Democrats Can't Write Off the Last Senate Race

Democrats Can’t Write Off the Last Senate Race. “Louisiana’s unusual electoral system features an ”all comers“ election on Nov. 8, followed by a runoff between the top two finishers, regardless of party. This year, there was no strong favorite for the open senate seat, and Republican State Treasurer John Kennedy and Democratic Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell wound up in the runoff, despite taking only 25 percent and 17 percent of the vote, respectively.”

National Democrats are apparently playing down the election, which has received practically no attention at all in the national media. I think that’s an odd choice.

This is true. I hadn’t heard of this until this morning.

For one thing, the seat is certainly extremely important just in terms of the Senate balance. Republicans have ambitious plans but a slim margin in the Senate to make them into reality. In the Senate, every seat is important: The chances of passing a major health-insurance-reform bill or anything else – or the ability to eliminate the filibuster – are much stronger with 52 seats (plus the tie-breaker vote from the vice-president) than with 51 seats. And that’s just for now, of course; the chosen candidate in Louisiana receives a six-year term, and we have no way of knowing whether we’ll have a one-seat margin in Senate control at some point within that timeline.

I remember reading a few years ago, probably in 2009–2011 when the Democrats had 51 Senators (or perhaps in 2007–09 when they had 49 with two caucusing independents), it meant that every vote counted and it empowered every Senator to demand stuff for their cooperation. Given how some Republicans feel about Trump, that would be a fun dynamic to watch for the next two years.

The Republican candidate, Kennedy, is a heavy favorite but:

On the other hand … Democrat John Bel Edwards easily won Louisiana’s gubernatorial election just last year. Runoff elections are typically very-low-turnout affairs, where strong passions on one side can produce unusual outcomes – and it’s certainly possible that a reaction for or against Trump’s election could produce an unexpected one-sided turnout surge.

The rest of the article makes the point that there is little downside in the Democrats making a hard push for this seat.

The Daily Show Last Night

I think Sam Bee and John Oliver are doing the best work with their weekly format. I also think Seth Meyers is the closest to a Jon Stewart replacement right now, his opening is really good. The Daily Show is still finding it’s way, but Trump has helped it.

First, Michelle Wolf tries to make sense of how Donald Trump won the presidential election, despite his offensive remarks about women.

Second Hasan Minhaj gives his shell-shocked take on Donald Trump’s presidential victory and shares his fears about the rising tide of Islamophobia in America. (3:55)

I didn’t know about Minhaj’s speech in July “at the 2016 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association Dinner, eviscerating Congress for its inaction on gun control.”

Here’s an interview with him, Hasan Minhaj, Of ‘Daily Show’ Fame, Tackles Islamophobia And Cost Of The American Dream.

President Elect Fuckface Von Clownstick

I do have to admit, his victory speech and statement after meeting with Obama were both good. But they are not enough to make up the deficit of his statements during the campaign.

I really want to see a breakdown of Trump voters:

• How many were the racists I kept seeing interviewed at his rallies
• How many just hated Hillary (for real or imaginary reasons)
• How many were voting to burn the whole thing down
• How many were just voting party line to save the Supreme Court
• How many really support his immigration, healthcare, trade, etc. "policies"

Nate Silver points out, we're still a really divided country. What A Difference 2 Percentage Points Makes.

Cabinet appointments will be really interesting. Scientific American reports Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition

Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign. Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump's transition plans for EPA, the sources said.

This seems pretty speculative but Polico writes Meet Trump's Cabinet-in-waiting. And Vox writes Meet President-elect Trump's economic advisers. Businessmen and just a few academics. Expect corporations to do well. The people and enviornment not so much. And I heard this morning that he's having problems finding National Security people willing to work for him. That's good, but I fear what he may select from.

The next leading indicator is if the Senate suspends the filibuster.

