Other Races On The Radar Tonight

Besides that little matter of the Democratic nominee clinching victory tonight, there are primaries all over the the country outside of California, some of them worth noting.

TPM Election Central mentions two Senate races, in New Mexico and New Jersey. The entire Congressional delegation in New Mexico is running for the seat vacated by Pete Domenici, and on the Republican side, wingnutty Steve Pearce is facing wingnut in moderate clothing Heather Wilson. Weirdly, Domenici waited until the weekend before the primary to endorse Wilson, so there was probably no impact of that. Pearce is favored in this primary, but the winner will be stomped by progressive Tom Udall in the general election, IMO.

In New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg was challenged from inside the party by Rob Andrews, a moderate (at best) Congressman. I think he's just trying to raise his statewide name ID for when Lautenberg (who's 84) eventually steps down, because he's getting smoked by all accounts. Andrews is having his wife run for his own Congressional seat and will probably try to get it back by having her step down if he loses. I hope he gets crushed today.

And in IA-03, Ed Fallon is challenging Bush Dog Leonard Boswell for a seat in Congress. Stoller calls this race an experiment in grassroots campaigning but I don't think that's true. Maybe it's because I'm in California, but in most parts of this state you can't put an ad on the air unless you're running statewide or get a king's ransom from an independent expenditure campaign. So I see this "experiment" every cycle. And it usually doesn't win, unfortunately. And most observers don't expect Fallon to win, either. But if he can make Boswell sweat, maybe he can alter his behavior.

Sometimes I Don't Get These People

Harry Reid just sent out an email to his list calling out Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) for supporting the nuclear depository at Yucca Mountain. It's a fundraising email for Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Senator who is being challenged in a primary by Andrews (and hardly; Lautenberg is whipping him handily so far).

It's the type of news you need to spit out fast, so I won't sugarcoat it - United States Representative Robert Andrews has knowingly voted to store the most toxic substance known to man - nuclear waste - near American citizens, while at the same time vying to represent those citizens in our government.

How? By running for Senate and trying to oust my friend, esteemed colleague, and champion of progressive values, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey [...]

It's hard to believe that a representative of the American people, Rep. Andrews, actually voted to store nuclear waste in a highly earthquake-prone area above a large source of water, only 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But don't take my word for it, take his:

"I joined with my colleagues in the House of Representatives to approve President Bush's decision to store the country's nuclear waste beneath Yucca Mountain ... 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas."

And to top off his record of shame, Rep. Andrews was also one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of President Bush's plan to go to war in Iraq.

All of this is true. Lautenberg is indeed a very good Senator, and Andrews is a snake. But you know, considering this challenge is a fringe possibility at best, I can't get enthused that Harry Reid is wasting his time on it, when John McCain was an even earlier and stauncher supporter of the war in Iraq, and just today he signaled his support for Yucca Mountain.

RENO, Nev. – Calling it “a little straight talk,” Sen. John McCain told Nevada backers at a town hall meeting Wednesday he still supports the construction of a nuclear waste repository north of Las Vegas as long as it meets all the regulatory requirements.

But the Republican presidential hopeful from Arizona also said he wants to address nuclear waste by reprocessing spent fuel and trying to find a place for an international repository, which he said the day before may make it unnecessary to build the Yucca Mountain facility.

“I support Yucca Mountain once it goes through all the processes it needs to go through,” McCain said Wednesday. “But I also support reprocessing. A little straight talk, we have to do both." [...]

McCain, a longtime backer of the waste dump most Nevadans oppose, responded to a question at the town hall meeting about Yucca Mountain by saying he's not the kind of politician who tells voters only what they want to hear. He said he earlier told the people of Iowa he doesn't support ethanol subsidies and he still doesn't.

“I go to places and tell people what they don't want to hear,” he said.

Like "I don't care if you die from nuclear radioactivity."

I'm not convinced Yucca Mountain is all that big an issue in Nevada. McCain's going to play an identity-based game rather than an issue-based one, anyway, and if you see Mitt Romney on the ticket it's to win this state. But it's certainly a bigger issue in Nevada than in New Jersey, and it's certainly more newsworthy to Harry Reid's email list that McCain supports Yucca Mountain than some Democratic primary opponent who's not going to win.

Is he interested in winning the Presidency or helping out his buddies?

Rob Andrews Ate His Wheaties

I'm following the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, and some of the liveblogging at Democracy Arsenal and The Washington Independent. So far, it's basically a rerun of yesterday. But Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) took a very strong line of questioning on the issue of political reconciliation that I thought was noteworthy. He was the first member of Congress that I've seen specifically state that the de-Baathification law as implemented bars top Baath Party members from key posts like the Defense and Interior Ministries, and doesn't do much de-Baathifying at all. Ryan Crocker tried to wiggle out of it by saying these were only top-level members being barred, but Andrews countered that those are precisely the kind of people, with actual expertise and knowledge, that you need back in the government. Crocker meekly said that the law "was done in the spirit of reconciliation," but the implementation shows that to be completely false. Andrews added that there had been no movement on an oil law, and that provincial elections haven't actually been fully passed as well. In fact the political progress is meager, and some of the laws which are being pointed to as "progress" actually harm reconciliation. In a particularly strong moment, Andrews said "The world didn't begin in September... as far as the American people are concerned this has been going on since April 2003," and it's not acceptable to have such little progress over those five years.

It should be noted that Andrews, who hasn't been entirely progressive on the war, is challenging Frank Lautenberg for the US Senate in New Jersey, and surely is trying to present his progressive bona fides by giving these tough questions on the war. But the points need to be made, that the "political reconciliation" being floated by the Administration and their spinners is the result of a bait-and-switch, where the initial progress on lawmaking is foregrounded and the eventual breakdown or negative consequences is backgrounded.

UPDATE: I should also mention Ellen Tauscher's question to Gen. Petraeus, asking him what he would do if his new commander-in-chief advocated for withdrawal, and he couldn't bring himself to say he would comply with those orders! He does "believe in civilian control of the military," in teh abstract however, so at least that's SOMETHING.