But for a ballot
Tony Adragna makes an excellent point:

[Democrats] allowed themselves to be portrayed as soft on National Security at the same time that folks like Cleland, Carnahan, and Johnson — two of whom lost their seats — were voting with Mr. Bush on going to war against Iraq. [...]

Now, you'll hear it said & read it written that September 11th & all that's transpired since are responsible for a swing in votes. I'm not buying that notion, the most facile form of which suggests [Democratic losses were due to] that voters took into account a politician's position on Iraq. If that were true, then Durbin, Levin and Reed should have lost. Instead, they won their races by overwhelming majorities — 60 - 38, 61 - 38, and 78 - 22 respectively. Of the three Democrat senate seats that changed hands, two of the incumbents — Cleland & Carnahan — voted for the resolution authorizing force against Iraq. Something else is going on.

Being one of those 9/11 theorists, I feel compelled to reply.

First, I don’t claim “rallying round” could have overcome a Democratic blowout when that rare event happened (Durbin, Levin, Reed). I just think those Gallup numbers about “most important problem” being are so remarkably different from past years that they just about have to have had an impact on the election; they were at minimum a very important distraction from issues like the environment, privatizing Social Security or moderating Bush’s court picks that Democrats were far more united on.

As for Cleland, as Adragna points out himself, he was tarred as being not committed enough to defense -- specifically homeland and missile defense, which isn’t a huge stretch from what I was talking about. The issue here isn't the patent unfairness of that charge; it's that the charge worked so well that even a Democrat like Cleland could be ousted. We'll be sifting through the Georgia and Minnesota wreckage for weeks, but the political framework of a looming war simply can not have helped the opposition party in a close race.

This is not about scoring points in a debate with Adragna -- luckily for me, I imagine many of you are thinking. It's about the direction the Democratic Party should take after a disappointing election. I submit that it was mainly disappointing if you counted on the midterm boost as an automatic given, that should have at least maintained the Democrats' hold -- their razor-thin, Jeffords-given hold -- on half a branch of government. The real disappointment is two years old: Gore letting the supposed automatic advantages of incumbency go to waste -- but only to the point where a notoriously divisive election process could wrest the presidency from his grasp. And that despite winning the popular vote and -- by at least one analysis-- even the electoral vote, had a full and fair accounting of all Florida's ballots been undertaken.

Rephrasing: if some Palm Beach county official had had a second cup of coffee and decided to order better ballots, I think that Gore would be the one basking in the mid-term glory Bush is enjoying right now.

Now Gore, whatever Republicans choose to think of him now, was and is no dove. Kenneth Pollack's book "The Threatening Storm" portrays Gore as one of the Clinton administration hawks when it came to Iraq. And lest Republicans among my readers think "so what": the Clinton administration took repeated military action to oppose Iraq, in the aftermath of Bush the First's fumbled Gulf War opportunity to oust Hussein. Andrew Sullivan's foamings notwithstanding, the Clinton administration's internal divisions and hesitations about Iraq were no more than those plainly shown in Bush the Second's administration as late as mid-summer this year -- well after the mind-focusing events of 9/11.

Rephrasing: if some Palm Beach county official had had a second cup of coffee and decided to order better ballots, I argue that Hussein would be worrying about very nearly the same U.N. resolution that's coming down the pike today or tomorrow. (And I argue that Bin Laden and his evil -- yes, evil -- cohorts would be just as much on the run.) Republicans have no monopoly whatsoever on being willing to fight to preserve this country and its legitimate interests.

This is speculation, of course, but it's reasonably grounded in fact, and it has a bearing on the course of the Democratic Party. I submit it would be extremely unwise, as a matter of self-definition (but I also have come to think on the merits) for the Democratic Party to tie itself to an anti-Iraq-war strategy. But for a ballot it might well be Democrats, not Republicans, preparing to wage that war. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:05:00 PM -- |    

 

Post mortDem
So what happened? Ignoring all cautions against overexplaining, I believe the unusual mid-term election outcome -- the presidential party gaining instead of losing seats -- is mainly a result of 9/11 and the looming war with Iraq. Those are two unusual circumstances distinguishing this mid-term election from any other; the other is the high turnouts in key races key GOP wins like Minnesota, Missouri, or New Hampshire, which by conventional wisdom once augured Democratic victories, but clearly didn't this time.