For what it's worth, Here is Donald Trump's plan for his first 100 days based on a speech he gave in October. But it's worth noting, Muslim ban statement disappears from Donald Trump's website. Still Dylan Matthews points out how Donald Trump's presidency is going to be a disaster for the white working class and other Vox articles point out what we can expect from President Trump, a nightmare for LGBTQ, disabled, climate change, and even gun makers.

Update: NPR has annotated his first 100 days plan, FACT CHECK: Donald Trump’s Plan For His First 100 Days As President

So Trump's agenda might not line up with establishment Republicans. E.g., infrastructure spending, Trump wants a lot more, Ryan fought Obama on raising it. A friend suggested that they'll finally have to work together to address the issues in serious ways. I don't see that as a given. So far, almost all of the establishment Republicans have fallen in line behind Trump. House members are up for re-election in just two years, and Trump just won, I don't see them fighting back so hard. Lee Drutman explores this with more expertise than I can muster, How will Donald Trump govern?

Salena Zito wrote in The Atlantic Donald Trump Makes His Case in Pittsburgh The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

Tons of navel gazing opinion pieces:

• David Remnick's An American Tragedy in The New Yorker got a lot of links. He did a great job capturing the view of everyone who was crushed Wed morning.
• Michael A. Cohen in the Boston Globe I was wrong about America
• If you're still in the anger phase, I highly recommend Catherine Rampell's Americans have voted for Trumpism. Let them have it.
• He's one from a fictional character that used to be on TV, A letter to America from Leslie Knope, regarding Donald Trump
• I don't know if Reggie Hamm is fictional or not but in PRESIDENT TRUMP tells everyone to calm down, who knows what will happen.
• Emma Grey Ellis writes in Wired The Alt-Right Will Fail. Even Under President Trump.
• Well here's some anecdotal evidence of Day 1 in Trump's America

So far this is my favorite opinion piece, I'm a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America

We, as a culture, have to stop infantilizing and deifying rural and white working-class Americans. Their experience is not more of a real American experience than anyone else's, but when we say that it is, we give people a pass from seeing and understanding more of their country. More Americans need to see more of the United States. They need to shake hands with a Muslim, or talk soccer with a middle aged lesbian, or attend a lecture by a female business executive.

We must start asking all Americans to be their better selves. We must all understand that America is a melting pot and that none of us has a more authentic American experience.

If we pin this election on coastal elites, we are excusing white working-class and rural Americans for voting for a man accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent apartments to black people. If we pin this election on coastal elites, we are excusing white working-class and rural Americans for voting for a man who called Mexicans rapists, drug dealers and criminals. If we pin this election on coastal elites, we are excusing white working-class and rural Americans for voting for a man who called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration.

I have friends and acquaintances who are Trump supporters. They genuinely do not understand today's shock, particularly from minorities. These Trump supporters do not understand that many minorities believe the people who voted for Trump endorse his racism and bigotry -- that those voters care more about sending a message to the political establishment than they do about the rights and welfare of human beings.

And, of course, people on the coasts could stand to meet more rural and exurban people, to understand why they are anxious about a changing world and less economic opportunity. But rural and exurban people need to see more of America. People do not understand the depths of how little rural America travels and sees other people and cultures.

I'm from the Midwest, and I love the Midwest, but it's not representative of modern America. We cannot fetishize it as “real" America. It's part of America -- a great, big, beautiful, messy republic -- but just a part.

Looking forward to 2020 when it's Trump vs Kayne.

This Had Better Go Well

Just saying…

Judge Orders RNC To Detail Voter Fraud Pacts With Trump Campaign

Politico reports Judge orders RNC to detail voter fraud pacts with Trump campaign.

A federal judge is ordering the Republican National Committee to detail any agreements it has with Donald Trump’s campaign to engage in ‘ballot security’ efforts in connection with next week’s election — something the national GOP has been banned from doing for decades without court approval.

