If you were wondering how low could the GOP go in order to hold the governorship of Texas — yes, that Texas, the one that has the Governor who talks up secession — take a peek at Suzy Khimm’s Mother Jones article “Serial Butt-Biting GOP Operative Sinks Teeth Into Texas Race.”
You probably heard that Governor Rick Perry is in serious electoral trouble, which is no small achievement in one of the reddest of states. Perry, it seems is in a dead heat with Houston’s Democratic Mayor Bill White, who Khimm calls “the strongest gubernatorial contender that Texas Democrats have seen in years.” Here’s Khimm on the Perry campaign’s latest connivance in cahoots with Charles Hurth III, a GOP operative who has a somewhat bizarre personal history:

…Last month, Hurth and two other GOP operatives–one a former top aide to Texas Gov. Rick Perry–were implicated in a scheme to bankroll a petition drive to put the Green Party on the ballot. It is an apparent ploy to siphon votes away from Perry’s Democratic challenger, former Houston Mayor Bill White. He’s an appealing target: Tied with Perry in the latest poll…
…Hurth’s first claim to fame was being sued in 1987 for approaching a fellow law student in a bar and biting her on the buttocks so hard that she required medical attention. During the trial, Hurth admitted that he’d used the same toothy overture to approach two other women at fraternity parties–and he said that his latest victim should have taken the gesture as a compliment. The jurors didn’t buy it, and Hurth was successfully sued for $27,500. Since then, he has dedicated himself to being a persistent pain in the butt for Democrats, setting up shop in a tiny Missouri town to create a clearinghouse for Republican electoral schemes. The latest came this spring, when Hurth and his allies succeeded in getting the Greens on the 2010 ballot.

If that wasn’t sleazy enough,

…The Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in early June against a Hurth-run nonprofit called Take Initiative America, as well as Arizona-based GOP consultant Tim Mooney and “unknown conspirators” for their role in the effort. Mooney has admitted that he funneled money through Hurth’s organization to pay Free and Equal Inc., a Chicago-based petition-gathering company that ended up amassing 92,000 signatures for the Texas Green Party’s ballot drive. According to a court document, Hurth’s group spent $532,500 on the effort.

Yes, there’s more:

…This isn’t the first time that Mooney and Hurth have resorted to such schemes to help Republicans at the polls. In 2004, Hurth set up an organization called Choices for America that furtively solicited help from Republicans to get then-presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, among other states. Mooney assisted with Hurth’s 2004 effort, along with Dave Carney, George H.W. Bush’s former political director who’s now one of Rick Perry’s top consultants. At the time, Carney acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that he was trying to gather signatures for Nader in order to help George W. Bush get reelected. According to the script for the petition drive, canvassers were instructed to tell Bush supporters, “Without Nader, Bush would not be president.”
Three years later, Hurth undertook yet another effort to manipulate electoral politics to the Republicans’ advantage. In 2007, Take Initiative America funded a California ballot initiative that would have distributed the state’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-takes-all. Had it succeeded, the effort would have greatly benefited Republican presidential contenders in the state. Hurth similarly refused to reveal the donor behind the effort, who finally came forward after Democrats accused the group of money-laundering and California officials vowed to investigate. Paul Singer, a hedge-fund manager and major Giuliani fundraiser, admitted that he gave $175,000 to the effort…

Khimm goes on to report that the Texas Green Party accepted the money, probably knowing that it could be coming from Republicans and that the state Democratic Party is continuing its legal challenge to ascertain exactly who funded the GOP-backed petition drive. It would be ironic indeed if the fallout is such that Perry narrowly loses because the efforts of Republican activists to divide the Democrats ends up winning them the majority of swing voters who don’t like underhanded ballot manipulation games.

