No matter what happens in the mid term elections, expect an intensified debate about the future of the Democratic Party in general, and an even more heated discussion about the breadth of the Democratic Tent — more specifically what to do about the ‘Blue Dogs.’
The debate has been going on for a few years. But a re-opening salvo has just been fired by Ari Berman, in his New York Times op-ed “Boot the Blue Dogs.” Berman, a contributing writer for The Nation and author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics,” argues that the Democratic tent has gotten too big, and the time has come to purge the party of conservative Democrats who are obstructing not only the Democratic agenda, but also the party’s ability to grow. He makes a strong case:

With President Obama in office, some notable beneficiaries of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy have been antagonizing the party from within — causing legislative stalemate in Congress, especially in the Senate, and casting doubt on the long-term viability of a Democratic majority. As a result, the activists who were so inspired by Mr. Dean in 2006 and Mr. Obama in 2008 are now feeling buyer’s remorse.
…Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.

Berman sees two pivotal benefits of dumping the ‘Blue Dogs’:

…First, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)
Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Berman adds “Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way.” He does not say exactly how Democrats should get rid of the Blue Dogs, but withholding financial support from them and otherwise disciplining Democratic members of congress who refuse to support the majority agenda are measures that have gained support among Democratic progressives who want to diminish the power of the Blue Dogs.
Single-payer, pro-choice, tax-the-rich, withdraw-from-Afghanistan progressive Democrat that I am, I worry about the effects of a wholesale purge of the Blue Dogs. I think it’s a mistake to stereotype all Blue Dogs as ideologues. Many are, but some are fairly progressive, and merely want to survive in their conservative districts, hoping to lead their constituents forward to a more progressive vision. Some Blue Dogs in marginal districts deserve a little wiggle room.
Use redistricting where possible to reduce Blue Dog numbers, while not cutting the number of Democratic districts, yes. Allocate less Party money to Blue Dogs and give it to needy progressive candidates in close races, sure. Invoke stronger party discipline with respect to committee assignments on those who fail to support the party a standard percentage of the time, of the time, absolutely.
As for conservative Democratic Senators (‘Blue Dogs’ is a term usually reserved for House members), it’s easier to draw a line in the sand. Cloture betrayal, as Ed Kilgore has persuasively argued, should invoke party discipline.
Generally, Dems should use more carrot and stick to sway the Blue Dogs in a progressive direction. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that majority status is so important for getting anything done in congress, that it would be a mistake to embrace a level of rigid ideological purity that denies Dems the speakership, committee chairs and the ability to enact legislation.

Quite a lot of buzz out there about Jack Conway’s recent video ad attacking Rand Paul for being stupid during his college years, with reactions ranging from righteous indignation to “Hey, personal history is fair game.”
Some progressives were offended by Conway’s ad, which attacked Paul for “mocking Christianity” As Jonathan Chait puts it in the New Republic, “The ugliest, most illiberal political ad of the year may be this one, from Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway.” Morally, Chait is right. In terms of ad strategy, there is a little more room for argument.
Kos disagrees, explaining,

Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. Voters are less concerned with issues than values when casting their ballots, and for many voters, religion speaks to the candidate’s values. I may not like it, but it’s a democracy, and the notion that the source of a candidate’s values are off-limits is patently absurd…In a democracy, you have to sell yourself to the voters. In many places, religion is part of the package.

Kos points out that Paul made religion an issue by prattling on piously. “Remember, it was Rand Paul that tried to gin up the outrage machine when Conway said the word “hell” during his Fancy Farm picnic earlier this year.” Theda Scopkol, quoted here in TPM, agrees that Conway was not out of line:

I have a real problem with all the prissy condemnations coming from liberal commentators about Conway’s ad on Rand Paul’s youthful playing with contempt for Christianity. People are acting as if it is some kind of political sin to point out to ordinary Kentucky voters the kind of stuff about Paul’s extremist libertarian views that everyone in the punditry already knows. This does not amount to saying that Christian belief is a “requirement for public office” as one site huffs. It is a matter of letting regular voters who themselves care deeply about Christian belief know that Paul is basically playing them. No different really than letting folks who care about Social Security and Medicare know that Paul is playing them…

