If you live in Iowa’s first or second Congressional districts, and you would like a chance to get tickets to Barack Obama’s inauguration, this post is for you.

Braley’s office put out this release yesterday:

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) announced additional details on how his office will be distributing tickets to President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20th, 2009.  The deadline for requesting tickets is Wednesday, December 3, 2008.

Requesting Tickets:

Residents of the First Congressional District can request tickets by emailing Rep. Braley’s office.

Visit www.braley.house.gov and use the “contact” form at the upper right-hand corner of the page, indicating how many tickets you are requesting.  Constituents are asked to provide their address, phone number and email address when requesting inauguration tickets.  

The deadline for requesting tickets is 5pm Central on Wednesday, December 3rd.

While we would like to honor all requests for tickets, constituents will be limited to two (2) tickets per family to ensure as wide a distribution as possible.

Awarding Tickets:

An extremely limited number of tickets are available.  Braley’s office will be using a lottery system to award inauguration tickets, with a limit of two (2) tickets awarded per family.  

The lottery drawing will take place on Thursday, December 4th, in Braley’s Washington office.  Constituents receiving tickets will be contacted by December 5th.

If individuals have questions about obtaining inauguration tickets, please contact our Washington ,  D.C. office at (202) 225-2911.

Loebsack’s office put out this release today:

Washington, DC – Congressman Dave Loebsack announced today his office will provide tickets to President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing in ceremony through a lottery system during the month of December.  Residents of Iowa ‘s Second Congressional District who are interested in attending the historic event must contact the Congressman’s office at 202.225.6576 by 5:00 pm CT on Thursday, December 4, 2008 to submit their names for consideration in the lottery.  Each resident awarded a ticket will be responsible for their own travel arrangements.

The lottery drawing will take place on Friday, December 5th, in Congressman Loebsack’s Washington office, and constituents receiving tickets will be contacted by Monday, December 8th.  At that time, constituents will be required to provide additional information before they can secure their ticket allotment.

Inauguration Day is Tuesday, January 20th, 2009.   It is expected there will be a variety of events that will not require tickets, including a public viewing area of the Inaugural ceremony on the National Mall and the public Inauguration parade. Iowans unable to attain tickets through Congressman Loebsack’s office are encouraged to monitor the Inauguration Planning Committee website, http://inaugural.senate.gov/in… for further details on non-ticketed events.

Please be aware that there are a few organizations trying to sell fake tickets to people.  Tickets are only being provided free of charge from official government offices, and tickets must be picked up in person from the office the day before Inauguration. Any group that suggests differently is providing incorrect information.

If you live in one of Iowa’s other Congressional districts, you can contact the office of your member of Congress to ask how they will distribute the tickets. I only receive press releases from Braley and Loebsack.

Apologies for not getting this thread posted yesterday, when President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his economic team.

On the plus side, there are no incompetent hacks in this group. I’ve heard particularly good things about Peter Orszag’s work at the Congressional Budget Office, and he will produce reliable numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

People I respect speak quite highly of Melody Barnes, who will run Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.

Also, it’s encouraging that Obama is committed to a major stimulus bill that will focus on infrastructure investments. I’ll reserve further judgment until we see more specifics about Obama’s plans, because spending $350 billion on stuff worth doing is a lot better than spending $350 billion on boondoggles.

I also agree with Matthew Yglesias that if you’re going to throw tens of billions of dollars at the economy, high-speed rail in the Midwest would be an excellent place to start. (UPDATE: Senator John Kerry has introduced a major bill that would promote high-speed rail development across the country.)

On the down side, since I opposed the series of Wall Street bailouts we’ve been seeing this fall, I’m not thrilled to see Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers as chief of the National Economic Council. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, I wanted economic policy to be more in the direction that Labor Secretary Robert Reich was proposing, but Clinton and now Obama are clearly favoring the approach of Clinton’s Treasury Secreatry, Robert Rubin. Almost everyone on Obama economic team has close ties to Rubin.

I think Bill Richardson will do fine at the Commerce Department, but I would have preferred to see him in a different cabinet position.

If you were one of those Obama supporters who claimed during the primaries that he would govern in a much more progressive way than Hillary Clinton, now would be a good time to rethink your views.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s team is taking care of one troubled financial firm after another. The latest bailout plan, for Citigroup, is a particularly bad deal for taxpayers, according to Paul Krugman (who reluctantly supported the $700 billion bailout package approved before the election).

What do you think about the team Obama is assembling to handle the economy?

UPDATE: The members of the New York Times editorial board are not wild about putting Geithner and Summers in charge:

As treasury secretary in 2000, Mr. Summers championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments – a k a toxic assets – that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe. He refused to heed the critics who warned of dangers to come.

That law, still on the books, reinforced the false belief that markets would self-regulate. And it gave the Bush administration cover to ignore the ever-spiraling risks posed by derivatives and inadequate supervision.

Mr. Summers now will advise a president who has promised to impose rational and essential regulations on chaotic financial markets. What has he learned?

At the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner has been one of the ringmasters of this year’s serial bailouts. His involvement includes the as-yet-unexplained flip-flop in September when a read-my-lips, no-new-bailouts policy allowed Lehman Brothers to go under – only to be followed less than two days later by the even costlier bailout of the American International Group and last weekend by the bailout of Citigroup.

It is still unclear what Mr. Geithner and other policy makers knew or did not know – or what they thought they knew but didn’t – in arriving at those decisions, including who exactly is on the receiving end of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money now flooding the system.

Confidence in the system will not be restored as long as top officials fail or refuse to fully explain their actions.

The Daily Kos community is so huge, with more than a hundred thousand active users and hundreds of diaries posted every day, that many communities have formed within it. In those groups, diarists and commenters can get to know each other over time.

The “Edwards Evening News Roundup” was that kind of community for most of 2007. People came looking for those diaries so they could catch up on the news of the day and with other Edwards supporters they had “gotten to know” online. After John Edwards dropped out of the race, many of the active diarists in this group formed the EENR blog, which is now Progressive Blue.

Daily Kos has generated other communities that have nothing to do with politics. Frankenoid posts a Saturday morning garden thread every weekend, for instance.

On Monday nights a group of people take turns writing diaries about bereavement in “The Grieving Room” series. If you have ever experienced this kind of loss, I recommend that you read these posts.

Last night’s edition by Papachach, a widower with three young children, was quite moving.

On a related note, if you or anyone you care about has experienced depression for whatever reason, I recommend reading this piece, which made the top of the Daily Kos recommended list yesterday: I hope this message reaches the right person.

UPDATE: On the subject of bereavement, I recommend reading this interview with Elizabeth Edwards from last year, in which she shares how the sudden death of her son Wade changed her life and her faith.

A recount resolved the last Iowa Senate race to be called. In Senate district 10, Democratic incumbent Jeff Danielson defeated Walt Rogers by 22 votes. This was one of the surprisingly close races on election night, as Danielson was not considered a top-tier target of Republicans.

Iowa Democrats will have the largest advantage they have ever enjoyed in the Iowa Senate: 32-18.

One Iowa House race is still unresolved. Democratic incumbent Art Staed asked for a recount in House district 37, where the certified vote count showed him trailing Carolyn Renee Shulte by 14 votes. Staed was targeted not only by the Republican Party of Iowa but also by conservative interest groups such as the corporate-backed Iowa Leadership Council and the American Future Fund.

Depending on the outcome of the recount, the Democratic advantage in the Iowa House will be either 56-44 or 57-43.

Jed L brought something remarkable to my attention over the weekend.

Michael Cannon of the conservative CATO Institute wrote a piece called Blocking Obama’s Health Plan Is Key to the GOP’s Survival. The idea is that if Obama gets universal health care passed, he will bring “reluctant voters” into the Democratic coalition. The Republicans must at all costs provent that from happening.

David Sirota and TomP both pointed out that conservative pundit William Kristol made the same case to Congressional Republicans during Bill Clinton’s first term. At first, some were afraid to be seen as obstructing the president’s health care reform efforts. But in December 1993,

Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to “kill” — not amend — the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the “Contract With America,” Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America’s majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol’s strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

Getting back to Cannon’s recent piece for CATO, I am struck by how conservatives don’t even believe their own propaganda about the horrors of “socialized medicine.” Yes, I know that Obama isn’t proposing socialized medicine (which would work like the Veterans Administration, where the government employs the doctors and runs the hospitals), or even single-payer health care (as in Medicare, where patients choose the doctor but the government pays the bill). But for the moment, let’s accept CATO’s frame on this issue, which is that Obama’s health plan would turn into socialized medicine.

Obama’s plan would presumably allow Americans to buy into a state-run health insurance plan as an alternative to private health insurance, and would prohibit insurers from excluding people with pre-existing conditions. These measures would force the insurance companies to compete for customers by offering better coverage, as opposed to the current system, in which they try to maximize profits by denying care whenever possible, and sometimes refusing to insure people for any price.

I have a friend with a thyroid condition. At one point her husband was between jobs and they looked into buying their own health insurance. They could not find any company that would take their family. It wasn’t a matter of excluding coverage for anything related to my friend’s thyroid condition. They simply declined to sell insurance to this family at any cost. Fortunately, my friend’s husband got a job with good benefits. Otherwise, they would be uninsured to this day.

The benefit of giving families like my friend’s the option of buying into state-run insurance program is obvious. But let’s assume that conservatives are right, and that any state-run insurance scheme is bound to be expensive and inefficient. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it fail in the marketplace?

Obama’s health care plan could evolve in the direction of single-payer health care only if the government insurance plan provided superior coverage to consumers at a lower cost. CATO shouldn’t be worried about this, right?

Let’s go a step further. Conservative pundits are trying to tell us that Democratic health care proposals would be disastrous for the country and wreck the economy. If that’s true, then why is a CATO analyst worried that enacting Obama’s health care plan would cause a political realignment in the Democrats’ favor?

Cannon’s argument is also shocking on a moral level. He appears to believe that Obama’s health care plan would improve so many Americans’ lives that the GOP’s survival would be threatened. So, he urges Republicans to put their own political interests ahead of the interests of Americans currently lacking adequate health care.

Jed L thinks

Cannon has everything backwards: the GOP’s survival depends on Republicans being part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

I have to admit that here I agree more with Cannon. Republicans would not get much credit for helping to pass Obama’s universal health care plan. Everyone would know it was a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress who delivered on that promise.

Obstruction with the goal of making Obama look like an ineffective leader in tough economic times is probably the Republicans’ best hope of making political gains.

I am cautiously optimistic that Congress will be more open to adopting Obama’s agenda than the Democratic-controlled Congress was for Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1994. We’ve got at least two things going for us: Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary will be Tom Daschle, who knows the inner workings of Congress, and Henry Waxman (not John Dingell) will be running the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack told Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register on Sunday that

he had never been contacted by aides to President-elect Barack Obama about [the Secretary of Agriculture] position or any other.

“I would have to speculate that I was in fact in the running and further speculate as to why I was no longer. I do not think it prudent or appropriate to speculate about either,” Vilsack said.

Vilsack had been linked repeatedly to the Agriculture Department position in news reports. The Washington Post at one point called him a “near shoo-in” for the job. Obama’s staff had never confirmed that he was being considered.

Obama “has many interests he has to consider, and we have an abundance of talent in both parties from which to satisfy those interests,” Vilsack said today.

I am surprised to hear Vilsack say no one from Obama’s team had contacted him. In that case I wonder why there was so much speculation about Vilsack being considered to head the US Department of Agriculture. I still think Vilsack would be an outstanding secretary of education.

At MyDD Natasha Chart has a good piece up on why agriculture policy is so important for the environment and the economy.

Two months from now, Barack Obama will be inaugurated, having promised to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months:

Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. They will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

I’ve been skeptical about whether Obama would follow through on this promise ever since I learned in April that Colin Kahl, the man Obama put in charge of his working group on Iraq, was secretly recommending that the U.S. leave 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2010.

As of June, Kahl was still Obama’s leading adviser on Iraq, and he co-authored a report advocating that “a large contingent of American forces [remain] in Iraq for several years”.

Now Obama is leaning toward leaving Robert Gates in charge of the Department of Defense for some time. In the best-case scenario, Gates would oversee the phased withdrawal of troops over a 16-month period, and then Obama would put someone else in charge of the DOD. On the other hand, it seems plausible that someone George W. Bush trusted to enact his Iraq policy might strongly advise the new president to back off from his planned timetable.

Consider Obama’s reported choice of General Jim Jones as national security adviser. Does it seem likely that this man, who backed John McCain for president, would encourage Obama to get us out of Iraq as quickly as we could safely do so?

The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported over the weekend,

There is growing concern among a new generation of anti-war foreign policy analysts in Washington, many of whom stuck their necks out to support Mr Obama early in the White House race, that they will be frozen out of his administration.

Mrs Clinton is expected to appoint her own top team at the State Department, drawn from more conservative thinkers.

A Democratic foreign policy expert told one Washington website: “They were the ones courageous enough to stand up early against Iraq, which is why many supported Obama in the first place.” Their fear, he added, is that they will not now secure the mid-level posts which will enable them to reach the top of the Washington career ladder in future.

Although I never thought Obama and Clinton were very different on Iraq or other policy matters, I feel sorry for the policy wonks who supported Obama because they thought he would be better on Iraq.

As Al Giordano recently reminded us, these people took a big risk for Obama:

Way back in ancient times – I’m talking about 2007 – the most difficult place to be a supporter of then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid was inside the Washington DC beltway. […]

If you were a Democrat in or around DC and backed Obama for president you were a pariah, shunned, no longer invited to the cocktail parties or policy panels. And no small number of Clinton bandwagoneers would take every chance to remind you that, once the White House had been reconquered, you would be screwed to the wall, and viciously so.

I have no contacts in DC, but this account has the ring of truth for me. I remember one particularly obnoxious Clinton supporter who used to comment at MyDD regularly during 2007. When Hillary’s nomination seemed inevitable, he would brag about his Washington connections and how after she wrapped things up on Super Tuesday, hellfire would rain down on certain people who had supported Obama for president.

I am not opposed to Clinton as secretary of state, but I think Obama owes something to the people who were there for him early on because (they thought) he was a strong opponent of the Iraq War.

For me, the most shocking part of the Telegraph story was this:

Suspicion of Mr Obama’s moves has been compounded, for some liberals, by the revelation that Mr Obama has for several months been taking advice from Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush.

Scowcroft? I know a lot of Democrats would be happy to see Obama serve out Bill Clinton’s third term, but I’m pretty sure none of them voted for Obama so that he could serve out Poppy Bush’s second term.

The Wall Street Journal confirms the connections between Obama and Scowcroft:

Many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft, a former national-security adviser turned public critic of the Bush White House.

Mr. Scowcroft spoke by phone with President-elect Barack Obama last week, the latest in a months-long series of conversations between the two men about defense and foreign-policy issues, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The relationship between the president-elect and the Republican heavyweight suggests that Mr. Scowcroft’s views, which place a premium on an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, might hold sway in the Obama White House.

Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see Obama pick up the Israeli-Palesstinian peace process, and I am aware that Scowcroft has criticized George W. Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq.

Still, it seems unjust for Obama to get elected on the promise of big change and then turn around an appoint a bunch of Scowcroft’s buddies to his foreign policy shop–especially if the foreign policy experts who were there for Obama early on are left out in the cold.

I would love to be proved wrong, but I am finding it hard to believe that the American military presence in Iraq will be down to a small residual force 18 months from now.

Your thoughts and rebuttals are welcome in the comments.

Skip this post if you think it’s too early to start talking about the 2012 presidential campaign just because Barack Obama hasn’t been inaugurated yet.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, was back in the state this week in more ways than one. On Thursday he held book signings that attracted some 600 people in Cedar Rapids and an even larger crowd in a Des Moines suburb. According to the Des Moines Register, he “brushed off talk of a 2012 run” but

brought to Iowa a prescription for the national Republican Party, which he said has wandered from its founding principles.

“There is no such thing as fiscal conservativism without social conservativism,” Huckabee said. “We really should be governing by a moral code that we live by, which can be summed up in the phrase: Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

Governing by that principle would lead to a more humane society, with lower crime and poverty rates, creating less demand on government spending, he said.

Huckabee was accompanied on Thursday by Bob Vander Plaats, who chaired his Iowa campaign for president. Vander Plaats has sought the Republican nomination for Iowa governor twice and is expected to run again in 2010. He recently came out swinging against calls for the Iowa GOP to move to the middle following its latest election losses. The Republican caucuses in the Iowa House and the Iowa Senate elected new leadership this month, and the state party will choose a new chairman in January. Vander Plaats is likely to be involved in a bruising battle against those who want the new chairman to reach out more to moderates.

Many Iowans who didn’t come to Huckabee’s book signings heard from him anyway this week, as he became the first politician to robocall Iowa voters since the November election. The calls ask a few questions in order to identify voters who oppose abortion rights, then ask them to donate to the National Right to Life Council. According to Iowa Independent, the call universe included some Democrats and no-party voters as well as registered Republicans. Raising money for an anti-abortion group both keeps Huckabee in front of voters and scores points with advocates who could be foot-soldiers during the next caucus campaign.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made two stops in Iowa yesterday. Speaking in Cedar Rapids,

Jindal said America’s culture is one of the things that makes it great, but warned that its music, art and constant streams of media and communication have often moved in the wrong direction.

“There are things we can do as private citizens working together to strengthen our society,” he said. “Our focus does not need to be on fixing the (Republican) party,” he said. “Our focus needs to be on how to fix America.”

I’m really glad to hear he’s not worried about fixing the party that has record-high disapproval ratings, according to Gallup.

Later in the day, Jindal headlined a fundraiser in West Des Moines for the Iowa Family Policy Center. He said he wasn’t there to talk politics (as if what follows isn’t a politically advantageous message for that audience):

“It all starts with family and builds outward from there,” said the first-term Jindal, who was making his first visit to Iowa. “As a parent, I’m acutely aware of the overall coarsening of our culture in many ways.”

The governor said technology such as television and the Internet are conduits for corrupting children, which he also believes is an issue agreed upon across party lines.

“As governor, I can’t censor anything or take away anyone’s freedom of speech – nor do I want to if I could,” he said, “but I can still control what my kids watch, what they hear and what they read.”

The problem is that parents who want to control what their kids read often try to do so by limiting what other people’s kids can read. A couple near Des Moines

are fighting to restrict access to the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” at East Elementary School in Ankeny. The book is the story of two male penguins who raise a chick together.

The Ankeny parents want it either removed or moved to the parents-only section, arguing that it promotes homosexuality and same-sex couples as normal and that children are too young to understand the subject.

Gay rights are sure to be an issue in the next Republican caucus campaign, especially if the Iowa Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality next year. The court will soon hear oral arguments in a gay marriage case.

For now, though, it’s enough for Jindal to speak generally about “family” and “culture” and raise his name recognition among the religious conservatives who have often crowned the winner in the Iowa caucuses.

I swear this post is not a reaction to my apparent maleness in the eyes of the Blog Gender Analyzer.

I was already planning to repost this piece on the weekend before Thanksgiving.

One of my favorite bloggers, Steve Gilliard, used to write a lot about holiday cooking around this time of year. When he was in the hospital, many of his readers kept The News Blog going with posts about subjects he liked to cover. I wrote a few guest posts about food, including this one.

Two easy recipes for pumpkin pie are after the jump. One comes from a friend, and the other comes from my tinkering.

