"All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be incomprehensible or puerile," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic 19th-century treatise, Democracy in America. "And he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them."

And so it is that, as the extent of the carnage in Iraq becomes evident and North Korea goes nuclear, America's political class obsesses over a single Congressman's predilection for teenage boys.

The scandal of Mark Foley, the Florida representative who sent lewd email messages to Congressional pages, has galvanised the Democrat leadership into aggressive opposition in a way that Abu Ghraib never could. They know how to make electoral capital out of a gay man propositioning American teenagers (as of yet there is no suggestion that he actually molested any of them). But when it came to American soldiers forcing Iraqi prisoners to masturbate for the camera, their ability to focus minds on inappropriate sexual behaviour and abuse of power somehow eluded them.

Now, with three weeks to go before the mid-term elections, the Democrats are flipping the traditional script. "Anybody who had a personal vulnerability before this is totally [at risk] with the spotlight on scandal," a Democratic aide told the Washington Post. "Frankly, it is a tough environment out there if you have a problem with the bottle or the zipper."

From the party that brought you Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy this is new territory indeed, but they are covering it like old pros. The handful of Republicans either personally close to Foley or who may be implicated in the alleged cover-up by the Republican leadership are in the direct line of fire, putting once safe seats in play. But elsewhere Democrats are simply looking for dirt, throwing it, seeing if it sticks, and then screaming "Foley". Last week in New Jersey, the Democrat candidate Linda Stender accused her Republican opponent, Mike Ferguson, of preying on young women in a Washington DC nightclub. In Pennsylvania, Chris Carney has accused his Republican opponent of "repeatedly choking" and "attempting to strangle" his young mistress. In upstate New York, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is pressuring the Republican incumbent, John Sweeney, to explain a drunk-driving arrest 30 years ago as well as a more recent accident. The Foley scandal "opened the door to talk about the ethical challenge of my opponent", said Stender.

So the party that was only recently laid low by evangelicals is now running on moral values. The Republicans, who lead the charge on family values and gay marriage, are running away from them. And with 15 House seats and six Senate seats between government and opposition, at stake is who will run the country.

After 12 years of Republican domination of both Houses of Congress (give or take a brief interlude), the Democrats seem poised to retake the House of Representatives. They may even get the Senate, though that remains a long shot. In a system where, thanks to big money and gerrymandering, 98% of incumbents are usually re-elected, such changes in Congressional leadership are rare. The Republicans have far more money and are far better organised. But it looks increasingly likely.

"This is without question the worst political situation for the GOP since the Watergate disaster in 1974," wrote the veteran analyst Charles Cook in his political report on Friday. "I think a 30-seat gain today for Democrats is more likely to occur than a 15-seat gain, the minimum that would tip the majority. The chances of that number going higher are also strong, unless something occurs that fundamentally changes the dynamic of this election. This is what Republican strategists' nightmares look like."

A recent Pew research survey revealed 51% of voters plan to back Democrats against 38% for the Republicans. Moreover, Democrats are more pumped up. Currently 59% of Democratic voters say they have given a lot of thought to this election, 51% are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, and 71% say they are angry. Republicans are far more distracted and less keen.

The trouble is the things the Democrats are angriest and more enthusiastic about are, for the most part, not the things their party is talking about. The Foley episode is having about as much impact on voting intentions as the Lewinsky affair did on Clinton's approval ratings - none. The Pew poll was being conducted as the Foley story broke. Interviews before and after he resigned gave almost identical results.

True, along with the Abramoff lobbying scandal (which claimed another Congressional scalp last week with the resignation of Ohio representative Bob Ney), the manner in which the Foley saga was mishandled does compound the sense of an out-of-touch Republican leadership out to protect its own. Given Foley's sexual orientation the Republicans are less likely to take their gay-baiting rhetoric to the polls. All in all it has confirmed the sense that Republicans have been in power too long. But there is little evidence that it has changed anyone's mind or is likely to suppress even the evangelical vote.

For if America's political class are pushing de Tocqueville's "puerile trifles", the electorate is clearly far more interested in substance. With wages stagnant, health costs rising and the military death toll in Iraq this month hovering close to a two-year high, voters want serious answers to serious questions. The Pew survey showed that the six issues of most concern to the electorate were Iraq, terrorism, the economy, healthcare, immigration and energy policy.

Last week, the Democrat minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, addressed some of these concerns. She pledged that in the first 100 hours of a Democrat majority she will increase the minimum wage, reduce interest rates on student loans, expand federal funding for stem-cell research, and require the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of prescription drugs for Medicare.

This is great as far as it goes. It provides an answer to those who claim there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. But it also confirms the accusation that, given the challenges facing American society, this difference is inadequate. For one of the reasons the Democrats are so eager to talk about the Foley scandal is because they have little substantive to say on the matters on the American public's mind.

Pelosi might have added to her to-do list closing down Guantánamo Bay, setting a date for troop withdrawal from Iraq, raising taxes on the top earners to help curb the deficit, and putting a stop to warrantless wiretapping. But the truth is that Democrats have no consistent or coherent position on Iraq, terrorism or anything else much. The last few months have told the tale of Republican demise, not a Democrat revival.

So while November 7 promises the possibility of electoral change, the prospect of real political change seems remote. The Democrats are standing for office, but little else.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1923268,00.html

Gary,

When I read this about a week ago, I thought this was an excellent article/post. Odd but not atypical that it's had only a few looks. I agree with most of your points, but the "Foley scandal" has for the most part already run its course at least in the "sensationalist" sense. (Now that apparently all the testifying before the House Ethics Committee is over with, we may have to wait until after the elections to find out how much there was in the way of "cover-up," protecting a GOP fund-raiser/contributor, protecting the GOP reputation, etc.) I do, however, mildly disagree about the elections promising only electoral change with only a remote chance of real political change. But in any event I thought some here might be interested in the New York Times online interactive "2006 Election Guide."

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/washington/2006...Set=senANALYSIS

The Senate seems most likely to be split 50-50 (which would give Vice President Cheney the deciding vote, a position he's accustomed to having). But within the past week or so the Virginia race has slipped from "Leaning Republican" to "Toss Up," largely because of polling shifts that resulted from the revelations of Allen's past racist language and his introduction of an otherwise unknown racial slur ("macaca") when referring to an (Asian) Indian who was a Democratic observer at one of his rallies. Tennessee is also considered a "Toss Up," but the GOP's campaign ad may backfire in favor of Forde, the Democratic challenger. (The ad not so subtlely raises fears of race-mixing) The first thing I noticed was that the only reason the Democrats have any chance of even getting close to getting the Senate is that so few southern states have Senate races this year.

The projections for the House of Representative races have literally changed every 3-4 days for the past couple of weeks, all moving away from the GOP. Even Ann Northup's race (representing Louisville, KY) has moved from "Safe Republican" to "Leaning Republican." She's now running ads stressing her "independence," and her challenger made fun of her in a debate because she said she didn't know that VP Cheney was in town recently (it's extremely unusual that a member of Congress would fail to meet the US Vice President when he visits the town the member represents). It's not a good sign for Republicans that congressional candidates are so overtly distancing themselves from the Administration. And if you notice the numbers, and assume that the "leaners" will go in the direction they're leaning, you can see that the GOP basically needs to sweep all the "toss-ups" (13 out of 16), whereas the Democrats only need to win 4 of the "tossups" in order to gain a majority (218 out of 435 seats).

Take care,

Dan (Probationary Member)

A report in the Daily Telegraph suggests that there will be a late swing to the Republicans. This is based on the idea that the Republicans will spend over £200m in smear campaigns against Democrats in states they are in danger of losing. For example, the attacks on Harold Ford in Tennessee who is being accused of receiving donations from a company that makes porn movies.

To people living in Europe, these smear campaigns would backfire over issues like this, although donations from companies that got contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan would have an impact on voting intentions. However, America is not Europe and maybe these “attack commercials” will work. If so, you deserve all you get.

The important point to grasp about people like Bush and Cheney is that they are not really conservatives. A major factor in conservative philosophy is the belief in a reduction in government spending. Bush, like Reagan before him, has greatly increased government spending during his period in power. When Bush took over in 2000, the long-term fiscal liability of the federal government was $20 trillion. It now stands at $43 trillion. Bush has increased government spending at a faster rate than any Congress since the 1930s (Roosevelt’s New Deal).

Reagan and Bush had no option but to increase government spending in certain parts of the economy. This is the way governments pay back their financial supporters. Large Corporations do not give donations, they make investments. Who made money from the Vietnam War? LBJ’s long-term financial backers: Halliburton, General Dynamics, Bell Corporation.

