Bye Jim

Tedisco throws in the towel.

The NY-20 special election is now officially over, with Democrat Scott Murphy the winner.

GOP candidate Jim Tedisco, who trailed by 401 votes as of yesterday's vote count, has called Murphy to concede, according to Murphy spokesman Ryan Rudominer. (The latest vote count puts Murphy ahead by 399 votes.)

Murphy takes over in the seat from its previous Democratic occupant, Kirsten Gillibrand, whose appointment to the United States Senate set up the special election for this marginal district.

Only one Sore Loserman left. Unfortunately, he's dragging that out as much as possible.

In It For The Voter Suppression

By this point, Jim Tedisco could be out of the race, but at the very least, he has admitted defeat, if privately. Now he's playing a long game for 2010, and for upstate New York Republicans far and wide.

A GOP source on Capitol Hill said Thursday afternoon that Republican Jim Tedisco’s camp has abandoned hope of winning New York’s 20th district special election but that the former state Assembly Minority Leader won’t concede the race to Democrat Scott Murphy until technical legal questions surrounding voter residency issues are resolved.

The source said that Tedisco believes the residency issues that came up during absentee vote counting after the March 31 contest could have a bearing on future races in New York. As such, the source said, Tedisco wants to see those issues resolved before ending the legal battle.

He's trying not just to get voters disqualified in his district, but throughout the upstate New York region. As Hudson noted in the comments to the last Tedisco post, state law appears to be on the side of those with dual residencies deciding where they want to vote: "New York State’s highest court found in Ferguson v. McNab, 60 N.Y.2d 598 (N.Y. 1983) that someone who has more than one residence 'may choose one to which she has legitimate, significant and continuing attachments as her residence for purposes of the Election Law.'"

Not that "the law" matters to the GOP. So I assume they'll fight this one out. At least this time, unlike with Norm Coleman, the loser is admitting that he's only stretching out the race to test the limits of voter suppression and delay the entry of the winner into Congress. It's refreshing, in a way.

Dragging It Out

Jim Tedisco found a judge willing to enable his now-quixotic quest to get into Congress:

ALBANY—The ballot-counting in the race to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in Congress will likely go on for a long time, in light of a court ruling just issued.

Judge James Brands declined to set a specific standard regarding valid residency, and said that objections lodged on the basis of ballot applications will, indeed, stand. While Democrat Scott Murphy leads Jim Tedisco by 273 votes, according to the latest official tally, there are some 1,800 votes left uncounted.

This ruling favors the Tedisco camp—or at least buys them time.

Actually, buying them time is the end goal, I would say. The vote count is up to a 365-vote lead for Murphy now, meaning that practically everyone that Tedisco says should be disqualified would need to be for Tedisco to win. Somehow I doubt that.

Meanwhile, a top Tedisco staffer stole $32,500 from a New York State Assembly campaign account to pay for his own legal bills. Just in case you wanted to know what a Congressman Tedisco tenure would look like.

...Now Panic at Tedisco is trying to challenge Sam Seder's ballot. I draw the line at people I was in student films with 15 years ago. How dare YOU, sir!

When In Doubt, Just Call For Victory

You have to admit, Jim Tedisco is the Alpha Dog of the Week:

COLUMBIA COUNTY — 20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.

According to The Associated Press, Murphy leads Tedisco by 178 votes district wide — 79,452 to 79,274. The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

Nicely done. I'm going to head to my local courthouse today and ask to be crowned king. The results of that vote, or whether there was one at all, simply inconvenience my desire to rule over the land like a colossus.

Cher from Clueless puts this best:

Cher's Dad (looking at her new-and-improved report card): Cher, what's this all about?
Cher: My report card?
Cher's Dad: The same semester?
Cher: Uh-huh!
Cher's Dad: What did you do? Turn in some extra credit reports?
Cher: No.
Cher's Dad: You take the midterms over?
Cher: Uh-uh.
Cher's Dad: You mean to tell me that you argued your way from a C+ to an A-?
Cher: Totally based on my powers of persuasion. You proud?
Cher's Dad: Honey, I couldn't be happier than if they were based on real grades.

I think this is just the first step in repealing the 17th amendment and going back to selecting lawmakers instead of having the unwashed rabble VOTE for them.

...Scott Murphy's now up by 264 votes, proving once again that the judges have to step in and stop this count before things get out of hand and the Democrat wins.

