Medina County Dem News

(Medina County Democratic Action Committee)

Reminder: Governor Ted Strickland Event December 8, 2007

Governor Ted Strickland will be the guest at a special holiday brunch sponsored by the Medina County Democratic Party on December 8, 2007, at the Rustic Hills Country Club in Medina. Tickets are $50.00 per person. Reservation deadline is December 4th. Send checks to Medina County Democratic Party, P.O. Box 583, Medina, OH 44258.

See Pics of the Medina County Democratic Brunch

Click here: http://mcdac.blogspot.com/2007/12/scenes-from-medina-county-democratic.html

Democrat Wins Coin Toss for Seville, Ohio Council Seat

James Lovejoy, a Democrat, won a coin toss between him and Leslie Miller,a Republican, to settle an election for Seville Village Council in southern Medina County. Lovejoy and Miller were two of three candidates running for two seats on the Council. After the unofficial count on election night Lovejoy was leading by one vote. After the official count, though, which included absentee ballots, they were tied. Ohio law prescribes that after the official count, if there is a tie, that it be settled by the flip of a coin.

Tom Wolfe, the Chair of the Board of Elections for Medina County, conducted the coin flip at the Board offices in Medina, Ohio. Since Lovejoy was out of state on a vacation, Miller got to call heads or tails. She called heads, but it came up tails, and so Lovejoy won the election. Wolfe, who is retiring after serving on the Board of Elections for 35 years, said this is the first time a coin flip has been used to settle an election since he has been a Board member. You can read more about the coin toss in the Medina County Gazette story of November 29, 2007.

Did Democratic Take Over of Congress Stop War with Iran?

The McClatchy News Service has an article out dated December 3, 2007, about the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran's nuclear ambitions. In the article the following quote appears:

The Democratic-controlled Congress ordered the production of the NIE amid concerns that the Bush administration was hyping the threat as it had in Iraq.
The report was to have been completed last spring, but senior intelligence officials had said they wouldn't declassify the key judgments. Administration officials held internal discussions about whether or not to release unclassified portions of the intelligence estimate, said a State Department official familiar with the issue.

In the end, said the official, it was decided that if the unclassified summary wasn't made public, that would increase the chances that classified parts of the document might leak. If that were to happen, the administration would be accused of suppressing intelligence that found that Iran's nuclear program wasn't as immediate a threat as the White House had suggested.

Take away the Democratic take over of Congress and chances are that the NIE about Iran's nuclear ambitions doesn't get produced. If the NIE doesn't get produced, then Bubble-Boy and his band of crazed neo-cons never have to confront the issue of whether to release the report to avoid it being leaked to the media. If the NIE report doesn't get made public, Bush and Cheney can continue to go around and make statements about how, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, WWIII is just around the corner.

Absent the NIE release this past week, and the conditions for a war with Iran exist, just like the conditions in 2002-2003 that gave us the war in Iraq. None of the above happens without a Democratic take over of Congress.

Okay, Southern Republicans are Mostly Racists

One of the things that most of the national political media won't talk about is the fact that the Republican take-over of the South has been motivated by racism. The national political media likes to talk about how the South is culturally conservative and believes in a strong military. According to the national news media, the South going Republican is the result of these factors and not racism.

Well, here is what this analysis overlooks. The South didn't start going Republican until after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Then, it started voting Republican big time. Did Carter and Clinton make inroads into the Republican domination of the Old Confederacy? Sure they did, but even now the base of the Republican Party in the South is made up of white voters. In fact, as Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent column, white voters in the South voted 62% for Republicans in the 2006 mid-term elections.

Why are we talking about the South, Republicans, and racism? Well, this article prompted this entry. As this blogger, a lawyer from New Orleans, points out the Department of Housing and Urban Development is planning to destroy thousands of low income housing units and replace them with nothing. Here is a quote from the blog entry:

Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units – an 82% reduction. HUD is in charge and a one person HUD employee makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago – all decisions are made in Washington DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax credit units – which will still result in a net loss of 2700 apartments to New Orleans – the remaining new apartments will cost an average cost of over $400,000 each!

