Denial2

What are we, three weeks past the election? [pauses to count on his fingers] Yeah, three weeks.

I would have thought that teaching Sykes, P-Mac, and Owen a lesson in denial and sore losership that first week after would have been enough. (I didn't think I needed to cover Dohnal's "What Hoppened," since he lives so far outside of reality everyone knows he's probably bunking with denial anyway.)

But the usually sensible Lance Burri visits denialville this week, in a post titled "Foiled by Fate":

That was 2006. Republicans lost, and Democrats won. Everything, everywhere. It was a tidal wave of 1994-esque proportions. A massive, inevitable defeat, brought on by forces that were well beyond our control.

The UW Dems' Andrew Gordon, in a post with the kind of language you'd expect from a college kid, rightly calls Lance on this:

In the end, it was this strong record of failure that cost Republicans in November. It's shocking that GOP talking heads still haven't figured it out. The Democratic Tsunami didn't come out of nowhere. Republicans made it, and lost because they consistently made wrong decisions on pretty much every issue. To blame it on fate avoids accepting any responsibilities for the shortcomings and failures of the last 12 years.

Indeed; for Lance to suggest that this year's Republican defeats were inevitable is like suggesting that the explosion at the bottom of the canyon was inevitable while forgetting that somebody had to drive off the cliff first.

In the comments to Andrew's post, Lance pipes up that he was really just "trying to figure out what we should have done differently." But, as I think Andrew's post makes clear, Lance at best makes excuses: All of these things that went wrong, he asks himself, could we have seen them and changed things? "Probably not," he answers.

This is a classic case of what we call hindsight bias. And what makes it funny is Lance's nomination of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker as Prophet of the Election. Never mind the reasons why Walker really dropped out of the primary (Ken Mehlman clearing the field, an inablility to raise money, God told him to), for Lance, Walker's decision--in hindsight--was prescient:

If you were planning to run for office, you had to make your decision months ago. July, June, or even earlier. Case in point: Scott Walker, who dropped out of the Governor’s race in May.

Did he know something? Did he read those tea leaves – take a long, careful look – and decide this wasn’t the year to be a Republican candidate? If so, then he is officially the smartest guy in the room, whatever room he’s in.

All hail Scott Walker, the Nostradamus of the Wisconsin GOP!

No, Lance, the responsibility lay with Republicans and six--or twelve, depending on how you want to count--years of policies designed to shrink and alienate the middle class, polarize this country along economic and religious lines, and drag our troops into unnecessary, costly, and tragic entanglements overseas. Anyone with common sense, rather than ideological blinders, could have seen the spanking coming from miles before you actually went off that cliff.*****I promised denial squared, and the second power here comes on the subject of Iraq, and, more specifically, Jessica McBride's waist-deep denial of what is happening in Iraq.

That post of hers merits not one but two eviscerations from the Brew City Brawler, as well as a savvy take-down from Tim Rock. Neither of them, though, hits what I think to be the most critical facet of McBride's denial here. Toward the end of a long piece asking, "Rethinking Iraq?" (her answer, "an emphatic no"), she throws this in:

In addition, I believe that many of the Democrats - and the MSM - have failed to respond to changing circumstances.

MSM, in McBride's leetspeak, is the "mainstream media," of which she is firmly a part, as an employee of the state's largest media conglomerate and host of a show on Milwaukee's highest-rated talk radio station. The irony, of course, is that the media have been, of late, responding to the changing situation on the ground, and they've been pilloried by conservative critics who can't believe, for example, that NBC should be allowed to call it "civil war."

It's McBride who goes on and on about how "we must finish the job" and "it's crucial [. . .] that we not accept defeat." But the vast bulk of the violence in Iraq today is not the United States versus anybody--it's the centuries-old conflict between Sunni and Shia with our troops being caught in the crossfire. There is a case to be made that we should be fighting the "al Qaeda in Iraq" group that has filled the void we created in Anbar Province; but al Qaeda isn't killing thousands of civillians every month. al Qaeda isn't shelling neighborhoods the way the Sunni and the Shia are.

It was absurd before the election for conservatives to suggest the the uptick in violence was an attempt to influence the vote in favor of Democrats, and it is absurd now to say that the violence is an attempt to embolden Nancy Pelosi. The violence in Iraq is being perpetrated by people who could not care less who's running this country; they are instead interested only in generations of blood debt and hostility.

Fareed Zakaria, not known for being anything close to a shrill anti-war anything, sees what McBride denies:

If you want to understand the futility of America's current situation in Iraq, last week provided a vivid microcosm. On Thursday, just hours before a series of car bombs killed more than 200 people in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City, Sunni militants attacked the Ministry of Health, which is run by one of Moqtada al-Sadr's followers. Within a couple of hours, American units arrived at the scene and chased off the attackers. The next day, Sadr's men began reprisals against Sunnis, firing RPGs at several mosques. When U.S. forces tried to stop the carnage and restore order, goons from Sadr's Mahdi Army began firing on American helicopters. In other words, one day the U.S. Army was defending Sadr's militia and, the next day, was attacked by it. We're in the middle of a civil war and are being shot at by both sides.

