The Plum Line

Polls show voters only care about the things I say they should care about.

* NPR talks to some voters who don't seem to have gotten the pundit memo informing them that they aren't supposed to care about the anonymous cash flooding the airwaves.

* Endorsement of the day: Rush Limbaugh, in endorsing John Raese, the GOP Senate candidate in West Virginia, notes that they're both members of a private golf club in Palm Beach. That dovetails rather neatly with the Dem message that Raese is out of touch with West Virginia working folks.

* And: Raeses's wife is losing her West Virginia voting status because she's registered to vote in Florida.

* Wow: The Tides Foundation, a frequent target of Glenn Beck, writes an incendiary letter to Fox advertisers telling them if they don't pull their sponsorship they'll "have blood on their hands."

* And: I'm told that Media Matters will pivot off this to launch a new campaign calling on all Fox advertisers to boycott the network. Previously, the group had only focused on Beck advertisers.

* The outside groups Karl Rove founded are telling Mike Allen that they are really psyched about the Dem attacks on them, because they've been able to raise a quick $100,000 from small donors in recent days.

However, for some reason, Crossroads GPS is not to my knowledge revealing what overall percentage of the millions upon millions upon millions it has raised came from small donors.

* Tim Phillips, the head of the right-wing Americans for Prosperity, joins the list of those who are valiantly defending the right of donors and special interests to anonymously influence the outcome of our elections against the thuggish harassment of those who are asking for transparency.

* In fairness: Politifact does a monster fact check and points out that outside groups on both sides do their share of fibbing.

* It's not easy being Harry Reid: Turns out he raised one seventh the amount that Sharron Angle pulled in ($14 million) over the last quarter.

* Worth a try, I guess: House majority whip James Clyburn, in an apparent effort to revive flagging Dem enthusiasm, says that if voters come out and keep Dems in Congress, they just might revive the public option.

* Such lockstep discipline! Rand Paul's advisers are at war over whether the candidate does or doesn't support replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

* Steve Benen points out a niggling flaw in Angle's argument that the market is a superior mechanism to mandated coverage: We've tried it that way before.

* Good read: Adam Nagourney watches the whole Nevada debate through the prism of our hyperpolarized national clash of competing philosophies about government.

* Liberal ecstasy: Anne Kuster, the Dem candidate in New Hampshire's second district who's being heavily promoted by liberal groups, edges ahead of GOPer Charlie Bass in a new poll.

* And: The photographer who took that phony "illegal aliens" pic that appeared in Angle's ad attacking Reid for giving all kinds of goodies to illegals rips the campaign for deception.

What else is happening?

There's been a ton of attention paid to Sharron Angle's exhortation at last night's debate that Harry Reid "man up" on Social Security, and much commentary on the debate has focused on whether her answers were too canned or whether they revealed her to be far saner than her public image suggests

But once you get past the process commentary, what will really matter is whether there were any important moments that either side can seize on to frame the closing days of the race. And it's my bet is that it's something that Angle didn't say that could end up having a pretty big impact.

I'm talking about Angle's silence after being pressed on whether there is anything at all government should mandate insurances companies to cover. Here's the exchange in question:

You could not ask for a starker illustration of Angle's vision of the proper role of government in our lives. When pressed to name one thing insurance companies should be forced to cover, she cited the free market as the best way of guaranteeing that insuance companies will make available the coverage people need. Asked again, she volunteered nothing.

Many have noted already that the Angle-Reid race has posed voters with one of the starkest ideological choices you could possibly ask for in a political contest. Her answer on mandates makes this even clearer. Contrast Angle's vision with Reid's. Whatever his flaws, he was one of two or three people who were most instrumental in passing a far reaching and ambitious health reform law -- after half a century of false starts -- that is reshaping government control over our whole health care system by, among other things, forcing insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions.

Sure, we already knew that this was her position on mandates, and this exchange has been covered here and there in the debate write-ups. But this is a bigger deal than people think it is, and if the Reid people have their way, it will enable them to define Angle as unfit to govern in the final days of the race. The Reid people already rushed this mandates moment into a new ad, and they will almost certainly pound away at it as hard as they can in the closing stretch.

Put it this way: If Reid's people have their way, this moment will ensure that even if Angle does win, Nevadans will know exactly what they voted for.

Okay, so here's the next question. It appears Democrats are doubling down on their strategy of hammering Republicans for benefiting from the massive amount of undisclosed corporate cash that's funding ads attacking Dems. Whether this can work may depend on one thing: Can Dems successfully tie the secret cash issue to the economy?

