WILL VOTERS PULL THE TRIGGER??

[phantom]

WILL VOTERS PULL THE TRIGGER??


David S.Broder, 0p-Ed Columnist, Washington Post, under this topic describes that “A fundamental and welcome change in the political environment is possible—but only if the Voters pull the trigger”. This was published on Thursday 0ctober 12,2006 and relates to the pre-election polls in United States; “When you examine the latest round of pre-election polls, what is striking is the stability of public attitudes over the preceding months. In this week's Post-ABC News poll, for example, President Bush has a job approval score of 39 percent, with 60 percent disapproving. Eleven months earlier, in November 2005, the scores were identical.”
Broder continues:” What all this suggests is a settled judgment on the part of the majority of Americans that the current leadership of the nation is not doing the job that people expect. This is the government the people chose in 2004, but now they are showing clear signs of buyer's remorse. What is driving public opinion is an overall impression that those in office -- meaning mainly Republicans -- have let things slide out of control and need to be relieved.
The failure of this Congress to act meaningfully on immigration, energy, health care or other vital needs has left the public frustrated -- and members of Congress feeling embattled.
Fortunately, the voters have the power -- if they pull the trigger on Election Day -- to create a new plot for the Washington drama.
That kind of fundamental change in the political environment is possible -- indeed, it is imminent and will be welcomed. But it will happen only if voters pull the trigger. Elections do matter, and this one matters more than most.”
The reason that Broder’s ideas caught my attention is that there is a striking similarity between the Political environment of America and Bangladesh; though the distance between the countries are miles and miles apart. But then, this is what is called Democracy -practiced worldwide and its ideology is the same; that whenever elected Government fail to fulfill their “Commitments” made to their Citizen, the Citizen exercise their right to choose their Representatives, whoever is capable to do so.
In Bangladesh, too, there is lot of pre-election speculations for the upcoming 2007 Elections. Like the Americans, the Bangladeshis too, openly declares that the present Leadership has failed to fulfill the “Commitments” made to its Citizen specially in respect to Power, Price of food items, containing Corruption, ensuring Human Rights and many others. Therefore, they need to exercise their right to Vote to Power another Party, which will form a Government that will fulfill the “Commitments”
But the pre-elections polls survey records indicated in Nazim Kamran Chowdhury’s Article “A New Arithmetic” published on 0ctober 6.2006 in the Daily Star is absolutely stunning. Firstly, due to record of bad governance, by either AL and its 14 party alliances or BNP and its 4 Party Alliance, the core base (Vote Bank) of all parties has massively eroded and Secondly, 53% of the Voter are Un-decided to Vote; Chowdhury states that,”it seems that Voters are disenchanted with the whole political system and that they are frustrated with the lack of a viable choice in future election.”
In a Democratic system the most important requirement is the utilization of the Citizens’ right to Vote to choose the Representative; there is no alternative. My personal opinion is that “If at this crucial election time, Citizen don’t exercise their right to select qualified candidates, they cannot expect economic and social justice from the Candidate or the Party that forms the Government. So the main screening test begins here.”
The main question that is now bogging the minds of the Bangladeshis is this: How can we know who will be the right candidate?? My opinion is, that we should, as like in America, try to know the candidate, his educational qualification, records of past performance and his present agenda for development of the constituency he would represent in the parliament. In America, as Broder states in the same article of his,” This election campaign has been a learning experience for candidates, of both parties, incumbents and challengers alike. They have been bombarded with messages from their constituents, telling them that the public is tired of the partisan bickering, tired of the gridlock and eager to elect people who will focus on the real problems and work together to find solutions. . If that lesson is reinforced by the election results, Washington will change.”
Nazim.K.Chowdhury, in his article speculates that Bangladesh is also reaching a political maturity, whereby Voters will tend to look for performance then politics and this suggestion should be accepted by the Leaders of all the Parties, should they intend to be identified as a creditable and contesting Party. Also, there remains a possibility that many from amongst the “53% undecided voters”, may then decide to Vote which could turn the tables in favor of right Party.

[michelle]

Yes, phantom, our recent elections were most important, and the public has spoken. However, according to polls, a third of the voters selected their candidates not to vote for them, but to vote against the other.
This was the case for myself also. It was also the first time ever in my voting history that all my candidates won; I heard this from others I spoke with too.
Will one ever be able to choose the right candidate for all their concerns? Hardly. There has never been a candidate who speaks for me. I had to laugh when people spoke nervously about the Democratic wins and how some of the candidates, such as Nancy Pelosi, are such leftists. Give me a break! People who say such things spout ideas put into their heads. I, myself, lean so far to the left that, as I said, none speak for me. Democrat, Nancy Pelosi is the 15th richest member of Congress; her personal fortune is $14.25 million. I'd be out of my mind to believe that what she stands for and that her concerns are similar to mine.
I did vote against the Republicans and most likely always will, but I am extremely discouraged with most of the Democratic party and their lack of political and moral virtue. The one thing I have to give them is what they will bring to the table, first on their agenda, the social concerns that have always underlined the Democrats, such as: increase minimum wage, availability of education for the masses, global warming, and there's no way they'll allow anyone to touch Social Security if that comes up again. It is also my fervent wish that they begin investigations. Education for all is most important to me as a voter. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, higher education was nearly open to all; that's not a reality for many in the country at the present time. One of the 1st items to be discussed by the Dems is cutting the interest on student loans. And our No Child Left Behind Legislation [Scam] is soon up for review; they damn well better do something to fix it, and stop the profiteering at the expense of our children's minds.
So yes, learn all you can about your politicians. Never, ever believe something just because they or the media tell you it's true. It takes dedication to be an informed citizen. I hope that these past elections are an indication that my countrymen have finally remembered this and continue to watch, prod, badger, and demand much from their officials.
Below is an article which should interest you.....Michelle


Democratic To-Do List
David Corn
November 08, 2006

David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Read his blog at www.davidcorn.com.

“I hope they don't get it.”

A veteran Democratic strategist, standing outside the Democrats' victory party in a Capitol Hill hotel ballroom, was talking about the Democrats and the Senate. The best outcome, he said, was for the Democrats to win back the House—which by this point on Election Night they had—and become the insurgents of Washington, challenging the discredited and sclerotic Republicans of the White House and Senate. With the House in hand, the Democrats would be able to pass popular pieces of legislation—say, raising the minimum wage—and mount whatever investigations they desire. The bills would then be killed by either GOPers in the Senate or the lame duck in the White House. The Democrats would have no true responsibility for governing—that is, for cleaning up George W. Bush's mess in Iraq and elsewhere. But if they were to end up controlling both chambers of Congress, they would become fifty-fifty partners in the government—become the target of a president who would use Democratic control of Congress as an excuse for his own failures and endlessly blame the Democrats for the nation's woes. “One-third is ideal,” this strategist remarked. Moments later, the wife of another prominent Democratic strategist told me her husband also wasn't wishing for success in the Senate.

Well, these Democrats may have to settle for both houses of Congress. As I write on the morning after, the Democrats are leading in the not-yet-settled Senate races of Montana and Virginia. If these numbers hold—and it seems that there will be a recount in the James Webb versus George Allen race in Virginia—the Democrats will indeed have the obligation to run the legislative branch. And they will have a rather narrow window in which they can attempt to re-brand themselves as the responsible party of Washington.

Democrats know that this election was more about Bush than them. They won mostly because they were not the other guy. Americans didn't flock to the polls because they yearned to see Representative Nancy Pelosi as House speaker or Senator Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. They wanted Bush out of the White House. But since he was not on the ballot, voters went with the next best thing: booting his comrades out of Congress. So the Democrats—even though they did campaign on a platform promoting various legislative initiatives—take office without a full mandate. But with this win comes the chance to persuade the American public that Democrats do stand for something, do share the values of many Americans and can get the job done. Yet the Democrats will have the political equivalent of ten minutes to prove this.

That's not an impossible task, but there are obvious obstacles. Foremost is the conservative, pro-Republican media attack machine. By the time you read this, the right-wing media will probably be intensifying its campaign to demonize Pelosi and the other Democrats who will assume leadership positions or committee chairmanships. Remember, when Newt Gingrich and his allies took power in the House in the so-called Republican revolution of 1994, the conservative media infrastructure was not nearly as large and as integrated with the GOP as it is today. Now, Mission One for this system is to discredit Pelosi and her fellow Democrats. So expect a ceaseless the-end-is-near attack from this gang.

The other obvious obstacle is Iraq. In their victory speeches on election night, Pelosi, Reid, Representative Rahm Emanuel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, each said the election signaled that the American people crave a course correction in Iraq. Yet the Democrats offer no clear alternative path. Though most tend to favor phased disengagement, they do not agree on how to do this. There will be great pressure on the Democrats to solve the problem Bush created in Iraq—even when there are no good or easy solutions. A failure to craft a coherent and convincing alternative for Iraq could quickly hobble the newly empowered Democrats.

The good news is this: In the House, they can start approving legislation immediately and can initiate investigations. Pelosi has already promised that within the first hundred hours, her Democrats will approve bills that raise the minimum wage, increase funding for homeland security, lower interest rates on student loans and permit the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices. If she pulls this off—with or without a Democratic Senate (where opposition party members can easily block legislation)—she will be able to demonstrate to the public that the Democrats are serious and worth supporting.

She will also have to make certain that the Democrats proceed with the appropriate inquiries. The goal is to hold the Bush administration accountable without appearing vindictive. (See Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay for a lesson in how not to do this.) My hunch is that many Americans—especially those outside the party faithful whom the Democrats will want to keep on their side for 2008—will prefer to see Democrats producing legislative accomplishments rather than acrimonious investigations. But there are plenty of probes that can proceed. Representative Henry Waxman, the new chairman of the government reform committee, should investigate thoroughly the failed reconstruction in Iraq. An estimated $45 billion of the $80 billion spent on Iraq reconstruction has gone down the drain of fraud and waste. What taxpayer would not like to see this fully investigated?

Pelosi and the Democrats—including those in the Senate, if they gain control there—ought to pick their investigations carefully and strategically. (Yes, this means staying away from any talk of impeachment.) But a prudent approach will hardly limit the opportunities. Take global warming. An investigation of how the Bush administration has suppressed scientific data showing the problem of global warming, coupled with hearings on the administrations refusal to do anything significant to redress this threat, could play well.

Let's face it: Pelosi and Reid are not the best media representatives for the Democrats. Democratic representatives and senators routinely hail each for effectively leading their party caucuses, even as they acknowledge these leaders' limitations as the party's spokespeople. And Pelosi is going to have to continue to keep her party together and disciplined on strategy and tactics—traditionally not an easy task for Democrats. (To take advantage of this moment, liberal and conservative Democrats are going to have to play nice with each other.) Pelosi and Reid get credit for the wins on election night, but neither of them is going to sell the Democratic Party using charisma and charm. They can only do so with substance. And many American voters will not grant them much more than a first impression. The Democrats have a shot at winning over the public. But there's a lot they're going to have to get exactly right.

Source: www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/08/democratic_todo_list.php

[michelle]

Who Voted For The Democrats And Why:
Various Statements from Voter Groups 11/08/06
PART 1 of 2

Dean Statement on Yesterday's Elections

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today issued the following statement regarding the 2006 election results:

"Yesterday the American people sent a clear message for a new direction. Voting for hope and opportunity, they rejected the Republican culture of corruption and the politics of fear and smear.

"I want to congratulate all of our Democratic candidates and our Gubernatorial and Congressional leaders who ran strong campaigns, worked hard, and offered the American people a clear choice and a strong vision for a new direction based on the priorities of the American people. The American voters also sent a message to Democrats that if we show up, work hard and ask for their vote, we can win in any part of the country.

"Yesterday was a historic night as well in the African American community. When presented with a choice, the African American community chose Democrats, because the Democratic Party respects the African American community and creates greater opportunities. We are honored that the African American community has again put their faith in the Democratic Party, and proud that Democrats continue to earn their trust. Democrats like Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Keith Ellison in Minnesota are making history. Patrick became the second African American Governor of a state, while Ellison will be the first African American Congressman from Minnesota. It is also historic that several African Americans are poised to assume Chairmanships of full House of Representative committees.

"We are also proud of our unprecedented efforts to protect voters' rights through our 50 state election protection program. America is stronger when its citizens vote, and we will continue to work to ensure that every American can cast their ballots with confidence.

"Our work didn't end last night, it begins today as we put forward an agenda that puts the American people first. Democrats are unified and ready to change the tone of politics in Washington to get things done for the American people. The African American community has paid for the Republican Congress' failed leadership with higher unemployment rates, lower hourly wages, and lower family income, while more are falling into the ranks of the uninsured. These inequities cannot continue to stand. We will value your beliefs and your families as we work together to make America stronger. Together we will move America in a new direction."---

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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Young Voter Turnout Up for Second Major Election in a Row; Exit Poll ShowsYoung Voter Turnout Up by More Than 2M Voters Over 2002
New Lake-Goeas Opinion Poll Shows Young Voters Motivated to Vote by Desire for Change, Contact From Groups and Campaigns

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Turnout among 18 to 29- year-old voters increased by more than 2 million voters in the 2006 elections compared to 2002, according to an early exit poll analysis released today as part of the first comprehensive look at the youth vote in the midterm elections, presented by Young Voter Strategies. At least 10 million votes were cast by this age group in 2006 compared to 8 million in 2002, and the vote counts are still coming in. Youth-dense precincts that were targeted by Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns showed even larger increases. Turnout more than doubled in the 36 precincts where groups like the nonpartisan Student PIRGs' New Voters Project actively turned out this age cohort.

Also released today, a new bipartisan poll by Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake shows that in 2006 young voters were motivated primarily by a strong desire for change, combined with high levels of contact from campaigns and nonpartisan organizations: 61 percent of those who were surveyed said they feel the country is on the "wrong track" and 52 percent report being contacted by a campaign.

"A new generation of voters has arrived as a force in politics," said Heather Smith, director of Young Voter Strategies. "For the second major election in a row, turnout among young voters increased -- yesterday's election showed that 2004 was the start of a trend of increasing young voter turnout. Today's young adults proved that they're a critical voting bloc for both political parties to court -- at 42 million strong, this generation will only grow in importance as more and more vote in each election."

