Post number 3, and the same caveat as the first two - do feel free to write about anything you want to know from the election in the comments. And with that out of the way, onto the news. You know the bad guy you thought was dead, who comes back at the end of the movie for one final scene-stealing jumpy moment, before being quickly dispatched by our hero? That's John Kerry. The bad guy, not the hero. And it's been Kerry's 24 hours in DC. The post put up earlier gets the most important bits of it. I wrote a Guardian piece also, trying to give a positive spin on event:
Yesterday was, in fact, a tremendous day for the Democratic Party. John Forbes Kerry, uniquely among his fellow Americans, genuinely appeared to believe that the next President of the United States could be John Forbes Kerry. Much in the same way as Nixon ran against Kennedy, was defeated, and came back, Kerry thought his phoenix could rise again. That is now not going to happen. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. John Kerry 2008. RIP.
This is the major takeaway. John Kerry yesterday became the second Presidential candidate to fall in this election, the first being Virgian Senator and Bush-lite impersonator George Allen. (The big winners are Mitt Romney and Barak Obama. More of that another time.) It now feels as if the news cycle has moved on. Kerry showed some rare smarts by going into hiding, while the Dems tried to counterpunch (not very succesfully) by attacking the President on Iraq. There has been some amusing comeback - this from radioshow host Don Imus and this picture, supposedly from Iraq - have been among the Kerry related stuff pinging around DC today. But in the end, there wasn't much of a story beyond an old Kerry-in-a-dunce-hat line. We move on.
Yet, in moving on, we still lost a day in the cycle. And that day hid two important stories squashed by Kerry and his mouth. First, and this is a big loss, we have the extraordinary fact that the American army just abandonned a soldier kidnapped by Shiite Cleric Moktada al-Sadr's militia. I'm not qualified to judge the military wisdom of this. But I am qualified to say that the Democrats should be all over this like a rash. This is (was?) a stop-the-press, storm-the-studios open goal chance to get the news back onto Iraq. Because if the news stays on Iraq, we win. As this morning's Note put it: Democrats must be about "making the end-game wide and narrow messages Bush, Iraq, Bush, Iraq, change, Bush, Iraq." (BTW - if you are a yank political junkie, the Note is as close to crack as it gets. Sign up here.)
The second story is, for me, even more exciting. Without anyone noticing it, the Senate is now in play. I repeat: since the weekend, the Senate is in play. I've just finished Progress Director Robert Phillpot's measured and reasonable intro to the campaign. It's good stuff, but it (perhaps wisely) undersells the possibilities of Democratic victory. There is almost no chance of 1994-style landslide for various reasons I can go into if people want. But in the last 3 days there have been 3 separate polls showing Jim Webb ahead in Virginia. This is tremendous news for the Democrats. It's also exciting news for those of us who live close to Virginia, and have been watching this race more closely than any other. Jim Webb is a good man who has run an unfussy campaign. He has given his idiot opponent enough rope to hang himself one malapropism at a time, while never sticking in the knife. And his policy background would be an asset for the Democrats for a generation. I can't vote for obvious reasons, but I really, really want to vote from Jim Webb.
Anyway, if I read the polls correctly, it is now just possible that the Democrats could win all of their competitive Senate races bar Tennessee. Doing this would take back the Senate. Is it likely? No, I think probably not. We have the turnout issue. We have the GOP's kick-ass GOTV issue. We have the Republican financial advantage issue. And we have the possibility of some other big news event coming Kerry-style and ruining another few days of the news cycle. But we must remember that if these races go into election roughly even, theory and history expect late-breaking and independent voters to go 2:1 for change. And that means voting for the Democrats. So don't hold your breath, but next Tuesday might be a good night all round. James.
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