My friend and I were talking about her seeing Rick Santorum on some PCN show talking about Muslims. She said, "Santorum's so passionate and smart and completely fucking insane." And therein lies the key to his coming success. People vote way before they get to the fucking insanity.
Conviction wins.
Best recap of Man-on-Dog v. Santorum-lite goes to ... Daddy Democrat!
Best message in a sidebar (scroll down to Think About It) goes to Brilliant at Breakfast!
Best idea that the Dems won't pick up on until two years after the GOP adopts it.
Best summary of the Path to 9/11 scandal.
Best way to waste time on You Tube:
So Joe will run on the Lieberman for Lieberman ticket. If the D.C. establishment lines up behind that run by refusing to fall in behind Lamont with everything they've got, then it's clear that the Dem leadership would rather give up a seat in the Senate to the GOP than see it won by an outsider. And we will at last be able to harbor no illusions about the state of the Democratic party.
And if that happens, I don't want anyone in the party to give any PA Dem voter who votes for Rick Santorum instead of Casey an ounce of grief.
Alex C. from over at the SantorumBlog asked me to weigh in on the Green candidacy of Romanelli. Alex cites this Joshua Holland post that runs down some of the predictable reaction from blogtopia: Romanelli is a useful idiot. The Greens are selling out to their worst enemy just to get on the ballot. It's Ralph Nader all over again. ... Meanwhile, the Casey campaign is whining about how the tactic is all about "stealing votes" from their guy.
Alex doesn't cite my favorite analysis of the whole thing, which comes from the insightful BFS:
I don't think there is any chance for Romanelli to affect the outcome of this election. But he could have a salutary effect by forcing Casey to move a little left (which would take him towards the center) as he tries to shore up the Democratic base in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. If that happens, that would be a bonus, as far as I am concerned.
I'm going to interrupt here: that won't happen. Casey will run the same campaign he's been running, which is to say as little as possible about as little as possible and bang the I'm Not Rick Santorum Drum as loudly as he can hoping to make it to election day without revealing too much of anything about his plans for the future. He won't reach out to people who vote on Choice. He won't explain his support for Alito. He won't talk about getting money from many of the same places that Man on Dog does. He's not Santorum. He's Santorum-lite. But he doesn't need to go into that.
But, if he does affect the outcome, it will not be Santorum's fault nor Romanelli's -- the fault lies in the Democratic leadership. Those among them who pushed Casey -- at Rendell's suggestion to Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid -- they are the ones that the Democrats would have to thank for blowing yet another US Senatorial election.
And then I have this, from my friend Liz, about the lessons the Casey family has taught us:
Let's not forget that Robert Casey Sr. did NOT support Bill Clinton, the party's choice for President in 1992; did NOT support Harris Wofford when he ran for Senator in 1994; and did NOT support his own Lt. Governor, Mark Singel, when he ran for Governor in 1994, assuring the election of Tom Ridge. Casey Sr. changed the politics of this state and of the PA Democratic Party by sticking to his guns. I hate what he did to both, but the lesson is not lost on me. You want change; stick to what you believe and stop voting for what you deplore.
Getting on the ballot in PA is insanely difficult. That needs to change. If the Greens found a way on by sleeping with the enemy, then that says more about the process than it does about the Greens. To be fair, I'd feel differently about the situation if they did this to run against someone I considered acceptable, but I'd accept it just as I accepted the candidacy of Alan Sandals. The fact is that the Greens are offering a Democratic alternative to two rightwing candidates. As BFS said, that's on the Democrats, not the Greens.
So Liz and BFS basically have my position on this covered. The question I want Casey and the people who anointed him to answer is this: How can someone steal votes that you threw away? The worst the Greens can be accused of is garbage picking. And, since I am speaking from somewhere deep within that garbage pile, let me say that it feels more like a rescue than a theft.
Firedoglake lists Man-on-Dog as "wavering" on Specter's bill S. 2453, which, according to Glenn Greenwald, "renders legal the President's lawbreaking and cedes to the President the right to eavesdrop on Americans with no judicial oversight."
I don't believe that Man-on-Dog is wavering on this at all. But why not call his office anyway and make the poor little Republican who answers the phone pretend to listen to what you want his/her boss to do?
Here's the contact info:
Washington, D.C. Office:
511 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: 202-224-6324Philadelphia Office:
1 South Penn Square
Widener Building, Suite 960
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Tel: 215-864-6900
Fax: 215-864-6910
Other PA contact numbers are here.
I've fallen through some kind of wormhole where time moves three thousand times faster than it is supposed to. That would be fine if I were able to get the stuff I needed to get done three thousand times faster but that part of my universe seems to be stuck at the same old speed I'm used to. As a result, I feel like I've been trying to run in mud lately.
That said, I've posted twice at the American Street and have another post or two I want to get up there before I pass out tonight. (I was supposed to have them up by 11:00 am EST. It's 8:30pm. So you see what I mean about the mud.
I love Bruce. On that topic: the video of his interview with bobblehead Soledad O'Brien has been around blogtopia but did anyone notice that he called her an idiot?
O'Brien: Some people gave you a lot of flak for being a musician who took a political stand.
Springsteen: Yeah, they should let Ann Coulter do it.
O: There is a whole school of thought, as you well know, that says, well you see it with the Dixie Chicks, go play your music and stop...
S: Well if you turned on to, present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week and you're saying musicians shouldn't speak up? It's insane. It's funny.
I really love that man.
