In Which I Find Myself In Agreement With Jack Kingston

So my column this past Tuesday for the Baltimore Sun was about whether and to what degree former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is an asset or liability to the Republican Party in general, and the Republicans she endorses in specific GOP primary races. The column was prompted by Palin’s conspicuously Heismann Trophy-like treatment of former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich with her Facebook-announced endorsement of Ehrlich’s virtual no-name primary opponent, Brian Murphy. A quick excerpt:*:

Mr. Ehrlich is fortunate that Ms. Palin poked her nose into Maryland's political tent to endorse Mr. Murphy. In doing so, the ex-governor who last year abandoned her post in Juneau became a useful foil for the former governor who would like this year to recapture his post in Annapolis....

Mr. Ehrlich said the snub didn't matter, but he knows better and ought to be giddy. Ms. Palin would have done far more harm to his candidacy by endorsing him, and if anything she gave Mr. Ehrlich the opportunity to polish his preferred image as a non-ideological pragmatist...

Ms. Palin has done Mr. Ehrlich a great favor. Whatever support he may lose from Palin-loving conservatives during September's primary will be more than compensated by votes he stands to gain in November from Maryland voters who distrust her.

With some of the highest negative approval ratings of any national politician, the unavoidable truth is that Sarah Palin is more of a curse than a blessing for most Republicans.

A day later, conservative Republican congressman Jack Kingston of Georgia spoke out about Palin's meddling in GOP primaries. "Why Sarah Palin decided to get in the race is beyond me," said Kingston, regarding the Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary race in which Palin endorsed a female candidate who eventually lost. "I don't know why she feels compelled to get into primaries all over the country. But, you know, fortunately Georgia voters are doing their own thinking on things like this....[I]t makes Republicans say, well, maybe we do need to rethink ... Sarah Palin, as somebody who does shoot from the hip a little bit too much."

My criticism of Palin as a liablity to her party tends to proceed from the assumption that Palin's endorsements will have the effect of helping candidates win primaries who might be too conservative (or simply too unknown or untested) to win in the general election. This was the case in Maryland, where she touted Murphy's conservative credentials in a very blue state where Ehrlich, the party's only real statewide figure of substance--former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is slowly destroying his reputation at home as well nationally--needs to position himself as close to the center as possible. But in the GA case, apparently the woman she endorsed, Karen Handel, was more moderate than the man she lost to, Nathan Deal.

So, on one hand, it would appear that Palin's impact is not necessarily to balkanize the party between hard right and center-right. But on the other, if Palin in fact drove some Republicans toward Deal, it just means that Palin is a liability no matter the ideological orientation of the candidate whom she chooses to endorse. To be fair, we can't know with absolute certainty whether and to what degree Palin's support for a candidate in fact hurts or hurt that candidate, like the Tennessee House candidate (CeCe Heil) she endorsed who lost last week. The evidence in cases like this is always to some degree circumstantial.

And then there is the related matter of Palin's own ambitions, whatever they may be. Now, perhaps I seriously misunderstand the method behind Palin's meddling madness, but her behavior looks to me like that of a politician liberated from seeking the Republican presidential nomination, rather than one with her eyes on that prize. Most smart pols avoid making primary endorsements unless the intra-party primary fight is:

(a) uncontested;
(b) features an obvious and safe favorite the whole state and/or county party leadership is backing over a bunch of wannabee cranks and yahoos;
(c) the endorser has some personal connection to a particular candidate; or
(d) the endorsee can do something unique for the endorser [e.g., the endorsee happens to be, say, the governor or state party chair of Iowa].

The Murphy-over-Ehrlich case meets none of these standards, which makes it all the more puzzling to me. Or maybe it makes perfect sense once one assumes that Sarah Palin quite simply is not running for president in 2012--which has been my contention all along. Palin poking her nose into state and local GOP races only reinforces my belief that she won't run.

Whatever she does in 2012, and however much she is hurting or helping Republican primary candidates this year, one thing is for certain: Jack Kingston isn't the first Republican Sarah Palin has frustrated, and he damn sure won't be the last.

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In the Battle Over a University, The Struggle for Iran's Future Begins

President and Leader in Happier Times

In recent months, Iranian politics has taken a back seat to developments in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Western media, with only the interminable discussions over Iran’s nuclear program eliciting much comment. But this does not mean that politics within the regime has stopped. The last three months have been dominated by a clash between President and Parliament, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bid to take over Iran’s largest private university has provoked a clash with the Principalists (the term the Fundamentalists use for themselves) majority in the Majlis , Iran’s Parliament. This clash in turn, may well foreshadow a major struggle over the succession to his office.

The battle over Azad University, a loosely affiliated system of campuses that educates more than a million students, is anything but an academic matter as its assets have a net worth of nearly 250 billion dollars. Because the university is closely linked with former President Rafsanjani, the dispute is partially an effort by Ahmadinejad to attack his powerful rival, and partially an attempt to crack down on student unrest by taking control of the largest University in the country – a university that until recently has acted as a safe haven for opposition. More importantly, however, the clash represents the changed political positions of the President and the Leader in the world created by the 2009 Presidential election

Central to the new order of things, is the independence of the President from the Leader. News reports at the time of the elections focused heavily on the person of Khamenei, something that was in many ways encouraged by the President himself, who seemed to go out of his way to separate himself from the events. Ahmadinejad left the country a day after the results were announced, and even criticized the crackdown which followed. Contrary to suggestions that the nature of his reelection would weaken him, Ahmadinejad has emerged stronger, not least because Khamenei, in the course of the elections, lost his power by becoming partisan. In reality, the Leader’s authority has always depended on mediating between factions, and while often aligned with Ahmadinejad, the very fact that he could intervene on behalf of the President’s opponents kept him vital to the President’s cause. With those opponents powerless, Khamenei influence has declined accordingly, and he has been forced to desperately move to set up new countervailing force which he can play off against the ambitions of the President.