An analysis of the National Election Pool's exit poll for 18 to 29-year-olds, conducted by the University of Maryland's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that turnout among 18 to 29-year-olds yesterday increased at least 4 percentage points over 2002 figures to 24 percent. This is a greater increase than was seen in the overall electorate; the share of votes cast by young people increased by at least 2 points.

"This is an extraordinary turnout for young voters," said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine. "In a year of rising turnout, young people led the way -- repeating the pattern that we saw in 2004. Youth were an especially high proportion of voters in Montana, Michigan, Minnesota and Missouri. Nationwide, in House races, 61 percent of young people voted for Democratic candidates -- the highest proportion for any age group."

Further, vote tallies from youth-dense precincts in eight states showed even greater young voter turnout increases in areas targeted by nonpartisan registration and mobilization efforts:

The 2006 analysis focused on a set of 36 precincts in Ohio, Connecticut, Iowa, Colorado and Michigan. The precincts all contained a relatively high concentration of college students, and were located near universities where nonpartisan Get Out the Vote efforts were conducted by the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project and other partners. The analysis compared voter turnout numbers from the 2002 General Election with yesterday's turnout numbers. Average turnout in those precincts increased by 157 percent over 2002. This increase is six times the national average increase of ballots cast by young adults.

"On Nov. 7, we proved again that 'if you ask them, they will vote,'" said David Rosenfeld of the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project. "In 2004, massive outreach helped propel youth turnout to historic levels; yesterday, the biggest project we've ever run in a midterm election cycle reached and engaged a new generation of voters who showed in no uncertain terms that they are a voting bloc that politicians must pay attention to." The Student PIRGs registered over 75,000 students to vote and ran nonpartisan GOTV operations on 80 campuses in 2006.

The bipartisan polling team of Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake -- who have followed this cohort throughout the 2006 elections -- released the initial findings of the first post-election Young Voter Battleground Poll. The poll, which looked at motivations for youth going to the polls, surveyed 500 18 to 30-year-olds and has a margin of error of plus/minus 4.4. Key findings include:

-- 58 percent talked a great deal/some with family and friends about the elections.

-- Young people listed education and college costs, the war in Iraq, and the economy as areas of concern they want Congress to address.

-- Young people said the most important issue to them when deciding who to vote for was the war in Iraq at 43 percent.

-- At the same time, 60 percent reported dissatisfaction with the president's actions on those issues.

-- 61 percent of young adults surveyed said they believe that America is on the wrong track; 31 percent on the right track.

-- The youth identify with Democrats at 40 percent, Republicans at 30 percent, and Independent at 23 percent. However, the Democrats win the majority of the Independent votes in a generic ballot question. 50 percent reported that they voted for Democrats and 35 percent reported that they voted for Republicans. Fourteen percent were undecided.

-- Of those surveyed, 46 percent were contacted by a political campaign or organization during the 2006 election cycle. The majority of the contacts remembered by young voters were by phone and mail.

"Democrats were victorious in 2006 in part because they have begun to reach out to young voters," said Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners. "We are excited to see this age cohort show up at the polls in increased numbers and vote overwhelmingly Democratic, their desire for change helped drive the Democratic victories yesterday. This is now the second major election in a row that the Democrats won the youth vote. Studies show that if a young person votes for a party in three elections in a row, they tend to vote with that party for life."

"The 2006 elections show that Republican campaigns must mobilize their base of young voters to win," said Ed Goeas of The Tarrance Group. "Yesterday proved that young voters can and will be a force in elections -- of the 28 seats in the House of Representatives that changed hands so far, 22 were won by less than 2 percent of the vote, 18 by 5,000 or less votes, and four by less than 1,000 votes. The increase in youth turnout certainly came into play yesterday. As the Republicans look ahead to 2008 in an environment where many of the incoming Democrats won with less than 55 percent of the vote, they should look seriously at continuing to engage and energize GOP voters under 30. There are cost-effective methods to do so and our survey shows that young Republicans are very party-loyal and willing to be turned-out."

Young voters made their voices heard at the polls on Nov. 7. At 42 million strong and growing, this generation has arrived as a force in politics and will only grow in importance as more and more vote in each election. Just as the Republican Party invested resources in winning the Evangelical vote and the Democratic Party courted the African-American voting bloc, both political parties can and must implement a strategy to target and win young voters -- both to win close elections today and to build political power for the future.
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Young Voter Strategies, a project of the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that provides the public, parties, candidates, consultants and nonprofits with data on the youth vote and tools to effectively mobilize this electorate for upcoming elections. It is committed to making the targeting of young voters a more permanent part of electoral strategies. Web: www.youngvoterstrategies.org
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Black Electorate Confront Obstacles at Polls But More Prepared to Make Their Votes Count, Says National Coalition

WASHINGTON. Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- An aggressive voter education campaign launched by the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), and its Unity '06 Campaign, resulted in a more informed and determined Black Electorate casting ballots in the Mid-Term Election Cycle. While numerous instances of voting machine malfunctions, inadequate supplies of ballots and voter registration errors were reported by poll watchers and calls to national election hotlines, Black voters countered by knowing their rights and taking action to protect their vote.

"It's been six years since the Florida election debacle and $3 billion dollars spent to upgrade the basic machinery of our democracy. And sadly, election reform is still a work in progress," said Melanie L. Campbell, Executive Director and CEO, of the nonprofit, nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. With nearly 40,000 calls reported by two national election protection hotlines, voters continued to encounter problems that threatened to disenfranchise voters.

"Black voters were far more aware of their rights and what to do to make their votes count during this election cycle. Distrust of the electoral process shouldn't be the primary concern on Election Day. Americans should be able to focus on electing the candidate of their choice and not have to worry about the voting process," Campbell added.

On Election Day, The National Coalition hosted a Unity '06 National War Room to monitor voter suppression and Black voter turnout across the country. Participants included national Black leaders representing the Black Leadership Forum, National Urban League, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, National Education Association, AFL-CIO, The Peoples' Agenda, Black Youth Vote, Common Cause, National Labor College, Harvard University Law School and NCBCP affiliates in several states.

Marc Morial, President & CEO, National Urban League, Unity '06 co-chair and War Room monitor stated, "E-voting irregularities and machine malfunctions seemed to be the number one barrier voters experienced. We believe our poll monitoring and voter assistance efforts were critical to reducing voter disenfranchisement in the Black community today." According to Kirk Clay, Director, ECR for Common Cause, callers to the 1-866- MYVOTE1 National Election Hotline reporting voting machine malfunctions increased to 20 percent this election cycle from the 3 percent reported in 2004. Other complaints registered by callers included:

-- Voter registration problems including new voter identification rules that resulted in voters being turned away at the polls

-- Locating the correct polling place

-- Absentee voting procedures

A more detailed post-election briefing, "Impact of the Black Vote on the Mid-Term Election Cycle," will be hosted by the National Coalition on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at the National Press Club, Holeman Lounge, 12 Noon to 3 PM in Washington, D.C.
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The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP) is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of over 80 member organizations and affiliates in 12 states dedicated to enhancing the full participation of the Black community in all levels of civil society. Over its 30-year history, NCBCP has served as an effective convener and facilitator at the local, state and national levels of efforts to address the disenfranchisement of African Americans and other marginalized communities. For more information, please visit our website at www.ncbcp.org.
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Union Member Vote Drove Shift in Balance of Power; AFL-CIO Calls 'Course-Changing Election a Victory for Working Families'

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Union voters drove home a victory for working family friendly candidates in yesterday's historic election, in which voters nationwide rejected the status quo. Election day exit polling and an independent national election-night survey released by the AFL-CIO today show that union members accounted for four-fifths of the Democratic victory margin.

High turnout among union members turned a win into a sweep with 74 percent of union voters supporting union-endorsed candidates in the House and 76 percent supporting Democratic candidates in Senate races - - a whopping 50 point margin for working family candidates. Non-union voters supported the Democratic House candidates by a two-point margin. Union households accounted for roughly 1 out of 4 voters.

"We're very proud and excited to see from the numbers this morning that union voters drove a wave that elected a pro-working families majority in the House and very likely in the Senate," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "The leaders in control of Congress neglected the needs of working Americans while catering to corrupt special interests, and working people said 'no more'."

Sixty-nine percent of union members said they disapprove of President Bush's job performance, according to an election night survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. The war in Iraq and the economy and jobs were union voters' top tier issues.

"We knew that our challenge at the AFL-CIO was to provide the organizing to transform the frustration and anger into political power," said Sweeney. "We responded with the biggest, most energetic grassroots program in our history, and it worked." Sweeney said the AFL-CIO program was "by far" the largest voter turn out effort on the progressive side.

Ninety-two percent of union members in battleground states said they heard from their union this election cycle.

The AFL-CIO's program reached out to 13.4 million voters in 32 battleground states. It reached union members, members of union households, retirees and members of Working America, the AFL- CIO's community affiliate for workers who don't have a union.

More than 205,000 union members volunteered for the AFL-CIO's political program this year. Union members knocked on more than 8.25 million doors, made 30 million phone calls and passed out more than 14 million leaflets at workplaces and in neighborhoods. The AFL-CIO's program sent out more than 20 million pieces of mail to union households, not including those sent by affiliate unions.

The AFL-CIO's "Final Four" program in the final four days of the election proved to be a powerful counter to the RNC's 72-hour program. The AFL-CIO turned out 187,000 volunteers, made nearly 8 million phone calls and knocked on 3.5 million doors in the final four days.

Working America, the AFL-CIO's community affiliate, played a central role, reaching out to 1.7 million members. Working America put special emphasis on Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where it hired canvassers, mostly students, for the final four days. The program was effective in moving voters: Working America was able to increase the vote for Rep. Sherrod Brown among its members to 72 percent from 53 percent through the fall, for example. Sixty-two percent of Working America members who had not voted in 2002 turned out to vote this year.

The AFL-CIO concentrated heavily on turning out "drop-off" voters - - voters who usually don't turn out in mid-term elections. The program reached these voters as many as 25 times through a schedule of worksite contacts, phone calls, mail and home visits. The AFL-CIO reached out to 496,000 drop-off voters in Ohio alone.

Of the 79 percent of the union drop-off voters who said they voted, 76 percent cast a Democratic ballot both for the Senate and the House, according to election night polling. Drop-off voters cited as their top two motivations for turning out: "send a message that we need a change" (43 percent) and "support candidates who support working people" (37 percent).

Sweeney said immediate priorities for Congress should include passing a higher minimum wage, giving Medicare the power to negotiate for lower drug prices, ending rewards for companies for sending our jobs overseas, restoring college funding and giving workers the freedom to organize and bargain. Long-term goals include health care reform, laws supporting retirement security and bringing our troops home from Iraq.

The AFL-CIO helped lead campaigns to pass the six minimum wage ballot initiatives that swept through Missouri, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and Montana. Together with ACORN, the AFL-CIO spearheaded many of the community coalitions that gathered the necessary signatures for the ballot initiatives, then educated voters and turned them out to vote.

The AFL-CIO's voter protection program turned out hundreds of volunteers in 23 communities in 6 battleground states to educate citizens about their voting rights and help prevent the kinds of voting rights violations that marred the 2000 presidential election. The program focused on communities in Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington and partnered closely with community groups and lawyers to provide election day support.

The AFL-CIO is the nation's largest umbrella organization of unions, representing 10 million working men and women nationwide, and reaching out to 13.4 million voters in union households.
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Workers in Change to Win Unions Help Bring Pro-Worker Candidates to Victory
Activists Call on New Leadership to Help Restore the American Dream

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- American workers sent a clear message yesterday that they are ready for new leaders who will stand up for issues important to their families, following a massive voter turnout program spearheaded by members of the most politically active unions in the country.

"For months, workers from the Change to Win unions have pounded the pavement to help elect leaders who will fight to make work pay for ordinary Americans, not just corporate America," said CtW Chair Anna Burger. "And voters united behind that hope for change at the polls."

Activists from the 6-million strong labor federation helped shape the outcome of this election by committing significant resources and contributing the people-power and organizing know- how to the largest grassroots mobilization of union members ever in a midterm election.

Truck drivers, janitors, grocery store clerks, carpenters, health care workers and others united in the CtW unions helped center the worker-to-worker contact program within a universe of 6 million CtW union member households across the country. In all, they knocked on 2.3 million doors, made 6.9 million phone calls, distributed 5.6 million worksite flyers, and contributed 356,731 volunteer hours to support candidates and initiatives that can make a difference for working people.

Shannon Ross, a UNITE/HERE member who was forced to live on minimum wage before her co-workers formed a union at a St. Louis laundry facility, got active for the first time in a political cycle to help give a raise to other Missouri workers.

"I helped raise the minimum wage by raising my voice," said Ross, who also helped elect a new U.S. Senator who has pledged to represent Missouri's working families in Washington. "Congress had left so many hard-working people out in the cold so I'm excited union workers like me here and in five others states took matters into our own hands."

In addition to working with the entire labor movement and other progressive partners on congressional races in all 50 states, both new and seasoned activists from the CtW unions also focused a comprehensive, strategic program around U.S. Senate, gubernatorial and down-ballot races in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, where CtW represents close to one million members, resulting in wins in key races in all three states.

The members of Change to Win affiliates today celebrated their hard work had paid off, but recognized their work is not over and plan to hold the 110th Congress and other politicians accountable for bringing changes to the polices that affect working families.

"Activists from Change to Win welcome their new leadership, but with an expectation. These new leaders must do their part to restore the American Dream -- a paycheck that supports a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement and most of all, a better life for our kids," said Burger.

"We will continue to do our part by helping workers unite in their industries to change their lives. Together, we will make work pay in this country again."
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Change to Win was founded in September 2005 by seven unions and six million workers to build a movement of working people with the power to make work pay for everyone. We believe that all workers should have a paycheck that can support a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement and dignity on the job. The seven affiliated unions are: Service Employees International Union, UNITE HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers' International Union of North America, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and United Farm Workers of America.
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CONTINUED......

[michelle]

....continued:
Who Voted For The Democrats And Why:
Various Statements from Voter Groups 11/08/06
PART 2 of 2


Landslide for Minimum Wage: What Happened, What's Next, Analyzed in Nov. 9 Teleconference

Minimum wage hikes won in every state they were on the ballot, winning by a resounding 76 percent in Missouri, 73 percent in Montana, 69 percent in Nevada, 66 percent in Arizona, 56 percent in Ohio and 53 percent in Colorado (latest totals).

