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Monday, November 27, 2006

Hollywood Movie Plot?

I can't just publish the link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401286.html); I've got to put the whole article out here.


Marijuana Multiplies Suspect's Problems
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff WriterSaturday, November 25, 2006;
Page B01

Talk about having a lousy day in court.
As Devin K. Hoerauf's robbery trial in Rockville was wrapping up Tuesday afternoon, the 19-year-old accidentally dropped a bag of marijuana on the floor when he stood up at the defense table.

The judge's assistant noticed a plastic bag containing "a green, leafy substance" and pointed it out to a Montgomery County deputy sheriff, who picked it up and added two misdemeanor charges -- possession of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia -- to Hoerauf's criminal history.

To make matters worse, his mother, a defense lawyer, was by his side at the time -- representing him.
"I don't even know what the word for it is," Circuit Court Judge David A. Boynton said, according to a recording of the hearing. "Inconceivable is not strong enough. For him to walk into a courtroom in the middle of a jury trial for a robbery case with marijuana in his pocket is just unbelievable."

Assistant State's Attorney Jeffrey Wennar asked Boynton for a high bond, noting that Hoerauf had tested positive for use of narcotics in recent weeks, a violation of the terms of his pretrial release supervision program.

"To come into a courthouse in the middle of trial and have a bag of marijuana on his person just seems to me to be a total disregard for the criminal justice system," Wennar said in court.

According to the recording, Gwyn Hoerauf, his mother, said jail was not the answer to her son's problems.

"I'm going to say it in a very crass way, and I hope he forgives me," she said. "He is brain-damaged, your honor. I don't mean he's just a defendant who does dumb stuff. This is a boy with an IQ in triple digits. His brain is glued together with Silly Putty. He can't think his way out of a paper bag, but he can do physics."

Hoerauf first appeared before Boynton years ago on juvenile charges. He pleaded guilty this summer to second-degree assault after an incident in Silver Spring. He was charged with robbery in June after he and some friends were suspected of stealing bikes from a group of younger teenagers near the MARC train station in Germantown.

The jury, which was not in the courtroom for the marijuana bust, convicted Hoerauf on four counts of robbery and acquitted him on two counts of robbery and one charge of conspiracy.

Courthouse arrests for such things as disorderly conduct and showing up drunk are not unheard of, Montgomery Sheriff Raymond Kight said.

"But at the defense table?" the sheriff asked. "We've never had that happen."

Moral of the story: Don't do that.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

All Hail the Democratic Party Organizations!

Mandatory Opening Rhetorical Hallelujah:
As Jim Talent said in his concession, and George Allen Jr. in his non-concession, "Thank God!"

"It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine!"--R.E.M., 1987

For the first time in a long time, we really won one. The 30-seat gain in the House is not record territory (best since 1974), but in today's big-spending, incumbent-friendly system a very impressive result. The six-seat gain in the Senate was at the outer edge of the probability distribution and, to me, was even more impressive. The Democrats won 24 of 33 races held in the Senate! That's 73%, in House terms a veto-proof 318 seats (vs. the reality of 230-something).

This sets Senate Democrats up well for the next election; the House outlook may not be as promising. The several scandal seats among the House pickups will be vulnerable next time around. Of course, the House will be working from about 15 seats above the minimum majority, while the bare majority in the Senate is vulnerable at any moment to sickness, scandal, or some sort of Liebermania.

The gains in the governors' offices and statehouses were all that we hoped for and more. In the House races and in gubernatorial elections, the Democrats showed that they could break out of the blue-state urban ghettoization that recent elections suggested. Here is Howard Dean's vindication, and I see no need to modify the tetrahedral party power structure that has emerged (Senate Dems, House Dems, and Dem Governors, with Dean supporting all and none in the pyramid) until someone breaks from the pack and wins the '08 nomination.

Two phenomena impressed most: one being the half-dozen or so surprise winners (the hallmark of a tidal wave victory) the DCCC came up with, and the other was the breadth of states represented in the House seats picked up by the Democrats. Yes, there was consolidation of control in blue states New York and Connecticut, and similar routing of Republican moderates in districts within swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. But there were also two seats in Arizona, three in Indiana (!), and ones in North Carolina, Texas (DeLay's old), Kentucky, and Kansas.

Then there was the incredible record of Democrats holding their own in the Senate, House, and Governors' seats. That is the answer to the argument that the results were merely "the Republicans and George Bush imploding".

Yet there was that implosion, that North Korean-magnitude muffled blast as the Tyranny of Bushite Misrule ends with a hidden blast, a futile attempt at suicide bombing that barely escaped the White House bunker. (Rumsfeld draped himself over the IED and absorbed much of the shock wave; the shrapnel passed right through, though.)

