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Archive for the 'National Politics' Category

Cold Wind in August

Published by William Beutler on August 31, 2007 in National Politics, Republicans, Scandal and Senate Control. 4 Comments

It rained some in the District during August, but it was cold at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Among the Republican politicians and officials announcing resignations or retirements in the past thirty days:

Chuck Hagel could have a similar announcement within weeks. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, survivor (of John Thune and a kind-of stroke) Tim Johnson alone in the Senate remains a question mark. Heck, Lautenberg sounds like he’ll stick around to beat Strom Thurmond’s record.

Who am I missing?

P.S. That said, I think the editors at TNR Online are going about this all wrong:

John Judis on the 2008 Senate election

Judis’ actual piece is pretty much straight analysis, not at all implausible, and definitely not gloating like the long headline. And what’s with the short headline? Dear Editor, for the analogy to work, isn’t Judis arguing this will be a Blue Dawn? Remember, the Reds were the enemies.

R.I.P.: Craig Thomas, R-WY

Published by Not Paul Begala on June 4, 2007 in National Politics, Obituary and Senate Control. 12 Comments

Senator Craig Thomas, R-WY, died earlier tonight.

For those deplorable calculators like myself who know that Wyoming governor Dave Freudenthal is a Democrat, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the seat won’t be changing hands.

Title 22:

(i) If a vacancy occurs in the office of United States senator or in any state office other than the office of justice of the supreme court and the office of district court judge, the governor shall immediately notify in writing the chairman of the state central committee of the political party which the last incumbent represented at the time of his election under W.S. 22-6-120(a)(vii), or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office. The chairman shall call a meeting of the state central committee to be held not later than fifteen (15) days after he receives notice of the vacancy. At the meeting the state central committee shall select and transmit to the governor the names of three (3) persons qualified to fill the vacancy. Within five (5) days after receiving these three (3) names, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment of one (1) of the three (3) to hold the office. If the incumbent who has vacated office did not represent a political party at the time of his election, or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office, the governor shall notify in writing the chairman of all state central committees of parties registered with the secretary of state. The state central committees shall submit to the governor, within fifteen (15) days after notice of the vacancy, the name of one (1) person qualified to fill the vacancy. The governor shall also cause to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the state notice of the vacancy in office. Qualified persons who do not belong to a party may, within fifteen (15) days after publication of the vacancy in office, submit a petition signed by one hundred (100) registered voters, seeking consideration for appointment to the office. Within five (5) days after receiving the names of qualified persons, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment to the office, from the names submitted or from those petitioning for appointment;

Personal memory: Senator Thomas was one of those really approachable people who always smiled when he met young folks like myself on the Hill. I remember talking with him about a 5K or something that he was participating in that week. That guy loved to run.

At Least it Pays the Bills

Published by William Beutler on May 24, 2007 in National Politics, Rhetoric and White House '08. Closed

In today’s Politico, analyst Roger Simon throws water on the media-invented boomlet for potential presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg. He makes a few smart observations, the best of which explains why self-funding his campaign may actually be an impediment to building a base of support:

[W]hen voters give you money, they often protect their investment by voting for you. When you finance your own campaign, you don’t build that base of support.

And while I tend to agree with the overall point of his column — Bloomberg is too smart to blow a billion dollars on a hopeless candidacy — it does contain this bit of unmitigated silliness:

We have elected people from all kinds of professions to the presidency. George Washington was a surveyor, Abraham Lincoln was a rail-splitter, Andrew Johnson was a tailor, Harry Truman was a haberdasher, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer and Ronald Reagan was an actor. But we have never elected a mayor.

Say what? Simon deliberately cites early, pre-political vocations by these former presidents and, tongue presumably in cheek, compares them favorably to Bloomberg’s current place of employment, Manhattan’s City Hall. Except Washington also was a wartime general, Lincoln was a lawyer and member of the House, Johnson was a member of the House, Senate and a governor before becoming Vice President, Truman was a farmer, judge and senator, and both Carter and Reagan were both governors.

Simon is correct that a mayor has never been elected president, though that is the highest public office attained by Giuliani as well. Citing Bloomberg’s pre-political career, as a businessman, would keep the symmetry, although it surely doesn’t sound as goofy as “rail-splitter” or “haberdasher.”

On the other hand, it would put Bloomberg in the company of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush. Not exactly exalted company — which might have been a slightly better argument, without the contrived goofiness of reducing presidential employment histories to caricatures.

