Election Day

This is it folks, the day we have been waiting for, the day we take back our country from those who have stolen it from us and trashed our liberties, all the while decreasing our stature and making us less and less safe.

Go to the polls if you have not already, and cast your vote. Remember to use the optical scan machines and not the touch-screen vote-flippers. Optical scan ballots can be hand counted in the event of a recount. We have worked and networked, we got out the vote and we phone banked. I posted like a woman obsessed. Okay, I am a woman obsessed, but still...

It is so an election in a politically active household. Newspapers and pizza boxes are taking over the joint. The dumpster is handy, but being Democrats we recycle, so we are just dealing for now.

Today is the most significant election day of my lifetime. The day we finally get to issue a stinging rebuke to this president and his failed policies and pogroms. As he hit the campaign trail, limiting his appearances to supposed friendly territory, his popularity dropped and the opponents of the candidates he campaigned for got the post-presidential appearance bump.

Here in Missouri, it is going to be a long night. If the margin of victory is less than 10,000 in the senate race between Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent there will be a recount. It is possible that we will not know the outcome for a day or two. We may see lawsuits filed by noon.

I have never lived in the Kansas 02 a single day of my life. But I have issued a lot of units in the VA hospital in Leavenworth, and we are a military family. I want what is best for that district and I fervently believe that that is Nancy Boyda. That is a race I will be watching. The members of the military who have kids vote where they are stationed because they have kids in school. The military is ready for change. This is the biggest disention in the ranks that I have seen in my entire life. What is happening is historic. Both Leavenworth and Fort Riley are in the Kansas 02. (As to that dissent among officers...I told you so...months ago). There is also a blue wave washing over Kansas that is going to lift the Boyda boat.

Dennis Moore in the Kansas 03 and Kathleen Sebelius are sailing to reelection, and Phill Kline and Paul Morrison are set to switch jobs. Paul is going to win the Attorney Generals race, and he will have to vacate his position as Johnson County Prosecutor. Phill Kline will be able to secure that gig, and he lives in Shawnee. And he will fuck up there too and that will hopefully be the end of his political career. On Wednesday we start looking for a candidate to unseat that Bush appologist Pat Roberts. He has abused his spot on the intelligence committee and it is time for him to go. Slattery, you out there? Come home. Kansas needs you, because we want Dennis Moore to stay right the hell where he is. No other Democrat can hold the 03 so securely, we are not sacrificing a senior congressman for a senate seat, put that notion out of your mind right now! In 2010, Kathleen Sebelius is going to unseat Sam Brownback. But we'll get back to that in two years. Right now, we need a Democrat for 08. Anyone have any ideas besides Slattery? Yeah me neither. Jim, back to Kansas with you.

Here in Missouri we need a new governor. Jay Nixon is the leading Democratic contender, he has won statewide elective office consistently since 1993. He will unseat Matt Blunt, should Blunt survive the coming primary challenge by Sarah Steelman. She declared her intent to challenge him during his innaugural address. And more power to her. I can tolerate a Republican who isn't insane.

We need Robin Carnahan to stay where she is, in the Secretary of State's office. We have faced to many election problems in this state to risk that position to a Republican. So who is going to be our candidate for Attorney General? No Republicans. Never again, not after that damned Ashcroft. We learned our lesson.

Let's concentrate on holding the seats that matter to Missouri. If we hold the offices of Auditor, Secretary of State, Attorney General and quite possibly governor, we are grooming our candidate to knock Bond out on down the road, if not in 2010, then in 2016. Politics is a long-range game, my friends, and victory goes to those who look anead, not behind. Politics might be a zero-sum game, but it is also never ending. There is always another election to plan for and that planning starts tomorrow.

And can we please pretty please get somebody out of the Ozarks that it ain't just a cryin' damn shame they weren't strangled in their crib? Y'all gave us that gaggle of Blunts, Rod Jetton and John Ashcroft. C'mon. Give us a break up here! We were issued a limited number of Charles Wheelers, Ike Skeltons, Emmanuel Cleavers, Susan Montees and Claire McCaskills to counter them, and Dr. Wheeler is retiring. Dr. Dean has some battle plans to help you out with party building. Let's turn those red ridges purple by 2010, okay?

Cast your vote today. Continue your GOTV efforts. This one isn't over until the polls close this evening. Which is precisely when the game-clock starts running for the next election.

Kansas City Star Endorses McCaskill

The Kansas City Star endorsed Claire McCaskill for the United States Senate on their editorial pages this morning.

Many of us expected the endorsement, especially after the paper had to formally request Talent stop running misleading ads that deceived the public by atributing quotes to the Star that were actually made by political opponents of McCaskill.

The Star did not mention this in the endorsement, although it would have been fair to do so. They did however point out his dubious record of - ahem - achievements and his rush to the negative in his advertising.

Talent’s shrill, deceptive campaign ads — over-the-top even by lax political standards — have been disconcerting. Pressed about them last week, Talent oddly sought credit for not using them earlier. He added with apparent pride that other candidates had run even worse material elsewhere.

A "But Mom! Billy did it first!" defense doesn't work with parents and it won't work with the electorate either.

It is time for grown-ups to be in charge, and Claire McCaskill is a grown-up, not a petulant child.

It looks like a whole lot of people have had enough

If the election were tomorrow, the Democrats would pick up 35 seats in the House and at least 4 seats in the Senate, possibly the 6 they need to have a majority, and with it, cloture.

The political climate today is worse for the incumbent majority than it was in 1994 when the Republicans took over. Independent political researcher Stuart Rothenberg predicts "a Democratic wave" on November 7.

Charlie Cook, publisher of The Cook Political Report, was more specific. He predicted this weekend that Republicans are most likely to see a net loss of 20 to 35 seats in the House, and with them their majority in the lower chamber.

