I’ve been and continue to be quite busy. I just did most of the work to put the November/December issue of the Washington Monthly online. Look for it on Monday. It will be good.
What’s on your mind?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Very sad at the death of Tom Menino, long-time mayor of Boston, a good man, a real mensch, the polar opposite of a self-centered slick* pol, and a man who knew the importance of good government and made it his life’s work. Boston is immensely indebted to the tremendous work he did for every neighborhood, every aspect of it the city, during his 20 years in that corner office. He was, for example, a staunch Catholic and a powerful friend to the LBGT community.
Knew this was coming when he let it be known he’d suspended treatment for inoperable cancer but still shocked at how quickly the end came thereafter.
RIP, Mr. Mayor.
*As Barney Frank noted in an interview with NECN this evening, “Mumbles” Menino could make him sound articulate.
Colorado polling all over the place
That’s why I remain optimistic about CO. I don’t think any of the polling is in the least bit accurate. One of these outfits is going to be wildly wrong.
It’s interesting to look at the 2010 GOP “big gains”: IL, IN, PA, WI. The first one was open (D) — with a messy history since Obama had been promoted. IN was open (DINO Bayh’s retirement) and PA (the R then D seat held by Specter who was primaried). WI was the only DEM Inc that was challenged. IN ran a former Senator who jumped out to a huge 20 point lead. They had more modest leads in the other three from 3.3 to 7.7%. All of those leads faded on election day from 1.9% to 4.9% — like a finish line incumbent rebound except three of those were for the party that had held the seat and not for the candidates who hadn’t.
That “rebound” was smaller for Bennet in CO than it was for Feingold in WI — but Bennet only needed three-plus points and Feingold needed 7.7-plus points and only got 4.9. The big Kahuna that year was Reid who got 8.3 points.
That was not seen in the four seats that flipped in 2012 — two taken by Democrats, one GOP, and one Ind. — three open and one incumbent challenged. They all added to their leads at the finish. However, it was seen in two D seats that didn’t flip. Incumbent Tester got a 4.4 bounce, and Heitcamp in the open ND seat got a 6.6 bounce.
Sen Lindsey Graham:
Lindsey has a huge 15% lead in his re-election contest, but oddly he’s only at 46%. Whereas the other SC Senator, Republican African-American Tim Scott, appointed to fill Demint’s seat and now running for the remainder of his term, has a 24% lead and a polling average of 54%.
Interesting that neither of these Christian fundamentalists has ever been married, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the folks there do seem to have a tolerance for unconventional personal relationships in their elected officials not usually seen in very red state electorates.
In SC I’m surprised that “Republican” trumps “African-American”. Is this guy some sort of Herman Cain?
One of his (ex?) staffers/interns loves the confederacy, and is basically a real-life Uncle Ruckus:
Here’s the Flag-Crazy Senate Intern Email Everyone in D.C. is Reading
Might be related to Clarence Thomas. Who has done well for himself by denying that he’s black and aligning himself with the rightwing GOP.
Charleston Southern University is an independent university partially supported by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)-affiliated South Carolina Baptist Convention. It has a large business and MBA program.
So there is some sense in which Scott is like Clarence Thomas. He was mentored by conservative religious professors interested in forming an African American student to their beliefs and providing him the network to succeed.
He is popular among white Republicans as an “I am not a racist but a conservative.” signal.
As for cognitive dissonance, a guy born the year after the Civil Rights bill passed growing up in the heavily military (and less bigoted) North Charleston community is going to have less dissonance than his parents did.
He is likely the among the first of a type that is like the movement of Catholic ethnics from the Democratic to Republican party as they gained wealth and status in their business careers.
Here’s his self-story:
According to his web site, his issues are cutting red tape, stopping the Common Core Curriculum (under the current circumstances not a bad idea), and opposing abortion.
He no doubt is what some Republicans are staking the future of the Republican Party on as the demographic shift occurs.
What this means is that Democrats are going to start to have to sell their principles and ideas instead on depending on the silent knowledge of identity politics to rally getting out the vote.