Is that really the position McBrides wants us to be in, to stay in, to persevere in? We're no longer on one side of this war; we're caught in a crossfire. How do you "win" when you're in a crossfire? What does "accepting defeat" even look like in that situation?

How do you decide not to "rethink Iraq," unless you've waded so far into denial that you can't see how much we've already lost?

Another wrong loser

My BFF Owen has a gigantic ideological stick where you know it's gotta hurt, but he usually gets his facts straight. Today he totally blows it in terms of telling the truth.

However, I can't say I disagree with his ultimate conclusion:

I must admit that I find the reaction of some Lefties to the election to be somewhat comical. Many of them are interpreting the election as a wholesale rejection of Conservatism. They insist that those of us who are conservatives, should abandon our beliefs and just accept the fact that the election proves that we are wrong about everything.

I do not actually think that the results are evidence of any kind of a permanent Democratic majority anymore than I believed Karl Rove when he said in 2004 that the Republican majority was permanent. There is still plenty of battleground, particularly in the West. But I think last Tuesday was, in fact, the end of a kind of re-alignment that began in 1994: Republicans now pretty well own the South; it took a dozen years for the moderate Republicans left in the Northeast and chunks of the Midwest to finally exit stage right. It was also a rejection of Bush--and the more we learn, the clearer that is. It's also a reaction to the utter hell that Iraq has become. (Remember when Iraq was supposed to be no more dangerous than Detroit? When Motor City residents start tattooing names and SSNs on their bodies, call me.)

But then, moving from that perfectly reasonable premise, Owen runs down the litany of false statements that, I think, conservatives are using to make themselves feel better. I'll take them one at a time; he's in italics:

• Never mind that many of the Dems who won across the country were espousing many conservative beliefs.
  Depends on how you define "many." If you mean "a few" including high-profile ones like Bob Casey, then sure. But some facts are in order: Chris Bowers counts 24 newly elected Dems from the House who are anything but conservative. In the Senate, Tester, McCaskill, Brown, and Klobuchar all have liberal voting records behind them. Tom Schaller puts it into convenient chart form, and adds, "the liberal wing of the GOP suffered a disproportionate share of losses compared to the moderate and/or conservative wings. Since the Democrats who beat them ran uniformly to the left of their opponents, the notion that conservative Democrats knocked off a set of mostly liberal Republicans defies simple logic."
  
  
• Never mind that the election results are completely average in historical terms.
  There have been two 6th-year midterm elections since the 1950s. In 1986, the Dems, the "opposition party" to Reagan, picked up fifve seats. In 1998, the Dems, the "ruling party" with Clinton, also picked up five seats. Since 1994's 54-seat switch, the number of seats switching have been less than ten at a time. To call last Tuesday average is to completely minimize it.
  
  
• Never mind that there were many forces in this election that were independent of philosophy (corruption, waste, etc.).
  And Republicans had nothing to do with those? Who's been in complete power for six years?
  
  
• Never mind that the Republicans lost much of their base precisely because they had become a bunch of big-government politicians.
  Except that the Republicans didn't lose their base. In fact, Republicans lost independents, who made up almost a quarter of the voters this year. Kevin Drum compares the 2004 and 2006 exit polls to find that "Conservatives are still solidly supporting the Republican Party." I bet, for example, that Owen and all of his conservative readers turned out for Republicans on the ballot last Tuesday.

I should also point out that the Dems received a higher percentage of the votes in both House and Senate races this year (53% and 55%, repsectively) than Bush did in either 2000 or 2004. This is not to suggest that I think Dems must run roughshod over everyone--as Bush suggested he could do with his "mandate" and "political capital." I am suggesting, however, that what happened Tuesday is not something that can be swept under the rug or hidden behind lame (and false) excuses. The national Republican Party--and the current flavor of conservatism--has led voters to speak with a clear voice in opposition.

Far be it from me to tell Republicans how to plan for 2008; it sure seems to me, however, that sitting around and lying to yourself about why you lost is a bad way to start.

McIlheran Watch: Another Sore Loser

I remember 2004. I even remember 1994, mostly. An election, as those were for me, that ends up as a repudiation of you and all you stand for can really kind of hurt. How you deal with it shows a lot about your character. If you're Charlie Sykes, for example, you mislead your readers into thinking that you had a bigger impact than you did. If you're Joe Lieberman, you pretend nothing major happened. If you're any conservative Tim Rock read this week, you imagine the grapes were sour, anyway.