Elections Are A Minor Inconvenience

Minnesotans want Norm Coleman to concede, by a two-to-one margin, so they can move on with full representation in their government. And the DNC has turned up the pressure by demanding that Coleman concede. But Norm Coleman and his business buddies don't care.

A group of several dozen of the most influential business lobbyists in Washington is vowing to raise and spend whatever it takes to bankroll Norm Coleman’s upcoming appeal fight, in the wake of a three-judge ruling declaring that Al Franken defeated Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race.

The group of lobbyists, which calls itself “Team Coleman,” is made up of some of the biggest players in D.C.’s permanent lobbying establishment, and includes executives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Restaurant Association and others.

“We will raise as much as is necessary,” Dirk Van Dongen, a leading member of Team Coleman and the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, told me in an interview. “We’ll keep raising money as Norm needs it. We continue to be active in raising resources for Norm to carry out this fight to the end." [...]

But Democrats are likely to point to the lobbyists’ fundraising as proof that they’re merely keeping this battle alive to keep the seat vacant and prevent Dems from getting a leg up in the big upcoming policy battles involving the business lobbies, such as the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act.

Van Dongen (who is the father of WhoRunsGov editor Rachel Van Dongen) rejected that claim.

“That’s a side benefit,” Van Dongen said, when asked if the goal was to keep the seat vacant. “But this is all about us doing everything we can to be sure that Norm has had a fair election and to get him back in his Senate seat. We’d be doing exactly the same thing if the Republicans were in the majority.”

Well, there you have it. The amount of corporate money plowed into a doomed-to-fail project is a small price to pay for the "side benefit" of keeping that 59th Democratic vote out of the Senate. I wonder if Team Coleman funded any of the tea parties, too.

And we're beginning to see this obstruction and delegitimizing of the election system as a pattern. In NY-20, where Scott Murphy has moved into the lead on the strength of absentee votes and is heavily favored for victory if the numbers continue to flow in at this level, the Republican candidate Jim Tedisco and his buddies from the Brooks Brothers Riot Roger Stone and John Sweeney have decided that their best option is to suppress as many votes as possible, and use the language of "voter fraud" to deny legitimate voters the franchise. Despite the fact that actual cases of fraud are almost nonexistent. Not even the junior Senator from New York has been spared.

This just in from Columbia County: when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot came up in the queue, the poll watchers for Jim Tedisco objected to it, saying the senator was in the county on election day and should have voted in person.

Gillibrand's office maintains that she wasn't in the county on Election Day.

And today, a judge said that most of Tedisco's 1,200 objections are invalid. But this statement by a Tedisco ally says it all.

They're not doing it because they believe the votes to be illegitimate, really. What they're doing, in the days and now hours leading up to the court hearings that will decide the outcome of the race between Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy, is creating a fact on the ground for the judiciary to overturn, if it dares [...]

"It's always better to be ahead-that's the whole goal of this process," said Nick Spano, a Yonkers Republican and former state senator who came out on the right side of a lengthy recount process in 2004, eventually winning by 18 votes.

This will never end. The Coleman and Tedisco cases can be put on a continuum. Conservatives now see electoral results as simply a starting point. They have adopted the cries of "stolen elections" from 2000 and 2004 and turned them right around. It was all so very predictable. They've had a plan for stealing elections for years and years, and Coleman and Tedisco are just following the playbook.

The latest and most elaborate of these jokes is the urban legend that American elections are rife with voter fraud, particularly in the kinds of poor and minority neighborhoods inhabited by Democrats. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that fraudulent voting would be a major target of the Department of Justice. As the New York Times reported last month, the main result of this massive effort was such coups as the deportation of a legal immigrant who mistakenly filled out a voter-registration card while waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles.

But the administration has remained ferociously committed to suppressing voter fraud -- as soon as it can find some. In April of last year, Karl Rove warned a Republican lawyers' group that "we have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today. We are, in some parts of the country, I'm afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses. I mean, it's a real problem.

"I appreciate that all that you're doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the ballot -- the integrity of the ballot is protected, because it's important to our democracy."

The goals here are to intimidate and alienate people from the voting process, suppress as many votes as possible, and delegitimize the victory, even if the Democrats manage to run the legal gauntlet and win. Eventually, Al Franken and Scott Murphy will be seated in Congress. But there's no harm for the Republicans to just keep on with the same dirty tactics, with a look to the next election, when they can whisper about how "the Democrats stole the last one."

...Howard Dean on Hardball today: "This could be a national pattern ... this looks like a national attempt by the Republicans to keep people out of office if they have a D after their name."