The ad was pretty cheesy. I hate the snarky voice-over thing, which seems to be in fashion this year for ads across the political spectrum. Conway was only down 5 points or so, and the race was most likely going to narrow some. Why bet the whole ranch on a pair of Jacks? I tend to agree with Larry J. Sabato’s take, which is that the ad is probably a net negative for Conway. “Mainly, it’s changing the subject to less helpful issues…I’d be surprised if this brings Paul down,”
But, who knows, the ad may do some good, as well as damage, by implanting the meme that Paul’s is a little too weird for Kentucky. It may be a game-changer, if it encourages the media, which after all, loves personal scandals, to press Paul to explain the pot-kidnapping-bondage-aqua-Buddha thing. My guess is he will dodge the media like he did Meet the Press for the next couple of weeks. It could be a wash.
But Conway should not apologize. Stick with responses that criticize Paul for his extremist ideas. Project certitude and strong conviction that Paul is too crazy for Kentucky. Keep attacking Paul for his idiotic policies, not his college pranks, and do it with sharply-worded soundbites, not rambling critiques.
Regardless of the outcome, the ad will probably be credited with making the difference, even though it may not be the case. Generally, however, I would argue against holding opponents accountable for their college behavior. Not too many of any political party could stand such rigorous scrutiny.

In our overheated political environment, it was inevitable that someone would come forward with the assertion that one political ideology or another made the celebrated rescue of the Chilean miners possible. So here’s an excerpt from “Capitalism Saved the Miners: The profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at the mine rescue site” by Daniel Henninger, an editor/columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Fox News contributor (video clip here):

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.
Amid the boundless human joy of the miners’ liberation, it may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.
In the United States, with 9.6% unemployment, a notably angry electorate will go to the polls shortly and dump one political party in favor of the other, on which no love is lost. The president of the U.S. is campaigning across the country making this statement at nearly every stop:
“The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper.”
Uh, yeah. That’s a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that’s right. Ask the miners.
If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?
Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.
This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill’s rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock’s president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.
Longer answer: The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That’s why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.
This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.
A remarkable Sept. 30 story about all this by the Journal’s Matt Moffett was a compendium of astonishing things that showed up in the Atacama Desert from the distant corners of capitalism.

Henninger goes on, extolling the marvels of free trade and innovative capitalism, Samsung cellphones and anti-bacterial socks, adding “…Without this system running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead.” He shoehorns in the requisite digs at the Obama administration tax, regulation and trade policies, which he sees as an obstruction to the life-saving miracles of the unfettered market.
Henninger’s bloodless, technocratic interpretation of a richly-human story as “a triumph of market capitalism” is amplified in another WSJ video, featuring additional gush about the leadership of Chile’s right-center President Pinera in the rescue effort.
Nice try, but no sale. After acknowledging that, well, yes, market capitalism does facilitate manufacture of great drill bits, socks and life-saving products (as well as shoddy, wasteful and dangerous products), and OK, President Sebastian Pinera is a charismatic guy who didn’t screw up the rescue, the hard evidence for calling the rescue “a smashing victory for free market capitalism,” thins considerably.
The spirit that kept the miners alive for 69 days has deeper roots in the miners’ faith and remarkable solidarity, strengthened by their families, community and union, CONFEMIN. That was also the source of the strength that drove the unflagging determination of the rescue team.
Indeed, the resurfacing workers pointedly called for stronger safety regulations to protect them and all Chilean miners from further disasters. As the second miner out of the shaft, Mario Sepulveda, put it, “This country has to understand that changes must be made.” Moreover, unions have always lead the drive for mine safety reforms in Chile and all nations, usually against the obstruction of conservative parties.
Some observers believe that Chile’s economy is overly-dependent on extractive industries in general. As Chilean academic Maria Ester Feres, director of the Central University of Chile’s centre on labour relations, research and advice, explains, “The joy over the near-epic rescue that has been the result of the strength and wisdom of the miners of Atacama makes it necessary for us not to forget that situations like this one are absolutely avoidable.”
As for President Pinera’s leadership, what politician wouldn’t be on-site for the duration of the rescue, with the possible exception of Rand “Accidents Happen” Paul, current darling of the libertarian right? Credit President Pinera with projecting a compassionate spirit, as did George Bush in the immediate wake of 9-11. Pinera seems to have found a little pro-regulation religion as a result of the miners rescue and the new national focus on mine safety, according to this report from the IPS-Inter Press Service:

The president also announced the creation of a mining superintendency to regulate and enforce safety standards, a restructuring of the National Geology and Mining Service, increased funds for inspections, and the establishment of another advisory committee, to review mining safety regulations.