At Daily Kos yesterday, The Baculum King reposted a piece on safe driving tips based on his experience as a truck driver and one particularly horrifying accident he witnessed.

Daily Kos user Translator followed up with this diary containing more advice about driving safely in cold weather.

These piece are well worth your time.

Feel free to add any other holiday travel tips in the comments.

Remember, “research has found driving while talking on a cellphone to be as dangerous as driving drunk.”

Iowa Independent’s Jason Hancock recently interviewed Jackie Norris, who ran Barack Obama’s Iowa campaign during the general election. (She conducted the interview before Norris accepted her new job as First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff.)

I found this exchange particularly interesting:

II: What effect do you think the Obama campaign will have on future campaigns, especially here in Iowa?

JN: I think Iowa is disappointed that more legislative candidates and candidates like Becky Greenwald didn’t win, that we didn’t see more of a coattail effect for down ballot candidates. The lesson learned is that in the counties where the Democrats weren’t organized before they realized that when they pool their efforts and work together they could actually get something done. I think what we’ve done is come in and be the catalyst for local political organizations. My hope is that once we leave they will still be energized and motivated for the next thing, whether that is a school board, a county auditor or a statehouse candidate.

II: But why weren’t the Obama coattails longer in Iowa?

JN: Iowans are notoriously independent. I also think that a lot of the people who voted were new voters and while we educated them enough to get them out to support the president they need to now be educated about the down ballot races. Not to say we didn’t do that, because I think we did see gains. But I think no one should assume voters would vote straight-ticket Democrat just because they turned out for a Democratic presidential candidate. The state and local parties need to continue to reach out to those voters in the future.

Before the election I often urged volunteers to remind voters to fill out the whole ballot and not just the oval next to Obama’s name. Every once in a while someone would ask why I was so worried about the potential “drop-off” (that is, the people who vote Democrat for president but don’t cast a vote in the down-ticket races).

Jackie Norris’s comments to Iowa Independent suggest that she thinks drop-off was the biggest problem for our statehouse candidates. That is consistent with what I’ve been hearing from staff and volunteers around the state. It is also possible, though, that the Republican scare-mongering about one-party socialist rule drove some Obama supporters away from down-ticket Democrats.

I still want to see more thorough analysis of the close statehouse races in Iowa, both the ones we lost and the ones we won.

Did the races we lost have a larger proportion of “drop-off” ballots? Or was the problem more likely to be related to ticket-splitting?

Several of our incumbents appeared to lose on election night but won once the early votes were counted. In the districts where we fell short, was the proportion of early votes lower than in the districts we held?

If you are willing to volunteer to look closely at the precinct-level results in one or more Iowa House or Senate districts, please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com).

Although further analysis needs to be done, the disappointing down-ticket results suggest to me that Iowa Democrats need more of a coordinated GOTV campaign in 2010 and 2012 than we had this year.

At Talk Left I saw a reference to the Gender Analyzer, which uses artificial intelligence to “determine if a homepage is written by a man or a woman.”

You enter the address, and it analyzes the text and gives you a prediction and a probability ratio.

When I checked this site, I got this:

We think / is written by a man (79%).

Better luck next time, computer! Maybe some linguist out there can explain why the program thinks I write like a man.

I fed in a bunch of other blogs, with mixed results. The analyzer correctly identified the “male” blogs I tested as being written by men, but mistakenly thought some of the “female” blogs were written by men too.

If it’s a close call, the analyzer will give you this kind of answer:

We guess http://walkslowlylivewildly.com is written by a woman (56%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

One of the most encouraging post-election developments was the House Democratic caucus’s vote yesterday to put Representative Henry Waxman in charge of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

It turns out that Iowa’s own Bruce Braley was a strong advocate for Waxman:

Waxman was generally respectful of [John] Dingell in his speech before the caucus, according to people who were in the room, but he took a few sharp jabs at the chairman. Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley, who gave one of Waxman’s nominating speeches, went a step further, lashing out at Dingell for standing in the way of environmental reforms. He even complained that the speaker had to go around him to enact a renewable energy bill during the Democrats’ first year in power.

It’s important to note that just a week ago, Dingell was widely expected to hold on to the powerful committee chairmanship. Reid Wilson of Politics Nation blog observed,

Politics Nation is told Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley, just elected to his second term, made an impassioned speech on Waxman’s behalf, blaming Dingell for blocking progress on a number of bills. Braley has been involved in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, co-chairing the Frontline program, but it’s still unusual to see such a junior member of congress question a more senior member, especially one who was serving his second term in Congress when Braley was born.

Braley took a big risk for a good cause, and progressives should thank him for that.

Some of Dingell’s supporters seemed to value Congressional protocol more than getting the job done under a new president. Here’s Representative Charles Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee:

“I have enjoyed the seniority system,” Rangel said. “It wasn’t broken.”

Actually, the system was broken if the narrow interests of Michigan manufacturers were repeatedly allowed to block legislation that’s in the national interest. Waxman’s primary goal was not to destroy the seniority system. If Dingell hadn’t been standing in the way of good environmental and energy policies for so many years, this challenge never would have happened.

This report from The Hill is worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt:

And supporters of a more aggressive approach to climate change and more aggressive regulation were encouraged. Dingell was a chief advocate of automakers and was slow to warm up to Pelosi’s call for restrictions to limit climate change.

“I think it will be easier,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said of global warming restrictions. “I think anyone who’s watched the last couple of years would conclude it will happen more quickly and more smoothly. [Waxman] is better positioned to guide that.”

Supporters also said they wanted swifter implementation of the agenda of the Democratic Party and Obama.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), a Waxman ally for years, said Waxman supporters were mindful of 1993 and 1994 when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House for two years, then lost Congress in a dramatic fashion.

“The memory of ’93 and ’94 was seared into our minds,” Berman said. “We have to pass the program. The question was how that could best be done.”

I couldn’t agree more on both the substance and the politics of this decision.

The Hill also reported that the conservative Blue Dogs are very upset by yesterday’s vote, which they view as a “California takeover.” It does not mention Congressman Leonard Boswell, who is a member of the Blue Dog group.

I contacted the offices of Boswell and Representatives Dave Loebsack to inquire about their position on Waxman v. Dingell. I have not yet heard back from Loebsack’s press secretary. Boswell’s press secretary cut me off without letting me finish my question and refused to call me back, as usual.

I do find it amusing that Boswell’s press secretary in Washington still freezes me out. Even at the height of the third district primary battle, the press secretary from Boswell’s Congressional campaign headquarters in Des Moines had no problem sending me press releases and responding to my queries.  

The more I think about it, the more I think Hillary Clinton should stay in the Senate. However, most analysts are speculating she will accept Barack Obama’s offer to become Secretary of State. Here’s a roundup of recent coverage on the appointment.

Tom Harkin thinks Hillary will be secretary of state, and he likes the idea:

Harkin said he was confident that former President Bill Clinton would not pose conflicts, as he’s agreed to make public the donors to his foundation and clear his travel schedule and speeches with the Obama administration, should his wife become secretary of state.

“If he’s willing to do whatever the Obama team and the president wants – and he should understand it, he’s a former president – that would be fine,” Harkin said.

He also said Obama naming her would be a demonstration of unity to the world. Sen. Clinton and Obama waged an intense, six-month campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year.

“I think it would send a good signal to the world if Hillary Clinton were secretary of state,” Harkin said. “The signal it sends to the world is we can have big fights politically here in the United States and yet after the election’s over, we pull together.”

Where does that leave Bill Richardson? I hope he ends up in the cabinet. UPDATE: ragbrai08 has heard rumblings Richardson might become Secretary of the Interior, which would be a decent fit for him.

Kia Franklin of the Drum Major Institute wrote an interesting piece on Eric Holder, the likely attorney general, and where he stands on civil justice issues.

John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs blog offers “A Different View of [Tom] Vilsack,” the front-runner to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

It is difficult, if not impossible, to predict when, where and from whom leadership will emerge. The book on Tom Vilsack is not complete, and perhaps that is a good thing. He does not get a perfect score on my litmus tests. But, when I disagree with him in the future I will continue to engage him, just as I always have, whether he is a private citizen or the Secretary of Agriculture. And he will engage me, just as he always has.

I hope that, at the end of the day, our next Secretary of Agriculture is the kind of leader that can help create a future for rural America with thriving family farms and ranches and vibrant rural communities. I believe Governor Vilsack can provide that leadership. Perhaps he just might get the chance.

James L. of Swing State Project is concerned that Obama might choose either Representative Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin or Representative Collin Peterson for the USDA job. Both are from Republican-leaning districts that would be hard for a different Democrat to hold.

Obama supposedly was leaning toward offering the Commerce Department position to uber-fundraiser Penny Pritzker, but she withdrew her name from consideration.

Haven’t heard much about a possible secretary of transportation. Obama supports greater investment in core infrastructure as well as high-speed rail and public mass transit, so I am hopeful he will put someone with vision in charge of this department. The highway bill comes up for reauthorization in 2009 and is sure to be one of the major battlegrounds in Congress.

Still no word on a Treasury Secretary. Matt Stoller remembered another reason why Larry Summers is wrong for the job.

Most people seem to think Robert Gates will stay on as Defense Secretary. I don’t see why Obama can’t appoint a Democrat for that position. We have plenty of qualified people in our party. Keeping the Republicans in charge of defense supports their propaganda that the GOP is best for defending the country.

The Mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz, is being considered either for Transportation or for Housing and Urban Development. Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is not interested in the HUD appointment.

Share your opinions or predictions in the comments.

UPDATE: Why does Obama want to reinforce Republican stereotypes about how they’re the only ones who can handle national security? Now General Jim Jones, a supporter of the Iraq War and John McCain, is tipped to run the National Security Agency. That is just crazy. Put some Democrats in charge, please. It’s not as if we don’t have people who could do this job well. I would not be surprised if Jones undermines Obama in this position.

UPDATE 2: The New York Times says Hillary Clinton will take the Secretary of State job.

Several news outlets are saying Timothy Geithner, about whom I know nothing, will be Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee. Geithner is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

NBC News says Bill Richardson will be Commerce Secretary. I don’t like him nearly so much for that job as I would like him for Secretary of State, Transportation, or Interior. Richardson’s a corporate Democrat, judging from his record in the 1990s. He ran the whip to get NAFTA through the House during Bill Clinton’s first term.

Still no progressives in Obama’s cabinet.

UPDATE 3: My brother, who works in the investment field and is much more of a moderate Democrat than I am, is “sick” about the prospect of Geithner running Treasury. His other comment about Geithner is not printable at this blog.

UPDATE 4: This is from a speech Geithner gave in May 2006:

Credit derivatives have contributed to dramatic changes in the process of credit intermediation, and the benefits of these changes seem compelling. They have made possible substantial improvements in the way credit risk is managed and facilitated a broad distribution of risk outside the banking system. By spreading risk more widely, by making it easier to purchase and sell protection against credit risk and to actively trade credit risk, and by facilitating the participation of a large and very diverse pool of non-bank financial institutions in the business of credit, these changes probably improve the overall efficiency and resiliency of financial markets.

With the advent of credit derivatives, concentrations of credit risk are made easier to mitigate, and diversification made easier to achieve. Credit losses, whether from specific, individual defaults or the more widespread distress that accompanies economic recessions, will be diffused more broadly across institutions with different risk appetite and tolerance, and across geographic borders. Our experience since the introduction of these new instruments-a period that includes a major asset price shock and a global recession-seems to justify the essentially positive judgment we have about the likely benefits of ongoing growth in these markets.

Despite the benefits to financial resilience, the changes in the credit markets that are the subject of your conference have also provoked some concerns and unease, even among those on the frontier of innovation and the most active participants in these markets.

These concerns are based in part on uncertainty-a candid acknowledgment that there is a lot we do not yet know about how these instruments and the increased role of nonbank institutions in these markets will affect how the financial markets are likely to function in conditions of stress.  […]

Let me conclude by reiterating the fundamental view that the wave of innovation underway in credit derivatives offers substantial benefits to both the efficiency and stability of our financial system.

Hmmm, he didn’t seem to have seen any of the current problems coming. Also, he apparently was involved in the bailout negotiations. So it seems like this is a very status quo pick for Obama.

On an even less encouraging note, Obama’s leading candidate to run the CIA is a “Bush-Cheney apologist.”

That’s not exactly “change we can believe in.”

UPDATE 5: Two people on Obama’s short list would both be highly competent and celebrated by progressives: Representative Raul Grijalva for Interior (he heads the House Progressive Caucus) and former Representative David Bonior for Labor (he has close ties to organized labor).

Congratulations to Jackie Norris, who has accepted an offer to be chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama, according to the Washington Post.

She was among Barack Obama’s key early supporters in Iowa and headed Obama’s Iowa campaign during the general election.

I will update this post when I find out whether her husband John Norris plans to stay on the Iowa Utilities Board after the family moves to the Washington area. Governor Tom Vilsack appointed Norris to that position in 2005.

UPDATE: I just remembered that John Norris ran Jesse Jackson’s Iowa campaign before the 1988 caucuses (that was before he and Jackie were married).

He never could have imagined that just 20 years from then, his future wife would be hired to run the first lady’s office in the administration of America’s first black president.

What a great day for the Norris family, and for the country.

Last week I wrote about some of the problems related to the Wall Street bailout. Among other things, no one knows what the Treasury Department has been doing with the money.

On November 18 Representative Bruce Braley sent a letter to leaders of the U.S. House “urging them to finish naming members of a congressional oversight panel charged with overseeing the implementation of the $700 billion bailout package.” His office released the text of the letter:

Dear Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi, Majority Leader [Steny] Hoyer, and Minority Leader [John] Boehner,

Thank you for your leadership throughout the 110th Congress.  As you know, we are facing an economic crisis as serious as any our nation has faced during my lifetime.  While this crisis started on Wall Street, it now affects Iowans and Americans from all walks of life.  We are all hopeful that the recently enacted Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) will have a significant impact on the recovery of financial markets.

Just last week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced a change in course on how taxpayer funds from the EESA will be used to stabilize the economy. He stated that instead of buying troubled assets, Treasury would use the funds to invest in nonbank financial companies, and to promote consumer borrowing through credit cards, car loans, and student loans. As reported in the Washington Post on November 13, 2008, the Bush Administration has already committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

With all that is going on, I am concerned that all of the members have not yet been nominated to the five-member Congressional Oversight panel, as designated by Section 125 of the EESA. As you know, the EESA included language that required the release of a detailed report from the congressional panel 30 days after the bailout program began.  This deadline for this initial report has since passed. Additionally, the congressional oversight panel is supposed to issue a report on January 20, 2009, giving an update on the financial regulatory process. Since a congressional panel is not yet finalized, it is unclear as to whether this deadline can be met.

I strongly believe that the American people have a right to know how their taxpayer funds are being used by the Treasury, especially in light of the recent change in course on how to revitalize the economy.  It is essential that Congress conduct vigorous oversight during this process. That is why I urge you to make it a top priority to complete the assembly of a Congressional Oversight Panel as soon as possible.

Thank you again for your leadership, and thank you for your attention to this issue.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Bruce Braley

Braley voted against the first proposed bailout but supported the revised version for reasons described here. Although I didn’t agree with his second vote, I appreciate his effort to improve Congressional oversight so that Treasury can be held accountable for how funds are being used.

An earthquake hit Capitol Hill today, as the House Democratic caucus voted 137 to 122 to make Representative Henry Waxman of California chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He will replace Representative John Dingell of Michigan, who has served in the House for more than 50 years (after his father represented the same district for more than two decades).

Dingell has been the top Democrat on the panel for 28 years and is an old-school supporter of the auto industry. Waxman has complained that the committee has been too slow to address environmental issues like global warming.

“The argument we made was that we needed a change for the committee to have the leadership that will work with this administration and members in both the House and the Senate in order to get important issues passed in health care, environmental protection, in energy policy,” Waxman said after the vote.

“The next two years are critical,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who spoke on Waxman’s behalf in the closed-door caucus. “It’s not personal. It’s about the American people demanding that we embrace change and work with the president on critical issues of climate change and energy and health care.”

This is more important than the Senate Democrats caving to Joe Lieberman on Tuesday.

It’s an excellent sign that the new Congress will be serious about progressive change. I had read yesterday that freshman Democrats were overwhelmingly for Waxman, while the Blue Dogs and Congressional Black Caucus were mostly for Dingell.

It’s unfortunate that Dingell has spent several decades trying to shield the big three American automakers from government regulation on fuel efficiency and other matters. If he had not “protected” them for so long, maybe U.S.-made cars would be more desirable for more consumers, and the automakers would not be on the brink of bankruptcy.

Of course, our employer-based health care system is another major drag on American manufacturers. With any luck we will be able to help uninsured Americans and major industry at the same time by passing universal health care reform.

Congratulations to Waxman for taking the first step in what will no doubt be a long slog.

UPDATE: A Siegel is encouraged by Obama’s speech to the recent bipartisan governors’ summit on climate change. Click the link for more details and the text of the speech.

In December the Minnesota State Canvassing Board will review hundreds of challenged ballots to see whether voter intent can be discerned. Their rulings could determine the outcome of the Minnesota Senate race, where fewer than 200 votes separate Al Franken and Norm Coleman. Many votes remain to be recounted before the canvassing board meets.

Minnesota Public Radio has posted photos of 11 ballots that have been challenged for different reasons. Click the link to view these ballots and vote on whether they should be accepted or rejected, and if accepted, for whom the vote should count.

Of the 11 ballots, I would only put one in the reject pile. Another was questionable, in my opinion. The other nine clearly showed a voter preference for Coleman, Franken or independent candidate Dean Barkley.

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Mark Begich took the lead as the early votes were counted, and seven-times-indicted Ted Stevens has conceded the Alaska Senate race. That makes seven Democratic pickups, with Georgia and Minnesota yet to be determined. The Democrats hold 56 Senate seats, and two independents (Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders) also caucus with Democrats.

The polls in Georgia have shown Republican Saxby Chambliss ahead of Jim Martin by three or four points. It’s all going to come down to turnout–I doubt much voter persuasion will occur between now and December 2. Barack Obama moved his field staff from Ohio down to Georgia, and many other groups, like Democracy for America, are helping Martin too. The state’s largest newspaper has endorsed Martin.

Chambliss has to be favored in this red state, but if the Democrats have a superior GOTV effort, Martin could pull off an upset.

The Minnesota recount has begun. Al Franken went into it 215 votes behind Norm Coleman (out of more than 2.5 million cast, or 0.008 percent). As of Wednesday evening, he had narrowed the gap to 181 votes. The state has a good “voter intent” law, meaning that if a person can determine the voter’s intent, the vote will count even if an optical scanner did not record it.

I can’t say I feel overly confident, but this study suggests Franken may have a good chance of taking the lead during the recount.

One wrinkle is that Franken successfully sued to get information about voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in one county. His campaign wants that information for all of the counties so that wrongfully excluded absentee ballots can be counted. However, it’s not clear whether those votes will ever be counted, even if the ballots were rejected because of clerical error.

As for the House races, we narrowly lost in CA-44, a district we did not target that was not considered competitive.

CA-04 has still not been called, but Democrat Charlie Brown trails carpet-bagger Tom McClintock by about 600 votes, and it seems unlikely he will be able to make up that margin.

It looks like we will pick up VA-05, which was viewed as quite a longshot before the election.