I don’t know how much Rand Paul’s latest tin-eared gaffe will cost him in terms of votes in the KY senate race (AP report here). But I’m pretty sure he didn’t win any hearts and minds in the Louisville forum, where he commented on poverty. Paul said “The poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world…” and referenced an old propaganda film that showed color TV sets in homes of the poor.
For sheer arrogance, it may not top Jim Bunning’s ‘Tough Shit’ response to a question about unemployment, but it reflects a similar, clueless spirit. Kentucky has been hit harder by unemployment than most states, and tied for second of the 50 states in percentage of residents living in poverty.
Paul’s Democratic opponent Attorney General Jack Conway didn’t pounce on Paul’s remark, a missed opportunity to make Paul back up and eat it. All is not lost, however. Conway should still be able to make Paul elaborate. One possible response to get things rolling:

Mr. Paul’s remarks reveal a disturbing callousness about poverty and a profound ignorance about the economic hardships many Kentuckians are experiencing. Kentucky doesn’t need another deaf ear toward working people in the U.S. Senate, and we certainly don’t need another errand boy for the rich representing our state.

Kentucky is tricky political terrain, fairly described as a red state in recent years. That’s not the same thing, however, as saying a majority of KY voters have unlimited tolerance for would-be leaders who keep making embarrassing remarks.

There’s an interesting sub-drama playing out in the Nevada Senate race. (Update : Thanks to Jim Gibson for correcting the state) Kristi Keck at CNN.com reports on Sharron Angle’s efforts to tone down her message and persona to the point where she appears to have an actual chance of being taken seriously by a majority of voters. Here’s how it’s playing in the website campaign:

In Nevada, Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle last week unveiled a revamped website that no longer details some of her more controversial positions, such as her calls to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and support for a nuclear waste dump facility at Yucca Mountain.
The campaign of Angle’s November opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, posted a copy of Angle’s original site at www.therealsharronangle.com. Angle’s campaign sent a “cease and desist” letter to Reid’s campaign, saying that the website falsely represented itself as Angle’s website.
Reid’s campaign temporarily removed the site, but the Nevada Democratic Party reposted it, claiming First Amendment protection. Reid’s campaign said Angle was trying to mask her views, but Angle’s campaign insisted its Democratic opponent was “doing desperate things to win.”

Keck quotes Angle copping a plea on a conservative radio program: “Today, I actually softened because I’m being held accountable for every idle word.” Not being a career politician, she said she doesn’t always say the best words.
John Avlon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America,” explains in Keck’s article: “When you are all of a sudden confronted with the possibility of real governance, then some of the red meat stops making practical sense…” TDS contributor Alan Abramowitz, author of “The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy,” adds “It’s when some Tea Party candidates or figures start engaging in Obama derangement syndrome that their message starts becoming political kryptonite.”
One of the most devastating takes on Angle’s campaign comes from GOP veteran insider Michael Gerson, who writes in his WaPo op-ed column this morning:

The Republican wave carries along a group that strikes a faux revolutionary pose. “Our Founding Fathers,” says Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, “they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact, Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.”
…Mainstream conservatives have been strangely disoriented by Tea Party excess, unable to distinguish the injudicious from the outrageous. Some rose to Angle’s defense or attacked her critics. Just to be clear: A Republican Senate candidate has identified the United States Congress with tyranny and contemplated the recourse to political violence. This is disqualifying for public office. It lacks, of course, the seriousness of genuine sedition. It is the conservative equivalent of the Che Guevara T-shirt — a fashion, a gesture, a toying with ideas the wearer only dimly comprehends. The rhetoric of “Second Amendment remedies” is a light-weight Lexington, a cut-rate Concord. It is so far from the moral weightiness of the Founders that it mocks their memory.

Gerson notes that, in her fondness for excess, Angle is not alone among the current crop of high-profile GOP candidates:

The Republican wave also carries along a group of libertarians, such as Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul. Since expressing a preference for property rights above civil rights protections — revisiting the segregated lunch counter — Paul has minimized his contact with the media. The source of this caution is instructive. The fear is not that Paul will make gaffes or mistakes but, rather, that he will further reveal his own political views. In America, the ideology of libertarianism is itself a scandal. It involves not only a retreat from Obamaism but a retreat from the most basic social commitments to the weak, the elderly and the disadvantaged, along with a withdrawal from American global commitments…. Libertarianism has a rigorous ideological coldness at its core. Voters are alienated when that core is exposed. And Paul is now neck and neck with his Democratic opponent in a race a Republican should easily win.