Pinera’s proposed reforms have already been criticized by union supporters as inadequate and lacking in substance. Drill bit innovations notwithstanding, meaningful safety reforms to protect miners have always come from two sources: negative publicity following disasters and union advocacy. Mine safety reform is more often obstructed by the legislative champions of unregulated markets.
For a more credible take on the rescue, consider this excerpt from Chris Matthews’ eloquent editorial on the topic on MSNBC’s Hardball (video here):

Down 2,000 feet in the ground a group of 33 men not only survived for 69 days but prevailed. What a story of human faith, hope, charity and community.
I know that last word drives people on the right crazy. Theirs is the popular notion of every man for himself, grab what you can, screw the masses, cash out of the government, go it alone, the whole cowboy catechism.
But how would those miners have survived – the 33 of them – and their loved ones living above – if they’d behaved like that, with the attitude of “every man for himself?”
This is, above all, and deep down there in the mine, about being all in this together. It’s about mutual reliance, and, relying on others not just do their jobs, but come through in the clutch. Somebody had to get food and medicine down to these guys and somebody did. Somebody had to drill that hole down to get them and somebody did. And all the time the guys down there – those 33 human souls – kept the faith.
“I was with God and I was with the devil,” one of the first guys out said. “They both fought for me. God won.”
So, in his way, did man. The group of miners stuck down a half-mile into the earth organized themselves. They had one guy in charge, another the spiritual leader, still another working on health, still another the director of entertainment….

In stark contrast to the spirit on display in Chile, Matthews cites the less inspiring political moment in the U.S.: “This coming election now looks to be a process very different. What it promises to be is a huge number of Americans withdrawing their confidence in the ability to work together, to have faith in each other to build a common community. It’s headed toward being something quite un-American: a statement that we are “not” in this together.”
An interesting point, which may help explain why the Chilean miners rescue made for such riveting television in the U.S. People all over the world prayed for the miners and celebrated their rescue with cheers and tears. But in the U.S., we were particularly inspired by the powerful spirit of concern for the workers throughout Chilean society, so absent in the right-wing movement that threatens to win control of congress. The challenge now is to generate some of that spirit in Democratic GOTV.

AP’s Phillip Elliot has a disturbing report in WaPo today:

Activists on Wednesday noted that “dozens of tea party-aligned groups have sought records and are planning to visit polling places on Election Day to enforce their own “voter protection” programs.
…And with anger at Washington at a fever pitch and an anti-incumbent sentiment growing, the loosely organized tea party’s efforts to challenge voters on Election Day could dissuade scores of voters from casting ballots, the activists said. Tea party groups from California to Florida have organized to go to polling locations to check registrations themselves.

The primary targets, as usual, would be Latino and African American voters:

“We are worried this year that we could see large-scale efforts to challenge voters at the polls,” said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan public policy and law institute based at New York University.
Gloria Montano Greene of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials also cautioned that the persistent anti-illegal immigrant fervor could drive down turnout or unfairly target those who appear to be immigrants.
“We know that we continue to face stark levels of voting discrimination around the country,” said Kristen Clarke, co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund’s voter project.

In light of epidemic home foreclosures during the last year and a half, there is also concern about the use of foreclosure lists to cast doubt on voters’ residency and voting eligibility. This was tried by Republicans in Indiana in 2008. A local Republican Party official reportedly said that presence on a foreclosure list “would be a solid basis” to ask someone to cast a provisional ballot.” The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund took legal action and stopped it.
Of all the forms of voter suppression, ‘caging’ seems to be most on the upswing. In his recent report on the right’s voter ‘caging’ initiative in Wisconsin, Josh Dorner at Think Progress has a good one-graph summary of the mechanics and impact of caging:

“Voter caging” is a means of voter suppression and intimidation that involves sending mail to a list of voters, compiling a list of mail pieces returned as undeliverable, and then challenging those voters at the polls or otherwise attempting to remove them from the voter rolls. The mere process of challenging voters can intimidate from voting even if they are eligible, cause long lines to form at polling places that will then discourage others from voting, and may result in eligible voters casting provisional ballots which stand a high likelihood of not being counted in the final tally.