The order also instructs the RNC to explain by 5 p.m. Tuesday what Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence were talking about in recent comments when they said that Trump’s campaign was working closely with the RNC to make sure there is no fraud at the polls.

Newark, N.J.-based U.S. District Court John Vazquez issued the order Monday after the Democratic National Committee went to court last week to allege that the RNC was violating consent decrees from the 1980s settling a case alleging that GOP pollwatchers sought to intimidate minority voters in a practice then known as ‘caging.’

Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

The New York Times puts things in perspective, Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees. I don't know why this is interactive instead of a single static graph. I wish this version showed the point, "103 million of them are children, noncitizens or ineligible felons, and they do not have the right to vote."

Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College

I came across this article from January Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College .

I knew their first two points, that voters in smaller states have more sway than those in larger states and that given safe states it turns the election into a contest among just 10 or so swing states. I also knew that someone could win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote, as Bush did when he beat Gore in 2000. I didn't realize it was so skewed:

"A presidential candidate could be elected with as a little as 21.8% of the popular vote by getting just over 50% of the votes in DC and each of 39 small states. This is true even when everyone votes and there are only two candidates. In other words, a candidate could lose with 78.2% of the popular vote by getting just under 50% in small states and 100% in large states."

That's crazy. This is not how we should pick a president. Their last point I didn't know at all, that electors are not bound to vote based on their states vote.

While electors are generally extremely loyal to the party they align with, they don’t have to vote the way the people of their state instructed them to. In other words, just because a candidate won the popular vote in your state does not mean that your electors have to cast a vote for said candidate themselves. Electors that vote against the will of the people are called “faithless electors.”

As fairvote.org explains, “Since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 157 faithless electors. 71 of these votes were changed because the original candidate died before the day on which the Electoral College cast its votes. Three of the votes were not cast at all as three electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The other 82 electoral votes were changed on the personal initiative of the elector.”

Twenty-nine states have legislation that penalizes faithless electors, though no faithless elector has ever been successfully prosecuted. 21 states do not mandate that an elector must vote for his or her party’s candidate.

While it doesn't come up often, it seems ridiculous that your vote isn't binding.

I found this while thinking about the Senate. I saw some article complain about not enough getting done when Obama had control of the both the House and the Senate and got annoyed because the person didn't realize or had forgotten that there was only a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for a couple of months and there was a lot of work to do already. And then I started to think of changing the filibuster rules because needing 60 votes to do anything is ridiculous. I thought that the better place for a conflict to be resolved was between Congress and the President rather than in one house. Perhaps we could tie changing the rules together. Make a filibuster rare (perhaps by returning to needing to actually stand and talk) and get rid of the electoral college and elect a president by popular vote. This way the Senate represents states, the House population by state and the president population nationwide. We still have to solve the gerrymandering problem in the House, but there are ways to do that.

Hillary Clinton Ahead Of Donald Trump, General-Election Map Shows

NPR has a nice write up of the current (but very early) state of the general election, Hillary Clinton Ahead Of Donald Trump, General-Election Map Shows

“Trumped" Starring Matthew Broderick & Nathan Lane

If the scammers in The Producers thought of electing Trump as their scheme...

Campaign finance reformers just won a massive victory at the Supreme Court

Vox wrote about this a few weeks ago and I'm surprised I didn't see more coverage of it. Campaign finance reformers just won a massive victory at the Supreme Court

"The US Supreme Court has ruled, 5-4, that states can prevent judicial election candidates from soliciting campaign contributions. The case revolved around a candidate for a judge seat in Florida who sent out a mass mailing asking for campaign contributions and solicited donations on her website. She was fined for violating the state's code of judicial conduct, so she sued, arguing that the restriction violated her right to free speech."

"The ruling's most surprising aspect is that Chief Justice Roberts has abandoned the conservatives on this issue, to side with the liberal supporters of limits on campaign fundraising. Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California Irvine, called the decision "a HUGE win for those who support reasonable limits on judicial elections," and said that Roberts's vote in particular was "surprising, welcome, and momentous.""

