When I posted about Floyd Landis and the Tour de France earlier today, I never dreamed I'd be able to tie in politics. But TPM Reader EM directed me to video of Landis at a press conference after his historic ride Thursday. We pick it up as Landis' cell phone begins ringing:
Reporter: Is that Bush?Landis (laughing): I doubt it. I'll hang up.
At TPM, we cover politics from every angle.
--David Kurtz
John Murtha has already touted himself for House Majority Leader should the Democrats re-take the House (12 years into Republican control it's probably a little quaint to call it "re-taking" the House). But what if the Democrats lose again? Is anyone quietly angling to replace Nancy Pelosi? The rest of the House Democratic leadership? It's a fair question. If you can't bring it home for the Dems in this political environment, then you should probably go home.
--David Kurtz
Another thought to follow up on my post below regarding what I called the Incumbent Party. One of the things that unites the Incumbent Party is, of course, the desire to preserve incumbency. And it has done a marvelous job of that. The Incumbent Party has reduced the risk of defeat faced by incumbents to about as close to zero as you can get while still maintaining a democratic system. Perhaps never before in our history have the structural underpinnings of American politics been so heavily tilted in favor of incumbency. Campaign finance, redistricting, the budget process--there are an abundance of ways the Incumbent Party has built its own perpetuation into the system.
My point is this: rather than being angry and indigant about the Lamont challenge, as Joe Lieberman reportedly is, shouldn't he be sheepish? I mean here is a guy with all of the built-in advantages of incumbency, and he still can't pull it off? No one has ever been particularly sympathetic to Goliath's plight, such as it was. To be angry about a stiff challenge is really to say that you don't want to have to the play the game at all. And that's precisely what the Incumbent Party is all about.
--David Kurtz
There are three parties in American politics. The third is the Incumbent Party. By that, I mean the peculiar (though certainly not inexplicable) tendency of the interests of incumbent elected officials to merge or align in a way that starts to erase the traditional partisan divide between them and creates a different kind of divide between them and their respective Republican and Democratic constituencies. (I’m by no means the first to observe this, but I’m not sure who gets the credit for first doing so.)
Much ink as been spilled in the last 30 years about the possible rise of a true third party in America. One of the reasons, and there are many others, that no third party has materialized out of the numerous third party candidacies during that period, I think, is that most independent candidates were running against the Incumbent Party rather than taking affirmative steps to unify voters around an identifiable set of beliefs. Opposing the Incumbent Party is the thread that links Perot, Nader, and the outsider candidacies by the likes of Jesse Ventura.
Sad to say but Joe Lieberman has become a member of the Incumbent Party. Ned Lamont’s candidacy is as much about opposing an Incumbent Party candidate, as it is a litmus test on the Iraq War. Others have run under the traditional party banners while campaigning against the Incumbent Party, and enjoyed some degree of success: Pat Buchanan, Howard Dean, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (to an extent) come to mind.
But off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone who has epitomized the Incumbent Party dynamic to quite the extent that Lieberman has. His decision to run as an independent in the general election if he loses the Democratic primary is the perfect microcosm of the Incumbent Party phenomenon. It’s one thing to abandon your party when you have lost election, like Buchanan did (twice). It’s quite another for an incumbent to lose his party primary and then try to mount a general election challenge. To announce it before the primary, well, there can’t be much precedent for that. Can anyone think of any?
My ambivalence about Lamont, like most of those conflicted about the race, comes from wanting the energies and resources of Democrats to be focused on defeating Republicans in a year where there is a real possibility of wresting control of one or both chambers of Congress away from the GOP. A Democratic Congress with Joe Lieberman in it is a whole lot better than a Republican Congress sans Lieberman. But it’s difficult now to see how a Lieberman victory, in either the primary or the general, is anything other than a victory for the Incumbent Party.
--David Kurtz
The WP today offers a broad overview of the role of Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the ongoing investigation of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La). Most of what is in Allan Lengel's piece has been reported before, but it's nice to step back and remind ourselves how outrageous this whole thing is:
[A] chauffeur drove Jefferson and his Northern Virginia business partner, Lori Mody, in a Lincoln Town Car down the winding pavement on Sorrel Avenue in Potomac to Abubakar's 2.3-acre property, partially shrouded by trees and protected by a six-foot-high black wrought-iron fence with gold tips.Unbeknownst to Jefferson, Mody was wearing an FBI wire, and the chauffeur was an undercover FBI agent.
Jefferson met privately with Abubakar, without Mody, to discuss iGate Inc.'s involvement with a Nigerian partner in a high-tech venture to market Internet and cable television in Nigeria, according to the FBI affidavit.
Mody had invested $3.5 million, and Jefferson had a secret share of her business and of iGate.
Following the meeting on Sorrel Avenue, Jefferson told Mody that the vice president had demanded a cut of the profits. He said they also needed to give him a $500,000 payment "as a motivating factor," the affidavit said.
