I asked my Dad this question last night at dinner. His response? "If the Demcrats do take over control of the House or the Senate or both, they'll be doing it in spite of themselves".
Ouch. 6 years ago, I went onto some Chinese BBS and advocated why Chinese Americans should vote for Democrates although I don't have the right to vote in US. Maybe there wasn't any effect anyways. 2 years ago, I did the same thing again. But I think Democrates have been very disappointing. Although I still feel, if not more, that current Repulican controlled admin and both houses at the same time, is not the best thing for US and the world, I don't want to do the same thing again, although it might still be pointless.
Never underestimate the democrat’s proclivity for blowing it! That said... I'm cautiously optimistic.
Here's a good article on Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and what he's doing to ensure victory. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102101049.html Fighting for The Spoils Lawmaker and Rainmaker Rahm Emanuel Wants a Nov. 7 Victory For the Democrats So Bad He Can Almost Taste It. If Only He Had Time to Eat. By Steve Hendrix Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 22, 2006; D01 CHICAGO This must be how Machiavelli ate his corned beef sandwiches. Sitting in a South Side deli, Rahm Emanuel doesn't so much eat his lunch as overwhelm it with two hands and a hard stare. It's a combat glower familiar to the political opponents, reluctant donors and more than a few allies who have encountered the White House fixer-turned-Democratic-congressman in his still-young career. By most accounts, they usually didn't fare much better than the sandwich. "There's no clean way to do this," Emanuel says, not quite clearly, through a garble of onion roll. They heap the plates high at Manny's, an old-guard cafeteria popular with cops and pols. But within minutes, the football-size loaf of sliced meat and mustard is gone. Emanuel wipes his hands and picks up the BlackBerry that has been buzzing every 40 seconds or so on the Formica tabletop. "God, I always eat it too fast," he mutters as he checks an e-mail. What follows is either a soft belch or a pfitz of surprise at some new poll results from Ohio. Charging toward the biggest election day of his career, Emanuel, the 47-year-old chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, doesn't have much time for niceties. Or, sometimes, even food. He's lost 14 pounds as the whirl of wheedling donors and lashing candidates to meet their fundraising targets has reached hurricane status in recent weeks. (It had been at least a year since he'd indulged his taste for Manny's corned beef.) He's always been slight, but his collar now gaps a bit at the neck; his cheeks, always lean, are now almost skeletal under the graying runner's buzz cut and the basset-hound eyes. He rubs his jaw (and you notice that he's missing a finger; he lost one to a boyhood infection). He admits he's not sleeping well. "He's driving himself to exhaustion," says Paul Begala, a friend and political compatriot since they both served on Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign and afterward in the White House. "He's like Lyndon Johnson, who finished almost every campaign in a hospital bed. As someone from Texas, I don't make that comparison lightly, but Rahm just may be our skinny, nine-fingered, Jewish, Chicago version of LBJ." Whether that's a fair comparison may be clear soon. If, as historians say, Johnson began his conquest of Capitol Hill with the political chits he collected as a young and triumphant chairman of the Senate campaign committee, what does next month promise for Rahm Emanuel? As the member of Congress responsible for recruiting candidates for House races, raising money and vetting strategy for dozens of districts, he's received raves from campaign connoisseurs in Washington for running a taut committee. Notably, he's nearly closed the perennial cash-on-hand gap between his team -- with $36 million in the bank at the end of September -- and its GOP counterpart. He's fielded credible candidates in districts no one had expected to be in play a year ago. And he's generally been flogging the party like a never-satisfied CEO. "He has been an amazing success any way you look at it," says congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "I think it's the best operation of any chairman of either party in several years." If Democrats do take the House -- they need to gain 15 seats to do so -- Emanuel, in only his second term in Congress, stands to claim considerable credit for ending a 12-year electoral drought. That's the kind of triumph Johnson rode to the top of the Senate. But if they don't . . . "If they don't win, it will be seen as a colossal failure," says Mann. "Rahm will be devastated." Expectations Are High In fact, Emanuel may have already fumbled the game of expectations -- they are wickedly high. With President Bush's approval ratings lodged at car-salesman levels, scandals going off like cluster bombs within the Republican caucus, and a general throw-the-bums-out restiveness in the land, even a near-miss by House Democrats will be seen as the greatest electoral choke since Dewey Didn't Defeat Truman after all. Commentators from George F. Will to James Carville have already laid down rhetorical markers: An opposition party unable to capture the House in this environment should find a purpose other than electoral politics. Selling Herbalife, maybe. And Emanuel knows that some Democrats would find time during their grief for a small smile at his expense. Such is the "Rahmbo" style that his sizzling passage through the campaign has left scorch marks on some colleagues. Among the singed: Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, with whom Emanuel has tangled