If you look around, you can see that little by little, in public and in private, Dem strategists are trying to nudge the debate in that direction. A new memo circulated by the DNC for pro-Dem commentators, columnists and editorial writers lays out talking points to accomplish this goal. The talking points detail the unprecedented amount of anonymous ad funding, and claim that the funders of the ads will expect payback from Republicans in the form of economic policies that benefit them over average Americans:

All of this is not a coincidence. Republicans in Congress support policies favoring the super rich and corporate special interests at the expense of middle class families. Republicans oppose requirements that groups taking money from corporate special interests disclose their donors. Republicans receive a massive infusion of secret, special interest spending in support of their campaigns. Need one even ask what will happen when the sources of all these contributions come calling on Republicans on Capitol Hill?

You can find more Dem candidates who are trying to draw this link, too. Dem Rep. Tom Perriello's campaign whacked his GOP opponent recently for "being backed by powerful special-interest groups that advocate for the outsourcing of American jobs." Russ Feingold's campaign recently hit GOP foe Ron Johnson as follows: "It's clear whose side Ron Johnson is on -- the wealthy, out-of-state corporate special interests who are trying to buy this election."

The Dem belief that they can successfully tie what's fundamentally a campaign finance issue to voter anxiety about the economy flies in the face of Beltway conventional wisdom. Some pundits have written this strategy off as dead. Mark Halperin, for instance, recently claimed that the issue is "convoluted and far-fetched," and that it "distracts from the issues voters care about."

Adam Serwer is a staff writer with The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog.

Earlier this week, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen crowed about the difficulties the Justice Department is facing in its prosecution of alleged Tanzanian U.S. Embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, after Judge Lawrence Kaplan excluded the testimony of a key witness because his identity was originally discerned through torture.

One might reasonably conclude that this shows one of the reasons why torturing people is a bad idea, but Thiessen argues that, "The Ghailani prosecution is hanging by a thread today not because of the interrogation techniques employed against him, but because of the Obama administration's ideological insistence on treating terrorists like common criminals and trying them in federal courts."

Thiessen is restating The Liquor Store Fallacy, the notion that military courts are better prepared to handle terrorism cases, while civilian courts are more suited to trying "someone who robbed a liquor store." In fact civilian federal prosecutors are far more experienced in such matters, while military prosecutors are actually the ones who are more used to prosecuting smaller scale crimes.

But the administration's "ideological insistence" is one that Thiessen's former boss presumably shared, since the Bush administration prosecuted hundreds of terrorism-related cases in civilian court, with an 88 percent conviction rate according to NYU's Center for Law and Security. Meanwhile, only four military commissions convictions have been secured since the system was created. It seems obvious why Thiessen's former boss more often used the civilian system as well -- it has a much better track record. As former CIA Director Michael Hayden recently noted, there's a "powerful continuity" between this president and the last one.

Thiessen's ultimate goal, though, isn't so much extolling the virtues of the military commissions system as defending torture. In doing so, he overstates Judge Kaplan's conclusions about the effectiveness of the Bush administration's torture program. Thiessen writes that Kaplan concluded that intelligence was obtained from Ghailani through so-called enhanced interrogation techniques while he was in CIA custody, and that "this valuable intelligence could not have been obtained except by putting Ghailani into the [CIA] program."

Except that's not actually what Kaplan wrote. He wrote that "the government had reason to believe this valuable intelligence could not have been obtained except by putting Ghailani into the [CIA] program." Kaplan doesn't draw the unilateral conclusion Thiessen wants him to draw, so he simply left out the qualifying phrase. In fact, it would be very odd for Judge Kaplan to draw a more definitive conclusion than CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, who after investigating the program, wrote in his 2004 report that "The effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be so easily measured." This is in character for Thiessen -- he previously tried to claim that waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed prevented a terror plot that had unraveled a year before KSM was actually captured. Thiessen has also implausibly claimed waterboarding isn't torture, but he has yet to take up former SERE Instructor Malcolm Nance's offer to undergo the procedure himself.

Moreover, the argument against torture is not that it can never solicit useful information. It's that on the whole, it produces less reliable information than traditional interrogation, it hampers potential prosecution, it's a moral abomination and it's illegal. As Kaplan noted, while "no one denies the agency's purpose was to protect the United States from attack," the methods used "might give rise to civil or even criminal charges." Thiessen left that part out, too.