Americans across the nation voted for a change in priorities, insisting on the fundamental fairness value of Let Justice's Roll message: A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

In Thursday's telephone press conference, state minimum wage ballot organizers (Ariz., Colo., Mo., Mont. and Ohio), leaders of the national Let Justice Roll campaign, a low-wage worker, and two business leaders will analyze this historic victory, discuss plans to raise federal and state minimum wages, and answer reporters' questions.

-- What was behind each state's minimum wage victory?

-- How did the new "values vote" impact the election? How effective were faith-based efforts to frame poverty wages as a moral issue?

-- How did voters respond to the competing business voices for and against raising the minimum wage?

-- What's next for campaigns to raise the minimum wage in more states and at the federal level?

WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 9, at noon Eastern

HOW: Journalists call 1-800-362-0571 and say passcode "minimum." Journalists can ask questions of the speakers by pressing (star)1 on the phone.

WHO:

-- Rev. Paul Sherry, national coordinator, Let Justice Roll campaign and co-author, "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future"

-- Montana: Doug Mitchell, campaign manager, Raise Montana, Helena

-- Missouri: Rev. Audrey Hollis, lead organizer, Let Justice Roll Missouri, St. Louis

-- Small-business owner: Lew Prince, co-owner, Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis; featured on PBS Now show on minimum wage

-- Ohio: Rev. Tim Ahrens, senior pastor, First Congregational Church UCC, Columbus

-- Low-wage worker: Mack McCowan, a worker affected by the Ohio results, Cleveland

-- Venture Capitalist: Adnan Durrani, president of Condor Ventures, Stamford, Conn.; venture partner, Blue Chip Venture Capital, Cincinnati

-- Colorado: Terri McMaster, leader in Let Justice Roll Colorado, and director, Lutheran Advocacy Ministry, Denver

-- Arizona: Rev. Trina Zelle, lead organizer, Let Justice Roll Arizona, Tempe

-- Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary, National Council of Churches, former Congressman, and author, "Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right"

Prince and Durrani are inaugural signatories to the Business Owners and Executives for a Higher Minimum Wage statement (available at www.letjusticeroll.org/pressroom/ljrpressrelease-10-31.html.)
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Let Justice Roll is a fast-growing national nonpartisan partnership of more than 80 organizations working for a higher minimum wage at the state and federal level. Leading Let Justice Roll members include the National Council of Churches-USA, American Friends Service Committee, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, ACORN, Union for Reform Judaism, and Interfaith Worker Justice.
For more information about member groups and the Let Justice Roll campaign, visit www.letjusticeroll.org.
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Members & Voters To Bush: Get Us Out of Iraq ASAP
'Call for Change' Phone Bank Makes the Difference in Close Democratic Wins

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll -- available at gqrr.com/index.php?IDequal1824 -- commissioned by MoveOn.org Political Action, makes it clear that the public elected the new Congress with a mandate to get our troops out of the mess in Iraq.

Principal findings include:

-- Iraq was the primary issue in this election.

-- Iraq was the number one issue among key swing groups.

-- Iraq drove the new Democratic majority.

-- The Iraq issue was clearly defined-it differentiated the candidates for voters.

-- Voters demand a change, favor setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

-- Voters expect Democrats to reduce or withdraw troops from Iraq if they control Congress.

GQR concludes: "More than anything else, this election was a referendum on the Administration's policy in Iraq. It was the defining issue of the campaign and the primary reason Republicans lost their majority."

The wave of voter rejection aimed primarily at the President's failed Iraq policy was amplified by the on the ground efforts of over 185,000 MoveOn volunteers who made 7 million get-out-the vote calls in the closing weeks, days and hours of the election. In many close races, the volume of MoveOn calls far exceeded the Democratic candidates' winning margins.

Notable examples include:

-- Kentucky 3: Yarmuth (D) defeated Northup (R) by 5,890 votes. Call for Change made 42,182 phone calls.

-- New York 19: Hall (D) defeated Kelly (R) by 3,528 votes. Call for Change made 63,745.

-- California 11: McNerney (D) defeated Pombo (R) by 9,355 votes. Call for Change made 39,007 phone calls.

Democratic leaders agreed with this assessment:

"Having perfected on-line grassroots mobilization, MoveOn's commitment to making change proved invaluable to Democratic candidates across the country, helping make the difference in dozens of races nationwide." -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

"The thousands of MoveOn volunteer hours, the millions of phone calls placed through Call for Change and the tens of millions of dollars contributed made the difference for Democrats this year." -- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid

"We're looking to Speaker Pelosi Senate Democratic Leader Reid to take the message on Iraq to the White House." said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action.
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Election Night Brings a Blue Tide of Governors; Democrats to Hold Majority of Governorships for First Time Since 1994

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Democrats last night won a majority of governorships for the first time since 1994. Governorships switched parties in 6 states -- New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Colorado, Arkansas and Maryland.

"Last night, America took a step toward getting our country on the right track by electing a majority of Democratic governors," said Democratic Governors Association (DGA) Chair and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. "Voters have welcomed in a blue tide. Democratic governors showed strength across the country, winning in every region. These widespread victories set the groundwork and establish tremendous momentum for Democratic victories in 2007 and 2008."

Richardson continued, "From the Northeast to the South, from the Midwest to Mountain West, last night's elections results confirm that voters prefer Democratic leadership. Americans like what Democratic governors have done to improve education, create jobs, expand quality, affordable heath care, and make communities safer. They are calling loud and clear for more of this responsible, innovative Democratic leadership."

The election creates a number of historic firsts. Massachusetts elected its first African-American governor and first Democratic governor in 16 years, Governor-elect Deval Patrick. For the first time since 1951, Maryland voters unseated an incumbent governor, which resulted in Martin O'Malley's election. And for the first time in more than a decade, Democratic governors hold a majority of the governorships in the Mountain West.

Democratic Gubernatorial candidates led efforts to work with national and state-based groups. Allies in Labor, both the AFL- CIO and Change to Win, were a significant factor in key governors' races from Wisconsin and Ohio to Massachusetts and Maryland, and in the final four days, the national Labor community had tens of thousands of volunteers dedicated to GOTV for Democratic candidates in gubernatorial races.

Arkansas Governor-elect Mike Beebe commented, "America chose a new direction last night, a blue direction. Democratic governors have been solving problems, giving hope, and exemplifying effective governing. Voters in Arkansas and across the country know they can trust Democratic governors to improve the quality of life and make their states stronger than ever before."

Ohio Governor-elect Ted Strickland agreed. "Tonight Ohioans chose hope over fear and division. I am honored and humbled by this opportunity to unite all Ohioans in an effort to turnaround Ohio," Governor-elect Strickland said.

"Our victory in Colorado and Democratic governors' victories across the country show that Americans want to see their states move forward. They want practical, pragmatic leaders who have a positive vision of where their states should go, not just for now but for our children and grandchildren," said Colorado Governor- elect Bill Ritter. "Here we call it the Colorado Promise, but the promise of better health care, better education, and a commitment to renewable energy is promise we as Democrats should keep to every state in the nation."

Under Richardson's leadership, the DGA won the first Democratic majority of governorships since 1994. During the past two years, the DGA has shattered previous fundraising records -- allowing itself to make early investments in promising candidates, ensuring re-election of all its Democratic incumbents, and protecting its one open seat. "The DGA started planning and investing early to ensure last night's outcome. And while we set records in what we raised and spent, that was only part of the story. Our work in the states -- providing staffing, developing state-specific policy ideas, giving invaluable strategic campaign counsel, and much more -- might be the untold story," Richardson said.
The Numbers

-- Current Democratic governors: 22 of 50

-- Post-election Democratic governors: 28 of 50

-- Republican Open Seats Won: 5 of 8

-- Republican Incumbent Defeated: 1

-- Democratic Open Seat Won: 1 of 1

-- Democratic Governors Re-elected: 13 of 13

-- Democratic governors in red states: 15

In January, states with Democratic governors will account for 295 electoral votes, up from 126.
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Paid for by the Democratic Governors Association. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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CAMR Recognizes Embryonic Stem Cell Influence In Certain Election Wins

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Sean Tipton, president, Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), issued the following statement today on embryonic stem cell influence in certain election wins:

"The voters have spoken. It's clear that Americans took their feelings about embryonic stem cell research to the polls yesterday. We are pleased to see that so many candidates supporting embryonic stem cell research were re-elected or elected for the first time to both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. This shows great promise for the future of federal embryonic stem cell legislation, and we look forward to working with elected officials on both sides of the aisle to bring about policy initiatives that will move America forward in the fields of science and medicine.

"We believe that pro-embryonic stem cell positions played a positive and decisive role in the election or re-election of candidates such as pro-stem cell Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and pro-stem cell Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, to name a few. And, we are pleased that stalwart stem cell champions Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), as well as Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and Dianne Feinstein (D- CA) were re-elected and are coming back to Washington in January.

"Thanks to the advocacy efforts of Michael J. Fox and the millions of Americans affected with debilitating diseases and disorders for which embryonic stem cell research provides hope for better treatments and cures, the issue of stem cell research stayed on the front burner this election cycle. We look forward to working with the U.S. House and Senate in 2007 to bring forth legislation that will provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Americans who themselves or whose families are impacted by cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries and other diseases and disorders let their voices be heard, and for that, we are grateful."
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The Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR) is the nation's leading pro-cures coalition. It is comprised of nationally-recognized patient organizations, universities, scientific societies, and foundations advocating for the advancement of breakthrough research and technologies in regenerative medicine -- including stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer -- in order to cure disease and alleviate suffering for individuals with life-threatening illnesses and disorders.
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WAVE: Wisconsin Voters Soundly Reject Gun Lobby's Extremist Agenda
Gov. Doyle's Commonsense Stand on Guns is Supported by Voters; Author of Concealed Weapons Bills, Dave Zien, Gets Ousted from State Senate

MILWAUKEE, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a statement by the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.

The citizens of Wisconsin won an overwhelming victory against the extremism of the gun lobby this election.

"Common sense won. Wisconsin's families won. Citizens who want to live in safe communities won," said Jeri Bonavia, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.

"The big loser yesterday was the gun lobby," said Bonavia. "Voters rejected the gun lobby's radical agenda. The gun lobby came here armed with distortions, threats and money, and we sent them home with a clear message that they are not welcome in Wisconsin.

"We're simply too smart, too savvy and too pragmatic to be fooled or intimidated by the gun lobby," said Bonavia. "I hope the gun lobby and our new legislature get the message: The people of Wisconsin will not tolerate an extremist pro-gun agenda."

The gun lobby had set Wisconsin in their sights this year. They even held the annual NRA convention in Milwaukee this spring, where they began a "Dump Doyle" rallying cry-a cry that has ended in a whimper.

Further, State Sen. Dave Zien actually threatened fellow state lawmakers with political retaliation and said that out-of-state, special interest money would be used against any legislator who "screwed" with his bill to legalize the carrying of hidden, loaded handguns. Zien was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as saying, "Anyone that screws us on this legislation -- Democrat or Republican, Assembly or Senate -- the NRA is going to work unbelievably earnestly, taking no prisoners, on this next election cycle."

"It was deeply gratifying to watch Zien's bullying backfire. Dave Zien and the gun lobby just didn't get it: The people of Wisconsin won't tolerate extremists," said Bonavia. "Despite all the threats, despite all the lies and distortions about his record, and despite all the money the gun lobby spent trying to defeat him, Gov. Doyle was supported by the voters because he was willing to stand up for the safety of Wisconsin's families."
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In Pennsylvania, Political Upsets Give Momentum for Push to Toughen Gun Laws

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In Pennsylvania, public support for tougher gun laws helped re-elect Gov. Ed Rendell, send new members to the U.S. Congress and defeat a key state legislative incumbent.

Governor Rendell, a longtime gun violence prevention supporter, easily defeated the NRA-supported Lynn Swann, a star wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers who had been expected to present a stronger challenge. Governor Rendell made the fight on illegal gun trafficking a major part of his re-election campaign as he championed legislation to stop the bulk buying of handguns by limiting handgun purchases to one per month.

"In this election, the gun issue was in play, gun violence prevention groups won while the gun pushers lost and there is now a shift in momentum on the issue of common sense gun restrictions," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The major victories come on the heels of a spirited rally by more than 2,000 gun violence prevention advocates in Harrisburg in September. Participants called for the legislature to act to stem the tide of illegal guns in Pennsylvania cities. The issue of illegal gun trafficking has become a major issue in the Philadelphia suburbs and statewide.

"Getting illegal guns off of our streets is a big priority for me in Pennsylvania," Rendell said. "I thank the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence for their continuing support and their commitment to making Pennsylvania a safer place to live."

The newly elected U.S. Senator, Bob Casey, agreed with the Brady Campaign when he publicly stated that he advocated full funding for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The NRA put more than $337,000 into supporting U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's losing campaign.

In two nationally targeted Congressional races in the Philadelphia suburbs, Brady-endorsed challengers were victorious. In Pennsylvania's 7th District, Vice Admiral Joe Sestak beat Rep. Curt Weldon, who recently voted to repeal a law requiring gun dealers to sell child safety gun locks with all handgun sales.

"The support of the Brady Campaign and all of their grassroots members was a great help in my victory," Sestak said. "I look forward to providing leadership in Congress to protect our children and to strengthen and enforce our nation's gun safety laws." In the 8th District, Iraqi War veteran Patrick Murphy appears to have defeated Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. The NRA put dollars behind the unsuccessful Weldon and Fitzpatrick campaigns.

In a pivotal State House race, Brady-endorsed Bryan Lentz appears to have knocked off NRA-endorsed incumbent Tom Gannon. "I'm very grateful for the help of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence," said Lentz. "The issue of gun violence really matters to voters in my district, especially when it comes to getting illegal guns off our streets."

"I am pleased to see that voters across the state are taking notice of the gun violence epidemic we are facing in Pennsylvania," said Barbara Montgomery, president of the Pennsylvania Million Mom March Chapters of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "I'm hopeful that we can now get to work on the serious business of protecting our children from gun violence." The Brady Campaign sent more than 20,000 emails to voters in Pennsylvania.