The same is true of the Iraq War. The contracts for rebuilding Iraq was organized by a company called New Bridge Strategies. This company was owned by Barbour, Griffith & Rogers. The majority shareholder in this company is Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi. His partners, Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers, are two lawyers who formerly worked in the George H. W. Bush administration. Barbour is also in charge of raising money for Republican Senate campaigns.

Barbour is a long-term supporter of George Bush. He arranged for a small group of companies, Bechtel ($1 billon), Halliburton ($2.3 billion) and International American Products ($527 million), to get most of the contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq schools, airports, roads, bridges, hospitals and power plants. It is no coincidence that these three companies are all major political donors to the Republican Party.

This is the reality of American capitalism. You can’t let the deaths of US military or Iraqi civilians to get in the way of profits.

Can't comment on the Daily Telegraph report without having read it, obviously, but the news that Republicans will spend a lot of money in smear campaigns against Democrats is shocking. I hope this won't become a trend. If it does, an angry letter to the Republican National Committee seems to be in order.
Can't say as I agree with the attitude, but then I've never been in favor of persecuting (or punishing) minorities.

When I'm trying to teach Swedes about how the US Constitution operates, one of the factors which needs a lot of explaining is gerrymandering. Another 'hard sell' is the positive aspects both of the US Constitution and US society in general …

My take on each of these issues is to try to point out the politics in the US and politics in Europe are still not quite the same - the US has no left-wing parties to speak of, which means that US voters don't have much of an alternative view of society presented to them (at least at the level of political parties - local races are another thing altogether).

I usually ask them why demonstrators in the US often walk around in circles, rather than standing still. (It's a way of avoiding a notorious piece of anti-union legislation from the early 20th century.) This strikes a chord - all over Sweden you'll find 'Folkets hus' and 'Folkets park' (literally "The People's House" and "The People's Park"!), which were started by left-wingers and trade unionists who had to build their own meeting places at the dawn of representative democracy, because the local land-owners, industrialists and priests usually conspired to try to deny the freedom of association.

However, at a crucial stage in the 1920s and 1930s, Swedes won battles which Americans lost … which is why Swedish democracy doesn't function in the same way as US democracy (gerrymandering is an impossibility here, for example), and why you don't ever see attack ads in the Swedish media.

You have to be joking....write a letter to the RNC...they don't care....they don't even hold meetings with the Democrats in Congress [see my post on Worst Congress in History], they know what they are doing and are totally amoral and corrupt and don't give a s**** what someone thinks, certainly not just a citizen alone...unless your a billionaire and then they are at your beck and call!

While both parties on occassions have done negative ads, the Republinazis have really perfected the art of fully false slander hate campaigns in their ads, knowing that it won't be refuted or discovered nor discussed until it is too late [after the elections] They have stolen two Presidential and many other elections, most of our democracy and destroyed much of our constitution and you're going to write a letter....

....sorry, I'm speachless that people still think the levers of democracy and civility still exist in the USA...those levers have strings that go behind the curtain and connnect to nothing. IMO

Only MASS protest, MASS action, Mass indignation at the polls [though vote tampering will be in full swing] etc. will do anything!...and it must be sustained. Loss of our democracy is not IMO something that could happen...it did!

Yes, Peter, I must have been joking. You see, when the idea is put forward that Republicans would spend a whole bunch of money in smear campaigns against Democrats, I compare this with my own experience of what has passed for politics in the United States for the past 30 years or so and I react with irony that this would hardly be news (or new) to anyone. I'm glad to see this misunderstanding gave you a chance to get some things off your chest, though. It's unhealthy to hold it all in, IMO.

But David Richardson wrote an excellent and informative post, didn't he? Very good points about how the regressive agenda has won out against "trade unionism" in the US, which was once a driving force for progressive reforms and general politcal education and involvement. As I've said before, if we continue to see rule by the regressives, within the next decade or so we're going to have a new national holiday where FDR's corpse is exhumed annually: "Piss on Franklin Roosevelt Day."

Thanks for those kind words, Daniel. I usually take a deep breath before I express opinions about how the US system works to Americans! I'm quite prepared to stand corrected by people who know better than I do.

One image I use to explain US politics to Swedes is a 'red shift' (bearing in mind, as I'm sure you know, that red is the colour of the *left* in Europe, whilst blue is the colour of the right). Any party in Europe which calls itself 'liberal' is a party of the right. The liberal parties (such as the Liberals in the UK, the FDP in Germany and Venstre in Denmark) originated before universal suffrage, and were, for a time, the vehicles by which working people had their views represented in Parliament (since working people didn't own enough property to qualify for the vote). The Swedish liberal party is even called 'Folkpartiet' - the People's Party.

In Swedish politics, you divide the blocs up into 'bourgeois' and 'non-bourgeois', with the old Communist Party and the Social Democrats in the latter bloc and all the others (except the Greens, who feel that they don't belong in either bloc) in the former. The US Democratic Party is definitely in the bourgeois bloc … which means that you don't have a 'non-bourgeois' bloc at all. The Swedish situation is mirrored right across Europe, even though there's a good case for saying that the 'non-bourgeois' parties have sold out.

There's a constant battle going on, though, with plenty of interference from the US.

Daniel, Apologies. I also suggest people look at my thread on plans to steal this current election and some strong proofs of the theft of past ones here
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8357

To David, I actually lived in Sverige for quite some time, as well as in Norge and Danmark [thats Sweden, Norway and Denmark for you non-Scandinavians] and know well your political system. It is much, much more democratic and less run by the elite IMO, though not perfect either. One of the big conspiracies [yes, another] in the USA is not to let anyone [but a few intellectuals who are reviled and ignored] know that there are other ways to construct democracies than that in America. Americans have no idea that many in Europe have long summer vacations [even paid ones]; social security they can't image; better health care systems and payment for it; even greater real democracy, where a greater spectrum of political viewpoints get to participate and it isn't a 'winner-take-all' situation....[which starts now to loose all its meaning as there is now only one party, with two wings IMO and most in Congress have been 'bought' by the rich and their corporations - and in now way represent the general public].

Scandinavia IMO puts the USA to shame...but your system is unknown in America and not discussed nor compared with the one in place.....the Empire is hermetically sealed by bad education; arrogance and a controlled media...oh, and by the myth of America [best of all possible political systems and one need not look closely at it - and certainly not at any others].

One of the revelations I had as a Brit coming to Sweden was that a high standard of living, a high degree of equality, a good welfare state, etc, etc aren't the *end* of a political discussion, but rather just the beginning. It's very difficult to find a space in your life to even think about how your country is being governed if you're having to scrape to get by, or to take two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

It's no accident that the first thing parties of the right want to do when they gain power is to create an underclass of the working poor, so that the broad mass of people are going to be too busy wondering how they're going to pay their bills at the end of the month to want to ask awkward questions.

It reminds me of the stories my grandad and uncles used to tell of life in Sheffield (England) during the Great Depression, when they often had no money at all in the house. The rentman used to come round with his leather money bag every week, and they'd put one penny a week by for private health insurance. When my Uncle Joe caught diphtheria, they used up all their insurance on medical care for him, and then were terrified that one of the other three boys would get it. If they had, they wouldn't have been able to call the doctor … No wonder Churchill lost the 1945 General Election.

The problem about being so ignorant about history and the world around you is that your ignorance comes back to bite you in the bum. I worked in Angola in mid-1985 when the Cubans were still there (and they were incredibly popular with the Angolans, BTW). Even though Angola was a war-ravaged country, it was in a better shape than parts of Savannah, just a couple of hundred yards from the waterfront, where I'd been a couple of years before …

Let's just hope for all our sakes that Americans manage to get a grip on their own future on November 7th … though I agree with Peter that the chances aren't great.

First, let's lay down the mother of all caveats. The conventional wisdom says Democrats are about to win control of the House of Representatives and could well take the Senate too. But, and here's the mega-caveat, the conventional wisdom in Washington is often very, very wrong. Cast your mind back to election night 2004, when the US media anointed President John Kerry. The warning this time is that Republicans might be fewer in number, but more motivated and therefore likelier to turn out. Note, too, the reports that White House strategist Karl Rove, the election wizard famed as George Bush's brain, is in cocky mood. In the contests that matter, Rove reckons Republicans have the money and the machine to win.

So Democrats and their friends should approach next Tuesday's congressional elections with low expectations: that way, they won't be disappointed. Then, in the appropriate frame of mind, they can ask the question that matters: what difference will a Democrat win make, not only to the United States but to the wider world?

There are a handful of policy specifics, including a promise to raise the minimum wage, but the party's election programme is stunningly short on detail. It sets out six, general goals - Six for '06 is the not very snappy slogan - and runs to just a single page.