Louisiana will hold two runoff elections in December. Corrupt Democrat “Dollar Bill” Jefferson will most likely hold the second district. The fourth district is competitive, and Dick Cheney recently headed to Shreveport to campaign for the Republican.

UPDATE: I forgot Ohio’s 15th district, which is going to count provisional ballots. It seems like Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has a decent chance of beating Republican Steve Stivers.

Democrats will end up with something between 255 and 259 House seats out of 438. Not bad at all.

Josh Goodman alerted me to this piece he wrote for Governing.com: “Move Over Missouri, Iowa Is the New Bellwether State.”

John McCain appears likely to take Missouri’s 11 electoral votes, which would be the first time since 1956 that the state did not vote for the winner of the presidential election.

However, Goodman argues that Missouri has not been the best bellwether for the last few cycles. Even though it voted for the winner each time through 2004, Missouri has steadily trended more Republican in relation to the national popular vote.

Goodman then lists “the five states that have come closest to matching the national popular vote in each election since 1988.” (Click here to see which other states made these lists.) Guess what he found?

Iowa is the only state that has been one of the top five bellwethers in four of the last five elections. The only year that it doesn’t make the list is 1996, when it was sixth — and only off by 1.82 points.

So, in every presidential election from 1992 through 2008, Iowa’s popular vote margin was within 2.55 percentage points of the national popular vote result. That is an impressive performance as a bellwether. […]

None of that guarantees that “as Iowa goes, so goes the nation” in 2012. Four years out, elections are never that predictable. But, just from the numbers, if there’s one state that we can expect to be a microcosm of the nation in 2012, it’s Iowa.

It’s interesting that Iowa’s vote has tracked so closely to the national popular vote, even though Iowa’s population is relatively unrepresentative demographically (96 percent white and with a higher proportion of senior citizens than most states).

Anyone have a theory to explain this phenomenon?

Looks like the Guardian jumped the gun; Hillary Clinton has not accepted the Secretary of State position and is reportedly still weighing Barack Obama’s offer.

Apparently Senator Ted Kennedy wants Hillary to lead the efforts to get health care reform through Congress. That’s where I’d like to see her as well, though the cynic in me wonders whether Kennedy is primarily trying to clear the path for his friend Senator John Kerry to become secretary of state.

I would be happy with either Kerry or Bill Richardson for that job, but my dream is still Richardson as transportation secretary.

Roll Call reports that former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, an early Obama backer, has accepted Obama’s offer to run the Health and Human Services department. Daschle will also be the White House “health care czar,” and I’m with Matt Stoller:

isn’t it weird that cabinet appointments are basically subordinate to White House staff positions?  It’s like, when did ‘czar’ become a laudable title?

Obama is said to have decided on Eric Holder for attorney general. Holder was deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton but supported Obama during the Democratic primaries. He also helped lead Obama’s vice-presidential search team. He is still being vetted, but if selected and confirmed, Holder would become the first black U.S. attorney general.

The Ethicurean gets real about who might become secretary of agriculture.

It’s notable that no hero of Obama’s progressive supporters seems to be in the running for any job. I admit that part of me is amused to watch heads explode among those who really believed Obama would bring transformational change. It’s been clear for many months that there was little daylight between Hillary and Obama on policy. Some people bought into the Clinton demonization project a bit too much in the winter and spring.

On the other hand, Pat Buchanan’s stopped clock is right about this: Obama should make at least one appointment that will please the “Daily Kos crowd,” which did so much for Obama during the primaries. It would be ironic if “the change we need” turned out to be a bunch of former Clinton officials and centrist Congressional leaders, with a few Republicans mixed in.

This is an open thread for any thoughts or predictions about Obama’s cabinet appointments.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein is excited by the news about Daschle:

This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.

UPDATE 2: CNN reports that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, an early Obama backer, will be named Homeland Security secretary. I want her to run against John McCain for Senate in 2010.

Iowa Senate Republicans voted out Ron Wieck as minority leader on Tuesday. New leader Paul McKinley of Chariton promised “to rebuild this party from the ground up.”

Wieck, of Sioux City, was selected for the job by Senate Republicans in 2007 after Sen. Mary Lundby of Marion chose to step down from the leadership role. He will continue to serve in his District 27 seat.

McKinley, former owner of the textile company Neely Manufacturing, stressed that all Republicans will continue to work together. Senate Republicans will focus on being a spending watchdog for the state, retaining Iowa’s pro-business economy, providing tax relief and advocating for smaller government, he said.

Last week Iowa House Republicans picked Kraig Paulsen to replace Chris Rants as minority leader.

No consensus candidate seems to be emerging to take on the unenviable job of rebuilding the divided Republican Party of Iowa.

The Des Moines Register’s David Yepsen wrote in his latest column,

Republicans are looking for a new state party chairman. The challenge for the party is to find a chair who is acceptable to social conservatives but who can raise money from more moderate business types. The new leader must look good on TV and execute a management turnaround, all while working for a board of directors that too often squabbles and micromanages.

Good luck. Polk County chairman Ted Sporer is running, but he may be too hot and scrappy for some. His critics say the Polk County GOP organization he heads isn’t impressive. He says it’s better than when he started.

Former state Rep. Danny Carroll of Grinnell is also mentioned. He’s a smart, well-liked guy but may be too much of a social conservative for a party that needs to broaden its appeal. Carroll’s also lost two consecutive legislative races.

Another former state representative, Bill Dix of Shell Rock, gets mentioned but may be more interested in another run for office someday.

If you’re wondering why anyone would consider Sporer “too hot and scrappy,” read his take on the Tom Harkin/Christopher Reed debate.

Appearing on Iowa Public Television the weekend after the election, Republican moderate and former gubernatorial candidate Doug Gross described his dream candidate:

Gross: Well, I can think of 1964 we had a debacle, the Goldwater debacle and Johnson won in a landslide.  The democrats took over the governorship in both houses of the legislature.  And then we brought in a young Des Moines attorney by the name of Bob Ray to run the party as a guy that understood the importance of communication, appealing to all factions of the party and worked his tail off to help rebuild the organization.  That’s the kind of person we need as party chair again.  What we don’t need is someone whose is ideologically pure on one side or the other, that’s not what we should have.

Yepsen: Have you got some names?

Gross: Do I have some names?  I’m looking for Bob Ray’s sons but he only has daughters but the daughters would be alright too.

Feel that inclusion, Republican ladies?

Even if Bob Ray had a son, I doubt a pro-choice moderate who welcomed increased foreign immigration to this state would have a prayer of winning a leadership contest in today’s GOP.

Here’s a tip for conservatives, though: Governor Ray was just about the only Republican my mother ever voted for.

For more speculation on a possible new leader for the Iowa GOP, read this post or this post at the Krusty Konservative blog. Check out the comments too. The conservatives sure are angry.

Jonathan Narcisse, the odd man out on the Des Moines school board, did something dumb recently:

Craig Richman, 16, a sophomore wrestler at Roosevelt High School, wrote an e-mail to school board members last week that voiced his frustration with the state’s “no pass, no play” rule, which benches athletes whose grades slip.

Richman blamed his academic struggles on advanced math classes. He said it was unfair that he should be required to sit out for six weeks for “challenging myself” and added that he is retaking the algebra class that gave him trouble.

Board member Jonathan Narcisse, one of three board members to respond to Richman, said Monday that he thought the teen needed some “tough love.”

His e-mail told Richman: “Suck it up, man. Hit the books. Work out, and stay in shape, and don’t make the same mistake ever again.”

Richman’s parents feel Narcisse’s 11-paragraph e-mail was unnecessarily harsh. But they are more upset with a story Narcisse shared with the teen about an athlete who hadn’t focused enough on his academics and was last seen at a convenience store “asking customers for money for wine and offering (oral sex) for money.”

I happen to support the “no pass, no play” rule for high school students, and I think we’ve all had the experience of writing something in an e-mail we wish we could take back later. However, Narcisse should be particularly careful not to use inappropriate language when communicating with students. I sympathize with his point that the kid needs to take his lumps and study harder, but he could have made that point without any sexual references.

School board chair Ginny Strong wrote a letter to Narcisse

on behalf of the board that said members are “appalled” at his response to the student. The letter warns Narcisse against inappropriate language in communications that are carried out in his capacity as a board member.

“It is highly and completely inappropriate for a board member to reference a sexual act in response to a high school student’s e-mail,” Strong said.

Point taken. Now let’s compare Narcisse’s offense to a recent decision taken by the school board and announced by Strong in a press release last Friday:

Des Moines school officials today said they will not sue the construction management firm that has overseen millions of dollars in projects paid for with sales tax money.

School board members paid attorney Nicholas Critelli $49,000 for a 13-month investigation that reviewed the findings of a 2007 state auditor’s report that showed competitive bid laws were broken on school construction projects.

Critelli was charged with completing a more detailed review of construction projects and found additional projects also violated bid laws. Critelli recommended to the school board they consider legal action against the firm that oversaw all of the work, Taylor Ohde Kitchell.

The district has a $19.3 million contract with Taylor Ohde Kitchell to oversee construction projects through June 30, 2011. School officials also have decided not to terminate their contract with the company. Critelli wrote that Taylor Ohde Kitchell was responsible for the violations because of the conditions of its agreement with the district, and therefore was in violation of its contract.

Strong’s press release indicated that legal action “with little or no chance of success does not serve the best interests” of the community. The Des Moines Register added that the school board discussed Critelli’s report “briefly” at an October meeting, but Critelli was not there to take questions about the investigation.

I am not an attorney and can’t assess the prospects for a potential lawsuit against Taylor Ohde Kitchell. But I respect State Auditor David Vaudt, whose findings prompted the school board to hire Critelli, and it seems that Critelli thoroughly examined the issues at hand.

As the mother of a child in a Des Moines public school, I wonder why the school board would pay Critelli $49,000 to look into this matter and then ignore his recommendations. Even if they decided not to sue, they could have at least terminated the Taylor Ohde Kitchell contract.

As a Polk County resident, I wonder why the school board seems unconcerned with holding Taylor Ohde Kitchell accountable for how nearly $20 million in local-option sales tax dollars were spent.

By the way, Duane Van Hemert, who oversaw the bidding process on these projects as the school district’s facilities manager, refused to cooperate with Critelli’s investigation. That alone ought to raise some red flags for the school board members. (Van Hemert resigned from his position with the school district a year and a half ago, soon after Nancy Sebring became superintendent.)

Current and former school board members take pot shots at Narcisse, but he was among the community leaders who raised questions about the Taylor Ohde Kitchell contract years ago. Where were Des Moines school board members when the alleged wrongdoing identified by Vaudt and Critelli occurred? They were dismissing critics of Van Hemert and the school board as a bunch of name-callers.

If members of the school board are “appalled” by a boneheaded e-mail that offended one student and his parents, they should be equally “appalled” by Vaudt’s and Critelli’s findings.

Here’s hoping people committed to better governance and oversight will get on the Des Moines school board in the future.

Via nyceve at Daily Kos I learned about a new study called “Class and Race Inequalities in Health and Health Care.” The three authors found that very few Americans lacking health insurance receive organ transplants, although the uninsured often become organ donors.

Eve’s diary includes a link to the full report in pdf format and summarizes one of its findings:

Strikingly, lack of insurance was a stronger predictor of organ donation than was any hospital characteristic or demographic factor other than age (older people’s organs are more often diseased and unsuitable for transplantation).

Why are the uninsured more likely to become organ donors? Could it be that more of them are dying prematurely?

The authors explain in the introduction why they embarked on this research project:

   “In September of 2005, one of us (Herring), then a third-year medical student, cared for a previously healthy 25-year-old uninsured day laborer who arrived at the emergency department with rapidly advancing idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy.

   The patient was ultimately deemed unsuitable for cardiac transplantation. The decision on transplantation was driven, in part, by realistic concern about the patient’s inability to pay for long-term immunosuppressive therapy and to support himself during recovery. Absent such resources, the likelihood of a successful outcome is compromised. The clinicians caring for him faced a wrenching dilemma: deny the patient a transplant, or use a scarce organ for a patient with a reduced chance of success. He died of heart failure two weeks after his initial presentation. This tragedy inspired us to examine data on the participation of the uninsured in organ transplantation, both as recipients and as donors.”

Yes, you read that correctly. The patient was rejected for a heart transplant in part because, lacking health insurance, he was deemed unlikely to be able to buy the immunosuppressing drugs he would need to survive with a new heart.

Republicans scream about “socialism” and “rationing,” as if health care is not rationed every single day in this country. Maybe one of my Christian conservative readers can explain why it was ok to deny this young man a heart transplant. If his job had provided health insurance, he might have gotten that heart and be alive today.

Speaking of health care rationing, I learned from this MyDD diary that the academic journal Health Affairs recently published a study comparing care for chronically ill patients in eight countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

Click here to read the study, which found that “Chronically ill U.S. patients have the most negative access, coordination, and safety experiences.” I’ve excerpted some passages:

Asked about experiences, U.S. and German patients were significantly more likely than patients in the other countries to report wasted time because of poorly organized care. […]

The United States stands out in patient costs, with 41 percent reporting that they spent more than $1,000 out of pocket in the past year. […]

U.S. chronically ill adults were by far the most likely to report forgoing needed care because of costs. More than half (54 percent) reported at least one cost-related access problem, including not filling a prescription or skipping doses, not visiting a doctor when sick, or not getting recommended care (Exhibit 2). […]

U.S. patients were significantly more likely than those in other countries to report that medical records or test results were not available during a scheduled visit or that tests were duplicated unnecessarily. One-third of U.S. patients reported at least one of these experiences–a rate 30 percent higher than in any other country. […]

U.S. uninsured adults were significantly more likely than those insured all year to go without care because of costs and to wait when sick. Remembering that all in this study have chronic (often multiple) conditions, a disturbingly high 82 percent of the uninsured did not fill a prescription, get recommended care, or see a doctor when sick because of costs. Uninsured chronically ill adults were also more likely than those with insurance to report errors as a result of higher rates of delays in hearing about abnormal lab tests and wrong-dose/ wrong-medication errors. Not surprisingly, given these experiences, the uninsured were also more negative about the U.S. health system than insured adults were.

Still, the experience of fragmented and inefficient care in the United States cuts across insurance status. Insured and uninsured chronically ill U.S. adults reported similarly high rates of coordination concerns (duplication and records/tests not available) and perceptions of excess care or time wasted because of poorly organized care.

Although insured U.S. adults fared better than the uninsured, they were still more likely than their counterparts in other countries to forgo care because of cost and to encounter poor coordination. Their perceptions of waste, patient-reported errors, and negative system views also remained at the high end of the country range. […]

Repeating patterns observed in earlier surveys, the United States continues to stand out for more negative patient experiences, ranking last or low for access, care coordination/efficiency, and patient-reported safety concerns. The percentage of chronically ill U.S. adults who reported access problems, errors, delays, duplication, and other symptoms of poorly organized care was two to three times the level reported in the lowest-rate countries in the survey (a 20-30 percentage point spread). Along with Canadians, U.S. patients were also the most likely to indicate a primary care system under stress–lack of rapid access, difficulty getting care after hours, and high ER use.

Americans spend a higher percent of our gross domestic product on health care than any other industrial democracy, yet we don’t get good value for money. It’s worst for the uninsured, but as the above study found, even chronically ill patients with health insurance reported more problems with health care access than comparably ill patients in other countries.

I hope Congressional Democrats are serious about making big changes to our health care system, because the status quo is immoral and unacceptable.

UPDATE: More evidence that our current rationing of health care is immoral can be found in this diary by nyceve: “Many uninsured Americans endure terrible physical pain.”

Only 13 Democratic senators think Joe Lieberman should pay a significant price for actively campaigning against, and repeating Republican lies about, Barack Obama.

In contrast, 42 Democratic senators think Lieberman should be rewarded for his poor judgment and disloyalty. So, Lieberman keeps control of the powerful Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He loses only a meaningless title: subcommittee chairman on climate change on the Environment and Public Works Committee. I say “meaningless” because that subcommittee won’t be where the action is on any forthcoming bill to deal with global warming.

This kind of thing is why I don’t give to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee anymore.

I’d like to remind the Ed Fallon haters in the audience that urging people to vote for the Republican candidate does twice as much damage to the Democratic nominee as urging people to vote for a third-party candidate.

Don’t expect Lieberman to keep whatever promises he made in exchange for this deal. I won’t be surprised if he joins with Republican filibusters, for instance.

While he never used his gavel and subpoena power to investigate the Bush administration’s homeland security failures (such as the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina), I bet Joe will aggressively pursue investigations of the incoming administration.

I’m afraid to ask how Tom Harkin voted, since he recently said it might be better to “forgive and forget” what Lieberman did during this year’s campaign. If anyone else calls Harkin’s office to inquire, please post a comment or send me an e-mail to tell me what they say.

I don’t care if Lieberman remains a personal friend of Harkin’s. He made his choice and has no business running a major committee in a Democratic-controlled Senate. It’s not as if he was even representing his constituents’ preferences in the presidential race. Connecticut voted for Obama over John McCain by a 61 percent to 38 percent margin.

Share your opinions on Senate Democrats’ stupidity, gullibility or cowardice in the comments.

If this report is accurate, shame on the Beltway press corps for getting scooped by the Guardian’s Washington correspondent.

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Back in June, Bleeding Heartland user American007 speculated about who might replace Clinton as the junior senator from New York if Obama chose Hillary as his running mate.

Swing State Project spun some more scenarios today.

UPDATE: Major American media are not picking up this story, so perhaps the Guardian jumped the gun.

Meanwhile, Digby comments on an amusing double-standard emerging from the Washington pundits. It’s terrible for Obama to be considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State,

because he promised change and this is so not it. He’s destroying his mandate before our very eyes.

In other news, Obama is also known to be considering keeping Bush administration cabinet member Robert Gates as secretary of defense, and former secretary of State and war architect Colin Powell is breathlessly mentioned being on the short list for a number of posts. This strikes everyone as being a perfect example of how Obama is bringing change to Washington.

An eighth-grader from Waukee who knows how to think big and aim high:

When Talia was 10 years old, she saw television clips of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and decided to help. She galvanized other kids and started a movement to trick-or-treat at Halloween for coins for hurricane victims.

The movement caught the public imagination, Talia made it on the “Today” show, and the campaign raised more than $10 million. With that success behind her, Talia organized a program called RandomKid to help other young social entrepreneurs organize and raise money.

At randomkid.org, young people can link up with others to participate in various philanthropic ventures. On the Web site, Talia has organized a campaign to build a school in rural Cambodia, backed by children in 48 states and 19 countries.

Likewise, she’s working with schools in seven states to provide clean water for rural African villages. […]

At a dinner a few days ago in New York, Talia was honored by World of Children, an organization that encourages youth activism and calls its awards the “Nobel Prizes for children.”

I have met Talia, and she is an amazing young woman. You can learn more about her organization’s work at RandomKid.org. Kids and adults can sign up to volunteer or donate at the site too.

Sobering news emerged today from the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses:

A report released Monday concluded that “Gulf War Syndrome” is a legitimate condition suffered by more than 175,000 U.S. war veterans who were exposed to chemical toxins in the 1991 Gulf War. […]

“Scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans,” said the committee, which has been looking into the problem since 2002. […]

Gulf War Syndrome affects at least one-fourth of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, or between 175,000 and 210,000 veterans in all, the report found. Few have seen their symptoms improve over the past 17 years, the report said.