Maybe it's not so huge, but Sandra Day O'Connor has been arguing against elected judges and Roberts at least recognizes there's a distinction there.

Is Jeb Bush Too Liberal To Win The Republican Nomination In 2016?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight thinks Is Jeb Bush Too Liberal To Win The Republican Nomination In 2016?.

Harry Enten also of FiveThirtyEight is more blunt, Jeb Bush Might Have A Tea Party Problem In 2016. "What’s the tea party’s problem with Bush? He’s staked out relatively liberal positions on the Common Core education standards and immigration reform, which leaders of the tea party movement deeply despise. More generally, tea party voters prefer outsiders, and Bush is about as insider-y as it gets, with a brother and father having occupied the Oval Office."

Yet again, the GOP primaries are going to be interesting (and scary) to follow.

The Gerrymander Effect, Take 2

Kevin Drum on The Gerrymander Effect, Take 2 .

"So the 2010 redistricting really was unusually partisan. But the size of the Republican advantage turns out to be about six seats, very similar to what Eric McGhee came up with. The incumbency effect is about double that, for a total built-in Republican advantage of roughly 20 seats. Accounting for uncertainty, the Republican advantage is 10-30 seats, which is right in line with how much they outperformed the popular vote this year.

I'm interested in further research on this subject, but for now we've got two methodologies that produce pretty much the same result. The Republican gerrymander following the 2010 census has given them a permanent tailwind of about six seats, and they'll keep this for the rest of the decade. Combine that with the incumbency effect, and Democrats are unlikely to regain the majority unless they win about 52 percent of the popular vote."

Election Wrap-Up

WonkBlog has a ton of links.

Nate Silver's model did really well at predictions. Here's his recap, As Nation and Parties Change, Republicans Are at an Electoral College Disadvantage and Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race.

Here are a lot of nice Election Maps, for example:



The Post also has a really good article, The strategy that paved a winning path and I mostly agree with the Post's Lessons from the 2012 Election.

I'm not a fan of Tom Friedman, but I agree with this: "And that is why Obama’s victory is so devastating for the G.O.P. A country with nearly 8 percent unemployment preferred to give the president a second chance rather than Mitt Romney a first one. The Republican Party today needs to have a real heart-to-heart with itself. The G.O.P. has lost two presidential elections in a row because it forced its candidate to run so far to the loony right to get through the primaries, dominated by its ultraconservative base, that he could not get close enough back to the center to carry the national election. It is not enough for Republicans to tell their Democratic colleagues in private — as some do — “I wish I could help you, but our base is crazy.” They need to have their own reformation. The center-right has got to have it out with the far-right, or it is going to be a minority party for a long time."

There was an article before the election that said 15 Senate candidates, all Republicans, opposed allowing abortion in the case of rape. Later that list was shortened to 13 though I'm not sure who other than MacGovern was removed, but his position was debatable. Still here's the list, it turns out 12 of the 15 lost.

Won NE Deb Fischer
Won NV Dean Heller
Won TX Ted Cruz
Lost IN Richard Mourdock
Lost MI Pete Hoekstra
Lost MO Todd Akin
Lost MT Denny Rehberg
Lost ND Rick Berg
Lost NY Wendy Long
Lost OH Josh Mandel
Lost PA Tom Smith
Lost VA George Allen
Lost VT John MacGovern *
Lost WA Michael Baumgartner
Lost WV John Raese

Time goes Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win

"A large portion of the cash raised online came through an intricate, metric-driven e-mail campaign in which dozens of fundraising appeals went out each day. Here again, data collection and analysis were paramount. Many of the e-mails sent to supporters were just tests, with different subject lines, senders and messages. Inside the campaign, there were office pools on which combination would raise the most money, and often the pools got it wrong. Michelle Obama’s e-mails performed best in the spring, and at times, campaign boss Messina performed better than Vice President Joe Biden. In many cases, the top performers raised 10 times as much money for the campaign as the underperformers.