On July 30, Mody gave Jefferson a $100,000 bribe to pass on to Abubakar, and shortly after, Jefferson assured her that it had been delivered.
On Aug. 3, FBI agents found $90,000 of the marked FBI bills in Jefferson's freezer at his Capitol Hill apartment. None of cash had gone to Abubakar, according to the FBI affidavit.
If this were in a movie script, you would roll your eyes.
--David Kurtz
This is off topic, but congratulations to Floyd Landis, who today sealed a dramatic victory in the Tour de France. I mention it only because if you haven't read about Landis' ride in Thursday's stage, you really should, regardless of whether you know anything about cycling.
In making up nearly 8 minutes on the race leader in a grueling mountain stage, the day after bonking and losing the yellow jersey, Landis turned in one of the great performances in sports history. It ranks up there with Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game, Tiger Woods' 1997 Masters victory, and Bob Beamon's 1968 long jump, performances that simply defied what was believed to be possible.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .
--David Kurtz
Disgraced former MZM executive pleads guilty to making illegal donations to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA).
--Josh Marshall
Italy to host ceasefire conference next week; Rice to attend. The conference, according to Italian FM (and former PM) Massimo D'Alema, was called at the behest of the State Department and will not include representatives from Israel, Syria or Iran.
--Josh Marshall
So it seems that we are on the brink of a far more intense and bloody phase of this war, as it now looks next to certain that Israel has already begun or is in the process of beginning a major ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
All I will say on the final outcome of this is that there won't be peace on that border or in the region more generally as long as southern Lebanon is controlled by a militia that is not controlled from Beirut, especially one that is supported if not necessarily directed by Iran, and most importantly one that still seeks confrontation with Israel. Our whole state system rests on sovereignty and governments strong enough to exercise it.
There is only one conceiveable way back from the brink here -- a multinational force to patrol southern Lebanon, get Hizbullah, or at least its rockets, off the Lebanon-Israeli border and put the region back under the control of the Lebanese central government, first nominally and then, as soon as possible, actually.
Clearly, Beirut is not capable of doing that on her own. Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon would be a disaster for Israel, Lebanon and the entire region. The bad consequences that would flow from that are just too numerous and dire to catalog.
It's clear that the Bush administration thinks that the answer to the situation is to let Israel crush Hizbullah, to whatever extent that is possible and then come in with some sort of international settlement once the changed situation on the ground is fait accompli. But I really wonder whether there is any serious grappling in Washington with how many fires are currently burning in the Middle East and how close they all are to bleeding into one another into a truly regional confrontation. We have three fairly hot wars going on right now in a relatively small amount of space -- four depending on how you choose to measure -- each of very different sorts: Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and a quasi-war in Gaza.
Who are we talking to exactly?
I don't think you need to oppose Israel's response to the initial Hizbullah attack or question the need to change the status quo in southern Lebanon, to get an eerie feeling that the Bush administration seems content to let this take its natural course, as though it were some geopolitical common cold or flu, with just as predictable an outcome. If Israel goes into southern Lebanon, how does she get out? And how does this end with a Lebanese government stronger, rather than weaker, than it already was -- a fairly key issue considering that the weakness of the Lebanese state, its inability to take control of the southern border region is the underlying cause of the problem. For all the lessons on offer in Iraq, I don't get the sense that the powers-that-be in the White House grasp the malign effect of what you might call geopolitical scar tissue or the unpredictability of war. This can quickly develop a dynamic that will be beyond our control to counter or guide.
Quite a bit of this flows from the Bush administration's general indifference to the peace process -- writ small (negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians) and writ large (trying to wrestle the various conflicts in the region toward some peaceful equlibrium) -- and their out of the gate conceit that managing the conflicts of the Middle East, particularly Israel-Palestine, accomplished little and only generated political grief for the president. But as we can see, things can always get worse. For the moment, however, forget about the past. What are they doing now?
--Josh Marshall
Spencer Ackerman on how Chairman Roberts is going to sit on 'phase II' of the Iraq intel inquiry forever.
--Josh Marshall
Judis on the war: "In their communiqué on Sunday, the G-8 nations warned that Hamas and Hezbollah threatened to "plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict," and they also cautioned Israel "to exercise utmost restraint" in retaliating against attacks. The United States was a signatory to, rather than a subject of, the document; but when the final account of this crisis is written--perhaps years from now--the Bush administration is sure to figure as a factor. That's because over the last few decades most, if not all, Arab-Israeli crises have occurred when the United States has been either unable or unwilling to play an aggressive role as a mediator; and most have only abated after the United States has finally thrown itself into the middle of them. This latest conflict, which has engulfed Gaza and Lebanon and could spread eastward, may not prove to be an exception to this rule."
Michael Walzer (sub.req.) on just wars and whether that is what Israel is fighting. And Bill Arkin on how civilian deaths are the seedbed of future terrorism.
--Josh Marshall
Marcus in Ha'aretz, "A Race Against the Clock," and what the Chief of Staff of the IDF says the IDF is doing in Lebanon.