Thiessen's argument is that the witness's testimony might have been allowed in a military commission, where the rules of coerced evidence are more permissive. That's true -- a military commission judge recently allowed the confession of Gitmo detainee Omar Khadr despite the fact that he had been previously threatened with rape -- but it's hardly a forgone conclusion. Thiessen quotes Lt. Col. David Frakt saying, "because the Military Commission Rules of Evidence are more permissive regarding evidence derived from coerced evidence, I do think it is possible that the witness might have been allowed to testify in a military commission." I don't know how this bolsters Thiessen's argument. The regulations allow the judge to decide to admit something based on whether or not it's "in the interests of justice," but in either forum, civilian court or military commission, the admissibility of such evidence is up to the judge. Even during the Bush administration, when the rules governing admissibility of coerced evidence were even more permissive, convening authority Susan J. Crawford declined to bring charges against alleged 20th 9/11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani because "His treatment met the legal definition of torture."

Meanwhile, the administration is already struggling in other cases because of evidence gleaned from coercive methods. The government is having a difficult time justifying the detention of Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman because two of the witnesses they're relying on were tortured. Worse, the government may need those same two witnesses to try by military commission the alleged perpetrator of the U.S.S. Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was abused even beyond the "legalized" torture guidelines offered by the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel. The administration recently postponed his prosecution.

Then there's the fact that military commissions tend to give out light sentences. Thiessen notes that if Ghailani were acquitted, the administration could continue to hold him as an enemy combatant. The sentence given to Osama bin Laden's former limo driver, Salim Hamdan, was so light that the Bush administration considered holding him as an enemy combatant after serving his alotted sentence.

Thiessen overstates his case for military commissions in other ways -- as Ben Wittes points out, he falsely suggests KSM could have been executed years ago, but it's not clear that military commissions allow the accused to plead guilty in capital crimes. The numbers speak for themselves -- out of the hundreds of terrorism cases tried in civilian court, the administration is struggling with the Ghailani case because he was tortured. But Thiessen's argument in favor of military commissions is revelatory in the sense that it reveals their true purpose -- to give the illusion of due process while actually stacking the case in the government's favor.

"The Ghailani conviction is in trouble because we didn't obtain the information in a way that's consistent with our laws," says Eric Montalvo, former marine and an attorney with Puckett and Faraj who has represented Gitmo detainees in military commissions cases. "What's the definition of justice? Is it getting a conviction? Or is it securing a process whereby the right result occurs?"

The reality is that the torture techniques employed by the Bush administration, not the law, are what's hampering Ghailani's prosecution. The case against Ghaliani is going forward, which suggests Thiessen's breathless characterization of the affair as a "catastrophe" is absurd. The "catastrophe" is that the process by which terrorists can be brought to justice has been jeopardized by the torturous interrogations Thiessen is so fond of.

UPDATE 11:54 a.m: Marcy Wheeler points out that in Judge Kaplan's latest ruling, he writes that the witness' testimony would likely have been excluded in a military commission proceeding as well. He writes that "statements obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," and evidence derived threrefrom, and could require exclusion of Abebe's testimony. Even if they did not, the Constitution might do so, even in a military commission proceeding."

The Constitution, with all its rules and principles. What a silly document.

* Calling the Nevada debate for Sharron Angle: Nevada top-dog journalist Jon Ralston, who has a good read on the Nevada electorate, says she won, because she managed to avoid appearing as "the Wicked Witch of the West."

Ralston also gives the Angle the prize for the most audacious and extensive revisions of history, a.k.a. lies.

* Angle benefitting from efforts to tar her as crazy and extreme: Chris Cillizza says that while Angle was "far from impresssive," she "almost certainly met the low bar of credibility she needed to clear to have a real chance at winning the race."

* And: Jonathan Martin, in the mother of all backhanded compliments, notes that Angle avoided appearing "entirely incoherent."

* But no game changer? Josh Marshall thinks not. And a senior Democrat emails these thoughts:

Boring, which I think is a win for Reid. Democrats hoping for an Angle meltdown didn't get it, but just as important, Reid didn't make any mistakes either. We're a few points ahead 18 days out and the debate did nothing to change that. That's a good thing.