Now, why would HUD do this? Well, the author goes on to explain how racial politics, Southern Republican style, is driving this decision:

Republican interests are clearly not served by the return of all African-Americans to New Orleans. Louisiana was described before Katrina as a "pink state" – one that went Democratic some times and Republican others. The tipping point for Louisiana Democrats was the deeply Democratic African American city of New Orleans. Immediately after the hurricanes struck, one political analyst said "the Democratic margin of victory in Louisiana is sleeping in the Astrodome in Houston." Tiny turnout by African-American voters in New Orleans in recent elections has led white Republican interests to calculate immediate new political gains. Demolition of thousands of low-income African American occupied apartments only helps that political and racial dynamic.

And who is blocking Democratic sponsored legislation that would require that HUD replace each housing unit destroyed with a new public housing unit? Why, none other than Senator David Vitter, you know, the guy who hangs out with prostitutes.

Looking for Substance? How About a Two-Hour NPR Debate?

If you are looking for more substance in political coverage, NPR has the show for you. It sponsored a two-hour debate today in Iowa among Democratic candidates. The format covered just three topics: Iran, China, and immigration. The whole debate can be downloaded from the NPR website. You can also read a story about the debate. The page on the NPR site with both the article and the downloadable mp3 file is found here.

Huckabee Polls Best Against Clinton in Ohio Poll by Survey USA

Talking Points Memo has two polls up on its website. One is a national polls that shows Huckabee running second among Republicans for the nomination. The other one shows that Huckabee is the Republican polling best against Clinton in a Survey USA Poll. These polls are very fascinating.

One reason why Huckabee may have moved up is that his campaign is tapping into a circle of evangelical ministers that is helping his spread his message. Giuliani doesn't play well to evangelical Christians because of his support for gay rights, abortion, and his rather messy life with his three marriages. Romney doesn't play well because a lot of evangelical Christians don't regard Mormonism as a religion but regard it as a cult. Interestingly Huckabee is not stating his views on Mormonism being a cult.

That is a very smart political move. By not getting involved he doesn't get criticized for being intolerant of others' religion. Yet, since he is an ordained Baptist minister, he also doesn't risk offending conservative Christians as he might if he said that he thought it wasn't a cult.

In a earlier post, we wrote that Huckabee is the worst Republican nominee from a Democratic perspective, especially if Clinton is the nominee. He would bring out conservative evangelical Christians without the down side of either Giuliani or Romney. Warning to fellow Democrats: Keep your eyes on "County Boy Huck".

Will Hillary Clinton be a Drag on Local Dems?

A reader sent us an article that appeared in the New York Times dated December 4, 2007, about how certain freshman House Democrats are concerned that a Clinton nomination will hurt them in their re-election races. Although the article's headline was entitled "Vulnerable Democrats See Fate Tied to Clinton's", the writer only mentioned five Democrats by name. They were Nancy Boyda of Kansas, Zack Space of Ohio, Nick Lampson of Texas, Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana.

The article focuses on Nancy Boyda of Kansas and what she is doing to make sure she distances herself from Clinton. The article has a great quote by Boyda:

Ms. Boyda, who is trying to establish a political identity as independent, said her intent was simply to show the voters of both parties in her district that she was delivering for them. Of the presidential race, she said: "It is something I have no control over, quite honestly. They will demonize any Democrat who becomes the nominee. I just put my head down and work."

The Clinton campaign, of course, downplays this concern. The article quotes Harold Wolfson, Communications Director of the Clinton campaign, in the following excerpt:

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has long sought to parry concerns within her party that she is too polarizing, dispute the idea that she could hinder Democratic candidates in Republican districts. They note that New York Democrats gained a net of four House seats in her two Senate elections and that she campaigned actively for House contenders in both.

"Anyone can speculate, but there are a set of facts that tell a very different story," said Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign. "The actual evidence makes clear that she is an asset in tough districts."

The problem may not be in 2008, but in 2010. In 1992, Bill Clinton won election but didn't get over 50% of the popular vote. The Republicans, led by Bob Dole in the Senate, declared on election night that since he didn't win over 50% of the vote, his election wasn't really legitimate. They then proceeded to block his most popular intiative on health care. The result was that the Democatic turn-out fell in 1994, and the Republicans took control of Congress for 12 years.

The same thing could happen in 2008 and 2010. Clinton could win in 2008 and the Democrats could retain and even increase their majority in Congress. If, however, there wasn't 60 reliable votes in the Senate, the Republicans could block legislation. The result might be a depressed turn-out in 2010 and a Republican come-back in the mid-term elections.

