Resignation?

A long time ago, I did freelance work for investment advisers to large pension funds. Their work focused on macro issues--interest rates, oil prices, stuff like that. Most of what I did was grunt work, but every once in a while, I'd have an idea they'd ask me to write up. The best of these was a prediction that a surprisingly large number of members of Congress and the Senate would not run for re-election. There had been a change in the campaign finance law. After that race, elected officials would no longer be allowed to take their warchests as personal income once they left office.

I turned out to be right. The resignation rate was unprecedentedly high.

When we're talking about our 21 little senators, there's good reason to think that a number of them will bail rather than face voters on Iraq. Markos links to an analyst who points out that you can't believe what sitting senators say about their reelection plans.

Does Warner really want to talk about Iraq? Does he really want to debate some Webb clone? Does Stevens really want to hear about the TUBEZ from some 50 year old whipper snapper? Being a retired senator is living a very good life. A campaign with an energized opposition, when you're pushing 80, not so much. If we can get candidates in place, seats will become open seats.

Open Letter to MoveOn and other 527s

Please, please start running some radio ads in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau. It can't cost much. You can start with this.

If you've forgotten your password to get to his campaign web site, Ted Stevens knows why:

Through a series of highly sophisticated and complex algorithms, this system has determined that you are not presently authorized to use this system function. It could be that you simply mistyped a password, or, it could be that you are some sort of interplanetary alien-being that has no hands and, thus, cannot type. If I were a gambler, I would bet that a cat (an orange tabby named Sierra or Harley) somehow jumped onto your keyboard and forgot some of the more important pointers from those typing lessons you paid for.

Point out that Alaska was made a laughingstock over The Bridge to Nowhere.

Then run the Tubes speech.

Then ask whether Ted Stevens is really still right for Alaska.

5 out of 7

Sens. John Warner of Virginia, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of [Nebraska*], Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

CNN reports these to be the Republicans voting to stop the filibuster. While it's true that Oregon, Maine and Minnesota are Blue States, Pennsylvania is purple, and Virginia is turning purple, this is a pretty clear sign that facing the voters in 08 is scaring some people.

Only Snowe and Specter are not on our list.

*CNN reported "Minnesota."

DSCC goes after Sununu and Smith

From TPMCafe:

DSCC targets senators.

The time to put the pressure on is right now. Don't let them off the hook. Just as the House dems are making their Republican colleagues get on the record on the war, the DSCC needs to force the republicans onto the record.

Reminder. of what this is all about.

These are the Senators in class II, up in 2008:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Larry Craig (R-ID)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Pete Domenici (R-NM)
Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Ted Stevens (R-AK)
John Sununu (R-NH)
John Warner (R-VA)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Norm Coleman (R-MN)

MoveOn calls out six of these guys in an ad running in key O8 states.

The $130,000 ad campaign -- which specifically targets GOP Senators John Warner, Sam Brownback, John Sununu, George Voinovich, Arlen Specter, Mitch McConnell and Elizabeth Dole -- will run nationally on CNN and in some local markets in D.C., New York, New Hampshire, Kansas, Maine, and Virginia.

via Election Central at TPM

No longer a voice in the wilderness

I set up this blog because I thought insufficient attention was being paid to the plight of republicans in the class of 2008. Senators don't get gerrymandered districts. They have to appeal to their entire state, and even the reddest of states is 40-45 percent blue. The war has cost the republicans the independent vote, and every single senator is vulnerable to an opposing candidate. In AK, Ted Stevens needs to fear a Tester clone, in SC Graham should be afraid of someone like Webb, and in ME, OR, MN and NH they already know that they are in serious trouble.

So I've been hoping that people would start figuring this out, would put pressure on their senators now, and find candidates who would hang the war around their necks, and get them out of office. Hence this blog.

Well, I'm alone no longer. Markos has noticed:

The problem with these Republicans is that Collins, Warner, Coleman, and Smith face tough or potentially tough re-election battles in 2008, and [the extremely weak, nonbinding] bill [on the Iraq war] was going to offer them cover while accomplishing zero to actually end the war. Yet they were forced by their leadership to vote against their own resolution, giving Democrats a vicious electoral cudgel to use against them.

The pressure is going to keep growing. We're now seeing, in Iraq, what ended the Russian occupation of Afghanistan--the insurgency's ability to shoot down helicopters. Saudi supplied? Could be. But it's clear to everyone except Bush, Barney and Joe Lieberman that this war has been lost. We need to make our republican senators aware of this, and make it clear that it they want to keep their seats, they have to end this madness.

19 0f 21

Only Collins and Coleman voted to continue debate on the Warner-Levin non-binding resolution. The other 19, including tough talk, no walk Chuck Hagel voted against the President's wishes.

Sununu flees

You think Sununu isn't feeling the pressure?

When Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) saw reporters approaching him last week, he took off in a sprint, determined to say as little as possible about a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush's troop-escalation plan, which is expected to come before the Senate today.

"You know where I stand," the senator, who is considered politically vulnerable back home, said repeatedly as he fled down stairways at the Capitol. "I'm still looking."

Still looking. He's looking for a way out. Last week, Chuck Schumer, head of the DSCC, in the process of promoting his new book on Imus and The Daily Show, said that he didn't think a binding resolution would be needed, because the republicans themselves would end the war before 08. But he's already moving toward a firmer stance. In an interview on myDD with Jonathan Singer, he goes farther than he went during his two interviews last week.

I think the President has so messed up Iraq. We'll do everything we can to stop this surge. If we can stop it - or if we can't, even - and we're going to try, but remember he can veto, so 67 votes is a hard thing to do. And I'm not talking about the non-binding resolution. I believe strongly that we have to go further and have something that really ratchets up the pressure on the President and has real teeth. I think this does have some teeth, in terms of public pressure, but I don't think it's the whole thing. We gotta go further.

Having said that, I think that Iraq is such a mess that the President himself, pressured by Republicans, is going to start pulling out troops by the beginning of 2008 because they're not accomplishing a darn thing. It's not helping in any way and it's an anchor tied to the foot of every Republican candidate.

Now I don't want it to be mistaken. If he doesn't pull out it will be a huge issue and we'll make it a huge issue. But I think we have to be prepared for the fact that it may well be that, forced by Republican pressure and just the total incompetence of what they've done - policing a civil war doesn't solve any problem in Iraq and doesn't solve any problem politically for them here at home - that it may be when November 2008 rolls around that there are half the troops or even less than half the troops we have now and they are on their way out.

This is a substantial movement from his earlier position. He's now saying that there will be binding bills passed, even if they are vetoed. This is the pressure that needs to be put on the Senate class of 2008. They can be with the president, or they can be with the people.

Sununu is looking for cover. There is no cover. Right now, Reid is speaking, and he is saying that they cannot stop the debate on Iraq. Cloture on the non-binding resolution may be voted. The debate will take place--on an appropriations bill, on a DoD funding bill. The debate will take place.

In some ways, having the republicans vote down this resolution is a short term loss and a long term win.