George W. Bush Fears Bill Clinton

Published by Not Paul Begala on May 18, 2007 in Academic Blogging, George W. Bush, Investigations, Meatspace and National Politics. Closed

The headline is meant to catch your attention — but seriously, 42 and his conduct in the White House explains more about how 43 runs the White House than any other force in all of modern history and politics. Rove admires Clinton’s skill and has studied the mistakes Clinton made.

Obviously, one thing that consumed Clinton at all times was investigations. Just like this administration, they fought them off, stalled and blamed them on partisan witch hunts. The one that got them was the independent prosecutor, Ken Starr.

Doesn’t it make sense that Bush, who’s already been burnt by a special prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald, would want to keep in place an Attorney General who actually tried to get a sick man to overrule his acting AG?

Talk about loyalty. With Gonzales at the helm, why would anyone worry about Justice investigating the White House? But, an independent AG — and who knows what the White House may be able to get through this Senate now — might appoint a special prosecutor to deal with one of the 100 or so scandals that afflict this administration. And toss aside the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation for the moment as a necessary pain to help distract the media from the scandal until the 2004 election was over.

A Senate no-confidence ote might be enough to bring down Gonzo if there are 65-plus votes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the White House begs their allies in the Senate to save them on this one.

George W. Bush does, after all, fear Bill Clinton’s fate.

5/20 update:

A footnote: Speculation in Washington legal circles is that President Bush has been reluctant to get rid of Gonzales for fear that Senate Democrats would not confirm his successor without a commitment to name a special prosecutor in the U.S. attorneys case.

Thanks for making me look smart, Bob.

Did Ann Coulter Just Undo the Damage Done by Amanda Marcotte?

Published by William Beutler on March 3, 2007 in Democrats, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, National Politics, Netroots, Rhetoric, Web video and White House '08. 6 Comments

David Bonior dispatched for e-mail response to Ann Coulter's slur on John Edwards

The last few weeks have not been good ones for the Edwards campaign, with professional blowhard Bill Donohue shouting the unfortunate comments of short-lived Edwardsville blogress Amanda Marcotte into the New York Times and Washington Post — and Marcotte herself prolonging the story in Salon and the Austin Chronicle. Nor were they helped when Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise filed her own Salon column confirming Elizabeth Edwards’ involvement in blog strategy and claiming she had warned Edwards staffers of how a netroots hire could go wrong.

One reason the incident has been so bad for the Edwards campaign is that it turned an asset — his widespread support among liberal bloggers — into a liability. While few among the netroots actually abandoned him, it exposed the possibility that a wedge could be driven between them — and his campaign hasn’t regained its footing since.

Until now, that is, and John Edwards has none other than Ann Coulter parody Ann Coulter to thank as the leftosphere is working overtime this weekend to turn this year’s CPAC — where Coulter referred to Edwards as a “faggot” — into the political equivalent of this year’s NBA All-Star weekend in Las Vegas (Pacman Jones or no). Call it a reverse Perlstein: the leftosphere always liked Edwards. Now they finally have a reason to rally around him again.

The incident won’t necessarily help him with Beltway handicappers who fault the campaign’s decision-making, although they should be reassured that Edwards quickly released an e-mail letter from campaign chairman David Bonior, pictured below, and worked it into a fundraising pitch, asking for “Coulter Cash”:

John Edwards fundraising pitch for Coulter Cash

Note that they are making the video available on their own site — this is to their credit, as traditional campaign wisdom holds that you don’t want to keep a negative story going. But this attack was so meanspirited and witless and obviously saying far more about Coulter than Edwards that there is virtually no downside.

The rightosphere can denounce her all they like — calling her a “verbal suicide bomber” and likening her to David Duke and Michael Moore — but they can’t make up for the YouTube-ready audience laughter and applause that greeted Coulter’s remarks.

For the same reason, Howard Dean’s call for the GOP frontrunners to denounce Coulter’s remarks was pretty smart, too. He got his presidential denunciations on short order, but some conservatives refocused their ire on him and effectively defended Coulter. Liberal bloggers may have painted a picture of the conservative blogosphere as a mere appendage of the right-wing establishment, but there’s no way Glenn Greenwald will let Ed Morrissey speak for the movement on this one.

Only CPAC can do that now. Will the conference organizers announce that Ann Coulter will not be invited next year? Her post-9/11 “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” column got her axed from NRO, so they would even have the cover of precedent. Or are they too fearful losing Coulter’s College Republican fan base?