The 3-D nature of this second-term Administration (Dumb Duck Dubya) is now a reality apparent to all. There will be no more admitted Bushites permitted in the Republican party as it operates beyond the Beltway, and the late-campaign Red-state show tour of the President is the equivalent of the advertisers' nightmare: what if they ran it up the flag, and no one saluted?

In our local focus race, NM-01, Republican Heather Wilson's position surged late in the night and she's ended up 1000 votes or so ahead, with a few precincts somehow still not reported. Wilson needs to apologize for her campaign before we will accept Patricia Madrid's concession (not offered as yet). The justification both had--Wilson for her slagging, Madrid for freezing up in the key debate-- was that so much apppeared to be at stake.

The reason why NM-01 gets off the hook from massive scrutiny (true of several other races, still) was the superb execution of Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer in the House and Senate Campaign offices. They came at Rove's forces from too many fronts--fairly little need for tactical defense, and give them credit for sensing that but still not losing any of their own seats--and eventually the pressure broke down their forces in several geographic areas. The win of both Houses (I had that at 12% four weeks out) qualifies as a strategic victory, in boxing terms a knockout. Rove's reputation for flawless strategy takes a hit, and Libby Dole (9-for-33) takes it on the chin for the team. At least Tom Reynolds could make sure he had enough $$$ for NY-26, which he salvaged for himself.

Prediction Reliability Assessment

We were pretty transparently sandbagging on the House number. The key for me was to make sure that I could only do better than expected, for once. On Election Day, once all the effort had been expended and the self-deceptive quality of making myself expect the worst had used up all its benefit, I was considering bumping up the seat gain into safe territory (16 or more), as I could not deny there were plenty of targets of opportunity (though I had no idea that half or more would come through, and that most would indeed end up being serious challenges). But I wanted to stay on the low side of expectations regarding the House.

These were my five favorite House pickups of the night:
1) NH-01--no one saw that one coming (second choice for longshot winner would be MN-01).
2) NC-11--Heath Shuler was too a good football player!
3) KN-02--Jim Ryun reminds us of his famous foldup in the 1968 Olympics.
4) AZ-05--Everyone hates J.D. Hayworth now that he's lost.
5) IN-08--First pickup of the night, a 61-39% thumping that still took 2 hours to call (simply because they, like me, must have expected that the margin would narrow sharply. I think they wanted to be sure they didn't get taken in by the exit polls this time.)

In the Senate, we foresaw the basic idea of the contest and the themes of the evening, but we got the characters and their roles a little mixed up: the disappointment was Tennessee, not Missouri; the potentially challenged race became Virginia, not Tennessee; the clutch win with the late urban returns was Missouri, not Tennessee. Those were the three races we got wrong, from the start; we had the rest right, all along.

The Most Definitive Sign of Comprehensive Bushite Defeat

It's Rumsfeld, of course. The decision may have been made long ago, and he may have been on life-support in his office for months, just waiting for the right moment to pull his plug. Still, it's a good move, for which its time had come.

Monday, November 06, 2006

More Electioneering: 2006 and 2008

2008 News

The big piece has been the emergence of Barack Obama as "CCC"--the Clinton Centrist Challenger. In the wake of Mark Warner's withdrawal, a vacuum was formed, and it took about a nanosecond for Barack O' to step forward, and in one fell swoop, assume center stage for that role. His advocacy for Democrats this year has been a major contributor to his emergence as a national party leader.

This guy would be a first in about as many ways as HRC would, so this is not a retreat to safe territory. Most interestingly, he's almost a post-boomer Generation X'er, suggesting that the second half of the boom (my half) might never be represented in the White House (the first half already has Clinton and Dubya, and they presume to trot out more of these burned out, narcississtic victims of the Culture Wars. Our generation just stays out of it. More of that another time.)

Barack is the real deal, more "post-liberal" than centrist, but it's way too early for him. The right time for him is after a two-term Democratic presidency starting in 2009.

One enters the stage, the other leaves. John Kerry has put himself in the George Allen category as a hyped contender who didn't even make it out of the paddock. He wasn't a good choice in 2004 (when we wanted a real "wartime candidate"), and he would've been a joke in 2008. If we wanted a candidate who lost a sure prospect due to insufficient fire in the belly, we would go for Al Gore. Sorry, John.

Seething in NM-01

I did some phone canvassing in the Rio Rancho suburb part of this neighboring district getting the saturation treatment for attack ads, being generated locally, from the national organizations (both), and from some independent groups. Patricia Madrid, the Democratic challenger and current state Attorney General, had forged to the lead in this naturally Democratic-leaning, large Hispanic minority district, over the four-term "moderate" Republican Heather Wilson, the only woman vet in the House (so far).