--Josh Marshall
Evvvvvrybody gets a taste.
Seems not only did Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) make a quick killing last year when he was given a sweetheart option to buy into a new politically-juiced California bank. Seems Lewis had his campaign committee buy in too.
Both purchases on the same day.
--Josh Marshall
Lanny Davis on Lieberman: "He's not depressed, he's not sad, he's not down--he is furious. I've been there with him since his first campaign in 1970, and I've never seen him this angry."
--Josh Marshall
That should go over well. Lieberman got contributions from Bill Kristol.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JW on Joe: "I offer this from the perspective of someone who is centrist and moderate, who doesn’t read any of the lefty blogs and is not part of the grassroots or the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic party. I am socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and I while I might be considered a hawk on most foreign policy issues (say, Afghanistan), I strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. Based on my own feelings from the moderate wing of the party, I don’t think that the anti-Liebermanism is confined solely to the far left. The problem for me is that he is sanctimonious and seems to have this feeling that he owns his seat in the Senate. The fact that he would even considering running as an independent seems to be me to be appallingly self-centered. But his sanctimony stretches to other issues, most importantly Iraq. I don’t see any difference between Bush and Lieberman on Iraq. He is one of those “everything is going perfectly well” types who refuses to accept reality because it differs with what he wants reality to be. Some people may like that; most Republicans apparently do. Personally, though, I don’t. I think that Lieberman has just run afoul of his own party, and not just the far left of it. When you don’t see that coming, and you’d rather fight it than accept it and address it, it’s time to move on."
--Josh Marshall
Shrill McShrillsons. RNC sending out blast emails about "the Taepodong Democrats", picking up sludge from the WSJ editorial page.
--Josh Marshall
A few more thoughts on the Lieberman-Lamont fracas, in no particular order.
One thing that strikes me is the sheer intensity of views on this race. We've heard a good deal already about the intensity of opposition to Lieberman. But his supporters, or what you might call the anti-anti-Lieberman crowd are really no less intense or in some cases almost unhinged about it. There is this sense that a Lieberman defeat on August 8th would be some sort of apocalyptic event, with Lieberman cast as some martyr, to what I'm really not sure.
Mort Kondracke's column, which I noted below, seems like the quintessence of this sort of attitude, though the volume is turned, well, all the way up to eleven in other quarters. Listen to the opening line of Mort's column: "This is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party — and possibly the future of civility in American politics — is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut."
That's really heavy billing, isn't it?
Following up on that, I think the Lieberman skeptics are really on to something when they point out that in the Kondrackes and others there is this sense that for a well-liked-in-the-beltway senior pol like Lieberman to face a primary challenge is somehow a genuine threat to the foundations of the system. You'd think he was a life peer, if not an hereditary noble, suddenly yanked out of the House of Lords and forced to run for his seat like they do in the Commons.
Finally, and this is just an observation, I think people really are going to write about this race after it's over. But I'm not sure it'll be for the reasons people think. The blogs have been important. They've generated money and press coverage, which are both key. But as I've said repeatedly, and tons of other people have too, Lieberman's in trouble with Connecticut primary voters. Usually in big elections you'll have particular races which come completely out of the blue, at least to the established voices, ones that show something big which, in retrospect, was clearly latent in the politics of a state or district, but couldn't become visible without some spark to bring it to the fore.
Clearly, one person who's been totally caught off guard by this is Joe Lieberman. And that tells me he's fallen seriously out of touch with his constituents. Now, 'Out of touch' is a phrase that is often tossed around in some characterological or poetic sense. It is perhaps the cliche of contemporary politics. But I mean it in a more concrete sense. Most successful pols, especially those who have to run in competitive or even semi-competitive elections keep a good read on the pulse of their constituents -- through a mix of retail politicking, political machines, polling, whatever.
To use just one example next door to Connecticut, look at Hillary Clinton. She's been working that state for six years. I have no doubt that she and her inner circle have every county and even decent sized town mapped out in ten different ways -- with pork, cultivating community leaders, keeping an eye on sources of opposition. The particulars aren't the issue. And you could say the same thing about pols all over the country. My point is that I really doubt much of anything would catch that team seriously by surprise in New York state.
One might say that Lieberman has stuck to his views on Iraq notwithstanding the political perils or the unpopularity of the position in his party. And that's certainly true in the sense that he had to know he wasn't winning any points with the broad mass of Dems on this issue. But I don't think he really understood the peril at home. Because if he had, he would have been more prepared for this. And he wasn't.
This impession has been added to in my mind by chats with various folks from the Lieberman world. I think most of Lieberman's advisors, supporters, hangers-on and former employees have watched these last seven or eight weeks with a mix of mortification, surprise and disbelief, as they've seen his campaign make one mistake after another. Going back to that issue of his being out of touch you really get this sense that Lieberman and his team were totally out of the habit of fighting a serious election. To me, it all goes back to the bizarre "bear cub" ad.