But my favorite has to be Patrick McIlheran; if you're him, you turn your back on a year's worth of your work as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's conservative frontman and declare that you don't have to be popular to be right:

[W]hat got defeated [. . .] is a certain sense that conservative ideas are right because they are popular [. . .]. Conservatism's superiority is taken for granted because it is self-evidently a 'winning' philosophy. We win, therefore are right. We are right, therefore we win. [. . .]

So it's going to be harder, maybe lonelier, for conservatives. So? Our ideas aren't validated by being popular. They're validated by being right.

(Of course, if you click through to read it, you'll find P-Mac is basing his assertions on a column by . . . wait for it . . . Charlie Sykes.)

Why is this my favorite? Because McIlheran has made a point, repeatedly, about how popular the positions he espouses are! Watch:

Though, in a heartening development, people aren’t necessarily buying the X-Files take on the NSA looking at calling records. ABC polls and finds that people regard looking at who’s calling whom as necessary to fighting jihadists.
********But the rallies Monday, with people in t-shirts reading, “We are not criminal,” aren’t necessarily helping. Polls show that most Americans, while sympathetic to immigrants, don’t like people sneaking in.
********Owen at Boots and Sabers comments with particular lucidity today: [. . .]

“Also, it is worth noting that polls show that 70% of the people support a constitutional amendment to limit government spending or revenue. This appears to be yet another case of the special interests driving Madison in a direction contrary to the will of the people.”
********No business that Mark Bradley knows of has broken up over taxes owed upon death. He ought to know - he's a big-name Wisconsin estate lawyer. He's not saying it doesn't happen, but he says fears over what is now a 46% tax are overblown. If a family absolutely doesn't plan, the IRS will take installment payments over a decade or so.

Others differ, of course. Ann Kinkade, who heads the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Family Business Center, says she's heard horror stories, though none firsthand. Businesses working with her have estate planning in mind.

This is a key question, since the tax is with us still. Despite polls showing most Americans don't like the IRS rifling the pockets of rich corpses, the Republican Senate still can't pull the trigger on a tax that's as anachronistic as the top hat on the Monopoly Man.
********The Wall Street Journal reports that support for legalized abortion is falling. The Roe vs. Wade decision that took the matter out of the hands of states and voters is now supported only by a 49% to 47% plurality in a Harris poll.

Sixty-three percent don’t think the Supremes will overturn the decision, but 40% favor laws that do more to protect children from being aborted.
********But if the unified aim is to make this nation forgive, en masse, 11 million people who broke the law, good luck. Polls show such rallies are hardening attitudes, if anything.
********[E]xpanding the labor pool depresses wages. Interestingly, more than a quarter of American-born Latinos polled by the Pew Hispanic Center last summer agreed. [. . .] Most of all, conflating legal and illegal immigration into one chanting insistence that America owes someone something won't fly. That Pew poll found that 60% of American-born Latinos want to keep driver's licenses out of illegal immigrants' hands.
********Critics ask us to take counsel of their fears. "People become afraid of their own government," Feingold says. That is, not only is it offensive that the government listened in, but without oversight, we don't know the NSA wasn't up to no good.

But polls show a more sanguine public, and no wonder. The more facts emerge, the more the claims erode, especially since, amid the plentiful emerging evidence that the program existed, no signs point to political abuse.
********People seem to sense this, as when they tell pollsters - 65% to 26% this summer in a Wisconsin poll, for instance - that they don't favor financing campaigns from tax money. Of course not: Once incumbents can just take from you the money they need, it's one less reason for them to have to listen to you.
********But polls repeatedly show that ordinary Americans are bothered by the illegality of illegal immigrants, and the presence of 11 million of them after the problem was supposed to have been fixed by reforms in 1986 shows a failure of the federal government. It's not surprising when local people take a whack at it.

Remember, that's just the past year, and probably not even as thorough a search as I could have done.

But, anyway, now we know what McIlheran really thinks. And the next time he shows up with some poll or another claiming to be speaking with the voice of the majority, we can remind him: Sorry; just because it's popular doesn't make it right!

Charlie Sykes: Sore (and Smug) (and WRONG) Loser

(See slight update here. Quite the discussion in comments there, too.)

I really wish Lena Taylor had smacked the mess out of Charlie Sykes Tuesday night. I mean, I didn't even give it a thought that TMJ-4 had Owen and me seated right next to each other. But then I noted that someone had the foresight to put Sykes and Taylor in different rooms, because, you know, she would have taken him down. I was never afraid that Owen would dive across the desk and throttle me; of course, I didn't do any of the smug taunting that Sykes did. With that smirk on his face and sleazy insinuations, I wanted to smack the mess out of him myself.

So today I see Sykes is congratulating himself over--you'll think I'm joking here--the size of Green's and Van Hollen's results in Southeast Wisconsin. Check this out (self-stroking italics included):

So, in a race that Doyle won statewide by 7-8 percentage points, he won the state's largest media market, which includes the state's most populous Democratic city and county, by only two-tenths of a percent. In other words, Doyle dramatically under-performed in this media market; Green, who was trounced statewide, dramatically over-performed here. [. . .]