Right now the Republican minority in the Senate is set on a course to force a record number of cloture votes, votes that are designed to end filibusters. When Democrats were in the Senate minority from 2003-2007, the highest number of cloture votes was 58 in both the 1998 and 2000 terms of Congress. At the rate cloture votes were being scheduled in July of 2007, the number for the 2006 term of Congress is projected to be 153.

There is one big difference,though, between then and now and that is that the political make-over of the former states of the Old Confederacy has pretty much been completed at the Federal level. It will be hard for the Republicans to find enough Congressional seats to take back the House in 2010 if they haven't done so in 2008.

Another possibility is that the Democrats could, if they hold on to their Senate majority, force a vote to amend the Senate rules and do away with the filibuster. The Republicans threatened to do so after the 2002 mid-term elections to get more of Bush's radical, right-wing judicial nominees confirmed. The argument was that it would only take 50 votes to change the Senate rules because the Vice-President could break a tie.

Whatever happens, Representative Boyda is correct. Down-ticket Democratic candidates can't control what Republicans do, they can only control what they do and how hard they work. No matter who is the nominee, Republicans will demonize any Democrat who gets the presidential nomination. They have to, because Bubble-Boy has failed to achieve anything other than get the U.S. involved in an endless war in the Middle-East, and run up huge budget deficits.

National Debt has Exploded Under Bubble-Boy

The Associated Press has a story out reporting that the national debt of the United States is increasing by nearly a million dollars per minute or 1.4 billion dollars a day. When George W. Bush took office, the national debt stood at 5.7 trillion dollars. Now, after nearly seven years of his administration, six of which his party controlled both houses of Congress, the national debt stands at 9.13 trillion and is set to go over 10 trillion dollars by the time he leaves office.

The article points out that the consequences of this increase in the national debt:
But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will have added to our nation's debt problem to the tune of about 2.4 trillion dollars over the next decade, according to the article.

What the article doesn't stress is that Bush's reckless, radical tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 greatly contributed to this problem. Between 1993 and 2000, the years of the Clinton administration, the deficit between what the government spent and what it took in as revenue decreased. This followed the 1993 tax act of Clinton's which Republicans claimed would ruin the country's economic. In 2000, the goverment actually ran a surplus of 86.4 billion dollars.

Now, it is true that in 2001 that surplus had turned into a 32.4 billion dollars because the economy had entered a mild recession. But that relatively small deficit exploded after Bush's tax cuts went into effect. Here are the numbers for the annual defict,in billions of dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office:

2001-32.4
2002-317.4
2003-538.4
2004-568
2005-493.6
2006-434.5

As can be seen, Bush's tax cuts of both 2001 and 2003 were followed by massive increases in the deficit. Although Bush and his Republican allies tout the recent decline in the deficit as "proof" of the effectiveness of his tax cuts, 2006's deficit of 434.5 billion dollars is higher than any annual deficit under Reagan, his father, or Clinton. Boy, that Harvard MBA that his supporter bragged about in 2000 has really helped our nation.

Republican Scorpions in a Bottle

Ronald Brownstein, the political writer for the L.A. Times who also writes for MSNBC, has a story up on the MSNBC website dated November 30, 2007 in which he compares the Republican presidential candidates to scorpions in a bottle. This is a quote from the article:

Why is the conflict so much more dispersed in the Republican race? The biggest reason is that every other Democratic candidate understands that he cannot win the nomination without getting past Clinton. None of them have an incentive to challenge each other unless they can weaken her first.

No Republican, by contrast, has emerged as a clear national front-runner comparable to Clinton. Five candidates (Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, and Sen. John McCain) have a chance to win at least one of the three key early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Personally, we at the MCDAC love bitter Republican primaries so much, we want there to be 50 of them, but if we can't have 50, we will settle for 10 or so. As James Carville says, "when your enemy is drowning, throw him an anvil."

Frank Rich Column in NYT on Obama

Frank Rich has a very interesting column in the New York Times Sunday, December 2, 2007 edition about Barack Obama's chances to become the Democratic nominee. In the article, Rich points out how the "Beltway media" in D.C. has been mostly wrong about the 2008 campaign. Here is a quote from Rich:

Election year isn't even here yet, and already most of the first drafts penned by the political press have proved instantly disposable, from Fred Thompson's irresistible Reaganesque star power to the Family Research Council's ability to abort the rise of Rudy Giuliani. The biggest Beltway myth so far — that the Clinton campaign is "textbook perfect" and "tightly disciplined" — was surely buried for good by the undisciplined former president's seemingly panic-driven blunder last week.

