Twitter Revolution FAIL

This is pretty hilarious. The Virginia State Senate is 21-19 Democratic, but a Republican Lt. Governor breaks all ties. So the Republicans in the Senate got some wayward Democrat to flip parties. Except the Chairman of the Party announced it prematurely on Twitter, leading the Senate to abruptly adjourn and scuttling the whole deal. Not Larry Sabato explains.

Before it was announced on the floor and finalized, RPV Chairman Jeff Frederick tweeted about it.

Majority Leader Dick Saslaw adjourned before it could happen.

The Democrats got into a room and pounded into Northam what would happen if he did this.

Northam backed down. (Now everyone hates him, idiot).

JEFF FREDERICK COSTS REPUBLICANS CONTROL OF THE SENATE!

This is the second damaging leak-via-Twitter in the last week, the other being Pete Hoekstra giving away classified information on a Congressional trip to Iraq. It's not just that Republicans appear to be deliberately sinking the economy in the hopes that the country will run to them in the event of a Depression. It's that they actually think their road to recovery lies in putting instant communication in the hands of inveterate gossips who will screw up all their plans in the name of "connecting with the kids." The ignorance is almost a little astonishing if you didn't know who you were dealing with.

...here's yet another example - Jim Tedisco, the candidate in the NY-20 seat vacated by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, is running all Tweets with the #ny-20 hashtag on his campaign site - including those attacking him.

Really, take the Twitter away from Republicans. It's hurting.

Dump Terry McAuliffe*

Let me make myself clear: Terry McAuliffe shouldn't be the Governor of anything. He was a terrible party chair who did nothing but raise money and spend it badly. The results speak for themselves; take a look at the 2001-2005 era compared to the 2005-2009 era. While he's lived in Virginia since the early 1980s, his connection to the state appears to be about as legitimate as MY connection to the state - he's previously been considered to run for Governor of Florida. He is from the money wing of the party, with no grassroots support whatsoever, and he's running on his wallet:

McAuliffe said in an interview that he is best suited to carry the Democratic banner because he will campaign as a business leader who can bring jobs to Virginia. McAuliffe also says he would be the strongest nominee because he could help finance the entire Democratic ticket.

"I have tremendous contacts everywhere and have many friends," he said. "If I decided to run, we could raise resources to run a first-class campaign. But I would also make sure House of Delegates and local races are well-funded and well-run."

Vote McAuliffe and local Democrats get paid!

The primary for this is coming up shortly - Virginia has an off-year election in 2009, and so we're only eight months out from the June election. I just read over McAuliffe's interview on Raising Kaine and he's making the right noises - high-speed rail, universal broadband - but this is a guy who hangs out with health insurance industry lobbyists and whose rich friends would be likely to run Richmond. I see no earthly reason to support him.

(* - It's a reference to someone's username on Daily Kos)

Unity 08?

Bloomberg on the ballot in Virginia would be an interesting phenomenon. He apparently has enough signatures (with Ron Paul as VP!), but it's an independent effort and he could apparently ask to be removed.

If he isn't, I have to think this helps Obama, particularly with Ron Paul conservatives who may otherwise drift to McCain.

The New Battleground

With an uninspiring candidate, an enthusiasm gap and a host of fundamentals against them, obstruction and suppression is really all the Republicans have left. You can see exactly where they're worried from this story:

As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants' eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.

Republicans are moving to examine surges in voter registrations in some states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law over the weekend that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud.

Republicans said they are particularly worried about prospects for fraud in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and are beginning to comb thousands of new registrations in those states for ineligible applicants. In some cases the huge numbers threaten to swamp their efforts -- and those of state and local governments to verify and process applications.

Read: we're going to lose Virginia and Pennsylvania unless we invalidate hundreds of thousands of legal votes through bogus voter fraud claims. Both of the Secretaries of State in these commonwealths are Democrats, but of course the county boards of elections have more local control, as we've seen. And be prepared for this meme that the stress of all these new voters may break the system.

