The 2010 Senate Landscape

It’s never too early. Looking to 2010, the Fix lays out the Senate landscape and what could be another tough election for Republicans. Overall, they must defend 19 seats including six (North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio) in states that went blue for Barack Obama. On the Democratic side, they have only one incumbent ( Ken Salazar) who won with less than 55 percent of the vote in 2004. Looking to each particular race, here are the Fix’s top 10:

California (D): While Republicans acknowledge beating Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) is something close to an impossibility, they have long believed that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) is far more vulnerable. In her first re-election race in 1998, Boxer took 53 percent but improved on that margin six years later when she took 58 percent against former Secretary of State Bill Jones. The hottest name among Republicans to take on Boxer is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger although the Governator has offered no public comment on the contest. The only announced Republican to date is state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

Florida (R): This Sunshine State seat -- currently held by Sen. Mel Martinez (R) -- is at the top of nearly every Democratic strategist's list of potential pickups. Why? Obama's win in the state has bolstered Democrats' confidence and the $14,000 Martinez raised between July and September has Republicans worried. Rep. Ron Klein (D) is giving every indication that he will run; as of Oct. 15 he had $1.8 million in his House bank account. A number of other Democrats -- including Florida's Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and state House Minority Leader Dan Gelber -- are mulling the race. For Democrats to win, they must try to avoid the nasty primary fights that have foreclosed their chances in other recent statewide races.

Kansas (R): Sen. Sam Brownback (R) is planning to leave the Senate after two terms to make arun for the open governor's office in 2010. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), who will be term limited out of office in 2010, is seen as a leading candidate to run for Brownback's seat and may well be the only Democrat who can make it a legitimate takeover possibility. (If Sebelius -- a close ally of Obama -- takes a job in the new Administration, Democrats have next-to-no chance of winning this seat.) On the Republican side, Rep. Jerry Moran has already announced he is running to replace Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiahrt -- among others -- is considering the contest.

Kentucky (R): For those Republican strategists hoping that Sen. Jim Bunning (R) would retire rather than seek a third term, think again. Sources close to Bunning insist the Kentucky Senator has made up his mind to run and is beginning to put the pieces into place to do just that. Bunning is absolutely certain to be one of Democrats' highest priorities in 2010 since he has never won with more than 51 percent of the vote. Democrats' strongest candidate would be Rep. Ben Chandler but the smart money seems to believe he will stay in the House. If Chandler does stay out, Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who lost to Bunning by 23,000 votes in 2004, probably has the right of first refusal. State Auditor Crit Luallen and state Attorney General Jack Conway are also mentioned and would be serious and credible candidates.

Louisiana (R): Sen. David Vitter's admission (sort of) of his involvement in the "D.C. Madam" prostitution ring virtually ensures that he will have a serious race in 2010. Rumors are that Secretary of State Jay Dardenne could challenge Vitter in a primary and, while no serious Democrat has stepped forward so far, you can bet the national party will find someone soon enough.

Nevada (D): Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is as wily a politician as there is operating in national politics today. Knowing that national Republicans would be gunning for him in 2010, he worked to recruit and fund a serious challenge to Rep. Jon Porter this election in hopes of taking out his strongest potential Republican opponent before his re-election bid even started. It worked, as Porter fell to 2006 gubernatorial nominee Dina Titus. Reid still isn't out of the woods yet, however, as Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki (R) announced on Thursday that he is considering a race against the Democratic leader. No matter who runs, this race will be a priority for national Republicans, particularly Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

New Hampshire (R): Over the past four years, the Granite State has collapsed on Republicans. In 2006, both incumbent House members were defeated. Then this November not only did Obama carry the state by a whopping nine points but Sen. John Sununu (R) was defeated in his rematch against former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. That leaves Sen. Judd Gregg (R) as one of the last of his kind and makes him a potential target in 2010. Gregg is something of an institution in the state -- his father, Hugh, served as governor and he has been in the Senate since 1992 -- and so Democrats would have to find a top tier candidate to take him out. The strongest nominee would be popular Gov. John Lynch but even the most optimistic of Democratic strategists don't believe he will run. Rep. Paul Hodes is apparently interested, however, and could be credible enough to make this a top-tier race.

North Dakota (D): The math on this one is very simple. If Gov. John Hoeven (R) decides to challenge Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) then this is one of the top contests in the country and perhaps Republicans' best takeover opportunities. If he doesn't, Dorgan will be a heavy favorite to win a fourth term.

Ohio (R): The last two elections have been very good to Ohio Democrats. In 2006, they claimed the governor's mansion and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) defeated then Sen. Mike DeWine (R). Earlier this month, Obama carried the state -- the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to do so. All of that adds up to potential trouble for Sen. George Voinovich (R) who is up for a third term in 2010. The Democratic field remains a work in progress and party strategists acknowledge that their bench is not as deep as they would like. A number of Ohio House Democrats -- Tim Ryan, Zack Space, Betty Sutton -- are likely to look at the race as are some statewide elected officials including state Attorney General Richard Cordray and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher.