Chicago discovered that people who signed up for the campaign’s Quick Donate program, which allowed repeat giving online or via text message without having to re-enter credit-card information, gave about four times as much as other donors. So the program was expanded and incentivized. By the end of October, Quick Donate had become a big part of the campaign’s messaging to supporters, and first-time donors were offered a free bumper sticker to sign up."

“We ran the election 66,000 times every night,” said a senior official, describing the computer simulations the campaign ran to figure out Obama’s odds of winning each swing state. “And every morning we got the spit-out — here are your chances of winning these states. And that is how we allocated resources.”

On the Romney side, they had Project Orca. John Ekdahl wrote about The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA. Breitbart has more, Inside Orca: How The Romney Campaign Suppressed Its Own Vote. As does Dan Farber on CNet, Why Romney's Orca killer app beached on Election Day.

Red State says Campaign Sources: The Romney Campaign was a Consultant Con Job. "According to sources who worked closely with the program, the blame is at the feet of consultants. Specifically Targeted Victory, FLS Connect, and The Stevens and Schriefer Group. While the Romney campaign did work with other consultants, they were apparently not part of the problem. They say that the truth is the consultants essentially used the Romney campaign as a money making scheme, forcing employees to spin false data as truth in order to paint a rosy picture of a successful campaign as a form of job security."

This is why people distrust consultants.

The Republicans kept the House but the reason seems to be Gerrymandering. House Democrats got more votes than House Republicans. Yet Boehner says he’s got a mandate? "It can be a bit difficult to tally up the popular vote in House elections because you have to go ballot by ballot, and many incumbents run unopposed. But The Washington Post’s Dan Keating did the work and found that Democrats got 54,301,095 votes while Republicans got 53,822,442. That’s a close election — 48.8%-48.5% –but it’s still a popular vote win for the Democrats. Those precise numbers might change a bit as the count finalizes, but the tally isn’t likely to flip." Some of the details are here, How redistricting could keep the House red for a decade. Fortunately 2020 is a presidential election so I hope the Dems do better.

Dems Make Major State Gains. "Our pre-election post on the state legislative landscape mentioned as Democratic takeover goals both Houses in Maine and Minnesota; the House in Colorado and Oregon, and the Senate in New York. All were achieved (check out the National Conference of State Legislature’s nifty interactive results map for details). Democrats also appear to have picked up the gigantic New Hampshire House (a major source of so many of those “we won a million net seats!” claims from Republicans in 2010). And moreover, Republicans failed in their own goals of picking up the Colorado, Iowa and Washington Senates, or the New Mexico House (they did pick up one, and possibly two, chambers in Arkansas, and consolidated temporarily-lost control in Wisconsin and Alaska). Out here in California, it appears Democrats have finally achieved the impossible dream of super-majorities in both Houses of the legislature, breaking the veto power of the GOP over any legislation involving taxes."

Marijuana and same-sex marriage win big in ballot measures. "Given the relative stasis in the presidential and Congressional election results, perhaps the most exciting news last night was at the level of state ballot initiatives. They ran the gamut from allowing same-sex marriage to banning same-sex marriage, from raising taxes to banning tax increases, etc. Here’s what won, what lost and by how much."

I have to say, I've never seen the word Schadenfreude as many times as I have this week and I've been enjoying it myself, for example, Karl Rove Defends His $300 Million Disaster. Here are some of my favorite tweets from the night:

@billmaher: Tea Party has now cost the Republicans 5 senate seats. My next donation is going to them.
@WGladstone: Your party doesn't believe in evolution. RT @McCainBlogette Heartbroken. My party has to evolve or it's going to die.
@tomtomorrow: We're NOT a majority rightwing nut job country, motherfuckers.
@BorowitzReport: BREAKING: Man Who Told Half the Nation to Fuck Themselves Somehow Loses Election #election #election2012 #vote2012
@chrislhayes: Looks like Mitt Romney won't win any of his 4 home states :(

Why is Florida So Stupid?