Culture of Voter Suppression

I understand that Republicans generally err on the side of suppressing votes, and in a tight election it's commonplace to challenge ballots for a variety of reasons - to keep them out of the count, and simply to make your position look better by keeping your opponent's ballots on the side for as long as possible. But this is completely ridiculous from Jim Tedisco.

This just in from Columbia County: when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot came up in the queue, the poll watchers for Jim Tedisco objected to it, saying the senator was in the county on election day and should have voted in person.

First of all, Gillibrand's office maintains that she wasn't in the county on Election Day. Second, there's no law that the absentee voter has to be out of the county, if you want to get technical. Gillibrand's statement says it the best.

“The Republican’s challenge is frivolous and without merit. This is part of their larger attempt to disenfranchise legal Democratic voters and delay the inevitable Democratic victory in the 20th. Every day that the national Republicans waste with their dishonest stalling tactics is another day Upstate New Yorkers are deprived their Member of Congress. Senator Gillibrand looks forward to working with Scott Murphy in Congress to support President Obama plans to turn this economy around and create good paying jobs.”

They're never going to stop with this nonsense. Tedisco is predictably using the language of "voter fraud" to deny legitimate voters the franchise. Despite the fact that actual cases of fraud are almost nonexistent.

Murphy's going to win this anyway. But the damage to the electoral system has in many ways already been done.

...Sen. Gillibrand posts at Daily Kos, saying "let my vote and every vote be counted."

Making A List And Checking It Twice

The Albany Project is all over the twists and turns of the NY-20 special election between Scott Murphy and Jim Tedisco. Both candidates have been listed as ahead today, with the latest reversal showing Murphy up by 83 votes. More important, a judge ruled that absentee ballot counting will begin Wednesday, despite a deadline for overseas ballots having been extended to April 13. The Tedisco campaign had been arguing for a delay in the counting, and Phillip Anderson speculates why:

It looks increasingly obvious what the Tedisco/Stone/Ciampoli game plan is. They are trying to delay the counting of absentee votes while they build a list of paper ballots to challenge. It will be much harder for them to challenge those ballots once they are opened and counted, so they are looking to delay that for as long as possible so that they can prepare a list of names to challenge before those ballots ever see the light of day.

Yep, that's got Roger Stone written all over it.

How are they compiling that list of names to challenge? Through polling.

A friend in Columbia County just got polled (Monday) about how he voted on his absentee.
He quizzed the pollster, and it was done on behalf if Tedisco.

Why poll? I suppose the GOP could claim either pure curiosity or that they're trying to decide how/where to target resources for their challenge. Or if the result is favorable, to create an impression of victory.

The concern would be if the poll results are NOT truly anonymous and become a basis for challenging ballots before they're opened.

Any other reports? This was in Columbia County.

UPDATE: Looks like plenty of folks have been polled about their absentee ballots. Since I posted this originally, I've received confirmations from about half a dozen folks. This message from a reader in Saratoga County is a representative example:

"I got a call on Thursday of last week about my father's absentee ballot. My father uses my address for mailing but actually lives in a memory care facility.

Anyway they asked for my father and when I told them he wasn't there but I was quite sure he had voted, they asked me if I knew for whom he had voted. I told them I couldn't disclose that (I actually don't know) but I could tell them I voted for Murphy."

So this has actually been going on since right after election day.

UPDATE: From another reader in Dutchess County:

"Funny you should mention that poll - I got polled a few nights ago.

Poll - Hi ***** how are you? We are conducting an exit poll in the 20th CD to see how people voted. Do you have a few minutes.

Me - Sure

Poll - Did you vote in the 20th CD?

Me- Yes

Poll- Did you vote in person or by absentee?

Me - Absentee.

Poll - Did you vote for James Tedisco, Scott Murphy, or Eric Sundwall?

Me - Wait - The order of your question neither makes sense alphabetically, or in order of how they appear on the ballot. You must be from Tedisco's camp

Poll - Ummmm ummmmm.

I voted for Murphy. Click."

It's possible, I suppose, that Tedisco and our pal Roger Stone have all the data they need to start challenging voters on Wednesday. I'll give them points for innovation in voter suppression, at the least.