This explains Khamenei’s increasingly desperate appeals to figures like Rafsanjani urging them to remain within the system, as well as his recent declaration that Iranians had a religious obligation to obey the Leader. While he may be many things, a fool is not one of them, and Ahmadinejad is clearly aware of where the remaining obstacles to his personal power are found. In fact, he began moving against them even before the elections last year when he sacked his Interior Minister, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, after the latter made a confidential report to the Leader involving irregularities in the 2008 Majlis elections. Traditionally Presidents defer to the Leader on appointments to the Interior Ministry, and Khamenei made his displeasure plain by making Pour-Mohammadi a personal adviser on security issues. The current clash has made the struggle explicit, as rather than being between a group of “dissident conservatives” and the President, is with Ali Larijiani, the Speaker of the Majlis, who is a former member of Khamenei’s staff, and represented him internationally. That Larijiani, a man previously close to Khamenei, is now heading a coalition stretching from the remaining Reformists in the Majlis to mainstream Principalists, is symptomatic of the degree to which Ahmadinejad is feared in powerful circles.

The question of succession looms large in these fears. With Khamenei already 75, maneuvering over the succession has been ongoing for some time. It is widely rumored that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the current Leader, is interested in the position, and that this interest has driven his efforts on behalf of Ahmadinejad in both 2005(when he urged the Revolutionary Guard to campaign in Ahmadinejad’s favor) and 2009(when it is argued he went much farther). Mojtaba however is not an Ayatollah, and has few clerical credentials, and while this may make him attractively weak to the President’s circle, any effort to elevate him would be fraught with difficulty for the same reasons. As a consequence he seems to be the only one to take his candidacy seriously. More plausible as a candidate is Ayatollah Taqi Misbah-Yazdi, Ahmadinejad’s religious mentor. Seen as the religious ideologist of the hard right in Qom, Misbah-Yazdi has repeatedly advocated the use of violence as justifiable in political disputes, and it was rumored last year that he went so far as to issue a religious edict endorsing the killing of protestors. He has defended suicide bombing, stating that “when protecting Islam and the Muslim `Ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but even is an obligation.”

The prospect of Misbah-Yazdi as Leader is something that should not frighten only Iranians. An Iranian regime freed from even the fiction of a commitment to democracy would be a close ally of dictatorships throughout the third world, while the internationalist revolutionary zeal of Misbah-Yazdi and his circle, missing in the Iranian elite since the 1980s, would be given free reign. The consequences for the West in issues ranging from the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the struggle over nuclear proliferation would be enormous with a regime that not only does not care about the international isolation sanctions bring, but would welcome it. Misbah-Yazdi has indicated that he views foreign influences as the driving force behind the alienation of Iran’s youth from Islam, and the prospect of foreign investment as the driving force behind the “apostasy” of figures like Rafsanjani. It would seem doubtful that he find much to fear from President Obama’s threats of sanctions.

The Would-Be Heir: Taqi Misbah-
Yazdi

Given the importance of the position to Iran’s future, it is unlikely that the remaining non-Ahmadinejad forces in Iran will roll over and play dead. The Assembly of Experts elections in 2006 were one of the few occasions when the normally compliant Council of Guardians roused itself against the President, disqualifying a host of pro-Ahmadinejad candidates including Misbah-Yazdi’s son. When the Assembly convened, Rafsanjani defeated Misbah-Yazdi by a vote of 41-31 for its chairmanship, with the hard-line head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Jannati taking 14 votes. Rafsanjani’s victory has proved limited however. His powerbase failed to hold together in the face of Basij intimidation last summer, and there is reason to doubt it would do much better when the stakes are potentially higher.

As a consequence, while Rafsanjani would prefer his own candidacy, and the Reformists would prefer any non-Principalist, the most likely alternative to Misbah-Yazi is likely be an anti-Ahmadinejad Principalist, with the name of Hashemi Shahroudi, the former Head of the Judiciary rising to prominence. One of the leaders of the judicial crackdown on Khatami’s Reformists,, Shahroudi hardly appears a moderate, but he has been a strong critic of Ahmadinejad, attacking the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and criticizing the state media for coverage of the previous election that he argued was biased in favor of the incumbent. It is a testament to the political weakness of the Reformists and even the moderate Principalists that they are likely to be in the position of supporting a man who jailed thousands of journalists and pro-democracy activists, but it is opposition to Ahmadinejad and not ideology that holds together the Iranian opposition, at least those parts of it that remain within the regime.

That is if they follow the rules. In the current dispute, Ahmadinejad showed few signs being willing to let the opposition of the Majlis stop him. Shortly after the vote, the Basij staged a major protest outside of the Majlis, castigating its members as thieves, and the following day they prevented enough deputies from entering to achieve a majority for reversing the earlier vote. Shortly thereafter, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani the head of the Judiciary, invalidated a court ruling which had struck down the new bill. While the Supreme Leader stepped in on July 25th to urge both sides to step back, an Iranian political analyst told the Turkish Weekly that “The Supreme Leader no longer wields the power to determine fate. Very soon, another round in the struggle for Azad University will begin.”