over spending priorities; several liberal would-be candidates who say they were steamrollered by Emanuel in favor of more centrist challengers; and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who went to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi this year with complaints about Emanuel's abrasive style and his increasing demands for them to raise money for the DCCC. "Well, I never said Rahm was a diplomat who spends a lot of time schmoozing," says Pelosi, who picked Emanuel last year to run the campaign. She tapped him over more senior lawmakers, she says, because she knew he'd be "coldblooded enough" to push the party relentlessly. And to those who came to have their feathers unruffled, she says she made it clear that Emanuel has her full support. "I said to them: 'We're here to win this election. What is this conversation about?' I don't think we can be better served than by having Rahm at the DCCC." "He's abrupt with me all the time," she adds with a laugh. "I call him the Field Marshal." A Man for Changing Times But to some observers of Chicago politics, Emanuel is less field marshal than Marshall Field (recalling the upscale department store that catered to the city's affluent classes). Emanuel was born in Chicago in 1959, the son of a doctor, and grew up in the decidedly non-working-class northern suburb of Wilmette. He's a graduate of the tony New Trier High School and a onetime ballet prodigy who was offered a scholarship with the Joffrey. A triathlete with a degree from Sarah Lawrence College, a master's in communications from Northwestern and a love of taking his children to modern dance concerts, Emanuel doesn't easily fit the stogie-gnawing stereotype of the old Chicago pol. Nor did he serve the usual ward apprenticeships in the vaunted Democratic machine. Rather, after working as a fundraiser in various campaigns, Emanuel came fully of age politically with Clinton in Washington. He had never sought elected office before running for the House of Representatives in 2002. In particular, Emanuel knew he would be an odd successor for the working-class Polish and Catholic precincts of District 5, which stretches from the lakefront to the Cook County line. "The previous congressmen from my district were named Rostenkowski, Annunzio and Blagojevich," he says. "Then along comes Rahm Israel Emanuel? C'mon, how does that fit?" But this is a changing Chicago. In front of Manny's, a police Segway is chained to a street sign as the officer eats his pastrami inside. The warehouse across the street is being converted into a Best Buy. And politics, too, has gotten a makeover. "Rahm is part of the young breed that people call the new Chicago machine," says Don Rose, a longtime liberal activist who worked for Mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington. "They're not 'dem' and 'dose' politicians. They know the difference between red wine and white wine. They're not driven by ideology, and they play to win." They all play to win, those Emanuel boys. Rahm is the middle son of three. His big brother, Ezekiel, is a Harvard oncologist and bioethicist. Younger brother Ari is a high-flying agent in Los Angeles. He made news recently as the only major agent to publicly call for an industrywide shunning of Mel Gibson following the actor's drunken, anti-Semitic tirade. Their baby sister, Shoshana, is a student. Yes, the folks are mighty proud, Rahm says. How many mothers have two children who have partly inspired TV characters (Josh Lyman on "The West Wing" for Rahm, Ari Gold on "Entourage" for Ari)? "People ask me what my mother put in the soup," says Ari, who talks with Rahm two or three times a day. "I wish I knew. I have three boys of my own." Their father is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who came to the United States after working for the pre-independence Israeli underground. In Chicago, he met Emanuel's mother, an X-ray technician and daughter of a local union organizer who ended up in more than one paddy wagon as a protester in the 1960s. "Politics and the civil rights movement were very much a part of our family life," says Ezekiel. "We went on Martin Luther King's march on Cicero with my mom." When Rahm was 17, he cut his finger on a meat slicer at Arby's, where he worked a summer job. It became infected, the infection spread to the bone, and a cut grew into a potentially life-threatening condition. Doctors eventually amputated the finger, and Emanuel spent eight weeks in the hospital. He says the experience made him more focused for college and beyond. "He blames me for ending up at Sarah Lawrence," says Ezekiel, who thought a small Eastern college would suit his brother better than a big school. "But he loved it. He loved being around all those women." The young Rahm wasn't particularly political. That passion emerged during college when he starting working with the advocacy group Common Cause. Later, he landed on a few campaigns, including Paul Simon's successful first Senate race in 1984. Almost immediately Emanuel proved a peerless fundraiser. Richard M. Daley hired him to dial up dollars for his successful mayoral run in 1989. Two years later, Emanuel got a job in the soon-to-be-legendary "War Room" of Clinton's upstart presidential campaign in Little Rock. "With the exception of the candidate and his wife, Rahm may have been the only indispensable person in that campaign," says Begala, who credits Emanuel with keeping the money flowing during the Gennifer Flowers unpleasantness. "He was a force of nature." He stayed with Clinton through most of two terms. Early on, though, his hard-charging style riled as many allies -- in both the White House and the Capitol -- as opponents. In 1993, he was fired as political director, reportedly at the urging of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he