Statewide Van Hollen won by less than half of one percent, but won the Milwaukee Media Market by more than six points, with a margin of 44,200. He won statewide by less than 9,000. Again, Democrat Falk under-performs, while Republican Van Hollen over-performs in the state's largest media market that includes the state's biggest Democratic county.

So what makes the Milwaukee market different from the rest of the state? Could it be.....????

Yes, my friends; as the Spice Boys noted today, he just can't help thinking he alone (well, perhaps also his little protege) was responsible for it all. I can just imagine the look on his face as he found those numbers. His smug ugly smile must have reached into the next office over.

Problem is, he full of crap. And not full of crap in the way that I often call him and his kind full of crap, but almost literally shoveling it out of himself to cover up for the complete and utter failure of the politics he's been pimping for the last decade.

I decided I'd test his numbers. Let's start with the AG's race. Here are the numbers Sykes gives for this week's election in his five-county Milwaukee media market sample:
Kathleen Falk: 305,488 (46.6%)
JB Van Hollen: 349,688 (53.4%)

I went back to the State Elections Board's 2002 data. Statewide, the results were different, of course, with the Democrat, Peg Lautenschlager, winning over the Republican, Vince Biskupic, 51.6% to 48.3%. So what were the numbers in the five-county media market? Glad you asked (rounded to the nearest 100):
Peg Lautenschlager: 249,600 (47.2%)
Vince Biskupic: 278,700 (52.7%)

Let that soak in for a second; the difference in the results here in the five-county Milwaukee media market between 2002 and 2006 is almost nothing. Think about that. Statewide, the Republican's performance between 2002 and 2006 went up 1.7%. In this media market, the Republican's performance between 2002 and 2006 went up only 0.7%. Seems to me Charlie Sykes ought be concerned that he dampened Republican performance among his listeners when it came to the Attorney General vote! He ought to be apologizing, not gloating.

But, you might say, the difference between 2002 and 2006 in the AG's race is almost so small it could just be statistical noise. That's true; it is very small. So let's look at the Governor's race, where the numbers are bigger. Here are Sykes's totals for the five-county sample in 2006:
Jim Doyle: 328,278 (50.1%)
Mark Green: 327,031 (49.9%)

Let's go back to the SEB's 2002 numbers. Statewide, Doyle defeated Republican incumbent Scott McCallum 45.1% to 41.4% (Libertarian Ed Thompson, of course, scored a bit over 10%). So what about our five Milwaukee-area counties? Again, rounded to the nearest 100:
Jim Doyle: 243,100 (44.7%)
Scott McCallum: 256,500 (47.1%)

This is how big of a lying, self-righteous idiot Sykes is: In 2006, this media maket voted for the Democrat--just barely. But in 2002, this media market gave the Republican a victory! So, you might ask, what makes the Milwaukee market different from the rest of the state? Could it be.....????

Yes, it is. Once again, Charlie Sykes shouldn't be sitting around gloating, trying to pat his back so much it bruises. He should be calling Mark Green and offering to commit hari kari because he may have cost Mark Green the race!

Charlie, time to retract. Time to give it up. You lost. If anyone should be gloating, it's us, not you (though I've really tried not to). So stop. Just . . . stop.

Friday Random Quotes

A few things I've collected this week. They may or may not tell a story.

This election proves that the Democrats are the mainstream political party. We just elected a socialist from Vermont and a former Reagan official from Virginia to the US Senate. We elected a number of Red State conservatives, true, but we are also going to have a Speaker of the House from San Francisco. We cover a broad swathe, ranging from sea to shining sea with only the most conservative old south remaining firmly in the hands of the Republican party. The idea that this is some sort of affirmation of conservatism is laughable. It's an affirmation of mainstream American values and a rejection of the Republican radicalism this country has been in the grips of for the last 12 years.

*

Here's the baseline: the overall Democratic share of the congressional vote was about 5 percentage points higher than in 2004. And what you find from the exit polls is that Dems gained 2-7 points in practically every demographic group surveyed. It was an across-the-board sweep, not a victory that depended on any single big electoral shift.

So were there any big changes? Compared to the overall 5-point gain, did Dems get a bigger share of the white evangelical vote? No. Women? No. Young people? No. Low-income voters? No. Self-described conservatives? No. Suburban voters? No. The South? No. The Northeast? No. Any region? No. Dems gained a steady 2-7 points in all these groups.

*

Democratic candidates won--in every part of the country and regardless of their ideology -- by committing themselves to one basic platform. They vigorously opposed what have become the defining attributes of the Republican Party and they pledged to put a stop to them: unchecked Presidential power, mindless warmongering, a refusal to accept or acknowledge realities (both in Iraq and generally), and the deep-seated, fundamental corruption fueling the Bush movement and sustaining their power.