Symptoms include persistent headaches, widespread pain, cognitive difficulties, unexplained fatigue, skin rashes, chronic diarrhea and digestive and respiratory problems.

[…]

The panel found two possible causes: a drug given to troops to protect against nerve gas, known as pyridostigmine bromide, and pesticides that were used heavily during the war.

The panel said other possible causes could not be ruled out, including extensive exposure to smoke from oil-well fires and low-level exposure to sarin gas when captured Iraqi stocks were destroyed.

I hope that further research will uncover effective treatments for these veterans, as well as more details about the causes. We need to make sure that future veterans are not exposed to whatever toxins caused this illness in so many Gulf War veterans.

I keep hearing chatter about a possible primary challenge to Governor Chet Culver in 2010. This scenario strikes me as extremely unlikely, but I want to encourage others to weigh in on this comment thread.

Running a statewide primary campaign is expensive. Who has the money for that? I can’t think of any self-funding candidate who would step up to challenge Culver. Anyone else have names in mind?

Organized labor has money and is unhappy with the governor, largely because he vetoed a collective-bargaining bill during the 2008 legislative session.

But most labor unions supported Mike Blouin in the 2006 primary, and their backing wasn’t enough to defeat Culver before he was an incumbent. Culver will go into the next campaign with huge institutional advantages he didn’t have as the secretary of state.

It would seem more logical for organized labor to continue the strategy they adopted this year: focus their political giving on statehouse candidates likely to support their agenda. If Culver continues to disappoint, simply don’t donate to his re-election campaign. That is cheaper than spending lots of money on a primary challenger.

I think there’s a decent chance the 56 Democrats who will be in the Iowa House in 2009 will be able to pass either “fair share” legislation (which would weaken Iowa’s right-to-work law) or a collective-bargaining bill like the one Culver vetoed. Getting those bills through the new Senate will be no problem. As I’ve written before, Culver supports fair share, and it wasn’t his fault it couldn’t get through the House in 2007. I also doubt Culver would veto a collective-bargaining bill a second time.

If labor unions decide to go all out against Culver, who could they find? I can’t think of many politicians with enough stature to pull this off. A few people have named sitting legislators in conversations with me, but I find it hard to believe any of them would take that risk. Look how the Democratic establishment reacted when Ed Fallon challeged the thoroughly mediocre Leonard Boswell in the third district Congressional primary.

Anyway, none of the current leadership in the House and Senate would be likely to win the support of other Democrats who have their own reasons for being disappointed with Culver. For instance, environmentalists who wish the governor would back agricultural zoning at the county level (also known as “local control” of CAFOs) have gotten zero help from statehouse leaders since Democrats regained the majority. Ditto for liberals who want to see the legislature adopt campaign finance reform (the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections act).

One person suggested to me that a primary challenger would not be able to defeat Culver, but could damage him enough to cost us the governor’s chair in 2010. I find this scenario unlikely as well. Let’s say organized labor backs someone like Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal for governor. I don’t think he will run against Culver, I’m just throwing out his name because he is well known and could raise a significant amount of money. He hasn’t put muscle behind local control or clean elections–on the contrary, he insulted a group of activists who came to the capitol in April 2007 to lobby for the VOICE act. I don’t see him getting enough traction in a primary campaign to do real damage. If anything, he could help Culver with swing voters in the general election, by showing that the big, bad “special interests” are unhappy with the governor.

I don’t mean to sound complacent. The Republican Party of Iowa is bruised and divided now but could rebound by 2010 with the right gubernatorial candidate. More important, the fiscal outlook is terrible at both the national and state level. That and other continuing economic problems pose a much bigger threat to Culver’s re-election than the prospect of a Democratic primary challenger.

What do you think?

Post a comment or send an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if I’ve left out any significant event.

Tuesday, November 18:

The Center of Sustainable Communities will hold an Open House from 4 pm to 7 pm at COSC’s Building, 219 Fifth Street, Historic Valley Junction in West Des Moines. If you are already a member or sponsor, or if you are considering joining our efforts, this is a great opportunity to learn more about COSC and connect with others involved in sustainable initiatives and green building. Visit www.icosc.com as details develop.

Reservations are due for the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa’s Crossroads luncheon on Friday, November 21 (see below).

Wednesday, November 19:

The Conservation Districts of Iowa annual conference will be held Nov 19-20, 2008, at the Hotel Gateway in Ames. This year we’ll focus on conservation planning for the extremes. More details will be available soon, but registration is now available at http://www.cdiowa.org/events.h…

Thursday, November 20:

The 2008 Midwest Rural Agricultural Safety and Health Forum will be held November 20-21 at the Radisson Quad City Plaza in Davenport, IA. We will explore how federal policy affects the health and economics of rural areas, trends in the agricultural work force, injury prevention, child safety, and translation of research to practice for the NIOSH tractor safety initiative. Call to register today – 1-800-551-9029 or go to: http://www.public-health.uiowa…

Friday, November 21:

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa is holding a Crossroads luncheon:

“Christian Privilege: Do Jewish Students Feel Marginalized in Public Schools?”

Michelle Garland, PhD Candidate of Multicultural Education and International Curriculum Studies, Iowa State University

What is Christian Privilege ?  How does the public school institution ensure the perpetuation of Christian Privilege ?  What are the perceptions and feelings surrounding the public school experience of students from the Jewish faith?

The Crossroads monthly luncheon is Friday, November 21 from 11:45 am – 1 pm at Plymouth Congregational Church, 42nd & Ingersoll Avenue , Des Moines .

Reservations are required to attend Crossroads and must be received by noon on Tuesday, November 18.  Cost is $8 and is payable at the door.

If you make a reservation and are unable to attend, payment for the reservation is appreciated.

For more information or to make a reservation, call (515) 279-8715 or email tiaiowa@dwx.com.

Saturday, November 22:

Biodiesel Homebrew Introductory Class

Learn the basics of how to turn vegetable oil into low-cost, environmentally friendly biodiesel in this hands-on workshop, at Iowa Valley Community College Nov 22, 9 am – Noon. Learn from a guy who has already run his vehicles thousands of trouble-free miles on homemade renewable fuels. During this fast-paced workshop, you will learn all aspects of Biodiesel production, from acquiring quality feedstock to assembling your own processor. Instructor, Steve Fugate is from Greenwold Biofuels.

Course #: AGR 9386 002; cost = $20. Location: Iowa Valley Community College Grinnell Room 115.

Instr: Steve Fugate.  To register: http://www.iavalley.cc.ia.us/i… Sponsored by the Imagine Grinnell Energy Program, (http://gotoplanb.net/gapri)

Join Iowa Rivers Revival on Saturday, November 22, for Iowa River Revival’s first River Congress at the Des Moines Botanical Center (10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.).  Participants will help to develop a River Bill of Rights that will set the standard for river quality expectations and practices statewide.  The Congress is an opportunity to collaborate with individuals and groups across the state to organize an advocacy agenda for the 2009 legislative session working towards preserving and enhancing Iowa’s rivers and streams.  Registration is open to individuals and organizations interested in improving the quality of Iowa’s rivers and streams.  Registration cost is $10 for meals and beverages. Please register by Friday, November 8.  For registration and more information, visit www.iowarivers.org.

Iowa Rivers Revival is also organizing a film screening:

Join Iowa Rivers Revival for a private screening of the award-winning documentary,  FLOW.  

·         Water is FAST becoming an unregulated, monopolized and commodified resource world-wide.

·         Water is now a $400 billion global industry – 3rd behind electricity and oil.

·         You thought gas prices were high…consider paying $9 for a gallon of water.  The average American uses 150 gallons of water a day – people in developing countries are lucky to find 5.

·         We can find alternatives for oil dependence – we simply cannot survive without safe, clean water.

   * Water is being exploited in areas where water is scare and often unsafe..and in some cases only available to those who can afford to buy it.

Don’t  miss your chance to see this powerful documentary!  Reserve your seat today at rlehman@iowarivers.org.

Watch the trailer:  http://www.flowthefilm.com/tra…

FLOW- Award-winning documentary comes to Des Moines

Can anyone really own water?  Join Iowa Rivers Revival on Saturday, November 22, 2008 (7PM) at the Iowa Historical Building for an exclusive Iowa screening of Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary FLOW – an investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century – The World Water Crisis.

FLOW will be shown as a fundraising effort in support of Iowa Rivers Revival’s education and program initiatives that have been developed to raise awareness about river quality and conservation and the many opportunities and benefits provided to us by rivers.  IRR is a non-profit organization that relies primarily on private contributions.  Tickets will be sold for $20 in advance or $25 at the door.  A student rate is available for $10 a ticket.

FLOW

http://www.flowthefilm.com/tra…

Iowa State Historical Building

600 E Locust St

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Doors Open at 6:30 PM

Movie starts at 7:00PM

This is a quick reminder that the runoff election for U.S. Senate in Georgia will be on December 2, and there are many ways you can help Democrat Jim Martin beat Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss.

Depending on how the recount in Minnesota turns out, which won’t be resolved for a few weeks, Martin could be the key to getting Democrats to that magic filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

1. Go donate to Martin’s campaign. It will only take a minute of your time.

2. Help google-bomb Saxby Chambliss. This is easy, and Chris Bowers explains why it is helpful:

Have you started linking to Saxby Chambliss yet? The more people who do, the higher it will appear in search engine rankings. If we can push it into the first ten results for Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, then it will result in a lot of excellent voter contacts. Everyone who encounters the site will be a voter looking for more information on Saxby Chambliss, and we can show them this great website made by an enterprising activist.

Log on to the various blogs where you comment, and click on your user page. Then click “profile.” There should be an area where you can write text that will be your “signature,” attached to all comments you make.

You want to embed a link to the Saxby Chambliss website. Here is what I did:

See if Saxby Chambliss is helping you.

If you don’t know how to embed a link, write this all on one line with no spaces in between:

<

a href

=

“http://saxby-chambliss.com/”

>

Saxby Chambliss

<

/a

>

3. Kick in a few more bucks to Martin’s campaign.

4. If you live in Georgia or close enough to travel there (not every Bleeding Heartland reader lives in Iowa!), sign up to volunteer for Martin’s campaign during the next few weeks. You were planning to take some time off for Thanksgiving anyway, right? Set aside extra time to volunteer.

Remember that there are many ways to volunteer besides knocking on strangers’ doors and calling strangers on the phone. You can help sort literature for the canvassers. You can help stuff envelopes. You can bring a home-made meal to the campaign office for the staff and other volunteers. I heard of one woman in Iowa who used to do laundry for field organizers renting apartments without washing machines. Every hour that staffer doesn’t have to spend in a laundromat is an hour he or she can be getting out the vote for Jim Martin.

5. Ask some friends or relatives to make a campaign contribution. Explain to them that this race will affect the Republicans’ ability to obstruct the change we need.

Please feel free to suggest other ways activists can help Martin bring this race home.

UPDATE: MyDD commenter ATL Dem made a fantastic suggestion:

In the meantime, I’m also running this Google ad to assist in desmoinesdem’s project No. 2:

Hi from Saxby Chambliss

Read about my work in D.C.

Too bad it’s not for you!

saxby-chambliss.com

It’s getting monster response — over 15 percent of people searching for “Saxby Chambliss” are clicking it. The bad thing about that is that my $10 a day budget gets used up pretty fast, so if you’re of a mind to, go to Google and click on “Advertising Programs” and set up another ad.

Please feel free to steal this idea!

Iowa politicians from both parties, as well as representatives of influential ag lobbies, like the idea of former Governor Tom Vilsack as secretary of agriculture, according to this piece from the Des Moines Register:

The ag secretary, whose department oversees such organizations as United States Forest Service, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service and the food stamp program, must have a strong relationship with the industry, be a strong manager, and be politically in tune with the president.

Former Gov. Tom Vilsack has those qualities, said Cary Covington, a University of Iowa political science professor.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey (a Republican) likes the idea of Barack Obama picking someone from Iowa who understands the biofuels industry. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley tells the Register that it always benefits Iowa to have someone from our state is a position of power.

The heads of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Corn Growers Association also have good things to say about Vilsack’s knowledge and background in the article.

Although this was ostensibly a news piece and not an opinion column, the Register made its preference clear by not quoting any critic of Vilsack’s record on agriculture and not mentioning any reason why anyone might oppose him for this job.

Vilsack’s strong ties to the biotech and biofuels industries prompted the Organic Consumers Association to come out against his appointment as head of the USDA. When I wrote about that on Thursday, a few people questioned whether anyone else on Obama’s short list for this job would be better than Vilsack in terms of supporting organic foods and sustainable agriculture.

It’s a fair question. Here Jill Richardson/OrangeClouds115 makes the case against House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson. She shows that Obama’s campaign platform includes a lot of good points on agriculture, most of which Peterson has used his position in Congress to block.

Yesterday, shirah argued here that Pennsylvania Secretary of Agricultre Dennis Wolff, another name on Obama’s short list, would be “about the worst person” for this job. The diarist has written extensively about “Wolff’s role in trying to take away the right of Pennsylvanians to know whether their milk was produced using rBST / rBGH (recombinant bovine somatrophin / recombinant bovine growth hormone).”

Looks like Obama’s agriculture policy is going to be “more of the same” rather than “change we can believe in.”

We’ve had ten days to decompress from the election. It’s time for a little self-promotion and self-criticism.

What did you predict accurately during the past presidential campaign, and what did you get completely wrong?

The ground rules for this thread are as follows:

1. This is about your own forecasting skills. Do not post a comment solely to mock someone else’s idiocy.

2. You are not allowed to boast about something you got right without owning up to at least one thing you got wrong.

3. For maximum bragging rights, include a link to a comment or diary containing your accurate prediction. Links are not required, though.

I’ll get the ball rolling. Here are some of the more significant things I got wrong during the presidential campaign that just ended.

I thought that since John Edwards had been in the spotlight for years, the Republicans would probably not be able to spring an “October surprise” on us if he were the Democratic nominee. Oops.

In 2006 I thought Hillary’s strong poll numbers among Democrats were

inflated by the fact that she has a lot of name recognition. I think once the campaign begins, her numbers will sink like Lieberman’s did in 2003.

Then when her poll numbers held up in most states throughout 2007, I thought Hillary’s coalition would collapse if she lost a few early primaries. Um, not quite.

I thought Barack Obama would fail to be viable in a lot of Iowa precincts dominated by voters over age 50.

I thought Obama had zero chance of beating John McCain in Florida.

Here are a few things I got right:

I consistently predicted that Hillary would finish no better than third in the Iowa caucuses. For that I was sometimes ridiculed in MyDD comment threads during the summer and fall of 2007.

I knew right away that choosing Sarah Palin was McCain’s gift to Democrats on his own birthday, because it undercut his best argument against Obama: lack of experience.

I immediately sensed that letting the Obama campaign take over the GOTV effort in Iowa might lead to a convincing victory for Obama here without maximizing the gains for our down-ticket candidates. In fact, Iowa Democrats did lose a number of statehouse races we should have won last week.

By the way, please consider helping Bleeding Heartland analyze what went wrong and what went right for Democrats in some of the state House and Senate races.

I’ve been consistently worried that Barack Obama would not set an ambitious domestic policy agenda if elected president. His post-partisan rhetoric has given me the impression that he would move toward compromising with the Republican position on various issues before negotiations with Congress have begun. Specifically on health care, I agreed with Paul Krugman of the New York Times that Obama’s proposal was not as good as the plans John Edwards and Hillary Clinton advocated during the primaries.

Obama hasn’t been sworn in yet, and the new Congress won’t meet for more than a month, but already there are signs of growing momentum for truly universal health care reform (and not just incremental progress toward that goal).

On Wednesday Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the Finance Committee, released a “white paper” on health reform. You can get the gist by reading this diary by TomP or this one by DemFromCT. Ezra “Momma said wonk you out” Klein dived into the details in a series of posts this week.

The key point is that Baucus embraced the concept of mandatory health insurance, but with a public plan any American could choose to join. So, if private insurers kept jacking up premiums while covering less and less medical care, people could “vote with their feet” by paying into a public plan that would work like Medicare (the patient chooses the doctor).

This story explains Baucus’ line of thinking:

Baucus, of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a health-care blueprint released today that only a mandate could ensure people didn’t wait until they were ill to buy health insurance, forcing up the price for everyone.

The 89-page proposal revives a debate from the Democratic presidential primaries about how to overhaul the U.S. health- care system. Obama supported requiring coverage only for children, saying adults would buy coverage voluntarily if it were affordable. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York said insurance must be mandated for everyone.

“Requiring all Americans to have health coverage will help end the shifting of costs of the uninsured to the insured,” Baucus said today in his plan. The requirement “would be enforced possibly through the U.S. tax system or some other point of contact between individuals and the government,” he said, without spelling out possible penalties. […]

Because of the urgency of health-care reform, Congress should move on legislation in the first half of next year, Baucus said at a press conference today in Washington.

“There is no way to solve America’s economic problems without solving health care,” he said. The $2.2 trillion health-care system “sucks up 16 percent of our economy and is still growing,” Baucus said.

It’s hard to exaggerate the significance of this development. First, as many others have noted, if Baucus runs health care reform through the Finance Committee there is a good chance it will be the kind of bill not subject to a filibuster. That means the Democrats would need only 50 votes (not 60) to pass it in the Senate.

Second, Baucus is among the more conservative members of the Senate Democratic caucus (check out his Progressive Punch ratings here). If he is ready for big, bold health care reform, the ground has shifted.

Third, this development could be very discouraging for Iowa’s own Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. Traditionally, Grassley and Baucus have had a close working relationship. But this past summer Grassley was annoyed when Democrats rejected a deal he thought he had cut with Baucus on a Medicare bill, and Baucus denied having reached any prior agreement with Grassley.

This report from Wednesday quotes Grassley expressing skepticism about finding the money to pay for a big health care initiative.

If Baucus moves away from the habit of compromising with Grassley now that the Democrats will have a solid Senate majority, could Iowa’s senior senator decide to step down in 2010? We all know that Grassley’s seat is safe for Republicans unless he retires. He seems to like his job, but perhaps facing defeat after defeat in a Democratic-controlled Congress would diminish his desire to hang around for another six years.  

By now you’ve probably heard the rumors that Barack Obama offered Hillary Clinton the position of Secretary of State in his administration.

Should she take this job?

If I were Hillary, I would say no thanks. She can be a senator for life, and probably will be in the majority party for most of that time. She could be the next Ted Kennedy.

At most she could run Obama’s State Department for eight years, and probably not even that long. He could replace her at any time.

It’s great for both of them to have this news leaked, however. It shows he is not holding grudges from the primaries and respects her skills. She obviously has the contacts with foreign leaders and the experience to do this job well.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Mr. desmoinesdem thinks that if she hopes to run for president again in 2016, she should definitely take this job. If she has given up all hope of becoming president and wants primarily to influence policy during the coming years, she should stay in the Senate. That sounds right to me.

Things have slowed down quite a bit since the election, so my calendar of events is not very full. However, there are probably lots of interesting things going on around the state that I don’t know about. Please send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) or post a comment if you know of important events I’ve left out.

Saturday, November 15:

From One Iowa:

Stand up and make your voice heard!

Last week’s historic victory for change was bittersweet with the heartbreaking passage of state initiatives denying gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry. Join us this Saturday to show your support for marriage equality in Iowa! LGBT people and our allies will gather across the county in solidarity to show support for equality – make your voice heard in Iowa!