Tedisco Inferno

(I am loving the titling of these posts)

In case you missed it, well, everywhere, the race in NY-20 between 26-year Assemblyman and local legend Jim Tedisco and Missourian and relative unknown Scott Murphy ended with Murphy up by 65 votes out of over 154,000 cast. There are roughly 6,000 absentee votes to be counted, with potentially more on the way in the next few days (they have to be postmarked by today). TPMDC has a good rundown of where things go from here. As I mentioned yesterday, Tedisco had already filed a complaint to contest the election results before the polls even closed. Here are the next steps:

Ballots have already been impounded tonight, for safekeeping. A hearing has been scheduled for this coming Monday, at which the candidates and the government will hammer out the procedures for counting, challenging and resolving ballots -- and you can bet the absentees will play a major part in this.

"There are statutory processes for canvassing and re-canvassing," Brehm explained, "and basically they're on hold until the court can set up a calendar that is mutually agreeable."

Brehm said that at least 10,055 total absentee ballots had been issued, including 1,882 military and overseas ballots, of which 5,907 total had been returned. Of the remainder, the regular absentees have the next week to arrive in the mail, while the military/overseas ballots have been given an extra six days on top of that under a recent consent decree with the Justice Department.

Election officials will be able to sort through these envelopes and screen out those that should be rejected, but they won't actually be able to count them until the court gives the go-ahead.

Both sides sound confident about the absentees. I agree with Sean Quinn that the best part of all this is that both sides won't be extrapolating the results into some grand statement about Obama or the stimulus. It was a local race in New York, the Republican ran a terrible race in a winnable district, and ended up in what amounts to a tie. What will be interesting is to see what vermin come out of the woodwork to try and overturn the election in Tedisco's favor:

The guy who held this seat before getting beat by Kirsten Gillibrand is John Sweeney, who led the famed Brooks Brothers riot in the 2000 election. If things get tough in this recount, Republicans may bring in a lawyer named Tom Spargo, who reportedly helped Sweeney with the Brooks Brother riot and other stuff in Florida. Spargo is also a former judge who got indicted for bribery a few months ago.

If this gets really tight—and it probably won’t, this stuff is usually orderly in NYS —we could see a whole cast of NYS crazies come out of the woodwork.

I'm telling you, that Brooks Brothers riot was like a nationwide American Idol casting call for GOP leaders. Ben Ginsburg, who ran Bush's legal team during the recount, has popped up in Minnesota to run Norm Coleman's recount.

I'm not so much interested in the outcome as I am seeing to what lengths the Republicans up there will go to win an election. Clearly they blew this one on the ground in a district they should have won, given the matchup, and now they'll try to fake their way to victory.

Pre-Emptive Strike

In New York today, the Republicans are dispensing with the election and going right to the overturning of the election results:

Republican Jim Tedisco may be running for the House in a district where Republicans outnumber Democratic voters by some 70,000, but with the polls closing in a matter of hours, Tedisco’s campaign is prepping for a loss.

An electoral loss, anyway.

The Dutchess County Clerk’s Office has confirmed to FDL that Tedisco’s people have filed an ex parte motion in order, the effect of which would be to investigate and overturn today’s election results, should the outcome not be to Republicans’ liking.

FDL is trying to obtain a copy of the motion and will post when available.

This filing come on the heels of a report that Tedisco’s own polling has him losing to Democrat Scott Murphy by a narrow margin.

Why not? It's working for Norm Coleman. In fact, given that success I'd be surprised if Republicans acknowledge losing an election ever again.

By the way, I want to address somnething else about this race. There are definitely national implications to Tedisco losing this seat, in a Republican-leaning area, to a virtual unknown in the district, especially because the race has turned in many ways on Murphy's support for President Obama's stimulus package. And on taking joy in watching Republicans flail about and continue their losing streak I take a back seat to no one. However, I never asked readers to support Scott Murphy financially, only wrote about the race a few times, and whenever I did I included the caveat that Murphy has planned to join the Blue Dogs. And I completely agree with Chris Bowers that we cannot keep supporting Democrats just because of the D next to their name, especially after they announce their intentions to undermine our values.

We--participants in blog and email list small donor fundraising efforts--have to completely stop raising money for Blue Dogs. We should not give a single cent to any current member of the Blue Dog coalition. We should not give any money at all to any candidate who refuses to rule out joining the Blue Dogs once in Congress. If we hope to improve Democratic behavior in Congress, this break has to be as public and as thorough as possible.

In politics, money speaks a lot louder than either voting or public criticism. We can criticize Blue Dog behavior all we want, but as long as we keep funneling their members millions of dollars every two years in small, online donations, then we will actually be ratifying, not criticizing their behavior. We will be supporting their efforts to push the party to the right, not working to push the party to the left. We will be sending a clear signal of support for their votes, not working to hold them accountable for those votes [...]

