Senate Campaign Report

Just a few items of interest:

• MS-Sen: What do you do when your handpicked GOP Senator is about to go down to defeat to a Democrat? You try to hide the race on the ballot, that's what!

A judge has temporarily blocked a state ballot that places the U.S. Senate race between Ronnie Musgrove and Roger Wicker near the bottom of the ballot.

Earlier today, the state Election Commission approved placing the Musgrove-Wicker race in the special election section that comes after regular election contests on Nov. 4.

But Pike County Election Commissioner Trudy Berger filed a lawsuit in Hinds County Circuit Court only hours after the commission meeting.

“My client's responsibilities are to the voters and the law is clear. Elections for federal office should be at the top of the ballot. The proposed ballot buries the most prominent election in the state and will cause confusion on Election Day,” said Jackson Attorney Sam Begley, who is representing Berger.

There's just no precedent for this. There's a clear dropoff of votes as you go down the ballot, and any coattails that the top of the ticket would have are nullified by placing the Senate race so far away. This is a novel way to suppress the vote by Mississippi Republicans. I'm almost in awe.

• NC-Sen: Elizabeth Dole is from Kansas. Her husband represented Kansas in the US Senate for decades. She ran for President as a citizen of Kansas. She moved to North Carolina when a seat opened up. That's not unprecedented (Hillary Clinton), but Dole tries to cover for this by saying that her family had a business in North Carolina for many years. Kay Hagan has been tweaking her Kansas roots, leading Dole to respond. But she couldn't actually name the family business that she uses to cement those ties to the state:

Dole (while laughing): I think (Hagan) has indicated many times that I’m from Kansas. But my roots are very deep in North Carolina. Very deep. Here, I grew up in Salisbury, went to the public schools, spent 11 years on the Duke board after I graduated from Duke, own a home there. I own a business in North Carolina, for goodness sake. My family roots go way, way back.

Reporters: What business do you own?

Dole: We had a family farm, which was turned into a real estate development. And it’s just outside of Salisbury. It’s just a beautiful development.

Reporters: What’s the name of the development?

Dole: [10-second Pause followed by nervous laughter] Well…

[Another pause]

Reporters: It’s fine if you …

Dole: I have to stop and think for a moment.

She eventually came up with the name (Forest Glen). Good for her.

• GA-Sen: Jim Martin has been impressively polling close to Saxby Chambliss in this race, which is kind of off the radar screen. And now he's brought in Max Cleland, the former Senator who Chambliss smeared horribly in the 2002 matchup (comparing him to bin Laden), to cut an ad. Keep an eye on this one.

• AK-Sen: The thought was that Ted Stevens wanted a speedy trial to prove his innocence before his Senate election. I guess he's less secure in the court case now, because he's clearly trying to drag it out. His lawyers are asking for reams of documents and plan to present a long, aggressive case. That may be good courtroom strategy, but it's terrible for Stevens' re-election hopes.

• MN-Sen: This is hilarious. No comment necessary.

Interviewer: I just want to know how you feel about the last eight years of George Bush.

Norm Coleman: Well, uh, belehduh belehdudeduh.

That's a verbatim quote.

2008: Everything But The Presidency

The progressive wave that began in 2006 shows no sign of cresting, thanks to GOP incompetence and corruption, plus some very good candidates on the Democratic side, helped along by the progressive movement.

Let's start in CA-04, where Charlie Brown, who narrowly lost last year to slimy corrupt John Doolittle, has already announced that he's running again. While a portion of Rep. Doolittle's money still go toward commissions for his wife, a portion of Charlie Brown's donations (donate here) go to veteran's groups that are trying to help their fallen comrades despite the tremendous obstacles put forth by the systemic hollowing out of care and treatment for military members. This Op-Ed written by Brown says it all:

Beneath the troubling revelations about the deplorable state of affairs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center lies something even uglier: A pattern of chronic neglect of veterans and their families by Washington politicians who will stand in front of any group of soldiers during an election year, but will stand behind none of them when it counts the most.

The Walter Reed scandal is only the tip of the iceberg. Skyrocketing rates of homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, suicide and divorce that have long plagued the veterans community- frequently the result of lasting psychological scars like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - are a national disgrace. And with more than a third of recently returning vets showing symptoms of PTSD, experts already predict that these disturbing trends will get worse in the decades to come [...]