Rally for Equality!

Saturday, November 15, 12:30 PM

Des Moines City Hall

400 Robert Ray Dr, Des Moines

With Remarks from:

Matt McCoy, State Senator

Alicia Claypool, Chair, Iowa Civil Rights Commission (for identification purposes only)

Ben Stone, Executive Director, ACLU of Iowa

Ed Fallon, Former State Representative

Rev. Mark Stringer, Minister, First Unitarian Church

Tim and Sean McQuillan, the only same-sex couple who legally married in Iowa

Linda Trudeau, President, Ames PFLAG

Brad Clark, Campaign Director, One Iowa

For more information contact One Iowa at organize@oneiowa.org or 515-288-4019

Tuesday, November 18:

The Center of Sustainable Communities will hold an Open House from 4 pm to 7 pm at COSC’s Building, 219 Fifth Street, Historic Valley Junction in West Des Moines. If you are already a member or sponsor, or if you are considering joining our efforts, this is a great opportunity to learn more about COSC and connect with others involved in sustainable initiatives and green building. Visit www.icosc.com as details develop.

Reservations are due for the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa’s Crossroads luncheon on Friday, November 21 (see below).

Wednesday, November 19:

The Conservation Districts of Iowa annual conference will be held Nov 19-20, 2008, at the Hotel Gateway in Ames. This year we’ll focus on conservation planning for the extremes. More details will be available soon, but registration is now available at http://www.cdiowa.org/events.h…

Thursday, November 20:

The 2008 Midwest Rural Agricultural Safety and Health Forum will be held November 20-21 at the Radisson Quad City Plaza in Davenport, IA. We will explore how federal policy affects the health and economics of rural areas, trends in the agricultural work force, injury prevention, child safety, and translation of research to practice for the NIOSH tractor safety initiative. Call to register today – 1-800-551-9029 or go to: http://www.public-health.uiowa…

Friday, November 21:

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa is holding a Crossroads luncheon:

“Christian Privilege: Do Jewish Students Feel Marginalized in Public Schools?”

Michelle Garland, PhD Candidate of Multicultural Education and International Curriculum Studies, Iowa State University

What is Christian Privilege ?  How does the public school institution ensure the perpetuation of Christian Privilege ?  What are the perceptions and feelings surrounding the public school experience of students from the Jewish faith?

The Crossroads monthly luncheon is Friday, November 21 from 11:45 am – 1 pm at Plymouth Congregational Church, 42nd & Ingersoll Avenue , Des Moines .

Reservations are required to attend Crossroads and must be received by noon on Tuesday, November 18.  Cost is $8 and is payable at the door.

If you make a reservation and are unable to attend, payment for the reservation is appreciated.

For more information or to make a reservation, call (515) 279-8715 or email tiaiowa@dwx.com.

Saturday, November 22:

Biodiesel Homebrew Introductory Class

Learn the basics of how to turn vegetable oil into low-cost, environmentally friendly biodiesel in this hands-on workshop, at Iowa Valley Community College Nov 22, 9 am – Noon. Learn from a guy who has already run his vehicles thousands of trouble-free miles on homemade renewable fuels. During this fast-paced workshop, you will learn all aspects of Biodiesel production, from acquiring quality feedstock to assembling your own processor. Instructor, Steve Fugate is from Greenwold Biofuels.

Course #: AGR 9386 002; cost = $20. Location: Iowa Valley Community College Grinnell Room 115.

Instr: Steve Fugate.  To register: http://www.iavalley.cc.ia.us/i… Sponsored by the Imagine Grinnell Energy Program, (http://gotoplanb.net/gapri)

Join Iowa Rivers Revival on Saturday, November 22, for Iowa River Revival’s first River Congress at the Des Moines Botanical Center (10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.).  Participants will help to develop a River Bill of Rights that will set the standard for river quality expectations and practices statewide.  The Congress is an opportunity to collaborate with individuals and groups across the state to organize an advocacy agenda for the 2009 legislative session working towards preserving and enhancing Iowa’s rivers and streams.  Registration is open to individuals and organizations interested in improving the quality of Iowa’s rivers and streams.  Registration cost is $10 for meals and beverages. Please register by Friday, November 8.  For registration and more information, visit www.iowarivers.org.

Iowa Rivers Revival is also organizing a film screening:

Join Iowa Rivers Revival for a private screening of the award-winning documentary,  FLOW.  

·         Water is FAST becoming an unregulated, monopolized and commodified resource world-wide.

·         Water is now a $400 billion global industry – 3rd behind electricity and oil.

·         You thought gas prices were high…consider paying $9 for a gallon of water.  The average American uses 150 gallons of water a day – people in developing countries are lucky to find 5.

·         We can find alternatives for oil dependence – we simply cannot survive without safe, clean water.

   * Water is being exploited in areas where water is scare and often unsafe..and in some cases only available to those who can afford to buy it.

Don’t  miss your chance to see this powerful documentary!  Reserve your seat today at rlehman@iowarivers.org.

Watch the trailer:  http://www.flowthefilm.com/tra…

FLOW- Award-winning documentary comes to Des Moines

Can anyone really own water?  Join Iowa Rivers Revival on Saturday, November 22, 2008 (7PM) at the Iowa Historical Building for an exclusive Iowa screening of Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary FLOW – an investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century – The World Water Crisis.

FLOW will be shown as a fundraising effort in support of Iowa Rivers Revival’s education and program initiatives that have been developed to raise awareness about river quality and conservation and the many opportunities and benefits provided to us by rivers.  IRR is a non-profit organization that relies primarily on private contributions.  Tickets will be sold for $20 in advance or $25 at the door.  A student rate is available for $10 a ticket.

FLOW

http://www.flowthefilm.com/tra…

Iowa State Historical Building

600 E Locust St

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Doors Open at 6:30 PM

Movie starts at 7:00PM

It may become harder for utilities to gain permission to build new coal-fired power plants while promising to deal with carbon-dioxide emissions at some point in the future, when carbon sequestration technology becomes available.

From a press release circulated on the Sierra Club’s Iowa topics e-mail loop yesterday:

Ruling: Coal Plants Must Limit C02

In a move that signals the start of the our clean energy future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) ruled today EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit from new coal-fired power plants the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.  The decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.

“Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy,” said Joanne Spalding, Sierra Club Senior Attorney who argued the case. “This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America.”

“The EAB rejected every Bush Administration excuse for failing to regulate the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States.  This decision gives the Obama Administration a clean slate to begin building our clean energy economy for the 21st century,” continued Spalding The decision follows a 2007 Supreme Court ruling recognizing carbon dioxide, the principle source of global warming, is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

“Coal plants emit 30% of our nation’s global warming pollution. Building new coal plants without controlling their carbon emissions could wipe out all of the other efforts being undertaken by cities, states and communities across the country,” said Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign. “Everyone has a role to play and it’s time that the

coal industry did its part and started living up to its clean coal rhetoric.”

The Sierra Club went before the Environmental Appeals Board in May of 2008 to request that the air permit for Deseret Power Electric Cooperative’s proposed waste coal-fired power plant be overturned because it failed to require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution. Deseret Power’s 110 MW Bonanza plant would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each

year.

“Instead of pouring good money after bad trying to fix old coal technology, investors should be looking to wind, solar and energy efficiency

technologies that are going to power the economy, create jobs, and help the climate recover,” said Nilles.

I don’t yet know how this ruling will affect the proposed coal-fired power plants for Waterloo and Marshalltown. I will update this post as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Mark Kresowik, National Corporate Accountability Representative with the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, provided this comment:

“The Environmental Appeals Board remanded Deseret’s air quality permit for the Bonanza coal plant, issued by the EPA under the PSD program, back to the EPA. They clearly stated that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and establish a “best available control technology” (BACT) limit for carbon dioxide pollution from significant new sources (like coal plants).

While they did not answer the question of whether or not the EPA MUST establish a limit, they did reject all of the previous excuses the Bush EPA has used to avoid regulating carbon dioxide.  So EPA must completely reopen the air quality permit, decide whether or not to limit CO2 from power plants (and how to limit CO2 if it chooses to), and justify that decision.

The EAB decision is formally binding on all air quality permits issued by the EPA.  However, most air quality permits are not issued by the EPA but rather by state authorities delegated that power by the EPA, for instance the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.  However, those authorities must enforce regulations at least as stringently as the EPA and all of them look to the EPA for guidance on issues such as this.  So it is probable that every coal plant air quality permit in the country from now on (including those issued but still being challenged on carbon dioxide grounds) must address CO2 limits directly, either establishing a limit or justifying their refusal in a new way that the EPA has not previously used.  It is likely a de-facto stay on all air quality permit decisions for approximately the next 6-12 months, including proposed coal plants in Waterloo and Marshalltown that have not been issued air quality permits.

This is an important opportunity for Iowa and the entire country to make significant investments in energy efficiency and clean energy that will lower energy costs, create millions of “green collar” jobs, and stimulate our economy.”

Looks like the DNR is our best hope for stopping new coal-fired power plants in Iowa.

Meanwhile, earlier this week Wisconsin became the latest state to reject an application to build a coal-fired power plant. The whole press release from the Iowa Environmental Council is after the jump. Here is an excerpt:

“Building coal-fired power plants has never made sense from an environmental perspective and no longer makes sense from an economic perspective,” said Katie Nekola, energy program director of Clean Wisconsin. “The transition toward a clean energy economy is beginning, and it’s important for other states not to lag behind the movement by building more coal plants.”

Nathaniel Baer, energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council, says Iowans need to follow the lead of neighboring states to the west, north, and now east, which have concluded that clean energy makes more economic sense than coal.

“Iowa simply cannot afford to be left behind sinking billions of dollars into monuments to 19th century dirty coal,” Baer said.

I wouldn’t mind Democrats passing an incredibly unpopular bill a few weeks before an election, if the bill solved a big problem.

Unfortunately, the Wall Street bailout Congressional leaders rushed to pass this fall doesn’t seem to have accomplished much, besides hand some Republican incumbents a great campaign issue.

We were told that the Bush administration needed this plan passed immediately, or else credit would dry up and the stock market would go into a tailspin.

But as it turns out, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had no idea what to do:

The Bush administration dropped the centerpiece of its $700-billion financial rescue plan Wednesday, reflecting the remarkable extent to which senior government officials have been flying by the seat of their pants in dealing with the deepening economic crisis.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson said the administration would scrub plans to buy troubled mortgage-backed securities but continue to devote bailout funds to restore liquidity to credit markets.

[…]

“You’ve had a tremendous amount of improvisation here,” said Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former Federal Reserve economist and an informal advisor to Obama’s transition team. “Even smart people get things wrong when they have no models to follow and are acting quickly, so it’s natural that there’d be some reworking.”

Or as Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) put it: “When you see so many changes, you wonder if they really know what they’re doing.”

Paulson, who originally dismissed emergency government investments in financial institutions as a recipe for failure, said most of the first half of the $700 billion had already gone to making emergency investments in banks and other companies aimed at reviving the routine borrowing and lending that are crucial to the economy.

Although Paulson said those actions had helped thaw credit markets and prevent “a broad systemic event” in the global economy, he acknowledged that most financial firms are still deeply reluctant to lend.

So, Paulson has been winging it, doing what he originally opposed, but credit remains very tight.

But no problem, because Congress imposed strict accountability measures in that revised version of the bailout, right?

Not according to the Washington Post: Bailout Lacks Oversight Despite Billions Pledged

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury’s massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country’s largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

“It’s a mess,” said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department’s inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. “I don’t think anyone understands right now how we’re going to do proper oversight of this thing.”

To put that $290 billion in context, the U.S. spent about $170 billion on the war in Iraq during all of 2007. Yet the stock market is still swinging wildly and financial institutions are “still deeply reluctant to lend.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got suckered into backing bad policy that was also bad politics. Barack Obama was eager to go along as well.

Next time leading Democrats want to pass something that expensive, could they at least make it something useful, like universal health care or high-speed rail connecting major cities?

Normally I mention these Iowa Politics events on my weekly calendar, but I only found out about this one today. There are still some spots available for reservations:

Drake to host forum on women in Iowa politics

Drake University will host a bipartisan forum Friday, Nov. 14, on the role women play in Iowa politics and future prospects for women to be elected to represent Iowans in Congress.

The featured speakers will be:

   * Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University

   * Becky Greenwald, Iowa Congressional candidate

   * Mary E. Kramer, former U.S. ambassador

   * Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Congressional candidate

   * Jo Ann Zimmerman, former Iowa lieutenant governor

The event, which is free and open to the public, will start at 11 a.m. in Levitt Hall in Old Main, 2507 University Ave.

Reservations are required for the event, which is sponsored by Drake, IowaPolitics.com and Mediacom, as part of the Cookies and Conversation Series. For reservations, call 515-226-8774 or send an e-mail to Julie Rutz at rutz@IowaPolitics.com.

IowaPolitics.com Des Moines Bureau Chief Lynn Campbell will moderate the program and questions will be accepted from audience members. The panel discussion will be televised to a statewide audience on the Mediacom Connections Channel and will be available for On Demand viewing from Mediacom on Channel 1.

Doors to Levitt Hall will open at 10:30 a.m. Free parking will be available in Drake lots at 26th Street and University Avenue and at 25th Street and Carpenter Avenue.

IowaPolitics.com is an independent, nonpartisan news operation offering a free Web site at www.IowaPolitics.com and paid subscriber products.

This is an open thread for discussing women in Iowa politics.

I still believe that the most important reason Iowa has never sent a woman to Congress is the fact that almost every woman who’s tried was challenging an incumbent.

Many women failed to defeat incumbents in other states too this year, including quite a few who had more money to spend on their campaigns than Miller-Meeks or Greenwald did in IA-02 and IA-04.

The Organic Consumers Association doesn’t hold back in this piece: Six Reasons Why Obama Appointing Monsanto’s Buddy, Former Iowa Governor Vilsack, for USDA Head is a Terrible Idea.

Click through to read the whole case against Vilsack. Among other things, they don’t like his advocacy of genetically-engineered crops for food or pharmaceuticals, his tendency to travel in Monsanto’s jet, and his support of biofuels.

I can’t recall anything Vilsack did as governor to address pollution from conventional farming or to promote sustainable agriculture. Then again, I was out of the state for most of his first term. If anyone wants to make the case for Vilsack as ag secretary in the comments, have at it.

I would much rather see Vilsack in a different post, such as secretary of education. He is very smart, understands policy and works hard, so he would be an asset to the cabinet–just not as agriculture secretary, in my opinion.

On a related note, if you care about food policy and sustainable agriculture, you should bookmark the community blog La Vida Locavore, featuring Jill Richardson (known to Daily Kos readers as OrangeClouds115) and Asinus Asinum Fricat, among others.

Jill’s recent posts indicate that Obama will likely improve food safety and may move us in the right direction in several other agricultural policy areas.

The Democrat challenging seven-time convicted felon Ted Stevens has taken a lead in the Alaska Senate race. OK, it’s only a three-vote lead among some 250,000 votes counted so far, but if I’m Mark Begich, I’ll take it. (UPDATE: Begich now leads by 814 votes out of some 263,000 counted.)

There are lots more early votes to be counted in the coming days, and no one seems to know exactly where they will come from. However, speculation in this thread at Swing State Project indicates that Democrats have reason to be optimistic about picking up the Senate seat from Alaska. That would bring the Democratic caucus to 58 (counting independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who votes with Democrats).

The Minnesota Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman will go to a recount and may not be decided before the middle of December. According to the latest count, Coleman leads by 206 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. Nate Silver examines Franken’s prospects from several different angles, and concludes:

The more that I examine this data, the more I’m beginning to believe that the number of reclassifiable ballots may be relatively low, but that the proportion of such ballots that are resolved in Franken’s favor may be relatively high. How these two factors will ultimately reconcile themselves, I don’t know.

The runoff Senate election in Georgia between incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin will take place on December 2. There have not been any public polls yet in this race since the general election. A lot of Barack Obama’s field staff have reportedly moved to Georgia to work this race for Martin. The Republican playbook is to link Martin to Democratic leaders in Congress. Will that be enough for Chambliss in this red state?

At Swing State Project, Crisitunity published this overview of likely candidates to replace Joe Biden as U.S. Senator from Delaware. Biden’s son Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, is ineligible because of his current deployment. The most likely options are either Lieutenant Governor Jack Carney, or a seat-warmer who would let Beau Biden run for the seat in 2010, after his deployment has ended.

Speculation about Barack Obama’s replacement continues, with the first Illinois poll on the topic showing Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. as the most popular choice.

Six U.S. House races are still uncalled: Alaska’s at-large seat, California’s fourth district, California’s 44th district, Ohio’s 15th district, Louisiana’s second district, and Louisiana’s fourth district. The first four are Republican-held seats where the Republican candidate leads. LA-04 and LA-02 will hold runoff elections in December. Probably our best chance to pick up another seat is in OH-15.

On the whole, Americans rejected minor presidential candidates. The nationwide popular vote stands at 66.3 million for Barack Obama (52.7 percent) and 58.0 million for John McCain (46.0 percent).

Out of curiosity, tremayne at Open Left reviewed the vote tallies for other presidential candidates:

530,200 votes: Ralph Nader

519,800 votes: Bob Barr

179,900 votes: Chuck Baldwin

147,600 votes: Cynthia McKinney

 30,800 votes: Alan Keyes (in CA)

 28,300 votes: Write-in/other

 10,500 votes: Ron Paul (in MT)

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office does not yet have the general election results on its website, and the Des Moines Register’s election results page only gives the numbers for Obama and McCain, but wikipedia gives these vote counts for Iowa:

818,240: Barack Obama

677,508: John McCain

7,963: Ralph Nader

4,608: Bob Barr

4,403: Chuck Baldwin

1,495: Cynthia McKinney

I am surprised that Nader got so many votes. That’s a lot less than he received in 2000 but at least 60,000 more votes nationwide than he received in 2004.

I also find it interesting that nationally, Bob Barr got three times as many votes as Chuck Baldwin, even though Ron Paul endorsed Baldwin. Maybe the “brand name” of the Libertarian Party is stronger than that of the Constitution Party, or maybe Barr just has more name recognition because of his prominent role in the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings.

In Iowa, Baldwin and Barr received approximately the same number of votes.

If any Bleeding Heartland readers have contacts in the Ron Paul for president crowd, please post a comment and let us know how the activists split among McCain, Barr and Baldwin.

UPDATE: A Bleeding Heartland reader compiled all the county results from Iowa and noticed something strange about Dubuque County. As he commented at Swing State Project, Dubuque County showed

quite a few votes for third party candidates and in some instances (La Riva/Moses) more than in the whole rest of Iowa.

I suspect there’s either something wrong with those numbers or they had some strange butterfly ballot.

Did anyone out there vote in Dubuque County, and if so, was the ballot design strange in some way that would produce an unusually high number of minor-party votes for president?

According to Time’s Mark Halperin, Barack Obama is sending former Republican Congressman Jim Leach and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (from the Clinton administration) to meet with foreign leaders from G-20 nations in Washington this Friday.

Leach was a leading figure in Republicans for Obama and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Open Left user tietack thinks Leach may be under consideration for a deputy Secretary of State position.

