The Blue State

Obama-Edwards '08?

John Edwards is all of a sudden saying some nice things about Barack Obama, while turning around and giving the cold shoulder to John Kerry.  Could Edwards be positioning himself as Obama's VP?

If you were in Las Vegas right now, and let's say you were forced to bet $100 on whether or not John Edwards will enter the presidential race in 2008, you know which way you would bet.  The former North Carolina Senator had an excellent 2006.  John and his wife, Elizabeth, were on the Oprah show.  In a Democratic presidential straw poll in Iowa last spring, Edwards won.  On top of that, his appearance last week on the Daily Show is now a popular hit on Youtube.  When you put ten and ten together, it is almost a certainty that he will run for president in 2008.

Considering all that, it was surprising what John Edwards said in an interview with the Associated Press that was released last night.  Edwards encouraged Illinois Senator Barack Obama to run for president:

"I hope he runs. I think he should run," Edwards told The AssociatedPress. "This is such an important job that I would urge anybody who canmake a serious contribution to the campaign and the dialogue - eitherin our party or the other party - to run."

This was more than just an instance of John Edwards trying to be polite.  On the Daily Show, Edwards gave a cold response when host Jon Stewart asked about John Kerry's presidential ambitions.  He has also been critical of Hillary Clinton, another presidential hopeful.

So again, why the warm reception for Obama?  Once again, as he did in 2004 regarding his relationship with Kerry, John Edwards is cozying up to the front-runner.  The strategy has its benefits, especially when it comes time for that front-runner to pick his or her vice presidential candidate.  In other words, Edwards might be playing for second place, similar to 2004.

Obviously, we can't read too much into just two sentences.  But for Edwards to be critical of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, yet act very receptive of Obama, there is definitely some strategy going on.

As you are probably thinking, we have more than one year until the Iowa Caucuses -- so I don't want to over-analyze the 2008 race until the fall of 2007.  If I get too carried away, let me know!

Specter ticked at Bush

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is really taking his party's election loss personally.  Like many others, he questions why President Bush did not fire Donald Rumsfeld one day before the vote, as opposed to one day after?:

"If Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference," Sen. Arlen Specter  (R-Pa.) said on television. "I'd still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee."

It is still inconclusive as to whether firing Rumsfeld before the vote would have made any difference in the Virginia or Missouri Senate races.  But if you were in Specter's shoes, wouldn't you be mad too?  He lost his chairmanship position of one of the most powerful committees in all of Congress.

Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) now takes over as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Election results skewed towards GOP

The November 7th election may have been an even larger landslide than we had thought.  The Election Defense Alliance is alleging that election results were skewed by about 4%, or three million votes towards the GOP:

A major undercount of Democratic votesand an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate racesacross the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit pollingdata, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.

These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for furtherinvestigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium ondeployment of all electronic election equipment.

"We seeevidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to politicalconditions existing before recent developments shifted the politicallandscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of ElectionDefense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for theactual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig anelection, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift fromexpectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics)the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What wasplenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.

"Thefindings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and votecounting systems used in the United States," according to SallyCastleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a nothing less than anational indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!"

Imagine how many House and Senate seats the Democrats could have picked up if this was indeed true?  Maybe Ford could have won in Tennessee.  Maybe 40 or 45 House seats could have been a possibility.  Again, I would like to see more evidence on this from either side before rushing to judgment.

What Phil Giordano and Ned Lamont have in common

By the stroke of luck or something more than just that, Connecticut Senate challenger Ned Lamont finished with exactly the same number of votes as Lieberman's Republican challenger in 2000.  Both 2006 Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont and 2000 Republican Senate candidate Phil Giordano had a total of 448,077 votes.  Except this time Lieberman finished with more than 250,000 votes less than the amount he received in 2000.

Turnout in Connecticut was lower in 2006 than in 2000.  This year, 1,131,692 people voted in the Senate race.  In 2000, 1,311,261 contributed to the results in the Senate race.  Turnout in 2006 was still very high, especially considering that it was a non-presidential year.

Giuliani compares Bush to Winston Churchill

It looks like someone else is in a state of denial.

Yesterday, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani set up an exploratory committee for a possible run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.  Arizona Senator John McCain made a similar announcement over the weekend.  It is likely that Bill Frist, Mitt Romney, George Pataki and Mike Huckabee will do the same in the coming weeks.

As of now, if he does indeed run, Giuliani will try to gain Republican support by cuddling up to President Bush.  The former New York Mayor defended George W. Bush yesterday, even comparing the recent anti-Bush sentiment to the kind that the late Winston Churchill received years ago:

"It doesn't matter what the media does to ridicule him or misinterprethim or defeat him. They ridiculed Winston Churchill. They belittled Ronald Reagan.  But like President Bush, they were optimists. Leaders need to beoptimists. Their vision is beyond the present, and it's set on a futureof real peace and security," Giuliani said.

I will give Giuliani one thing: It is easy to misinterpret a guy who has trouble finishing a sentence.  But it sure isn't easy to misinterpret policies that have hurt working families in this country.  That was why Bush and his party got a vote of 'no confidence' one week ago.