The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, which monitors elections, projects registrations this year will surpass the total from any previous single election year, building on momentum from the record 20 million registrations for the combined election cycles of 2004 and 2006. Newcomers helped drive turnouts for the Democratic primaries, which drew roughly 19.5 million more voters than in 2004, according to the Democratic National Committee.

"State elections systems have shown signs of stress, and there's a serious concern that they won't be able to handle the number of voters," said Wendy Weiser at the Brennan Center.

In Pennsylvania, where improper registrations have been a problem in past elections, state officials say rolls have increased by about 230,000, to 8.4 million, since the 2006 midterm elections. Some observers believe the large increase could invite more potential for voter-fraud problems, said Lawrence Tabas, general counsel of the state Republican Party. "When you get so many new registrations like that at record numbers...it's very difficult for people to monitor the validity of it," he said.

The roar of voter fraud will reach its loudest din in the next few months. The RNC has been laying the groundwork for this for over a year, and the power players on the right for longer than that. And we have a candidate whose entire strategy is predicated on inviting more people into the political process.

The McCain campaign is trying to let this happen without their imprint on it. Yet at that little St. Louis get-together which Digby wrote about last week included McCain's Election Day coordinator, Michael Roman.

Check out this bit of narrative setting from a member of the voter fraud brigade:

Ms. Mitchell warned about what she regards as a long pattern of abuses in registration by groups such as Acorn and their Democratic allies. "We're all for getting people involved in the process...and getting them to the polls," she said in an interview later. "What we're not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It's a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry."

She urged lawyers working on behalf of state and local party groups and campaigns to monitor new registrations. She also pointed out that Sen. Obama himself -- in his past life as a community organizer -- was "involved" with some of the groups that have been responsible for abuses in recent years.

That's right. Obama himself is personally stealing the election by writing "Mickey Mouse" on voter registration cards and then showing up at the polls in that hat with ears you get at Disneyland.

Interesting, too, that they're throwing the "denier" meme back in Democrats' faces.

There's no limit to my amount of worry about this. And as Digby has said, whether they can suppress enough votes to steal the election or not, they can delegitimize the election and run back every statement made about Bush v. Gore in reverse. They're very good at things like that. It comes with the lack of shame.

If Obama Were Sporting, He'd Spot McCain Ten Points

McCain-friendly media is so desperate to keep this race competitive that every poll with an Obama lead is pre-spun to show that he has problems. Not problems winning the poll, mind you, but ... problems.

Can I just note that I seem to live in some kind of mirror universe where the fact that Barack Obama has, for months, maintained a modest lead over John McCain in every public poll constitutes bad news for Obama and that the specific reason it constitutes bad news for Obama is that the larger political climate is favorable to Obama. The trouble of course is that given the favorable climate the expectation is that Obama will lead, so in order to "really" win, he needs to win by some gigantic margin -- merely being the first Democrat in over thirty years to secure a majority doesn't cut it. Or something.

There's an expectations game in the primaries. In the general election the first past the post wins. This is totally stupid.

What I just wrote is good news for John McCain.

Those 20 new field offices in Virginia are great news for McCain, too.

Noted With Little Comment

Barack Obama is polling ahead in Montana.

The GOP is buying ad time for John McCain in Virginia.

Bush went down to a fundraiser for Roger Wicker, an endangered incumbent Senator from Mississippi.

We're looking at the changing of the map.

2,700 Licenses In Two Days

There's no suggestion that all of these are for same-sex weddings; it is June and lots of people get married around this time, after all. But already the number of licenses issued exceed a traditional week in June. I think we can reasonably aver that at least 2,000 of these are from same-sex couples.

4,000-plus people's lives and loving relationships have been reaffirmed in just a couple days. That's nice.

Meanwhile, Virginia is SCARED OOGABOOGA!!! Actually, random nuts in Virginia are scared, even though their state has already passed a constitutional ban. It's worth remembering that, while this is a great week for California, the struggle for recognition and rights is a long way from being over.