I remember at the time after commenting that it had to be one of the silliest ads ever. And some wrote in saying, well, it may look silly but the Lieberman camp is planting the seed of doubt about Lamont that he's not his own man. Or it's a Rovian example of attacking your opposition on their strength. But, really, it was just stupid -- dumb and incoherent, making three or four contradictory claims at once. It showed a man and a team that were really rusty, caught unawares of what was rumbling beneath them.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader FC pipes in ...
I'm not too macho to admit that I actually wept with pride when Joe Lieberman took the podium at the 2000 Dem convention. Today, I consider myself among the "sorely disappointed' who would be glad to see Sen. Lieberman replaced by Ned Lamont.Replaced, of course, is the operative word. Many Joe-pologists keep pushing the spin that it hurts Democrats to compete among themselves in a blue state primary, and that challenging Liebeman risks giving a safe Senate seat to the GOP (TPM reader JC even took a wild swing by comparing it to 1968!).
The truth is that this is a super-safe Democratic seat in one of the most reliably pro-Democratic, anti-Bush states. It's not as though Barbara Steisand is self-financing a challenge to Ben Nelson in Nebraska. The winner of the Democratic primary will be the next Senator from Connecticut, period. The question is whether that Democrat will be Joe Lieberman or Ned Lamont.
Unless of course, Joe Liberman loses the primary and runs as an Independent...
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader MM responds to DO's comments below ...
I do not spend as much time tracking blogs as it seems DO does; no doubt there is some validity to his point that there is unwarranted venom out there. But I find it hard to believe that mean-spirited blogging alone would account for Lieberman's ongoing slippage in the polls. There must be some other reason. It's buried in DO's post:"And with the exception of Lieberman's enthusiastic support of the Iraq war, it's hard to see how Lieberman's policy preferences are markedly different than his Democratic colleagues."That's a pretty quick way of disposing of the issue. DO makes it sound like differing on the Iraq disaster is akin to differing on button subsidies, or the ball-point pen tariff. Iraq is bigger than that. Much bigger. No doubt Lieberman has a good voting record on all sorts of other things, but what we've done in Iraq, with his "enthusiastic support" is so bad for the country that it's not unreasonable for Democrats in CT to consider replacing him as their senator.
TPM Reader RP chimes in too ...
I am a frequent reader and poster at DKos. I have read a lot there about Lieberman. Not a single comment that I have seen as either wished him an untimely death nor been anti-semitic.The core problem that Kos has with Lieberman is that he gives cover to Republicans. 'Look,' they can say. 'Even a Democrat says what we're saying.' There are far more conservative Democrats, none of whom raise the ire of the left. Why? Because, while they may not vote with Democrats all the time, they do not go on Fox news to trash other Democrats. Remember Ronald Reagan's famous 11th commandment? That goes for Democrats, too.
As DO points out, Lieberman is more liberal than almost all Republicans - a fact that does not go unnoticed at dKos. However, in contrast to Ben Nelson, he's from a deep blue state. Connecticut deserves a Senator more attuned to their leanings. And Lieberman isn't attuned to anything except his own selfish interests.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Then again, there's TPM Reader JC ...
I wish to concur with "DO". He says everything I've been feeling (and says it very well) about the attacks on Lieberman. You can see the venom - I read it just now at the TPM Cafe - about Israel and see the same venom (watered down) about Lieberman.I'm on record comparing the attacks on Lieberman to the immolation of the Democrats in 1968. It will be ironic if the same group of people who voted for Nader in 2000, driving Gore-Lieberman out of history, will destroy our chances to take the Senate in 2006.
But TPM Reader JM takes a different tack ...
I just read the e-mail from DO about how anti-Semitic we in the anti-Lieberman crazy blogger Left are. Seems to me what's missing from his very long message is, say, an example of that anti-Semitism? I frequently read through the comments sections of Eschaton and FireDogLake, and I'll admit there are a lot of comments about Lieberman's support of Israel and AIPAC's support of Lieberman. Are those, in and of themselves, anti-Semitic? Are they untrue? I honestly don't know. My objection to Lieberman is that he supports Bush and his plan-less war more than most sensible Repulicans (and Social Security, Alito, defending Rumsfeld after Abu Grahib, voting for Alberto "Quaint" Gonzalez--Digby has a post of Lieberman actually defending the word 'quaint'--and Condi Rice) such as Hagel (and isn't Hagel, who would be the blogosphere's favorite Republican if he ever followed through on any of his lip-service to the Constitution, Jewish?). Even the vastly over-rated McCain would have cashiered Rumsfeld by now.How do you (or DO) square these charges of anti-Semitism with the blogofascists' almost fanatical support of Russ Feingold and (at least before she announced she'd be campaigning for Lieberman) Barbara Boxer? There are also, especially at Eschcaton, 'trolls' who take the names of regular posters and write "I hate Lieberman the Jew" or some such. Maybe this is what DO is referring to, maybe DO is one of those 'trolls'. The only thing missing from his email is "I've been a proud member of the Democrat party all my life, but Sean Hannity is right..."
