In a season of emotional ads, this sinister spot from Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes attacks Nathan Deal over proposed legislation that critics said would have weakened the state's rape shield law, and which he dropped amid protests when a state legislator.
It's the latest and perhaps the most visceral in a series of late Democratic ads seeking to bring women home.
And indeed, if you watch the tough closing ads across the country, you'll see that both sides are playing to their base: Republicans are talking more to men, Democrats more to women.
Sharron Angle's last ad is totally unambiguous about which border she's talking about, with an image of the Mexican border and some clearly Hispanic hordes.
"It's clear whose side [Reid]'s on, and it's not yours," says the narrator.
The ad is calculated to produce yet more outcry from Hispanic and immigrant advocates, which Angle's campaign likely sees as working in her favor.
If you're interested in the intersection of social media and politics, Ben is moderating a discussion beginning right now at George Washington University.
You can watch it here or follow my Twitter updates here. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #goingviral2010.
Dick Morris has completed the transition from Democratic operative to Republican media figure, but not everyone on the right is convinced.
In an interview with Michigan's conservative Mackinac Center, the Wall Street Journal writer John Fund refers to Morris as "the most amoral political consultant in the country."
The race for Attorney General has, Dan Morain noted recently, taken on national dimensions, largely because the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, is seen as a rising star in her party.
President Obama has raised money for her, and the Republican State Leadership Committee just spent more than $1 million on a hard-edged attack on her opposition to the death penalty.
Now the wealthy liberals who have largely sat out the midterms are rallying to her defense. California donor and organizer Steve Phillips says he and other allies have already anted up $400,000, in part from this "urgent appeal" to her top supporters, for a response that will begin airing later this week.
Add this to list of bizarre and unusual campaign trail antics: at last week's Tea Party Express rally in Phoenix, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio welcomed Sarah Palin with a pair of pink underwear.
"I just got done welcoming Sarah Palin to our County. Had a nice chat and gave her a pair of pink underwear," Arpaio posted onTwitter, along with a photo of him with the former Alaska governor.
Why pink underwear? The hard-line lawman has gained national attention for his controversial methods, such as requiring prisoners to wear all pink, underwear included.
As the event was coming to a close, a campaign staffer in a car near the assembled press reportedly spoke loudly into his cell phone, saying: “She’s Ready? She’s coming out now?”
Two women then got into his car, while Angle apparently went out a side door, avoiding TV cameras altogether.
The press, thinking Angle was still inside the building, stayed outside for another half hour until one intrepid reporter begged Microsoft staff to let her in to use the restroom. (No, folks it wasn’t me.) The reporter then confirmed that Angle had already left the building.
To take this blog in a slightly esoteric direction (would I ever do that?), Jonathan Franzen's trip to the White House today prompted a friend to point out a bit of a blindspot in Franzen's new book, Freedom.
I thought the book was as good as everyone says it is, but that its rare weak spots came when it was doctrinaire in its liberalism. His caricatured Irving Kristol character took some deservedflack.
My friend emails that he was struck by the real-life echo in another scene, a political rant by one of the main characters, a little-known rocker named Richard Katz who has, in middle age, suddenly been embraced by the pop culture and is being interviewed by a young fan. The long interview in which former Velvet Underground Drummer Mo Tucker explained her appearance at Tea Party events was, my friend writes, "a carbon copy of a scene w/ the musician Richard Katz in Freedom."
From Freedom:
Q: So what’s next for Richard Katz?
A: I’m getting involved in Republican politics.
Q: Ha ha.
A: … I’ve been given the opportunity to participate in the pop-music mainstream, and manufacture Chiclets, and help try to persuade fourteen-year-olds that the look and feel of Apple Computer products is an indication of Apple Computer’s commitment to making the world a better place. Because making the world a better place is cool, right? And Apple Computer must be way more committed to a better world, because iPods are so much cooler-looking than other MP3 players, which is why they’re so much more expensive and incompatible with other companies’ software, because—well, actually it’s a little unclear why, in a better world, the very coolest products have to bring the very most obscene profits to a tiny number of residents of the better world. This may be a case where you have to step back and take the long view and see that getting to have your very own iPod is itself the very thing that makes the world a better place. And that’s what I find so refreshing about the Republican Party. They leave it up to the individual to decide what a better world might be. It’s the party of liberty, right? That’s why I can’t understand why those intolerant Christian moralists have so much influence on the party. Those people are very antichoice. Some of them are even opposed to the worship of money and material goods. I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I’m in favor of the music industry …
Q: Seriously, though. … Do you think successful musicians have a responsibility to be role models?
A: Me me me, buy buy buy, party party party. …What I’ve been trying to say is that we already are perfect Republican role models.
The difference between Tucker and Katz, of course, is that Katz is at least half-joking, and Tucker is serious, which seems like something that, in a broader sense, the left is still reckoning with.
I asked Kentucky Attorney General and Senate candidate Jack Conway's spokeswoman, Allison Martin, over the weekend about a rather confusing Courier-Journal report on Conway's brother's legal woes, in which a police officer has been accused of leaking word of an investigation into Matt Conway's conduct to Matt Conway, a state prosecutor.