Virginia Exits

According to the exit polls, Obama took women by 58-42, took voters without a college degree by 62-37, and took Latinos 55-45 (that may not be a huge sample, 5% according to the poll). That's supposed to be Clinton's entire base.

Those are pretty important numbers. And the baseline spread in Ohio, per SurveyUSA, is only 17 points, quite a bit less than the spreads in some of those other big states that Obama has had to come back from. (The only poll out of Texas has it even less, at 10 points). There's at least a decent chance that this could be over on March 4.

UPDATE: Another clean sweep. Obama takes Maryland and D.C. in addition to his 63-37 win in Virginia. He's actually ahead in total delegates and could get as high as a 54-29 split in Virginia.

John McCain pulled out a narrow win in Virginia and took Maryland, and I think both were winner-take-all states on the Republican side. So he's obviously consolidated a bit of support.

I'd say the betting odds are on an Obama-McCain matchup in November. But Obama needs to win either Texas or Ohio to seal the deal.

...watching Obama's speech right now, and it's not surprising that his line about how "George Bush won't be on the ballot this November" gets applause, but it's long, sustained, out-of-control applause. Our President is truly hated, and the Democratic majority in the Congress continues to not get that.

Obama Takes Virginia

NBC just called it moments after the polls closed, as a "substantial" victory. This was Hillary's best chance at a good showing, so it's likely to be a bad night for him.

Also, McCain-Huckabee is too close to call in Virginia, and the exit polls intimate that Obama got a huge amount of independents, draining them from McCain in this open primary, raising Huckabee's number as that race becomes more conservative.

This could be 8 straight losses for Clinton since Super Tuesday, with Wisconsin and Hawaii looming next week. Ohio and Texas loom even larger now. Obama should be ahead in delegates, even with superdelegates, by the end of the night.

Authoritarianism Run Amok

This is the inevitable consequence of a right-wing movement that seeks only to diminish human freedom:

The Virginia GOP has found an interesting way to discourage non-Republicans from voting in their presidential primary. Voters will be required to sign an oath, pledging to support the party's nominee for president.

Loyalty oaths? That's where we're headed in our elections? Apparently Virginia Republicans aren't alone - Kansas is trying something similar. And Steve Benen notes similar "loyalty oaths" that came out of Bush-Cheney campaign events in 2004.

The Republican Party wants lockstep agreement. They want their supporters to be "avowedly with them." They seek a nation of robots.

Even David Freddoso at The Corner had a problem with this.

This is deeply troubling [...] I would feel differently if this were a private, party-funded event to pick the nominee — in that case, they can make you stand on your head for all I care. But Virginia has an open primary that is funded by the government. It is extremely strange that the state Board of Elections would allow this.

If the Republican Party really demanded absolute loyalty to Republican principles and not just votes, they would have to throw out every single one of their elected officials.

Big Night For Southern Dems

Steve Beshear took 58% of the vote to take the governor's mansion with ease, the what is supposedly the solid Republican South. Ernie Fletcher is a goner. Remember, this is the guy who tried to save his political career by running ANTIGAY ads. That's how out of touch the GOP is in this day and age.

Now, I remember a TON of stories about Bobby Jindal ushering in a new era in Louisiana, how this presaged hope for Republicans, disregarding the fact that Hurricane Katrina drained the state of Democrats, if you'll pardon the pun. I wonder if we'll hear about this from the national media poohbahs?

In addition, Virginia Democrats captured the state Senate and made major gains in the House of Delegates. How many of these elections have to happen before the DC establishment to realize that there a fundamental shift happening in this country, and not just in the coastal areas, but in the South as well? And that it all has to do with a historically unpopular President, and therefore national Democrats needn't be afraid of Republicans calling them terrorist-lovers or immigrant-coddlers?

UPDATE: In addition, Utah rejected a private school voucher proposal written by the Republican Party. That's right, the GOP couldn't get a win on an issue of wingnut faith in UTAH.