Dorner’s excellent report details the tea party’s role in the Wisconsin voter suppression campaign based on a recording of a tea party meeting, including bragging about voter intimidation involving “a 6’4″, 300-pound man to challenge voters at the polls.”
The thing to keep in mind is that effective caging often depends on using one of two kinds of intimidation at the polls: (A.) goons questioning voters, and/or (B.) using law enforcement and/or trained attorneys to badger voters. The use of legit law enforcement would probably only occur in GOP-friendly jurisdictions. But fake, uniformed “enforcement” personnel have been used effectively to intimidate voters in the past. There is still time for voting rights groups to submit radio and TV public service announcements informing voters that they don’t have to stop and talk to anyone at the polls who doesn’t present legitimate law enforcement credentials.
In his post at Talk Media News, Kyle LeFleur quotes Weiser, who notes that about 3 million people couldn’t vote in 2008 because of registration problems. Weiser worries about the scale of voter suppression operations underway: “This is not something that we have seen for years and it raises significant risk for voters.”
All of which adds up to ominous signs that the GOP and or tea party activists may be assembling a nation-wide voter suppression campaign of unprecedented dimensions. Democrats were caught unprepared by the GOP’s “Brooks Brothers Riot” in 2000, and by the time we got our act together, it was too late. It appears that a massive ‘caging’ initiative is likely underway and we may see tea party goon squads intimidating voters at many polls on election day. This time, let’s be ready.

I imagine a group of Democratic Party insiders holed up in an office somewhere in D.C. sorting through videos and photos of various Republican candidates, and one of the Dems sighs and sums it up: “This one puts out a video saying she’s not a witch. Here’s one prancing around in a Nazi uniform. ‘Terror babies,’ census paranoia — We got a bunch of them on video who want to privatize social security, increase medicare deductibles and give huge tax breaks to the rich…I can’t believe we’re losing to these guys.”
By any measure the GOP’s ‘crackpot factor’ is inordinately high this year. No doubt individual Democratic campaigns are making the best of it on a case by case basis. But the question arises, is there some way to amp up the re-branding of the 2010 GOP as the party of crackpots?
The meme is well-established in progressive circles. But there has to be a tipping point at which a healthy chunk of swing voters, including white blue collar workers — the so-called “Reagan Democrats” — think “Jeez, much as I’d like to stick it to the Democrats, the Republicans really do seem to have a lot of crackpots. Hard to see them doing much to get the economy rolling again.”
We may not be quite at the crackpot tipping point point yet, but it shouldn’t take too much more, although time is running out.
As the crackpot factor expands, ridicule becomes a more powerful Democratic weapon. Tina Fey turned Sarah Palin into the laughing stock of America, and there’s an argument — though no data to back it up — indicating that it was devastatingly effective in making a large number of swing voters dismiss the GOP ticket as saddled with a terminal lightweight. Certainly cartoonists are having a field day with the crackpot factor this year (see here, here and here, for example). But we’re not likely to see an SNL skit as politically-potent as Fey’s Palin impersonations for a long time.
I’m worried about the “decoy effect” of one particular crackpot, Christine O’Donnell. She hogs so much media coverage with her ridiculous pronouncements and history, that other deserving Republican crackpots are slipping under the radar. Rand Paul, for example, the uncrowned King of the tea party loonies, who is in a close Senate race with a solid Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, must be thanking his good fortune for O’Donnell every day. Ditto for Sharron Angle.
It’s a lot easier to show voters why a particular candidate is too loony to vote for than it is to re-brand an entire party as too crazy to take seriously. Still, “I don’t know…the Republicans have too many crackpots” is a meme worth encouraging whenever possible. The wild card is the MSM. If it takes root in the next couple of weeks, it might help. A couple of good national ads projecting the meme couldn’t hurt.

