Of Senate Races and Cell Phones

According to the Cook Political Report, the it looks like control of the senate hinges on 9 states. With a Kerry win Dems need to take 6 of the 9, 7 with a Bush win. The 9 states are FL, LA, NC, SC, SD, CO, OK, AK, KY. At the moment, this is just me here, I'm confident of Tennenbaum in SC, Daschle in SD, Salazar in CO, Carson in OK and Knowles in AK. Betty Castor looks like a decent shot in Florida as well. That's 6 right there, which just means an upset in either North Carolina or Kentucky (and seriosuly senile Senator Jim Bunning seems to be doing more than necessary to make that happen in the Bluegrass State) or a huge Lousiana push in the Dember runoff to determine control of the Senate if Bush wins. That is good news for Democrats, because when they actually put money into Louisiana, they tend to do quite, and surprisingly well-witness Mary Lanrieu's upset reelection two years ago. As a former resident of Lousiana, I can say that it is still one of the few states driven by machine politics, and the Democratic machine there benefits immensely when local bigwigs have money to throw around instead of just rallying cries.
Buried in the latest Cook Report is another interesting tidbit that as far as I have seen, has not been reported. It seems that around 10 percent (including, myself and and Astro, if I'm not mistaken) of all Americans now only have cell phones. As pollsters are not allowed by federal law to call these people, that means there is a large group of people who aren't being polled. These people skew younger, poorer and less white than the average voter, groups that tend to skew decidedly for Democrats. Let's assume for a minute that of these people, 6 in 10 are planning on voting for Kerry 3 in 10 for Bush and 1 in 10 undecided, thus, in an average opinion poll that interviews likely voters and finds a 47-45 lead for Bush with 8 undecided, with these numbers taken into account, the poll info should actually be Kerry 46.5%-Bush 45.3% with 8.2% undecided.

Happy Speculation

Maybe it's my newfound love affair with Elliot Spitzer, but for the first time yet I'm confident enough in the course of the Kerry campaign to enjoy the truly great possibilities in a Kerry administration. Most know I am no fan of Kerry, but that said, his cabinet appointments do have the possibility of making me excited. The first of course, is AG, where Spitzer looks to be an early front runner. While some (inlcuding Elliot himself) have speculated he wants to make the leap to NY governor, for a man with his ambition, national AG makes much sense and would be the obvious springboard to heights in the party. The earlier Spitzer becomes a national figure, the sooner the party can be moved into the hands of the people who make me more excited about its future than I've probably ever been: those people being Spitzer himself, Barack Obama and to a lesser extent, Jennifer Granholm. Like Obama, Spitzer is a committed left Democrat who has shown us the true "third way"-how to speak and prove to ordinary people that the issues the Dems should stand for-labor rights, civil rights, the temporing of capital and civil liberties are issues that have a tremendous postive effect on the lives of most Americans. For a variety of reasons, those who might've been Reagan supporters become left dems after hearing these guys speak or watching how they take on capitalist interest. A Spitzer led justice department would bring this tendency to the national level, and finally truly contest the business dominance of American discourse that's largely been hegemonic in the half century since the Treaty of Detroit. Other Departments, especially Labor, will become incredibly important posts, and though its too much to ask for a Dennis Kucinich, Secretary of Labor regime, a Dick Gephardt led labor dept. will be more than helpful when the growing organizing drives of the SEIU-UNITE HERE-Laborers alliance begin to build steam. Indeed, the urgency and efficacy with which these groups are organzing, could just use a neutral hand, we don't even need a helpful partner like Kucinich, just the end of Elaine Chao and the most anti-labor regime in post Depression history. Gephradt, despite his all too annoying allegiance with the conservative craft unions, will help turn the NLRB into a nominally non-fascist organization (not just rhetoric, the NLRB since Reagan has been operating in a very corporativist model). If Kerry has dependably been on the right side of history, it is in regard to the environment, and thus the EPA can expect its most effective chief ever.
I know it's too early, but in your lack of sleep the next few days, try to just imagine a world in four years where AG Sptizer has taken on industry after industry in the name of labor and consumer rights, and effectively derailed the free-market ideology ascendant since the 50s while simultaneously providing and institutional base for the party's left wing while a Gephardt labor Dept. has presided over the biggest increase in organized labor since the rise of AFSCME in the late 60s and an effective EPA will have further attacked the free-market model by demonstrating over and over that capital does not have the right to whatever it wants whenever it wants it.

October Surprise?

The revelations in today's Times and Sixty Minutes of the American military's inability to secure Iraq's biggest stockpile of explosives could become the October Surprise we've all been waiting for. How can this NOT stick to Bush. There is not a single logical excuse for this, it is solely an example of horrible planning and idiotic assumptions on the part of ideologues who selectively interpret evidence contrary to the almost universal assumptions of civil service military planners and diplomatic officials. The inevitable response will be, "it's hard work bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq." John kerry should not let this opportunity pass him by. I want a commercial airing in swing states tomorrow stating simply that had John Kerry been president, the insurgency would not have had the explosives it has used to kill more than 1000 American soldiers because that would've been his first priority after the fall of Hussein. No graphics, just James Earl Jones reading the statement. I want it brutally clear that those thousand lives are directly the responsibililty of Bush and Bush alone.

Constitutional Crisis?

Given current state polls, a not so unlikely scenario seems to be upon us. What if Bush holds the same states he won except for Florida and New Hampshire and adds Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico (not only is this not unlikely, but, most agree the t three states Bush has the best chance of picking up are those while two of the three for Kerry are the ones Bush loses)? The result is a 269-269 tie. The election gets thrown to the house then, where it would seem compromise would be unlikely (as far as I can tell there are at least two different constitutional readings here, both would create chaos). The answer then might be not Kerry or Bush, but, bringing in another compromise ticket, i.e. McCain-Breaux or McCain-Graham. Not all too likely, but if I told you a week ago that the Red Sox would come back from three games down and a game three thrashing to win the series, you would laughed just as hard.