* Angle's vision of government: Only hours after the debate, the Reid campaign went up with a new ad hammering her opposition to mandating insurance coverage of, well, pretty much anything:

* Did "hicky" rescue the West Virginia Senate seat for Dems? The Dem candidate, Governor Joe Manchin, looked to be in trouble in recent days, but now a new poll finds he's opened up a double digit lead over Republican John Raese, 48-38.

* The Tea is only beginning to steep in GOP waters: A worthy New York Times analysis finds that the Tea Party has enough candidates in play to establish a sizable bloc in Congress to push its agenda.

I'll say it again: The impact of the Tea Party on the GOP is only beginning to be felt, and we have no idea where this story is taking us.

* How bad is it for Dems in the House? The new NPR poll finds that Dems have closed the gap in 58 hard-fought districts. But it also finds that there are now 96 seats up for grabs -- and 86 of them are currently held by Dems.

* Say hello to Senator-elect Pat Toomey? Dems are hanging their hopes on internal polls and on Joe Sestak's ability as a closer, but Nate Silver games out why Sestak is unlikely to duplicate the comeback he managed in the primary.

* Outside spending at $220 million and counting: And much of it coming from the right remains undisclosed.

* Bone-chilling quote of the day: In the above link, from Sunlight Foundation chief Ellen Miller: "We are standing at the precipice of unlimited political spending."

* Christine O'Donnell is a classic American type: Great rant from Joe Klein on how the myth of ignorance as authenticity keeps O'Donnell and other Tea Partyers viable, and what it means for our "diseased" society.

* And here's the (alleged) Tea Party con game/shakedown of the day: Howard Fineman reports that O'Donnell threatend Beltway establishment GOP types at a private meeting thusly, in an apparent effort to get them to pony up for her campaign:

"I've got Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys."

What else is happening?

* Harry Reid and Sharron Angle have their big debate tonight at 9 p.m. eastern, and Chris Cillizza has a good curtain-raiser telling you why it matters and what to look for.

* Big boost for libs? In a move that could help Dems in a race that's hugely important to liberal groups, GOP House candidate Charlie Bass of New Hampshire -- who's being challenged by liberal darling Ann McLane Kuster -- is now under scrutiny for work he may have done to benefit a company in which he owned stock.

The Hill reports that when Bass was previously in Congress, he may have arranged a meeting with then President George W. Bush for officials at a wood pellet company, after buying at least $500,000 in shares in that company.

Bass claims his financial disclosure forms were botched. But Common Cause spokesperson Mary Boyle says it may be trouble: "Based on what has been reported, if Mr. Bass is elected to Congress, it appears these allegations certainly merit investigation by the House Ethics Committee."The Dem candidate is a lib hero because she defeated Joe Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign manager in the primary.

* Huh. National Dems are apparently ignoring smug inside-game commentators: Mike Shear reports that they've concluded that the attack on secret cash funding elections is working, and they plan to intensify it.

* John Cole says that for all their bravado, the Chamber and Republicans secretly worry the Dem attacks are working, and urges Dems to press on.

* But: The Chamber is really, really psyched to have Glenn Beck's support.

* This will drive some discussion: Tim Dickinson says disappointed lefties are wrong: Obama's is a historic presidency.

* Say hello to Senator-elect Marco Rubio? National Republicans are pulling cash out of Florida because they're confident he's on track to victory.

* Jonathan Cohn notes one of my pet points: How perverse it is that Nancy Pelosi and House Dems may end up taking the brunt of voter punishment for what are really the Senate's failings.

* David Broder acknowledges that the Tea Party's impact on the GOP is far more serious than anything happening to Dems, and may be the real cause of our hyper-polarization, which suggests establishment Washington may be starting to come around to this idea in earnest.

* Jed Lewison imagines the debate exchange Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell should have had.

* James Fallows says O'Donnell may be more dangerous than the 'Cuda herself.

* Why did MTV ask participants at today's town hall with Obama to ask the president "light" questions? Do we really need to know whether he wears boxers or briefs?

* Twisted attack of the day: A Newsmax writer is now attacking Eric Cantor and demanding he be removed from the GOP leadership because ... he strongly denounced that Nazi-impersonating House GOP candidate.

* And the headline of the day, from Jonah Goldberg:

Obama's Arrogance Starting to Get Noticed

They've been trying this attack since the McCain-Palin "celeb" ads more than two years ago, so it's about time it finally took hold!

It has become an article of faith among certain Beltway inside-game commentators that there's no way the Dem attack on secret money funding elections could ever have a prayer of working. Surely the issue is too esoteric, too process-y, and too removed from voter concerns about the economy to resonate.