If Democratic media wizards don’t make an ad out of Bob Herbert’s column in today’s New York Times, take it as a signal that the party’s media mavens are utterly clueless. Here’s a vivid image from Herbert’s column, begging to be captured in a widely-televised Democratic political ad:

It’s beyond astonishing to me that John Boehner has a real chance to be speaker of the House of Representatives….I’ve always thought of Mr. Boehner as one of the especially sleazy figures in a capital seething with sleaze. I remember writing about that day back in the mid-’90s when this slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House.
It was incredible, even to some Republicans. The House was in session, and here was a congressman actually distributing money on the floor. Other, more serious, representatives were engaged in debates that day on such matters as financing for foreign operations and a proposed amendment to the Constitution to outlaw desecration of the flag. Mr. Boehner was busy desecrating the House itself by doing the bidding of big tobacco.
Embarrassed members of the G.O.P. tried to hush up the matter, but I got a tip and called Mr. Boehner’s office. His chief of staff, Barry Jackson, was hardly contrite. “They were contributions from tobacco P.A.C.’s,” he said.
When I asked why the congressman would hand the money out on the floor of the House, Mr. Jackson’s answer seemed an echo of Willie Sutton’s observation about banks. “The floor,” he said, “is where the members meet with each other.”

Do the American people want such a guy controlling the U.S. House of Representatives? I think not. But it’s up to Democrats to show them who the Republican speaker-in-waiting really is. Herbert has pretty much written the script. All the ad-meisters have to do is hook up a little creative re-enactment.
The scene above should be enough. But, if you need more, Herbert’s got it:

…The amount of democracy-destroying money that manages to make its way into the sleazy environs of what is now known as Boehner Land has increased to a staggering degree.
The Times’s Eric Lipton, in an article last month, noted that Mr. Boehner “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
“They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.
The hack who once handed out checks on the House floor is now a coddled, gilded flunky of the nation’s big-time corporate elite.”

Herbert’s got more, much more, so extensive are Boehner’s and the GOP’s predations. Commend Herbert for writing a great column — his Pulitzer is long-overdue. But Boehner’s history should be dramatized, so the public can see exactly what members of congress have been witnessing for years and who will be running the House if they vote for Republicans. If Dems don’t show them, who will?

If the campaigns of 2010 seem more intense than usual, one reason may be early voting. So note Carolyn Crist and Melissa Weinman in their article “Early Voting Is a Game-Changer: Campaigns react to 45-day stretch of casting ballots” in the Gainesville (GA) Times.
The authors cite a huge uptick in early voting in the Peach State:

In the 2008 general election, more than half of voters came in early, about 2 million of the 3.9 million total in Georgia. That showed a large jump from the 2004 election, in which early voting was only allowed for specific reasons. In that election 387,596 voted early of the 3.2 million voters, or about 9 percent.
…Heath Garrett, a Republican political strategist, said early voting has caused a “monumental shift” in the way political campaigns operate. Because the early voting period is so new, there is still a lot to learn.
“Most of the campaigns in Georgia are learning from the 2008 election. 2008 showed that most campaigns, other than the presidential campaigns were not prepared for the impact of early voting,” Garrett said.

As you might imagine, early voting has created a bit of an earthquake in political advertising, sort of a ‘twin peaks’ phenomenon, as Crist and Weinman explain:

Now that voters head to the polls early, campaigns have to catch them early as well. Garrett said campaigning has become more expensive as a result.
“It’s almost like you have to have the same resources you had in the last week to 10 days in a campaign before early voting, but then you have to add onto that the resources to allow you to advertise and engage the electorate in the weeks leading up to early voting,” Garrett said.
“With your paid advertising, you have to peak just before and right around the beginning of early voting, which is 45 days prior to Election Day. And then you have to sustain some kind of paid advertising now for that entire period of time. Then you have to repeak as you get into the week of what we call advance voting heading right into Election Day.”
Garrett said there is a big difference between what the gubernatorial and Senate campaigns can do and how the down-ticket races cope with the costs of early voting.
In a state with a population of 10 million, the cost of advertising and direct mail in Georgia is expensive…”Those campaigns don’t have the budget to do television or radio so they really have to rely on good, old-fashioned grass-roots campaigning,” Garrett said.

The authors add:

[Republican] Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s campaign officials said volunteer efforts have been prolonged.
“With an increasing number of early voters casting their ballots before TV commercials air and mail arrives, it’s more important than ever to establish a grass-roots organization that can build support for a candidate prior to early voting,” said Ryan Cassin, Cagle’s campaign manager. “This is why the lieutenant governor has worked so hard to cultivate an aggressive grassroots network in all 159 counties, and grow his team of supporters on social media like Facebook.”…Cagle still plans traditional forms of outreach, such as TV and mail ads, during the latter stages of the campaign. But the grass-roots effort has played a large part of the early campaign, Cassin said.