I think Bush and the Republicans motivated and got the votes of most people who felt Iraq and 9/11 are the most important issues, and either gave the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, or decided the confrontation is the right course of action. According to a November 5 Gallup poll, Iraq/9-11 (well, "terrorism/war/international issues") is ahead of the economy as the most important problem facing the country (42% to 37%). Judging by the election outcome, that may have skewed voter turnout towards the Republican tickets:

...unlike any year since the Vietnam War, an enormous number of respondents tell Gallup that the number one problem has to do with the nation's foreign policy front: terrorism, the situation with Iraq, national defense, or fear of war generally. [...]

Among all national adults, the Democrats are preferred over the Republicans by a slight margin, 48% to 43%. But among the much smaller group of Americans who are expected to turn out to vote today (about 35% of the general population) the Republicans lead, 51% to 45%.

Having failed to effectively co-opt the popular tough line on Iraq,* Democrats compounded their problem by failing to effectively make the only possible point left to them: that Iraq was but one of many issues, the rest of which they had better answers for. The line might have been, "The president is hiding behind a confrontation with Iraq to sneak through plans none of us support: radical judges, privatized Social Security ...." I'm obviously no professional political speechwriter or sloganeer, but this approach might have worked better than the haphazard Democratic national campaign I saw.

To some extent, this echoes Josh Marshall's first take on the election debacle:

The Democrats have lots of long-term political and demographic trends in their favor. But they don't really have a politics, a vision, or a message -- or perhaps, better to say, the courage and imagination to get behind one. And I suspect that that is the underlying issue.

The reaction among professional Democrats is one of profound shock. And a lot of heads are going to roll over this. Starting at the DNC, moving on to the leadership on the Hill, and likely spreading out from there.

Today, there's word that Gephardt is stepping down as House minority leader, which I'm not too broken up about. Still, I agree with Marshall only in the sense that it's more important to have a message than it is to focus on tactics. My "here's what we're against about Bush" checklist doesn't cut it there either -- although "don't let your patriotism be abused" might have been a fair message in itself.

But given the lack of a national leader and the honest differences of opinion about Iraq, there was not going to be a single vision for Democrats to get behind about the most important issue of the election. If that was true, tactics matter after all. We'll never know how Wellstone would have done, or how Mondale might have done if the Wellstone funeral hadn't been so disgraceful. But in general, it would have made sense to focus all resources on winnable Senate races, and not on a grudge match like the Florida governorship.

Despite feeling that they've fumbled badly in this election, I'll work harder for the Democrats in the next election. My main concern is to restore some checks and balances to the system, and especially to give Republicans as short a window of opportunity as possible to restock the Supreme Court with the likes of Scalia, Thomas, or Rehnquist -- dishonest ideologues masquerading as impartial judges. In my simple politics, heading off the worst is a great reason for not waiting for the best; thus, I'm still a Democrat, and still proud of it.


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*The same Gallup poll doesn't provide direct measures of the approval for a tough line on Iraq, but combining Bush's 63% approval and 71% saying they "trust government to handle international problems" strongly suggests it. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:04:00 AM -- |    

 

Terrible
Ehrlich is giving his acceptance speech for Governor of Maryland just now. I'm realizing I did not do anywhere near enough to stop that or the likely Senate recapture by the Republicans. I voted (Townsend, Van Hollen), I gave some money, but I didn't volunteer locally, I guess mainly because I thought Townsend was a lock until recently, and Morella and Van Hollen seemed oddly indistinguishable. Van Hollen seemed too much of a "I have an international policy background, and we need to work with everyone" guy for me, which is why I voted Shriver in the primary -- who at least didn't say that.

Maybe it's the last several places I've lived that got me out of the habit of really getting into "local" politics. California was too big a state for me to feel I mattered there; locally, I generally felt out of step with the self-anointed progressive supermajority of the Bay Area. Then a two-year stint in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spent chiefly trying to stay warm with my coffee-glazed eyes glued to an avalanche of books or papers. Then several years among the disenfranchised voters of D.C., resigned to the political environment of 1) Mayor Barry and 2) the "peculiar institution," shall we say, of D.C.'s status in the United States. (More on that another time.) Now I suppose I feel a bit out of step with my new home town, Takoma Park,* a place with lots of Green Party lawn signs, earnest discussions of mass transit and development, and general goodthink.