Martin sent over a statement from Conway: “My brother told me of the matter. I advised my brother that he should engage counsel. Once he retained counsel, I was not involved in the matter.”
But the report suggested that Jack Conway heard about the investigation twice, first from his brother, and then third-hand, from something an acquaintance had overheard in a bar. The story and statement left a bit unclear whether Conway had, as Attorney General, had felt any obligation to report the leak.
I asked Martin about it again today. She said Conway received a call from his brother and then subsequently received a voicemail from an acquaintance -- meaning that all the information Conway had on the matter was second or third-hand. Conway was troubled about the “courthouse gossip,” she said, and advised his brother to hire a lawyer to deal with the issue, since Matt Conway was the person directly involved in the matter.
Matt Conway and his attorney contacted the police, which was "appropriate under the circumstances," Martin said.
Adrian Arroyo of the Democratic fundraising outfit ActBlue makes the case that the new Crossroads groups aren't building anything that will last past November:
American Crossroads GPS (GPS stands for "Grassroots Policy Strategies;" you can almost hear the cynicism) is a 501c4 organizations that doesn't disclose its donors. American Crossroads is filed as an independent expenditure PAC. It can accept unlimited amounts of money, but can't give any to campaigns. In short, the groups themselves direct the funds, not the donors, and these groups can't help campaigns beyond the air war; that's neither "grassroots" nor "infrastructure."
Reid Wilson and I have been remarking on Michael Steele's abiding interest in America's disenfranchised territories -- from Puerto Rico to the Northern Marianas and Guam -- since around the time he was chosen. Back then, I reported that Island Republicans -- who vote for Chairman, if not in federal elections -- bluntly expected payback.
Since then, Steele has raised some eyebrows for transferring the RNC's cash to the territorial parties, and today Wilson (on the snazzy new National Journal site) reports that Steele's been tending to his base in advance of a re-election bid in another way:
Steele also has ... invested in state organizations that don't ordinarily receive national attention. Steele transferred $20,000 to the Northern Mariana Islands Republican Party in 2009 and $15,000 to the Guam GOP in September. Last week, the RNC also transfered $5,000 to the U.S. Virgin Islands state party....
He has visited Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The RNC held its first-ever meeting in Hawaii, last January. And the RNC pays Fred Radewagen, the husband of American Samoa's national committeewoman, as a consultant.
Radewagen, according to FEC reports, was paid $10,000 total over August and September of this year.
Major Garrett, off payroll, assesses Fox's impact and strategy:
That speaks to a problem that neither Fox nor NPR can solve – they don’t want to solve – which is the polarization of American media. For a certain amount of marketing points of view, Fox wants to keep that polarization, saying, ‘Look, we are different, dramatically different. You can see how we are different. If you like that difference, you better come over here and you better stay here.’ That is an embedded part of the marketing that surrounds what happens in the news division at Fox.
If you're going to be elitist, the actor, writer, and former Nixon aide Ben Stein seems to have concluded, you might as well do it right:
Joe Miller supposedly is a graduate of Yale Law School, as I am, and I never knew one stupid person at Yale Law, which makes me wonder if Mr. Miller really went there..... A Yale Law grad, especially one supported by the Tea Party, which is all about curbing abuses of power by the government, would not even think of taking away the reporter's video camera, as Miller's guards did. That's what stupid people do. Maybe I am wrong and he somehow slipped through the Ivied doors when they weren't looking. Maybe Miller thinks he is boss of some kind of third world country and his mirrored sunglass-wearing Tontons Macoutes can just bully anyone who gets in his way....
Someone's been listening to "Send in the Clowns" a little too often. "Don't bother, they're here," is what keeps occurring to me. Only this is a dangerous, stupid clown. Time for him to go home and cool off.
...any payments to her staff, according to my colleague Manu Raju, who noticed the oddity.
An Angle spokesman says they are being paid biweekly and regularly - but the latest FEC reports don't show that, he emails.
Unclear what that's about. She's not exactly short on cash.
Raju writes:
Angle's spokesman Jarrod Agen said staffers get paid on the 1st and 15th of every month, but the last set of payments went out Sept. 15, which totaled more than $50,000 in payments to about 28 staffers, according to their third quarter fundraising reports.
But in the pre-general election report filed with the FEC, which should have covered the Oct. 1 pay period, there appeared to be just $5,250 in payments to five staffers. One of those staffers got $2,000 on Oct. 12.
The Angle spokesman said the smaller checks are for housing stipends and travel reimbursements - not salaries - but it's unclear if the campaign will have to file an amended FEC report if staffers indeed got their Oct. 1 paychecks.
"I'm having the finance team take a look," Agen said. "Everyone has been paid their normal salary, so I'll have them review the report."
[A portion of this item was initially left out by mistake.]
UPDATE: Agen tells Manu: "The payroll did not get pulled down into the last FEC report. We are submitting an amendment on just the payroll. But everyone did get paid in full."