Virtually every Democratic winner, from the most conservative to the most liberal, in the reddest and bluest states, have that in common. They all ran on a platform of putting a stop to the radicalism, deceit and corruption that drives the so-called "conservative" political movement.

*

If George Bush wants to continue to wreck America, then there is no way anyone in Congress with a modicum of self-respect and love of country should let him get away with it.

That's easy to say, but what if it means a dangerous constitutional crisis?

Don't answer right away, folks. Stop. Think.

The standard cliche American response to these kinds of challenges is an instantaneous, adrenaline-fueled shout of, "Bring it on!" The intense desire to engage the enemy, mano a mano, to stop all the pussy-footing, and let's get down to it! We can win this thing! Plans? Plans??! I don't need no stinkin' plans! I'm right, I'll win and I'll just let the weak plan what happens then.

And we know how well that works. So step 1 in the post 11/07/06 world is for Dems and liberals not to act like drooling violent morons - because we're not, and anyway, it never works outside a Stallone movie - and think this through. To paraphrase Susan Sontag, we know we're strong. We are going to have to be smart.

In order to confront an out of control, delusional, and ruthless president, the Democrats are going to have to be in control, levelheaded, and prepared to do whatever it takes.

*

America Says No to Wedgies.

Two lessons for campaigns

One: The campaigns that won here in Wisconsin on Tuesday were the ones with the clear, unambiguous, crystalized messages--at least for the state-wide races. Consider:

• The yes side of the amendment fight had a clear message the entire time--vote yes to "protect marriage." (I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just using it as an example.) The no team, while they had just about the best GOTV efforts of anyone Tuesday, especially on the campuses, spent the last month of the campiagn muddying its message. The yes side stayed consistent, and no jumped from one message to another about the drawbacks of the second sentence, to keeping the status quo, to Tuesday's call about activist judges. The yes side's clearer message held out.
  
  
• JB Van Hollen ran on a single clear message, too: He decided he was running for Batman. "I want to fight crime! I'll get the terrorists! I'll clear out the illegal immigrants! I want to date Commissioner Gordon's daughter!" I think it was a phony and misleading campaign (it took some kind of gall to suggest that a 14-year Assistant Attorney General didn't have the experience to be Attorney General). But Van Hollen stuck to it, unambiguously, and won even against a Democratic wave so large it knocked out Jack Voigt. On the plus side, Van Hollen will be so tired from fighting crime all night he won't do much damage during the daylight hours.
  
  
• Mark Green's message through the whole campaign was an ill-defined "I'm not Jim Doyle" kind of thing. Green offered nothing beyond cookie-cutter Republican policies, borrowed or thieved from somewhere else. There was no bold, clear, unified message to truly distinguish himself from Doyle, or define himself without regard to Doyle. Even his attempts to ding Doyle for corruption failed, not least because he bore the stink of a corrupt Congress; throw in the fact that Tommy Thompson used to sell more state contracts by 9 AM than other governors do all day and, well, that didn't play with the voters. Doyle's initial message--Wisconsin is better off than it was four years ago--didn't seem to pay off, either. In fact, if you look at the polls leading up to election day, Doyle was having a hard time sealing the deal and couldn't get anything close to his actual vote total--until the last week. The last week, the issue became stem cells; the issue became Michael J. Fox. (I think the rape victim ad also helped crystalize it for Doyle's most key constituency, women.) Such clarity at the end attracted voters who, for 18 months of polling, weren't fully sold on Doyle.

So there it is: Find a clear and distinct theme, hammer it home, and don't muck it up.

Midday update: Seth makes this point much more eloquently today. By contrast, Jessica McBride, the professional pundit (!), sounds barely coherent trying to answer the question of why Green lost but Van Hollen won.

--

Two: There are, apparently, a lot of socially conservative Democrats in this state, Reagan Democrats, if you will. More than a quarter--getting near a third, maybe--of Doyle's vote total must have come from people who voted for the amendment. (A corollary: embryonic stem cell research doesn't seem to qualify as a social issue here.) I think that means a strong social agenda, including a repeal of our abortion ban in anticipation of a Roe challenge (as reader PK recommends in comments to this post), may not be the best way to start under new Dem managment in the legislature. Instead, I think the newly-empowered Wisconsin Dems need to look to economic issues--health care (which could have pro-woman positions, like eliminating the pharmacist "conscience" clause, for example), campaign finance reform, school funding reform, making UW more affordable again, and so on--as the way to begin the next legislature.

I'm sure that's not the end of what I think we should be taking away from this week. But it's what I've got for you this morning. The more I watch campaigns, and the people in them, the more I realize I should probably not tell people how to run their campaigns. Would the deicisions I would have made led to any different outcome? I don't know. But these two messages seem to stand out to me more than any others right now.

Myriad Random Thoughts 4: Things I have learned

-> An election is the best way to spike my blog traffic. Can we do this every week?