It seems one state is really bad at counting votes. All the other states, even those ravaged by a hurricane, could count their results last night. Florida was even a laughing stock 12 years ago for the same problem and they still haven't fixed it.

And while this is just an issue with one dumb poll worker, it's pretty funny (except for the person voting), Woman Wearing MIT Shirt Banned From Voting In Boca Raton

"A woman attempting to vote in West Boca Raton this morning was initially prohibited from entering the polling place because she was wearing a t-shirt with the letters MIT. BocaNewsNow.com has heard from multiple sources that an election supervisor at the polling place ultimately realized that MIT stands for ‘Massachusetts Institute of Technology’ — a school where students tend to know how to spell — and was not a campaign shirt for the Republican candidate, who spells his name MITT."

Predicting the Election

This graph from the NY Times showing the shift in presidential votes between 2008 and 2012 is I think my favorite graphic:



I think this chart is the most telling by far of what happened:



WonkBlog of course has The 2012 election in charts. I don't think there's anything surprising in them other than that of those people listing health care as the most important issue, 74% were Democrats and only 25% Republicans, that's not a mandate to repeal Obamacare.

xicd got it right again:



Nate Silver hasn't posted a summary yet but he seems to have gotten every state right for the presidential election. I think more importantly he's been right about the election the whole year.



Paul Glastris wonders about The Mystery of Why Republicans Were So Sure They’d Win. "One of the more interesting questions of this election is how and why so many Republicans, who are certainly just as capable as Democrats at reading polls, chose to ignore the overwhelming statistical evidence that a Romney win was unlikely. I suppose one could say it is not much of a mystery, and that this mass refusal to accept politically inconvenient facts is of a piece with, say, conservative denial of global warming. And maybe that’s all it is. But I suspect that there was something else at play, too.

Alexis Madrigal reminds us that Data Doesn't Belong to the Democrats and that "The 2012 election was a triumph of Democratic data over Republican data."

Finally, The Election

I voted. And I just really want the candidates to stop emailing me, calling me, and knocking on my door. I'm really sick of the election. I hated all the campaigns. They weren't about issues, they were like reality television. Whoever wins won't have a mandate to do anything and the opportunity to educate the public on issues was wasted. Seriously, what Bill Clinton did at the Democratic convention was really great and not that difficult. I'm really surprised that no other candidate even made the effort. Here are a few things to look at on election night.

The Guardian has a chart showing What time do US states declare election results?.



The New York Time posted a nice graphic, Paths to the White House showing which state combinations will allow Obama or Romney to win.



If you won't be glued to your TV watching but want some place to check into, The Economist says they'll update this graphic throughout the night. The State of the Race.

And it wouldn't' be an election without some controversy. The Washington Monthly gives us Your Voter Suppression Round-Up.

Andrew Cohen correctly complains that No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote as some have already had to do in Florida.

Wonkblog notes, A quarter of Americans will vote by electronic machine. Is that a problem?

Machine Turns Vote For Obama Into One For Romney

MSNBC reports Machine turns vote for Obama into one for Romney.

"A Pennsylvania electronic voting machine has been taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed. Republicans have also said machines have turned Romney votes into Obama ones.

The video was first posted on Youtube by user ‘centralpavoter.’ It shows a voter’s finger repeatedly pressing the button for Obama, but a check mark coming up next to Romney’s name:"

This was posted to YouTube by centralpavote and apparently he commented about it on a reddit thread.

Why does Mitt Romney want to be president?

Ezra Klein answers Why does Mitt Romney want to be president?