But that's not the point. For a Democratic victory would change the terms of trade of American politics. The precedent is the year the Republicans swept the House, ousting the Democrats who had ruled there for an unbroken 40 years. The Republican landslide of 1994 did what landslides are meant to do: it re-made the terrain. From that point onwards, the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had to navigate around a landscape shaped by Newt Gingrich and his conservative revolutionaries.

Gingrich set the agenda; Clinton could only react to it. He was reduced to protesting that he was still "relevant". The result was that the president had to drop forever what had been his signature ambition - the reform of America's hideously unjust system of healthcare - and slash the welfare system for those without work.

Democratic success next week could mete out the same fate to George Bush. Since 2000, Republicans have been able to define the terms of debate. Bush, sitting at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, has been able to count on a reliable amen corner at the other. A Democratic House would force Bush onto the defensive; if the Senate were also to fall, he would be crippled. The Bush presidency is already in its final phase; double Democratic success next week would all but end it.

Take two examples that matter most to those outside the United States. One is climate change. Democrats are not great on it, but they exhibit less of the wilful denial that characterises the Republicans. They would at least give the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern a hearing when he crosses the Atlantic to make his case for a cut in carbon emissions - even if they, like the Republicans, can't bring themselves to propose green taxes on anything.

The second critical matter is Iraq. The Democrats' brief policy document, A New Direction for America, calls for "the responsible redeployment of US forces" with "Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country". Those are, admittedly, words that could be uttered by Bush or Donald Rumsfeld. They too say American troops will stand down as Iraqis stand up. But "responsible redeployment" at least hints at a different impulse: to get the hell out.

Now it's true that Democrats have a double credibility problem in this area. Almost all of them voted to authorise the use of military force in Iraq: they feared what the Republican attack machine would do to them if they didn't. Second, House Democrats may huff and puff all they like about troop withdrawals but that is not a decision for them to take. The constitution gives that power almost exclusively to the commander-in-chief. If Bush insists on staying the course in Iraq, there is little the House of Representatives can formally do to stop him.

But where the constitution ends, politics begins. For both houses of Congress wield a crucial power: the right to hold hearings into the conduct of the administration. For six years, Bush has been spared the ordeal of congressional investigation. While Clinton saw his every move subject to televised inquiry by hostile Republican committees, subpoenaing witnesses, demanding sensitive documents, Bush has operated with the lightest of scrutiny.

As of January 2007, when the new Congress is sworn in, that could change. Suddenly, Democrats would chair the pivotal foreign affairs committees. They could instantly establish the kind of sustained inquiry opposition MPs vainly sought in Westminster yesterday, subjecting the likes of Rumsfeld and others to fierce, public cross-examination.

It would require some careful positioning. Democrats would have to focus on the honesty of the initial case made for war, arguing that they were misled, that they would never have voted for invasion had they known the full truth. This is a debate Britain aired during the Hutton inquiry, but until now the US has lacked a formal outlet for such an examination. If the polls are right, Capitol Hill is about to be that outlet.

And Democrats will press the issue for all it's worth. Surveys show that the war is one of the core questions of the current midterm campaign: one poll saw voters ranking Iraq a single percentage point behind the economy in their list of most important issues. (Troublingly, perhaps, for Democrats, that same UPI-Zogby poll found the number one determinant for voters was the "values, morals and character" of a candidate.) A win in an election billed as a referendum on Bush's foreign policy would embolden Democrats to keep up the pressure: it would have confirmed Iraq as a seam worth mining for political advantage. There would be high-grade allies too, now that several senior Republicans, among them John Warner, chair of the senate armed services committee, have joined the chorus lamenting the Iraq war.

That process would have two long-term effects. First, a sustained assault could blunt at last the enduring Republican edge on national security. Since the cold war, the Republicans have been able to cast themselves as the party of strength in international affairs. That advantage, carefully nurtured and hardened by Rove and Bush, has cost the Democrats dear, helping to keep them out of the White House in all but three presidential elections over the last 40 years. If a new Congress puts the Republicans on the defensive over Iraq, and over the entire Bush approach to foreign policy, that would yield a major political dividend. Watch for Senator Hillary Clinton to follow the process with interest: she would like nothing more than the Republicans to be stripped of their traditional national security armour ahead of 2008.

The more important effect will be on what Bush does next. He could still embark on another crazed venture abroad, even in the face of opposition from the House, but it would be harder. Political reality will force him to operate within new constraints.

Next week's elections cannot, alas, remove George Bush from office. But they can hobble him badly. Those of us watching from afar can only hope that Americans seize their chance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1936324,00.html

I am not confident that Hillary Clinton would make such a good president. The other day Rupert Murdoch admitted he had been making donations to her presidential campaign. Has Murdoch found another Tony Blair?

CBS News

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll has good news for the Democrats. Asked about the House of Representatives, 52 percent of likely voters said they would vote for the Democrat running in their district and 34 percent said the Republican.

Forty percent of those polled said they were voting against President Bush, while just 14 percent said they were voting to support the president.

The poll showed Iraq is the most important issue in the coming election with nearly seven in 10 voters saying Mr. Bush does not have a plan for Iraq. The president's job approval rating remains at 34 percent.

Despite those numbers, CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante reports the president is giving no ground on Iraq. He told the Associated Press Wednesday that he wants Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to stay on the job for the rest of his term.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/...in2143962.shtml

So in Europe "liberal" is understood as signifying a conservative orientation. In the US "liberal" is understood as signifying everything that right-minded and God-fearing Christians should oppose --- treason, taxing-and-spending, plans for gay weddings, pulling the heads off of grandchildren, etc.

A good, accurate point about the Democratic Party. It would be helpful if we had a real third party to contest the dominance of the 2 (only) parties we have. It's ironic that American democracy has resulted in this stale domination of the political system by two political parties, the Right-of-Center Party and the Somewhat-Less-Right-of-Center Party. Virtually interchangable and indistinguishable, and equally compromised. That's part of the problem Gary Younge was alluding to: the actual opposition to Iraq policy has occurred almost entirely at the grass-roots level (albeit without Peter's envisioned Revolution), while the Democratic hierarchy latches on to "things of a day" sensational issues (pathetically, as if it will only take one more scandal, evidence of corruption, incidence of malfeasance to help them "take back" what they're incapable of earning on their own merits).
Exactly. As I said, the main reason Democrats even have a chance in the Senate is how few southern ("red") states have senatorial contests this year. I tend to disagree about the media anointing Kerry, though, but maybe this is a reflection of media-reporting in Britain/Europe (and some in the US)? Partly wishful thinking, partly a reflection of just how much dissatisfaction among Americans there was with President Bush? I've pointed out a couple times that 3 years after 9/11, with US troops at war, President Bush's re-election should have been a walk-over; but he was "acquitted" with 51% of the popular vote (in an election with the largest percentage voter turnout since the voting age was lowered to 18.) Not exactly overwhelming approval under the circumstances.

I think the general perception of Rove is that he's delusional (he's able to "see" numbers in his favor that most everyone else sees going against him) or has no other choice but to "claim victory" (admitting beforehand that the GOP is going to lose the House might result in lower GOP turnout). The key thing I've learned recently is that one of Rove's main components of success has been a strategy of an intense push to get Republicans involved in the last 72 hours before election day. Conservatives have a clear advantage there, since members of their base are apparently more inclined to obey orders, whereas Democrats have to rely on more independent, "freethinker" types. But Bush Republicans have alienated many of the very people (moderates and independents) that the GOP can't win without, by constantly appealing to their base and promoting the idea "you're with us or against us"; that also makes Democrats like myself vote against any Republican for the sole reason that anyone who would associate themselves with that party must by definition be dishonorable, dishonest and senseless.

So every thing depends on whether or not independents as well as Democrats turn out to express the dissatisfaction reflected in the polls, and how Republicans' own dissatisfaction will play out. My hope is that most Americans are concerned enough that they will turn out in large numbers as they did two years ago, and that this will be a clear referendum on the Bush Administration and their lapdogs "representing" us in Congress. But my expectations are more realistic.
The problem here, Jonathan, is the half-century degradation of Congress's constitutional war-making "rights," prerogatives, duties, obligations, etc. Only Congress can declare war under the US Constitution, but we've been involved in several wars since 1945 and the last time we had a formal declaration of war was against the Empire of Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It is our own political leaders who have encouraged rule by the Commander in Chief, by the Congress's ceding its own authority in this area to various presidents. This is a way for members of Congress to shirk their own responsibility: if the war goes well, they can say, "I stood with the Commander in Chief"; if the war doesn't go well, they can say, "Well, I didn't make the policy/the President didn't follow my advice, etc." That's bad enough in itself, of course, but fundamentally we're talking about a steady erosion of democracy and the steady growth of rule by one man (the President). Once we have a continuous war (like a "War on Terror"), then the prerogatives of the Commander in Chief become paramount, "national security" is reflected in every aspect of national policy, and dissent becomes treason. At this point I'm only thankful that Bush Republicans have more in common with Mussolini's fascisti than with Hitler's Nazis (the latter being more ruthlessly efficient in getting their way).