A leading voice of Republican social conservatives in Iowa makes a surprising analogy in an op-ed piece from Tuesday’s Des Moines Register:

Jesus Christ, whom many Republicans claim to follow, summoned his followers to be either hot or cold toward Him, because a “lukewarm” commitment makes Him want to vomit. I believe this accurately reflects the mood of voters in the past several elections where Republicans have witnessed consecutive defeats.

We have followed the misguided advice of “experts” to abandon our principles and move to the middle so we can supposedly win. In essence, we have become “lukewarm” on life, on marriage, on the Second Amendment, on limited government, on balanced budgets, on lower taxes, on parental rights in educating and raising children, on faith, on family and on freedom. The net result is that voters have spit us out of their mouths. […]

The “elite” politicos and Iowa’s dwindling Republican establishment are now convening committees and strategy sessions to advise their “flock” to abandon the party’s principles and move even further to the middle if they hope to win again. The voter sees and tastes the “lukewarm” and compromising attempts to gain positions and power. The result is no trust, and the voter, like Christ, wants to throw up.

If Republicans are to win again, they must authentically embrace their core principles and effectively communicate a compelling message of bold-color conservatism that inspires faith, family and freedom.

That is no fringe politician talking. It’s Bob Vander Plaats, a businessman from northwest Iowa who ran for the 2002 gubernatorial nomination, was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 2006, and chaired Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

If you click the link and read the whole piece by Vander Plaats, you won’t find any opinion poll data backing up his assertions about why Iowa voters have been rejecting Republicans.

National polling shows that the electorate as a whole thinks Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections because they were too conservative. At the same time, Republicans are more likely to reach the same conclusions as Vander Plaats: their party is losing because its candidates have not been conservative enough.

I’ll be honest: I’d be happy to see the Republican Party of Iowa embrace Vander Plaats’ faith-based political strategy. I suspect that’s a path toward further losses for the GOP in 2010.

Quite a few GOP legislative candidates who put social issues front and center in their campaigns lost last Tuesday.

Vander Plaats does not name any specific candidates whose moderation allegedly made voters want to throw up. One who drew a lot of fire from the social conservative crowd was Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican candidate for the second Congressional district. She was a strong candidate, in my opinion, and it would be ridiculous to argue that she lost for not being conservative enough. This district has a partisan index of D+7. No Republican in the whole country represents a Congressional district with that much of a Democratic lean. Mike Castle of Delaware is the only one who comes close, and he is not a religious conservative firebrand.

The Vander Plaats piece is further evidence of the deep split in the Republican Party of Iowa. It won’t be easy to heal under any circumstances, but especially not if social conservatives insist on driving their party off a cliff.

Today I am beginning an occasional series on what George W. Bush will do for corporate interests and major Republican donors during the final weeks of his presidency.

This comes from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s e-mail newsletter:

EPA Administrator Signs Off on Final CAFO Rule:  Last Friday, as a “Halloween trick” for the environment and public health, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson signed a revised Clean Water Act final regulation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permits and effluent limitations.  EPA revised the CAFO regulations in response to legal challenges to a 2003 CAFO final regulation, brought in the case Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. v. EPA by both environmental organizations and the CAFO sector.  

The revision opens a gaping hole in the 2003 regulation by allowing a CAFO, no matter how large, to self-certify that the CAFO does not “intend” to discharge to the waters of the U.S.   EPA ignored the recommendation of the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals to establish a regulatory presumption that large-scale CAFOs discharge pollutants.  The presumption would have required that a large-scale CAFO demonstrate to regulatory authorities that it is designed and can be operated to avoid all discharges of regulated pollutants.  

EPA also rejected making improvements in technology that reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens that threaten public health, a problem aggravated by the development of antibiotic resistant pathogens in CAFOs.  The revised rule does include one improvement required in Waterkeeper — that a CAFO nutrient management plan must be included in a Clean Water Act permit for the CAFO and made available for public review and comment.

EPA is expected publish the revised final regulation in the Federal Register before the end of November. In the meantime, a copy of the unofficial version of the revised regulation is posted on the EPA website. You can also register on the website for a November 19 EPA webcast about the revised CAFO regulation.

SAC will be urging the new Administration to revisit this rulemaking on an expedited basis.

Why am I not surprised that industrial ag profits are a higher priority than the environment and public health?

I hope that the Obama administration will put this on the list of actions to be overturned.  

It’s the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Ninety years ago, the Armistice between Germany and the Allies went into effect and the Great War (which later became known as World War I) ended.

NavyBlueWife has a nice piece up at MyDD on the history of Veterans Day and what it means to honor our veterans.

Via BarbinMD I learned that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Ad Council have launched a “national multimedia public service advertising (PSA) campaign.”

The campaign aims to address the mental health consequences of combat, which threaten to overwhelm a new generation of veterans. The 1.7 million men and women who have served, or are currently serving, in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing an increased risk of mental health issues. Nearly 20 percent of military servicemembers who have returned – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a RAND Corporation study released in April 2008. Untreated mental health conditions can cause or aggravate other debilitating problems in the veterans’ community including high rates of unemployment, suicide, homelessness, substance abuse, divorce and child abuse.

Created pro bono by ad agency BBDO New York, the campaign seeks to increase the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who seek treatment for mental health issues by connecting them with other veterans with whom they can discuss the issues they face as they readjust to civilian life. The campaign includes television, radio, print, outdoor and Web advertising. The TV spots feature Iraq veterans who are Purple Heart recipients.

You can view the ad here or at the new Community of Veterans website, which is designed for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is the home page of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

The “IGTNT” team of diarists at Daily Kos write tributes to all American troops who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today’s edition of this series contains links to many organizations that support and honor veterans.

Thanks to all veterans who have served in peacetime or wartime.

Thanks also to all the members of Congress who voted for the “new GI Bill” in May (you can find the roll call votes for the U.S. House and Senate here). My dad went to college on the GI Bill in the 1940s, and his family would not have been able to afford the tuition otherwise.

This is an open thread for any thoughts you have related to Veterans Day, or anyone you are remembering today.

UPDATE: I learned something new today in this letter to the Des Moines Register: Remember veterans: Fund ALS research

Very few people, including those serving in the military today, know that veterans are twice as likely to die from ALS – the deadly disease known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

We don’t know why vets are more likely to develop ALS. But we do know that the disease takes the strongest among us – our military heroes – and robs them of the ability to walk, move their arms, talk, eat and even breathe on their own. They are isolated and awake, alive with the knowledge that they are trapped inside a body they no longer can control.

As the disease progresses, there is little they can do, for there is no treatment for ALS. It is fatal in an average of just two to five years.

Urge elected officials to support funding for ALS research at the Department of Defense so we can learn why the disease is stealing our heroes and take action to protect them. Recently both Congress and the Veterans Administration have supported ALS research and provided benefits to veterans with the disease, but more must be done.

I am disappointed that the Democrats did not gain as many seats in the Iowa legislature as I’d hoped. With Barack Obama winning this state by 9 percent and Democrats enjoying a big voter registration advantage, we should have done better in the statehouse races. We need to analyze what sank some of our down-ticket candidates so we can do better in 2010.

None of that should obscure the much bigger problems currently facing the Republican Party of Iowa.

Six days after the fourth straight election in which Republicans have lost seats in both the Iowa House and Senate, the Republicans House caucus voted to replace Christopher Rants of Sioux City as their leader. Kraig Paulsen of Hiawatha (a suburb of Cedar Rapids) will take on the job. According to the Des Moines Register,

Rants and Paulsen have starkly different governing styles. Rants is known at the Capitol as a fighter, often using sharp language to rally for his party. For years, he has been the main go-to guy for his party, advising them on nearly every issue.

Paulsen has been described by his peers as being rather mellow. He’s also got a reputation of being able to work well with Democrats. This summer, for example, he was seen frequently working with other legislators such as Sen. Robert Hogg, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, on flood-related issues.

With two House races yet to be decided, Republicans are likely to end up with only 44 of the 100 seats in the lower chamber. Eight years ago they had 56 seats. The delegation is not only smaller, but also more conservative than it was in the past. For instance, my own House distict 59 has traditionally been represented by moderates (Janet Metcalf, Gene Maddox, Dan Clute), but incoming representative Chris Hagenow was backed by right-wing interest groups.

Speaking of those two House seats that are still too close to call, let this be a lesson to voters about the importance of filling out the whole ballot. Democratic incumbent Wes Whitead leads by six (!) votes in House district 1, and some ballots are being challenged because an estimated 100 to 120 Woodbury County voters received absentee ballots listing candidates in the wrong state House district.

In House district 37, highly targeted Democratic incumbent Art Staed trailed Republican Renee Schulte by less than 50 votes on election night and by only 14 votes as of Friday. If Whitead’s lead holds and a recount changes the outcome of Staed’s race, House Republicans would end up with with only 43 seats for the next two legislative sessions.

Speaking of contested ballots, the votes of 50 Grinnell students who listed the address where they receive mail, rather than the address of the dorm they live in, will be counted in House district 75. As I predicted, that race turned out not to be close enough for the challenged votes to be decisive. Targeted Democratic incumbent Eric Palmer beat former state representative Danny Carroll by about 1,200 votes (54 percent to 46 percent).

About those close races: the Republicans might have picked up more seats if the Democrats had not banked so many early votes. Rants announced after being ousted as House Republican leader that “he’ll now take on a personal crusade to spark Republican voter registration drives and early voting as a way to help his party rebound.” Building an effective early-voting campaign will not happen overnight, though.

Republicans in the Iowa Senate are considering changing their leadership as well, now that their Senate caucus will be the smallest in history. Depending on the outcome of the extremely close race in Senate district 10, Republicans will hold just 18 or 19 seats out of 50.

The national economic and political climate could be very different in 2010, which may give some Republicans hope. But don’t imagine it will be easy for them to defeat Governor Chet Culver and win back a net six or seven seats in the House and the Senate. A few years ago, Republicans and Democrats had about the same number of registered voters in Iowa. Yet Culver beat Congressman Jim Nussle (who was considered a strong candidate) by about 100,000 votes in 2006. Culver goes into the next campaign with the advantages of incumbency as well as a Democratic lead in voter registration.

The Republican Party of Iowa also faces divisive battles between social conservatives and moderates. Stewart Iverson announced last week that he will not seek another term as state party chairman. Polk County Republican Chairman Ted Sporer wants the job and wants to make the party more confrontational:

“We need to fight with the Democrats. I want to fight with the Democrats every day,” he said. “I want our party leadership to join me in that.”

The current GOP leadership has led the party to the bottom, he said.

“If 2009 doesn’t look like the bottom has dropped out, I mean if this isn’t truly where you bottom out, what’s it going to look like?” he said. “We have to turn around and start fighting back.”

Sporer said the party must return to its conservative values, from fiscal to social and everywhere in between.

“We were so not conservative in the last election cycle,” he said, adding: “[Republicans] are so afraid of losing power that they pander to the middle instead of running hard and proud as who they are.”

But even before the election, moderate Iowa Republicans were planning to “fight back against the evangelicals and goofballs who have taken over the party.” Goofballs such as U.S. Senate candidate Christopher Reed and Kim Lehman, who was elected Republican national committeewoman this summer at the GOP state convention (replacing Sandy Greiner). Steve Roberts, another moderate Republican who lost his RNC slot to a social conservative, suggested before the election that Lehman should choose between leading Iowa Right to Life and serving on the RNC.

The moderates (including 2002 gubernatorial nominee Doug Gross according to Cityview) think Republicans should not take such a hard line on social issues. Former Republican lieutenant governor Joy Corning, who is pro-choice, took issue with Lehman in this letter to the Des Moines Register:

Pro-life can and does mean pro-choice to great numbers of Republicans. It means they want government to let individual citizens decide on matters best left to each person’s dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility.

If Kim Lehman, one of two Iowa representatives on the Republican National Committee, makes being anti-choice a litmus test, it only further divides the Republican Party.

We are defined by principles that have been our foundation since the time of Lincoln – limited government, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, self-determination and opportunity. We are not defined by a National Right to Life survey.

Last week’s election results strengthen the moderate Republicans’ argument, in my opinion. Lynda Waddington of Iowa Independent showed in this piece that Republican statehouse candidates who emphasized abortion as a campaign issue did not do very well.

But who will take on and defeat Sporer in a campaign to lead the state party? His belief that the GOP has been losing because it’s not conservative enough is shared by most Republicans, even if the overall electorate disagrees.

I don’t give the moderates much chance against the “goofballs” if Republican activists are doing the choosing.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that as a rule, the party out of power sees more of its members retire from the state legislature. It’s not much fun being in the minority during the legislative session. In all likelihood, Republicans will go into the 2010 cycle with more open seats to defend in the Iowa House and Senate.

I also want to link to a few conservative bloggers’ commentaries on the situation facing the Republican Party of Iowa.

At his own blog, Ted Sporer lays out his vision for a “Republican Rebirth” in Iowa. Many of his ideas are grounded in the Republican mainstream, but make no mistake: Sporer is more closely aligned with the “goofballs” than with the moderates.

After Christopher Reed went way over the top in his debate with Tom Harkin last month, Sporer defended Reed’s description of the four-term incumbent as the “Tokyo Rose of al-Qaeda.” To hear Sporer tell it, this phrase was “accurate,” and “we need more discussion of objective factual truths in politics.” Furthermore, he argued that Reed’s line of attack against Harkin could have been a winning message if only Reed had had “more money, a staff and some TV advertising.” This tells me that if Sporer does become Iowa GOP chairman, we’re in for a lot of Newt Gingrich-style rhetorical bomb-throwing in 2010.

The well-connected Krusty Konservative notes that groups of Republican moderates and conservatives have met in recent days to discuss the way forward:

While I’m glad that both the establishment crowd and conservative activists are meeting, I just wish they would sit down and meet together. If this turns out to be a battle between the two groups only one thing will come of it; defeat.

Krusty also wants social conservatives to be “more inclusive and tolerant of people and candidates who don’t comply with a strict anti-abortion litmus test.” But he had this to say to the Republicans who blame the religious right for losing elections:

It amazes me that the social conservatives are being blamed for the lack of message within the Republican Party. This couldn’t me farther from the truth. The liberal media would lead you to believe that our candidates only talk about gay marriage and abortion. […]

When you look at the message breakdown on economic/kitchen table issues it’s been the establishment candidates who have failed us. In this last presidential campaign we saw John McCain lose the kitchen table issues to Obama, but we shouldn’t have been surprised, our Republican standard barers [sic] have not been able to win the debate on economic issues vs. their Democrat challengers for more than a decade.

Commenting on my post about the problems facing Republicans nationally, Bleeding Heartland user dbrog recommended watching the latest Iowa Press program on Iowa Public Television. The video is here, and you can download the transcript at the same page on the IPTV website.

Krusty Konservative wasn’t optimistic after watching:

Interestingly enough both National Committeeman Steve Scheffler and Doug Gross discussed the future of the Republican Party in Iowa on Iowa Press this past weekend. The interview didn’t generate any real fireworks, but it also lacked any specific ideas to move our party forward. All I took out of it was to expect more of the same, which means we should prepare to lose more legislative seats in 2010 and maybe a statewide elected Republican unless we can rally around the cause of winning elections.

Blogger abregar of the Iowa Defense Alliance describes what he wants to see in a party chairman:

The Republican Party of Iowa is in crisis. As a party we have just come off another losing election cycle. There were a few areas that provided a sense of optimism, but they are few and far between. It has become obvious that the current party leadership does not know how to win. Their strategy has led us down the road to defeat yet again.  The party is fractured and in need of healing yet our leadership has not attempted to do just that. The next RPI Chair needs to be someone that understands and supports all the values and ideals that our party stands for. Essentially the next Chair should eat, sleep, and drink the party platform. The next RPI Chair must unite our crippled and fractured party. There are deep divisions in the party right now that current leadership has done little to heal.

To my mind, a GOP chair who “eats, sleeps and drinks the party platform” will be unable to heal the party’s divisions, because social conservatives have been so dominant in crafting that platform. But that’s not the most interesting part of abregar’s analysis:

I cannot deny that under normal circumstances I think that [Sporer] would excel as Chair of RPI. Ted is solid on all the issues that represent the Republican Party here in Iowa. He most definitely is outspoken and has great ideas. At this point in time, Ted may not be the right person for the job. Far too many people across the state Ted is a symbol of the Polk County political machine and they resent that. […] Other party members across the state see the influence that Polk County has and they resent it. I hate to say this, but I don’t think that Ted would bring the party together like we need.

Right now RPI needs a leader that can reach across the state to bring Republicans together. We need someone that is going to be a strong leader that will promote our issues and values. We need a strong leader that will loudly and vocally support all of our candidates, not just one or two. We need someone that is going to be solid on all Republican issues. In order to do this RPI is going to need to look outside of Polk County.

Not surprisingly, the most influential Republican moderates in this state are based in Polk County, which contains Des Moines and most of its suburbs. Polk County is also where a lot of the heavy-hitter Republican donors live (both moderate and conservative). If the state GOP takes abregar’s advice and looks outside Polk County, will unifying the party become any easier?

The bottom line is that there is no easy path forward for the Republican Party of Iowa.

Barack Obama is preparing to quickly reverse up to 200 executive orders issued by George W. Bush.

He will also take a step toward returning this country to a law-governed state by closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are going to reduce the number of Republican seats on key committees.

But don’t worry, Republicans, it won’t be this bad. (Click the link for a funny video that doesn’t want to embed here for some reason.)

Seriously, though, we won’t see radical change from the next administration. Obama’s not even trying to punish Joe Lieberman, who actively campaigned for the Republican ticket and repeated their talking points.

UPDATE: In case anyone doubts that Obama has a mandate for changing our direction, a Gallup poll that was in the field between November 6 and November 8 showed 70 percent have a favorable opinion of Obama, while 25 percent have an unfavorable opinion. 65 percent of respondents are confident in Obama’s ability to be a good president, 28 percent do not have confidence in his ability, and 7 percent have no opinion. The same poll showed George W. Bush’s approval rating at 27 percent and disapproval rating at 66 percent.

Keep in mind that no president since Nixon ever had disapproval numbers above 60 percent. Multiple polls have shown Bush in this range.

On my weekly calendar of events I mentioned a meeting this Thursday at the state legislature regarding energy efficiency. I received this press release from the Iowa Environmental Council today and have put two especially important passages in bold:

For Immediate Release:

November 10, 2008

Editors Contact:

Lynn Laws, Communications Director, 515-244-1194, ext 210

Iowa Environmental Council

521 East Locust, Suite 220

Des Moines, Iowa

Winter is inevitable. But big energy bills don’t have to be.

Winter is inevitable, but big energy bills don’t have to be. On November 13, that’s what some Iowa clean energy advocates will be telling members of the Iowa Legislature who sit on an interim committee to study utility-run energy efficiency plans and programs funded with consumer dollars. Clean energy advocates will present ideas for ways utility companies can help more Iowans reduce their winter energy bills.

According the Iowa Utilities Board, investor owned utilities in Iowa have issued press releases advising consumers that natural gas prices are expected to be high during the upcoming winter heating season (November-March). The utilities are estimating that consumers will see a 20 to 30 percent increase in their natural gas bills during the 2008/2009 heating season.

David Osterberg, Iowa Policy Project Director, says this added expense will hit low income Iowans’ pocketbooks the hardest. The good news is that this segment of the population could benefit most from utility company energy efficiency programs.

“People may not realize that low-income families, those earning under $20,000, spend 10 percent of their annual income on energy bills. Residents earning over $50,000 only spend 2.4 percent. It is vital to improve and target our energy efficiency programs for low-income Iowans,” said Osterberg.