-> Xoff has a life outside of the internet. If he's retired from blogging, I think I move up to assistant deputy vice president of Wisconsin Liberal blogging. If I could just knock off Soglin somehow . . . Seriously, thanks for the last two years, Bill. Stay in touch.

-> Blogs don't vote. (Actually, this election was more a confirmation of this; it's not something I just learned.) I've written before that some of my bloggy colleagues give themselves too much credit for things. But in everything from Joe Lieberman's win yesterday in Connecticut to Green's surpisingly large loss here in Wisconsin, we see the blogs repudiated. Wisconsin bloggers from both sides opposed the amendment (it was certainly not unanimous on the right), and it passed by 20 points. What wins is money and ground game (and, apparently, some latent bigotry), not blogs. Will that change by 2008? Doubt it. I may have more to say on this Saturday at Download 2006.

And thus ends the series of Myriad Random Thoughts. I'll see you at Drinking Liberally tonight, and then maybe I'll take a brief break. But this McIlheran column needs fisking. Brawler? Robola? You guys got it?

Myriad Random Thoughts 3: Things that befuddle me

-> Conseratives' spinning that the only reason Democrats won yesterday was because we ran conservative candidates. I'll give them Jim Sullivan, locally, and Bob Casey, nationally. But everyone from Kathy Vinehout to Sherrod Brown and from Steve Kagen to John Tester are solidly liberal. How do I know this? Because the very same conservatives were saying on Monday that all of these very same far-lefty moonbat candidates would go down in a leftward death spiral of socialistic fire. I don't care if their rhetoric is over top; I would like a little consistency, though.

-> Split-ticket voters. If only 5% of those who voted for Doyle and against Falk had voted Dem for both offices, we'd be talking about Attorney General Kathleen Falk right now, not Van Hollen. Looks like Kohl won Sensenbrenner's district again. Stuff like that.

-> Complaints that Green lost because he couldn't use $467k that the State Elections Board (and an appeals court and the state Supreme Court) said were off-limits. I ran some numbers, and if the reports of $20 million being spent by the campaigns are true, then each vote cost about $8.50. Green could have bought another 55 thousand voters or so with that extra cash, which still would have left him between 50 and 100 thousand votes short of a plurality.

Myriad Random Thoughts 2: Things I am happy about

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

-> Turnout! 2002's turnout was ony 1.8 million. Yesterday, we topped 2.3 million--an increase of more than half a million voters. In fact, more people voted for Mark Green in 2006 than voted for Jim Doyle in 2002. (It still pales compared to 2004's 3 million, but, you know, mid-terms.)

-> Health care referenda making a difference. One Wisconsin has remained relatively invisible in the Cheddarsphere, and yet in the real world, they made a huge difference. Cory Liebman tells us,

The high cost of health care was on the minds of many voters as they went to the polls yesterday. [. . .] It appears that this may have led to the Democratic takeover of the state Senate.

Republican State Senators Dave Zien and Ron Brown both lost in yesterday's election. Racine County Executive Bill McReynolds also lost his bid for the state senate. As a study from the Institute for One Wisconsin showed, all of these areas lead the state in paying high health care costs. All of these areas also had grassroots efforts that put health care on Tuesday's ballot. Those advisory referendums calling for health care reform won by overwhelming margins. Eau Claire County passed the health care reform referendum by 83%, La Crosse County by 84%, and the City of Racine by 83%. It seems that this very clear call for health care reform played a major role in flipping the state Senate in this election.

There was even a huge upset in a state Assembly race in Eau Claire. Democratic candidate Jeff Smith focused on health care reform and narrowly beat incumbent state Rep. Rob Kreibich.

The people of Wisconsin have spoken on health care reform and have entrusted the Democratic Party with the state Senate. They should make reforming health care one of the first items on their agenda to honor the wishes of the people that elected them.

-> The South Dakota abortion ban and the Arizona gay marriage ban both lost at the polls yesterday. I was hoping Wisconsin would be the first state to turn back the tide of anti-gay sentiment, but at least one state did this cycle. Kudos to everyone in SD and AZ who worked on the side of goodness and light this year.

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.

Prediction vs. Reality: How did I do?

In short, I deserve a lollipop. Let's check the scorecard:

Prediction: The Democrats will take the House, picking up 20-23 seats.
Reality: Looks like I was, indeed, low on that number. But still, plus one point for me, for calling the switch.

Prediction: Democrats will not take the Senate, though they will win four or five seats. No Dem incumbents will lose, except Joe Lieberman.
Reality: Lieberman won. And Dems took the Senate (at least based on who's made victory speeches so far). Minus two points (though I feel okay about missing this.)

Prediction: Jim Doyle will be re-elected.
Reality: Jim Doyle won easily. Plus one point.