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Obama's "Problems" With the Left

I want to follow up Nate’s comments about the tensions between liberals and President Obama in the wake of press secretary Robert Gibbs' comments. Peter Daou, who is a veritable one-man panopticon of what's published online, provides a nice summary of general disgruntlement (prior to Gibbs' outburst) from the president's left. In a recent column that also predates the Gibbs episode, my good friend Paul Waldman of the American Prospect weighed in on how liberals are "falling out of love" with the president. Meanwhile, since the Gibbs' remarks, none other than Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison--an African American and [the lone*] one of two Muslim members of Congress--has called for Gibbs to step down; his bombastic colleague, Alan Grayson, agrees. In short, this controversy is heating up.

During a press briefing yesterday, the ever-glib Gibbs was asked about the matter by White House beat reporters:

Q: Just on another topic, what do you think the consequences should be of the comments that you made about this “professional left”?

MR. GIBBS: The consequences?

Q: Yes.

MR. GIBBS: Do you have anything in mind? (Laughter.)

Q: No supper.

Q: One House member suggested resignation, so I’m asking what you think your view is.

MR. GIBBS: I don’t plan on leaving, so--and there’s no truth to the rumor that I’ve added an inflatable exit to my office. (Laughter.)

There are a lot of moving parts to this issue of Obama's problems with and from his left flank. I basically have four, related points to make. For the benefit of organizing and presenting my ideas, and to allow readers to more conveniently respond to one or more of them by number, let me set them out as bullet points:

1. The “professional Left” and the fuller set of people who are self-identified “liberals” are different entities--and the former isn’t necessarily a representative sample of the latter. But even if the so-called professional Left were some perfect subset ideologically, the reality is that liberal supporters of the president who are working and raising their families in Peoria or Portland or Plymouth aren’t in the day-to-day business of raising political objections to this or that part of the policy agenda. On the other hand, that’s what political professionals, whatever their ideological persuasion, do every day. So it should be no surprise that, whatever complaints or grumbling may arise, support for the president among self-described, rank-and-file liberals hasn’t much changed of late and remains strong.

2. There are policy decisions and then there is the matter of policy saliency. I just finished reading Jonathan Alter’s book about Obama's first year, The Promise, and there is a moment recounted in there where the president and some of his advisers say “Shhh!” after a staffer notes that some piece of legislation (I think it was his education reform bill--man, my memory is going) will actually provide a lot of help the poor and underprivileged. The point of relaying this episode is that what a president accomplishes and what he trumpets are not always the same thing, and often for good reason(s). People with health care, for example, vote and contribute to campaigns at much higher rates than those who do not, and they were also more opposed to reform than those without health care. Though it’s not necessarily a mutually exclusive choice, if liberals had to choose between a president who passes centrist policies but talks like a tough liberal, and one who passes liberal policies but positions himself as a centrist, I presume most of them would choose the latter. Indeed, any principled liberal would have to prefer the latter. This is not to say it’s wrong to want the president to proudly proclaim himself and his policies as liberal. It’s just to say that, no matter how important words and labels are—and they are—deeds still trump them.

3. There is the intangible matter of how passionate a president gets—or rather, in this president’s case, how dispassionate Barack Obama so often remains. The book on this president's temperament is pretty simple: He’s one cool cat. But maybe too cool? To be fair, there is value in any president, and particularly the first African American president, not looking too mercurial, whimsical or uneven tempered. That said, I think some--but certainly not all--of the growing tension between the “professional left” (again, whateverinthehell that is) and the White House is a matter of optics and emphasis—that is, saliency. They’d like to see the president prioritize some of their agenda, boast about it, and express a bit more passionate advocacy for those causes. Rather than the posture of an anemic, Spock-like defender of the latest, split-the-difference policy compromise, they want to see him get his back up every now and then--you know, like an angry cat does. And yes, they want to see him sometimes reject the half-loaf and do so as a warning signal that he won’t always compromise or search out the politically practical solution. Maybe I’m wrong about all of this, but my hunch is that little gestures—like an occasional “elections have consequences” statement, or a metaphorical nose punch for conservatives or the GOP—would make a big difference. It’s not like Obama doesn’t have the capacity; anyone who saw him live on the stump in 2008, as I did, knows what he is capable of.

4. If one listens closely, you notice that the president's rhetoric and tone has started to change lately. Obviously, as the November election draws nearer the president will more often switch hats from commander-in-chief to partisan-in-chief. Hence, Obama's recent shot across the bow about how the Democrats have been governing the past 18 months while the Republicans have been politicking. If you read recent speeches he’s given at fundraiser/rallies for candidates or to raise money for the party, you’ll notice a different tone. (Read down in the middle the part of the speech he delivered Monday at a DSCC fundraiser where Obama used the car-in-the-ditch metaphor to slam the GOP.) Yes, these speeches must be contextualized because they are delivered in an environment of high-level partisan supporters. But the words are public: The White House releases full text versions that anyone can read.

In sum, does Obama have a problem on the Left? Yes. Did Gibbs' comments exacerbate those problems. Definitely yes. But is it a big problem? No--although that doesn't mean this problem won't hurt Democrats in the midterm if liberals are discouraged from turning out. I suspect we will hear some dog-whistle rhetoric and hear about some private gestures from the White House to the Left in the coming months.

*I stand--or rather, sit--corrected: Until alerted by a colleague, I was unaware that Andre Carson of Indiana is the other of two Muslims in Congress. Apologies to readers--and to Rep. Carson.