stayed on as a senior adviser to redeem himself, with both Clintons, by successfully spearheading some of their diciest legislative ambitions, including NAFTA and the assault weapons ban. Those initiatives passed, and along the way Emanuel's wonkier self bloomed like a thousand white papers. He talks fluidly about 401(k) regulations and dependent health coverage and universal college tuition. With fellow Clinton alum Bruce Reed, he recently wrote a book, "The Plan," an election-year wish list of New Democrat policy proposals. "He's a great strategist, but I actually think he cares more about the policy side of it," says Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is close to Emanuel and is campaigning with him for several DCCC candidates in the final weeks. "He likes to talk tough, but deep under that crusty exterior is someone who believes that government can make a difference in people's lives." But Emanuel's devotion to, say, tax reform may never overtake his rep for grenade-launcher etiquette. His spat with Howard Dean, for example, went publicly profane. "Rahm and I have certainly had our disagreements," Dean says by e-mail. "But the bottom line is we both want to win." Even within the White House, few were safe from his instinct for showstopping vulgarity. He once marched up to the newly elected Tony Blair in the Oval Office, where he and Clinton were preparing to go out for their first joint appearance. "This is important," Emanuel said to the British prime minister. "Don't [foul] it up." "Blair looked pretty shocked before he started laughing," says Begala, who was there. "They are a little more formal in Britain than they are in Chicago." Back in the Game Toward the end of Clinton's second term, Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, a Wharton MBA, and the first of their three children moved back to Chicago with the express purpose of making some serious money. In 1999, without any previous experience, Emanuel joined the investment bank of Democratic donor Bruce Wasserstein. Within two years, thanks in part to the bank's being sold, Emanuel had made about $18 million, enough to get back into the game without worrying about his family's finances. "Rahm was always going to go back into politics," says Ezekiel. "That was the whole point of going into investment banking, to earn a nest egg." It was Da Mayor himself who first suggested that Emanuel run for the open North Side congressional seat in 2002. "I told him he was crazy," Emanuel says. "But then I did a poll, and it actually looked like I had a shot." With the Daley cogs turning on his behalf, Emanuel edged out a Polish American state legislator in the primary and went on to win the general election. It's a safe seat now -- he's not even running ads this year -- but he speaks with pride of the street-level fight he waged the first time. "I walked a hundred precincts during that campaign," he says. "I stood in front of every grocery in my district seven times." Emanuel keeps in regular contact with his City Hall patron. And some say he has brought LaSalle Street sensibilities to his House job, particularly those who have been on the wrong side of his DCCC machine. He hasn't hesitated to muscle aside liberal candidates in favor of ones he thought could go toe-to-toe with Republicans on security and social issues. He recruited several Iraq war veterans and found sheriffs to run in both Washington state and Indiana. He persuaded Heath Shuler, a former Redskins quarterback and an antiabortion Democrat, to run in North Carolina. (Shuler has said Emanuel's five-calls-a-day pushiness was worse than any college recruiter's.) In one move that Rose calls a "classic Chicago power play," Emanuel pushed Tammy Duckworth, a political newcomer who lost both legs as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, to run in the congressional district of retiring Illinois Republican Henry Hyde. That didn't sit well with supporters of Christine Cegelis, a technology consultant who had scored a surprise 44 percent against Hyde in 2002. Her supporters say the DCCC effectively starved the antiwar Cegelis of money and support in favor of Duckworth, who calls the war "a mistake" but calls for more aggressive training of Iraqi forces before pulling out U.S. troops. "There was a lot of frustration on the ground, trying to figure why the national Democratic Party was trying to squash a strong local movement like this," says Kevin Spidel, a founder of Progressive Democrats of America who managed the Cegelis campaign. "It generated a lot of volunteers for us. We were outspent 4 to 1 and came close to beating Rahm Emanuel and his Washington machine." Out of the Wilderness Asked if he ever has regrets about his hardball habits, Emanuel stares into his glass of tea for a long moment. "Look, you're never as tough as they say you are," he says finally. But the self-reflection lasts only as long as it takes for him to remember the tactics of the other side. "They call Tammy Duckworth a cut-and-runner when she left two legs in Iraq?" he shouts, jabbing a finger in the air, drawing stares from around the deli. "How dare they! I'm going to give them the medicine that they've been giving out. That's what shocks them." If Duckworth wins, along with enough of Emanuel's other candidates to deliver the House into Democratic hands, it's easy to predict that all the hard feelings within the party will be quickly swept away by the shouts of hallelujah. And Rahm Emanuel, with a month to go before his 48th birthday and less than five years of seniority on the Hill, will be basking in acclaim for helping to lead his long-suffering party from the backbencher wilderness to the Promised Land of majority. Just what is the proper reward for an electoral Moses? Plum committee assignments? (He already has a coveted seat on the Ways and Means Committee.) A leadership post? Leapfrogging to a chairmanship? "How about the great honor of serving as the chairman of the DCCC?" says Pelosi. "Honestly, we've never even had a conversation about that." Emanuel refuses to muse, publicly at least, on how a good Nov. 7 could boost his career. Or whether that career is likely to be on Capitol Hill, in Springfield or up at City Hall. For now, he's consumed only with the race. "I don't even want to talk about that," he says, tapping his BlackBerry on Manny's Formica. "Call me on November 8th. We'll talk about it then." © 2006 The Washington Post Company