"But after spending the last year talking to Romney advisers and former colleagues, as well as listening to him on the campaign trail, I’ve come to see this description as insufficient. It’s not so much that Romney lacks a core as that his core can’t readily be mapped by traditional political instruments. As a result, he is free to be opportunistic about the kinds of commitments that people with strong political cores tend to value most.

What Romney values most is something most of us don’t think much about: management. A lifetime of data has proven to him that he’s extraordinarily, even uniquely, good at managing and leading organizations, projects and people. It’s those skills, rather than specific policy ideas, that he sees as his unique contribution. That has been the case everywhere else he has worked, and he assumes it will be the case in the White House, too. When we look at Romney’s career and see a coreless opportunist, we’re just looking at the wrong data."

"This is why Romney thinks he should be president. A lifetime of data has proved to him that his management skills constitute a unique and powerful contribution. In Romney’s world, there’s nothing strange about that, which may also explain his willingness to be unusually strategic, even cynical, about the policies he supports."

"Some argue that the president holds the ultimate power to “agenda set,” even if much of that power is derived from Congress’s willingness to let him set its agenda. There’s truth to that, but it obscures the very substantive negotiations between the White House and Congress. "

"The answer, then, to the question “What does Mitt Romney think?” is this: It matters even less what Romney thinks than it matters for most presidents. Romney’s policy preferences are unusually weak, his deal-making instincts are unusually strong and his party will be unusually aggressive in policing his agenda."

"In choosing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the lead architect of the Republican House’s legislative agenda, as his running mate, Romney signaled his broad acceptance of Norquist’s argument. Whether a Romney administration would corral the votes to pass Ryan’s agenda remains an open question."

"At this point, neither voters nor Romney have sufficient data to know how he would govern. With a Republican Congress, he would govern from the right. With a Democratic Congress, he would move to the center. If he faces a divided Congress, he will look for compromise to get “the best possible thing done.” Without knowing the composition of Congress, we can’t know the kind of president Romney would be. We know he can manage, but we don’t know which company he will be managing."

Latest Dark Money Tallies

The Sunlight Foundation reports the Latest Dark Money Tallies: $213 million in the general election and counting, 81% on behalf of Republicans; 34 races with $1 million or more.

"Back in July, Senate Republicans successfully blocked the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required all organizations spending $10,000 or more to reveal their donors. Now we understand why. Through Nov.1, at least $213.0 million has been spent in the general election by ‘dark money’ groups to influence the 2012 elections. Of that, $172.4 million (81%) has been spent to help Republican candidates, as compared to $35.7 million (19%) to help Democrats."

"As of our latest calculations, there are now 34 races (12 Senate and 22 House) where dark money groups have dropped at least $1 million. In the Senate, the five races with the most dark money are: Virginia ($19.0 million), Ohio ($13.1 million), and Nevada ($11.7 million), Wisconsin ($10.4 million), and Montana ($7.5 million). Dark money accounts for more than 40% of the outside money in Senate races in New Mexico (71%), Nevada (47%), Massachusetts (44%), Ohio (43%), and Virginia (41%)."

"These totals surely undercount the true amount of money these dark money groups have spent to influence elections, since they only have to disclose their election-oriented spending within 60 days of an election in House and Senate races, and following the national nominating conventions in the presidential race. Yet, when we looked at what Crossroads GPS was doing earlier in the cycle, we found that as of July 5, they had already announced $83 million in ad buys – more than they’ve reported in the disclosure window we are able to cover here."

Is this really how we want our elections to work?

No Tagg Romney isn't Rigging Voter Machines in Ohio

I had tweeted this article from Lee Fang in The Nation, Tagg Team: The Romney Family Recipe for Crony Capitalism.

I heard this NPR story tonight,
Is Romney Son Gunning To Steal Ohio Vote By Rigging Voting Machines?. "Have you heard the story that's swept the liberal blogosphere in recent days about how Mitt Romney's son, Tagg, is going to steal the election for his dad? It's not true, but like all good conspiracy theories, it is based on kernels of truth."