Prediction: The Falk-Van Hollen race is too close to call, almost. I think Falk will win a squeaker
Reality: Plus one point for the close thing, but minus one for Van Hollen's slim margin of victory. Let's watch today for news of recounts and challenges.

Prediction: Both statewide ballot measures will probably pass.
Reality: Both passed. Two disappointed points.

Prediction: Republicans will keep the state Assembly.
Reality: They did, but lost some key races. Point.

Prediction: Democrats will take the state Senate. Reynolds and Zien definitely lose.
Reality: And how! Point, plus a bonus point for naming names.

Prediction: Herb Kohl will win. By at least 20%.
Reality: Wouldn't you know it. Point!

Prediction: The House races: Paul Ryan, Tammy Baldwin, Ron Kind
Gwen Moore, Jim Sensenbrenner (though with a much smaller margin than in 2004), Tom Petri, Dave Obey, Steve Kagen (by five or six points)
Reality: I didn't beat the spread I set for Kagen, and I was only partially right on Sensenbrenner, depending on how you define "much." So I'll say plus just five points, minus one.

Prediction: David Clarke will be re-elected.
Reality: He was. Point.

Prediction: John Chisholm will win the Milwaukee County DA's race.
Reality: He did. Point.

Prediction: All the various Iraq war bring-'em-home referrenda will pass.
Reality: They did. Just one point--I won't count them all individually.

And the total is . . . seventeen positive points, four negative points, for a net positive of thirteen, or 81%. I am not going to go through everybody else's predictions yet, but I think that's about as well as anyone did. Yay, me!

Dems take the State Senate. First on the agenda?

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was going to bed. But this is the first election night in a long time that I'm enjoying. I have to savor this.

With the Senate going in at 19 Republicans to 14 Democrats, we needed three seats to win control. I believe we've got four, as I write this. UPDATE: We do have four. We won all four races, though Zien-Kreitlow was tight and will undoubtedly be recounted.

SD-05: Jim Sullivan has handily defeated incumbent loon Tom Reynolds. With 100% reporting, Sullivan has 36,144 votes (52%) to Reynolds's 33,691 (48%). There's no checkmark yet, but I can't imagine this won't get called for Jim.

SD-21: John Lehman spanked Bill McReynolds in a race for an open seat. With 100% in, it's Lehman 31,736 (53%) and McReynolds 28,069 (47%)

SD-23: This is the one I don't know yet. Pat Kreitlow is trying to unseat another incumbent loon, Dave Zien. With 81% Kreitlow's at 30,119 (51%) and Zien has just 29,063 (49%). Watch it here.

SD-31: Farmer Kathleen Vinehout is also out to beat an incumbent Republican, Ron Brown. WisPolitics.com has called this race, but other outlets haven't. I trust that the result will hold, though. With 90% reporting, Vinehout has 28,250 (51%) and Brown has 26,884 (49%). Watch it here.

If Kreitlow holds on, we'll have an 18-15 advantage--we'll have flipped that Senate right around.

Now the question is, with a D Senate and a D Gov, we can set the agenda. What's first? Campaign finance reform? Re-doing the school funding formula? Civil unions, as I jokingly mentioned below? Gimme your suggestions in the comments. I know many of the powers-that-be check in on this blog, so they'll be interested in your ideas, too.

AP Calls it for Doyle

AP I have confidence in. If it's only Owen in the next segment, call 911--he probably strangled me in frustration.

Congrats, gov!

I Voted For Non-Democrats

Three of them: Rae Vogeler, because I want a third party on the State Elections Board; Don Holt, because I thought he'd be a better sheriff; and Winston Sephus, because he carves a mean pumpkin. Looks like Winston is picking up a few thousand other votes, too.

Photo by Scott Feldstein.

Ballot Questions

They seem to be going "Yes." The tricky part will be the margin.

Election Day Open Thread

VOTE TODAY! Even if someone else thinks you're stupid, vote.

Don't know where to vote? The MJS has a handy guide.

Don't know whom to vote for? A recap of my recommendations and endorsements: Jim Doyle for governor; Kathleen Falk for attorney general; Don Holt for Milwaukee County Sheriff; "no" on both the death penalty referendum and the anti-gay-marriage-and-civil-unions-and-other-substantially-similiar-status amendment; Steve Kagen in the WI-08; Bryan Kennedy in the WI-05; and Democrats generally, particularly Jim Sullivan and John Lehman in some of the relatively local races.

Use the comments thread here to talk about your voting experience, if you like. If you are concerned about election integrity, remember these phone numbers: 1-866-OUR-VOTE logs incidents here, and they can put you in touch with local people who can help you. Watch the Vote wants to know about problems with electronic voting machines (of which there are few in Wisconsin) at 1-888-SAV-VOTE. The DNC has volunteers answering 1-888-DEM VOTE and checking in here.

Tonight, you can watch yours truly during TMJ4's election coverage starting after 9 pm. Or you can go out and party:

• Conservatives round these parts will be gathering for a special election-night Drinking Right.
  