In the Senate, according to Cook, Republicans were poised to lose at least four, but possibly five or six seats.

The list of most endangered Republican senators included Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Conrad Burns of Montana.

They could easily be joined by Jim Talent of Missouri and George Allen of Virginia, who are fighting for their political lives in very tight races, analysts said.

These poll numbers had Bush on the campaign trail, but one has to wonder about the length of his coattails when his approval rating is mired in the thirties. He "spiked" upward to 37% approval after consistently polling about 33% for several weeks running. But really, anything Bush can accomplish for the party looks like it will be too little, too late.

The economy, once the Republican parties ace-in-the-hole, Americans favor Democrats to manage things better by a 47 percent to 34 percent margin. Likewise, they have fallen out of favor as the part best able to deal with the threat of terrorism, having seen their strong lead turn into a statistical tie of 40 percent to 39 percent.

But the most stinging rebuke of all: By a 12 percent margin, Americans now trust Democrats rather than Republicans to handle Iraq. The Newsweek poll found 45percent of Americans trust Democrats on the prosecution of the war, versus 33 percent who favor the Republicans.

On broad policy issues, 53 percent of likely voters said they favored Democrats, to 39 percent Republican.

Victory is within reach, folks. In fact, at this point, it's ours to lose. We have nine days to put Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb over the top in Missouri and Virginia. Nancy Boyda has nine days to close the narrow, within-the-margin-of-error gap and unseat Jim Ryun in the Kansas-02. Nine days for Sara Jo Shettles to continue building her base to unseat Sam Graves in the Missouri-06.

This is our year. A whole lot of news was dumped in the Friday news cycle. If that was just the beginning, and this week gets worse for the Republicans, we get the Senate too. Hell, we may even have a majority of Governors Mansions.

A Blue Senate, Too?

A new McClatchey-MSNBC poll shows Democrats pulling ahead in key Senate races. In the two states that the Democrats must hold, New Jersey and Washington, the incumbent Democrats (Menendez and Cantwell, respectively) appear to be successfully fending off the challenges mounted by their Republican opposition.

Remember that election day isn't Christmas and we aren't six; we probably aren't going to get everything we want. Tennessee has Bob Corker pulling ahead of Congressman Harold Ford Junior. Ford is a scrapper, and the race is within the margin of error - but the polls say Corker will pull this one out. Ditto Virginia. Even though Norfolk is the home of the Atlantic Fleet, and James Webb was Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, it looks like things that would make normal people run from George Allen as far and as fast as they could, endears him to Virginians, since polls show Allen leading 47% to 43%. Go figure.

In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is not merely pulling ahead of the incumbent Mike DeWine, he is pulling out of sight. The latest polls show him leading DeWine by 8 percentage points, safely outside the margin of error.

In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum has spun out of control and is going down. His melt-down during a recent debate with Bob Casey set him back so far that the national party has turned off the money tap and written off the state. Casey leads Santorum 51% to 39%.

In Rhode Island, the Democrats find themselves in a virtual win-win situation. The Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse, leads Lincoln Chaffee by a 48%-43% margin. This is moot. Chaffee might as well just switch parties - he votes with the Democrats far more often than he does the Republicans. A Chaffee victory (not likely) that resulted in a 50-50 split would be interesting, since no party would have cloture.

The two really interesting races are from two of the reddest of red states - Montana, and my own state of Missouri. In Montana, Conrad Burns is trailing State Senator John Tester, and the mood in Montana is one of "it's time for him to go." He didn't do himself any favors when he told the firefighters who battled this summers wildfires tht they did a "piss poor job" when the National Guard troops who normally take on a great deal of that responsibilty were bogged down in Iraq, an operation Burns has backed.

Missouri is really interesting this election cycle, and all over the country, eyes are cast toward the anachronism that is Missori. Some of us have been calling for a McCaskill-Talent showdown since the 2004 general election. The series of debates wrapped up last Wednesday (although the fifth and final debate didn't air until Thursday, so as to not interfere with Dancing With the Stars) and they helped Claire. She was a tough prosecutor, she knows how to work a jury, and really, what is the electorate if not the ultimate jury of ones peers?

Missourians like it when a politician answers questions. Jim Talent doesn't do that most basic thing. I will give an example...The following appeared on the letters page of the Kansas City Star weeks ago, and Jim Talent has not answered.

Jim Talent

I recently came across a post on the Fired Up! Missouri Web site that stated Sen. Jim Talent had missed 65 of 95 meetings of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
To verify this, I pored over transcripts of the minutes of these meetings, which confirmed that he has missed a shocking number.

I then started calling the senator’s office asking for clarification. My questions have gone unanswered.

I have not seen this brought up in the so-called liberal media, so I wish to pose the question directly to Sen. Talent. I hope he sees fit to answer.

Senator, why have you missed so many of these meetings? I would think they would take top priority because the United States is involved in two shooting wars and the military has lost so many troops to death and injury in these conflicts that we have effectively lost a division of seasoned and trained troops.

These absences have occurred during a time when the Army is short 3,000 officers, and the Army Reserves are short nearly 11,000 lieutenants and captains in the ranks (source: the U.S. Army Web site).

I know if I were in your position, wild horses couldn’t keep me from them.

Jim Talent has not answered this constituents question, even though it was posed in public and is in reference to a war he supports and SASC service he flaunts. A war he would vote to authorize today, even knowing what we know now.

Jim Talent votes for force and against body armor, touts his SASC service but skips the meetings, and backs tax cuts that mean every child born enters life $30K in debt. Call that a Birth Tax.

We are grave robbers because we oppose repealing the estate tax? Well try this one on for size, if you want to fight the hyperbole wars.

They are cradle robbers. In every sense of the word.