Frankly, it's less than admirable of you to publish this nonsense without any kind of comment or context.
PS- Just listening to the anti-Semite Sam Seder on the Majority Report. They played a clip of Lieberman saying that the United States is a creationist nation. Yup. No reason to oppose him other than anti-Semitism.
For the record, I'm pretty certain Chuck Hagel is not Jewish.
And finally, TPM Reader MB ...
Josh, are you actually sufficiently naive to print such nonsense as though it made a point? Just so that it's clear, we don't have to apologize for extremists on our side of the fence. Republicans don't, even though their extremists are both more extreme and more prominent.I don't appreciate being blamed for the fact that some wild-eyed leftist, possibly fictitious, verges on anti-Semitism in his disapproval of Joe Lieberman. And I don't appreciate that you give such views credibility by publishing them.
Come to think of it, this grievance actually encapsulates our problem with Lieberman himself.
Actually, one more, from TPM Reader CB ...
The criticism DO has of the far left blogosphere has considerable merit, although I can't say it quite equals in venality of the right's eight years of smearing Clinton (after all, I haven't seen any claims that Lieberman was a murderer or drug smuggler, as was alleged by Scaife-backed projects). I reckon all it goes to show is that extremism doesn't sit well with many, if not most, Americans -- at least when it's blatant. [Rachel Maddow had an interesting take Thursday morning when she referred to it as the right wing's "Boiling the Frog" tactic -- admitting that the metaphor itself is a myth -- of graduality, incrementally pursuing a policy course of which most voters would object if they recognized the ultimate goal (i.e. Social Security privatization)].The main complaints about Lieberman among more moderately liberal Democrats is his unwillingness to reconsider his position on the war and, more critically, his completely lack of loyalty to the party. The latter is the kind of thing than can get an entrenched incumbent beat in the primary, where he has to sell himself to fellow Democrats who believe he has sold out to the other side.
More to come.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DO chimes in on Lieberman ...
Have you ever actually READ the things left-wingers are saying about Lieberman on sites like Democratic Underground? Sure, Kos's daily rants against Lieberman are bad enough. But look at what the rank-and-filers are saying. You don't have to look hard to find someone wishing Lieberman an untimely death, or expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. And while this may only represent a fraction of the anti-Lieberman crowd, the majority who ought to know better chooses to remain silent rather than confront the bigotry in their midst. I don't have a problem with people not liking Lieberman, or even supporting a primary opponent. It's a free country. But the obsession that the far left has with Lieberman (which actually predates the war in Iraq by several years) borders on the psychopatic. Everything Lieberman says or does is scrutinized far more closely by the left-wing blogosphere than the actions of any other Democrat I can think of, and he's presumed to exercise an influence over the body politic far out of proportion to reality. And then there are the lies. Sorry, but no rational person would assert that Lieberman is a right-wing Republican, but that's become gospel among the far left. The fact of the matter is that Lieberman's voting record puts him well to the left of any Republican in the Senate, with the possible exception of Lincoln Chafee. And with the exception of Lieberman's enthusiastic support of the Iraq war, it's hard to see how Lieberman's policy preferences are markedly different than his Democratic colleagues. But none of this seems to matter to the far left, which regularly brands Lieberman a DINO.You ought to read today's post by the Bull Moose, who really hits the nail on the head. The comparison to the New Left's smearing of Hubert Humphrey, one of the greatest liberals this country has seen is particularly apt, since I've always considered the New Left to be the spritual forerunners of today's left-wing blogosphere. And no, I don't mean that as a complement.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DE on whether the "corruption" issue has traction politically ...
Maybe I am being overly simplistic here, but is it possible that both the mainstream media narrative and your narrative on the electoral effect of corruption are right? I.e., corruption has certainly contributed to the trouble that the GOP faces in the November elections. On the other hand, it is difficult for a candidate to run on a "culture of corruption" unless the opponent has some personal involvement in corrupt activities. The rising tide is lifting Democratic votes, but in most races, the Democrats are still going to have to explicitly run on other issues to win.
I think there's a lot of truth to this way of understanding the issue. And, yes, I blame George Lakoff for the fact that I had to use 'understanding' as opposed to being able to use 'framing' in its pre-Lakoffian sense. Okay, I'm done.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DT on Kondracke ...
Does Kondracke know who Steve Laffey [currently challenging Sen. Chafee] is? Or Pat Toomey [who challenged Sen. Specter]? Or is it only sign of "hatred politics" when Lieberman is the focus? What is hateful or radical about Ned Lamont? How come the internet radicals are okay with anti-choice Harry Reid? How come the more conservative Dem senators like Baucus and Dorgan are not under assault by the allegedly radical internet mafia? Does Kondracke even bother to ask these questions, or shall I assume that truth isn't the point?
