Category: Politics & Elections

Idaho: Best Senate Race Ever?

The MotherJones Blog has this, extracted from a Wall Street Journal article:

(1) Dr. Rex Rammell is a conservative independent who is running in the Idaho senate race to replace Sen. Larry Craig. He is only running because the Republican in the race, a man named Jim Risch, once had Fish and Game Department officers kill 43 members of Rammell’s private elk herd. Risch was serving as interim governor at the time. Rammell, who staged a sit-in on a fresh elk carcass that game officers were trying to remove, vowed at the time “to see Jim Risch never gets elected in this state again.”

(2) Rammell’s daughter is Miss Idaho USA. After winning her crown, she refused to have her photograph taken with Risch, due to the aforementioned dispute between Risch and her father. She called Risch a “weasel.”

(3) One of the fringe candidates in the race (okay, one of the other fringe candidates in the race) is named Pro-Life. That’s his whole name. He is an organic-strawberry farmer who, apparently, cares passionately and exclusively about the rights of the unborn.

Keep in mind the senate seat they’re after is that of Larry “Tap Tap” Craig.

Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em

As the Democratic primaries revealed, Barack Obama is having a hard time winning the support of blue-collar voters.

So here’s a piece of strategic advice for the candidate: Lose the Nicorette. Light up instead.

Consider these statistics, culled from studies of smoking patterns. Americans who make between $24,000 and $36,000 a year smoke at twice the rate of those earning $90,000 or more. The same applies to Americans with a high-school education rather than a college degree. Rural Americans smoke more than city-dwellers. As for race, there’s a close correlation between states with high rates of white smokers and those where Mr. Obama polled worst in the primaries. Leading the pack of smoking states are Kentucky and West Virginia; industrial states like Ohio aren’t far behind.

Bottom line: small-towners in the Rust Belt and Appalachia don’t cling to guns and religion so much as they do cigarettes.

Tony Horwitz

There’s more.

Webb’s rebel roots

NewMexiKen believes Barack Obama will select a governor or retired general as his running mate, not another senator. Be that as it may (and my prognostication skills have proven sadly lacking before), Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) makes every list.

But is Webb a Confederate sympathizer? David Mark suggests that might be the case at Politico. Mark begins:

Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as it goes about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy.

Webb is no mere student of the Civil War era. He’s an author, too, and he’s left a trail of writings and statements about one of the rawest and most sensitive topics in American history.

He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride.

James Fallows deconstructs Mark:

… Moreover, the article that “uncovers” this startling fact is written in classic and depressing Beltway “could be perceived as problematic” style. It doesn’t flat-out say that there is anything wrong or illegitimate in Webb’s views.
…

And after all: we’re discussing scenarios in which the first black major party nominee might choose Webb as his running mate. Somehow this would “have the potential” of conveying a pro-Confederate tilt?

Webb has pretty much made the point that he respects the fighting courage of Confederate soldiers, and their belief in state sovereignty. It isn’t slavery and slaveholders that most of them fought for he argues. Webb got 85% of the black vote in the 2006 Virginia election.

Thanks to Byron for the link. Interesting stuff.

Post mortems

NewMexiKen hasn’t spent much time reading the numerous “Why Hillary Lost” articles and blog entries, but I have glanced at a few. What I haven’t seen anywhere yet is that she lost because she was already in the White House for eight years. That’s the primary reason I didn’t care for her candidacy. Was I alone?

Electoral Enchantment

Urban and wild define the New West — fast-growing cities nestled in Wallace Stegner’s “geography of hope.” The art, the history and the food of New Mexico have been commoditized, for obvious reasons. But many of its special places are intact, and owned by every American because of the Wilderness Act, which dates to the fertile years of Stewart Udall’s reign as the emperor of the outdoors.

Mark Udall has climbed every one of Colorado’s 54 peaks over 14,000 feet (and has come within 3,000 feet of the summit of Everest). Tom Udall is the driving force behind legislation that saved the spectacular Valle Vidal in northern New Mexico from the predations of Dick Cheney and his allies.

From a longer piece by Timothy Egan on the Udalls and Democrats in the Southwest. Egan is one of the very best contemporary writers on the West anything.

Best line of the day, so far

“They’re all over the ‘Hillary has 18 million voters’ bit, as if 18 million people were following her around like goslings.”

Functional Ambivalent; the “they” being the commentariat.

You gotta go read Tom’s whole post, but I can’t help excerpting this:

Listen: Obama doesn’t need her or her big money friends. He raised $300 million a hundred bucks at a time, signing up a couple of million small contributors. Lest you forget your history, that’s the kind of financial base Ronald Reagan built, that has carried Republicans to victory for 20 years. When Obama stops by to speak, lines form 10 blocks long. Hillary’s big-money loyalists aren’t going to stay out of this election. They’re not in the political money business because they think Hillary’s a doll. They’re in it because it buys them access and influence and status, and there’s not one of them who’s going to stay over at Hillary’s pity party when Obama’s rockin’ the house down the block. They go with the winner.

As for those 18 million voters, well, maybe there are a few who are going to vote for John McCain. Maybe they’re that angry. But here’s what they’re going to have to swallow: No comprehensive healthcare; war forever in Iraq; bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran; anti-abortion judges; and more tax cuts for rich people. When they go to the McCain dinners, they’re going to be seated next to people who don’t understand why we haven’t put Jesus’s image on the dollar bill.

Best line of the day, so far

“I never was moved by a candidate before. Not Ronald Reagan, not Bill Clinton. I never participated. But this guy is a once-in-a-century politician. This guy can change the world. You can’t meet him and walk away untouched.”

Anonymous entrepreneur at fund-raiser quoted by Andrew Tobias.

I’m telling you people, read Obama’s books — the autobiographical Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and the more issue-oriented The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

Tough Night for Jerry J. Sanchez

How does a thing like this happen? I know that it’s probably something as bland as a ballot misprint, but last night as I watched the election results flash across the bottom of my tv screen, I couldn’t help think about all the bad things that a person would have to do in order to lose an election 1854 to ZERO. As his opponent’s numbers increased, while his remained at ZERO, I started to feel really bad for him.

The Alibi Weblog has more.

Heather

NewMexiKen’s very own congress critter, Heather Wilson, lost the primary yesterday for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. The far more conservative candidate won, Rep. Steve Pearce. He gets the opportunity to lose in November to the third of our state’s three representatives, Democrat Tom Udall.

My question: What do you think are the chances Heather will stay in New Mexico now that her political career is over?

Team of Rivals

One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was “how can we get this country through this time of crisis?” And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.

Senator Barack Obama

So, which job does Kucinich get?