If we keep sending the Blue Dogs millions of dollars in small, online donations every year, then there is no incentive for Blue Dogs to ever change their behavior, or for Democratic candidates to not seek out membership in the Blue Dog coalition. Currently, being a member, or prospective member, of the Blue Dog coalition provides you access to a network of Hill staff, corproate lobbyists and their PACs, large donor fundraisers, and press releases back home to talk about how you aren't like those other, dirty liberal Democrats. If we want to change Democratic behavior in Congress, we have stop adding even more incentives for Democrats to become Blue Dogs. Instead, we must offer strong disincentives for them to become Blue Dogs, such as a significantly reduced access to online, small donor fundraising.

Unfortunately, in Scott Murphy's case, small online donors raised over $300,000 for him even after Murphy had stated he was applying to join the Blue Dogs. That has to stop. Before we raise money for other congressional candidates in 2009-2010, we have to extract promises from those candidates that they won't join either the Blue Dogs (for House candidates) or Evan Bayh's groups (for Senate candidates).

Blue Dogs derive their strength from their numbers, and their ability as a caucus to block progressive legislation. I support particular individuals in the Blue Dogs on particular stances from time to time - Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania comes to mind. But I can't support any individual who joins that group, which has been composed for the sole purpose of blocking progressive legislation. If we keep giving them money time after time we are being played for suckers.

NY-20: Tedisco, Duck

It has been notable to see the President and the Vice President get fairly involved in the special election in NY-20 over the last week or two, despite the dynamics of the district presumably favoring a Republican. Obviously something flipped and they feel like Scott Murphy can take the seat (incidentally, liberal netrooters, Murphy has announced his intention to join the Blue Dogs, so caveat emptor). And if you want to know why, just check out what Eric Sundwall, the Libertarian candidate who was kicked off the ballot at the last minute after having his signatures challenged, had to say about Republican Jim Tedisco:

Mr. Tedisco denies any involvement with the concerted effort by his supporters to knock me off the ballot. I don't believe him. The ruthless effort by his supporters to knock me off the ballot without a word of protest by him proves his unfitness for any office let alone Congress in these critical times.

I will be voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday. While we disagree on some important issues, I find him to be a man of honor, a good family man and successful businessman. Unlike Tedisco, he actually lives in the District. And, unlike Mr. Tedisco, I view Scott's business success as a virtue, not a vice.

I urge my supporters and all those who believe in open and free elections to show their disgust at the tactics of the Republican political machine to win at all costs. Please join me in voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday.

Obviously, the Libertarian candidate dropping from the ballot and throwing his support to the Democrat means little on a practical level. But the fact that Tedisco's tactics so angered him that he decided to blast him clearly shows how Tedisco is making friends and influencing people in the district. And the slow-motion winnowing of the GOP into a small regional party in the South continues apace.

NY-20: The Last Days Of Tedisco

I don't know much about Scott Murphy, the Democratic candidate in NY-20, other than that he said he'd join the Blue Dogs and that's enough for me to know that I won't endorse him or give him a dime. We have enough Democrats in the House, and the major problem over there is the power and influence of that corporate whore caucus, so I have little interest in seeing it grow.

At the same time, I understand that Republicans failing to pick up a seat in a heavily Republican district would be kind of an embarrassment and may signal the end of Michael Steele's tenuous hold on the RNC. So it's with a sense of bemusement that I see Jim Tedisco, the Republican candidate, freaking out because he's sinking in the polls (by the way, James L. wins the award for title of the year for "Panic! At Tedisco")

Reacting to his Democratic opponent's surge in the polls, Tedisco said Thursday he's taking control of the content of his advertising from the National Republican Congressional Committee.
"I'm taking over and we're going to run a campaign that relates to the people of the 20th Congressional District," he said.

The first depiction of "the real Jim" will air in a new television commercial set to debut this evening, he said. [...]

Tedisco blamed his drop in the poll on an advertising strategy that has focussed heavily on attacking his Democratic opponent.

Tedisco said going forward the content of his ads will be more positive with him making the decisions instead of the national party.

Even more amusingly, the NRCC, the Republican campaign arm in the House, will run their ads anyway despite Tedisco's demands for them to stop. Hilarious.

The rub here is that the NRCC ads may be hurting Tedisco. A recent Siena College poll found that Tedisco commercials made 12% more likely to back him, and 28% less likely.