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Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Appears to Shift at Accelerated Pace

In April, 2009, when we last took a survey of gay marriage polls, we found that support for it had converged somewhere into the area of 41 or 42 percent of the country. Now, it appears to have risen by several points, and as I reported yesterday, it has become increasingly unclear whether opposition to gay marriage still outweighs support for it.

Here is a version of the graph we produced in 2009, but updated to include the dozen or so polls that have been conducted on it since that time, as listed by pollingreport.com. I have also included opinions on gay marriage from the General Social Survey, which asked about gay marriage as long ago as 1988.



The LOESS regression line now shows 50 percent opposed to gay marriage and 49 percent in support -- basically too close to call.

One caveat is that LOESS regression tends to be fairly sensitive on the endpoints, and so yesterday's CNN survey, which showed the pro-gay marriage position leading 50.5-48.5, makes a fair amount of difference. But even if we ignored that survey, support for gay marriage would instead be in the range of 45-46 percent (and opposition between 51-52 percent): that would reflect acceleration in the rate of support for gay marriage, about a 4-point gain over the past 16 months, faster than the long-term rate of increase, which has been between 1 and 1.5 points per year.

Something to bear in mind is that it's only been fairly recently that gay rights groups -- and other liberals and libertarians -- shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise. While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things like court decisions -- support for gay marriage slid backward by a couple of points, albeit temporarily, after a Massachusetts' court's ruling in 2003 that same-sex marriage was required by that state's constitution -- it seems that, in general, "having the debate" is helpful to the gay marriage cause, probably because the secular justifications against it are generally quite weak.

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CNN Poll is First To Show Majority Support for Gay Marriage

A landmark of sorts was achieved today as CNN just came out with a poll showing a 52 percent majority of Americans agreed with the statement that "gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid." Some 46 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement.



CNN also asked the question in a slightly different way to half its respondents, omitting the term "should" from the question above, i.e. "Do you think gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid?". Using that phrasing, 49 percent said yes and 51 percent said no.

Combining the two subsamples has 50.5 percent of Americans in support of gay marriage and 47.5 percent opposed: just about the barest possible majority. But a majority nevertheless, something that no previous poll had shown. An ABC/Washington Post poll from April 2009 had come the closest, showing a 49/46 plurality in support of gay marriage rights; a few other polls had also shown gay marriage to the plurality position when respondents were given a three-way choice of marriage, civil unions, and no legal recognition. But no national poll, save for one debatable case with highly unorthodox phrasing, had shown it to the the majority position.

Polls, of course, have a margin of error, and needless to say it is not yet safe to say that support for marriage equity has become the plurality, let alone the majority, position. At the same time, it is probably also no longer safe to say that opposition to same-sex marriage is the majority position, and it is becoming dubious to call it the plurality position. Opinion on the issue, instead, is close to evenly divided, with results varying somewhat depending on things like question wording. It may be noteworthy that CNN tends to find slightly higher levels of support for gay marriage with a question that is explicitly framed around constitutional rights, echoing arguments that are very much at the center of the ongoing legal case against California Proposition 8.

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Some Cliffhangers, Some Surprises: Primary Night Update

In the four states holding primaries today (one of them, Georgia, is actually a runoff), the results are still rolling in, but some judgments can be made. Winners include Dan Malloy, Tom Foley, and Linda McMahon in CT and Michael Bennett in CO. The other big statewide races are still up in the air.

In CT, Malloy came from behind and soundly defeated Ned Lamont in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. With over 80% of precincts reporting, Malloy is leading 58-42.
In the Republican gubernatorial primary in the Nutmeg State, the self-funding front-runner, Tom Foley, seems to have won a narrow victory over Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, leading 42-39 with nearly 90% of precincts in.

Unsurprisingly, Linda McMahon won the CT GOP Senate primary, but didn't set any popularity records; at this point she's got 49% of the vote, to 28% for Rob Simmons, and a surprising 23% for underfunded Tea Party/Paulist candidate Peter Schiff.

Down in Georgia, as polls suggested might happen, Nathan Deal and Karen Handel fought to a draw in the GOP gubernatorial runoff. With all precincts reporting, Deal leads by 2581 votes out of about 580,000 cast, with some absentee ballots in urban counties still to be tallied, which will probably cut Deal's lead even more. There will also almost certainly be a recount. Deal did surprisingly well in metro Atlanta outside Handel's home county of Fulton, and Handel did surprisingly well in non-metro cities and in southeast Georgia, but it all came out in the wash. As expected, Tom Graves won the GOP nomination for a full term in the 9th congressional district; Rob Woodall dispatched Jody Hice in the 7th District; and in a less predictable race, Ray McKinney won the right to take on Blue Dog John Barrow in the 12th.

In Colorado, Michael Bennet rode big majorities in the Denver suburbs, and in Northern Colorado, to defeat Andrew Romanoff by a robust 54-46 margin (at least that's the margin with more than two-thirds of the vote in). In the GOP Senate primary, Ken Buck is holding a 52-48 lead over Jane Norton, mainly because of a huge margin he ran up in his Weld County base and in adjoining Larimer County. But the race hasn't been called yet.

In the Colorado GOP gubernatorial primary, just over one thousand votes separate Dan Maes and Scott McInnis, amidst speculation that the winner will ultimately withdraw and let the state party choose a less damagned candidate. In highly competitive GOP congressional primaries in marginal districts, Scott Tipton has a solid 56-44 lead over Sarah Palin endorsee Bob McConnell in the 3d, while Ryan Frazier (a rare African-American GOP congressional candidate) easily defeated John McCain staffer Lang Sias in the 7th.

