Sacrifice and the American way of life

I'm sure you've seen the infomercials--finally, a way to lose 100 pounds without eating less or ever doing any exercise! Always beware of those who promise you something for nothing: weight loss without exercise, money without work, and a strong country without any sacrifices from its citizens. In the long run, there's always a price to pay. How many get-rich-quick schemes do you know that actually work? Well, for the last three decades, the Republicans have been promising us something for nothing, and we've been buying it.

Nationally, our president is the first in history to go to war while simultaneously making tax cuts. We can't afford the war in Iraq, and it is seriously undermining the strength of the dollar, not to mention getting our soldiers overseas killed. Bush has put the Iraq war on our credit card, and he's leaving the next president to clean up the mess. And the whole time, he's claimed that wars don't require any sort of sacrifices from our citizens

Here in Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty campaigned on "no new taxes" and we have seen our infrastructure collapsing and our schools descending into mediocrity. He and his fellow conservatives have complained and complained about "the state that works." They've tried to tell us that paying the taxes we need to maintain our infrastructure and fund our local communities is bad for us! But if their plan is so great, how come it's hurting us so much?

We're starting to wise up to these something-for-nothing scams. Most of us are suspicious of miracle diet pills and get-rich-quick schemes. So why do we fall for it when conservatives promise us a utopian country with no need for sacrifices? The fact is, building this country took hard work, it took money, and it took sacrifices from our leaders, our soldiers, and our citizens. And if you think we can get it all without giving anything back, I need your help transferring some money from Nigeria.

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McCain to throw "hail mary" with early announcement of VP

Robert Novak and CQ Politics are reporting that John McCain may be ready to announce his candidate for VP. This would be the earliest anyone has ever announced their VP, and it seems like a fairly desperate play to me.

Barack Obama is out-raising and out-polling McCain, and his trip overseas is having a huge impact. He's getting great news coverage and blunting criticism about his foreign policy abilities. McCain seems to feel the need to do something to turn the tables, but he must be out of ideas.

In the long run, I wonder how this can benefit McCain. His only goal seems to be to counter the Obama "overseas bump" with a McCain "VP bump". The trouble with that, of course, is that he foregoes the opportunity to get that VP bump later in the campaign, when people are paying attention.

More importantly, it will take more than temporary bumps to move McCain ahead in the polls. If he wants to win this thing, he needs to search for a long-term solution, but his campaign only has the ability to look at the immediate present. It's particularly telling to me that McCain seems caught off-guard by Obama's successful trip. It's not like this was kept a secret, yet McCain had no strategy to counter the headlines Obama has grabbed, leading to the desperation move of revealing his VP choice early.

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Coleman terrified to debate issues

A couple of days ago, Al Franken released his first "compare and contrast ad," a fairly mild piece which contrasts Franken and Coleman on a few issues. The message can be summed up pretty quickly: Al Franken disagrees with President Bush on the war and the economy, while Coleman votes with Bush almost 90 percent of the time, including his continued support for Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent. Franken also criticized Coleman for taking money from special interests. See the full ad below:



Doesn't seem too bad, right? Well the Coleman campaign freaked out. Yesterday, they released the following statement, according to Minnesota Democrats Exposed: “It’s official. Al Franken has launched the first television attack ad of 2008 and is going negative in a big way against Senator Coleman.” They also said Franken was in "full-on attack mode."

Did we watch the same ad here? Is Coleman completely out of his gourd? Apparently, he is so ashamed of his record that he feels the need for massive retaliation whenever someone brings it up. I guess I can understand that: we've already explored how Norm is wrong on transportation, the environment, education, and employment. But I have news for you, Norm: that's how politics works. Once you make the votes, you have to answer for them. If this ad is "negative in a big way," are there any issues we are allowed to discuss?

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CD3 debate set for August 21

I just saw on the Star Tribune's website that a debate between Ashwin Madia, Erik Paulsen, and David Dillon has been scheduled for August 21. Maybe Paulsen can finally answer some questions about his positions, since he doesn't seem to want to share them.