Gerson goes on to add that the GOP “wave carries along a group more interested in stigmatizing immigrants than winning their support” and he laments the response of too many Republicans who should know better “to stay quiet, make no sudden moves and hope they go away.” He adds

…Significant portions of the Republican coalition believe that it is a desirable strategy to talk of armed revolution, embrace libertarian purity and alienate Hispanic voters… With a major Republican victory in November, those who hold these views may well be elevated in profile and influence. And this could create durable, destructive perceptions of the Republican Party that would take decades to change. A party that is intimidated and silent in the face of its extremes is eventually defined by them.

For Dems, we can hope that enough swing voters will get it sooner than later, in time to tell the Republicans in November “Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’ve got serious problems here, and this is no time for tea party nonsense.”

John McCain has gotten a blast of richly-deserved negative coverage recently about his flip-flop on immigration policy, which put him squarely in the camp of the bashers of undocumented workers. But McCain will have a ways to go to top KY Senatorial candidate Rand Paul, who has just accomplished a rare double flip-flop on an important immigration issue.
Sam Stein’s Huffpo post, “Rand Paul’s Border Fence: Candidate Does Full 180, Now Supports Physical Fence” explains it thusly:

Rand Paul’s Senate campaign has clarified yet again the Kentucky Republican’s position on how to stem illegal immigration, this time fully embracing a proposal he once criticized: the construction of a physical fence along the border.
In an email statement to the Huffington Post, Paul’s chief spokesman also insisted that Paul does not, as he has stated previously and on his own campaign website, support building an underground electrical fence along the border…Several weeks ago, the Huffington Post reported that Paul had been championing an underground electrical fence as a way to detect border crossings (law enforcement officials stationed with helicopters at nearby stations would then detain those coming into the country illegally). Senate Republicans copped to having never heard of such an idea. Libertarian immigration experts openly criticized the cost and draconian nature of the proposal.
Since then, Paul’s camp has insisted that the underground electrical fence was simply an erroneous item on the campaign website, not something that the Tea Party backed candidate actually supports. But there is clear video evidence of Paul advocating the proposal on the campaign trail. In fact, in the same video in which Paul touts building a fence underground, he also talks disparagingly about the symbolism of building an above-ground structure dividing the United States and Mexico — the very proposal his campaign is now embracing.

Here is what Paul actually said in May 2009 (video here):

“I don’t like the symbolism of a 15-foot fence going the whole border. It’s extraordinarily expensive, and it reminds me of the Berlin Wall which was built to keep people in and from fleeing to the West,” Paul said. “I think you could actually put in an electronic fence under the whole border for probably $10 or $15 million, which sounds like a lot to us but that’s peanuts. And you could probably have helicopter stations in maybe five different locations, and I think you could have any breach of the border could be stopped at any point and we send them back.”

You see, he was against the above-ground electrified fence he now supports. But he was for the underground electrified fence he now opposes. Is that clear?
Apparently Kentuckians are starting to get it, and perhaps understand why even the dean of conservative columnists, George Will has described Paul as a “frivolous” candidate. For Dems, the latest poll is encouraging. As TPM’s Eric Kleefield reports:

The new survey of the Kentucky Senate race by Public Policy Polling (D) shows a tied race in this red state, where Republican nominee Rand Paul and Democratic state Attorney General Jack Conway are competing for the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Jim Bunning. Furthermore, it’s quite possible that the negative coverage of Paul’s past opposition to the Civil Rights Act may have done him some damage.
The poll has Paul and Conway tied up at 43%-43%…The poll finds Paul with a favorable rating of only 34%, with 42% unfavorable, compared to Conway’s rating at 31%-29%.

Sure, Kentucky is a red state. But Attorney General Jack Conway, the Democratic nominee, is playing a strong hand, while Paul, who also stood up for BP, is rapidly positioning himself to be the GOP’s poster boy for ‘Saturday Night Live’ ridicule in this cycle. This Senate seat is looking increasingly like the Dems’ best shot at a pick-up.