But a new poll commissioned by MoveOn, and done by the respected non-partisan firm Survey USA, strongly suggests that the issue may indeed matter a good deal to voters after all.

The poll finds that two thirds of registered voters, or 66 percent, are aware that outside groups are behind some of the ads they're seeing. This makes sense, since the issue has dominated the media amid the battle over the huge ad onslaught against Dems funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove's groups.

What's more, an overwhelming 84 percent say they have a "right to know" who's bankrolling the ads. And crucially, the poll also found that the issue is resonant when linked to the economy. A majority, 53 percent, are less likely to think a candidate who is backed by "anonymous groups" can be trusted to "improve economic conditions" for them or their families. People don't believe these groups are looking out for their interests.

Here are other key findings from the poll, which was provided to me by a MoveOn official:

* An overwhelming 84% of voters polled, including 80% of Republicans and 81% of Independents, believe voters have a right to know who is paying for ads for a particular candidate.

* Fifty-six percent of voters overall (including 53% of Independents) are less likely to vote for a candidate if they know the ads supporting that candidate are paid for anonymous corporations and wealthy donors.

By some reckonings, Christine O'Donnell had a bit of a rocky time at her Delaware Senate debate with Dem Chris Coons last night. She wouldn't say whether she believe in evolution, described Coons as a Marxist, and appeared to stumble over her answer on discretionary funding.

And yet, as Dana Milbank notes, in comparison to recent revelations about her and the national caricature that is the result, her performance was clearly an improvement.

If that's so, there are two people she has to thank for that, and they're both Sarah Palin advisers: Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb. They were the ones who took on the job of prepping O'Donnell for the debate, Goldfarb confirms.

Palin, in a conversation with O'Donnell, recommended the two men to her, and the O'Donnell campaign reached out to them to enlist their help, Goldfarb says. They spent the day with her yesterday in Wilmington getting her ready.

Goldfarb insists he was happy with her performance, claiming that Coons and the moderators had ganged up on her. "She came off as the far more likeable candidate," Goldfarb said. "Coons just kept his head down to the extent he could. My view was that it was three on one, and she held her own."

Goldfarb also rejected claims that O'Donnell botched her answer on Afghanistan, when she said that "we were fighting the Soviets over there in Afghanistan in the '80s and '90s" and that "we did not finish the job."

"Her point was that we left and that was a huge problem," he said. "Her point that we were there fighting the Soviets, that's also fundamentally true. The CIA was in Afghanistan. We were arming, equipping, training."

Still, it's hard to imagine a more daunting task than prepping O'Donnell for a high-profile, high-stakes debate. But Goldfarb insists that wasn't the case at all: "She's extremely impressive -- she's not a career politican."

No, she certainly isn't.

That National Republican Senatorial Committee is copping to the casting call for "hicky blue collar" workers for an NRSC ad in West Virginia, admitting that its vendor was responsible for the language and terminating its relationship with that vendor.

The NRSC sends over a statement:

"This morning, the NRSC learned that our vendor Jamestown Associates was responsible for the offensive language surrounding our independent expenditure ad in West Virginia. When originally confronted last week, they flatly denied having anything to do with the unacceptable language and we took them at their word . Upon learning these facts this morning, the NRSC immediately fired Jamestown Associates."

The NRSC had previously denied up and down that the committee or its vendor was responsible for the language, instead blaming it on a casting agent that had been contacted by the NRSC's vendor. And for my part, I wrote that until further evidence emerged to the contrary, it was unfair to pin this on them. But the NRSC is now admitting its previous statements were wrong:

"Because we did not know the truth, we have made incorrect statements over the last eight days, and we regret doing so. The NRSC unequivocally denounces the offensive language that Jamestown Associates used in producing this ad. We apologize to any West Virginia voter who may have been offended by this firm's actions, and we extend our apologies to Kathy Wickline and all those who were misled as a result of Jamestown Associates' actions. The NRSC will have no further dealings, now or ever, with Jamestown Associates, but they were our vendor and we take responsibility for this unfortunate matter."

The NRSC's admission came after Politico reported this morning that the person who the NRSC blamed was denying any involvement in use of the "hicky" language -- and had supplied an email proving it.

Mystery solved.

UPDATE, 12:14 p.m.: The Kathy Wickline referenced in the NRSC statement is the person who was originally (and wrongly) blamed for the language.