.1 million. Fundraising is on track to meet budget and totals put Tom Allen ahead of most other challengers across the nation. One only need to look at Senators Whitehouse, Tester and Webb from the 2006 cycle to see three victors who many months from election day faced double digit deficits against entrenched incumbents. And much like the Whitehouse-Chafee race, this match will never be about likeability - both Allen and Collins have plenty of that. It's about the issues: Iraq, health care, a middle class squeezed by Bush-Cheney economic policies.
Unlike past elections in Maine, the wrong track is largely driven by Iraq. A recent Survey USA poll showed that 25% of respondents chose Iraq as the top issue facing Maine. Of those voters, Tom Allen leads Susan Collins by 9%. Remember, Tom Allen is one of 133 Members of Congress who voted against the war and the candidate with a consistent voice to get us out of Iraq. Susan Collins voted for the war and has consistently agreed with the Bush-Cheney policies down the line. Collins is on very thin ice, and there are powerful forces at play that are aligned against her.
Mike Nutter
Director of Internet Communications
Tom Allen for Senate
One of the best parts of the Lieberman-Lamont primary was when Lieberman or his surrogates would publicly lash out at bloggers and decry our vitriole. The reaction of the majority of primary voters ran from 'what is a blogger' to 'what is Lieberman talking about' to 'Lieberman isn't talking to me'. While reporters read blogs somewhat obsessively, most voters did not know what blogs were or particularly care. To insiders, Lieberman campaign was responding to bloggers in the conversation about politics, but to voters, Lieberman was responding to ghosts in his own mind. He looked clumsy and weird, kind of like Democrats complaining about Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s to people who never listened to Limbaugh.
Responding to blogs the way that Collins is doing is hilarious, because most voters are going to look at her and say 'why does she want us to stay in Iraq, and why is she arguing with ghosts on the internet instead of getting us out of Iraq?' That's what this is about.
STATE BLOGS