Pennsylvania (R): Every indication is that Sen. Arlen Specter (R) is running for a sixth term in 2010. And, from what we hear, "Hardball" host Chris Matthews is very serious about running as a Democrat against Specter. As we wrote earlier this week, if that race comes to pass it will be the biggest -- and most high profile -- contest of the 2010 midterms. Several other Democrats including Reps. Alyson Schwartz and Joe Sestak are also mentioned as potential challengers to Specter.

Dr. Paulson

Proposition 8

Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, Dan Savage took it to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council over California Proposition 8. With his passion and poignancy, Savage scores one for civil rights and equality.

False Pretenses

Recently in the Times, C. J. Chivers and Ellen Barry reported that newly available accounts by independent military observers call into question many of the Georgian assertions surrounding its military conflict with Russia this summer. “Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.” More:

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.

Senior Georgian officials contest these accounts, and have urged Western governments to discount them. “That information, I don’t know what it is and how it is confirmed,” said Giga Bokeria, Georgia’s deputy foreign minister. “There is such an amount of evidence of continuous attacks on Georgian-controlled villages and so much evidence of Russian military buildup, it doesn’t change in any case the general picture of events.” He added: “Who was counting those explosions? It sounds a bit peculiar.”

The Kremlin has embraced the monitors’ observations, which, according to a written statement from Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, reflect “the actual course of events prior to Georgia’s aggression.” He added that the accounts “refute” allegations by Tbilisi of bombardments that he called mythical.

The monitors were members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s.

The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belarussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both. Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian, and were not disputed by the O.S.C.E.’s mission in Tbilisi, which was provided with a written summary of the observations.

Mr. Saakashvili, who has compared Russia’s incursion into Georgia to the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and skepticism about his judgment from Western governments.

The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired. Georgia’s army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its brigades, seized and looted their bases, captured their equipment and roamed the country’s roads at will. Villages that Georgia vowed to save were ransacked and cleared of their populations by irregular Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack forces, and several were burned to the ground.

The Chief of Staff

Recently, the Fix provided "10 facts about Rahm Emanuel that tell you everything you need to know about the next White House chief of staff."

1. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and is a classically trained dancer.

2. The dead fish story is true -- although neither Emanuel nor pollster Alan Secrest like to talk about it publicly and it happened TWENTY years ago. (Old news folks; people change.)

3. He is on a first-name basis with every political reporter in Washington.

4. No one in Washington (with the possible exception of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham) better understands the give and take between politics and policy better than Emanuel.

5. He comes from a ridiculously accomplished family. One of his brothers -- Ezekiel -- is the chairman of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health while another brother -- Ari -- is a Hollywood agent and the basis for the character of "Ari Gold" on HBO's "Entourage." And, no, we are not kidding. [More on the three brothers here.]

6. He is a man comfortable with profanity. Extremely comfortable. And the more he swears at you, the more he likes you.

7. Although known as a relentless partisan warrior, he has made some friends and allies across the aisle. Witness this statement by Lindsey Graham: "Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills. He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together. He is well-suited for the position of White House Chief of Staff."

8. The foremost Rahm scholar among reporters? Naftali Bendavid of the Chicago Tribune, who wrote a book entitled "The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution."

9. Advice to incoming White House staff from DCCC executive director Brian Wolff: "Develop a thick skin, cancel vacations, weddings and all personal appointments........ learn what the term 25/8 means......25 hours a day .....8 days a week......expect to be available."

10. Rahm's closest friend in Congress: Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro. (He lives in a basement apartment in DeLauro's house -- she is married to Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg -- during his time in Washington).

The "Obama Dividend"

Nick Kristof recently wrote an uplifting column on the “Obama Dividend.” After the election, he invited people to post their thoughts on his blog “and the result was an outpouring from every nook of the globe” that powerfully revitalized the American idea of equality and opportunity.

Jessica watched the results from a bar in Cape Town and wrote: “For the first time in recent memory, I can shout in the streets that I am American and be proud of the progress, hope and color that now define us.”

In Switzerland, an American was bathed in compliments comparing the election to the fall of the Berlin Wall. An American in Kenya named Tom wore an Obama T-shirt and found that his walk to work took more than an hour because so many people stopped to congratulate him and celebrate with him.

An awed Tanzanian named Leonard wrote to say that this election has promoted democracy far more effectively than anything the United States could say or do. He ended: “Long live America.”

And here in the United States, an 8-year-old boy announced on Wednesday morning his new career goal: He will be America’s first Latino president.

The outpouring suggests that the United States will enjoy an Obama dividend of global good will in the coming months, a chance to hammer out progress on common threats. “Barack” means blessing in Swahili, and this election feels like America’s great chance to rejoin the world after eight years of self-exile.