"It's clear that the problem of illegal handguns was a critical issue in the election," said Diane Edbril, executive director of CeaseFirePA. "We look forward to working with this new legislature to enact life-saving common-sense gun violence prevention measures including our statewide one handgun per month legislation."
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As the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign, working with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work and in our communities.
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2006 Midterm Election Analysis: Vanderbilt Experts

NASHVILLE, Nov. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Election outcome helps put to rest one of the oft-cited pieces of conventional wisdom about negative campaigning - that attack advertising depresses turnout, says John Geer, professor of political science. It appears that turnout was up in 2006 from 2002 and yet 2006 was surely more negative than four years ago, Geer says. There may be reasons not to like negative ads, but lower turnout is not among them. Geer says that Corker's narrow win in Tennessee can be interpreted several ways. Some will contend that race played a role in the outcome. Geer says that is possible, but Tennessee is a redder state than many realize. President Bush's popularity in this state is about 50 percent. That is far above the national average and makes Tennessee look more like Texas than Virginia, he says. Geer, an expert on campaigns, elections, polls and negative ads, can be reached at 615-343-5746 or by email at [e-mail] .

Since Harold Ford Jr. vs. Bob Corker was an open seat, Ford had trouble tying Corker to the unpopular Bush administration, which worked in other states against Republican incumbents, says Assistant Professor of Political Science Christian Grose. Ford's campaign was also hurt in the last 10 days by anti-Ford push polls sent across the state and Corker's new media team. The number of highly enthusiastic supporters for Ford across the state outnumbered Corker's very strong supporters dramatically, as noted by the larger numbers showing up at Ford rallies compared to Corker's. However, a slim majority of the voters, while not enthusiastic about either candidate, decided to vote for Corker. One advantage for Corker was his strong performance in the ring counties surrounding Nashville compared to previous GOP candidates. Christian Grose, who studies Congress, elections and Southern politics, can be reached at 615-322-6242 or [e-mail] .

Democrats in Congress now have the ability to put their issues on the agenda, and agenda control is key to being in charge on Capitol Hill, says Professor of Political Science Bruce Oppenheimer. In addition, the returns signify new oversight of the Bush administration that could not happen under a Republican- controlled Congress. Oppenheimer sees similarities between the 1994 GOP take-over in the House and the Democrats' big wins in 2006. He anticipates that the minimum wage increase and Medicare are among the issues that Democrats will take up quickly in the 110th Congress. Oppenheimer, who teaches and writes about Congress, legislative policy and elections, can be reached at 615-322-6232 or [e-mail] .

Voters in the 2006 elections show they prefer a politically divided government, with more checks and balances on presidential leadership, says Professor of History Thomas Alan Schwartz. While many interpret the results as a complete rejection of Bush policies in Iraq, Schwartz does not think Democrats in Congress will call for any drastic changes, like complete troop withdrawal. Lawmakers will certainly investigate what went wrong in Iraq and mostly likely push to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group that is co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, he believes. Looking back at the Vietnam War, even when the Democrats prevailed in Congress in the early 1970s, they did not vote for immediate cuts in funding for the war. They waited until the American soldiers had left. On the other hand, Schwartz says President Bush will be forced to make leadership changes, including the secretary of defense, and push harder on the Iraqi government to stabilize. Schwartz, a presidential historian and foreign policy scholar, can be reached at 615-343- 4328 or [e-mail] .

Youtube, Google and other video-sharing Web sites have a significant impact on the news coverage and voter awareness of various campaigns, according to Bruce Barry, professor of management and sociology. This is the first major election in which non-journalists were shadowing candidates with cameras and then posting their videos on popular Internet sites. For example, Harold Ford Jr.'s street confrontation with Bob Corker in Memphis was posted on www.youtube.com as were controversial negative ads in the campaign. Even if many voters are not watching these videos, they draw attention to events that otherwise the mainstream media might overlook. In addition, there was an expansion of effective blogging about the campaigns, with data showing more people now reading political blogs. Various forms of new media could have an impact on close races, giving undecideds a reason to vote or not to vote for a particular candidate. Barry, who teaches "Technology, Media, Culture and Society," can be reached at 615-322-3489 or [e-mail] .

[michelle]

Who Voted For The Democrats And Why:
Various Statements from Voter Groups 11/08-09/06
LATE ADDITIONS

Arab Americans Play Pivotal Role in Key Races Across U.S.; Arab American Democrats Help Jim Webb, Democratic Party Seize Senate

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Arab American Democrats played a pivotal role in Senate and House races across the country - organizing voter rallies, candidates' nights, sophisticated get-out-the-vote phone banks and door-to-door canvases that helped deliver victory in these key races.

In Virginia, Senator-elect Jim Webb's campaign was buoyed by Arab American Democrats, who placed more than 30,000 phone calls encouraging the Arab American community to get out to the polls in support of Webb.

"Arab American Democrat" signs were visible throughout the room at Webb's Victory Party. One volunteer on the ground reported, "As soon as Webb glanced at our signs, he said, 'I will make sure that our party will be an all inclusive party,'" he said. "Just this phrase is a great gift for the efforts that we have all been generous in giving...we have already proven our collective political influence on his campaign."

Webb campaigned directly for the Arab American vote, attending the Arab American Institute's Virginia Candidates' Night, where he answered questions from the community about Palestine, the war in Iraq and civil liberties.

In New Jersey, the Arab-American Democratic Caucus endorsed Sen. Robert Menendez, citing his responses to an Arab American Institute's questionnaire about his stance on trade with Arab nations, engaging the Arab American community in the political process, habeas corpus and other issues of deep concern to the state's Arab American voters.

During the last week of the campaign, AADC members placed 55,000 phone calls for Menendez, and went tirelessly door-to-door to help energize voters for Menendez.

In Pennsylvania, Arab American Democrats aided five congressional candidates and U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey, Jr. through direct mail and thousands and thousands of targeted phone calls. Additionally, individual groups of Arab American voters, many getting involved politically for the first time, organized fundraisers in their home for local candidates running for Congress.

"The political organization of Arab American Democrats and Republicans helped engage record numbers of Arab Americans in the civic process and raised the visibility and importance of this emerging swing vote," said Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute (AAI). "Candidates in these races spoke to the issues at the heart of the Arab American community, and those issues mobilize this pivotal base to the polls. We hope that in 2008, even more candidates on both sides of the aisle look to engage Arab American voters."
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About the Arab American Institute

Founded in 1985, the Arab American Institute (AAI) is a nonprofit organization committed to the civic and political empowerment of Americans of Arab descent. AAI provides policy, research and public affairs services to support a broad range of community activities. For more information on AAI, please visit www.aaiusa.org or call 202-429-9210.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Immigrant Voters and the 2006 Elections: Exit Polls in Three Cities Reveal Immigrant Voting Patterns

NEW YORK, Nov. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Immigration was a major issue for both immigrant and native-born voters this year, and the handling of the issue likely contributed to Democratic gains in this year's elections, exit poll findings released today suggest.

A majority of voters followed this year's immigration rallies closely and felt that Democrats did a better job on the immigration issue, according to the New Americans Exit Poll, which was conducted in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle by researchers at Barnard College of Columbia University, the City University of New York, Loyola Marymount University and the University of Washington.

"The immigration issue was clearly on the minds of most voters, and it made a difference at the polls," said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, which coordinated the three-city effort in partnership with community-based organizations in Los Angeles and Seattle. "The aftermath of the elections has created the perfect political moment for immigration reform: the anti-immigrant extremists have been discredited, there is broad national support for immigration reform, and the 12 million undocumented immigrants aren't going anywhere. President Bush is right to identify immigration reform as a key issue on which Republicans can find common ground with Democrats. We urge both parties to take up President Bush's invitation and deliver immigration reform to the American people," said Hong.

By a wide margin, voters felt that Democrats did a better job of handling the immigration issue during the last year. In New York, 57 percent of foreign-born voters and 50 percent of native- born voters said the Democrats did a better job on immigration, whereas only 15 percent of foreign-born voters and 10 percent of native-born voters sided with Republicans on the issue. Similar findings emerged from Los Angeles, where 60 percent of foreign- born and 48 percent of native-born voters preferred the Democrats approach, while 14 percent and 13 percent of foreign- and native- born voters, respectively, sided with Republicans. In Seattle, 30 percent favored the Democratic approach, while 12 percent opted for the Republicans.

In New York, among those who voted for President Bush in 2004, about a quarter now say that over the last year, the Democratic party handled immigration issues better than the Republican party, with immigrants more likely than the native-born to think this way (29 percent of foreign-born Bush voters favor the Democratic party on the immigration issue today, compared with 10 percent of the native-born).

"Voting patterns show that immigrant voters will shift loyalties if they are unfairly criminalized and attacked. The message here for both parties is you better pay attention to the fastest-growing segment of the electorate -- immigrant voters," added Hong.

The surveys found that two out of three voters in New York and Seattle, and three out of four voters in Los Angeles, followed news of the immigration rallies closely or somewhat closely. The high level of interest in the immigration debate was just as prominent, if not more, among native-born voters as among foreign-born voters. Ten percent of New York voters indicated that they or a family member took part in the immigration rallies, while in Los Angeles, a stunning 33 percent of foreign- born voters and 16 percent of native-born voters participated in the rallies.

"Does this tell us that grassroots power translated into voting power? The answer is yes! The findings also clearly show that the immigration issue has exploded into the American public arena and into American voters' consciousness in a big way this election year. It is no longer just an immigrant constituency issue but a major social problem that our nation must solve," said Eun-Sook Lee, executive director of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, which sponsored the New Americans Exit Poll in Los Angeles, along with Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the Central American Resource Center.

Immigrants continued to be the driving force behind the expansion of new voters. They were much more likely to have cast a ballot for the first time in these elections than their native- born counterparts. Eight percent of foreign-born voters in New York (12 percent in Los Angeles) reported they were first-time voters, compared with two percent of the native-born (5 percent in Los Angeles). Consistent with past findings, about two-thirds of all first-time voters in this election said they were foreign- born.

Immigrant community groups also stepped-up their voter registration and mobilization efforts following the spring's immigration rallies, and there was more coordination nationally. In New York, immigrant groups contacted over 46,000 immigrant voters, including registering nearly 10,000 new voters just during the last six months. Immigrant groups also did intensive outreach to recently naturalized immigrant voters, who are less likely to be contacted by political parties or other get-out-the- vote efforts, according to past exit poll results. These activities were coordinated under the New York Immigration Coalition's Democracy in Action! campaign, the goal of which is to empower and mobilize immigrant communities through citizenship and civic participation, grassroots action and public education.

"This was the year that immigrant groups across the nation conducted unprecedented voter education and mobilization campaigns. A new kind of immigrant voting block is forming. We have the beginnings of an immigrant electoral machine that will continue to build and flex its muscle in 2008 and beyond," said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of Hate Free Zone, an immigrant and civil rights group based in Washington state.
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Food And Commercial Workers Bring Fight for Health Care, Minimum Wage to the Ballot Box

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In the final weeks of the election, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) from across the country mobilized their co-workers, neighbors, and communities in a massive GOTV effort on behalf of pro-health care reform candidates and legislative initiatives that work for working families. UFCW members were engaged in nearly every important election across the country-from Deval Patrick's groundbreaking election in Massachusetts to Jerry McNerney's upset Congressional victory in Stockton, Calif. Their efforts paid off as dozens of candidates committed to health care reform and other worker issues were elected at all levels of state and local government.

"Working families voted, and working families won," said Joe Hansen, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). "That's the simple explanation for the results of Tuesday's election."

The UFCW's complete grassroots effort in Iowa brought new leadership to both state legislative chambers, two new pro-worker members of Congress, and a governor who understands the issues working families face. A top-to-bottom campaign in Michigan helped to change leadership in the State House there as well as re-electing Governor Granholm and Senator Stabenow. In addition to political races, UFCW members targeted state legislative campaigns as well. Faced with the threat of right-to-work-for- less legislation in Indiana, UFCW members mobilized and helped to change the leadership in the State House to candidates who oppose that anti-worker legislation.

Working with their own local unions, and together with both Change to Win and AFL-CIO affiliated locals, UFCW members used phones, mail, literature and member-to-member canvasses not only to get out the vote, but to inform people about issues like health care, minimum wage, and the right to join a union. More than a quarter million pieces of mail were sent to UFCW members in targeted states and districts.

"Though the election is over, our members' work is not over," Hansen said. "In January, we'll begin holding our newly elected leaders accountable on the issues on which they were elected. Our members will leverage their hard-fought political and legislative victories to push for meaningful health care reform, to improve the economy for working people, to secure real retirement security, and to help workers gain a voice on the job."
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Clean Elections Candidates in Three States Win Dozens of State Office Seats

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- With a number of races still left to be decided, Clean Elections candidates in three states -- Arizona, Maine and North Carolina -- have won at least 206 state offices in this year's elections. These new office holders include Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and challengers, women and a diverse reflection of races and ethnicities.

Maine

In Maine, where Clean Elections has been in place for all state races since 2000, at least 84 percent of the legislature will be represented by people who won using public funding. The results of eight races are still outstanding and some of the current results could change as more returns trickle in.

-- One-hundred-twenty-seven to 131 out of 151, or 84 percent to 87 percent of the members of the new House and 29 out of 35, or 83 percent of the new Senate will be legislators who used public funding.

-- In 63 percent of the state's legislative races, Clean Elections candidates ran against Clean Elections candidates, demonstrating the popularity of the system. Out of 186 races for state legislature, only three races (all in the House) had no publicly funded candidates.

-- Three out of five gubernatorial candidates used the system. The winner, incumbent Democrat John Baldacci, did not use public financing, but showed his support for Clean Elections by ensuring the Clean Election Fund had enough funds for this election cycle.

-- Of the incoming legislature, at least 48 and as many as 51 women will be serving -- at least 39 and as many as 42 in the House and nine in the Senate -- who used Clean Elections.

-- Of the Clean Elections officials serving in the new legislature in races we know the results of, 66 percent are Democrats 33 percent are Republicans and 1 percent are independent.

-- In the House, 14 of the 15 incumbents who lost their bid for reelection were defeated by Clean Elections candidates. Five of the losing incumbents were privately financed.

-- In all, 80 percent of the general elections candidates in Maine ran using Clean Elections, the same percent of the candidates as used the system in the primaries.

-- Eighty-six percent of Senate candidates were publicly funded, and 79 percent of House candidates used the system.

-- Women used Clean Elections at a slightly higher rate than men, with 89 percent of women running for Senate using it vs. 84 percent of men, and 81 percent of women running for House seats using it vs. 78 percent of men.

-- Ninety-two percent of Democrat candidates used Clean Elections, 72 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of Greens and 38 percent of Independents.