Up in Minnesota, Mark Dayton's expected gubernatorial primary win is in doubt. With about 70% of the precincts in, DFL state convention endorsee Margaret Anderson Kelliher is holding a 41-40 lead over Dayton, fueled by big wins in her Twin Cities base. Dayton has, however, been cutting into her lead as other parts of the state check in, and he could still win.

UPDATE, 12:11 AM: AP has called the CO GOP Senate race for Ken Buck, which is a bit surprising since he only has a 13,000 vote lead with 23% of the precincts still out, including quite a few in counties where Norton's leading. But let's assume AP knows what it's doing.

In MN, Kelliher's lead over Dayton is now only 2528 votes with 85% of the precincts reporting. But as the folks over at Swing State Project are noting, a big chunk of precincts are out in St. Louis County (Duluth), where Dayton has a sizable lead.

UPDATE II, 12:57 AM: Mark Dayton has just taken the lead in the MN Democratic gubernatorial primary, with most of pro-Dayton St. Louis County still not reporting. In fact, with the exception of one precinct in Ramsey County, Dayton's leading in every single county with precincts still out. Looks like the CW and the polls were right after all.

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How Much Does Money Matter in Connecticut and Minnesota?

While the Colorado and Georgia elections have gotten more national media attention, there are primaries today in Connecticut and Minnesota as well. In the Nutmeg State, the gubernatorial primaries in both parties have turned into very close contests matching candidates with personal wealth with opponents receiving public financing. And while former wrestling executive Linda McMahon seems to have the GOP Senate primary in hand, it will be interesting to see what sort of protest vote her two challengers receive. In Minnesota, two self-financed candidates for governor, including front-runner and former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, are taking on the officially endorsed DFL candidate in a test of voter turnout strategies.

Speaking of turnout, observers in both CT and MN are speculating about the impact of holding a primary at the peak of vacation time. Even the best-financed campaigns in highly competitive races can wind up throwing resources into the void if voters are checked out.


Both of Connecticut's gubernatorial primaries feature wealthy front-runners who seem to have lost momentum. Among Democrats, 2006 Senate nominee Ned Lamont began the campaign with high name ID, a lot of progressive support, and plenty of personal money (he committed $9 million to this primary), but has actually campaigned as something of a centrist focused on dealing with CT's fiscal problems. Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who narrowly lost the 2006 gubernatorial nomination, has been on the offensive for much of the campaign, and has taken multiple shots at Lamont's links to the financial industry. Down the stretch Lamont has been firing back, drawing attention to an incident in Stamford when Malloy was alleged to have given a no-bid contract to a construction company that did work on his home (an explosive charge in CT, thanks to the scandal that enveloped former Gov. John Rowland).

A subplot in both gubernatorial primaries is Connecticut's public financing system, which is providing both Malloy and Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele with $2.7 million, an amount partially determined by their opponents' personal spending. The system is in trouble in the courts as part of the fallout from the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, but has survived through primary day.

A late Quinnipiac poll showed Malloy closing to within three points (42-45) of Lamont.

On the Republican side, the wealthy frontrunner is former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, who won the state convention endorsement and had a substantial early lead. He hasn't spent as lavishly as Lamont, but has loaned his campaign $3 million. Coming on strong is Fedele, who in the final Quinnipiac poll has closed to within 8 points (30-38), with a lot of instability evident in public opinion on the race (a third candidate, underfinanced businessman Oz Griebel has 17%). The fate of a closed textile mill in Georgia onced owned by Foley's investment firm has become a major issue in the campaign, as a symbol of Foley's alleged indifference to economic suffering.

Both Democrats have double-digit leads over both Republicans in general election polls.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, free-spending Linda McMahon, who upset former congressman Rob Simmons to win the state convention endorsement, is expected to beat Simmons (who dropped out of the race, then dropped back in) and Tea Party activist and former Ron Paul advisor Peter Schiff without too much trouble, but her percentage will be watched closely for signs of weakness in her uphill general election battle against Democrat Richard Blumenthal.

In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (the history-laden label for the Democratic Party in this state) gubernatorial primary is a three-way race involving two self-funders who skipped the state convention process for securing a party endorsement, and the endorsee, Margaret Anderson Kelliher. One self-funder, department store heir Mark Dayton, is obviously well-known as a former U.S. Senator and long-time progressive firebrand, while the other, former state legislator Matt Entenza, is known mainly as the founder of a progressive think tank. Each has put about $3 million in personal money into the campaign, while Kelliher has had to get by through raising just under a million.

Polls have shown Dayton holding a steady lead with Kelliher in a steady second place. The most recent poll, from Survey USA, shows Dayton at 43%, Kelliher at 27%, and Entenza at 22%. Dayton and Kelliher have basically split the major labor endorsements. Her chances probably depend on an aggressive ground game aided by low turnout.

With Tom Emmer certain to win the GOP gubernatorial nomination, the other primary to watch is that of the Independence Party (that third-party legacy of Jesse Ventura), where the state-convention-endorsed and better-funded candidate, former Republican staffer Tom Horner, is expected to defeat publisher Rob Hahn. In general election polls, Horner is definitely pulling some significant Republican votes, which is one reason that all three Democrats are leading Emmer by comfortable margins. That's significant; aside from the national political mood, the DFL hasn't won a gubernatorial race in Minnesota since 1986. Retiring governor Tim Pawlenty, who is running for president, would probably prefer not to have a Democratic successor firing shots at him from back home.