It must be nice to be able to have discussions about whether or not Hillary Clinton would be a good president or too much like another Tony Blair. Many Americans respect Blair because under a parliamentary system he at least has to stand there and take it when people question him and his policies in open Commons debate. The closest anyone gets to openly questioning President Bush is in a "news" conference or an interview. Not exactly a "full and free debate" surrounding by one's fellow members of government.

More to the point, however, what Europeans and some few in the US may find hard to understand is that "Hillary for President" is the answer to the GOP's most ardent prayer. (Second on the list: "Howard Dean for President.") For nearly 30 years Republicans have had extraordinary success in elections by using "liberal" as the most useful epithet possible in winning elections. This has very little to do with the merits of the argument (the quality or qualifications of the candidate), but has everything to do with the "propaganda battle." Except in the northeast and California, being labeled successfully as "liberal" is the surest guarantee of defeat. Like the TV ad says: "Baron Hill. Too Liberal For Jesus. Too Liberal For Indiana."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/midterms2006/sto...1939472,00.html

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday November 4, 2006
The Guardian

Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting.

Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for the control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election.

"I think the influence will be on morale [among Republicans]," said Steven Clemons, the head of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation. "I think they are confusing the right. What this is yielding is ambivalence, and people will stay at home."
Mr Perle, a member of the influential Defence Policy Board that advised the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the run-up to the war, is as outspoken in denouncing the conduct of the war as he was once bullish on the invasion. He blamed "dysfunction" in the Bush administration for the present quagmire.

"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly," Mr Perle told Vanity Fair, according to early excerpts of the article. "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

Asked if he would still have pushed for war knowing what he knows now, Mr Perle, a leading hawk in the Reagan administration, said: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?', I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists'." The Bush administration admits it was mistaken in believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but the president and other top officials maintain that Iraq is better off as a result of his removal.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, however, now believe the war was not worth the cost in blood and resources. The public rethink by top neocons comes at a time of rising violence, with the US death toll climbing steadily towards 3,000 and the United Nations estimating that many Iraqis may be being killed by the conflict each month.

Kenneth Adelman, another Reagan era hawk who sat on the Defence Policy Board until last year, drew attention with a 2002 commentary in the Washington Post predicting that liberating Iraq would be a "cakewalk".

He now says he hugely overestimated the abilities of the Bush team. "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent," Mr Adelman said.

"They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

He too takes back his public urging for military action, in light of the administration's performance. "I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked 'can't do'. And that's very different from 'let's go'."

Mr Adelman, a senior Reagan adviser at cold war summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, expressed particular disappointment in Mr Rumsfeld, who he described as a particular friend. "I'm crushed by his performance," he said. "Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."

Mr Adelman said the guiding principle behind neoconservatism, "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world", had been killed off for a generation at least. After Iraq, he told Vanity Fair, "it's not going to sell".

Michael Rubin, who worked on the staff of the Pentagon's office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.

The president's actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did".

Mr Frum, who as a White House speechwriter helped coin the phrase "axis of evil" in 2002, said failure in Iraq might be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them". The blame, Mr Frum said, lies with "failure at the centre", beginning with the president.

Andrew Sullivan was an enthusiastic supporter of George Bush in the early years. This is not surprising as he works for the Sunday Times, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch. However, over the last couple of months Sullivan has begun to have second thoughts about Bush. This culminated in an amazing article in yesterday’s Sunday Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2437911,00.html

What’s at stake is saving the US from the incompetent, reckless fanatics now in control
ANDREW SULLIVAN

It is difficult to look into the future when you are going through what America is going through. All I can say about the atmosphere in the United States right now is that it feels as if the country is about to vomit. The nausea is there; the vote is imminent; and the purge necessary. And yet it hasn’t happened yet. Americans are still staring at the porcelain. And those who desperately want a change — as I do — have to wait.
But there are some things that this election has already decided. Several national careers have ended; and the presidential race for 2008 — the most open in decades — has been winnowed.

Not so long ago the leading candidate to replace George W Bush for the Republicans was the Virginia senator George Allen. Allen is in a tight race for re-election. He may still win. But even if he does, his presidential hopes are over. In an incident captured on video, he called a dark-skinned supporter of his opponent “macaca”. It means “monkey”. When told he had a Jewish grandmother recently, he complained that people were casting aspersions in his direction. He is no longer a serious candidate.

The same, I fear, may be happening to the Republican senator John McCain. McCain’s selling point for years has been that he is a man of integrity — hence his appearance at the Tory party conference in Bournemouth last month. He wasn’t broken under torture by the Viet Cong; he fought the religious far right; and he voted against much of the insane Republican spending spree at the federal level. Yes, he loyally backed Bush in 2004. But those of us who differed felt that he was just doing what he had to.

But then, this autumn, McCain caved in on the question of allowing the CIA to torture military detainees. He surrendered habeas corpus to Donald Rumsfeld, the incompetent maniac running the Pentagon. He went to Jerry Falwell’s university to make nice with the religious right. He is even now appearing in advertisements to amend the constitution of his home state, Arizona, to strip gay couples of legal rights. In short, he’s become a compromiser on issues that cannot be compromised on — torture, honesty, honour — and his brand of integrity has been badly damaged.

The big winner for the Republicans is also clear: Mitt Romney. Romney is the Republican governor of Massachusetts and has been able to stay largely out of the fray of this dirty, ugly campaign. He has quietly been building a national campaign based on the religious right. He is vociferously against embryonic stem cell research, abortion and acceptance of gay couples as equal citizens. Right now, the Republican race is between him, McCain and Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York.

For the Democrats, Hillary is still there: sane on the war, smart on the issues, carefully honing a centrist message. She has lots of money — but not much enthusiasm. Some say she may not even run, preferring to become Senate majority leader. And she sees, as we all do, another light on the horizon.

That light is Barack Obama, a 45-year-old first-term senator from Illinois. He is the son of Barack Hussein Obama of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. They met while his father was in Hawaii on a foreign student visa. In the middle of this election season, Obama’s manifesto, The Audacity of Hope, has been No1 for weeks. Its title tells you why. He was just on the cover of Time magazine. And he just pointedly said he has “thought about the possibility” of running for president in 2008.

Earlier this year he gave a superb speech on how faith and politics can intersect while keeping their distance — the central issue in American politics. He’s a centrist and a brilliant speaker who electrified the Democratic convention in 2004. If America is yearning for a cultural and racial healer, Obama looks like one.

But this election is not a presidential one. That race is still a long way off. What’s really on the ballot is the Iraq war and the Bush administration’s conduct of it. The result on Tuesday could therefore change a huge amount — or not much at all.

The awful truth is: whoever wins will be unable to alter the fundamental dynamic in Iraq. The project for a peaceful, democratic future in that country is dead. On Friday two core neoconservatives, Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, acted as coroners. Adelman told Vanity Fair that “the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world”, is dead. Both define neoconservatism. When they have abandoned it, like Monty Python’s dead parrot it is truly pining for the fjords.

So what happens? We found out last week what the options are. One of the most astonishing things came out of the mouth of an American president in my lifetime. He declared that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had both done “fantastic jobs”, and that both would stay in office till his last day in 2009. No, I’m not making that up. The man responsible for what has happened in Iraq has, in Bush’s view, done a “fantastic job”. That’s how deep the denial goes. But then Bush also said that the man tasked with responding to Hurricane Katrina had done a “heckuva job”.

If the Republicans somehow manage to defy expectations and retain control of House and Senate, this dangerous denial will be empowered and enhanced. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will be all the more convinced that they are right and all the more determined to pursue their manic dream of remaking the world. They will be like Nixon, the last to realise that their own fantasy has ended — but, unlike Nixon, with a Congress of their own party they will be able to drag the entire country with them. If that happens, the centre in America will not hold. And we will be facing severe strife within America itself — as well as a potential disaster in the Middle East.

That’s one option. But if the Democrats win and win handily, then the political tectonic plates will shift. Bush — for all his bravado — may be forced to fire Rumsfeld and face reality.