And I love the National Weather Service.
While everyone is down on Chuck Schumer because he's standing by his man in Connecticut, A Big Fat Slob is paying attention to Schumer's man in Pennsylvania:
The first reason is that Bob Casey does not offer the voters a clear choice. He is too much like a Santorum wannabe than a Santorum challenger. He does not give the electorate a reason to support him. He doesn't stand for anything. Casey has no ideas, no vision, no leadership and it shows in the lukewarm (and often reluctant) support he has. It isn't a coincidence that Casey's level of support in this latest poll is exactly the same as Santorum's disapproval numbers -- 49% say they would vote for Casey and 49% say they disapprove of Santorum. Casey doesn't so much have supporters as Santorum has a lot of people who dislike him and want to see him gone.
The second reason is that Bob Casey is hiding from the voters. How many public, non-fundraising events has the candidate been engaged in? Not many. How often has he been in Philadelphia to meet and greet voters (excluding $1,000 a plate functions)? Even his silly bus tour, when is it coming to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? In how many debates has Casey agreed to participate?
There's time for Casey to come out of hiding, of course. I guess that's on the schedule right after "send email asking for money." But there's time for Santorum to get the vote out too. Susie (via Avedon Carol) suggests that the stay-at-home GOP vote will be high in Novemeber. I'm not so sure. Making up for that kind of voter is why the GOP targets their faith-based voters so strongly.
Susie quotes a comment from a hardcore Republican who won't vote Dem and so is planning to stay home on election day. I can find whole churches of people who are just waiting to wage war in November on behalf of the unborn and "family values" and their beleaguered defender, Rick Santorum. Bad poll numbers are a siren's song to the codependent base. These people don't follow politics, which is dirty and complicated, but they know what they're going to do in the fall. Casey's anti-choice position in a pro-choice party doesn't cut any ice with them because - and make no mistake about this - they love their boys when they're up, but especially when they're down.
So who's really got the turnout problem? In PA, it's not Santorum.
Bob Casey, Jr. needs money:
Rick Santorum has begun his campaign as we expected - by launching negative, untrue attack ads against Bob Casey. Santorum's latest attack comes in the form of radio ads, airing statewide, that attack Bob for supporting practical solutions and bipartisanship.
We need your help to fight back! We started airing a radio ad today to set the record straight and hold Santorum accountable. But we need you to pitch in NOW to help us keep this ad on the air.
Then to add insult to injury we get this flashback to the primary:
The lesson learned is that when you measure up Bob Casey next to Rick Santorum, Bob is the clear winner. We know that Bob's message wins. Now we need to find the resources to get that message out there and we need your help.
Why not just use "Conviction Wins" and be done with it. But wait! There's no time to lose!:
We will fight back with all of the force that we can muster. But the strength and depth of that force depends on you. Please make a contribution. There's no time to spare.
See, but here's the thing. All during the primary all I heard is how much money Casey had. Millions! Millions! Sure he may not be the candidate you want to represent you but nobody had a chance to beat him because of all the money. Now it's not even a month later and he's asking me for donations to keep a radio ad on the air.
Open that magic checkbook, Bob. That's what it's there for.
Cold spaghetti is all the time I've had time to cook lately. And by cook I mean taking the plastic wrap off the pot before I put it on the table in front of the kids. I'm kidding. I feed my kids real food. I'm the one eating the cold spaghetti.
It's been a crowded month. Apparently every school event involving my children was scheduled to happen in May. For me, of course, there were the primaries to lose. You'll be surprised to find out that it can take the same amount of time to lose an election as it does to win one. Who knew? In the case of Casey, it took a lot of time avoiding the primary in order to win it, which he did masterfully. The avoiding that is.
With no legislation in place to mandate a voter-verified paper ballot and a proper audit of the election results, most of PA voted on unverifiable and unsecure voting machines. The reviews from the corporate media are in. Predictably, since no machine sprung to life and killed actual voters, the electronic systems were routinely describedin the corporate media as effective or even in once case "swell." The gaping security hole in Diebold's TSX, which was used in sixteen Pennsylvania counties was largely ignored. The failures of machines all over the state were written off as glitches. It fell to me, Cassandra that I am, to remind anyone who cared to read what I write over at the PhillyBurbs site that even if we can set the hundreds of "glitches" and stunning programming weaknesses aside, we really have no idea how the machines that did work performed because we haven't audited those results and we have no means to do so.
Democracy is on the march, people. Speaking of which, I wrote about Haiti for the American Street. Even though nobody thought to fly me down for Preval's inauguration, which happened on Sunday, I'm not holding any grudges. I'll keep trying to figure out what's going on down there.
The Haitian elections got a ton of well-deserved press but, with the election of Preval, a true reformer, the story of what comes next is going to be even bigger. After the nightmare coup and disastrous rule of Latortue, universally acknowledged as a puppet of the governments that sponsored the removal of Aristide, Haiti has a real shot at strong leadership from Renee Preval. He's had this job before so it will be hard for his enemies to cast him as inept should he displease them by refusing to rebuild Haiti on the already strained backs of the poor.
For my part, I'm absolutely fascinated to watch him navigate the very dangerous waters he's found himself in. And despite being a Cassandra, I'm enough of an idealist to think that he can find a way to get to that middle ground he so clearly seeks and maintain his ideals of social and economic justice. It would be a miracle if he can accomplish that but if there's anywhere due for a miracle, it's Haiti.
Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.
Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.
But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.
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