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As Liberals Lose Hope, the White House is Losing Its Cool

Lord knows I've had my share of disagreements with the "professional left", as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs derisively referred to them in a rant to The Hill this morning. And I tend to endorse Jonathan Cohn's view that Obama has had a reasonably accomplished first year-and-a-half in office that perhaps has been taken for granted by some liberals.

But if there is a gulf between what Obama has accomplished and the amount of credit that some liberals are willing to give him for it, it just became much wider today with Gibbs statements like "those people ought to be drug tested" and "they wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president".

One problem that Obama is having -- and not just on the left, although it might be most acute there -- is the dissonance between the grand, poetic narratives of the campaign trail and the prosaic and transactional day-to-day grind of governance. To some extent, this is intrinsic to the nature of the respective activities. Still, for the 70 million who voted for Obama, there was a sense that -- after a difficult eight years for a country challenged by two wars, two recessions, Hurricane Katrina, and the worst act of terrorism in history -- things might finally start to be different. That change had come. That progress was happening. That politics were becoming more elevated. A black man had just received 365 electoral votes, for crying out loud!

The euphoric feeling among liberals in the days between the election and the inauguration seems so quaint now -- like something that happened decades ago -- but it was very tangible at the time. Conservatives, for their part, were willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, with his approval and favoability ratings sometimes soaring into the 70s: such a post-election "bounce" had once been commonplace in the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy, but had rarely been seen in the post-Watergate era.

But Obama was never really able to capitalize on that momentum. Perhaps, in the face of the headwinds of an ever-deepening jobs crisis (far worse than his advisors had anticipated) and unrepentant Republican obstructionism (a canny, even ballsy strategy in retrospect), there was no way he really could have.

Nevertheless, I suspect that for most liberals, any real sense of progress has now been lost. Yes, the left got a good-but-not-great health care bill, a good-but-not-great stimulus package, a good-but-not-great financial reform plan: these are a formidable bounty, and Obama and the Democratic Congress worked hard for them. But they now read as a basically par-for-the-course result from a time when all the stars were aligned for the Democrats -- rather than anything predictive of a new direction, or of a more progressive future. In contrast, as should become emphatically clear on November 2nd, the reversion to the mean has been incredibly swift.

What liberals haven't had, in other words, is very many opportunities to feel good about themselves, or to feel good about the future. While the White House has achieved several wins, they have never been elegant or emphatic, instead coming amidst the small-ball banality of cloture vote after cloture vote, of compromise after compromise.

Meanwhile, the White House has had two incredibly cynical moments in the past several weeks -- Gibbs' rant today and the premature firing of Shirly Sherrod three weeks ago. Both reflected politics at its worst, the clumsiest possible efforts at "triangulation".

I am taking it for granted, of course, that Gibbs's comments today will prove not to be a cagey political strategy: they were so naked and inartful, such a Velveeta attempt at Sister Souljah moment, that I don't see how they possibly could be. They will annoy the left but do nothing to placate Obama's critics on the right or persuade those in the center.

The Sherrod incident, as I wrote at the time, raised questions about the White House's state of mind. Did it not recognize how silly it looked? How incredibly daft a political strategy it was for a Democratic White House to bark for fear of Glenn Beck's command? These same questions can be raised today. But in Sherrod's case, at least, the White House was trying to react to a developing story in real time. Gibbs's comments today, in contrast, were completely unprompted.

I don't know whether Gibbs was going "off-message" out of frustration, or whether the White House has become so jaded that they actually think this was a good strategy. Either way, it speaks to the need for some fresh blood and some fresh ideas in the White House. The famously unflappable Obama is losing his cool.

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Cage Match in Georgia

The primary runoff in Georgia is primarily a Republican affair (the only statewide or congressional Democratic runoff is for the Secretary of State position). And the marquee contest, the gubernatorial runoff, has been a bitter cage match between former Secretary of State Karen Handel, who finished first in the seven-candidate primary with 34%, and former congressman Nathan Deal, who finished second with 23%.

Aside from the very personal shots the two candidates have been taking at each other (spurring Republican fears of a divided party going into a tough race against Democratic nominee Roy Barnes), the contest has developed a national dimension, punctuated in the home stretch when 2008 Georgia presidential primary winner Mike Huckabee campaigned with Deal (Newt Gingrich has also visibly supported Deal) while Palin appeared today with Handel. Although Atlanta-based Handel has a geographical advantage, very close polls and the likelihood of low and erratic turnout indicate anything could happen.


The bitterness of this contest is nothing new. Handel's campaign message from the get-go (strikingly similar to that of another Palin endorsee, Nikki Haley of SC) has been that she's a "conservative reformer" taking on the corrupt, unreliably conservative (and in some cases ex-Democratic) good ol' boy establishment of the GOP. She raised some serious hackles in the ranks of Republican state legislators when she continued the corruption charges without interruption after House Speaker Glenn Richardson was dumped in the wake of a sex-with-a-utility-lobbyist scandal. So it's not surprising that Deal has been endorsed by a majority of Republican state legislators (including Richardson's replacement, Speaker David Ralston, who hails from Deal's North Georgia stomping grounds), along with most of his former colleagues in the congressional delegation. A contributing factor to resentment of Handel's anti-establishment message is her unofficial sponsorship by lame duck Governor Sonny Perdue, who is held in low regard in many elite Republican circles.