A huge and bloody battle for the soul of American conservatism will then take place. The neocons and religious fundamentalists, libertarians and fiscal conservatives, foreign policy realists and domestic policy pragmatists: all of these Republican factions will be scrambling for advantage, argument and candidates. And that will be a good thing. My own profound hope is for a resounding victory for the Democrats. That’s not because I agree with them on every issue. Far from it. But I can recognise incompetence, fanaticism and recklessness when I see them; and right now, all three have seized the White House and the Republican leadership. It will be good for the Republicans to lose this election. They need to lose as badly as the Tories needed to lose in 1974 and 1997. As they spend and spend and borrow and borrow and throw the American military against a brick wall like a broken toy, they have forgotten even the most basic principles of conservatism: competence, accountability, limited government, and prudence in foreign policy.

America’s founding fathers constructed a system so that if the president would not change a disastrous course, another branch of government could force him. A Democratic Congress would simply put a brake on the Bush express train. It could force the president to start vetoing some spending bills; it could encourage him to appoint moderate justices to the Supreme Court; it could demand an end to torture and a restoration of habeas corpus; it could compel him to be finally accountable for failure in Iraq; and it could investigate some of the many abuses of power that have accumulated during one-party rule.

Whether it does any of these things will be up to the Democratic leadership in both or either House. But that is a good thing too. Especially for the war. The Democrats need to be forced to take responsibility for the war on Islamist terror, to make the hard choices it demands. With a Democratic victory, we may — finally — have a serious debate about how to do triage in the ravaged country of Iraq, how to grapple with America’s dangerously growing debt, and how to defang the growing menace of Iran. Bush may even have to go back to some of his father’s wise men again, hire a new defence secretary and listen to a military leadership that wants a decent outcome in Iraq.

We may get, in other words, sane conservatism back again. And it may require a big Democratic victory to do it. Given the level of denial in the White House, this is not really an election. It’s more like an intervention. To save Republicanism from Bush, to save Bush from himself, and to save the world from impending crisis.

But this is a democracy. Only the voters will decide. And we must wait.

from www.democracynow.org from Nov 6, 2006 - it is full of good information
also see http://www.truthout.org/voters.rights.htm

On Tuesday, millions of voters will cast their vote in the mid- term elections. Many are calling this the most high-stakes election in recent years with the possibility of a Democratic takeover of Congress. But some are warning that voters could be subject to intimidation and a variety of suppressive tactics meant to keep them from casting a ballot. Some of these tactics have been mandated by the government like new rules requiring government-issued voter identification cards. Others have been perpetrated by unofficial sources such as the bogus letters sent to thousands of Latino voters in California telling them it was illegal to vote.

Adam Cohen, an editorial writer for the New York Times. His piece in today's paper is titled, "Protecting the Right to Vote"

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Cohen is an editorial writer with the New York Times. His piece in today's paper is called "Protecting the Right to Vote.” We welcome you to Democracy Now!

ADAM COHEN: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Adam, you’ve been following the whole issue of voting for quite a long time now. What are the issues, the key issues you see right now?

ADAM COHEN: Well, the first issue is electronic voting. About 80% of Americans will be voting on electronic voting machines on Tuesday, and we don't really have a lot of confidence that those votes will necessarily be accurately recorded. We’ve already seen some problems in the early voting. In Montgomery County, Maryland, in the primary, there was absolute chaos when they failed to include a necessary part for the electronic voting machines, so people were literally casting ballots that they wrote on scraps of paper. Poll workers were reading the candidates’ names, and voters were just writing names literally on pieces of paper. The machines weren’t working.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait. So, the machines, they had to put them aside.

ADAM COHEN: They weren’t working. They were missing a key part. So there was actually -- the word “chaos” was used. That’s Montgomery County, Maryland. In Virginia, we already know that on the summary sheet in some Virginia electronic voting machines, Jim Webb, the Democratic candidate for Senate, his full name will not appear. It cuts off after his middle name. So, “Webb” does not appear on the summary page?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by “summary page”?

ADAM COHEN: Well, when you vote on an electronic voting machine, often you make your choices by hitting various buttons, and then at the end you get a summary of all the choices you’ve made, and you confirm that that’s correct. So that summary page should have all the candidates you chose.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s not actually a piece of paper, it’s the screen.

ADAM COHEN: It’s the screen, but for some reason the electronic voting machine manufacturer that made a lot of machines for Virginia was unable to fit Jim Webb's entire name on there. They admit that it was a mistake. They say they’ll do better next year, but people are actually going to be voting with this flawed technology that has the full Republican name and only half of the Democrat's name.

AMY GOODMAN: Isn't there a law against this?

ADAM COHEN: Well, everyone says, “We’re going to try better next year,” but those are not even the worst problems. I would say the worst problem we’ve seen so far in early voting is in Broward County, Florida, where people are reporting that when they’ve chosen the Democratic candidate for governor -- they’ve made that choice -- when they get to the summary page and need to confirm that their choices were, you know, correctly recorded, they see that they’ve actually voted for the Republican. The name has flipped. And that’s something that people have brought to the attention of the election officials, and they say that they have a way of re-jiggering the machine. They actually admit that when the machines are heavily used, they get out of sync, and sometimes they do flip the vote from, in this case, Democrat to Republican.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain how this is happening. This goes to the issue of early voting.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, well, people are voting now in many states. More than 20% of all votes have already been cast around the country. They're voting on electronic voting machines. And you would think that an electronic voting machine would have to absolutely accurately reflect the choices a voter made, before it could be used in an election. That’s not true. It’s a very, very imprecise science. These electronic voting machine companies are really not very good at making these machines.

AMY GOODMAN: But in the case of Broward County, if you cast your vote for the Democratic governor and it shows up as a Republican governor on the computer screen, what do you do? You then have to walk out to one of the poll workers and say, “Can you come in and look at my computer?” And then they also see what are you choice is.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, and you say, you know, “I chose the Democrat, but actually on the summary page it's showing me that I’m voting for the Republican. Could you please do something about that?” And then they will recalibrate the machine. They may take the machine out of service. I actually talked with someone from the Broward County Elections Office last week, and I said, “I hear you’re having some problems with electronic voting down there.” And she said, “No, there are no problems, because if the voters tell us that there’s a mistake on the summary page, we can fix it.” Now, to my mind, that’s a problem, if the voter needs to catch that. Otherwise, their Democratic vote will become a Republican vote. But apparently, they don't consider that a problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Aren't there issues about privacy in voting?

ADAM COHEN: There are issues about -- I mean --

AMY GOODMAN: Aside from aren’t there issues of casting your vote and having it not counted?

ADAM COHEN: You should absolutely not have to bring an elections official to say, “I’ve chosen a Democrat, and it’s coming up as a Republican,” because you’re telling them your vote. You also shouldn't have to be voting on a scrap of paper in Montgomery County. You know, in San Diego, actually, we just learned that they ran out of absentee ballots, so the official ballots that they mailed to some people in San Diego are Xeroxes, which you vote on this Xerox, and then when you send it in, election workers will transfer your choice onto a proper ballot, which will then be scanned properly. That’s crazy, but they’ve just run out of proper ballots.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in Maryland, the governor said they will not use electronic voting machines tomorrow, is that right?

ADAM COHEN: No, they are using them. He’s discouraging people from using them, and you have the choice not to, but they’re -- no, I mean, they were one of the states that went earliest to all Diebold voting machines. They and Georgia, they hopped on the bandwagon very early, and now there’s a lot of buyer’s remorse, because people realize that these Diebold voting machines, which do not have paper trails, are not reliable. Even if they have all the parts on Election Day, you’re not sure that they’re working properly.

AMY GOODMAN: In the case of Virginia, can Webb simply challenge the vote, because his name will not appear?

ADAM COHEN: I think the theory is that at least his name is fully represented on the first page, where you make the choice, and that maybe it’s not so important that it be correct on the summary ballot, although since we know that sometimes the votes are flipping in Broward, you would like to be sure that your full name is there on the summary so that people can catch it. You know, these are the imperfections that someone could try to challenge. I don't know if a judge would set aside an election because of it.

AMY GOODMAN: What about what’s coming out of Memphis: the early memory cards being lost? There was some rumor of this.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, the “Drudge Report” online made a big deal last week about some voter cards going missing, and I think that we still don't know exactly what is going on there and who took them, or whether -- how many votes can be voted with these, I believe, twelve cards that are missing.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by cards?

ADAM COHEN: These are cards that a voter uses to actually -- you have a card when you go to vote that you put into the machine, and some of these are missing. It doesn't appear to be a large number. It doesn't seem like it’s a number that would really change the election, but it’s definitely feeding into people's anxieties.