“Cutting back energy usage through energy efficiency not only results in smaller energy bills for consumers, it’s cheaper than other strategies when it comes to solving global warming,” said Nathaniel Baer, energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council.

Carrie LaSeur, President of Plains Justice, has also been invited to present to the legislative committee and says utilities should be required to maximize their consumer energy efficiency programs before they are granted approval to build or expand power plants.

“The expense of adding new sources of power – like the proposed coal plant in Marshalltown – is always passed onto the consumer. Utility companies convince community members that building new energy capacity means providing new jobs.  But the truth is that energy efficiency programs create more jobs and save consumers money on their energy bills at the same time,” said LaSeur.

Osterberg, Baer and LaSeur are just a few of the experts invited to provide advice for legislators on …

Thursday, November 13

9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Room 19, State Capitol

*Utility company representatives will be presenting in the morning

*Presentations from the clean energy advocates and others will begin at 1 p.m.

Learn more about what clean energy advocates will be saying to legislators on Thursday…

Call the following individuals for interviews:

Nathaniel Baer, Energy Program Director

Iowa Environmental Council

521 East Locust, Ste 520

Des Moines, IA 50309

515-244-1194, ext 206

Baer@iaenvironment.org

Carrie La Seur, President, Plains Justice

100 First Street SW

Cedar Rapids, IA 52404

(319) 362-2120

claseur@plainsjustice.org

David Osterberg, Executive Director

Iowa Policy Project

20 E Market St

Iowa City, IA 52245

319.338.0773

dosterberg@iowapolicyproject.org

–          End     –

Aside from the obvious ethical case for targeting energy-efficiency programs to low-income Iowans, think about the potential impact for the economy as a whole. About two-thirds of our GDP depends on consumer spending. If energy-efficiency programs are able to save people money on utility bills, consumers are likely to spend more money on other things. That is especially true for low-income consumers who may otherwise be forced to cut back on essentials to pay for heat and power.

LaSeur’s point is also extremely important. Energy-effiency programs not only create more jobs than building a new power plant, they also save consumers money, which can be spent on other things.

Even if we disregard global warming and all other environmentalist arguments for conserving energy (as opposed to increasing production), there is a strong economic case for moving our public policy in this direction.

As always, post a comment or send an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if I’ve left out any important event.

Monday, November 10:

Center on Sustainable Community’s 4th Bi-Annual Building a Sustainable Iowa Professional Training Workshop will be held the week of November 10th through 15th in three locations this year. We are excited to bring Marc Richmond, a national leader in the green building movement, back to Iowa to present this two day course in Cedar Falls, Ankeny and Fairfield. The Cedar Falls course will take place on November 10-11. This course is recognized by the building community as the most comprehensive residential green building training course offered in the state so plan to attend!

For more information visit www.icosc.com or contact Emily at emily@icosc.com or (515) 277-6222.

A Local Food Dinner will be held Monday, Nov. 10, at the University of Northern Iowa Commons Ball Room at 6 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Northern Iowa Food & Farm Partnership at the UNI Center for Energy & Environmental Education. Dr. Preston Maring, MD, will speak on “Sustaining Iowa: Making the connections between food, health and land.”  Pre-registration is required by contacting andrea.geary@uni.edu, 319-273-7883.

The Food, Health and Land Connection: California physician Dr. Preston Maring will be in Iowa to present “Sustaining Iowa: Making the Connection between Food, Health and the Land,” and to share his passion for local food. Maring is Associate Physician-in-Chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, where he helped start a weekly farmers market at the hospital. He has his own blog with weekly recipes for fresh produce that gets about 50,000 page views each month. His presentation is scheduled at: Noon, November 10, 140 Schaeffer Hall, University of Iowa, Iowa City; 7:30 p.m., November 10, Commons Ball Room, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls; and 7 p.m., November 11, 2050 Agronomy Hall, Iowa State University, Ames. Following each presentation, local speakers will share Iowa stories about the benefits of local food. They include: Iowa City chef Kurt Michael Friese, author of A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland, and editor for Edible Iowa River Valley magazine; Story County Planning and Zoning director Leanne Harter, about the county’s new Local Foods Systems Initiative.

Tuesday, November 11:

The Residential Green Building Workshop organized by the Center on Sustainable Communities continues in Cedar Falls.

Wednesday, November 12:

The Residential Green Building Workshop organized by the Center on Sustainable Communities begins in Ankeny.

A workshops on Managing Floods of the Future: Concepts, Tools and Success Stories will be held at the UNI Center for Energy & Environmental Education (CEEE) from 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Some of the nations’ best minds on ecological floodplain management will make presentations. The workshops are primarily for elected officials, planners, economic development staff and community leaders. To register, e-mail/call Barbara.payton@uni.edu, 319-273-2573.

Thursday, November 13:

The Residential Green Building Workshop organized by the Center on Sustainable Communities continues in Ankeny.

A workshop on Managing Floods of the Future: Concepts, Tools and Success Stories will be held at the Johnson County Fairground/Iowa City from 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Some of the nations’ best minds on ecological floodplain management will make presentations. The workshops are primarily for elected officials, planners, economic development staff and community leaders. To register, e-mail/call Barbara.payton@uni.edu, 319-273-2573.

Wind Rights Legal Forum: The Drake University Agricultural Law Center is sponsoring a half-day Continuing Legal Education workshop for lawyers and other interested officials on legal issues relating to the wind rights agreements being used in Iowa. Speakers will discuss wind agreements from the perspectives of wind developers, landowners, and neighbors. Speakers will also discuss the potential for legislation and local regulation of wind development. The forum will be from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Drake University Legal Clinic located at 24th and University. The fee is $40 and registration information can be found at www.law.drake.edu/cle.  For more information contact Prof. Neil Hamilton at neil.hamilton@drake.edu.

Energy Efficiency Plans and Programs Legislative Study Committee Meeting: Increasing energy efficiency is a great way to save money and help keep Iowa’s air and water clean. On November 13, utility companies, environmental organizations, and state agencies will discuss energy efficiency plans and possibilities for 2009. The discussion is tentatively scheduled to begin at 9:15 a.m. in room 19 of the State Capitol Building, with three Iowa environmental groups presenting from 1:50 p.m. to 2:15 pm. To confirm the schedule, or if you’d like to express your own views at the meeting, call the Iowa Legislative Services Agency: (515) 281-3566. To see the meeting agenda, visit http://www.legis.state.ia.us/l… The State Capitol Building is at East 12th & Grand, Des Moines, IA 50319.

Friday, November 14:

The Residential Green Building Workshop organized by the Center on Sustainable Communities begins in Fairfield.

Annual Fall Tri-State Gathering of Women in Agriculture, November 14-16, YMCA Camp Pepin, Stockholm, WI. Education and networking, potluck, silent auction. Workshops to include felting and eco-preneuring; virtual farm tours. $99 for two nights’ lodging and three meals. Co-sponsored by Women, Food and Agriculture Network. Contact Stacey Brown to register, 515-231-1199,  staceyleighbrown@yahoo.com.

Saturday, November 15:

The Residential Green Building Workshop organized by the Center on Sustainable Communities continues in Fairfield.

Last day for early-bird registration for the fourth annual Natural Living Expo, which will take place in Des Moines on March 28-29, 2009. In my non-blog life, I am helping organize this event, which is free to the public. Businesses or non-profit organizations oriented toward healthy or environmentally-friendly living can contact me (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) for more information about exhibiting at the expo. There is a significant discount for registering by November 15, but we will still take registrations after that date.

Someone who poll-watched in a different Iowa county has informed me that the Republican candidate was listed above the Democratic candidate for every race on all of that county’s ballots.

My impression, although I didn’t look closely so can’t remember, was that in Polk County one party was not consistently above the other party on ballots.

It seems reasonable to require that the order of candidates be rotated on ballots so as not to give either party an advantage.

Bleeding Heartland readers, please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you noticed one party’s candidates being consistently list first on your ballot (absentee or election-day ballot).

Last night I attended the world premiere of “The Sparks Fly Upward,” a musical drama that “follows three German families in Berlin, two Jewish and one Christian, through the Holocaust.” I cannot express how powerful and moving this performance was. I am so proud of the author and composer Cathy Lesser Mansfield, a professor at Drake Law School who took a sabbatical year a few years ago to complete a project she had started 25 years earlier. She had written a musical based on the Book of Job while still in high school.

After her twins, Megan and Sarah, were born in 1994, Mansfield revived “Job” and set out to formally score her high-school composition. The idea to embed Job in a Holocaust story came from the twins’ Baptist nanny. The families in “Sparks” try to comfort themselves by re-enacting the story of Job during Kristallnacht, the infamous “Night of Broken Glass” when Jewish synagogues and businesses were destroyed and lives were lost. The Job thread continues as some family members live in hiding while others are arrested, deported, and led to the crematorium at Auschwitz.

I noticed this information about public lectures on The Sparks Fly Upward website:

Composer/Librettist Cathy Lesser Mansfield lectures about Berlin before and during the Nazi Regime and other more recent genocides. The lecture uses several hundred photographs from the photo archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, to show Jewish life before the Nazi regime, and the chronology of events leading up to the Holocaust. The lecture also uses music from Sparks, and a DVD entitled Defying Genocide: Choices That Saved Lives, which focuses on both the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

There is a link you can click for contact information, if you would like to invite her to give this presentation to a group. For more information about the opera and the research Mansfield did while writing it, click here or here.

Another friend I’m proud of is Sara Janssen, whom I met through moms’ groups in the Des Moines area. The New York Times recently profiled her family in this story about the “Green RV”:

OVER the last few years, Sara and Matt Janssen have been downsizing their life. First, they moved from a 1,600-square-foot home to a small apartment in Montana. Then, wanting to tour the country without harming the planet, they took up residence in a recreational vehicle fueled by used vegetable oil.

They now travel with their 4-year-old daughter, Bella, spreading the word about the sustainable life.

Recreational vehicles, which get about 8 miles a gallon, are often considered the antithesis of low-impact living. But it doesn’t have to be that way, said Ms. Janssen, speaking by phone from her home, a 36-foot, 1998 Western Alpine Coach, when it was parked in Des Moines recently.

Their motor home has a hot water capacity of only six gallons, “so I know how long my showers are,” said Ms. Janssen, a 31-year old photographer who also works for her father, a developer of franchises for Cold Stone Creamery. The RV’s limited space also means “we can’t buy anything because it won’t fit,” she said.

Add to that a comprehensive remodeling, including nontoxic paints, bamboo floors and the waste-grease fueling system, and the Janssen mobile home “is a self-contained lifestyle,” Ms. Janssen said.

Sara is a talented photographer and has several blogs:

Walk Slowly, Live Wildly

The Live Lightly Tour

Happy Foody

This is an open thread about friends doing something meaningful with their lives.

While taking my son to Sunday school this morning, I saw a great bumper sticker on an activist friend’s car:

THE LABOR MOVEMENT

The folks who brought you the weekend

Pendulums swing in politics, and not every election will be a Democratic wave. However, certain demographic trends seen in this year’s election have to be discouraging for Republicans.

Before the election, some Republicans were confident about John McCain’s chances, in part because they expected a “Bradley effect” to be skewing polls toward Barack Obama. That is, they thought large numbers of white people might be lying to pollsters about their intention to vote for Obama. Polling experts like Sam Wang and Nate Silver and Mark Blumenthal predicted weeks ago that there would be no Bradley effect, and Tuesday’s results showed they were right.

Not only that, Obama did better among white men and white voters generally than John Kerry did four years ago. Obama’s relatively strong performance among whites increased his national popular vote lead and swung states like Indiana (which had not voted Democratic for president since 1964) into his column.

NBC’s Chuck Todd has drawn attention to Obama’s strong showing among college-educated whites in particular:

Our final NBC/WSJ poll before the election showed that Obama had a three-legged stool of support that contributed to his lead over McCain — African Americans, Hispanics, and 18-29 year olds. And that poll (and others like it) proved to be right. Obama won African Americans, 95%-4%; Hispanics, 66%-32%; and 18-29 year olds, 66%-32%. But Obama had one extra bit of support that turned a three-legged stool into a four-legged chair: college-educated whites. McCain narrowly beat him here, 51%-47%, which helped reverse a 17-point deficit Kerry had with all whites in 2004 to the 12-point deficit Obama had last night. And it’s what helped Obama do so well in suburban counties like the ones above in Pennsylvania or the ones in the I-4 corridor of Florida or the ones in Northern Virginia. That’s the difference, folks, between losing an election and winning one.

Obama also more than doubled Kerry’s winning margin among Latino voters. Nationally, he took about 67 percent of the Latino vote. McCain, who was supposed to be a relatively appealing Republican with this demographic, won just 31 percent of their votes. To make matters worse for the GOP, “the number of Latinos who went to the polls increased by nearly 25 percent over 2004.”

In part because of Latino voters, states like New Mexico and Nevada, which were very close in 2004, went to Obama by more than 10 points.

Now look at the charts about the youth vote (aged 18-29) in this post by Mike Connery. Young voters split almost evenly between Bush and Gore. In 2004, they went for Kerry by a 9-point margin. In 2006, they went for Democratic Congressional candidates by a 22-point margin. This year, they went for Obama over McCain by a ridiculous 34-point margin (66 percent for Obama, 32 percent for McCain).

Scroll down this page a little to the graph showing what the electoral map would look like if only 18-29 year olds were voting. McCain would win just eight states for 57 electoral votes and be tied in Arkansas. Also,

Sixty percent of all new voters this year were under age 30, according to a report by Tuft’s Tisch College Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE.

The Republicans better figure out a way to reverse this trend quickly, because

Many academic studies show that if a voter votes for the same party in three consecutive elections they disproportionately carry that political identification with them for the rest of their lives.

Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 are a large cohort, because they are mostly children of the Baby Boomers. They have now voted overwhelmingly Democratic in two consecutive elections (2006 and 2008).

Finally, let’s not forget about women voters. They make up more than half of the national electorate, and they went for Obama by 55 percent to 43 percent. Incredibly, 70 percent of unmarried women voters supported Obama. In Ohio, Obama got 54 percent of the women’s vote, and in Pennsylvania he got 60 percent of the women’s vote.

If I were a Republican anywhere, I would be depressed by these numbers.

In the next day or so, I will write about the deep hole Iowa Republicans are in.

UPDATE: If I were a Republican, I would probably drop most of the social issues rhetoric and stick to big government and taxes. However, via Todd Beeton at MyDD I learned that exit poll data don’t show this as a promising path either:

   View of Government

   Should do more 51

   Doing too much 43

   Will your taxes go up if Obama wins?

   Yes 71

   No 27

   Among voters making $200,000 or more

   Obama 52

   McCain 48

UPDATE 2: Paul Rosenberg asserts that the GOP [is] Set to Drive Off a Cliff. Click the link to view charts from a new Democracy Corps report, showing that the electorate as a whole thinks the Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections because they were too conservative, and that the GOP needs to appeal more to moderates to win.

Meanwhile, the subset of Republican respondents in the Democracy Corps survey said the Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008 because they were not conservative enough.

Similarly, this survey yet again shows that McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin hurt him more than any other factor with voters who considered both Obama and McCain. But a Rasmussen survey of Republicans taken after the election showed that most think Palin helped McCain’s candidacy, and favor Palin more than any other likely contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

If Republicans cannot acknowledge what just happened, they are unlikely to be able to improve their party’s standing.

Rob Hubler sent this e-mail to his supporters today:

Dear [desmoinesdem],

The highest appreciation that can be given a person in the Navy is “Well done!” To all of you I give my sincerest “WELL DONE!”  I cannot be prouder of all your efforts and your response to this campaign. Everyone went above and beyond their capabilities.

I want to share my thoughts about what went right, and what went wrong, so we can learn from events and continue to build a progressive force in the Fifth District, and I need to ask you for a little extra help to close out this chapter.  But first I offer some words from an essay by Tim Wise, that describe the work that has just begun with the election: http://www.redroom.com/blog/ti…

   “…And so it is back to work. Oh yes, we can savor the moment for a while, for a few days, perhaps a week. But well before inauguration day we will need to be back on the job, in the community, in the streets, where democracy is made, demanding equity and justice in places where it hasn’t been seen in decades, if ever. Because for all the talk of hope and change, there is nothing–absolutely, positively nothing–about real change that is inevitable. And hope, absent real pressure and forward motion to actualize one’s dreams, is sterile and even dangerous. Hope, absent commitment is the enemy of change, capable of translating to a giving away of one’s agency, to a relinquishing of the need to do more than just show up every few years and push a button or pull a lever.

   This means hooking up now with the grass roots organizations in the communities where we live, prioritizing their struggles, joining and serving with their constituents, following leaders grounded in the community who are accountable not to Barack Obama, but the people who helped elect him. Let Obama follow, while the people lead, in other words…”

We all know things did not go as we had all wanted and anticipated. It is far too early to get a complete handle on what happened. With the effort you put into our campaign the results should have been better.  We did receive more votes then any 5th district candidate has in the past, but the percentage was about the same as in previous races. We had considerable impact with Republican and independent voters–a tribute to your efforts. This was always a major effort of our campaign and we succeeded.

The early indication is that we did not do as well as we should have with Democrats.   Anecdotal evidence suggests that the GOTV effort we all worked so hard on was not directed to the folks that would have boosted our Democratic total and helped the down ticket.  Democrats across the district and the state did not win where we should have.  Kurt is one example of a Democrat who should have won, given the demographics of his district, but lost by fewer than 400 votes.  A better GOTV effort would have helped him.

The good news is that our campaign leaves a greatly improved Democratic organization in the 5th. There is a new sense of identity and a new willingness to improve on the infrastructure you all built. We have the foundation of a viable two-party system in our district. We can build and be competitive at the local and state level. Clearly we will throw away an opportunity if we do not unite behind our newly-energized party, and position ourselves to do even better than we did this year. These gains can be expanded and I will be working toward making this happen.

The bad news is that we must pay off a remaining debt of $10,000. You were one of those who were so generous and helped our campaign. I am asking you to contribute once again to eliminate the debt I have incurred, which is mostly owed to the staff. You all saw a staff that was totally dedicated to the campaign, and devoted great energy and sleep time to our effort.  As a past campaign staffer, I know how many times campaigns close without paying what is owed to staff members. I know it is my personal responsibility to fulfill my agreements with them, but I have expended all of my personal resources already and must depend upon you to help. A $25 or more contribution by you would be very much appreciated.

I look forward to the next two years of helping President Obama to answer the challenges we have been talking about in this campaign, and continuing our vigilant watch on Steve King. He is the only elected official who celebrated the election by being combative and disgraceful.  He is in stark contrast to John McCain’s gracious call for bipartisanship, and the need for cooperation in these trying times for our nation.  Whether King runs for reelection in 2010 or runs for Governor, we in the Fifth must continue to dog him and hold him accountable.  I know you will join me in this effort.

This is not an announcement of a campaign for 2010.  I am not going to even think about running again for a long time, if ever.  I am making this commitment to stay in the fight, however, no matter who is running for Congress in the election years to come.  This race was never about me, it was about real representation for the Fifth District, and it was about you.  My commitment to you will not waver.