While Handel's "conservative reformer" riff has represented her main claim to the much-prized "true conservative" mantle in this race, Deal has gone very specifically ideological, siding with the Georgia Right-to-Life organization's angry attacks on Handel for favoring rape-and-incest exceptions to a hypothetical abortion ban, and for opposing GRTL's proposal to restrict IV fertility clinics (a very personal issue for Handel, who is childless after years of trying to get pregnant). Deal has also invested serious television ad time to attacks on Handel for alleged pro-gay-rights positions taken earlier in her career when she was a local elected official in Atlanta.

With Handel calling Deal a corrupt, superannuated hack, and Deal calling Handel a lying liberal (these are not exaggerations of the rhetoric), it seems reasonably obvious that Handel's trying to boost turnout with some populist heat and a special appeal to women, while Deal's hoping to appeal to hard-core conservatives who are sure to vote, particularly supporters of the losing candidates in the primary. Polls indicate that Deal's doing a pretty good job of attracting such supporters in middle and south Georgia, outside his own North Georgia base and Handel's metro Atlanta base (though he did not receive a much-hoped-for endorsement from third-place finisher Eric Johnson of Savannah).

Only 52,000 early votes had been cast in the runoff as of one day before the deadline, possibly indicating a very low turnout (though the early voting period for the three-week runoff campaign was unusually short). So the late fireworks--including a full-throated attack on the "good ol' boys" generally and GRTL specifically by Palin--could matter.

The other factor influencing the size and shape of the statewide runoff vote is where other runoff races are occurring. It's very helpful to Deal that there's a runoff in his old 9th district congressional seat; it's the fourth time in just three months that Deal's successor, Tom Graves, has faced former state senator Lee Hawkins (in a special election when Deal resigned, in a special election runoff, and then in the regular primary and runoff). Graves has struggled with reports of legal and financial issues involving his business, but is benefitting now from help from the GOP congressional leadership, along with the Club for Growth and his longstanding ties with the Tea Party movement. Hawkins main hope is probably that he's from Hall County, as is Nathan Deal, so a very big home-town vote for the gubernatorial candidate could help the congressional underdog as well.

But another competitive Republican congressional primary is in Handel's political wheelhouse of metro Atlanta, the 7th district runoff to succeed John Linder. The first-place finisher, former Linder chief of staff, Rob Woodall, is expected to defeat the surprise second-place finisher, Christian Right activist and radio talk show host Jody Hice, if only because Woodall's been endorsed by Linder and is from vote-heavy Gwinnett County. Hice, a Southern Baptist minister famous for defying IRS regulations restricting electioneering from the pulpit, drew attention this year with billboards reading: "Had Enough of Obama's Change?" with a hammer-and-sickle replacing the "C" in "Change."

The third GOP congressional runoff, in Blue Dog Democrat John Barrow's 12th district, which runs from Augusta down to Savannah and was narrowly carried by Barack Obama, is harder to predict, with two candidates claiming the Tea Party and "true conservative" mantle engaged in an increasingly nasty contest. Unsuccessful 2008 candidate Ray McKinney, who finished first in the primary, is expected to defeat volunteer fire chief Carl Smith, mainly because of solid self-financing and a more visible district-wide campaign. The winner will be an underdog against Barrow, who's been busily raising money and voting against the Democratic leadership on many high-profile issues (he carried less than 60% against underfunded liberal primary opponent Regina Thomas).

One other runoff that could have an impact on the overall turnout pattern is the Republican Attorney General's race, where the former chief executive of the large metro Atlanta suburb of Cobb County, Sam Olens, is competing, and could draw a strong vote from the home folks. Cobb, like Gwinett, was handily carried by Karen Handel in the primary.

As noted above, the polls in the gubernatorial runoff show a close contest. Georgia-based Insider Advantage, polling on August 5, showed a 46-46 tie, with Deal running surprisingly well in metro Atlanta. A three-day poll by Mason-Dixon released about the same time showed Handel up 47-42, with a significant gender gap helping her among women. And then at the last minute, the Republican firm of Landmark Communications, which had an earlier survey showing Handel up 46-37, released a new poll showing Deal pulling ahead 44-42, with virtually no gender gap.

It should be an interesting election night. Polls close at 7:00 EDT.

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Chaos in Colorado

Four states will hold primaries tomorrow, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia (a runoff) and Minnesota. And while all four have significant contests, the two that have garnered the most national attention are Colorado, which features competitive Senate primaries in both parties and a very strange gubernatorial contest; and Georgia, where Karen Handel and Nathan Deal are concluding an exceptionally nasty runoff campaign with implications not only for November, but for 2012. So I'll cover Colorado and Georgia separately, and deal with Connecticut and Minnesota together later on.

To put it simply, Colorado's appointed Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, is in danger of losing tomorrow, while Colorado Republicans are looking at a close Senate primary while struggling to make the best of a bad gubernatorial landscape.


Despite a large financial advantage (about 3-1 in spending as of the beginning of August) and the support of the White House, Bennet has been visibly slipping in the runup to his primary with former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. And his stretch run was interrupted by a negative story broken by The New York Times about his handling of investments for the Denver school system that quickly became fodder for a Romanoff attack ad, reinforcing his general argument that the incumbent is a self-profiting ally of Wall Street. Both candidates have had to dip into personal funds to pay for last-minute ads, with Romanoff actually selling his house.