AMY GOODMAN: And you're saying 20% of the votes will be cast by tomorrow already, people who are in states where there is early voting.

ADAM COHEN: At least that many have already been cast, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the issue of voter suppression?

ADAM COHEN: Well, it’s an issue every year. And it’s -- we saw it this year with 14,000 letters that were sent out in Southern California in Loretta Sanchez’s district to voters with Latino names, saying that if you're an immigrant, you're not allowed to vote, which is absolutely untrue, of course. If you're an immigrant and you’re naturalized and you’re registered to vote, you can vote, but that was false information that was systematically sent out.

But we're seeing it in many other places in many other ways. Some small ways, there were reports of radio commercials in black neighborhoods in Baltimore earlier this year saying that Martin Luther King was a Republican -- not true -- but designed to suppress the black vote, which is going to be very important in Maryland this year. And then, we're seeing government forms of suppression with voter ID laws that are designed not just to ensure that only people who are registered to vote can vote, but actually to stop a lot of people from voting.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll talk about the issue of voter ID laws after break. We're talking to Adam Cohen, editorial writer for the New York Times, tracking the votes.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the issue of voter suppression, voter confusion, of problems in early voting, of who will be counted, and the hidden history of voter disenfranchisement in this country, our guest is Adam Cohen. He is editorial writer for the New York Times, talking about the issue of whose votes get counted. Before we move on, on San Diego, the letter, was it ever traced who put out this letter telling Latinos they can't vote?

ADAM COHEN: Well, there was an investigation, and it’s believed to have been done by the candidate, the Republican candidate running against Loretta Sanchez, the congresswoman in that area. And there’s some question about how directly involved he was.

AMY GOODMAN: And Baltimore, the ad saying that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican?

ADAM COHEN: I’m not sure where those have come from. But, you know, often on Election Day, you see all kinds of fliers and things that come out that never get traced to anyone, saying the election has been postponed, various other things like that. People just, you know, they never find out who did that kind of stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: Voter identification.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, actually even before voter ID, there is this issue of voter registration, where what we’ve been seeing now is states cracking down on perfectly legitimate voter registration drives. And we saw this in 2004, when, you may recall, Kenneth Blackwell, who’s the Secretary of State of Ohio, began rejecting perfectly valid voter registration forms. At one point he came up with a rule that said if it wasn't on thick enough paper, 80-pound thick paper, it would be rejected, which was, you know, a crazy rule that, under pressure, he withdrew. We're not seeing that this year, but we did see Florida adopted very, very strict rules for voter registration drives, so strict that the League of Women Voters of Florida, for the first time in, I think, 70 years, stopped registering people to vote, because they were afraid of the criminal and civil penalties associated with that, so we’re seeing that.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain criminal penalties.

ADAM COHEN: Well, Florida’s legislature, which is not so receptive to voter registration drives, came up with rules that said if there was a certain number of inaccuracies, if you didn't hand in the forms on time, lots of technical requirements, but, you know, when you do a registration drive, you do the best you can. But the League of Women Voters didn’t want to do a drive, if it meant if they didn't get the form that they collected from a perspective voter into an elections office within x number of days, they would be fined. I don't know that there were criminal penalties, but the civil penalties, they calculated, could easily eat up their entire budget for the organization, so they stopped registering people.

AMY GOODMAN: Voter ID.

ADAM COHEN: Voter ID. We’ve seen a number attempts around the country to try to stop people from voting through overly onerous voter ID rules. Now, everyone agrees that there can be some reasonable request that you present ID when you vote, but what we’ve seen is incredibly strict rules.

So, Georgia started this out with a rule you had to actually, if you didn't have a driver's license, you had to buy a voter ID card. So that meant that poor people in Georgia, you know, were essentially subject to a poll tax. The court struck that down. But it was very clear that Georgia was trying to stop people from voting, including the fact that when that law went into effect, there was no office in the entire city of Atlanta where you could buy that card. And they actually -- they had a bus that they had traveling around the state, and if you were able to find that bus, you could buy your card there. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution actually followed the bus and found that it kept breaking down. It was like a 15-year-old bus. And I think it ended up issuing like 500 cards in a month, and there were 300,000 people who needed the card. So, that has been struck down, Georgia’s rule.

But there are other states, like Indiana and Arizona, that have very strict voter ID laws that are in effect for this election. And as Bob Herbert, my colleague, writes in his column today, Julia Carson, a congresswoman from Indiana, tried to vote with her congressional ID, and that was initially deemed not to be acceptable ID. So you can imagine, they're really trying to discourage --

AMY GOODMAN: In Indiana?

ADAM COHEN: In Indiana. Discourage people from --

AMY GOODMAN: She showed her congressional ID?

ADAM COHEN: And the initial ruling was that it was not acceptable, because it didn’t have an expiration date on it. I think that was eventually appealed. But you get the idea: if they're not letting a famous congresswoman in Indiana vote with her congressional ID, they're not really trying to make every vote count.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the issue of voter roll purges?

ADAM COHEN: Yes, this is something we remember from 2000, when Katherine Harris did that very bad felon voter purge that ended up disenfranchising many people who weren’t felons at all. This goes on all the time, because we don't really have a lot of access to how board of elections keep their voter rolls. So they can purge names without a lot of notice, and we’ve seen already once this year in Kentucky, they did a purge. They announced a purge that was improper. It had a high error rate, and a court actually ordered them not to do that purge.

Here in New York State, we have a state senator who is running in an incredibly close race. He won his seat two years ago by a very small margin. Last week, he -- or Republicans in his district presented the names of 5,000 people they said were on the rolls improperly. Well, if you do that a few days before the election, it’s hard to know what the Board of Elections can do, but there’s a lot of concern in that district that these people may be eligible to vote, but may be stopped from voting.

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of purges, it’s something we know well from Florida from 2000. Let's talk a little about the issue, the history of voter disenfranchisement. Just can you go back in time, put 2006 in context? You can go back to the beginning of people voting in the United States.

ADAM COHEN: Sure. People sort of think that 2000 was the beginning of problems with voting, because that was when we saw it in Bush versus Gore. But, in fact, if you look back at the history of voting in the United States, there has always been an attempt to use rules of various kinds to stop certain people from voting. It’s always been a partisan thing. One party realizes if it stops a particular ethnic group or racial group from voting, it may win, and they adopt rules that appear to be neutral, but actually aren’t neutral at all.

So, for example, in New York State, the first voter registration laws were passed in 1840. They applied only to New York City, and everyone understood that it was Republicans in the state who were trying to disenfranchise Irish Catholics in New York City through these voter registration rules. In 1921, there was a constitutional amendment that was passed in New York State, adopting a literacy test for the first time. Everyone knows that was done to stop Yiddish-speaking voters in New York City from being able to vote.

And around the country, we have seen many other rules of this kind. New Jersey, for a while, they adopted what were called “sunset” laws, which required the polls to close at sunset, and everyone knows that the reason was that workers were still working in the factories, and the plan was that by the time they were off of their shifts, the polls would be closed.

AMY GOODMAN: And you take that through to now. I mean, immigrants in also, and you’ve written about this with Abraham Lincoln talking about the issue.

ADAM COHEN: Absolutely. They tried to -- various -- in Massachusetts, for example, Republicans tried to extend the period of time after an immigrant was naturalized, that they had to wait in order to vote. And Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, and it was his own party who was promoting that rule, said, “This really isn't right. You know, America is about letting people vote,” and he actually did not support that rule. But we’ve seen in many other places, of course, you know, we don't even need to talk about all the rules in the South, through Jim Crow and after, that were designed to stop blacks from voting, particularly in places where blacks were in the majority.

AMY GOODMAN: And we should comment that Julia Carson of Indianapolis, first woman and first African American to be elected by Indianapolis to Congress.

ADAM COHEN: Right, and apparently her congressional ID was not sufficient proof of her eligibility to vote.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, today -- or I should say tomorrow, what are you looking for as the most serious violations that we might see tomorrow?

ADAM COHEN: Well, we're going to see a lot of things. First of all, we'll see who’s actually allowed to vote. We'll see if there are improper challenges at the polls. The Washington Post reported that in Maryland, where there's going to be some very close races, that the Republicans have issued guides for their poll workers that advised them to threaten the election judges with arrest if they don't stop various people from voting. So, it could get very intense. So, we’ll see that. We may see fights over who gets to vote. We’ll see voter ID laws perhaps wrongly applied.