The voters I talked to were very angry, with both candidates, for the low blows and infantile tactics. To be honest, the message of the campaigns have been very simple, though; Wilson is a Bushite who supported the Iraq war, and Madrid can't be trusted.

The last Wilson salvo (by her campaign organization) is really making me hopping mad, though. From one of their debates, they took out of context a brain lock Madrid suffered while trying to respond to a Wilson-authored question about Federal tax increases. Instead of going for the easy "no increased taxes for working families" pledge, Madrid stumbled, froze, then started hesitantly. They don't even show her answer, that's not the point. The point is something on the order of, "Can you have a representative who doesn't speak fluently at all times?"

To me, this is about one step away from mocking your opponent's stutter. Apparently, though, it's working as an ad, and it truly does present Madrid unflatteringly.

I think it is time for the Madrid campaign to launch the whisper campaign about Wilson's being a closeted butch Foley co-dependent with a thing for girls in page-boy haircuts. It's simply the next step in the escalation process; I can't say if it's true, but it's certainly plausible.

Supplement to the NY Times Election Preview

First thing I want to say is, it's not that bad. If it were the product of a one-person blog, I'd say it was great. The graphics interface on the website works well and produces reams of factoids about money spent, last elections, demographics, etc.

What it doesn't do is tell you anything useful about the results to expect in the House races. One of the biggest omissions in the newspaper articles is any information whatsoever about seven of the 16 races they've called "tossups", but somehow not "key races".

For the record , these are MN-06, NH-2, WI-08, CT-05, CT-02, PA-06, and VA-02. These races apparently didn't have anything interesting that could be reduced to a one-sentence summary going for them. My view of those seven: Minnesota sixth looks like a five-point win for the Republican incumbent, as does WI-08 and VA-02. Those three should be "Leaning Republican", in my view. PA-06 looks like a narrow win for the Democratic challenger, and I'd say the same about CT-05 (Murphy over Nancy Johnson). CT-02 and NH-02 are the true tossups in that group, with the latter a race that has switched from Republican leading to a dead heat.

CQ has been shifting its views much more quickly than the Times in these late days, and has a few more tossups to throw into the pile: OH-01 and OH-02 (Times: both leaning Repub.); AZ-01 (a shocker, as most others consider that a safe Republican seat, but a late scandal has hit); AZ-05 (another LR with a shrinking margin), IN-02 and IN-09 (Democratic challenges in the process of being rebuffed), NY-20, NY-24, and PA-08. Bob Novak's excellent calls--he doesn't hedge, his tossup states are called one way or the other--include one Republican pickup, in GA-12. He's looking for a 20-seat net House pickup for the Dems.

Those looking at Bush's late tour as a something more than just a rote route are onto something here, and it's this: Bush's late visit to Red States indicates a clarification in the projected outcome set that is happening as we finish. It's back to polarization--most of the tossup races are not in Red states, and he can't help there. Most of the House gains for the Democrats will end up being at the expense of moderate Republicans in blue states. That's where the gerrymandered levee walls will be overtopped by the wave of anti-Bushite sentiment, and his late tour is just going to make this more clear.

RED STATE/BLUE STATE Updates

The key states are Pennsylvania, New York (upstate), Connecticut, and Ohio, where Republicans are being hounded from their holes; Florida, as always a battleground, but with the Democrats winning this year's key battles; and the mountain states of Montana, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. I'm looking for the Dems to gain 11 House seats and two Senate ones from the first four, governorships and legislatures as well, and to establish their challenges in the latter four, picking up a couple of seats and possibly more. Florida will deliver a couple pickups in the House, re-election of its Lieberman-WASP Democratic senator, and possibly a major governorship.

I'm sticking with my 218-217 prediction (14-15 seat pickup for Dems), one way or the other. I see slippage in some of the seats that have been predicted for the Dems for a long time, particularly the three in Indiana (check out CQ's article about bellwethers--http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/11/election_night_bellwether_watc.html--
but expect bad news until Ohio's Republican debacle reports). There really aren't very many safe Democratic pickups, and even some of the "scandal seats"--like Foley's own FL-16--now are not sure things.

On the Senate: I'm still not confident about Virginia--a lot of closet racists will come home to Allen. I always expect Missouri to disappoint. I'm still looking for Tennessee to surprise with heavy black turnout, and I think there will be a surprisingly close race from either Nevada or Arizona. Maryland and New Jersey remain worries, though, and I'm sticking with my 50-50 prediction (Lieberman on the losing side, ours).