Some questions I would like to see answered include:

• Do you have a position on Iraq?
  
• Do you believe in global warming?
• Now that you've been proven wrong on Iran, are you willing to be an adult and support aggresive diplomacy?

What questions would ask Paulsen? Add your comments below.

(By the way, it is an outrage that spectators will have to pay to get into this debate--Chris Truscott has the story)

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The Shrinking GOP: Nevada edition

We all knew this was going to be a bad year for Republicans. However, I've just seen the first sign that indicates the GOP may be in trouble for a lot longer than just this single election. The following news came from Nevada this weekend:

Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.

The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.

To me, this indicates two major problems for the long-term health of the Republican Party:

First, canceling their convention takes away an opportunity to train and motivate Republican activists in Nevada. This should help Democrats to make some major gains in the state over the next two years, while the Republicans are searching for activist leaders.

Second, Nevada is yet another state where Ron Paul and his backers are making a serious play for influence within the party. As the GOP is faring worse at the polls, it is veering sharply to the right, which should reduce the number of moderate voters it can win over the next few election cycles.

Overall, these trends spell major trouble. The GOP will be competitive in fewer states, and it will attract fewer voters in those states. If the Democrats' 50-state strategy pays off and Democrats learn to communicate better (something I'll address more in future weeks), they could seriously marginalize the GOP for the next decade.

[UPDATE: This was originally a stand-alone piece, but there's been so much news on this front that I'm starting a series about the Shrinking GOP. I am retitling this article accordingly.]

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Senate race downgraded by CQ Politics

According to CQ Politics, Franken is stumbling in the Senate race. Accordingly, they have downgraded the race from "no clear favorite" to "leans Republican." But don't worry, Democrats, hope is not lost.

On Saturday, I mentioned three major tasks for Franken's new communications director. With an additional task for his campaign manager, I believe there are four things the campaign needs to do to turn things around.

1. Institute a "zero-tolerance policy" against Norm Coleman's attacks. All attacks should be cleared up within 24 hours, whether that involves responding directly or getting the subject changed.
2. Re-introduce Al to Minnesotans. The first introduction was mired by irrelevant "scandals" dug up by Coleman to distract us from his own record.
3. Relentlessly turn the conversation to the issues, where Coleman is the most vulnerable.
4. Aggressively vet Franken; discover the scandals waiting to be uncovered and develop strategies to prevent future problems.
   

By mid-August, maybe even the Republican-biased SurveyUSA will show Franken gaining again.

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Drilling more oil won't save us

You have to love Michele Bachmann.

The loony Republican Congresswoman from CD6 makes my job so much easier. She's never had an original idea, but she always manages to take Republican talking points to such an extreme that it's a joke. Her latest crusade is Newt Gingrich's reality-defying plan to "Drill Here, Drill There, Drill Everywhere." Of course, she once again felt free to expand on the talking points, claiming that we could drill ourselves back to $2/gallon gas. It's nice to see that logic isn't getting in her way.

Yesterday, Pat Doyle of the Star Tribune had a great article which refuted most of the arguments of whackos like Bachmann. For instance:

The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds too little oil to reduce gas prices more than a few cents per gallon, and new sources of oil could take decades to develop, according to government analysts.

Of course, none of the Republicans' plans for drilling will do the trick. I've pointed out before that Norm "W" Coleman's plan to expand offshore drilling would only provide us with 2.8 billion barrels of oil over 20 years, or 35 days worth of global consumption. Even between the two of these plans, are we going to see $2/gal gas any time soon? Not likely.

Gas-crazy conservatives don't just stop there, though. They are determined to keep using oil, even when there are viable alternatives that we could develop. The latest fad they are thumping their chests over is oil shale. But is this really an option? Doyle again:

Oil shale in Western states might be significant enough to one day exceed imports from Saudi Arabia, but it faces tough technological hurdles to become reality.