I think that there's something of a difference with Baucus and Dorgan. They come from red states. But there is this odd indifference to the fact that Republicans pretty routinely draw primary challengers pretty much just like Lieberman is this time. But that doesn't seem to phase anyone. Right now in Rhode Island you can make a decent argument that the last remaining moderate Republican senator is being primaried from the right. But nothing. That doesn't seem to faze anybody.
--Josh Marshall
Greg Djerejian: "Three years ago, I would have poo-pooed anyone using the word "radicals" to describe the neo-cons. No more. Any group that can so brazenly (and breezily) avoid a real reckoning with the continuing crisis in Iraq--which is descending into civil war as we speak--any movement that has the gall to suggest as some panacea that we mount significant military operations in Iran and Syria and god knows where else (with Israel in Lebanon to boot), well, their credibility is at a very low ebb indeed, and they very much need to be urgently reined in."
--Josh Marshall
Kondracke on Lieberman-Lamont ...
Lieberman Race Pits Moderation vs. Hatred-PoliticsThis is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party — and possibly the future of civility in American politics — is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), one of the last “liberal hawks” in the Democratic Party and a leader in efforts to find bipartisan solutions to America’s problems, is being targeted for defeat by an emergent new left that’s using savage, Internet-based attacks to push moderation out of politics.
The rest at Roll Call, subscription required.
--Josh Marshall
A true testament to our political discourse. From WaPo: "The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war."
--Josh Marshall
Not looking good for Katherine Harris. A second staffer has a talk with the Feds.
--Josh Marshall
The Hill says the Congressional Black Caucus is divided on the McKinney run-off.
--Josh Marshall
Jim VandeHei has a piece this morning in the Post explaining that Ralph Reed's defeat Tuesday in Georgia has put political strategists in both parties on notice that the issue of political corruption has real traction, at least for candidates directly implicated in the on-going investigations.
He begins the article with this lede: "While political corruption has failed so far to take root as a national issue, the defeat of scandal-stained Ralph Reed in Georgia on Tuesday showed that federal investigators could tip some key House and Senate races this fall, according to party strategists."
Now, I know that national polls haven't registered too strongly on the issue of corruption per se. And readers might fairly wonder whether I have some professional investment in the issue of corruption, given that I founded a site dedicated to muckraking. But I've wondered for a while whether the conventional wisdom VandeHei is stating here is really accurate. It seems to me that the constant stories of indictments and pay-offs and lobbying scams have, all together, had a strong atmospheric effect, weighing heavily on the popularity of the Republican majority. When we see the GOP double digits behind the Democrats and voter perceptions that they're out-of-touch, not serving the voters' interests, self-seeking, etc., I think the corruption issue has had more to do with that than people realize.
What do you think?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader NR chimes in ...
So when Joe Lieberman is being primaried and there is a real chance he will lose, common wisdom says it is because the liberals are demanding ideological purity. But when Cynthia McKinney is being primaried and there is a reach chance she will lose, common wisdom is nonexistent.Just 'cause the talking heads like Lieberman and don't like McKinney doesn't change the fact that grassroots, rank and file voters are using the primary process to select the candidates they like the best. That's the way it is, and the way it should be.
Sounds about right to me.
--Josh Marshall
With all the combustion about the Lieberman-Lamont race over the last month or so -- and the general expectation that Lamont can or will beat Lieberman in the primary -- what's always been knocking around my head is that there've been a number of public polls and none of them showed Lamont actually ahead.
Well, until now.
The highly respected Quinnipiac poll has a new sounding out with Lamont topping Lieberman 51% to 47%, though Lieberman still appears to win decisively in a three-way match-up between him, Lamont and Foxwoods regular Alan Schlesinger.
--Josh Marshall
In the wake of Ralph Reed's defeat, Republicans are worried about corruption as an issue this year -- but it'll take just a couple of indictments to really convince them it's a problem. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
If you're curious about how a doctored exploitation of 9/11 looks, you can see it here, courtesy of Sen. Mike Dewine's (R-OH) campaign.
--Paul Kiel
Lieberman rules out accepting the GOP place on the ballot from CT Republicans.
--Josh Marshall
So a run-off it is. On August 8th, Rep. Cynthia McKinney goes up against Hank Johnson, Dekalb County Commissioner. And from looking at the numbers, it seems like McKinney is in a bit of trouble.
The final results (98% reporting) were McKinney (47.1%), Johnson (44.4%) and Coyne (8.5%).
Both Johnson and Coyne were running clearly as anti-McKinney candidates, if of different flavors. So there seems to be a clear anti-McKinney majority among Democrats. From what I've heard too, Johnson didn't really get that much attention before the first ballot and therefore wasn't able to raise much money. And that will almost certainly now change.
Just because Republicans often attack McKinney (sometimes in scurrilous ways) I feel like there's a tendency to run to her defense among Democratic partisans. For my part, I think folks in 4th district of Georgia could do a lot better. What do you think?