While it’s unclear whether the ads that are backfiring are the Tedesco campaign’s or the NRCC’s, it’s very possible that the national GOP’s spots are doing the damage, Siena pollster Steven Greenberg tells me. “It is certainly plausible that the NRCC commercials are the ones that are turning off voters,” Greenberg says.

This was Kirsten Gillibrand's seat that she vacated to go to the Senate, and now she has an ad up for Murphy. By contrast, there's this free-for-all on the right.

I really don't care who wins, but it has a certain train-wreck quality to it.

The Highest Broderism

David Broder's paean to bipartisanship yesterday was pretty funny. Funny in an "what version of Earth in the DC multiverse is this guy living on" fashion.

Some consider Obama's wooing of Republicans a rookie mistake, a measure of his naivete. Others focus on the Republicans and fault them for obduracy in denying Obama all but three of their votes on the stimulus bill. The critics agree that the effort at bipartisanship should end.

I hope Obama isn't listening. It's the worst advice he has received.

It starts from a false premise: that the stimulus bill proves the failure of outreach to Republicans. In fact, had Obama not negotiated successfully with Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter and met most of their terms, his bill would have died. This was a success for bipartisanship, not a failure.

Morone's history also is false. To prove that bipartisanship has never existed, he has to skip over Harry Truman's success with a Republican Congress on the Marshall Plan, Lyndon Johnson's forging the great civil rights acts with Sen. Everett Dirksen and Rep. Bill McCulloch, and Ronald Reagan's steering his first budget and tax bill through a Democratic House.

But the real reason Obama should ignore this advice is that he will need Republican votes to pass the remaining parts of his program. When it comes to energy, regional and commodity interests will inevitably divide the Democrats. They always do. Oil, coal, natural gas and consumer groups will exert their will. If Obama writes off the Republicans in advance, he will end up with a watered-down bill -- or nothing.

It's useless to argue with Broderella, but nevertheless...

Never mind the fact that he has to go far back in history, when Dixiecrats still existed and the parties were ideologically jumbled, to prove his fantasy. He really manages to define bipartisanship in this one, doesn't he? Meeting most of the terms enforced by conservatives is the new working definition. And he demands that the President give in to the terms of Republicans in the same way to pass his agenda.

Is Broder aware of the modern conservative rump faction that includes about 90-95% of elected Republicans in Washington? Their spiritual leader Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that trying to understand a Democrat is like trying to understand a murderer or a rapist. Their favorite son Jim DeMint's plan for economic recovery is to do nothing, stand still and hope everything magically bounces back. Their top legislative agenda consists of cherry-picking pieces of stimulus spending to prove that the entire bill is wasteful, a project they have ANNOUNCED TO THE MEDIA IN ADVANCE.

The parties disagree. These days they violently disagree. And the public has pretty much made their decision on who to support.

According to a new AP poll, voters are assigning blame to gridlock -- and they're blaming Republicans. Asked whether Obama was doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans, 62 percent said he was. Asked if the Republicans were doing enough to cooperate with Obama, 64 percent said they weren't.

Republicans now run the risk of being blamed for their own irrelevance. The stimulus bill passed without their votes and that's being seen as evidence of their intransigence, not Obama's. Bipartisanship is being measured by through the evident intention's of the players, not the final tally on the bill. If this normalizes -- if Americans begin to expect that the GOP won't cooperate and so Obama can't be expected to win their votes -- you'll have a situation where Obama can reach out to them on entirely on his terms because it doesn't matter if the outreach actually succeeds. If the President asked Mithc McConnell to help him pass Medicare-for-All, it's hardly the President's fault if McConnell refuses. And that will lead the GOP totally, and unsympathetically, marginalized.

In fact, Republicans are starting to actually be blamed for their own policy ideas, and are desperately trying to run away from them. Jim Tedisco, the candidate in the New York Congressional special election to replace Sen. Gillibrand, refuses to answer the question of whether or not he supports the stimulus even though the answer is obvious. Rep. Joseph Cao, who beat Dollar Bill Jefferson in Louisiana, is now facing a potential recall as a cause of his vote against the stimulus. This is not a function of whether one side or the other is bipartisan enough, it's that the public has generally discovered that they really don't like Republicans.

Parties disagree. They have a particular platform and they are expected to uphold it. The electorate looks at each side and makes a decision. If they don't like the results they can choose the alternative later. It's called democracy. I don't think David Broder believes in it.