But those are lame excuses. I meant to get more involved in politics and campaigns when I moved to Maryland. I did a bit of Gore work in 2000. It's a little late to put up this time around, so for now I'll shut up. Grudging congratulations to Ehrlich. The gun folk must be very happy, how nice for them.

But the main thing is that the Senate is going to be Republican again. Why anybody gave a flip about Jeb Bush with the Senate teetering like this is beyond me. McAuliffe's got to go.

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*Revealed at last! posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:02:00 AM -- |    

 

Excellent
U.S. Strike Kills Six in Al Qaeda (Washington Post):

A missile fired by a U.S. Predator drone over Yemen Sunday killed six suspected al Qaeda terrorists in a vehicle about 100 miles east of the nation's capital, the first time the United States has used the unmanned weapon outside Afghanistan, sources familiar with the action said yesterday.

A senior administration official said Yemeni defense officials had identified one of the men killed as Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader and one of the terrorist network's top figures in Yemen. Al-Harithi is one of the suspected planners of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, and has been linked to the Oct. 7 bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen.

There's a great AP photo of some guy poking through the rubble. Great photos need great captions, leave yours as a comment if you like. "Asses to ashes"? The group was probably not on a coffee-and-doughnuts run. As ABC News reports:

Yemeni government sources have confirmed that traces of explosives and communications equipment were found in the car traveling in the oil-producing Marib province, about 100 miles east of the capital, San'a on Sunday.

...making me even less concerned about some Swedish foreign minister's concerns ("summary execution") than I already thought possible.

It's a quibble, but we might have left this and the next two or three attacks "unexplained" for a while. On the other hand, this may slow down the operations these guys were planning, make their buddies rethink their travel plans, and allow more time to prevent terror attacks. In the meantime: are there any Predators flying over the "Empty Quarter"? posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:38:00 PM -- |    

 

Do feed the spambots
Along the lines of the telemarketing stuff posted below, here's another way to Fight Back! (Is that slogan taken already?) This time, the target is nothing less than ... spam itself.

I have no idea whether the idea is widespread among the English-speaking digerati yet, but German super-blogger Joerg Kantel, a.k.a. "Schockwellenreiter" ("Shockwave Rider")*, has proposed a simple anti-spam idea: clutter up your blog web page now and then with a bunch of fake e-mail addresses. If enough people do it, the "crawlers" that spammers use to sift through web pages for e-mail addresses to pester will start to get lower "nutritional value" out of what they're doing. I suppose this is kind of like the tinselfoil chaff the Allies would throw out of planes to screw up Axis radar. There was some cool code name for that ... "Window," I think. (Hmm.) Anyway, Kantel also recommends using them as CC's in newsgroup postings and in mailing lists.

Mr. Kantel provides a random-email address generating macro for "Radio Userland" blogware users, along with some instructions. Kantel also wrote or obtained similar tools for a few other blogware (I suppose) applications called Python, Manila, and Frontier.

At any rate, this seems like good, clean, guerilla fun. In case anyone wants it, I built a little Excel file (I know, I know: Microsoft bad, four legs good) that will generate 10 random fake e-mail addresses. Feel free to try out "spambotfeeder.xls" (at your own risk), play with it to introduce numbers, make more "believable" e-mail addresses, and so on.

My first fake e-mail address links are below. Sniff! I'm so proud of you little guys! Go forth and screw up a spammer for me.

joftrdko@ywfbraag.org, jIegbpvv@Isgtsjts.edu, orybxodx@kpzqqrzw.biz, dfrjbImg@uepcuirk.edu, eacauqea@zwbxjbmp.com, aahqddpc@mbvfnfge.de, sbmalIak@eyjvidtg.us, esgxcgcu@aeimuagk.de, webjquui@ffylIcnn.com, qfixfxsb@pztbdclc.com

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* Loyal newsrack readers will recognize Mr. Kantel as one of the people briefly profiled in a piece many moons ago about German blogger responses to an incident in the east German city of Pirna. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:03:00 AM -- |