There are concerns about how early voting affects the overall quality of campaigns, explain Weinman and Crist:

Douglas Young, a political science professor at Gainesville State College, isn’t so sure the 45-day time frame is a good idea…”On one hand, I respect the desire to try to help more people vote because things can always come up unexpectedly on Election Day with the weather or car trouble,” he said. “However, I’m troubled by the fact that Georgians can vote so early. If you look at American history, so often in the last six weeks of campaigning is when important debates occur. So many other events can take place after people have voted.”
This includes news media uncovering new information, candidates disclosing each other’s potential weaknesses and the release of financial information, he said…”A good survey might poll those who voted several weeks early before more information came out and how many regret having voted early,” Young said. “I think a week or two weeks is gracious time to get your act together and get to the polls. Six weeks out is long before relevant information may come out.”

Go negative early seems to be the new political mantra:

Garrett said the effect of such prolonged negative campaigning has yet to be seen…”If you’re in a competitive race, the negative attacks all start earlier,” Garrett said. “I think we’re going to learn a lot this year from that kind of impact.”

Early voting may also amplify the utility of ‘new media,’ especially at local levels, report Crist and Weinman:

Grassroots and social media campaigning is certainly helping Chad Cobb, a Democrat running for Georgia House District 26…”I’m not doing signs because I haven’t had financing as far as getting those, but I do hope to do a radio ad and newspaper ad the week before Election Day,” he said. “Facebook is a gold mine for campaigning. That’s what I started in June knowing I didn’t have a Democrat opponent for the primary. After that, I knew I could reach out and talk to the people in my district. It’s more of a grass-roots campaign.”
For Carol Porter, the Democrat lieutenant governor candidate, social media also is the answer…”Early voting has changed the way we think about campaigns, and the new dynamic is Facebook, Twitter and all the other ways you reach people where they are,” said Liz Flowers, Porter’s press secretary. “Websites are a more prominent campaign tool than in the past, and Carol gets up every morning to post something on Facebook and Twitter. It’s not something the staff does, which happens in other campaigns. She puts down what is on her mind so people can directly connect to her.”

Early voting has apparently added intensity to the traditional ‘boiler room’ GOTV effort, as well, report the authors:

The Democratic Party of Georgia has set up 15 field offices across the state – its most ambitious field program ever – and filled them with people to call registered voters and encourage them to vote early, party spokesman Eric Gray said.
So far, the offices have made more than 100,000 calls statewide. That effort frees up candidates, who are under more strain with the early-voting timetable than the traditional model of nearly everyone voting on the first Tuesday in November.
“This is still pretty new territory we’re trying to navigate,” Gray said. “The candidates have to be everywhere for six weeks before the election instead of one week.”

As a resident of Georgia, I’ve been somewhat awed by the ubiquity of former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes’ internet banner attack ads, lambasting his Republican opponent for Governor, Nathan Deal as “too corrupt, even for congress.” I do a good bit of political net-surfing, and I’ve seen his ads, which I assume are keyed to net-surfer’s zip codes, flickering on websites everywhere during the last month or so. Barnes is surging nicely in a major “red south’ race that pundits are rating in toss-up territory.
Deal has responded with a YouTube video, “…If you go early and get the voting out of the way, you can just fast-forward through all of those bad commercials that my opponent is running,” Deal says.
Game-changer that it is in individual campaigns, early voting hasn’t yet translated into a significant expansion in overall voter turnout. In their article, “Reducing the Costs of Participation: Are States Getting a Return on Early Voting?” in the Political Research Quarterly, Joseph D. Giammo and Brian J. Brox cite “the puzzle” of why governments have implemented early voting when it hasn’t had much enduring effect on turnout, and note further, in the article abstract:

…Early voting seems to produce a short-lived increase in turnout that disappears by the second presidential election in which it is available. They also address whether the additional costs to government are worth the negligible increase in participation. They conclude that these reforms merely offer additional convenience for those already likely to vote.

Makes sense. Folks well-organized enough to vote early would likely vote even if the early opportunity isn’t available. We might see some improvement as boomer generations mature. But I don’t think early voting is the “killer app” for overall turnout that internet/cell phone voting or automatic registration might be.
For the campaigns of 2010, however, expect those candidates who have planned well for early voting to have an edge.