--Josh Marshall
Something worth considering about the State Department's "very well thought out" evacuation plan for American citizens in Lebanon.
--Paul Kiel
Here's a guessing game - how many thousands of dollars did DHS employees drop on unused dog booties? $10,000? $30,000? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
Update: Canine lovers, here's our follow-up on the booties.
--Paul Kiel
Katherine Harris ascends to Stage IV of the TPMmuckraker Political Scandal Process (TM).
--Paul Kiel
This sounds solid, doesn't it? From The Hill ...
Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.) used earmarks to create an overseas study program for Russian business students coordinated by his friend and business partner, an ex-KGB general’s wife and onetime English teacher.The International Trade and Small Business Institute, created last year and funded through a Taylor earmark to the Small Business Administration (SBA), uses federal money to send seven Russian students to eight North Carolina schools for business courses. Two of the students hail from Ivanovo, the depressed textile city where Taylor is majority owner of the local bank and a frequent real-estate investor.
Taylor, you'll remember, is also the guy with the Abramoff fundraiser bamboozle. And before that, he was the one who said he didn't cast a vote on CAFTA because his voting card broke.
--Josh Marshall
I must admit to a certain ambivalence about the ignominious defeat of bible-thumping and money laundering pro-gambling consultant Ralph Reed. On the one hand there's little doubt this a victory for fair-dealing, truth, justice, America, not being a complete knob and various other good things. But I also have to face the fact that it also means the loss of a substantial amount of quality muckraking copy for TPMmuckraker.com.
But here's something else out of Georgia. The votes aren't fully tallied yet. But it appears that Rep. Cynthia McKinney may face a run-off to get the Democratic nomination to run again for her seat.
About a half hour ago the AP reported that "with 80 percent of the precincts reporting, McKinney was leading with 47 percent of the vote to lawyer Hank Johnson's 45 percent."
Johnson is a second term DeKalb County Commissioner.
--Josh Marshall
Lieberman on the GOP ticket in Connecticut if the current gambler candidate gets bounced?
--Josh Marshall
Lieberman to Lamont: You invested in Halliburton!
Lamont to Lieberman: No, I didn't. My money manager did it for me.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Bonilla (R-TX) paid big bucks to protect the discriminatory redistricting of his congressional district.
--Josh Marshall
Some of the wonderful emails we get (emphasis added) ...
Since Israel decided to bomb Lebanon’s Airport and Ports without warning, forcing these emergency evacuations, why don’t we withhold the cost of the evacuations from our generous financial aid to Israel. I’m sure the Israel’s would approve; they supported reparations be paid by the Swiss and Germans from their actions during WWII.
Furthermore, why not deduct reparations to innocent foreign national civilians killed as a result of their air assaults as well?
No end of sickos.
Late Update: This post occasioned some comment on what the meaning behind my comment was. My meaning is this: I don't believe the question of 'deductions' from foreign aid for the cost of these evacuations or for the loss of innocent lives (though who exactly would we pay that money too, and on whose behalf?) is comparable to the reparations Germany paid for the Holocaust. Call me old-fashioned.
--Josh Marshall
President Bush personally blocked NSA wiretap probe. More hands on than I thought.
--Josh Marshall
Agree with Matt on this one: I found Richard Cohen's column in the Post this morning a bit ugly and more silly. Glib in a way that addresses none of the serious issues in play on either side.
--Josh Marshall
President dives into the diplomatic route head first?
No, I'm not sure either.
--Josh Marshall
"I made a mistake" trying to honor disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), Capitol historical society prez admits. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Foreign Affairs has a online 'roundtable' up on their site: "What to do in Iraq." In what is perhaps a sign of the times, there's actually pretty decent representation of well-known bloggers (Kevin Drum and Marc Lynch) among the participants.
--Josh Marshall
Ex-New Hampshire phone-jammer says he's sworn off phone-jamming for good.
--Josh Marshall
A reader disagrees on CNN's fronting the Bush remarks ...
Man, do i disagree w/ you on CNN putting that up front. Yes, of course, this little 'shit' reference in and of itself is not really newsworthy. But look at the video--his insouciant air, as he chomps on his butter role, Blair hunched over him--the ignorance (Syria has much less influence over hezbollah than it did a year or two ago)...It all encapsulates a moment, almost a zietgeist. We've got no effing leadership at the top, and he's fiddliing incoherently in the midst of this like a child w/ a tantrum.
TPM Reader WD reacts similarly ...
I'm not sure this is such a minor story. Many people who frequent this and other blogs have internalized the fact that Bush is, at best, less than statesmanlike when not scripted and surrounded by political props. Outside of this, this message does not appear as much outside of the late night talk shows.People ask why the U.S. is in the midst of this crisis. This recording provides a simplistic but understandable answer. While none of the major media will directly offer this intepretation, I think it's clear that they feel that this brief clip captures a president who does not look emotionally or intellectually capable of leading in this crisis.