Arizona

Using a public funding system has been an option for Arizona state candidates since 2000. This year at least 43 percent of the candidates serving in the new legislature, and six out of eight elected statewide officers, ran using the system. The precise number of legislators won't be known until all of the close races have been decided.

-- Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano won her second race as a publicly funded candidate. Her opponent, Len Munsil, also ran using the system.

-- Five out of the remaining seven statewide winning candidates won their races using public funding. These include officials serving as secretary of state and attorney general.

-- Thirty-one out of 80 seats decided so far and at least eight of the remaining ten seats in the new legislature will be made up of officials who ran using full public financing for their races. This includes at least 30 out of 60 members of the House and nine out of 30 members of the Senate.

-- At least 14 women who will be serving in the new legislature ran using public funding.

-- Of the publicly funded officials in races decided so far who will be serving in the new legislature, 61 percent are Democrats and 39 percent are Republicans.

-- At least seven members of the new legislature are racial and ethnic minorities and ran using the system.

-- Over all, 61 percent of the eligible primary candidates and 58 percent of eligible general elections candidates in Arizona ran using public funding of elections.

North Carolina

The 2006 elections were the second in which candidates for top judicial posts had the option to run using full public financing. Two-thirds of the candidates running for these seats, including five of the six winners used the system this year.

-- Three of the four seats up for election on the seven-member Supreme Court and both of the seats filled on the 15-member Court of Appeals will be held by judges who ran with public funding.

-- Four of these publicly financed winners are women and one is an African American. Four are registered Democrats and one is a Republican (the elections are nonpartisan); one was a challenger, one won an open-seat race, and the other three were incumbents.

-- Eight out of twelve candidates in the general elections used public funding. Another attempted to participate but failed to qualify.

-- The only winner this year who was not in the program faced a privately financed opponent.

-- Overall, 20 of the 28 candidates in the 2004 and 2006 general elections for the North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals have met the program's conditions and received "clean" public funds for their campaigns.

-- Because of public financing, the campaigns in 2004 relied on attorneys and special-interest groups for less than 14 percent of their non-family funds, compared to 73 percent for candidates in 2002, before the reform.

-- Thousands of registered voters -- more than 4,000 in 2006 - - are providing the modest qualifying donations that authorize candidates to qualify for the public funds.

For more information, contact Nancy Watzman at Public Campaign, 303-329-8563. In Maine, contact Jon Bartholemew, Common Cause, 207-878-4126. In Arizona, contact Eric Ehst, Arizona Clean Elections Institute, 602-840-6633. In North Carolina, contact Bob Hall, Democracy North Carolina, 919-489-1931.
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UPDATE: IEA Support Provides Winning Margins in Many Races

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Most candidates supported by the state's largest education employees' union had good reason to celebrate on Election Night.

The bi-partisan candidate slate promoted by the Illinois Education Association (IEA) was overwhelmingly successful Tuesday, winning key races in all parts of the state.

In races for the US House of Representatives, IEA played a major role in the successful campaign of Phil Hare (D-17th) and provided crucial support for the re-election victories posted by Rep. Melissa Bean (D-8th) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-10th).

In General Assembly races, IEA helped Michael Noland (D- Elgin), Michael Bond (D-Zion), and Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge), win election to the Illinois Senate and played a key role in the elections of Jill Tracy (R-Quincy) and Sandy Cole (R-Grayslake) to the Illinois House.

IEA also was deeply involved in the election of Judge Vicki Wright to the 3rd Appellate District Court and in Brendan Houlihan's election to the Cook County Board of Review. The Board rules on the valuation for tax purposes on all of the more than 1.6 million parcels of real estate located in Cook County.

"Every decision that affects what happens in our public schools, whether it's congressional approval of the federal education law, a school or university board policy decision, or the setting of property evaluation by elected officials, is a political decision. That is why IEA is involved in politics," said IEA President Ken Swanson.

According to the IEA president, Tuesday's election marked the organization's first step toward passing legislation to reform school funding in Illinois and reducing local property taxes.

"We are sending a message to legislators and the governor that the people for whom we advocate, the children of Illinois and school employees statewide, demand fairness. We expect the politicians to deliver." Swanson said.

EDITORS: Fifth paragraph clarifies the duties of Cook County Borad of Review.

[michelle]

Now the Hard Part Begins

Many in the united States are disappointed that the Democrats have pulled impeachment off the table. Below is a letter sent from Rep. John Conyers. Mr Conyers suggests that that oversight, accountability and checks and balances must occur. There has been much legislation passed which has been detrimental to the well-being of the American people and their voting rights. Rep. Conyers is right; we have much work to do to restore our governmental system. I believe that it would be very good indeed for Rep. Conyers to be selected as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Changes are not going to happen quickly; citizens must light a blaze under their Washington representatives and, pay attention to legislation. C-Span televises both the House and Senate debates and, there are many groups which send notices of legislative resolutions. Continue to be extremely vocal. Don't neglect your individual State and local governments' actions either!
Below is the link to John Conyers' blog; I encourage you to engage in your right to freedom of speech and submit your ideas and comments.....Michelle
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Now the Hard Part Begins
11/15/06

Dear Michelle,

We did it! We won at least 29 House seats and took the majority. We won 6 Senate seats and took back the Senate too, not to mention 28 Governors and several more statehouses. We had incredible turnout of Democratic voters across the country. Thanks to you, we had a vigorous election protection program in place to fight those who would restrict our right to vote. We ran a positive campaign on the issues that really matter to American voters.

The past two years we have worked very hard to bring a new majority to Congress and to restore accountability in Washington. We have fought together on issues such as the unanswered irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, the scandal of the Downing Street Minutes, the shame of outing a CIA agent, and much more. Together we proved that a number of dedicated online activists, working in conjunction with a single congressman, could become a force to be reckoned with.

Although we won back control of Congress, none of us should delude ourselves into thinking that running the legislative branch in a nation wracked by years of one party rule will be easy. We need to put aside any thought of anger or payback. Instead we need to focus on identifying and correcting abuses and pass legislation which serves the interests of the American people.

We also need to recapture the White House in 2008 and maintain and expand our majorities in the Congress. In order to achieve these goals we need to be totally united as a Party. It is fine to debate and argue behind closed doors and among ourselves, but at the end of the day, we owe it to the American people to unite and lead.

Thus, in my opinion it serve’s no one’s interests but the Republicans for anyone, including my friend James Carville, to suggest dumping DNC Chairman Dean less than three days after the most sweeping Democratic Congressional victory in more than thirty years. As many of you also know, I have agreed with Speaker-to-be Pelosi that impeachment is off the table. Instead, we agree that oversight, accountability and checks and balances – which have been sorely lacking for the last six years – must occur. I have nothing but respect for those who might disagree, but that is where I come out.

Having devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to detailing the many abuses of the Bush Administration, I firmly believe that we have brought these matters to the attention of the American people and the mainstream media, and that their verdict was reflected in the elections on November 7. I consider the now famous “basement hearings” and the issuance of my “Constitution in Crisis” Report to be among the watershed achievements of my more than forty years in Congress.

I also remain committed to the seminal issue of election reform. As one who held several hearings in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio debacle and went on to author “What Went Wrong in Ohio,” I believe more than ever that we need a paper trail on voting machines. We also need to strengthen our laws to put an end to intimidation schemes, like the stealth robo-calls voters received before the election. I intend to introduce legislation next Congress concerning these matters.

Additionally, none of us should underestimate the continued anger and vitriol of our political opponents, even after the election they are engaged in a permanent campaign to discredit Democrats and thwart our agenda of change. You need to go no further than the November 9 editorial in the supposedly mainstream Investors Business Daily, which smeared not only me but my constituents, writing, "[Michigan congressman John] Conyers led the defense of Bill Clinton in last decade's impeachment hearings and is clearly out for blood. So are many of the constituents he serves." Pejorative and prejudiced statements like this should have no place in our political discourse.

I am hopeful that I will be selected as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is one of the most important committees in the House, and has jurisdiction over the Justice Department, the civil rights laws, criminal laws, the civil justice system, the courts, immigration laws, antitrust laws, patent and copyright laws, bankruptcy laws, administrative law, and Constitutional amendments. If I am selected as Chair, I believe it will place us in a position to make real and meaningful changes for the good of the American people.

We remain in this together, and I continue to look forward to receiving your ideas, your support, and your advice in the coming months and years.

Your Friend,

John Conyers, Jr.

ConyersBlog
Come to my blog today and share your views with me:
johnconyers.com/blog

[michelle]

Showdown With the Democratic Leadership


Below is a running total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq War. The number is based on Congressional appropriations.
The War in Iraq Costs $348,485,881,161 [and running by the second; this is the $$$ I freeze framed!!!!]

See the cost in your community

Or compare to the cost of:
PRE-SCHOOL
KIDS' HEALTH
COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS
PUBLIC HOUSING
PUBLIC EDUCATION

Notes and Sources
Embed a counter in your own web page!
Set up an LED counter on Main Street in your town.

In April, 2003 an intergenerational team of Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD created costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.
Go to: www.costofwar.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter the amount of federal income tax you paid during 2005 and see how the government spent the money.
Note: Totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interactivetaxchart/taxchart.html
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Dennis Kucinich’s Showdown With the Democratic Leadership
Posted on Dec 6, 2006
By Joshua Scheer

Editor’s note: In an interview with Truthdig research editor Joshua Scheer*, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) criticizes the leadership of his own party for announcing Tuesday that it would support a massive increase in spending for the Iraq war.

Truthdig: What was the upshot of [Tuesday’s] Democratic caucus meeting?

Kucinich: At this point the Democratic leadership—the speaker and the majority leader and Rahm Emanuel—are all recommending that the Democrats support the appropriation that is going to be brought forward in the spring, for the purposes of [continuing to fund] the war in Iraq.

Truthdig: Why do you think that is?

Kucinich: The leadership feels that they can bring about greater transparency [in spending], that they can bring special committees to look at what’s gone wrong with the war, and that there’s going to be improved oversight.

Truthdig: Were there dissenting opinions ... ? Do you think this will pass?

Kucinich: I think this is going to be a serious test of the Democratic Party. We were put in power because people expected a new direction in Iraq. It goes without saying that they expect greater transparency and oversight, but they also expect us to do something to bring the troops home. Now, if Congress goes ahead under Democratic leadership and votes to approve what some are now estimating as an additional $160 billion for the war in Iraq, bringing the total for the fiscal year to $230 billion, the Democratic Congress will have bought George Bush’s war. Now, who would buy a used war from this administration?

Truthdig: Weren’t the Democrats elected because of the war in Iraq?

Kucinich: The Democrats came to power because of a strong desire on the part of the voters to get out of Iraq. That’s why people voted Democratic. So now, with the Democratic leadership taking a position saying they’re going to approve the supplemental budget in the spring, this could be seen by many as a breach of faith.

Truthdig: What can people do?

Kucinich:People first of all need to know about this. People need to know that there is an attempt by our leadership to support the supplemental, and what the consequences are.... The most difficult part of the challenge is to get members of Congress to understand that they themselves voted for a bill which went into effect on Oct. 1 that appropriated $70 billion, which could be used to bring the troops home. Unfortunately, our leadership is saying they’re supporting the supplemental as a way of supporting the troops. So if we continue to ignore the money that’s there right now to bring the troops home, we’re losing an opportunity to bring the troops home now. People are now saying that they oppose the war, but they’re continuing to fund it in the name of supporting the troops.

They say they’re not going to abandon the troops in the field. We’re professing a strange love for these troops by keeping them there, because the money’s there to bring them home. So this is going to shape up as a major discussion across this country. People are going to want to know why Democrats would not bring the troops home now, when the money is there now.

Truthdig:For me this is really disheartening, because I feel like I have been lied to, and the American people have been lied to, because the [Democratic] Party was so against extra funds for the war. It’s almost like the party has done a bait-and-switch.

Kucinich: I think there’s going to be a concern around the country that this does represent a bait-and-switch. I’m hopeful that this position will be reconsidered and that the Democrats will not vote to keep the war going. But at this point, if the Democrats go forward and support a supplemental which by some accounts is now rising to $160 billion, they’ll be providing enough money to keep the war going through the end of George Bush’s term.

Now, this is a serious moment. I believe the public is largely unaware that this is happening, and I think a lot of people are going to be very surprised to learn that less than one month since this great realignment, that Democrats leaders, who came to power because of widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, are now saying that they will vote to continue funding the war.

Truthdig: Is there any hope to end the war now, and not go for this extra $160 billion in supplemental funds? Was there anything that happened in the room that gave you hope?

Kucinich: There’s a type of thinking which equates staying in Iraq as demonstrating strength. There’s a type of thinking which equates support for the supplemental with supporting the troops. This type of thinking is inherently flawed. It is circular in its nature. It will keep us in war. It will damn our troops to the horror of getting shot at from all sides. This is the time for Democrats to be uniting to exit from Iraq. And the exit door is already well lit with a sign that says $70 billion. If we support the troops, why in the world would we not use the money to bring them home, instead of spending more money to keep them in? Why would we, when we have money to bring them home right now, appropriate another $160 billion which would keep them there, possibly through the end of George Bush’s term?

The Iraq Study Group recognized the perilous nature of this war, and there is no indication that the administration is going to bring the troops home. Every statement that the president has made has been very clear with respect to his intent to continue the U.S. presence. He has basically said, “No timetables,” and he hasn’t set any call for troop reductions. Now, we have men and women who are dying there, and for what? That’s why it’s more than disappointing that the Democratic Party is not standing up.

Truthdig: So, again, what can people do?

Kucinich: I think it’s important for people to contact their member of Congress, and to let the member of Congress know how they feel. The people are also going to have to work their e-mail lists to pass the word, because not a lot of people know about this. It’s going to be important for people to organize. It’s going to take a mass movement to change this situation. It’s going to take a mass movement to really create such an uproar that approval of the supplemental will be stopped. [see note below]

Truthdig: Thank you.

*Truthdig interviewer Joshua Scheer worked as an entry-level staffer on Kucinich’s state Senate campaign and was later a summer associate in his congressional office. In this weekly interview series, Rep. Kucinich gives his take on the goings-on in Congress in the wake of the Democrats’ victory.