Mike Lux has been one of the more unsparing critics of what he terms “the culture of caution” among Democratic Party leadership and the way it dims Dems’ electoral prospects. But in his Open Left post, “Thank You Republicans,” Lux nonetheless sees hope for Dems in 2010.

The good news, however, is that Republicans seem hell bent on saving us from electoral defeat by a dumbness that just seems built into their DNA: continually showing the American people how extremely right-wing they are. This will still be a hellishly tough election for Democrats to do well in, but the Republicans are at least keeping us in the game.
Their incumbent Governor of Texas is thinking about seceding. Their Senate candidates for highly targeted races like Nevada and Kentucky don’t like Social Security, Medicare, or Civil rights laws. The guy who would become the chair of the energy committee in the House, backed up by the Republican study group and many other Republican leaders, apologizes to BP. The man who would be the Republican Speaker of the House wants to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 70 years old, and considers the financial meltdown of 2008 and the resulting loss of several million jobs to be as trivial as an ant. The anti-immigrant nativists in Arizona are stirring up Hispanic voters. In successive Supreme Court nominations, Republicans in the course of playing to their base, insult first Latinos and now blacks by attacking civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall. Every one of these things, when voters are reminded that Republicans are saying them, will be repulsive to both swing and Democratic base voters.

A lot of high-profile Republican candidates of 2010 have some ‘splainin’ to do for their imprudent pronouncements. Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Joe Barton, Meg Whitman are just a few names that come to mind. And, despite the historical precedent of the party that holds the white house losing seats in their first midterm elections, Dems have a crop of exceptionally-solid candidates in high profile contests. In this context, a series of Dem campaign ads depicting the more clownish GOP statements, followed by a “Sober policies and serious leaders are needed for tough times” message might get some traction.
GOP follies notwithstanding, Dems could still lose control of both houses, if we fail to seize the opportunity. As Lux says:

It remains imperative for Democrats to embrace taking on the deep and persuasive corporate corruption of Washington. It is not enough to remind people how kooky the Republicans have become, Democrats have to become fierce advocates for change and reform, for a government that isn’t in thrall to the banks and BP and the insurance companies. When they do that, the contrast with the ever more extremist pro-corporate all the time Republicans becomes ever clearer.

As Lux concludes, “…Now the Democrats need to be bold enough and tough enough to take advantage of the gifts they have been given.”

Rhodes Cook, senior columnist at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, has some encouraging observations for Democratic candidates’ mid term prospects. Cook sees 2010 Dems in much better shape relative to the 1994 disaster. First, it’s about exposure, says Cook:

Fully half of the Democratic seats in that strongly anti-incumbent, anti-Democratic election 16 years ago were in districts that had voted for the Republican presidential ticket in one or both of the previous two presidential elections. This time, just one third of Democratic seats are in similarly problematic territory.
It is an important distinction since the vast majority of House seats that the Democrats lost in 1994 – 48 of 56, to be precise – were in “Red” or “Purple” districts. And this year, the Democrats have fewer of such districts to defend…The number of “Blue” districts they hold has risen by 43, from 128 in 1994 to 171 today, while the number of “Purple” districts they must defend has dropped by 39 (from 77 to 38). Meanwhile, the total of “Red” districts occupied by House Democrats is down this year by four from 1994 (from 51 to 47).

Even in 1994, notes Cook, “House Democrats ran very well in “Blue” districts that year. They lost barely 5% of those that voted for the party’s candidate in the previous two presidential elections.” If that pattern holds in November, Dems should keep their House majority.
Second, Cook sees Dems as “a more cohesive, top-down party than they were in 1994,” and adds,

Now, the Democrats have the look of a much stronger party. They are coming off a string of five consecutive presidential elections since 1992 in which their candidate has swept at least 180 districts each time. The byproduct of this consistent top of the ticket success has been the creation of more hospitable “blue” districts for House Democrats than their colleagues enjoyed in 1994.