P.S. What do we make of the fact that PoliPundit blogger and Duncan Hunter campaign paid staffer Michael Illions is one of the few conservative bloggers publicly standing by her, while this same week the Hunter campaign cut loose two South Carolina operatives for making bigoted statements? Just asking.

P.P.S. Beyerstein got at least one thing wrong in her Salon column — Matt Stoller, whom she cited twice as a better potential hire than herself or Marcotte, missed the boat entirely as this was breaking last night:

I called a contact at the Edwards campaign for a response. Nothing yet. It would be stupid to respond to Coulter, but it’s a good idea to hang Coulter around Romney and Giuliani’s neck.

Right. Certainly nothing you’d want to use to solicit campaign contributions…

Ginormous Tuesday: Front-loading and the 50-State Strategy

Published by William Beutler on February 7, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, Campaigns, DNC, Democrats, Howard Dean, Iowa Caucuses, National Politics and White House '08. Closed

One year from this week, we might already have our Republican and Democratic presidential nominees. Early? Definitely. Too early? Debatable. Impossible? Might be unavoidable. One reason might be Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy.

In just the past month, a few very large states have started talking about moving their presidential primaries to the first week in February. Those states include Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and the fifth-largest economy in the world, California. This shouldn’t be a surprise: the parties want a bigger say in presidential nominations, and the rest of each state wants a bigger slice of that billion-dollar pie. What’s more, Illinois would like to give favorite son Barack Obama a major boost — and they can’t do it if their primary still comes after Super Tuesday. According to The Green Papers, at least nine other states have taken steps to move their primaries up.

Primary front-loading is a perennial good-government gripe about the nomination process. Coincidentally or not, it continues unabated. And it’s not just the primaries — the presidential debates are starting even earlier this year. The rules are different on the Republican side, but over time, Republicans have generally adopted changes first proposed by the (more process-oriented) Democrats.

Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe, the two most recent DNC chairmenThis time around the Democratic National Committee, under superlative-magnet chairman Howard Dean, deliberately enabled some noteworthy front-loading: Nevada’s caucus and South Carolina’s primary were both moved up to late January so union members and African-Americans would have a say in the process, whereas they would not in right-to-work Iowa and 97% white New Hampshire. Everybody else can go starting Feb. 5.

Remember that when Howard Dean ascended to party chair in early 2005, the Washington establishment balked. Dean’s support among liberal bloggers might have been a foregone conclusion, but one idea they shared with Dean — a plan to rebuild the party’s national reach by contesting races and spending money all around the country, even in districts previously abandoned to the GOP — helped him win over the state-based committee members who put him over the top.

Needless to say, this has been controversial inside the Beltway, especially after Dean’s slow fundraising start. The party has enjoyed fundraising success under Dean since then, but he’s given so much of it to state parties that the old complaints gave way to new ones.

Of course, the state parties love the arrangement. State party executive directors — they control state party budgets, not the unpaid, figurehead party chairs — queued up to accept their party-building money. For Dean, it was probably a smart move — it may have pre-empted James Carville’s would-be coup before it got very far.

But Dean’s indulgence of the state parties cuts both ways: Yes, he has their support when negotiating with the Beltway establishment. But the nomination process isn’t about that — it’s every state for themselves. And the state executive directors also know Dean won’t be in charge of the party forever: once a nominee is chosen, he or she becomes the de facto leader of the party, and who knows what happens after that. Are the states pressing their advantage now because they know Dean won’t say no to them?

I bet this wouldn’t be happening under Terry McAuliffe. To be sure, McAuliffe was complicit in front-loading the process himself — his big idea was to front-load things just enough to produce a nominee early to take on Bush. In practice, the John Kerry electability meme took hold around the same time and was decisive. (What meme will be temporarily entrenched a year from yesterday?) But his base of power was firmly inside the Beltway — the Clintons and their donors — and not in the states.

The DNC chair can invalidate a state’s primary, or withhold funds, or threaten to do these things. Certainly in public, Dean has said nothing of the sort, even though New Hampshire secretary of state William Gardner is ready to hopscotch Nevada and Florida is openly talking about moving its primary to Jan. 29 — a week ahead of the agreed-upon window.

When it comes to the nomination schedule, how far can the state parties go? What, if anything, can Dean do about it?