Source: www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20061206_dennis_kucinichs_showdown/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note from Michelle: Please go to today's posting where you can read more on the new funding for the war and TAKE ACTION AGAINST THIS at:
Re: Current Legislation/Action
« Reply #56 on 12/08/06 at 2:30pm »
There is Only One Way to End The War in Iraq
tinyurl.com/ylrj4g

[michelle]

Tuesday, 1/23/07...1 hour after State of the Union Address
I'm not going to comment on the Dems plan for Iraq. I have posted this to show that the one major difference in the new party majority that we can benefit from is what agendas are brought to the table. The Dems, true to their basic party platform, promise to address sorely neglected domestic issues. BTW, GW, as always, made me ill watching and listening to him...Michelle

Democratic Response of Senator Jim Webb to the President’s State of the Union Address
Published: January 23, 2007

Good evening.

I'm Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, where this year we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown ­ an event that marked the first step in the long journey that has made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth.

It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut the President's message, nor would it be useful. Let me simply say that we in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and healthcare for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.

Further, this is the seventh time the President has mentioned energy independence in his state of the union message, but for the first time this exchange is taking place in a Congress led by the Democratic Party. We are looking for affirmative solutions that will strengthen our nation by freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, and spurring a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs. We look forward to working with the President and his party to bring about these changes.

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy ­ how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy ­ how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.

In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy ­ that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

And under the leadership of the new Democratic Congress, we are on our way to doing so. The House just passed a minimum wage increase, the first in ten years, and the Senate will soon follow. We've introduced a broad legislative package designed to regain the trust of the American people. We've established a tone of cooperation and consensus that extends beyond party lines. We're working to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for more than 50 years. This is my father, when he was a young Air Force captain, flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy, I used to take the picture to bed with me every night, because for more than three years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues ­ those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death ­ we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.

We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us ­ sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable ­ and predicted ­ disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

On both of these vital issues, our economy and our national security, it falls upon those of us in elected office to take action.

Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt

Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves "as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other." And he did something about it.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

Thank you for listening. And God bless America.

Source: www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/washington/23webb-transcript.html

[michelle]

I said, somewhere at the forum, that I wasn't going to post stuff on the presidential race...Dennis Kucinich is gone and I don't give a rat's ass about the rest of them. After the last midterm elections, I felt a glimmer of hope from the Dems...Boy, was I a sucker!!! However, I'm backtracking on that statement because I found the following interesting. I resent how politicians talk to me/us....do they really think we are such imbeciles? Now, it appears that Barack Obama is talking a pretty good game and is bringing up previously avoided issues....Only time will tell what he's made of. In the mean time, here's a few articles of interest.....Michelle

Talking Down to America
By Michael Winship
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 26 March 2008

I haven't worked in the realm of children's television in more than a decade, but lessons learned in that world are lessons learned for life.

First and foremost: never condescend. When writing for kids, think of them as slightly shorter grown-ups with fewer bad habits and better credit.

Would that the Bush administration followed the non-condescension rule for adults. Instead, they've taken a page from the playbook of the late Uncle Don, host of a kiddy show during the glory days of radio.

It's apocryphal, one of those hoary urban legends, but the story goes that after finishing the broadcast of his usual half-hour of moonbeams and treacle, Uncle Don turned to a colleague - not knowing the microphone was still hot - and said, "Well, that ought to hold the little bastards."

Similarly, the White House seems to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that dispersing the same old, Uncle Don-style effluvium to the American public will continue to placate and hold us close. But more and more of us know it's nothing more than a bad smell.

A comparison of two noteworthy speeches last week - Barack Obama on race, George Bush on Iraq - shows the difference between a candidate who talks to us like grown-ups and an incumbent who seems to think he's still reading "My Pet Goat" to second graders in Sarasota.

Regardless of how you feel about Obama's candidacy or the continuing issue of his past affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, last Tuesday's speech in Philadelphia was formidable, candid, sophisticated rhetoric.

As Republican Peggy Noonan, a virtuoso of speechwriting for Ronald Reagan, observed in Friday's Wall Street Journal, "He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said."

What he said was, as per civil rights activist and historian Roger Wilkins, "the most extensive discussion of race ever by a presidential candidate." He rejected Wright's incendiary remarks but not his friendship, and he placed the minister's words in the context of the history of black churches in America.

"The anger is real," Obama said. "It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

Then he added, "A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.... So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

Oh my. "This wasn't the gauzy vision of diversity draped in tapestry metaphors and rainbow hues," The Boston Globe's Peter Canellos wrote. "It was a nation confronting its sins and overcoming its deeply held fears and prejudices."

Contrast that reality with the banana oil the president was peddling when he spoke at the Pentagon the next day, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. "The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around," he insisted. "It has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.... The significance of this development cannot be overstated."

Yes, it can. As Senate Majority Harry Reid noted, "We are proud of the warriors who have fought hard to reduce violence in Iraq in recent months. But America is not secure and the costs and consequences of the war continue to mount.

"Al-Qaeda is stronger than it has ever been since 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains at large, the readiness of our Army and Marine Corps is at its lowest levels since Vietnam, and trends in Afghanistan are deeply troubling. The military has done its job; it is time for this administration and Iraq's political leaders to do theirs."

In his new book, "Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power," journalist Fred Kaplan concludes that the strategies of the Bush/Cheney co-presidency are based "not on a grasp of technology, history or foreign cultures but rather in fantasy, faith and willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences."

It's no wonder when told by ABC's Martha Raddatz that two-thirds of Americans believe the war is not worth the cost in lives, money and international respect, the reply of Consigliere Cheney was a dismissive, supercilious, "So?"

Speaking on behalf of former little bastards everywhere, that kind of condescension has got to go. November can't come soon enough.

Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York. This article was previously published in the Messenger Post Newspapers.

Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032608A.shtml
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The Swiftboating of Barack Obama
David Michael Green
3/27/2008

If there’s anything I’ve learned about American politics over the past decade, it’s this: First, regressives will do anything – and I mean anything – to obtain power (the real purpose of which is to loot the public fisc of all items not securely nailed to the floor). And, second, just about everything they try works when employed against an American public possessed of stunning political immaturity.

It comes as little surprise, therefore, that two things happened over the last couple of weeks. One, that Barack Obama was swiftboated by means of a bogus inference in order to make him look like an angry black radical. And two, that a lot of dumb voters went for it.

It was pretty inevitable, really. I mean, the guy was getting rather, um, uppity, if you know what I mean. Winning elections and all. Mobilizing millions of voters. And so on. Plus he’s talking like he might actually, really, seriously, shut off the government teat of Iraq war no-bid contracts, NAFTA/WTO-based cheap labor, and massive tax transfers for the hyper-wealthy. This shit had to end.

True, John McCain is not quite as reliable a special interests whore as, say, Mitt Ownme, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and sometimes it seems like he even genuinely believes all the crap they feed him. Anyhow, he’s far more controllable than some Democrat, especially one who seems increasingly able to get voters (with a massive assist from the complete failure of Bush and the regressive agenda) to cease responding to the cues for which they’ve been so well trained these last decades. Hear that bell? Salivate now. We say “Jump”? Ask “How high?” See that grainy image of a black criminal? Vote Republican. Oh, and please be sure to hand over your wallet before exiting the building.

No doubt about it, people. The American plutocracy paid good money to create such a well disciplined voting class, and they’re not about to let that investment go down the drain without a fight.

The damn thing about it, though, is that Obama hardly gives them anything to work with. I mean, the guy is mild-mannered to a fault. He’s inspirational when he speaks, never angry and alienating. He was supposed to be vulnerable for opposing the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made, but instead all except the most low-wattage voters see Iraq as, well, the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made. I mean, the guy doesn’t even really seem black.

That only leaves one option remaining, then: Swiftboat the SOB. Find some tangential pseudo-vulnerability that goes after Obama’s biggest potential asset and turn it into a negative. Is he coming off to a mesmerized public as some kind of post-ideological, post-racial-divide healer who could unite the country and return us to our sanity? Then he must be turned into Eldrige Cleaver. All that’s needed to complete the picture is a big ‘fro, a beret and an AK-47 with a menacing tilt to it.

Preposterous? Think it can’t be done? So did I, until I saw a guy with three Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross turned into a weak, wimpy, lying coward, in order to make sure that a weak, wimpy, lying coward who went to Margaritaville instead of the Mekong Delta during the Sixties could be portrayed as some sort of macho tough guy, and thus steal another four years in the White House.

Fortunately, Obama is no John Kerry. The latter waited three weeks to respond to the attacks against him. He might as well have waited three years. Obama didn’t make the same mistake. And when he did speak, what a tour de force it was.

The most stunning feature of his speech was the least overt. This was a speech about his pastor, but that was not its central motif. This was a discussion of race, of course, but that was not its deepest theme.

What really mattered most about this speech was the way in which Obama addressed us. American politicians have treated the voting public with barely concealed contempt for so long now, we’ve largely forgotten what respectful discourse looks like. On March 18th, Obama reminded us.

Forget about charisma, a very much overrated if not dangerous characteristic in politicians anyhow. What matters instead is this: It’s been decades since someone spoke to the public with this much honesty and sophistication about our society and its choices. It was breathtaking just to witness that level of esteem pointed in our direction.

All the more so because of the epoch we’ve just survived. George Bush is far from the only contemptuous politician in recent history, but he is surely the worst of the lot, and his politics are instructive because of that.

In Bush’s world, everyone is two-dimensional, at best. They’re either good or evil. Folks is either with us or with the enemy. In Bush’s comic book reality, no issue is ever nuanced. There’s only right – which, remarkably, always happens to be his way – and there’s wrong. Once asked if he could name any mistakes he’d made as president, a flustered Bush was unable to identify even a single one. (I wish I could have been there to assist him. We probably could have made a dent in it after a week or two.) He cannot conceive that anyone he’s labeled evil could have legitimate grievances. He cannot imagine that America could ever have committed any crimes, such as using violence to achieve political ends.

Or so he acts when he speaks to us. I doubt he truly believes his own sorry shtick, which of course only makes it far worse.

Nor has the so-called opposition been much better. While their positions on issues might be slightly more thoughtful (and how could they be less so?), one has little sense from a John Kerry or a Hillary Clinton that they can say something just because it is truthful, as opposed to because they’ve calculated that it’s popular. Theirs is different from Republican pandering in scale and destructiveness, but not in kind. It is still pandering for purposes of personal benefit.

And American politics have been deeply impoverished for decades now because of our politicians’ contemptuousness. Worse, the effect has been cyclically corrosive. The more of it we get, the more of it we breed.

We live today in a polity characterized by the most unsophisticated public discourse, one where twenty-second scare ads win elections every time. And one where attempts at thinking through basic questions – such as whether our enemy resides in Afghanistan or Iraq – are ridiculed as effete intellectual elitism.

Look what it’s produced for us. Whether it is the federal debt, falling economic standards, environmental crisis, or our diminished world standing that we’re discussing – or, more likely, not discussing – Americans have dug themselves into failed policy holes of epic proportions. In very large part, this is because it’s been mutually convenient for both politicians and voters alike to indulge in a Potemkin politics of fantasy.

But the stunning sub-text of Obama’s speech is that we can think of these issues and the people involved in them as more than mere caricatures. In adopting this posture, he telegraphed to Americans more respect, and less contempt, than they’ve seen from any politician in three decades, ever since Reagan seduced them into assisting in their own looting.

When Obama reminded us that his former pastor had not only bad but also good ideas – like most anyone, black or white, emerging from the cauldron of American race relations might – he treated his listeners with a dignity and an intellectual esteem largely absent for a generation.

When he rejected the expedient route of completely disassociating himself from Reverend Wright, he demanded sophistication in our thinking. He asked us to use our minds rather than our emotional reflexes, and to invest more energy into determining our own fate than that which is required for passively imbibing deceitful television ads, cold beer in hand.

When he implored us to reject the divisions of race, religion and nationality that right-wing politicians have been exploiting for decades to divert attention from “the real culprits of the middle class squeeze,” he showed a political courage that is as exemplary as it is rare.

And when he did all of these things – but especially when he showed us an intellectual respect that we frankly haven’t often deserved – Obama demonstrated that he perhaps really might belong in that pantheon of American political giants that includes Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and King, but precious few others.

He also made clear why those who peddle the politics of contempt have lately shown such desperation to somehow silence his revolution, a revolution not so much of policy – Obama is no V.I. Lenin; he’s not even a Paul Wellstone – as it is of esteem. Think, for a moment, of the sheer absurdity of what they are asking you to accept on the face of their argument.

Has this man committed treason, like Scooter Libby, for example? No. Did he lie to the world at a cost of a million lives, like Bush and everyone else in his reprobate camp? Uh, no. Has he bankrupted the future of our children through his environmental, fiscal and foreign policies, like the entire Republican Party? No, he did not. Heck, is he even guilty of the heinous crime of screwing an expensive prostitute, like silly Eliot Spitzer? Nein.

Barack Obama’s great crime, as the regressive noise machine (as well as a certain senator from New York) would have you believe it, is failing to quit a church where the pastor has controversial ideas. Let’s say this again, because the absurdity of it is so astonishing (as with all regressive politics, once you look closely). This man is being excoriated for the crime of failing to quit a church whose pastor has ideas with which he doesn’t entirely agree. That is why, it is being argued, Obama should be rejected as a contender to lead America as president.

This, by the way, while John McCain has been actively wooing televangelist (a modern euphemism for crook) John Hagee for his endorsement, despite that the good reverend has called Catholicism “a godless theology”, blamed the Holocaust on Jewish “disobedience and rebellion”, argued that Katrina was “the judgment of God against New Orleans”, and claimed that the Koran gives Muslims “a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews”. Notwithstanding any of those slightly controversial remarks, McCain sought this clown’s support, got what he wanted, and thus stated at a campaign event that “I was pleased to have the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee yesterday”. [see article that follows]

If it seems like a helluva logical conundrum that Obama gets trashed for comments his pastor makes, over which he has no control, while McCain goes scot-free after seeking the endorsement of a king-size bigot, well then welcome to Swiftboat Land. Park your brain over there, to the right. By the same ‘logic’, John Kerry, who went to Nam, became our national security wimp, while Wee Caligula, who couldn’t even stay sober enough to show up for the faux service Poppy arranged to keep him out of the jungle, became our tough commander-in-chief.

Of course, logic has nothing to do with swiftboating, apart from the crucial requirement that it must be murdered in more ways than Rasputin was, and buried deep on some distant continent, lest anyone in America should actually awaken from their regressive-induced stupor long enough to ask why that emperor dude is running around in his underwear.