One of the tactics Republicans favor for deflecting attention from their voter suppression efforts is launching unmerited accusations of fraud on the part of pro-Democratic groups and individuals. For a glimpse of how this works, check out “Despite Dearth Of Evidence, Right Wing Voter Fraud Fear Machine Carries On” by Ryan J. Reilly and Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo. The authors recount the smears against ACORN and the phony charge that the New Black Panthers were intimidating voters, and then explain how these incidents are being regurgitated in the latest fear-mongering campaign:

The most prominent example, of course, is the aforementioned New Black Panthers case. After the Obama administration decided only to act against one member, ordering him away from polling places in Philadelphia until 2012, Adams and other Bush appointees cried foul. They allege that Obama’s DOJ, under Attorney General Eric Holder, is purposely dropping cases against black defendants, and got the conservative-dominated Commission on Civil Rights to investigate it. Gail Heriot, who sits on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, expressed concern in one meeting that the New Black Panther who held a nightstick at the polling place could “just hop on a bus” and intimidate other voters on election day this year.
That case has gotten new life in the headlines as the election nears. Last week, the former head of the voting rights division, Chris Coates, defied the DOJ and testified before the commission. Before that, the DOJ’s inspector general announced he would investigate allegations that the department is handling cases based on race.
Other cases trumpeted by the right have similar racial undertones. In Harris County, Texas, a tea party offshoot called True The Vote and the Republican registrar of voters have accused a low-income voter registration program of falsifying thousands of applications in an effort to conduct “an organized and systematic attack.” True The Vote says they found the alleged fraud by scouring voter registration records in districts with a high number of households with six or more registered voters — which also happened to be the predominantly poor, black voting districts. True The Vote is now advocating for proof of citizenship to be required at the polls. And the Tea Party Nation has told its members to “steal their good idea.”

Slajda and Reilly also report that a former ACORN employer, now a “whistle-blower,” Anita MonCrief, is whipping up tea party participants to take up the GOP voter fraud crusade, urging them to monitor welfare offices and bus stops etc., where she claims liberals are ripping off votes. “I called it ‘Operation Darkie Shield,'” she reportedly said at one recent conference.
In Wisconsin, the authors note, someone put up billboards “featuring dark-skinned, jailed figures who admit to voter fraud to warn Milwaukee residents of jail time if they vote illegally.” GOP candidate for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has said “As governor, I will sign into law a bill to require a photo ID to vote.”
So, for Democrats, it comes down to teaching poll watchers the true rules and procedures, so they won’t be hustled by suppression or fraud scams. “We just want to make sure that everyone is clear on the rules — that voters know their rights, that these groups know what they are and aren’t allowed to do,” said Tova Wang, Senior Democracy Fellow at Demos.
“Every single election there are these allegations of voter fraud that turn out to be mostly untrue and every year we find that there might be a very small handful of voter fraud cases but nothing on the order of what is alleged,” Wang said.
The fear-mongering about fraud and the attack against ACORN has worked depressingly well for Republicans. They succeeded in destroying one of the most successful organizations dedicated to registering poor and minority voters. James O’Keefe has since been discredited, but right-wing voter suppression operatives are still at work, as they have been for decades, making false accusations and looking for new ways to suppress progressive voters. Democrats have gotten smarter about challenging their campaigns, but enhanced vigilance is needed.

Just in case you haven’t had enough political loony tunes from the unhinged right today, here’s a couple of tidbits that have recently emerged about Rand Paul’s Senate campaign. First, from Joseph Gerth’s article “Rand Paul part of AAPS doctors’ group airing unusual views” in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters
…Speaking to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons’ annual conference last October in Nashville, Paul said he has been a member of the group since at least 1990…”I use a lot of AAPS literature when I talk,” he told the group.
…Dr. George Nichols, Kentucky’s former longtime medical examiner, said the AAPS’ positions sound like a combination of “pseudo-science, public policy and mysticism.”
And Mother Jones, a liberal magazine that wrote about the group earlier this year, has said the group is “hardly part of a mainstream medical society. Think (Fox News commentator) Glenn Beck with an MD.”