Let’s imagine that the big four states move their primaries up to the first Tuesday in February. (If not 2008, then 2012.) Along with the states already camped out here, that day will be worth more than 1,000 delegates (1,098 using 2004 figures). That’s almost exactly what Super Tuesday (March 2) was worth in 2004. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much of a Super Tuesday left, and the whole thing could be settled two weeks after the Iowa caucuses — where’s the fun in that?

So what do we call this… Mega Tuesday? There’s already been one of those. Uber Tuesday? Perhaps a little too Teutonic. Colossal Tuesday? You can never really count on naming these things, but for now I’m calling it Ginormous Tuesday.

Register Your Discontent! II: Speculating About The Speculators

Published by William Beutler on January 21, 2007 in Barack Obama, Domains, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, National Politics, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 6 Comments

Domain Registration Options

In our previous installment, I went digging through WHOIS to determine the availability of domains calling for the impeachment of 2008’s crop of presidential contenders. It may be too early to consider any of them locks for their respective party nominations, but it turned out that it’s not too late to plan for their removal from office.

I’m not sure these observations are worth much, but obviously I believe they are worth a blog post:

  • According to the available information, it appears that none of these domains were registered prior to 2003 and most were snapped up in just the last year, which suggests that all the the resgistered domains in fact refer to the each candidate, and not say, other people named Clark or Paul. This seems to be true even of ImpeachKerry.com and ImpeachKerry.org, but it is also possible they were previously maintained through another registrar.
  • The biggest category of registrations are those with no identifiable owner: They are controlled through private registration intermediaries Domains by Proxy and the more obscure Domain Discreet of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. These include all the Edwards sites save one, ImpeachHillary.org and ImpeachHillary.net, ImpeachKerry.com and ImpeachKerry.org, ImpeachBrownback.com and — for some reason — ImpeachPaul.com.
  • Which campaigns might have secured some of these domains? I found no smoking gun evidence, but if any, most likely John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The registration of three Edwards-related domains through Domain Discreet — on different days but within two weeks of each other last December — is at least chin-stroke worthy. The .org, however, was registered 10 months earlier and through Domains by Proxy. If any one candidate is most likely to be hoarding domains, it’s Edwards — but that isn’t saying much. Clinton knows a thing or two about impeachment, but that’s about it.
  • The identifiable registrants for Hillary Clinton’s sites are split among three individuals. I attempted to contact each, but as yet none have replied. Norman Livingston of Boynton Beach, FL owns ImpeachHillary.biz, but he seems to be un-Googleable. Michael Miller of Cincinnati owns ImpeachHillary.info, and there is an outside chance he is Republican lawyer and former Franklin County Prosecutor Michael Miller, although it would be quite a commute to Columbus. ImpeachHillary.com — the one domain which could conceivably fetch twenty-five large in a future online auction, belongs to another Miller: Mark L. Miller, a San Diego attorney and family man — apparently neither the Republican money man nor the Kentucky state police commish.
  • Meanwhile, Obama sites are like potato chips — you can’t have just one. In late December, Michael Meder of Emeryville, CA helped himself to .net and .org. Then a few days after Obama’s announcement, Robert McKee of Austin, TX picked up .us and .info.
  • The exception is ImpeachObama.com, which was registered to an entity called Registered to Protect From Squatters on July 15, 2004 — two weeks before Obama delivered his famous convention speech. The constitutional visionary here goes by the name DomainGoon, and he’s a pro, controlling ImpeachGilmore.com, ImpeachBiden.com and ImpeachVilsack.com as Script Registrations. (He — really, what woman would call herself “goon” anything? — maintains other prized domains, such as abughraib.com, registered two days after the April 2004 “60 Minutes II” report.) I believe it’s fair to credit him with ImpeachClark.com and ImpeachPataki.com — those are owned by a company called Sunlane Media LLC, which shares the same Encinitas, CA address and contact information as Script Registrations. Most of these were registered in the second half of 2006, but ImpeachBiden.com was picked up in December 2004, the day after Biden told Don Imus: “I’m going to proceed as if I’m going to run.” And ImpeachClark.com was registered Sept. 11, 2003, the week before Clark threw his hat into the ring the last time. The guy is good.
  • John Wall of Cincinnati ties with DomainGoon for the most impeachment domains, but has the clear edge in both candidate and TLD prestige: ImpeachMcCain.com, ImpeachRomney.com, ImpeachRichardson.com, ImpeachGiuliani.com, ImpeachGingrich.com and ImpeachGingrich.net. All but Romney were registered on June 19, 2005 — the exception was registered on the surprisingly late date of December 2006.
  • ImpeachBiden.org belongs to someone named Daniel Cook of Chicago, who has owned it since November 2005. According to Amazon’s social network 43 Things, Cook or someone with the same “cookforpresident” handle wants to “have sex a lot,” “have sex today,” and “have sex eight times in one day.” As yet (if 43 Things is up to date) he has accomplished none of these things. Just saying. Also, I don’t know which Cook is being referred to, but my money is on Dane Cook. Which would explain a lot, but not the interest in Joe Biden.
  • Mini-tycoons include Joseph Culligan of Miami, FL (ImpeachMcCain.org, ImpeachMcCain.net) Charles Wallace of Spokane, WA (ImpeachKucinich.com, ImpeachEdwards.us) and Barney Schlacks of St. Louis, MO (ImpeachRomney.net, ImpeachGiuliani.net).
  • None of the sites are earnestly in opposition to the candidates named, most of the domains lead to parked pages with ad links and some don’t load at all, but there are some unusual ones.
  • ImpeachClark.com, oddly enough, leads to Hated.com, which seems like the political version of a parked domain — it’s a guide to a number of popular liberal sites such as BartCop and Raw Story, but only links one true blog: Bill Scher’s Liberal Oasis.
  • ImpeachMcCain.com features apparently-original text previewing McCain’s ‘08 bid, and almost feels like a tribute site — with a photo gallery! — but also features conspicuous Adsense and makes sure to quote McCain’s infamous Chelsea Clinton joke.
  • ImpeachGingrich.com and .net both redirect to AboutEating.com, the website of a culinary celebrity in Wall’s hometown of Cincinnati.