In truth, what Reverend Wright said is of as much actual concern to regressives as was John McCain’s supposed black love-child or Willie Horton’s crimes. Which is to say none at all. The point is to swiftboat Obama by injecting race into the campaign and frightening away closet racist voters. The point of doing that is to win power. And the point of that is to steal your money and your country.

That’s why Obama’s ‘revolution’ represents that most threatening commodity of all for those who employ contemptuous deceit to mask “economic policies that favor the few over the many,” as he accurately labeled it.

It’s a revolution, ultimately, of respect – and that’s really dangerous. For the first time in a very long time, a presidential candidate is speaking to Americans as if they were grown-ups.

We’re about to find out if anyone is listening.

Source: www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/The_Swiftboating_of_Barack_Obama.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What About McCain's Pastor Problem?
Source: Editor & Publisher, March 20, 2008

Pastor John Hagee endorses John McCain for PresidentWhile news media have focused on Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, little attention has been paid to the endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain by controversial Texas televangelist John Hagee. Hagee has voiced extreme anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual views. In a September 2006 interview on National Public Radio, Hagee reaffirmed his view that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment against New Orleans for hosting a homosexual parade. Hagee has also said that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by "turning away from the true God." He referred to Catholicism as a "false cult," and said the religion contributed to Hitler's anti-semitic views. When Hagee endorsed him, McCain said he was "proud" to have the pastor's support. More recently, McCain has been working to distance himself from Hagee's inflammatory comments.
Source: www.prwatch.org/node/7124

[michelle]

Happy Summer Solstice, Friends! I'm only posting GOOD NEWS today, and will try my damnedest to include some for you everyday that I post from now on. here's one from David Michael Green that warms my cockles...Do women actually have cockles, and just what exactly are cockles anyway?! ;D
Michelle

Ugly: The Future of the Republican Party
6/19/2008 3:25:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time
David Michael Green

Republicans are going down.

Let me say that again (‘cause it feels so good): Republicans are going down. Hard.

A tsunami this way cometh, and it’s got GOP loaded in its GPS.

Apart from the fact that the Democrats are about to nominate a black candidate in a still racist white country, there could hardly be a more perfect storm of Republican-focused discontent imaginable in 2008. And Obama’s color may actually turn out to be a neutral factor, or even a net gain. African Americans are going to come out in droves to vote for him, possibly even putting certain Jim Crow states, such as North Carolina, into play for the Democrats for the first time since the civil rights movement. Moreover, young people are going to turn out and vote in huge numbers this year, and it won’t be John McCain who is the glimmer in their eyes. And then there are the angry people – which is just about all of the rest of us – who are going to be voting in big numbers as well. They may not necessarily be voting for Obama, but they will be gleefully voting against anything on the ballot stupid enough to have an R after its name (and there will be one helluva lot less of those, by the way, in 2010 than in 2008).

This is the year in which Republicans are going to come to join the rest of us in their levels of affection for George W. Bush. They are the only constituency whom he hasn’t yet taken over a cliff, but that will change on November 4th. Bush won’t be on the ballot. He will be the ballot. Every angry American (hey, only a record-breaking 82 percent of us think the country’s on the wrong track) will be thinking about how much gas costs, about how their expenses are going up, their income is stuck in neutral and their job is headed for India. They’ll be thinking about two wars turned into twin debacles, and the lies associated with them. They’ll be thinking about the dead bodies, the stink of torture, the tortured reputation of their country, and the people who made all of that possible. They’ll be thinking about the mountain of national debt their kids are gonna have to pay back, plus interest, so that the fantastically wealthy in this country could matriculate into becoming obscenely wealthy. They’ll be thinking about environmental destruction. They’ll be thinking about arrogance and incompetence and corruption. They’re gonna want somebody to pay, and – worst of all for the party of Rove and Cheney and Bush – they’re not really afraid anymore.

As if things weren’t bad enough for the GOP we got a glimpse of their coming horror show on the Tuesday night of the last primary. Could there possibly have been a greater contrast between the prime-time performances of Barack Obama and John McCain? There was Obama, every inch the eloquent statesman, the perfect fit for the crises of his time. And there was McCain, more wooden than a cigar store Indian, less authentic than a sit-com laugh track, unable to even read a speech without sounding like a shrill robot with serious software glitches. Oh, Baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Bring. It. On.

Forget what the polls are now saying about the closeness of the race. Obama is going to clean McCain’s clock, both in the electoral and popular votes. The guy is finished, and I couldn’t be happier that it is George W. Bush who is taking him down a second time, and destroying forever his life’s aspiration. After what Bush and Rove did to him in 2000, McCain should have left the GOP, dragging his dignity along behind him. That he stayed, and that he then participated in the nightmare for democracy that was the Republican convention of 2004, going to bat for a punk like Bush and dissing Michael Moore over a movie McCain hadn’t even bothered to watch, sealed his fate forever. Mr. Maverick laid down with the nastiest dogs this side of 1930s Berlin, and it is only right and proper that he will be buried choking in fleas.

Another of the wonderful ironies of the Great GOP Implosion of 2008 is that in so many ways, they were victims of their own success. These guys don’t know anything about how to govern, and they couldn’t be less interested. Remember that old expression about New Dealers who came to Washington to do good, and also wound up doing well? Well, these guys came to rape, and also wound up pillaging. Nobody in America outside of Greenwich, Connecticut or Orange County, California has any interest in having that kind of government. We’ve seen it in Zimbabwe, and it isn’t pretty. Which is why it was always amazing that these gluttons could keep winning elections. But that’s where they were so good. Nobody can do marketing miracles like the GOP. Historians will have so much to say about our time, decades and centuries from now, but surely they will be most stunned by the simple fact alone that a thing like George W. Bush could have twice been propelled into the White House, out of 300 million possible choices. That’s the power of quality marketing, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Anyhow, November 4th is going to be a serious party in a whole lot of households across the entire planet, but November 5th is in many ways going to be even more amusing. For, along with getting clobbered in the race for the White House, the Republicans are going to get smashed all across the ballot, from the US Senate all the way down to local dogcatcher races. They are going to be shell-shocked zombies. The walking wounded. Poster-children for PTSD. And, they are neither going to know what to do about it, nor will they have any particularly attractive options from which to choose.

Many Republicans are going to quit the party in the weeks and months following. For those who remain, these will be really dark days. I see four possible futures for the GOP after November 4th, when 1932 comes round again in 2008.

Many of the looniest of the regressive right will insist that their problem was that they simply weren’t conservative enough! The rest of us here in the reality-based world should cross every finger, toe and any other bodily appendage we can, in the hopes that these folks win the fratricidal war inside the party. Yeah, man, that’s what America wants! Not less of the thirteenth century, but more! More war! More bankruptcy! More lies! More recession! More deficits! More economic predation! More environmental destruction! More trashing of the national reputation! More Constitution shredding! More democracy debasing! More corruption! More sexism, racism, xenophobia and homophobia! More polarization and rancor in our politics! More imperial presidency accountable to no one! More drowned cities! More incompetence! More Bushes! (Yo, Jeb – what up, dude?) Of course! What could Republicans ever have been thinking? The problem with conservatives is that they didn’t realize until too late that America is actually more conservative than Bush, Scalia, DeLay and the rest.

Ha-ha, right? But this is actually precisely the thinking of many of the party’s true believers. America is angry at us because we didn’t cut spending on popular programs like Medicare and thereby diluted the Republican ‘brand’. I’m not kidding. This is actually the dominant line inside the party now, as they begin already to scramble ahead of the earthquake they know is coming. And why not? What else are they going to do? Are they going to say, “We’re getting clobbered by furious voters because we were flat-out wrong on everything imaginable”? Not many of them are existentially brave enough to admit to that, and the rest of us should be thankful for that fact. For the longer that this is the prevailing wisdom inside the party, the better its chances for long-term irrelevance, or perhaps something even more deserving and delightful. If the GOP hard-liners move the party further to the right, one quite conceivable future is that it will go the way of the Federalists or the Whigs and disappear, spending eternity you-know-where, sipping some very, very hot tea with Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet and a host of other nice folks.

A second possibility, if the hardliners win the day, is that the party splits. No way are the Olympia Snowes or Arnold Schwarzeneggers of this world sticking around to test the theoretical question of how deeply despised one party can become. They know what comes next if they do. Can you say ‘Lincoln Chaffee’? This would be a moment pregnant with the possibility of GOP ‘moderates’ calving off to form a center-right party, probably fiscally conservative and socially moderate – the perfect match for a lot of self-centered Baby Boomers who want it all. No doubt certain DLC-type Democrats would be attracted to just such a party (Lieberman could run for president again!), perhaps even enough to join up. If it got some traction, we would enter a period in which America had three major parties from amongst which voters could choose. But the country’s history, not to mention its winner-take-all, district (i.e., non-proportional) electoral system strongly suggests that such a condition would not long last. My guess, if we’re not getting too far out in front of ourselves here, is that, of the two, it would be the right-wing, rump GOP that would ultimately perish under those conditions, though it is certainly no picnic launching a new major party in America. Last time that happened successfully was over 150 years ago.

The reason I suspect that the GOP might well tack to the right after its November spanking is because over there lies the party’s fundamental raison d'être, and that has been the case for a generation now, ever since the Reaganoids finally succeeded in chasing out the Rockefellerites in the 1980s. This party is today nothing whatsoever other than a vehicle for corporate predation. It pretends to give a shit about abortion or affirmative action to get votes. It pretends to be pious to sucker preacher-programmed Jesus Freaks into voting for it. It pretends to care about national security because a good fright always comes in handy on election day (and also because there’s loads of fat, no-bid contracts to be had from the corpulent military-industrial complex). In fact, though, it doesn’t care about any of those things.

Indeed, in truth it is a misnomer to even consider the GOP to be American in any real sense of the normal meaning of that term. Ironically, the party of xenophobia and so-called national security has long been little more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporations whose locations and tentacles are completely global, and whose only real interest is in importing wealth to shareholders and management, while exporting risk elsewhere. If that means evaporating American jobs by the hundreds of thousands and sending them off to Mexico, China or India – while getting a tax break for doing so – so be it. Those folks in Beijing sure know how to crack the heads of union organizers hard, and how to keep wages soft. Not only that, but a little economic insecurity can have a very salubrious effect on those uppity American human resources – er, employees – as well. In a very real sense, the only allegiance to America that the owners of the GOP ever manifest is when the country takes on a two-dimensional, green form. Yeah, exactly. It’s all about the Benjamins.

What that means is that a moderate, non-corporate GOP is of about as much use to the owners of the party as is sobriety to Britney Spears. Just as a sober Britney Spears is no Britney Spears at all, so a Republican Party that represents the interests of non-elite Americans is less than worthless to the über-wealthy who control the thing. What would be the point of that? Who cares about public service? The national interest? That’s for chumps! Better to just get it over with and fold the thing up.

But the politicians are a different breed. With rare exception, any given Republican politician is simply practicing the world’s oldest profession under separate cover. Which means they’re no more attached to their professed ideology than a hooker is likely to fall in love with the fifteenth sweaty john of the night. They just want to win. A guy like Norm Coleman is an instructive example. When he was at Hofstra University, where I teach, in the late 1960s, he was a long-haired anti-war protestor. Then he cleaned up his act and became a moderate Democratic politician. Sensing the direction the wind was blowing, he switched parties to become a Republican and, horribly, now sits in Paul Wellstone’s seat representing Minnesota in the Senate. Six years ago he was all right-wing when that crap was selling like hotcakes, but now he’s furiously trying to move back to the center and win re-election in a centrist state. Al Franken is going to destroy him in November, and we’ll probably be lucky enough not to hear much from this horrid thing again in the future, but don’t be surprised if he becomes a Democrat again.

So, maybe the GOP politicians, as opposed to party’s the corporate owners, decide to tack back to the center. After all, this is precisely what the party looked like as late as the 1970s. Back then, the center-right wing (which even included one or two real liberals) was by far and away the dominant tendency in the party, and the Goldwaterites of the far-right were considered to be the cranks that they truly were, about as welcome as a fart in church, but not nearly as funny. Of course, back in the 1970s, using the words ‘Ronald Reagan’ and ‘president’ in the same sentence could instantly earn any stand-up comedian howls of laughter. Those days are obviously gone, but they may not be so far from returning. Indeed, this is probably what the McCain candidacy now represents, though pre-November 4th he must still genuflect deeply in the direction of the rapacious right – whether of the corporate, imperialist or religious stripe.

It is possible that the party could eak out an existence in this form over the coming awful times ahead, reconstituting itself back in its old, pre-Reagan form. The problem it will have, even if it can pull this off, is that it will carry lots of baggage. Obama is going to be a popular president, at least initially, and the anger for the GOP is not going anywhere fast. Moreover, he’s smart enough to keep reminding people of the bad old days, and the Republicans are stupid enough to do the same, so the GOP is going to be drowning in roosting chickens for quite some time. Moreover, they will have the same problem in mirror image – even assuming they can manage to go this route – that Democrats have had these last decades. That is, the Republicans would likely become Democratic Lite, and why vote for that when you can get the real deal? All of which, of course, is predicated on the notion that the GOP can be unified, and can move from the far right to the center-right, marginalizing the storm trooper kooks of the former group. Good luck with that. Indeed, good luck even finding such moderate Republicans anymore around which to build a new (old) party.

The fourth, and I think most likely, scenario is that the GOP traverses the same path as did its brethren in the UK’s Conservative Party. These nasty blokes followed Maggie Thatcher and her hapless semi-acolyte, John Major, first to popularity and then off the cliff into a decade of ridicule and bitter loathing from the British public. The Tories have essentially been completely floundering since 1997 (really, since 1990), dabbling in different policy gambits here and there, dumping leader after losing leader, right up to the present time.

The party hasn’t really come together in all that time, nor is David Cameron, its present leader, any sort of amazing politician. I doubt that the British voting public can even identify much about what the Conservative Party stands for to this day. Except for one thing. Whatever they are, they are not the current Labour Party government. And that party, and that government, have become increasingly unpopular. Meanwhile, there sit the Conservatives, just hanging on the sidelines, winning public support simply by default. They’re the party that isn’t the Labour Party. And, according to the polls, they’re vastly more popular now than Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, which is essentially a hangover from the legacy of Tony Blair who got too smarmy and too Iraq-obsessed for most British voters, much like John Major inherited all the negativity and none of the charismatic excitement (for some people, at least) of Thatcher.