We’re also seeing dirty tricks. We’re seeing this already with -- the blogosphere is speaking a lot right now about, apparently there is a Republican “robocall” dirty trick campaign going on nationwide that’s designed to suppress the Democratic vote. And what the blogosphere says -- I don’t know this first hand, but -- is that in about 50 races around the country, Republicans are doing robocalls that appear to be from Democrats, that are coming early in the morning, late at night. They call back seven or eight times, and it’s designed to make voters think that the Democratic candidate is harassing them. And in some cases, voters are calling up the Democratic campaign headquarters and saying, “I’m not voting for you. You keep on calling me.” But, in fact, supposedly, it’s actually a Republican robocall. So, we’re hearing about --

AMY GOODMAN: By “robocall,” you mean?

ADAM COHEN: This is a nonhuman voice. It’s an electronic -- you know, it’s an automated phone call, and they can make hundreds of thousands of these very cheaply, because it’s just a machine calling. But, as I say, it’s designed apparently to be done in a deceptive way.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it explain at any point who is responsible for the call?

ADAM COHEN: Well, the description I’ve seen online, they start by saying, here is some important information about the Democrat running for office, and it goes on for a while. People generally hang up and are angry at the Democrat. If you stay on the line long enough, eventually it says, but actually, you know, “This is the Republican Party calling, and we're warning you about this bad Democrat.” But either people hang up at the beginning and they think a Democrat is harassing them, or if they listen to the end, they get the Republican message. But mainly people are hanging up and reportedly being called again and again and again right afterwards, which, no one would design their own robocalls to do that. That’s designed to apparently leave a bad taste in voters’ mouths.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s a piece in the New York Times today, “A new telemarketing ploy steers voters on Republican path,” meaning this piece.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, although that’s focusing more on the sort of intelligent use of robocalls to -- these are calls that they say, “Do you care about abortion? Are you opposed to abortion?” And if you hit yes, it will then take you to a message about why the Republican is the right person to vote for. So that’s sort of the more benign kind of robocall, although still very sophisticated. And some people are calling it a form of push polling, because they do say negative things about the opponent. But that’s at least within the realm still, I would say, of not being a dirty trick. This other one of pretending to be from the other side and harassing people is worse.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Adam Cohen, editorial writer for the New York Times. The very close races that could determine the balance of the Senate, where they stand today? For example, Tennessee.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, I think people right now are saying that control of the Senate probably rests on Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia; Tennessee, incredibly close. Harold Ford, the first African American who has a real shot in modern times of representing the state. We’ve seen, you know, a very spirited campaign. Allegations of the Republicans have been using racially charged advertising against him. I don't think anyone knows how that is going to turn out. I mean, there have been polls both ways, showing Ford up a little. Lately Corker seems to have closed the gap, or the Republican, or moved ahead, but I think it’s all going to come down to turnout in Tennessee.

AMY GOODMAN: And Virginia?

ADAM COHEN: Virginia, there, too, a fascinating, very high-profile race. We all know about Senator Allen and his problems. Jim Webb is the Democrat. They’ve been seesawing back and forth. Some polls say that Webb is up by one or two points. Again, turnout will be very important. Virginia is a state that has been Republican for a long time, but they’ve elected two Democratic governors lately, and Democrats in the state, I think, are cautiously optimistic that Webb may win that one.

AMY GOODMAN: And in Missouri?

ADAM COHEN: Missouri may well be the closest race in the country. It seems to be dead even, 47-47, 49-49, depending on the poll, between Jim Talent, the Republican incumbent, and Claire McCaskill. Missouri has some of the closest races in the country. I think people feel that could come down to literally just a few thousand votes in the end.

AMY GOODMAN: Arizona seems to be in play in a way that no one talked about before.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, no one was really focusing on Arizona, but in the last few days, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been pumping more money into it, because Kyl, the Republican incumbent, does seem to be vulnerable. He’s really not been above 50% in the polls for a while, and that’s a vulnerable place for an incumbent to be. Pederson, the Democrat, has a lot of money on his own, and I think they are two people just, I think, it will come down to who actually turns out to vote on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you’ve got the House. You had the New York Times headline yesterday, "GOP Glum as It Struggles to Hold Congress." Some of the closest races there.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, I think people are looking particularly to the Northeast there. Connecticut has three very closely contested races, where some of the moderate Republicans are in trouble, people like Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson. And the Philadelphia suburbs, three more close races, where again moderate Republicans are in danger. Upstate New York has some other races where Republican seats could go Democratic. Those states alone could make up most of the seats that the Democrats would need to make up the 15 seats they need to take the majority.

AMY GOODMAN: And the language that’s being used now, because of course in every one of these local races, where the Democratic Party, where the Republican Party pours resources in, they're going larger than that particular race. I mean, for example, Nancy Johnson, big pharmaceutical support, insurance support, but when they pour money into the race, they're talking to the electorate about what the complexion of the country will look like, what the composition of Congress will be.

ADAM COHEN: Right, we’re really seeing a battle here, where the Democrats are trying to nationalize these races. The Republicans are trying to keep them local. So, you see the Democrats saying, “Nancy Johnson is one more vote for the Republican majority. President Bush really wants Nancy Johnson reelected.” Nancy Johnson talks about things like, “Look at all the bacon I’ve brought home for the district. Here is a parkland that I turned into federal park.” You know, local, local, local. And you’re seeing that repeated again and again and again, where the Republicans want to say, you know, “This isn’t a referendum on Iraq or on President Bush. This is about all the things I’ve done, you know, for the community.”

AMY GOODMAN: In New Mexico, a very close race with the incumbent Heather Wilson.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, Heather Wilson appears to be in trouble. Patricia Madrid, the Attorney General, has been running very strong. And that’s part of this trend in the West: a lot of states that had been Republican are now trending Democratic. We’re seeing that in New Mexico, Arizona. Colorado is another state like that, where, you know, they're purple states now, but they seem to be moving in a blue direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Any other major issues, major races that you're right now looking at?

ADAM COHEN: Well, there are a couple of races that the Republicans hope they'll be able to take a few Senate seats away from the Democrats, which would really block their chance of taking over. So, they talk about New Jersey; they talk about maybe knocking off Menendez. I don't think that’s realistic. New Jersey is a very blue state. Menendez seems to have pulled ahead. Maryland, the Republicans are looking to possibly win that with Michael Steele against Ben Cardin, but I think Cardin will win that, as well. Rhode Island should be interesting. It looks for sure that Chafee was going to lose, the Republican incumbent, a week or two ago. Now the polls have tightened, but I still think the Democrat there is likely to unseat him.

AMY GOODMAN: Very unusual case also, because Chafee is not exactly in the past embraced by the Republican Party.

ADAM COHEN: No, he went out of his way to say that he personally didn’t vote for President Bush, and what may be helping him close the gap is, he’s done a commercial where he says, “Hey, you know, I voted against this war.” He’s almost trying sound like a Democrat, and that may be helping him in the end.

AMY GOODMAN: And there’s also an interesting ballot initiative in Rhode Island around the issue of felon disenfranchisement.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, Rhode Islanders have a chance to vote for a constitutional amendment that would make it -- that would extend the vote to some felons right now, people who are on parole and probation who need to wait right now in Rhode Island ’til those end. So people can be out of jail in Rhode Island and for 10, 20, 30 years still not be able to vote. And I think that would be a good thing if that passed.

AMY GOODMAN: How typical is that?

ADAM COHEN: These laws vary by state, but usually that’s not uncommon. I think 37 or more states have rules like that. What is uncommon is having a referendum and having the voters have their say. And there’s a decent chance that will pass.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Cohen, thank you very much for being with us. Adam Cohen is editorial writer for the New York Times.

It is claimed that Karl Rove is confident that his last minute $30m drive will help retain Republican control of Congress. The polls definitely seem to be showing a movement towards the Republicans. Maybe his confidence is based on other factors. How much corruption do you think will take place during the voting and counting process?

We'll know tomorrow, won't we, John!

I'm deliberately avoiding most of the commentaries on the US elections until the result has been announced, but it'll be interesting to see whether the turkeys keep voting for Christmas!