OK, queue up Twilight Zone music for this one:

…On its Website, the AAPS included an article in October 2008 titled, “Is Obama a Brilliant Orator … or a Hypnotist?” It cites an unsigned paper suggesting that Obama used hypnotic techniques and speech patterns in his 2008 campaign.
The paper bases its finding on the work of a controversial psychologist, Milton Erickson, who died 30 years ago and pioneered the also-controversial field of neuro-linguistic programming, which purports to use voice patterns to subliminally influence people’s decisions.
The paper claims to examine Obama’s speeches “word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.”
The paper goes on to say that Obama’s “mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because ‘Obama is the greatest leader of a generation’ who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically ‘inspires’ by giving speeches. Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.”
The AAPS article notes that the Obama campaign logo “might just be the letter ‘O,’ but it also resembles a crystal ball, a favorite of hypnotists.”
And it suggests that hypnosis is the reason some Jewish people backed him.
“It is also interesting that many Jews are supporting a candidate who is endorsed by Hamas, Farrakhan, Khalidi and Iran,” the article says.

Oy. Also in the Courier-Journal, Stephenie Steitzer’s “Conway camp calls on Paul to return money from white separatists” reports:

Read more…

Democratic ad-makers should have a gander at Steven Leser’s post at op-ed news, “2010 Election – A Democratic Momentum Shift Begins to Materialize,” not so much for the optimistic outlook as for the way Leser frames his critique of several Republican candidates and their party. Leser cites his reasons for the Democratic surge, including:

Republicans have been trying to make the case since a month into the Obama administration that Obama’s policies were too extreme left (they aren’t, if anything they are center-left). Instead of trying to follow-up that line of attack with center-right candidates, they nominated the most radical right wingnut candidates this country has ever seen. While it seems like I am saying the same things the Republicans and conservative media are saying, from the opposite side of course, unlike the Republicans, I can back up my claim. Consider the following:
While we are accustomed to Republican candidates being against a woman’s right to have an abortion, five high-profile Tea Party Republican SENATE candidates, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, are even against a woman’s right to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest! Women would have to have their rapists baby. Girls raped by an uncle or cousin or their fathers would have to give birth to a child from a resulting pregnancy.
…How does that square with the two year long Tea Party talking point that says that government is too intrusive and should stay out of people’s lives? How about the continued Republican/Tea Party fight against gay rights including the right for gays to serve in the military and marry? If you do not have the freedom to have consensual sex with other adults and have a choice over whether you reproduce (particularly if raped), I’d say that the rest of the freedoms really don’t matter much.

Leser goes on to describe the lunacy of Christine O’Donnell’s ideas about religion and science, Carl Paladino’s ugly flirtations with racism and the GOP’s WV U.S. Senate candidate John Raese’s celebration of upper-class privilege, along with Newt Gingrich’s lack of cred as a spokesman for ‘family values.’
With respect to the Republicans’ Speaker in Waiting, Leser notes what a GOP takeover of the House would mean for the speakership:

Regarding the “Pledge” the Republicans put forth, Republican house minority leader Boehner made the lack of a plan in “the pledge” clear on Fox News last Sunday when he said “The Pledge just lays down the pathway towards the possibility of building a framework for possible plan to have a real plan in the future.”

Leser provides a video showing more of Boehner’s ridiculous jive-talk. Leser concludes:

…While most Americans are normally too busy to take note of the latest Republican manufactured outrage or conservative media hyperbole, when it gets down to the 60 days before an election, people start taking a closer look. The trend in polling shows that what the American people are seeing with that closer look is not to their liking. Republicans, of course, see the danger in what is happening and in response, many campaigns are pulling back from media appearances and canceling debates with their Democratic opponents. I think it is too late and the momentum has shifted. It became too late when the Republicans nominated these wingnutty teabaggers for house and senate seats.
…The polls say the American people are having second thoughts about putting the Republican/Tea Party bums in the driver’s seat. You can almost hear what they are thinking. What are these Tea Party folks trying to sell us? Who are these crazy candidates? Why is a more severe version of the same stuff that put us into the economic crisis we are in better than the policies that have stabilized the economy? With those questions, the Republicans are seeing the Senate slip away and their hope of a Republican majority in the House start to appear in jeopardy.

Leser’s analysis makes good sense. and Democratic candidates may be able to draw from some of his framing to good effect.