You could argue that the perception of ideological differences between Bennet and Romanoff is largely an illusion; Romanoff was generally considered a bipartisan-oriented "centrist" in the legislature (and supported Hillary Clinton for president, a favor that Bill Clinton returned with a well-timed endorsement in this race), while Bennet pleased many progressives with a vocal stance in favor of a public option during the latter stages of the health reform debate. But Romanoff easily won the state party convention endorsement, generally dominated by liberal activists, and is definitely appealling to progressive unhappiness with the perceived coziness of the Democratic "establishment" with Wall Street.

The last-minute dynamics in this and every other Colorado race is affected by the fact that most of the state's counties (including all the big population centers other than El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs) opted for an all-mail-ballot system this year, boosting the likelihood of early voting and probably increasing turnout generally. (As of mid-afternoon today, 34% of registered Democrats and 37% of registered Republicans had returned ballots; Colorado is a closed primary state). A Survey USA poll taken July 27-29 showed just over half of likely voters in the Democratic Senate primary as having already cast ballots, with Romanoff doing very well among early voters, and leading overall 48-45. A more recent PPP survey showed Bennet still holding onto a 49-43 lead.

On the Republican side of the Senate contest, the race between former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton and district attorney Ken Buck has also become very contentious and competitive. The early front-runner and NRSC pick, Norton began the race dangerously associated with "the DC Republican establishment," typified by her brother-in-law, big-time lobbyist and campaign strategist Charlie Black. She was also very close to John McCain, a mixed blessing in a state where McCain was trounced by Mitt Romney in the 2008 caucuses. Building a strong base in the Tea Party movement, and also earning the support of out-of-state conservative validators like Jim DeMint and RedState's Erick Erickson, Buck won the state convention endorsement (which Norton did not even contest), and by mid-June had moved well ahead of Norton in the polls. A particularly embarassing moment for Norton occurred when Sarah Palin came into the state for a rally, and instead of endorsing her, as was expected by many observers, didn't even mention the race.

But two highly visible gaffes by Buck helped Norton get her mojo back. First, clearly rattled by Norton taunts that he interpreted as questioning his masculinity, he answered a question at a public event by saying: "Why should you vote for me? Because I do not wear high heels." Norton's campaign sprang immediately upon the comment with ads, and with suggestions that it represented a "Macaca Moment" for Buck. Second, a tape recording came out of an earlier moment when Buck said to a Democratic tracker: “Please tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera.”

While Norton had a significant financial advantage early in the campaign, the candidates been relatively even in the ability to run ads down the stretch, and both have benefitted from "independent expenditure" attacks on their opponent. During the last week, Norton made the surprising decision to invite John McCain to campaign with her in Colorado, supposedly to draw attention to her hawkish views on Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's unclear who's ahead. The end-of-July Survey USA poll for the Denver Post showed Buck still maintaining a 50-41 lead, while the later PPP survey showed Norton back up 45-43.

The outcome is equally unclear in the GOP gubernatorial race, but if Norton and Buck are trying to overcome occasional misteps, the candidates for governor are more accurately trying to show who's less determined to lose.

The Democratic gubernatorial nomination was secured by Denver mayor John Hickenlooper the moment he announced. At one point, the GOP nomination seemed similarly nailed down by former congressman Scott McInnis, who benefitted from a field cleared of major candidates. Yes, little-known businessman Dan Maes won a Tea Party-dominated state party convention endorsement in an upset, but quickly squandered that advantage with a series of amateurish campaign finance law violations, with the fines dissipating his meager funds.

Then, beginning on July 13, the Denver Post very nearly drove McInnis out of the race with a series of revelations about extensive plagiarism in a wonky, serialized paper on water policy that had appeared several years earlier over McInnis' byline, earning him a hefty $300,000 stipend from a local foundation. To make a very long story short, McInnis didn't handle the scandal very well, but decided to gut it out, probably because of considerable misgivings among Republicans about Maes, who subsequently got his own very bad press after claiming that a popular private-non-profit bike-sharing program aimed at reducing Denver traffic was actually part of a United Nations plot to take over the city.

While Republicans quietly talked about the possibility of convincing the winner of the primary to withdraw and let the state party choose a more presentable nominee, former congressman Tom Tancredo crashed into the scene, threatening to run on the ticket of the far-right Constitution Party if Maes and McInnis didn't immediately promise to get out after the primary. When the two candidates didn't meet his ultimatum deadline, The Tank duly announced his candidacy; a Rasmussen poll subsequently showed him splitting the Republican vote right down the middle and ensuring an easy win for Hickenlooper.

Survey USA's final poll showed Maes leading McInnis 43-39, while PPP's had McInnis up 41-40. But it wasn't clear if Republican voters were choosing the strongest gubernatorial candidate, or the one most likely to drop out after the primary and give the state party a fighting chance to find a unity candidate and convince Tancredo to stand down (a prospect not exactly enhanced when state party chairman Dick Wadhams got into a wild, extended screaming match with Tancredo on a Denver radio show).

With all this drama, downballot candidates in Colorado have struggled to get attention, but there are two competitive GOP primaries to choose opponents for potentially vulnerable Democratic congressmen John Salazar (3d district) and Ed Perlmutter (7th district). In the 3d, state rep. Scott Tipton has been the front-runner, but a surprise endorsement of Bob McConnell by Sarah Palin has given the fiery Tea Party activist hopes of an upset. And in the 7th, Aurora city councilman Ryan Frazier has had a big financial advantage over former McCain Campaign Veterans Coordinator Lang Sias, but the underdog probably benefitted from an attention-grabbing personal appearance with his old boss.

Polls close at (or in mail-ballot-only counties, ballots must be dropped off at "service centers" by) 7:00 MDT.

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