Even in triumph, Democrats cannot depend on Republicans being bigots forever, despite the white hot media fever right now.
For now, Tim Scott is a smooth operator, unlike Allen West or Ben Carson. And because of his friendship with Paul Thurmond, much more of the Strom Thurmond conservative post-Dixiecrat mode.
Just as with the Jesse Helms-James Meredith relationship, Southern politics can depart dramatically from stereotype.
Given the support that Tim Scott has gotten this year, I would not underestimate him in the future. He has legislature experience and could possibly explore the Presidency in the 2024 time frame. After all, Barack Obama has kicked down the door.
Progressives must figure out how to organize when no one is taken for granted.
He can explore, but it’s not going to happen. It was 58 eight years between the first non-Protestant, white-anglo-saxon-male POTUS and Obama. All others before and between were male WASPs. We’ll see more of the same, but one will be a female WASP. At some point probably a Latino Catholic male. But maybe not before a gay, male WASP.
Excellent point about his success. There’ve been no Jewish, Italian, Greek (although Dukakis tried) Presidents either. But since Kennedy, they all claim to be Irish. Even Obama got in a claim from the Dunham side of the family.
Claim is right. One of my Irish friends says Reagan was not Irish at all but Scotch-Irish, i.e. an Ulsterman.
Key word in that sentence is “intern”. Not all interns move on to some other political office. This guy apparently has figured out the Allen West shtick.
I’m surprised their heads don’t explode with all the cognitive dissonance they carry around with themselves everyday.
What heads? The empty thing supporting their faces?
property in banglore
No more intertubes for me tonight! I’ve got packing to do. Tomorrow is my last day before starting my birthday week Hawaii vacation (my bday is Nov 5, I’m actually spending weekend in Oakland then flying to Hawaii on Monday)
I’ll be an ocean way from Louisiana and I plan on doing as much of a “media” and internet blackout as I am comfortable with, i.e barring some MAJOR news. BTW, I’m NOT counting election night as news. If I have my way, I won’t really know how stupid the American people might have been on next Tuesday night until I return back to Louisiana Nov 11th.
So TTFN, frog pond.
Happy Birthday and I hope you voted early or absentee.
yup. early voting ended last week here in La.
It occurred to some people that a Republican Senate puts Richard Burr in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Burr does not believe that the public should have oversight of the intelligence community. It’s pure “trust us” with him.
Isn’t Richard Burr as interesting as paint drying? He’s done absolutely nothing to distinguish himself.
If Democrats could get a solid candidate to run against him, he should be a prime target to get knocked off in 2 years, especially during a presidential year where NC should be a tossup state.
Richard Burr is secretive. An insider back-bencher that has lasted his way into a ranking member position on an important committtee. And no doubt is in the pocket of the intelligence community.
With what can you knock off a guy who has done nothing visible? Especially after he gets the perfect job to avoid accountability?
Breaking news: Eric Frein’s been captured. Nobody got hurt in the process.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/30/us/pennsylvania-trooper-shooting-suspect/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
I’m finding it entertaining that Turner and Dish Network are at each other throats negotiating and since CNN has been replaced for those of us Dish subscribers for over a week now by (chortle) MSNBC (yes Dish is running MSNBC on the CNN channel) am wondering where the ratings will end up for October and hoping that voters will be better reminded to go out and vote Progressive than they would have been if CNN had their airwaves intact.
Ran across this quote today from Isaac Asimov:
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
First, I am glad that Booman seems to have recovered from his recent medical difficulty and is busy again.
I read Ed Kilgore’s piece over at Washington Monthly about the Georgia Senate race and how racial attitudes dominate the politics there.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_10/existential_politics_in_the_de052738.php
I lived in Atlanta for 12 years, and the experiences he describes are very similar to what I had. You don’t have to go very far from Midtown or Little Five Points to run into attitudes that seem more from the 50’s than today. I am sooo glad I left there for Oregon 20 years ago.
On the Ebola front, a judge in Maine has essentially told the governor to take a hike on quarantining Kaci Hickox:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/31/health/us-ebola/index.html?hpt=hp_t2