The America version of that scenario would look like this: Obama wins, he becomes a Tony Blair-type figure who combines (too) smooth rhetoric with a lack of real policy substance, along with perhaps a monumental screw-up the equivalent of Blair hitching his wagon to an imbecile like George W. Bush and his imperial adventure sold on lies. Or perhaps Obama’s great, but his Democratic successor isn’t, and ultimately there is a scandal or two. I don’t think Obama will be a nothing-burger, and I don’t think he would do something as stupid as Blair did. I do worry, though, that he might not be bold enough to address the multiple crises he will inherit.

In any case, two decades from now, the public could be in the same place the British were after eighteen years of Tory insanity. Or that American voters were after twenty years of Democratic rule ending with an unpopular Harry Truman presiding over an unpopular war in Korea. Meaning that Republicans, if they could hang on that long, could resurrect themselves at that point as simply the party that isn’t the Democratic Party.

This is all very speculative, of course. But the point is to envision where the GOP might go from here, and what are the probabilities of any of these four scenarios.

My guess is that you can’t bury these guys forever, and that, anyhow, the new Republican Party that emerges after their near-death experience in 2008 will be much more moderate than the crazed one of the Reagan-through-W era (and how could it not be?).

All of that would be a major improvement on the horror story we’ve all lived through these last decades, though of course, even better would be to slay the beast once and for all.

Meanwhile, whatever happens, progressives are about to live through the Woodstock of schadenfreude.

Enjoy the ride. Boy, have we ever earned it.

Source: www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/Ugly_-_The_Future_of_the_Republican_Party.html

[michelle]

The Sounds of Voting - and Check Writing
Of the upcoming presidential election, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship ask: "How can there be change when so much money is coming from the usual big business suspects?"

I so appreciate the following article. I've kept a low profile concerning the presidential election. I mean, what is there really to discuss when looking at the two camps of democrats and republicans? McCain and Palin don't deserve a breath of commentary from me or anyone else. If the majority of voters haven't figured that one out, then have mercy on the soul of America.

Now, Obama's something else. He's seen by many as the point of light to guide the united States out of its slumber. And these many include our global brothers and sisters too. A friend of mine was in Europe this summer and she remarked how wild Europe is for Obama, that the response to him was overwhelming. I'm sorry, but I just don't share in that enthusiasm.

One of the few positive points I see if Obama wins is that the majority of Americans have gotten over their aversion of voting for a person of color. Of course, just because he's biracial is no reason to place all your bets on him; look where Condi, and Colin Powell took us with who and what they support or supported.

In the article below, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship play the truth seeing child of the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes. They point out what is plain to see; that is if one stops looking for a savior for the united States and I guess the rest of the world too, since U.S. policies have so much effect on their lives.

Go ahead and vote for Obama and your state and local politicians, people, but after you do, don't put the car on cruise control again. You need to stay ever vigilent, watching politicians' every move and stay on your state representatives' asses making sure that they make good on their promises. Otherwise, it'll be business as usual, locking you, the public, out of all government decisions.....Michelle

The Sounds of Voting - and Check Writing
Saturday 01 November 2008
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Our Manhattan offices are in a building that also houses the New York City Board of Elections. So this is the season when we hear above our heads the sounds of heavy objects rolling across the floor into freight elevators. The moving men have arrived - and what they're transporting are voting machines being carted off to polling places.

It's reassuring, the sound of those big metal boxes being rolled out so we can cast our votes, but all too often in our fair city (as no doubt where you live, too) we are confronted by an end run on the part of a political elite, many of whom don't really trust what comes out of the ballot box on Election Day unless they've fixed what goes in.

For some weeks now, we've watched our mayor, Mike Bloomberg, maneuver to undermine the will of the people. Once upon a time the mayor supported the rule that city officials can only serve two terms. But then someone pointed out that term limits applied to him, too, and that he couldn't run for a third term. So he set out to change the rules. But instead of asking the people to vote on it in a public referendum, the mayor decided he couldn't risk his ambition on a fickle public.

So he turned first to his fellow moguls, who own the city's major newspapers - Murdoch of the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal; Zuckerman of the Daily News, and Sulzberger of The New York Times. Then, according to the Times, with his considerable philanthropic clout - before the financial meltdown, his worth was some $20 billion - the mayor leaned for support on the community and arts groups that depend on his charitable largesse.

Then he dodged the public referendum process by jawboning and cajoling the city council, whose members, lo and behold, would also enjoy a chance at a third term just by giving the mayor what he wants.

By just about all accounts, Mayor Bloomberg has been a fine mayor, and there are good people arguing that Gotham City needs his unique experience during a financial crisis that not even Batman or Spider-Man can untangle. But New York said no to Rudy Giuliani when he tried to pull the third-term hat trick in the aftermath of 9/11, and under other circumstances it's likely Bloomberg, too, would have been told, "No, thank you. We prefer due process."

The mayor's ploy has the odor about it of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's perennial plutocrat. But even Silvio's forebears, those Roman emperors who similarly ruled by decree, had a minion standing behind them whose sole job was to whisper, "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal."

We tell ourselves that no one is above the law, but that seems hard for some politicians to grasp. So now we also have the spectacle of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, 84 years old, who likes to wear a tie emblazoned with the visage of that popular anti-hero, the Incredible Hulk. Convicted this week on seven counts of lying on financial disclosure forms, Stevens declared, "It's not over yet." Then off he headed back to Alaska, where the state's Republican Party said voters shouldn't be denied the services of one of the country's most successful pork merchants just because he's a convicted felon.

That's the kind of argument we've always heard in Washington, and you have to wonder if Barack Obama or John McCain really think they can deliver on their promises to change that culture. Special interests are entrenched and incorrigible, and they're spending the money to keep it that way.

This year's will be the most expensive federal election in history - the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the presidential and Congressional candidates will spend more than $5.3 billion. Among incumbents in the House of Representatives, 79 percent of their campaign funds come from beyond their home districts - of the top 20 ZIP Codes making those contributions, 15 are in Washington, DC, and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs - home base for lobbyists and lawyers, corporate PAC's, unions and other special interests whose money buys access you don't have as a citizen.

Nearly two and a half billion dollars is being spent for the presidency, twice what was spent four years ago and triple the amount in 2000. The Obama campaign has boasted how it's the average citizens who have been funding him - small contributions made over the Internet and such. But Senator Obama has no shortage of high rollers - he's received more than $37 million from lawyers and lobbyists, $21.6 million from the communications and electronics industries, $16 million from health care interests. While fewer than 2,600 contributors to John McCain list their occupation as "chief executive," nearly 6,000 of Obama's contributors are CEO's. If you don't think any of these donors will be hoping for at least a little something in return, I've got a Bridge to Nowhere I'd like to sell you.

How can there be change when so much money is coming from the usual big business suspects? Hedging their bets, many of them are giving more money to Democrats this year than to Republicans - Democratic Congressional candidates are receiving more from corporate political action committees than Republicans, the first time that's happened since 1994. The drug company lobbyist PhRMA - the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America - is prescribing more than $13 million worth of advertising for 28 members of Congress, 25 of whom are Democrats.

Democrats also hold a slight edge in money coming from the finance sector. Finance, insurance and the real estate industries - combined, they're the biggest players of all in this election cycle, contributing more than $373 million to Democrats and Republicans. That's on top of the $288 million they've spent so far this year on lobbying. Is it any wonder that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is so freely donating banks and financial institutions the $700 billion financial bailout with so few conditions? As Time magazine reported, "Uncle Sam has a new name on Wall Street - Sugar Daddy."

So can change happen in Washington when the usual suspects are piling up money like sandbags to protect against the public's clamor for a better deal? We're about to find out.


Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.


Source: www.truthout.org/110108Y

[michelle]

A look at who and what parts of society voted for Obama. The second half of the article looks at the balance of Democrats and Republicans in Congress...M

Behind the nationwide sweep by Democratic Party
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2008

The Democratic Party victory in Tuesday’s presidential and congressional elections was propelled by a record turnout of minority workers and among wide layers of young people, both college students and those just entering the work force.

As many as 133 million people cast ballots in the 2008 election, according to estimates by election analysts, an increase of more than 10 million over 2004. Turnout rose in most states and across most demographics, with the exception of a few heavily Republican states in the interior West.

Some 24 million voters were young people aged 18-29, an increase of 3.2 million over 2004. Obama swept this section of the population by a margin of 66 to 32 percent, according to exit polls. His margin among young people, about 8 million votes, was almost exactly equal to his margin overall. Obama and McCain ran nearly even among voters over 30, regardless of race and ethnicity.

African-Americans accounted for four million of the increase in turnout, while the total vote among Latinos rose by 2.7 million. The increase in turnout among these voters alone accounts for two-thirds of the increase in the number of voters. By one estimate, black turnout was nearly 70 percent of those eligible, far surpassing the previous record of 58 percent in 1968, the first presidential election after the Voting Rights Act put an end to the disenfranchisement of most blacks in the South.

While excitement over the election of the first black president contributed to the huge increase in minority turnout, there is no doubt that economic issues—jobs, living standards and the looming prospect of a major recession—were the driving force of Obama’s victory, not race. This was coupled with the intense and entirely justified popular hatred of the Bush administration. Among the 72 percent of voters who disapprove of Bush’s performance in office, two thirds voted for Obama.

Exit polls showed that the vast majority of voters said race was not a major consideration in their decision. Most of those voting for Obama would have backed his main rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, or any other nominee of the Democratic Party. They were voting to throw out the Republicans and repudiate Bush.

Given the narrow and reactionary political framework of the United States, with only two officially recognized parties, both right-wing defenders of big business, that meant placing the Democrats in power. [See, “Class divisions begin to emerge in Obama coalition” ]

Antiwar sentiment played a contributing role—those citing the war in Iraq as the most important issue voted 5 to 1 for Obama over McCain—but more than 60 percent of those interviewed in exit polls cited the economy as the most important issue, and most rated Bush’s performance on economic matters as poor or bad. As the Wall Street Journal admitted, in its analysis of the Republican debacle, “The economy was by far the dominant issue, and voters held GOP members who belonged to the party in the White House responsible.”

Significantly, Obama carried nearly all the states that have been hardest hit by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and skyrocketing foreclosure rate: California, Florida, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio and Michigan—all except Arizona, the Republican candidate’s home state, where McCain actually ran behind Bush’s numbers in 2004.

Obama carried all of the industrial Midwest from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis, including the state of Indiana, which voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964.

Like Indiana, Virginia voted for a Democratic president for the first time since 1964. The symbolic significance of the state, which was once the capital of the Confederacy, voting for the first African-American president, was widely noted in media coverage.

Obama won all 19 states carried by John Kerry in 2004, improving on the Democratic performance in each of these states except Massachusetts, Kerry’s home state, where his margin was the same. He carried nine states won by Bush in 2004: Ohio, Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida in the South, and Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada in the West.

Exit polls showed that Obama ran ahead of Kerry in every demographic group except those 65 or older. This includes those layers, such as white working class men and rural voters, whom the media falsely characterized as too culturally conservative to vote in significant numbers for a black candidate.

Jewish voters, traditionally Democratic, voted by a higher percentage for Obama than for Kerry four years ago, an indication that the persistent attempts to smear Obama as a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer had little impact on them. Obama received 53 percent of the votes of Roman Catholics, compared to 47 percent in 2004 for Kerry, a Catholic himself, despite increasingly heavy-handed efforts by Catholic bishops to discourage a vote for candidates who support a woman’s right to abortion.

The congressional victory for the Democrats was not as sweeping as Obama’s for the presidency, but still one of the biggest in decades, particularly following on the 2006 results, when the Democrats gained six seats in the Senate and won 31 additional seats in the House. The Democratic Party won another five seats in the Senate Tuesday and 20 additional seats in the House of Representatives.

In the Senate, incumbent Republicans John Sununu in New Hampshire and Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina were defeated—Dole held the seat occupied previously for four terms by arch-reactionary Jesse Helms. Three Senate seats left vacant by Republican retirements were captured by Democrats, in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico.

Four Senate seats remain undecided, all now held by Republican incumbents: in Georgia, where there will be a December runoff after neither candidate won 50 percent; in Minnesota, where incumbent Norm Coleman was narrowly ahead but facing a recount; in Oregon, where incumbent Gordon Smith was trailing; and in Alaska, where incumbent Ted Stevens was leading despite a corruption conviction two weeks before the vote.

At this point the Democrats hold a 54-40 majority in the Senate, with two unaffiliated: right-wing Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who supported McCain, and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who backed Obama. Both currently caucus with the Democrats.

Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives defeated 13 Republican incumbents and captured 11 seats left vacant by retiring Republicans. The Republicans only averted a complete debacle by defeating four Democratic incumbents, in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Kansas.

The current balance in the House is 256 Democrats and 173 Republicans, compared to 236-199 before the election. Four seats remain too close to call, in Virginia, California, Washington and Alaska, and two Louisiana seats will be decided in a December runoff. Five of the six seats were held by Republicans in the previous Congress.

The congressional Republican Party was nearly wiped out in the Northeast. All 22 House seats in the six New England states are held by the Democrats, as well as 28 of 31 seats in New York State. There is no region of the country where the Republican Party has similar dominance.

In one seat, California’s Eighth District, held by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, independent antiwar candidate Cindy Sheehan placed second ahead of the Republican. Pelosi took 72 percent of the vote against 17 percent for Sheehan and 9 percent for the Republican candidate. The district comprises most of the city of San Francisco.

The Democratic gains in the congressional races were in large measure due to the increased turnout among youth and minority workers associated with the Obama campaign. The Democrats also had an unusual financial edge as corporate donors shifted a considerable amount of campaign funds away from the Republicans. Both House and Senate Democrats raised more than their Republican counterparts.

According to data filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $77.5 million in the 90 most competitive House raises, compared to only $24.4 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee. This three-to-one spending advantage mirrors that enjoyed by the Obama over McCain in the final month of the campaign.

Democratic candidates also made significant gains in state legislative races, taking over control of the New York state senate, giving them control of the entire legislature and governor’s office there for the first time since 1935. In the entire Northeast region comprising 11 states from Maine to Maryland, the Republican Party controls only one state legislative chamber, the Pennsylvania state senate.


Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/elec-n06.shtml