Rich is making a very good point. Most of the time the political press does get it wrong. The political press thinks about politics all the time. It's their job. They also have to produce stories all the time. Again, because it's their job. When they produce these stories, however, they are mostly trying to predict the behavior of voters who don't have to make a decision for some time. Consequently, they have a good chance of making bad predications.

The intangible thing that Obama may have going for him is the fact that most Americans are tired of the type of politics they have gotten since the cultural wars of the 1960s. The 60s produced some very bitter struggles over civil rights, the Vietnam War, the role of women in our society, and laid the path for the battle over gay rights.

Consequently, the politics of baby boomers, who grew up in that decade, have been shaped by those same bitter struggles. We have seen that in the troubles of the first two baby-boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush. Each of them has had their own supporters and opponents who seemed determined to fight to the death. Such struggles take a toll on voters' psyches. Voters may be looking for a way to end these battles.

Barack Obama, being the youngest of all the presidential contenders in both parties, is positioned to take advantage of such sentiment, if it exists. If he was to win the Democratic nomination and then go on to win the presidency, the fact that he was born in the 1960s and therefore not shaped by its bitterness would be a big reason why.

So What Happened to "We Are A Nation Of Laws, Not Men"?

One of proudest boasts of Americans in the past has been that "We are a nation of laws, not men." What Americans meant by that was that our leaders were expected to follow the law, even if they didn't agree with law. While that idea is a little too quaint for our current President. Our current President believes that he can sign Congressional Acts into law, but then issue so-called "signing statements" that purport to tell the Congress what laws he will obey and what laws he won't obey.

The Boston Globe has a reporter, Charlie Savage, who won a Pulitzer prize for is stories on Bush's signing statements. He had another story up on its website dated December 1, 2007, about Bush's signing statement on recent pieces of legislation. Once again our current President believes that he doesn't have to follow laws that he determines are inconsistent with his Constitutional authority.

Now this is where Bush's failure to get into the University of Texas Law School becomes a problem. If he had any inkling of the actual text of the United States Constitution he would realize that Article II of the Constitution contemplates a executive branch that is subordinate to the legislative branch. That's why Article I deals with the powers of Congress and Article II deals with the power of the President. Too bad that Bush does't really understand the Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect.

Karl Rove Manipulates History with help from the Washington Post

Karl Rove is spreading the lie that the Bush Administration wanted to wait for the resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq in 2002. He started spreading this lie on the Charlie Rose show on public television and continued pushing it in another interview. This is from a story that appeared in the Washington Post:

Rove repeated his assertion in an interview yesterday, pointing to comments made by Democrats in 2002 that they wanted a vote. "For Democrats to suggest they didn't want to vote on it before the election is disingenuous," he said. The vote schedule, he said, was set by lawmakers. "We don't control that."

What Rove overlooks, though, is the fact that his former boss, you know "The Decider" was pushing for a vote before the 2002 midterm elections. This is from the same story:

News accounts and transcripts at the time show Bush arguing against delay. Asked on Sept. 13, 2002, about Democrats who did not want to vote until after the U.N. Security Council acted, Bush said, "If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, 'Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.' "

Then there is this beauty, also from the same story:

Two days later, Bush sent a proposed resolution to Capitol Hill, saying: "We've got to move before the elections."

Notwithstanding the above facts, though, this is how the Post characterized Rove's remarks in the story's first paragraph:

Former White House aide Karl Rove said yesterday it was Congress, not President Bush, who wanted to rush a vote on the looming war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a version of events disputed by leading congressional Democrats and even some former Rove colleagues.

See, for the writer of this article, Rove wasn't lying, it's just that his version of events is "disputed." It is this kind of supposed objectivity that is killing newspapers' reputations.

If someone says something that isn't true, that is demonstratively untrue, then reporters can point that out in their stories. Instead, however, perhaps because the reporter likes Rove, or perhaps because the Post is afraid of Rove, or for whatever stupid reason, the article's author chooses to use the word "disputed."

Rove isn't stupid. He knows that Iraq will go down as one of the biggest diasters in American foreign policy history. It cost the GOP control of Congress in 2006, could cost it control of the White House in 2008, and he is doing his bit to rewrite history so it doesn't happen. And just like it did in 2002 when it pushed the story line of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, the Post is there to help him.

Newsletter prepared by:
Medina County Democratic Action Committee
Joyce Kimbler, Treasurer
P.O. Box 1213
Medina, OH 44258
MCDAC Website