"It [oil shale] is sort of meaningless in the sense that it's such a large resource base and we're so far from producing it," said Philip Budzik, an oil and gas analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "It's not going to be tomorrow, and it's not going to be in 10 years."

The bottom line: Conservative plans to drill our way back to $2/gal gas are a pipe dream. We could drill every square foot of unused space in this country--something they would likely be okay with--and it wouldn't get us much improvement in gas prices. Yet they refuse to consider improving fuel efficiency and they want nothing to do with alternative energy sources. We've been addicted to oil far too long to have a quick fix, but the Republicans are impeding any chance we even have of a long-term fix.

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Coming next week...

It's great to see the blog starting to take off and get a bit of traffic. It's been about a week since I started adding additional content to what I write for MN Campaign Report. Thanks to all of you who have been reading!

Up next week:

• Norm Coleman continually refuses to support transportation security
• 3 decades of conservatism and our national "me-first" attitude
  
• Updates to the Conservative-to-English dictionary
• Maps! (assuming I buckle down and get my research done, the first of a batch of maps will appear Friday)
• More...
  

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Great piece on Republican filibusters

Gary Ater has a great piece on the Republican filibuster, in which he discusses how Republicans have shattered the previous record for the number of filibusters in a session.

Since the Democrats won their razor-thin majority back in 2006, the Republicans have now used the filibuster a record 80 times to halt any legislation offered by the Democrats. Even with the small majority of 51 to 49 that the Senate Democrats have today, it still takes 60 votes to pass a Senate bill that would also over-ride a possible filibuster or a presidential veto. Based on these numbers, the Republican Senate leadership has decided to only "rarely" allow any "moderate" Republicans to vote on the Democratic side of an issue, whether the legislation is good for the country or not. All the Republican Senators have to do today is open up the debate on the Senate floor and keep it going until the Democrats eventually give in and give up. This action virtually stops the bill in its tracks, and they then move on to other bills or new business.

As has recently become a routine in the Senate, the Senate Republicans, with the aid of a couple of conservative Democrats, successfully obstructed the passage of a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases. The measure fell 12 votes shy of the 60 votes needed in the Senate. It has since been pulled from consideration by the Democratic leadership.

Such action would normally strike a more depressing note if it had not become the Senate norm over the last 2 years. Republicans in the Senate have filibustered ~80 pieces of legislation in the current session of Congress. (This is an all-time record, and the session isn't over yet.) Not all of these attempts to block legislation have ended in success. A few bills actually have passed, but this latest rate of obstructionism has been historic, far surpassing the previous record of 62 filibusters.

Of course, the Republicans complained bitterly when they were in power any time the Democrats tried to filibuster. Back then, they called it obstruction.

I don't have much else to say on this, other than that it's a fantastic article and well worth a read. Go check it out!

Person Gary Ater

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CD3 Whup-Ass

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a training session for volunteers with the Ashwin Madia campaign. I don't want to write here about some of the strategies revealed by campaign manager Stu Rosenberg, which will remain confidential. But I do want to write a bit about the incredible volunteers of the 3rd District, to whom the DFL owes a great debt for putting this district in play. A few months ago, I published a series of maps showing the 3rd district's slow change from red to blue--these volunteers are the reason that's happened.

Volunteers gave up their entire day and spent it at the Madia campaign office. They were full of energy, asked great questions, and had a ton of great suggestions for the campaign. They were particularly interested in keeping the Madia campaign aligned with other DFL races; they are clearly committed to building the DFL party in the district. Some of the volunteers had the opportunity to talk about their personal reasons for being involved with Ashwin Madia and with DFL politics in general. There were a lot of really excellent speakers in the room; they should be formidable on the phones!

The most impressive part, though, was how well-trained all of these activists were. We wound up spending a minimal amount of time talking about things like how to read a walk sheet, how to record an ID call, and things like that. The great volunteers of CD3 knew it all. They have their eyes focused on winning throughout the district, and they know how to do it. George Greene, writer of The Aurora Alert, calls this CD3 whup-ass. And it is going to make CD3 DFLers a force to reckon with for decades.

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