Third, Cook finds encouragement for Dems in the House “special elections”:

But in recent decades, if a “big wave” election was brewing, there were signs of it in the special House elections that preceded the fall voting. That was the case in early 1974, when Democrat John Murtha scored a special election victory for a Republican seat in western Pennsylvania that proved a precursor of huge gains for his party that fall.
It was also the case in early 1994, when Republicans picked up a pair of Democratic seats in Kentucky and Oklahoma. And it was the case again in early 2008, when Democrats peeled off a trio of Republican seats in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi.
This election cycle, Republican Scott Brown has already scored a conspicuous special Senate election win in Massachusetts. But Republicans have been unable to post a similar high-profile breakthrough on the House side in spite of a handful of opportunities.
To be sure, Republicans did pick up a previously Democratic seat May 22 in Hawaii, where the incumbent had resigned to focus on his campaign for governor. But the victory by Republican Charles Djou was clearly a fluke. In a district that Obama had carried in 2008 with 70% of the vote, Djou prevailed with less than 40% as two major Democratic candidates divided the bulk of the remaining votes. There was no provision for a runoff election.
Much more noteworthy have been the special elections held over the last year in a trio of “Purple” districts. Republicans were unable to win any of them. Two were in upstate New York, the other Murtha’s seat in southwest Pennsylvania.
A GOP victory in the latter contest on May 18 would have been a loud reminder of 1974 – rekindling memories of how Murtha’s special election victory served as a harbinger of his party’s great success that fall.
That the vote last month was a loss for the Republicans, though, underscored the opposite – that winning a House majority this year might not be nearly as easy for the GOP as many political observers have predicted.

As Cook concludes, “…There are plenty of targets for the Republicans this fall. But there are not as many ripe ones as was the case in 1994.”

I’m liking the DNC’s just-launched ‘Accountability Project.’ It’s a gutsy idea, creating a video bank of Republican gaffes, which can be tapped for mash-ups by gonzo vj’s. This is another good sign that the Democratic party is shifting gears into more of an attack mode. The idea is not only to capture GOP gaffes, but also to encourage and support the making of political ads/video clips attacking Republicans by anyone who wants to try. Here’s how the Accountability Project explains it’s purpose on its new web page, which already has a few great clips:

For too long, our politics has been poisoned with misinformation, lies and double-speak. The most powerful way to combat these tactics is to drag them into the light of public scrutiny.
The Accountability Project is a volunteer platform to document Republican candidates and their public statements at local events, as well as their campaign tactics. The Accountability Project allows you to submit videos, recordings, and other items for publication online, so that candidates see that there’s a cost to their dishonesty.

Christina Bellantoni of Talking Points Memo explains it this way:

The Democratic National Committee today is launching a new effort to allow citizens on their side “keep track” of Republican candidates on every ballot nationwide, in hopes of a voter capturing a so-called “macaca moment.” The DNC’s latest effort to influence the midterm elections, called the Accountability Project, will act as a database of campaign events and, Democrats hope, every gaffe, goof and outlandish policy position.
The task: take a camera to a political event and “hold Republicans accountable for misleading claims, lies, and unseemly behavior,” the DNC says. The site will allow for uploads but also provide clips for download so voters can make their own mashups or ads.

Up till now, Dems have been a little too casual about documenting and using myriad GOP gaffes and their lamer policy statements — we use stuff that the MSM happened to tape and share, allowing them to be our first line editor. No more. From now on, Dems will more pro-actively seek out Republicans talking and otherwise behaving badly and make them answer for it.
More squeamish Dems may wince at the inevitable comparison to ‘gotcha’ journalism. But we are not talking entrapment set-ups here, of the sort that Republicans roundly applauded when the pimped-out young Republican toppled ACORN with his phony scam and was hailed as a GOP hero. Instead, the Accountability Project will film Republicans in their natural habitat, doing what they do best — paranoid bellowing at tea party demos, groveling at the feet of oil barons, snarling about immigrant workers hired by their contributors etc. Think Trent Lott, George Allen, Rand Paul, Joe Barton and the like tracked by progressive VJ’s. The possibilities are limitless.
Let a thousand YouTubes bloom.