There are a number of ways to measure the question of whether Democrats attacks on secret money have an impact, and Greg Sargent has been making the case that they're under-rated, on the grounds that polling that asks specifically about the outside money find people genuinely disturbed by it.
Doug Schoen emails that he and Scott Rasmussen tried a different tack, asking, "If the Republicans win one or both houses in Congress, do you think it is because Republican Party special interest groups bought the election, or do you think it is a reaction against the perceived failed policies of Obama and the Democrats in Congress?"
The response:
-Republican Party special interest groups bought the election 29%
-A reaction against the perceived failed policies of Obama and the Democrats in Congress 53%
-Not sure 19%
The poll, as yet unreleased, was conducted for their new book.
A close observer of the '08 campaign emails regarding the decline in registration of young voters from 2008, which is hardly a surprise:
Obviously there was more youth enthusiasm in 2008 than 2010, but one of the biggest differences between 2008 and 2010 is that Obama ran a primary campaign in nearly every single state in 2008. He could register college voters in the spring, and if not, he'd developed the campus infrastructure to carry out effective voter registration during the general election.
The problem with colleges is that there's always turnover. Let's say you develop relationships with the college Democrats in the 2008 primary season. Many of those folks are gone by the Fall of 2008, and they're certainly gone by Fall 2010. Campus engagement will always be tough, and it will always be driven by current events, not past partisan loyalties. It's hard to maintain those relationships and infrastructure over time. Ideally, Obama would hire an organizer (with alumni ties) for every major college in important states (25k+ students), stoke relationships with college Democrats, and pick up 1,000+ low hanging votes every election at all of these major colleges.
One thing that's interesting is that many polls in 2008 showed that while Obama excelled with the 18-29 crowd, his numbers were ABSURD with the 13-18 crowd (something like 70-80%). Despite what he may have hoped, those folks aren't rushing to register and participate as far as I can tell. Remember how people's children made them endorse Obama?
Univision sends over a telling transcript of today's "Piolin" interview:
Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo: I know you are a man that keeps the promise and you make it happen, so we're gonna start, Mr. President. I'm gonna give you the option, you know, which topic would you like me to begin with.
POTUS: We can talk about anything you want, Piolín.
EPS: I'm gonna give you options. Multiple choice. Are you ready?
POTUS: I am.
EPS: A.) Immigration reform B.) Immigration reform, C.) Immigration reform or D.) All of the above.
Sotelo repeatedly stresses Hispanic voters' disappointment, and the only answer Obama can give is a deeply unconvincing one: That they should vote against Republicans in the hope that Democratic majorities will somehow do what larger ones haven't:
EPS: But how can you ask for their vote now… if, like… most of my listeners, that's what they see … that you haven't worked that hard to make comprehensive immigration reform now.
POTUS: Piolín, I completely disagree with you on this. With all due respect, even though I'm in your studio. The notion that we haven't worked it hard is just not true. There is a notion that somehow if I had worked it hard enough, we could have magically done it. That's just not the way our system works. If I need 60 votes to get this done, then I'm gonna have to have some support from the other side. If the Latino community decides to sit out this election, then there will be fewer votes and it will be less likely to get done. And the other side, which is fighting against this, is not gonna support it, so look, let me say this as an African American. We worked for decades on civil rights. Civil rights didn't come after one year. It didn't come after two years. People had to march, they had to have their heads beaten, they had fire hoses put on them. Even after Dr. King gave his I Have a Dream Speech, it still took years before African Americans achieved full citizenship in this country. Change isn't easy. It doesn't happen overnight. Now, you know, for us to say, oh, it didn't happen right away and so we're just giving up and we're not gonna be involved in the system, that makes no sense. That's not the history of this country. That's not the history of change in our own lives. All of us, you included Piolín, have gone through hardships, you've had your struggles and what happens is, is that you keep on working and you keep on working and you keep on working and finally, eventually you make a breakthrough and you get things done. That's how change happens for us personally, that's how change happens in the country, so instead of us giving up, we just have to keep working until it gets done.
EPS: Well, yeah, we're gonna keep working.
POTUS: Absolutely.
EPS: But I would like to find out the steps that we need to take, Mr. President, so we can help you to make this happen.
POTUS: Look, the steps are very clear. Pressure has to be put on the Republican Party.
EPS: How?
POTUS: Well, let me give you a very specific example. Right now, Nevada, you've got a majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, who's running against a woman named Sharron Angle who is completely opposed to comprehensive immigration reform. ....I mean, the -- there is no place in the country where the Latino vote doesn't matter and even if Latinos are gonna support Republicans, they should say to the Republican candidate, the price of our support is you publically saying that you're gonna support comprehensive immigration reform because I've already said that, Harry Reid has already said that, Democrats are already on record as saying it. If I can get the votes, I'd sign the bill tomorrow. So you have to put the same pressure on those who have not yet been willing to publically commit to comprehensive immigration reform and if they don't publically commit, then you've gotta vote against them.
This isn't to say that there was an easy answer, or any answer, to that question.