And that’s about all I found. If I’ve missed anything important, let’s hear it in the comments.

Register Your Discontent!

Published by William Beutler on January 20, 2007 in Barack Obama, Domains, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, National Politics, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 1 Comment

Ownership rights to impeachbush.com sold on eBay earlier today for a cool $25,200. The new owner, first-time buyer azmo-bargain, is anonymous. The seller was another eBay unknown, somebody named Jody Denise. He or she registered the domain in May 1999 but never did a thing with it.

This gives me an idea. With the 2008 presidential race stepping up a notch this past week, I wondered: What’s available to the aspiring impeachment activist or politically-aware cybersquatter?

To answer this question, I ran a series of impeachX.com domain searches at Network Solutions. For the purposes of this exercise, I went off the list of legitimate candidates from Politics1.com (sorry, St. Michael Jesus Archangel). In the case of Sen. Clinton, I assumed any impeachclinton domains would be related to her impeached husband. Past a certain point, there were several domains for whom no candidates had any associated registrations: .tv, .ws, .bz, .de, .co.uk and .eu. Mostly to save column space, I have Photoshopped them into oblivion.

I then organized the list in descending order from the candidates nobody expects to be impeaching to the most likely candidates for impeachment starting in 2009. Where candidates had an equal number but different domains registered, I defaulted to NetSol’s order of premium-ness. All other ties were decided by the alphabet.

Without further ado, here is the complete list:

Network Solutions domain registrations related to Mike Gravel, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Al Sharpton, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson, Sam Brownback, Wesley Clark, Jim Gilmore, Dennis Kucinich, George Pataki, Ron Paul, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

Alas, this doesn’t tell us who registered these sites or when, to say nothing of why. Which campaigns were already wise to domain-hoarding? Who do the speculators like? Are any of these sites unrelated to 2008? Are any of them even active? I’ll try to answer those questions later this weekend.

The Other Truth About Hillary

Published by William Beutler on December 10, 2006 in Democrats, Hillary Clinton, MSM, Midterms '06, National Politics and White House '08. Closed

When the universally-panned trashy tell-all “The Truth About Hillary” hit bookshelves last year, one amusing sidelight was the fact that author Edward Klein is the pseudonymous author of “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade” in Parade, the semi-glossy Sunday insert that appears in virtually every newspaper in the country not owned by Gannett.

The book made a number of dubiously-sourced allegations about the Clintons’ private lives, most of which were recycled, while the new ones were so outrageous even the Clintons’ most hardy detractors took exception. The book failed, Hillary’s career survived, and that was that.