Can they really do it? I've said yes, for a long time. Check out this poll from today: Independent Voters Favor Democrats by 2 to 1 in Poll Iraq War Cited Most Often As Top Issue for Elections By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 24, 2006; A01 Two weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans are losing the battle for independent voters, who now strongly favor Democrats on Iraq and other major issues facing the country and overwhelmingly prefer to see them take over the House in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The new poll underscores how much of a drag the war threatens to be on Republican candidates in competitive races. With debate underway in Washington about possible course changes in Iraq, Americans cite the war as the most important issue in determining their vote next month more often than any other issue, and those who do favor Democrats over Republicans by 76 percent to 21 percent. Independents are poised to play a pivotal role in next month's elections because Democrats and Republicans are basically united behind candidates of their own parties. Ninety-five percent of Democrats said they will support Democratic candidates for the House, while slightly fewer Republicans, 88 percent, said they plan to vote for their party's candidates. The independent voters surveyed said they plan to support Democratic candidates over Republicans by roughly 2 to 1 -- 59 percent to 31 percent -- the largest margin in any Post-ABC News poll this year. Forty-five percent said it would be good if Democrats recaptured the House majority, while 10 percent said it would not be. The rest said it would not matter. The poll also found that independents are highly pessimistic about the Iraq war and the overall state of the country. Just 23 percent said the country is heading in the right direction, compared with 75 percent who said things have gotten off track. Only a quarter of independents approve of the job Congress has done this year. Only a third say the Iraq war is worth fighting. A month before the 2004 election, independents were almost evenly split on that question. Independent voters may strongly favor Democrats, but their vote appears motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than by enthusiasm for the opposition party. About half of those independents who said they plan to vote Democratic in their district said they are doing so primarily to vote against the Republican candidate rather than to affirmatively support the Democratic candidate. Just 22 percent of independents voting for Democrats are doing so "very enthusiastically." Among the electorate as a whole, the poll highlighted how the political climate continues to favor Democrats. President Bush's approval rating among all Americans stood at 37 percent. Two weeks ago he was at 39 percent, and in September he was at 42 percent. By more than 2 to 1, Americans disapprove of the way Congress has been doing its job. The generic vote for the House -- a question that asks people which party they favor in their district but that does not match actual candidates against one another -- remained strongly in the Democrats' favor, 54 percent to 41 percent. These national numbers do not translate directly into predictions of whether Democrats will gain the 15 House seats or six Senate seats they need to take control of those chambers. But an analysis of the findings sheds light on why Republicans are now deeply worried about losing their House majority and why the Senate is in play as well. The poll showed that Democrats not only have a significant advantage in blue states -- those won in the 2004 presidential race by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) -- but also have a narrow advantage in Bush-backing red states, which helps to explain why the number of GOP-held seats that appear competitive has increased recently. Iraq is cited most frequently as the most important issue in the midterm elections. Two weeks ago, 26 percent of those surveyed cited the war as the single most important issue determining their vote in November, compared with 23 percent who cited the economy and 14 percent who said terrorism. In the new poll, 27 percent said Iraq, 19 percent cited the economy and 14 percent said terrorism. Independents are almost as likely as Democrats to cite Iraq as the single most important issue in the campaign. Both groups are twice as likely as Republicans to single out the war when asked about the election's top issues. Independents do not limit their criticism of the war's handling to the president. Fifty-five percent of independents said congressional Republicans deserve a "great deal" or a "good amount" of the blame for problems in Iraq. Fewer, 36 percent, give congressional Republicans credit for helping prevent terrorist attacks against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Bush agreed last week with a commentator's suggestion that a recent surge in violence in Iraq could be equivalent to the 1968 Tet Offensive, which marked a turning point in U.S. public support for the Vietnam War. But the percentage of Americans who believe that Iraq could be another Vietnam is no higher, at 45 percent, than it was in June. Four in 10 Americans said the war is not worth fighting, and three in four said the war has damaged the United States' image in the rest of the world. Not quite half of those surveyed said that overall, the war has helped to improve the lives of the Iraqi people, a sharp decline since June, when roughly seven in 10 believed it had. The small decline in the economy's ranking as a top voting issue comes at a time when Americans are increasingly upbeat about the state of the national economy. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said the economy is "good" or "excellent," a sharp jump over the past two weeks and the highest since Bush took office. But Republicans appear to be getting little tangible benefit from the growing economic optimism, which has come amid declining gasoline prices and a record high in the Dow Jones industrial average. Those who cite the economy as the most important issue favor Democrats by 18 percentage points, 57 percent to 39 percent. One reason is that only a quarter of those surveyed said they are getting ahead financially. About the same number said they are falling behind. Most, however, said they are just able to maintain their standard of living. Republicans have an advantage only among those who say their financial condition is improving. Among those voting primarily on Iraq, Democrats hold a sizable lead, 76 percent to 21 percent, in voting intentions. Democrats also are favored by voters who cite health care as their most important issue, while those voting on terrorism or immigration strongly favor Republicans. Voters also continue to trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the war, the economy, North Korea and ethics in government. On terrorism, the two parties are at parity. But independents, the key swing voter group, strongly trust the Democrats on all of those issues by margins ranging from 14 percentage points on terrorism to 23 points on Iraq and North Korea and 26 points on ethics in government. The growing independent support for Democratic House candidates represents a significant shift in attitudes since the 2004 election, when Democrats held only a slim advantage. In winning reelection, Bush narrowly lost the independent vote, 50 percent to 48 percent, and in the vote for the House, independents split 50 to 46 for Democratic candidates. One important question that will affect the outcome of the elections is who shows up to vote. More Democrats than Republicans, 32 percent vs. 24 percent, said they are "very closely" following the campaign, and Democrats are more likely to be very enthusiastic about voting. Independents show less enthusiasm about this election than do Democrats or Republicans. Almost three in five respondents said this congressional election is more important than past congressional elections. A higher percentage of Democrats said this election has more significance than did Republicans or independents. Both parties are making extraordinary efforts to turn out their voters in November. Twenty-nine percent of registered voters said they had been contacted by one party or the other for their votes, and three in 10 of those said they had been contacted by advocates for both parties. Republicans appear to be doing a better job of contacting independents. In the poll, 45 percent of those independents who said they had been contacted said they were urged to vote for Republicans, while 17 percent said they were urged to vote for Democrats. The rest said they were contacted by both sides. The Post-ABC News poll findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,200 adults conducted Thursday through Sunday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102300766.html The Tidal Wave is coming! Keep D&D Civil.
Can they? I sure hope so... it would be nice to put the brakes on crap like this... __________________ Ignoring Senate, Bush Taps Mine Exec to be Safety Chief By Justin Rood - October 20, 2006, 6:09 PM Ah, the magic of the presidency. The Senate has refused to confirm former coal company executive Richard Stickler as the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). So, while they were out, Bush gave him a recess appointment to the post. MSHA exists to protect miners' well-being. Once a miner himself, Stickler spent most of his career above ground, much of it as an executive for companies like coal giant Massey Energy. According to the Charleston Gazette, Stickler's mines had accident rates of twice the national average. At a Senate hearing in March, Stickler explained that if U.S. mines were unsafe, it wasn't an "enforcement problem," merely a "compliance problem." His nomination was opposed by the United Mine Workers of America and the AFL-CIO, among others. Failing to win Senate approval earlier this year, the administration made Stickler a senior contract employee to the Department of Labor, working with mine safety issues. Bush first nominated Stickler after the Sago mine disaster in January. Family members of miners who died in the disaster wrote to President Bush, urging him not to appoint Stickler to the important safety post. http://tpmmuckraker.com/
Bush has absolutely no comprehension of the Constitution, and the separation of powers. Or he does, and he just doesn't give a tinker's continental damn. I think it is the latter. There hasn't been a President in recent memory who has trampled our Constitution as this man has. Even Nixon looks good in comparison. That our nation is led by such a man is both an embarrassment, because it reflects on the judgment of those who elected him and those who couldn't manage to defeat him, and a tragedy, because of the harm he has done to our nation since he was "elected," and what we will endure repair the incalculable damage he has caused. Keep D&D Civil.