While there will be results tomorrow, I predict literally hundreds of contested election districts, incidents and talies due to the various tricks now standard proceedure by the Bushoviks & Rove and Co. The last minute verdict in Bagdad trick made a little move toward the Republicans. I don't think many on the Forum, especially those not living in the USA realize that most Americans have NO idea of the REAL issues and live in a bubble created by the media/spin doctors/myth of America/propagandists and not 'pricked' by real news, reality nor even the candidates who are too afraid [even on the Democratic side] to mention them. There has been little campaign debate about the War, the horrible laws stealing our legal rights, unconstitutional acts, etc. Debate is on trivia manufactured on the Right IMO, who still are 'framing' the issues that can be discussed, with a few exceptions. Third parties [Greens, Socialists, etc.] are all but unknown except to a few intellectuals and oddballs - they were not allowed to debate with the one party - two wing crowd, for the most part and not covered in the media. I usually voted Green or Peace and Freedom and the day after the elections those parties vote were not even printed in the newspaper. Marginalization of everything but the approved limits of debate is the rule in the Empire. I have sadly listened on the BBC to interviews of Americans who don't sound totally stupid, saying they don't like the War in Iraq, but feel we must stay the course with the Republicans as 'we must fight them there or we will have to fight them here - better there' They obviously never got the message about the false pretenses for starting the War, the lies before and during or that Hussein had nothing to do with 911 - as the propaganda wanted them to think. Very sad. Propaganda, education and access to real information is the key to the naivete of Americans. Sadly, they don't seem to use native intellegence to challenge the obvious manipulation of their sensorium and reality. As to how much 'funny business' will be in the voting and tampering with it, I'd guess one hell of a lot.....which will only slowly come out in the alternative media.

In the absence of a decent tv channel I', watching CNN on digital tv keeping track of the coverage. The house will most likely be secure, Byrd has just secured his seat as expected. Virginia will be an interesting nugget. The senate in ohio is close, I'm trying to look for a few good independent blogs, but I'm not having an luck.

CNN's coverage is abysmal, flashy graphics, but no content.

John

The Soviet Union was derided for having a one-party state, imprisonment without trial and imperial ambitions. However I must agree that the Democrat victors sounded like Republicans, I will not be holding my breath waiting for them to do something about Guantanamo or the war.

The theme of the night was "We must have a change of tack in Iraq" - not "withdraw the troops" just a change of tack, which Bush has already indicated is likely. And "we need a bipartisan love-in in Washington". If that is the case why vote for these jokers?

Still it is interesting to see there is a lot of commitment in politics over there, a poll worker in Kentucky tried to throttle a voter according to this morning's papers. We seldom get that level of excitement over here.

The victory of Bernie Sanders in Vermont shows the potential for someone who stands against the millionaires to gain support. He appealed to both Democrat and Republican voters: "Right wing republicans cannot afford healthcare, right wing republicans cannot get their kids through college - they want someone to look after their economic interests."

He approved of the idea of millionaires voting against him - it is in their class interests to do so!


Bernie described socialism on Democracy Now! as follows:

"Well, I think it means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship, all of our people have healthcare; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality childcare, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly. That's all it means. And we are living in an increasingly undemocratic society in which decisions are made by people who have huge sums of money. And that's the goal that we have to achieve."

Bernie's view of socialism is more on the Scandinavian model of peaceful coexistence with capitalism. Nevertheless his victory does show what is possible.

While it is true that Sander's brand of Socialsim is very moderate, in the USA he is considered radical left!

Thread on Sanders here http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...amp;#entry80457

Report on the BBC website:

The leading US news agency has called the final undecided Senate seat for the Democrats, which would give them control of the chamber. The Associated Press (AP) news agency declared Democrat Jim Webb the winner in the state of Virginia by 7,236 votes over Republican incumbent George Allen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6131122.stm

The ugly American mark two is dead. Overnight six years of glib European identification of "American" with rightwing fantasism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway neocon calling abortion murder and torturing Arabs as "Islamofascists" has been laid to rest, and by a decision of the American people. Another McCarthy raised its head over the western horizon and has been slapped down. It is a good day for level-headed Americans.

Yesterday's result could hardly have been more emphatic. George Bush's election wizard, Karl Rove, said he would make America's midterm elections "a choice, not a referendum". The electorate declined. Certainly the spectacle was not always pleasant. These regular fiestas of participatory democracy make the European visitor's hair stand on end. They are politics as blood sport, all-in wrestling with no quarter given, Eatanswill on speed. The welter of dirty tricks, midnight robocalls, push polls and face-to-face confrontation contrasts with Europe's "new politics", a feelgood quest for the centrist voter.

I have watched many American elections, but still find myself shocked by candidates accusing each other in public and on television of corruption, homosexuality, lying, surrendering to terror, killing babies, favouring torture, associating with hoodlums and consorting with prostitutes. My favourites this time were "Brad Miller pays for sex but not for body armour for our troops" and, most savage of all, "Michael Steele loves George Bush". Achieving office in Britain is a stroll in the country. In America the participant must carry the one true ring to the land of Mordor. The game goes only to the strong.

I find this healthy. The electioneering technique pioneered by Rove eschews consensus. It splits electors into slivers of opinion, profiling them by what they watch on television, where they play golf, what car they drive, what they buy and where they pray. It then directs specific messages and canvassers to win their vote. The strategy has proved successful in the Bush cause in the past. It separates the person from the mass and responds to his or her fears and needs.

As such it purges politics of the accumulated sludge of power. The huge amount of negative advertising is distasteful, but demands that candidates defend themselves on their weaknesses as well as their strengths. An elderly man in the street, a declared Republican, smiled at the camera, shrugged and said simply: "My president lied to me." No wound is left unopened. The scrutineer of American politics is not the voter but the opponent. And internet fundraising has made resources available to any plausible candidate, not just the rich. As for this being the "dirtiest campaign ever", there have been plenty worse. Lyndon Johnson accused his opponent, Barry Goldwater, of wanting to blow up little girls with mushroom clouds.

So what now? Democrats campaigned against Bush and won a mandate to use their congressional power to curb his remaining two years in office. They took the House of Representatives by a safe lead and appear to have deprived the Republicans of a Senate majority. The argument, put forward in this week's Economist, that American government is better constrained when Congress is at odds with the presidency than when they are at one is about to be put the test.

The new congressional majority wishes to press ahead with a higher minimum wage, an end to pork-barrel budgets, an immigrant amnesty, energy conservation, stem cell research and reform to the spiralling drugs bill and welfare generally. Most of these measures may fall by the wayside, but they have behind them the winds of mandate.

A bigger challenge is to reverse the drain of power away from Congress and the courts to the executive under Bush. As the impeccably conservative Grover Norquist said in June: "If you interpret the constitution's saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws, you don't have a constitution: you have a king."

Such usurping of power is not confined to the so-called war on terror, used by Bush to justify any and every illiberal act. Congress must find a way of curbing federal spending, which has risen under Bush faster than under any president since Johnson. Otherwise a Democratic president in 2008 will endure agonies of retrenchment. Whether Bush will cooperate with such reform in the hope of rescuing his floundering presidency is up to him. The first sign of compromise is the departure of his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld - announced by a chastened Bush at his press conference yesterday - who has been facing a near-mutinous revolt of his generals against the Iraq war. However, the only Republican of any stature, Senator John McCain, is disinclined to come to Bush's aid.

American politics is suddenly open and interesting. California's Nancy Pelosi is poised to become the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives and thus third in line to the White House. She has already promised to cooperate with a shattered Republican party to salvage something from Bush's remaining administration. Round her is an array of plausible Democrats with their eye on 2008: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, a reborn Al Gore and a reputed "10% of the Senate" claim to be considering the presidential nomination.

They all have one item of unfinished business. A CNN exit poll of swing issues suggested Iraq, terrorism, the economy and corruption were of equal concern to voters, with the Republicans scoring badly on them all. The politics of fear has lost all its post-9/11 traction. Republicans mouthing dire threats of "Islamicists" under every bed are simply scorned. The most ferocious television ad I saw had a voice incanting that Americans were less popular, terrorism was worse, people were less safe, gasoline was more expensive, soldiers were dying and Osama bin Laden was still free - all because of the Iraq war.

Over 60% of electors want US troops withdrawn from Iraq now or soon. Reports from Baghdad indicate expectation and relief that American policy in that country is about to change. The US army wants to leave. The government ran on a pro-war ticket and suffered a resounding rebuff. At this point the insurgency knows it has won, however long it takes the occupying power to go. Retreat in good order is the best hope. An era of ill-conceived, belligerent interventionism has come to an end - by democratic decision, thank goodness.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1942897,00.html

Steve Bell's analogy turns out to be the most apt one. Invading Iraq to fight terrorism really is like invading Greenland to fight global warming,

Exit polls showed that the main reason that people voted the way that they did, was over the issue of corruption (42%). Iraq was only in fourth place (37%). Although it could be argued that these two issues are linked. That people (I know I would) are concerned about the corruption involved in the granting of contracts in Iraq.

Also, never forget the quote that "all politics are local." In Florida, where we elected the very capable Republican Charlie Crist, you would have found the major issues being soaring property taxes and out of control insurance rates at the top of everyone's list.

I will go on the record as saying that as a registered Republican I did vote for more Democrats in this election that any other I can think of.