However, Klein has now revisited his subject — and appears to have changed his tune. Having exhausted the rest of today’s Washington Post, I picked up today’s Parade from the stack, and found in the latest “Personality Parade”:

Q: How does the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate affect Hillary Clinton’s chances of getting the 2008 Presidential nomination?—Daniel O., Los Angeles, Calif.

A: Judging by the large number of moderate and conservative Democrats who won last month, it looks like Senator Clinton and her party are moving in the same direction: toward the political center. (Another indication: Sen. Russ Feingold, a leading liberal, dropped out of the 2008 presidential race.) Being on the same wavelength as her party should make it easier to secure the nomination.

I’m not sure what to do with this, if anything. After all, who looks to Parade for political advice? People who read Parade on a regular basis, I suppose.

For one thing, I am certain that many on the left, particularly those in the blogosphere, will disagree with the notion that the Democratic party is moving significantly toward the center. The “large number” of moderates and conservatives is simply wrong; for every Heath Shuler there’s a Sherrod Brown, and district by district results aren’t always the best indicator of which direction the party is going. Look instead to the leadership and the committee chairs — such as impeachment-itchy House Judiciary chairman John Conyers, resolutely anti-war Senate Armed Services chairman Carl Levin and soon-to-be Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And I am certain that many on the left, particularly those in the blogosphere, will not think they move away from the center enough.

Additionally, Feingold’s withdrawal says nothing of the sort. It says a lot more about the fact that he would be an issue candidate beloved of bloggers but not fundraisers or primary state activists. Last year he divorced his wife, which didn’t help things any. Meanwhile Dennis Kucinich — newly remarried and even further to the left — is probably going to run again, not that he has a chance either.

The “Walter Scott” column does suggest one other thing: Despite his own portrayal of Sen. Clinton as a radical lesbian feminist, when he’s not trying to sell books, Edward Klein doesn’t even believe himself.

Exit Music For A Campaign

Published by William Beutler on November 7, 2006 in Democrats, Election Night, Meatspace, Midterms '06, National Politics and Online Fundraising. 1 Comment

It is only a matter of minutes now before the polls close and BIog P.I. departs for an evening of electoral victory/defeat partying, letting people with a stake in the day’s events this buy our drinks. In the meantime, here are some thoughts before the election returns are returned…

Today’s Wall Street Journal could have coined it the Wonkette Rule:

Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday. Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; and for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.

If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress.

The sidebar does, however, single out Nick Denton’s Beltway gossip sheet in a sidebar (though in 2004 Slate’s Jack Shafer joined Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox in bravely/shamefully running those numbers early):

WSJ pins early exit poll blame on Wonkette

That’s right, it’s all the bloggers’ fault — and not the reporters who leaked the information to them, nor the reporters who leaked the information to themselves for publishing on the Internet.

These things we know: Exit polls are far from authoritative, and one shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on them. However, there are ways of making that point without being as deliciously hubristic as RNC Research Department:

In 2000, Exit Polling Malfunctioned And Incorrectly Projecting [sic] Vice President Al Gore As The Winner Of The Crucial Battleground State Of Florida.

Well, Yes, And Then Some Other Stuff Happened, Too.

Also of some interest — what Danny Glover did for political blogger/consultants last week, today he does for political blogger/donors. Earlier in the week I extrapolated from his numbers (in some cases perhaps a bit too far) to create charts based on them. Today, why don’t I rank his latest findings in order, from those donating the most to those donating the least? Why not indeed:


Blogger Breakout Total
John Hinderaker, Power Line Mark Kennedy ($2,400); Michelle Bachmann ($2,100) $4,500
Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos Jim Webb ($1,825); Jon Tester ($1,300); Ciro Rodriguez ($250) $3,375
Hugh Hewitt, TownHall.com Jon Kyl ($2,000); Rick Santorum ($1,000) $3,000
Duncan Black, Atrios Vote Vets ($250); Lois Murphy ($200); Patrick Murphy ($200) $650
Matt Stoller, MyDD Ned Lamont $500
Chris Bowers, MyDD Ned Lamont $250
Stirling Newberry, various Ned Lamont $250

All numbers from Glover’s FEC searches, and as I am guessing he did not run every known political blogger’s name through the system, the list is surely incomplete. But would you have pegged Kos to have donated more than Hewitt? I’m pretty sure I would not.

The next time Blog P.I. is updated, the Washington political world will be turned upside down. Or possibly not. But if I had to wager — and I have made my non-wagering predictions elsewhere —  things are more likely than not to end up sideways.