Myriad Random Thoughts 1: Things I worry about

I'm trying to get all my various reactions together. This is the first in a series of posts of small items.

-> The moves against domestic-partnership benefit plans seem to be starting. I would be more worried if the motions were coming from actual attorneys, but it certainly seems like some parts of that faction aren't wasting any time laying the groundwork for legal challenges now that the amendment passed.

-> Some of the seats we Democrats won here in Wisconsin--and even nationally--are tough ones to win, and might not have gone our way without the Great Democratic Wave. I worry, for example, about Steve Kagen's being able to hold the 8th in 2008, a presidential election year. The last Dem to hold the seat was Jay Johnson, who was turned out after two years. The 5th State Senate District is a little schizophrenic and trending more Democratic, but Jim Sullivan will have to work hard to hold it in 2010, especially against someone relatively sane like Leah Vukmir.

-> Exit poll science: As I noted last night, by five minutes after the polls closed, TMJ4, which is where I was most of the evening, had called the Attorney General's race for Falk based on exit polling. Their polling was accurate for Doyle, but way off for falk. No one else called that race until after I went to bed (contra Peter DiGaudio, who claimed, for example, that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called it for Falk; they didn't--I was up until 2 AM waiting for that checkmark to appear and it never did). This is probably more TMJ's problem than a big-picture issue. But remember, the exit polls were way off in 2004, too.

-> I agree with Seth: The best thing Dems in Congress (and Dems in the State Senate) can do right now is work on correcting the course. I worry that some people will make conservatives' prophecies self-fulfilling and start demanding impeachment and non-stop investigations. This is not to say that I think there should be no accountability for anything the Bush Administration did wrong, or Republicans who held the Congress. But remember that virtually nothing got done in 1998 and 1999 when the Republican Congress decided that impeachment over consensual nooky was more important than the people's business. I have faith that Nancy Pelosi wasn't lying when she said she had a "100 hours" plan that is about real issues affecting real people. After that 100 hours, it's wait and see.

-> Bush has proposed a real winner to replace the "resigning" Don Rumsfeld. I worry that Dems will block him--as they should, with his Iran-Contra ties and everying (seriously: is right now the best time to be putting a man into the Pentagon with a history of selling weapons to Iran?!?)--and that Joe Lieberman will graciously offer himself as a bi-partsian compromise. The Republican governor of Connecticut then appoints a Republican to replace him, and >poof!< that Dem Senate majority goes bye-bye.