• The party with the sure winners is the joint Herb Kohl-Gwen Moore party at Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery (ironically, on the Milwaukee River, not on the lake) at 1872 N. Commerce St, starting at 7.
  
• Te Milwaukee County Dems, including Jim Sullivan and Dave Cullen, will be shindigging at the Friday's Front Row at Miller Park, with doors opening at 8.
  
• Bryan Kennedy's party is at the Fox-Bay Cinema Grill, 334 E. Silver Spring Dr. in Whitefish Bay, also starting at 8.

And don't forget to compare reality to what the bloggers are predicting. This is an open thread.

The Most Encouraging Result, Other Ruminations, and the Contest Winner

• This is the result that has me feeling somewhat optimistic:

  357,182 (or so) people voted in the Democratic primary for Attorney General
  238,606 (or so) people voted in the Republican primary for Attorney General

  That's a 20% Dem advantage in turnout statewide. There are a number of things that could explain this away, and I bet Republicans will try them. The most obvious is perhaps that there were more contested Dem primaries for Congress for example, including the Kohl-Masel race. But I don't think Republicans were seriously worried about Ben beating Herb enough to forgo the chance to vote for Bucher or Van Hollen. There was also the contested Secretary of State race on our side, but that seems only about as likely to drive up Dem turnout as the contested Lt. Governor race on their side, maybe less so. You can't even blame Milwaukee County Republicans crossing over to re-nominate David Clarke for Sheriff; Clarke won by around 3,000, not anywhere near enough to account for either Bucher's embarrassingly lopsided loss or the greater Dem turnout statewide.
  
  Jef Hall also noticed, and seems more optimistic about "the coming Democratic landslide."
  
  
• On the downside, the results in the 8th CD (congrats to Kagen--I needed at least one endorsee to win) were disappointing, and show how much work it's going to take to win that race. 56,000 Republicans turned out for what no one really thought of as a contest between Gard and McCormick. Only 52,000 people turned out in the highly contested Democratic primary. That's a 4% Republican advantage. While some McCormick voters may well bolt to Kagen, the good Doctor is going to have to capture a significant majority of that elusive non-primary-but-general-election voter.
  
  On the other hand, only 12,000 people voted for Dottie LeClair in that district in the 2004 Democratic Primary (52,000 for Mark Green), so the contested primaries did significantly increase turnout, especially on our side. Let's hope that energy and momentum continues!
  
  
• My scorecard for predictions was a meagre 7-4. If I'd gone ahead and listed Vinehout and Koehn (two races I was pretty sure of, but just didn't put on paper), my percentage would have been significantly better. And though I called Falk-Lautenschlager right, I did it for the wrong reasons. As it turns out, Dane County came through for Peg, not Falk.
  
  I haven't taken the time to compare myself to everyone else--and, with a 6:45 AM meeting before school today, I won't--but at least I know I beat Bob Dohnal, who went 0-1. Whew.
  
  
• WI-01 CD voters have once again sent Jeff Thomas to run against Paul Ryan. What's the definition of insanity again?
  
  
• I may well endorse Don Holt for Sheriff. In an election between a Republican and a Republican, I'd rather support the honest one. I also suspect that Holt will pick up many of Bobot's law-enforcement endorsements. And he has to be an improvement over the man who was held in contempt of court for literally hundreds of violations of rules and regulations at the County Jail.
  
  
• The contest winner is D.B.:

  Nowhere is where the formerly respected journalist ended up in Milwaukee in November, after the elections were over. The death of the campaign season spread its pallor over the city where once she had worked, and which she now declaimed was in crisis. Corpses of newspapers that had held her front-page byline fluttered around, given bursts of life in the squalor that only she saw on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  Technically, he was the only entrant, since Diamond Dave's disgusting plagiarism of Bill O'Reilly was disqualified. D.B.'s prize is a free drink from me at tonight's one-year anniversary of Drinking Liberally! And, since I'm not sure who he/ she is, if you show up and claim to be him/ her, you can get that drink for yourself.
  
  Plus, I think there will be cake. A new contest will be announced later.

Brief Election Wrap

Well, the folkbum endorsement continues to be the kiss of death, as JD Watts lost to Jane Carroll 54-46%. Future candidates should heed that warning. It's a good thing I didn't come out and endorse Larry Nelson (Xoff rubs that in).

The bigger election news, of course, is what happened on the various Iraq War referrenda. As you probably know by now, three-quarters of the communities voting on the idea of bringing the troops home now or on an accelerated timeline voted yes. In many communities, it was close, of course; but the wide sampling of places around the state where voters said it was time to end the president's folly and get our soldiers home before more die needlessly suggests that the sentiment is generally strong across the state. I wrote last last week (twice) about how the votes might get spun by the other side. We'll have to keep an eye on the commentary today to see how accurate those predictions were.