As a Vietnam Veteran with a son who will soon deploy on his fourth rotation in Iraq, I would argue that the greatest possible threat to the morale of our troops and the security of our nation is elected officials who vote to make tax cuts for billionaires and oil companies, as well as their own pay raises, a higher priority than properly equipping our military, repairing outdated healthcare facilities for wounded soldiers, and ensuring the VA has the resources needed to meet the tsunami of aftercare needs that they will soon be facing.

In 1781, then General George Washington said: "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they view veterans of previous wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." This statement is as true today as it was then.

I don't think Max Cleland will be running to get back his Senate seat in Georgia, but he laid into Dick Cheney the other day and it was gratifying to see.

Blitzer had Cleland watch a clip of Dick Cheney speaking today before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2007 Policy Conference when Cheney said this:

"When members of Congress speak not of victory, but of time limits -- when members speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they're telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out."

Blitzer then asked Cleland what he would say to Cheney if he could "sit down with the vice president and have a direct, one-on-one meeting with him." Here's Cleland's response:

"Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War? If you had gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you would have learned something about war. You can't keep troops on the ground forever. You gotta have a mission. You gotta have a purpose.

"You can't keep sending 'em back and back and back with no mission and no purpose. As a matter of fact, the real enemy is Al Qaeda, it's Al Qaeda stupid, it's not in Iraq."

Max Cleland is a pure American hero, who gave three limbs on the battlefield for his country, and the disrespect shown him in 2002, when he was compared to Osama bin Laden, is horrifying. In many ways it kickstarted the Fighting Dem movement you see today with candidates like Charlie Brown.

Elsewhere, the news is good. This incredible post highlights what Susan Collins will have to face in her Senate race in Maine (likely to be against Rep. Tom Allen).

She voted for the 2001/2005 tax cuts and voted for the 2003 $350 billion tax cut for the wealthy
She supports repealing the estate tax
She voted for the bankruptcy bill, voted against tax subsidies for the US jobs that go offshore
She voted to allow lobbyists to make some gifts to the Congress
She voted in favor of confirming Judge Samuel Alito knowing full well he is against Roe v. Wade
She voted ‘yes’ on the flag burning Constitutional amendment
She voted to authorize military force against the sovereign nation of Iraq
She voted in favor of the Military Commissions Bill (pro-torture and not a lick of peace in it)
She supports the Real ID Act and instead of fixing this Act to protect American’s privacy, she wants to move it ahead to ‘forget about it until later’
She voted in favor of diverting Homeland Security funds to low risk areas of America rather than to the high risk areas
She refused to subpoena the White House after Katrina, even when she had the power to do so as Chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
She had the NAACP investigated for speaking out against Bush back in 2004

Quite a record to run on. Especially in New England. Susan Collins is not nearly as well-regarded as Olympia Snowe. She's in trouble.

So is Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who only polls at 46% against Al Franken in a potential 2008 matchup. This is very low for an incumbent at this stage of the game.

Then of course, there's the fallout in New Mexico from Iglesiasgate. Heather Wilson will have an opponent in Sen. Bingaman campaign aide Terry Brunner. And many are circling the sky, waiting to face disgraced Sen. Pete Domenici.

Unless more questions are raised about Domenici’s actions, in the obligatory Senate Ethics Committee inquiry or elsewhere, the conventional wisdom in New Mexico is that his deep well of public support should enable him to win another term, albeit against a much better-known and better-financed Democratic challenger than had been expected. But political consultants in both parties say odds are now starting to tilt more toward a Domenici retirement next year, when he will turn 76. A decision to exit voluntarily would probably deflate Democratic interest in mounting an aggressive ethics investigation.

But the situation appears much more problematic for Wilson, who has been groomed by her mentor, Domenici, to someday take his place in the Senate since she first won her Albuquerque House seat nine years ago. His coattails have now shortened considerably, and if he retires now, the timing couldn’t be worse for her. Even before her dealings with Iglesias came to light, she barely hung on last November — she ended up besting Madrid by just 861 votes — leaving her with little money in reserve and already labeled a top House Democratic takeover target once again in 2008.

“That’s impossible now, that can’t happen,” Democratic consultant Harry Pavlides of Albuquerque said about the notion that Domenici could succeed in handing his Senate seat to his protégé. Another political analyst in the state, Joe Monahan, said of Wilson: “One of the first political casualties here is her chance for the Senate seat.”

With many more Republicans having to defend seats in the Senate, and continuing scandals throughout Republican districts, the outlook is pretty bright for the Democrats at this point. But we're a long ways off.