In a world where our media is incapable of directly stating that view, clips like this exist as a proxy for honest analysis. It's news because of it stands for what the media feels it cannot say.
It seemed to me that CNN's headlining was all about the expletive. But these readers may be right that the broader context of the statements is the issue. And it's difficult, both in economy of language and within the canons of objectivity to convey what those mean.
--Josh Marshall
Summary of Bill Odom's new piece at Neiman Watch: "A reverse domino theory may be playing out in the Middle East: Gen. William Odom says Vice President Cheney has it all wrong when he warns that the U.S. must stay in Iraq because failure there could prompt collapse elsewhere. In fact, now it looks like a new Arab-Israeli war could be breaking out precisely because our actions in Iraq have emboldened Iran and Syria."
--Josh Marshall
Is this really front page news?
President Bush, discussing the Middle East crisis, uses a fairly low-tier expletive in conversation with Tony Blair when he thinks he's not on the microphone. And that's front page headline on CNN?
I might post on it. Atrios might. It's kind of funny. And it puts some of the lie to the now presumably rather degraded notion that the president is above such things. No one likes to poke the president's eye more than me. But this is the headline, with everything that's going on today?
That strikes me as fairly odd news judgment.
--Josh Marshall
With his primary fast approaching, Ralph Reed finally comes clean on his work for Jack Abramoff.... and blames the Indians.
--Paul Kiel
I just wanted to make sure everyone saw TPMmuckraker's post from yesterday on Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). If you don't think the criminal probe into the House Appropriations Chair is a big deal, why are like 90+% of his campaign expenditures going to his legal defense?
--Josh Marshall
Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Hastert agree that Duke Cunningham shouldn't be receiving awards for his congresssional service. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
I guess conservatives have given up on the whole "9/11 changed everything" gambit. At least until it's convenient to bring it back up again. In its place we're getting schooled on what an intractable problem the Middle East is and has been for years, it turns out: too protracted for us to fix, too ancient for us to have exacerbated. In short, nothing has changed.
Here's where you roll footage of the blindfolded American hostages in Iran in 1979 and of the Marines in 1983 sifting through the rubble of their barracks in Beirut.
Queue up a somber voiceover from David Brooks:
If you look at the jihadists, they had a victory in '79 by pushing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They pushed the U.S. out of Lebanon. The pushed the Israelis out of Gaza and out of Lebanon. They're probably pushing the U.S. out of Iraq. They are on the march.Iraq is part of that, but it's not the whole story. They are on the march, and they're sidelining the reasonable people in the Middle East, who may be the majority, but right now what's happening in the Middle East is the Israeli public opinion has gone to the center, for withdrawal, but Arab decision makers have gone to the extremes, to Hamas and Hezbollah.
And that's just not something -- we can't call them up and have a summit. We can't have shuttle diplomacy. We can't invite them to Camp David because they're so extreme, so we are constrained. . . . it's gloomy, but it's a long historical trend of which Iraq is an important part.
This sudden embrace of the "long view," as Brooks calls it, is of a piece with the recent claims by some neo-conservatives that there was nothing we could have done to prevent the sectarian violence in Iraq given its "coarsened and brittle cultures." Or as Josh paraphrased it: sure, we had a crappy post-war plan in Iraq, but that really didn't matter one way or the other.
While it is true that you can understand little about the Middle East without understanding its history, conservatives have an obvious motive for wanting to compress the last 20-30 years of events in the Middle East. Linking the brutal events of the recent past with the brutal events of today allows them to skip over the fact that real progress toward peace and stability in the region was made in the 1990s, in part due to U.S. leadership and diplomacy. In doing so, I suppose conservatives hope to obscure what a hash they have made of the Middle East in the last 5 years.
--David Kurtz
Newt Gingrich, on the rebuilding of Iraq:
We need to fundamentally reorganize our nonmilitary bureaucracies to be effective. I mean, part of the reason you don’t have an effective Iraqi bureaucracy is the American inability at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department to provide any level of systematic competence is, is almost zero.Did he leave anyone out? Hmmm, let's see . . . oh, yeah. The Pentagon!
It was the Pentagon that elbowed State aside and assumed full responsibility for post-invasion Iraq, despite having failed to undertake the sort of pre-invasion planning necessary to confront the enormous task.
It was the Pentagon that made no plans to rebuild the Iraqi bureaucracy because Rumsfeld thought if you lopped off the head of the regime and replaced it with a pro-Western government, the Iraqi bureacracy would just keep on keeping on.
It was the Pentagon that disbanded the Iraqi Army, one of Iraq's stronger bureaucratic structures, despite the warnings from U.S. commanders on the ground.
And let's not forget that Gingrich was on Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board during the period in question and was one of the leading proponents of the Pentagon's approach.
Going around behind Gingrich to set the record straight could be a full-time job, but this particular blame-shifting canard needs to be confronted and knocked down hard.
--David Kurtz