They’re talking class warfare out in the Golden State, or at least Anthony York is, in his ‘PolitiCal’ blog at the L.A. Times. York spotlights a new ad (see below) from California Working Families entitled “Whitman’s World, which portrays the Republican gubernatorial nominee, not without reason, as a fat-cat jet-setter, who stashes her wealth in an off-shore tax haven. Here’s York’s take:

In the third ad released by California Working Families 2010, the group tries to make the connection between Whitman’s personal penchant for private jets and her economic policies for the state. The ad derisively describes “Whitman’s world,” — a place with “tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, but nothing for the middle class.”

Whitman has net worth in the ballpark of $1.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine. She is said the be the 4th richest woman in CA, coming from a background of “multiple lines of great wealth & great connections,” according to Hannah Bell of Democratic Underground. Here’s the ad:

Read more…

Open Left‘s Mike Lux, always one of the more insightful progressive bloggers on Democratic strategy, has one of his most perceptive posts to date, cross-posted at HuffPo.
Lux. a member of the TDS editorial board, begins by conceding that better polls indicate that the GOP is dominating the framing battle leading up to the November elections, with the meme that “big government,” controlled by Democrats has become “overreaching and ineffective.” He then addresses one oft-proposed remedy, that Dems move to the right, and provides a thorough shredding of the strategy:

This was the path followed by a lot of Democrats in the 1994 and 2002 elections, when the national tide was clearly moving against us. They played defense, started voting with the Republicans a lot, and ran a lot of ads bragging on how much they (a) disagreed with Clinton (in ’94) or (b) agreed with Bush (in ’02). This strategy arguable could have saved a few, but mostly it was a flaming disaster. Of the 52 House members and 8 Senators who lost in 1994, most of them were ones who went with that I’m-a-lot-more-conservative-than-the-national-Dems strategy. And the 2002 candidates who went that direction fared even worse- the only competitive Senate races where Democrats won that year were Landrieu in LA and Tim Johnson in SD. While neither of them ran as flaming liberals, they survived mostly because they put unprecedented amounts of money and effort into turnout out minority communities (Native Americans in SD, African-Americans in LA) in their states.
There are multiple reasons the almost-a-Republican strategy tends not to work. First of all, you tend to depress your base vote even more than it is already depressed. The biggest single factor in 1994, 2002, and the big defeats Democrats have suffered so far this cycle in MA, NJ, and VA was that the electorate has so many fewer of the youth, unmarried women, and minority voters that tend to vote strongly Democrat. They just aren’t coming out to vote. A candidate who moves steadily to the right isn’t likely to motivate those voters to turn out.
Secondly, moving to the right reinforces the negative anti-Democratic dynamic in voters’ minds. If the Democrat sounds like a Republican, and no one is articulating a Democratic frame, it’s a big problem for a Democrat to convince voters- swing or base- why they shouldn’t just go for the real McCoy, a genuine Republican. If no one is making the case why Democratic principles and policies are good, the electorate will keep moving right. Leaving the playing field re the essential framing of the race is never a good idea.
Third, a strategy of walking away from the Democratic Party keeps a Democratic candidate on the defensive for the entire election. The whole narrative of the race becomes “have they walked away enough from Obama/the national party/health care/the stimulus” ad infinitum. I have been volunteering for, working for, or consulting for candidates for about 40 years now, and I have rarely seen a candidate win who was on the defensive for the whole election. I understand how candidates react when they feel besieged and under attack, that you want to pull back the drawbridge and go into a defensive crouch. But if you set up the frame for the entire election in that manner- that even though I’m running on the Democratic line, I’m really not as much of a Democrat as my opponent says I am- you are likely to lose. The candidate, and party, on offense is the one that wins the vast majority of the time.