Really though, I can understand quite well why Giuliani would want to cozy up to Bush when he runs for president.  The two have the same mentality when it comes to invoking 9/11 for the moral high ground on everything.  In other words, expect the campaign to turn into an "I was there and you weren't" sort of thing.

Dead Democratic candidate in SD beats Republican

You think the anti-Republican sentiment is not felt in every pocket of the country?  Try this on for size:

Marie Steichen died two months ago but she won a battle to become acounty commissioner for a small South Dakota town in the US elections,an official said.

Jerauld county auditor Cindy Peterson said that the election listclosed on August 1, and while Steichen died from cancer in Septemberher name was kept on the list for Tuesday's election.

Steichen beat a Republican rival by 100 votes to 64 and Peterson saidshe believed that voters knew the woman was dead but wanted to maketheir political point.

This is analogous to what happened in November of 2000 when John Ashcroft lost to Mel Carnahan for Missouri's Senate seat.  Carnahan died about two weeks before the vote.  Ashcroft went on to become Bush's Attorney General.

WA-08: Burner doesn't give up hope

I know the election is old news to many of you.  But there is still one race left to be decided.  In Washington state's 8th District, only 63% of the ballots have been counted.  Democrat Darcy Burner trails incumbent Republican Dave Reichert by 3,120 votes.  This race is far from over.

According to Zach Silk, Burner's campaign manager, it is not their goal to stretch this out into a long court battle:

"In no way do we want to drag this out," he said. "If the numbers bear it out, we may make that decision."

Mike Britt, Reichert's campaign manager, said he had talked with GOPlawyers about the possibility of a recount, but the campaign had notbegun fundraising.

Burner still thinks she has a shot to win.  About 50,000 more absentee ballots that still have not been counted are from King County, an area that is more progressive than rural Pierce County.

WA-08 is just one of eight races nationwide that are still undecided.

The polls were right after all

As the web site Pollster.com shows, the pre-election polls turned out to be almost exactly right.  The web site took the average of the five last polls of each Senate race and compared them to the actual results:

The next time you hear someone say that the polls are always wrong, cite this example.

House races still up in the air

The election is not over yet for a number of Democratic House candidates who are locked in tight battles.  Here are the nail-biters.  Pay close attention to the House race in Washington state's 8th district, where only 59% of the precincts have been reported:

Connecticut 2nd District (100% reporting)
(D) Joseph Courtney - 50% (121,321 votes)
(R) Robert Simmons - 50% (121,151 votes) - incumbent

Georgia 12th District (99% reporting)
(D) John Barrow - 50% (71,500 votes) - incumbent
(R) Max Burns - 50% (70,641 votes)

New Mexico 1st District (99% reporting)
(R) Heather Wilson - 50% (102,376 votes) - incumbent
(D) Patricia Madrid - 50% (100,981 votes)

Ohio 2nd District (100% reporting)
(R) Jean Schmidt - 51% (113,932 votes) - incumbent
(D) Victoria Wulsin - 49% (111,609 votes)

Ohio 15th District (100% reporting)
(R) Deborah Pryce - 51% (101,636 votes) - incumbent
(D) Mary Kilroy - 49% (98,100 votes)

Washington 8th District (59% reporting)
(R) Dave Reichert (77,597 votes) - incumbent
(D) Darcy Burner - (74,861 votes)

Wyoming - at large (100% reporting)
(R) Barbara Cubin - 48% (93,197 votes) - incumbent
(D) Gary Trauner - 48% (92,227 votes)

As of this moment, the Democrats have captured 29 GOP seats, giving them a significant 229 to 196 seat advantage.  If we win in Connecticut and hold the seat in Georgia, as we will likely do, then the net gain for the Democrats will be 30 seats. 

In the end, we might add the 8th District in Washington to the list as well.  Only 59% of the precincts have reported.  This district is located about fifteen minutes from where I live.  I know this usually solid GOP district very well.  It is growing in population rather fast, and therefore has turned more progressive as of late.  40% of the districts from King County, the more progressive area of this district, have yet to be counted.  Burner is in very good shape at the moment.  We will have to be patient as the rest of the ballots come in.  This would be an excellent pick-up because Republican Dave Reichert has voted with President Bush 90% of the time, and Darcy Burner has never run for office before.  So for an ex-Microsoft employee-turned-political novice like Burner to pull this off, it would send a message that voters in that heavily Republican district want a fresh independent face.

I will keep tabs on these races in the hours and days to come.

(Video) VA-Sen: Imagine if those threatening calls never happened

Had it not been for the Allen Campaign's threatening phone calls, this race might not be as close.

Just days before the election, a number of Virginia residents started getting phone calls from individuals at the Allen Campaign disguising themselves as members of the Virginia Elections Commission.  The people who were called were residents from Northern Virginia and some predominantly black districts.  They were told to not show up to vote or else they would be arrested.

Below is what one of those phone calls sounded like:

Even though this whole case might soon be moot, as it is expected that James Webb will maintain his 7,000-vote lead, we might not be talking about possible recounts if these calls had never happened.  Reportedly, thousands of people in Virginia got these phone calls.

All we can hope now is that James Webb hold onto his lead.