So, the DSCC is moving in with a big buy in South Dakota. So what? You don’t live there, so what do you care? Hell, it exhausts me to even think about trying to explain the Senate race in South Dakota, let alone why you might want to give a crap about it.
Pretty much everything about American politics exhausts me right now, which is why I haven’t been writing too much. It’s not writer’s block exactly. It’s just fatigue. What are we doing? How are we going to get out of this jam? Where is all the energy we had back in 2005? Even if I had the energy to try it, I can’t organize potted plants.
I guess I am digressing. I am in a mood. There’s shit to understand about South Dakota but the public is being custom-fitted for a collective hazmat suit for the brain. Ebola! Benghazi! Hamas!
Who the fuck is going to read this thing anyway, which I will publish in the middle of the night? What difference will it make?
Well, judging by all the generous donations you’ve been making over the last few days, I’m guessing there are more people who still give a shit than the cable news channels want me to know about. So, here goes.
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is retiring. He’s a quiet and unassuming fellow, and was so even before he suffered a stroke that it made it hard from him to enunciate or to speak at length on the Senate floor. But, he’s a powerful man who wields the gavel on the Banking Committee which he took from Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut after Dodd retired to become a Hollywood lobbyist.
South Dakota likes banking and credit cards. They’re silly like that.
When the international banking giant Citibank moved its credit-card operations to Sioux Falls, S.D. in 1981, it altered the small Midwestern city overnight. With a population of barely 80,000 at the time, Sioux Falls still had an economy built on agriculture and meat-packing. But when state leaders, desperate to attract outside businesses during the economic recession of the early 1980s, changed South Dakota’s usury laws to eliminate the cap on interest rates and fees, Citibank came calling.
The company initially promised to bring 500 jobs to the area and to build a large facility in northwest Sioux Falls. Citibank now employs more than 2,900 workers in the city, and it anchors a financial sector that provides more than 16,000 jobs in a metro area with a growing population of nearly 230,000 residents. And according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., South Dakota holds more bank assets—$2.5 trillion—than any other state in the country.
They say that Senator Tim Johnson represents the people of South Dakota, but we know better, don’t we? He actually represents $2.5 trillion in assets, more than any other state in the country.
South Dakota! Who knew?
But Senator Johnson is retiring and someone else will have to oversee our banking laws. And that means that people are clamoring to butter up the next chairman of the Banking Committee. Could be a Democrat or it could be a Republican, but that depends on which party winds up controlling the Senate next year.
And that brings us back to Tim Johnson’s seat, because everyone has assumed for a year or more that it would soon belong to the former Republican governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds. When you read all the odds makers telling you what the chances are of the GOP taking over the Senate, they all presume that the South Dakota seat is lost. But, maybe it isn’t. Maybe Harry Reid and the DSCC have had a card up their sleeve all along.
Maybe I am already exhausted, but I am just getting warmed up. Still, in order to give myself a breather, let me have the esteemed Mark Halperin and his half-wit sidekick explain:
Public and private polls show Rounds, a former governor who easily won two terms, mired in the mid-30s with both Democrat Rick Weiland and former Republican Senator Larry Pressler within striking distance. A fourth candidate, independent Gordon Howie, is trailing, but Democrats think his presence in the race is giving them a chance to win by siphoning conservative votes. In a four-way race, less than 35 percent of the vote could be a winning total.
Democrats believe they will keep the seat in their party’s hands if either Weiland or Pressler prevails. Pressler is also running as an independent, but Democrats believe he could well caucus with them. He publicly endorsed President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Every sophisticated political strategist knows that going negative in a three-way race benefits the candidate who is neither attacking nor defending, and that means that the DSCC’s decision to blast Mike Rounds on the behalf of Democrat Rick Weiland will primarily benefit the independent Larry Pressler. That works out nicely because Pressler is polling in second place anyway. And Weiland can’t really complain because, what? He doesn’t need the help?
And, so, if all goes according to plan, the DSCC’s ad blitz will sink ex-Gov. Rounds under an ethical cloud of his own making, related to some kind of visa scandal that you really, really don’t give a shit about. And, because the public hates negative campaigning, the good people of South Dakota will also conclude that Mr. Weiland is a desperate shit-heel that they want nothing to do with. Meanwhile, over here stands Mr. Pressler, with clean hands and a wry smile. He’s above all that nepotism and mudslinging, and he’s not partisan at all. He’s a Republican who endorsed Obama. He’s two yellow stripes in the middle of the road.
Does Harry Reid give a shit? He didn’t even want Weiland to run in the first place. Weiland is a Daschle guy. And you know how that is. If you have a memory you do, anyway.
But we’re getting so far down in the weeds.
Harry Reid is a master strategist. He’s a political pugilist who keeps conjuring up stunning rabbits out of unseen hats. But I am catching on to his game, as I anticipated his move in Kansas. Yes, he could wind up orchestrating a victory in each state, both resulting in a former Republican running as an independent, becoming a U.S. Senator, and caucusing with the Democrats in the majority.
But, hark!!
Could Harry Reid’s genius be the recipe for his own political demise?
These stealth candidates of his are coming to Washington to clean out the partisanship and unlock the grid. If they aren’t already on the record as not supporting Reid for leader, they’ll be making those sounds soon. And this centrist caucus is growing. There’s the independent senator from Maine, Angus King, and the conservative senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin. Michelle Nunn and Mark Pryor say that they don’t support Reid. If they both win election, we’ve got quite a rump of senators who are willing to stick with the Democrats but not necessarily with Reid.
But, then, what if Reid is passed over? Certainly he won’t go back to being a backbencher who has to sit on committees all day. He’ll retire and the Republican governor of Nevada will appoint his replacement, giving the Republicans an extra seat and possibly changing control of the chamber back to the Republicans.
So many permutations and possibilities. So much strategizing and backstabbing and holding one’s cards close to one’s vest.
Where does the intrigue begin and end?
The incentives to backstab Reid can vary from compelling to suicidal depending on the exact composition of the Senate, which probably won’t be decided for good until Georgia finishes its run-off election in January.
It’s all so byzantine that it could actually be exciting, especially when you consider what will happen to Mitch McConnell if the GOP fails to win the Senate, and what will happen to the GOP if McConnell fails to win reelection.
Except, the Senate doesn’t do anything anymore.
And that’s the real logic behind these independent campaigns. Reid may be the man behind the curtain doing the crazy voodoo that he do, but the greater logic is that he and McConnell’s era has outlasted its usefulness and perhaps the electorate is going to have something to say about it in its unguided invisible hand kind of way.
The GOP went nuts, which perhaps is opening the way not for a third party but for the one thing our system can absorb, which is a rump of one party coming over to the other and then insisting on having its way.
That’s what the segregationists did when they left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. At first, they were Dixiecrats, remember?