The better strategy, argues Lux, is to “to go on offense, and to reset the frame in this election” and then he provides this insightful distinction:

…There is genuine anger out there, but it’s not only anger at government or the Democrats; it is anger at the big corporate interests who have messed up our economy and who seem to control our government. The swing voters who are disillusioned with government are in great part disillusioned with the fact that government seems to be in bed with big corporate special interests. And the disappointment with Democrats by both swing and base voters not very interested in showing up to vote is that the Democrats didn’t deliver on the change they promised: the big bankers got bailouts and bonuses while unemployment stayed high; there seemed to be no change in the corruption that allowed BP to drill a faulty well with no decent plan in case of a spill; deficits keep going up while government contractors keep getting rich and regular folks don’t seem to be getting much of the benefit.
I think Democrats should be honest in recognizing those feelings, and not try to pretend the Democratic Party has done everything right in taking on corporate special interests. The frame needs to be about not just taking on big corporations, but taking on corporate corruption of our government…

Lux characterizes the 2010 campaign as “a blame election,” adding,

…Voters are in a foul mood, and they are trying to decide who to blame- or to put it in a somewhat more constructive way, who to hold accountable. Right now, they are leaning heavily toward that being the Democrats, since they control government and government hasn’t delivered jobs or the change that was promised.

It’s a painful truth to accept. But Lux charts a hopeful course:

…To change that inclination in swing voters, and to motivate their own disaffected base, Democrats need to be very aggressive in framing the election about cleaning up the corporate corruption that permeates our government.
It might not work, but it’s got a lot better shot than the I’m-kind-of-a-Republican-even-though-I-am-running-on-the-Democratic-ballot-line strategy that failed so miserably in 1994 and 2002. DC pundits and NYTimes writers like Matt Bai don’t believe a message going after big corporations works in modern America, but I don’t think they talk to enough folks like the ones I grew up with in the working class Midwest. Yes, there is anger at government and the incumbents who people believe have failed them. There is a feeling of bitterness that both parties have failed to deliver, and so we may see a third election in a row where the President’s party gets hammered. But the anger at corporations, and corporation corruption of our government, also runs deep. And if Democrats are brave enough to be aggressive about taking that corruption on, they could reap the benefit.
The Democrats have one chance to get this right. If they stay on defense, or are too tentative in their message, they will get swamped. If they gamble and take on the mantle of cleaning up Washington’s corporate swamp, they have a chance at doing a lot better than anyone thinks.

I think Lux’s prescription is right on time. The BP oil spill is providing vivid, horrific and daily reminders of corporate corruption to an unprecedented extent. Republican office-holders are providing tone-deaf gifts to Democrats in the form of their expressions of sympathy with BP and there is ample documentation of corruption in the Mineral Management Service under President Bush. If Dems don’t make the most of this opportunity to dramatize the connection between Republicans and “Washington’s corporate swamp,” we can expect the worst outcome in November. It’s the difference between riding a wave of discontent and being crushed by it.

The bumper sticker above says it well, Big Oil’s Republican toady in the House of Reps could well become the next chairman of the House Committee charged with preventing horrific oil spills. Rep. Barton’s groveling was disgusting enough, punctuated as it was by his ridiculous retraction, which should indicate to his alert constituents that his principles are somewhat flaccid, to put it charitably. According to OpenSecrets.org, Barton received more dough from Oil and gas companies during the entire 1989-2010 election cycle than all other members of the House of Reps. (For an amusing graphic take on the sorry episode, check out Mike Luckovitch’s cartoon here).
In my decades of watching party politics, I don’t recall a more emblematic moment for the GOP. This is who they too often are — groveling lackeys for Big Oil in particular and Big Business in general, even though it insults the families of the workers who were killed in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, the thousands who have lost their livelihood and turns a blind eye toward the massive destruction of wildlife and our natural heritage. That they tried to wash it away with a half-assed apology was predictable. Most Republicans are pretty clever about hiding their worst impulses, when corporate abuse becomes a major controversy — we don’t hear much from Dick Cheney, for example, on this topic. But every now and then the cover is inadvertently lifted.
Barton may get re-elected despite his screw-up, and he may or may not be removed from his ranking position as chair-in-waiting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But If thoughtful voters, not just in Barton’s district, but in every House district in the U.S., needed a clinching argument to vote Democratic in November, Barton has provided it.