...One of Mr. Obama’s challenges will be to harness the extraordinary idealism that he inspired in his campaign to a larger, national cause. My 11-year-old daughter toiled with her friends this fall to sell lemonade and cookies to raise money for Mr. Obama’s campaign, all on their own initiative. On Election Day, my daughter was still selling Obama buttons in the street, and on election night, she flagrantly defied her bedtime rules to celebrate as history unfolded. Now she’s ready to drop out of school — who needs algebra? — and become a community organizer.

...Whatever the next step, it’s worth savoring this historic vista. First, look backward at a long-forgotten horror. In 1958, a little white girl in North Carolina innocently kissed a 9-year-old black friend named Hanover on the cheek. The police arrested the boy, along with his 7-year-old companion, and a court sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment for attempted rape. (After publicity, the boy was eventually released.)

Considering that past, perhaps the most incisive comment on Mr. Obama’s election actually came long ago. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature in 1959, two years before Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks but “to free the soul of America.”

Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: “Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”

The Cast-Aways

Pawlenty on the Republican Party

Tim Pawlenty on the tough road ahead for the Republican party:

"We cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes States, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the Mid-Atlantic States, and the Democrats are now winning some of the Western States. "That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation."

"And similarly we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward."

Kos asks the relevant question: " What can they do about it? Really, not much. The GOP is out of step with a public that is increasingly libertarian on social matters, yet their religious wing won't let them shift on those issues."

Best Senate Ads

Earlier this week, The Fix listed its favorite ads from this year’s Senate races.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, "Rocking Chairs": Rarely does a single television ad change the direction of a race. This one did. Run by the DSCC independent expenditure arm in early August, the ad, which features two older men sitting on rocking chairs and debating Dole's lack of effectiveness and support of President Bush, framed Dole as changed and out of touch -- the narrative that ultimately beat her. This, to our mind, was the single most effective ad run in any Senate race in the country.

Freedom's Watch, "Peace Bus": The idea of a Department of Peace has long been a pet project of Congressional liberals but had never been used to such devastating effectiveness before this Freedom's Watch ad slamming Rep. Mark Udall for his vote in favor of it. The aging hippie narrator was a nice touch but the piece de resistance was the smoke-filled "peace van."

Tom Udall, "Humbled": The luxury of being a heavy favorite in an open seat race is that you are freed from hammering your opponent and can instead focus on positive accomplishments. This ad, which is told by a disabled Iraq war vet, is an incredibly powerful testament to Udall's work on behalf of returning veterans.

Norm Coleman, "Angry Al": In a race that started nasty and just went downhill from there, this ad stood out for its stirring use of comedian Al Franken's words against him. Franken spent much of the last two years seeking to put controversial statements he had made in this past behind him -- reassuring voters that he was serious about serving in the Senate. This ad put all those doubts about Franken back on the table in a visually compelling way.



Joe Biden, "Kitchen Table": While the national media focused on Biden's vice presidential bid, his own longtime ad guy -- Joe Slade White -- was crafting this terrific black and white ad centered on Biden's daily train trip to and from Washington. "Each night riding home on the train, seeing the lights in the houses, he knows the conversations mothers and father are having around the kitchen table," says the ad's narrator. Powerful stuff.



Jim Inhofe, "One Man in America": There was a time when national Democrats thought they might be able to knock off Inhofe -- a man who even his allies acknowledge is rough around the edges and, at time, hard to like. But, this ad helped take Inhofe's supposed weaknesses -- being stubborn and hard headed -- and turn them into positives, noting that he had accomplished positive things for the state that many people said couldn't be done. And, by the way, Inhofe won reelection with 57 percent.



John Kerry, "Sean Bannon": This ad, run by Kerry in his non-competitive reelection race, shows how much a gifted media consultant can do in the space of 60 seconds. We are introduced to Sean Bannon, a wounded Iraq war vet, who tells the story of meeting Kerry while recovering and asking to receive his Purple Heart at Fenway Park. Cut to the footage of the day when that wish came to pass. A wonderful example of a positive ad designed to remind voters why they sent Kerry to Washington.

The "Buffet Effect"

In his latest column, Tom Friedman discusses the significance of the election and the "Buffet effect." An excerpt:

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States. A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.

This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president. That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.

How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well. But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.

Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.

And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.

Stupid Questions

On the Huffington Post: While most of Newsweek's behind-the-scenes Special Election Project reporting reveals serious campaign issues on both sides, there's one funny moment when Barack Obama talks candidly about dumb debate questions:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me ... answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Change is Coming

The Odd Truths of Sarah Palin

As discussed by Andrew Sullivan, "it looks as if [Palin] may be the gift that keeps on giving. The narrative is now beginning to look something like this: the McCain campaign picked her essentially out of a hat and with Bill Kristol's recommendation letter. They did no vetting. They assumed she wasn't completely out of her mind and dumb as a rock, which, one should concede, is not that big an assumption for a sitting governor with her approval ratings but still ... Then they find out the truth":



No clue who is in NAFTA? Africa is a country? The fact that she got as close as she did to the Vice Presidency is terrifying.

Change is Coming

"Yes, We Can" to Justice and Equality