We have a daunting task before us as a district, a state, and a nation. Barack Obama is a visionary who is up to the task. Senator Tom Harkin, Gov. Culver, Representatives Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack, Leonard Boswell, our Democratic State House and Senate will all join with our new President to tackle the tasks at hand. We will bring real rural development to Iowa. We will stand with working families, family farmers and ranchers, the middle class and those who have no voice. And as we continue to do our part, collectively, we will bring back the respect the people of the 5th want and deserve.  It will not be easy but we have a good start. Let us continue what we have begun and work together to make our district a place of justice and not a national laughing stock.

I hope you will continue with me in our fight. The new page is turning even here. We have taken many steps and we must continue our journey until our job is complete.  We were not defeated. We have only been further challenged. We are up to the task. Let’s continue till we arrive at victory.

Thanks again for joining this campaign for Justice and peace. Step by step we will get there.

Peace and Justice,

Rob Hubler

(712) 352-2077

P.S. Your contribution of any amount helps us finish this campaign with the integrity from which we started it. I sincerely appreciate your assistance from the beginning to the end.

What Hubler says here about the GOTV effort is similar to what I am hearing from people all over this state. We lost statehouse races we should not have lost, races the House Democrats felt confident about going into the election. I have not crunched the numbers myself to confirm, but some are saying that the “drop-off” (that is, the number of people who cast a vote for president but not for state House or Senate candidates) was much greater this year than in 2004.

If anyone out there who worked in an Obama field office would like to give me your side of the story regarding the turnout effort or help provided to down-ticket Democrats, please contact me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

The “Kurt” referred to in this message is Rob Hubler’s son Kurt Hubler, Democratic candidate in House district 99 (Pottawattamie County). He lost narrowly to Doug Struyk, a former Democrat who switched parties and was one of the candidates supported by the American Future Fund during the final days of the campaign.

Looking at the election results, I noticed that only about 11,000 votes were cast in Kurt Hubler’s race, which is a lot less than the more than 16,000 votes cast in my own district 59. That’s one side effect of the generally lower turnout in Pottawattamie County, compared to 2004. Polk County, where district 59 is located, had higher turnout this year than in 2004.

I encourage you to help Hubler retire his campaign debt by donating one last time. He put tremendous effort into running a real campaign in a very tough district for Democrats.

There were so many extremely close races for the Iowa House and Senate that we don’t yet know how many seats Iowa Democrats will have in each chamber. Once again, several districts proved to be a lot more competitive than anyone expected before Tuesday. The strong early voting for Democrats saved a few of our incumbents.

There’s a lot of work to be done in figuring out why we won and lost some of the close races. I plan to look carefully at what happened in my own district 59, but I don’t have time to research and write up all of the stories about all of the districts.

I encourage Bleeding Heartland readers to write about what happened in Iowa’s down-ticket races this year. I will promote to the front page any good analysis you can provide about why we won this race or why we lost that race.

Some useful information would be:

What was the winner’s margin in the district (total votes and percentage)?

What kinds of ads did the Democratic and Republican candidates or outside interest groups like American Future Fund run in the district (if any)? Was most of the advertising positive or negative? Did the Democratic candidate respond to any negative advertising?

What issues did the candidates bring up in their direct-mail pieces or the fliers they left on doorsteps? Taxes? Unions? Education? Smoking ban? Abortion?

Did the Democratic candidate in the district underperform or overperform Barack Obama, in terms of a percentage of the vote?

What was the “drop-off” in the district? By that I mean how many votes were cast for president and how many for the state House or Senate race? How many raw votes did Obama receive in the district, and how many did our Democratic statehouse candidate receive?

What kind of GOTV did our Democratic candidate have in the district? Was his or her campaign handling it for the most part, or was it organized by the Iowa Democratic Party or the Obama campaign field office in the area?

If you like, you can look at more than one district that are close to each other and try to figure out why we won one but lost the other.

I would also appreciate it if someone would volunteer to closely examine the turnout in Iowa by county. Which counties showed more votes cast this year than in 2004? Which counties showed fewer votes cast than in 2004? What about the turnout percentages? Some counties may have had more votes cast but a lower turnout percentage if there were lots of new voter registrations.

I would also like to hear from more people who worked for an Obama field office in Iowa or for a statehouse campaign. If you don’t want to write about your experience but are willing to share some of your thoughts off the record, please e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com so that we can arrange a time to talk.

It’s time for a new thread on the Congressional races across the country.

First, I need to make two corrections. I reported late Tuesday night that Tom Harkin had won all of Iowa’s 99 counties. That was based on a map on the election results page of the Des Moines Register’s website, which showed all of Iowa’s 99 counties in blue. However, the Daily Kos election scoreboard shows the true picture (click on “Senate,” then on Iowa). Harkin won “only” 94 Iowa counties. He lost Page County in southwest Iowa as well as Sioux, Lyon, O’Brien and Osceola in the northwest corner.

Second, I have reported that EMILY’s List provided no financial support to Becky Greenwald’s campaign in the fourth Congressional district. However, Bleeding Heartland commenter Bill Spencer pointed out that Greenwald’s third quarter FEC filing shows a $5,000 contribution from EMILY’s List on September 22 (a few days after the group endorsed Greenwald).

It’s worth noting that when EMILY’s List strongly commits to a race, they invest considerably more than $5,000 in the candidate.

Earlier this year, EMILY’s List backed Nikki Tinker in the Democratic primary in Tennessee’s ninth district against Steve Cohen, who had a perfect pro-choice voting record. I have not been able to confirm a number, but EMILY’s list was reported to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advocating for Tinker.

James L. of Swing State Project compiled this comprehensive chart showing independent expenditures in House races across the country. Look at how much EMILY’s List spent in some other districts: more than $160,000 in IL-11, nearly $150,000 in CO-04, nearly $60,000 in OH-15, more than $30,000 in NH-01, $19,000 in FL-13, $16,500 in NY-26.

That only counts the money EMILY’s List itself spends on behalf of Congressional candidates. The group can also raise substantial funds for candidates through their mailing list. Donors to EMILY’s List receive direct-mail and e-mail appeals regularly, asking them to contribute directly to key candidates from around the country. These letters contain short bios of the candidates EMILY’s List is backing. I have confirmed from more than one source that EMILY’s List did not send out any direct-mail or e-amil appeals urging members to contribute to Greenwald’s campaign.

So, while I was wrong to write that EMILY’s List provided no financial support to Greenwald, it is accurate to say that they did little to help her beyond issuing a press release very late in the game.

Getting to the big picture, Democrats have picked up six U.S. Senate seats: Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. Three races have yet to be called. Norm Coleman leads Al Franken in Minnesota by 236 votes (out of more than 2.5 million cast) at the latest count. There will be a mandatory recount in this race once the initial count has been completed. I read last night that Franken can win if even one extra vote for him is found in every eight Minnesota precincts.

We may be headed for a recount in Alaska, although it seems unlikely that Mark Begich can overcome convicted felon Ted Stevens’ narrow lead. There is some speculation that Stevens will resign or be expelled from the Senate, in which case a different Republican (Sarah Palin?) could take the seat.

By the way, the election results in Alaska diverged from pre-election polling in an almost unprecedented way, not only in the Senate race but also in the presidential voting and in the race for Alaska’s at-large seat in the House. Further investigation is needed to figure out whether all polls in Alaska (and Alaska alone) were way off, or whether there was any tampering with the vote counting.

Georgia will hold a runoff in December between Jim Martin and the Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss. I don’t have high hopes for this one, since Georgia is a Republican state to begin with and I think the GOP base will be motivated to reduce President Obama’s working majority in the Senate. However, anything can happen. On a related note, there are some anomalies in the turnout figures in Georgia that will require further analysis.

As for the U.S. House, Democrats picked up 23 seats on Tuesday and lost four for a net gain of 19 and a total of 255. Seven races have not been called, all of them in Republican-held districts. Democratic candidates are leading in only two of those (MD-01 and VA-05). Republican leads are extremely small in OH-15 and CA-04, but the picture looks more discouraging for our side in CA-44 (a real under-the-radar race), WA-08 and Alaska’s at-large seat.

If all the candidates currently leading are eventually declared the winners, Democrats would hold 257 House seats and Republicans 181. Crisitunity posted these charts showing Republicans in blue districts and vice versa. Note that the partisan voting index for every Congressional district will have to be recalculated, tossing the 2000 presidential voting and adding the 2008 presidential voting. But using the current partisan voting index numbers (which are based on the 2000 and 2004 presidential voting), only nine Republicans in the whole country represent districts with any Democratic lean at all. One of them is Iowa’s own Tom Latham.

In contrast, at least nine Democrats represent deep-red Congressional districts with a partisan index of at least R+10 (for perspective, Iowa’s fifth district is R+8). Many more Democrats represent districts with only a slightly less Republican lean. We lost incumbent Nancy Boyda in KS-02 (R+7) but picked up Betsy Markey in CO-04 (R+9).

What does Crisitunity’s post mean for Iowans? I take away two lessons.

First, there’s no question that Latham will be tough to beat in 2010, but if he vacates the seat IA-04 becomes a top pickup opportunity for Democrats. I would be very surprised to see him run for governor, but if Chuck Grassley were to retire for any reason I think Latham would take a shot at the Senate race.

Second, looking at the nationwide picture, Democrats are far more competitive in red Congressional districts than Republicans are in blue districts. I am confident that the Republicans have very little chance of recapturing IA-01 and IA-02.

Also, a new Democratic candidate will be favored to hold IA-03 whenever Leonard Boswell retires, even if redistricting after the 2010 census somewhat reduces the Democratic lean in this district.

This is an open thread for any commentary on any of the U.S. House or Senate races.

Watch this video: Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

This is also worth a read:

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

“Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, ‘Things are finally as terrible as we’re willing to tolerate,” said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. “To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time-these last eight years must have really broken you.” […]

Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday’s election.

According to a CNN exit poll, 42 percent of voters said that the nation’s financial woes had finally become frightening enough to eclipse such concerns as gay marriage, while 30 percent said that the relentless body count in Iraq was at last harrowing enough to outweigh long ideological debates over abortion. In addition, 28 percent of voters were reportedly too busy paying off medical bills, desperately trying not to lose their homes, or watching their futures disappear to dismiss Obama any longer.

These short pieces made me laugh too:

McCain Gets Hammered at Local VFW

Republican Party, Average Working Joe Bid One Another Adieu Until 2012

Who do you think Barack Obama will pick for his cabinet? Post your speculation here.

I predicted before the election that Obama’s cabinet would include at least two Republicans but no Democrats who strongly supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries. However, my brother knows someone who knows someone who knows Obama and thinks that Tom Vilsack will be Obama’s secretary of agriculture.

The two appointments I’ll be watching most closely are attorney general and secretary of transportation. Probably Obama has a long list of people he knows who’d like to be attorney general. I want a strong advocate in that position.

The highway bill is coming up for reauthorization in 2009, and I want the cabinet secretary to push for more balance in our transportation funding, rather than such a huge portion of the federal money going to new road construction. Bill Richardson is my dream candidate for secretary of transportation, but Obama may tap him for secretary of state or some other high-profile job.

UPDATE: I agree with Matt Stoller, Larry Summers would be a bad choice for Treasury secretary.

Jeff Merkley pulled ahead in the Oregon Senate race, which brings the Democrats a sixth seat gained in the upper chamber. (The others were in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado.)

We are headed for a recount in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by 0.03 percent of the vote. What is wrong with the 400,000+ people who voted for independent candidate Dean Barkley?

Absentee and provisional ballots are still being counted in Alaska, where seven-time convicted felon Ted Stevens has a narrow lead over Mark Begich. They sure like their Republicans in Alaska.

The Georgia Senate race will go to a runoff in December, but Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss has to be heavily favored over Jim Martin.

If I could choose only one of the late-to-be-determined races to win, I would pick Oregon. Merkley has been very effective in the Oregon legislature and is going to be a huge asset to progressives in the Senate. Also, he is likely to have an easier time holding this seat than our candidates would in AK, MN or GA.

There are still a few U.S. House races to be determined. It looks as if Democrats will end up with a net gain of about 19 or 20 seats, which gives them a solid majority of about 250 (there are 435 seats in the House of Representatives).

However, there’s no getting around the fact that many analysts were forecasting Democratic gains of 25 to 30 seats before the election. Republicans have to feel good about protecting most of their incumbents from the Obama wave. The Democrats did not make enough of a case for why a Democratic Congress would be a force for good, and the Republicans may have energized their base with warnings about one-party rule.

As for the presidential race, some of John McCain’s staffers and conservative talking heads are already trying to blame Sarah Palin for dragging down the Republican ticket. They are complaining about her clothes shopping spree and her refusal to accept preparation for her interview with Katie Couric. I agree that Palin hurt McCain, but get real: whose fault is it that such an uninformed, unprepared candidate was on the ticket?

If Fox News goes along with the effort to discredit Palin (and judging from this clip, they will), it will be interesting to see if the network’s ratings decline. Palin now has a loyal following among ideological conservatives who are the core viewers for Fox. If you watch Fox or listen to any right-wing talk radio, post a comment or write a diary about how the various hosts are explaining McCain’s loss. I am curious to see how many parts of the right-wing noise machine try to undermine Palin, and how many will keep encouraging her to run for president in 2012.

Also, if you know Republicans who were active in supporting a presidential candidate this past year, do you think they would stick with that candidate in 2012, or might they prefer Palin?

Looking to the future on the Democratic side, Clinton White House staffer Mike Lux explains what’s wrong with the conventional wisdom about Clinton’s so-called “overreaching” in 1993 and 1994.

Early analysis of the presidential voting is already appearing. Obama did better than Al Gore or John Kerry among protestants and evangelicals, including frequent church-goers.

At Swing State Project, Crisitunity has already calculated the new partisan voting indices for all 50 states, taking into account the 2008 election results. The partisan voting index looks at the popular vote in each state from the last two presidential elections, and compares that to the nationwide popular vote. So, in a state that is R+5, the share of the vote garnered by Bush in 2004 and McCain this year is about five percent higher than the share of the national popular vote Bush and McCain received.

Although Obama did substantially better than Al Gore and John Kerry in many states, he also outperformed those candidates in the national popular vote. The result is that the change in partisan voting index is minimal for most states. Crisitunity explains,

In most people’s minds, this was a sea change election, a total map-changer… but if you look closely at the underlying data and not just the colors on the TV screen, it wasn’t. Most of the states behaved exactly as you’d expect them to, coming in a few points more Democratic in a year where the Democratic candidate performed a few points better than the previous few Democratic candidates. In other words, most states’ boats were lifted the same amount by the one overall rising blue tide.

There were some big shifts and drops, though; where were they? The states where the PVI most notably shifted to the Democrats were Colorado (+3), Hawaii (+6), Indiana (+3), Montana (+4), Nevada (+3), New Mexico (+3), North Dakota (+3), South Dakota (+3), and Vermont (+5). With the exception of Hawaii (favorite son effect) and Vermont (large 2000 Nader effect falling out of the equation), the explanation for these states seems to be a combination of two factors: Obama’s greater appeal (maybe personality-wise more so than policy-wise) to midwestern and western states, and the fact that the Obama campaign actually put a lot of ground game effort into these states instead of treating them as an afterthought.

Based on the 2000 and 2004 presidential election results, Iowa had a partisan voting index of D+0, meaning the state as a whole closely mirrored nationwide popular voting for president. Dropping the 2000 numbers and adding the 2008 results, Crisitunity calculated a PVI of D+1 for Iowa, meaning our state has a very slight Democratic tilt compared to the national electorate.

This is an open thread for any thoughts you have about the election or anything interesting you’ve read lately about the results.

SECOND UPDATE: He took the job. Special election on the way to fill Emanuel’s D+18 House seat. Outgoing DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen may seek to replace Emanuel as Democratic caucus chair in the house.

UPDATE: Apparently this report has not been confirmed, so it’s possible Emanuel will turn down the offer from Obama.

If you were hoping Barack Obama would “turn the page” on the Bill Clinton years, you’ll be disappointed to learn that he has hired Congressman Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of the Clinton administration, to be his chief of staff.

I think this is a master stroke by Obama. He gets a senior staff member with recent White House experience, good ties to the Clintons and tremendous contacts in the House Democratic caucus.

Also, if Obama has a particular person in mind to replace him as Illinois’ junior senator, giving Emanuel a different job removes a rival candidate that Governor Rod Blagojevich might appoint.

I’ve been worried that Obama would not drive a hard bargain with Congress, but Emanuel is a tough advocate.

A side benefit from my perspective is that this gets Emanuel out of the House of Representatives. He was rising fast and could have become speaker someday. Nancy Pelosi is not particularly effective in my opinion, but our second tier of leaders (e.g. Steny Hoyer) are terrible. I want to build a progressive bench in Congress.

So, now that Emanuel is out of the picture, who will replace Obama in the U.S. Senate?

American007’s speculation is here, and other links on the same subject are here.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that overall turnout in Iowa in 2008 was lower than it was in 2004. That is surprising, given the well-documented surge in new voter registrations.

Which people who participated in 2004 stayed home yesterday, and how did that affect the results?

Tom Harkin won all 99 counties, which is remarkable considering that John McCain beat Barack Obama in 46 or 47 of Iowa’s counties. Even in Republican areas, they’re looking for more in a U.S. senator than trash talk and smackdowns. Does anyone remember whether Chuck Grassley carried all 99 counties in 2004?

(UPDATE: The Daily Kos election scoreboard shows Christopher Reed beating Harkin in Page County in the southwest part of the state and in the four counties in the northwest corner. There may be a mistake on the Des Moines Register’s map, which shows all 99 counties in blue for the Senate race.)

The words “idiot” and “insane person” will be removed from the Iowa Constitution.

Speaking of idiots, Steve King got away with barely campaigning in the fifth district, winning by at least 20 points. Politics can be cruel, and I feel for Rob Hubler, who worked so hard for so long to give fifth district residents a credible candidate.

Nationwide, many Democratic challengers in districts like IA-05 fell far short. Nancy Boyda, a surprise winner from 2006 in KS-02, was a surprise loser last night. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee invested millions of dollars in other similarly Republican districts like MN-06 and AZ-03, and our challengers lost those too.

After beating Kim Schmett by 57 percent to 42 percent (about double his margin of victory in 2006), third district Congressman Leonard Boswell immediately vowed to run for re-election in 2010. Can’t some Democratic heavy-hitters who are on good terms with Boswell encourage him to retire? Barring that, is there anyone willing to start fundraising for a 2010 primary challenge who would have some establishment support?

We may have to run against Tom Latham in a redrawn third district in 2012, and it would be helpful to have a new Democratic incumbent in place before that happens.

Bruce Braley was the incumbent re-elected by the largest margin, 64 percent to 36 percent. I agree with John Deeth that Republican moderates are going to challenge Dave Hartsuch in his 2010 state senate primary.

Dave Loebsack won big in the second district, by 57 percent to 39 percent. The hill in this D+7 district is just too steep for a Republican candidate to climb. Mariannette Miller-Meeks would be better off seeking a different political office in the future, although the Iowa GOP may encourage her to run for Congress again in 2010. Loebsack won’t have the Barack Obama turnout machine cranking in Johnson and Linn counties two years from now.

Iowa Democrats are looking at small net gains in the House and Senate. Dawn Pettengill got away with switching to the GOP after the Iowa Democratic Party worked hard to elect her. A couple of races may have a different result once the absentee and provisional ballots are counted. Deeth has more details.

Jerry Sullivan has not ruled out requesting a recount in House district 59, although it seems unlikely to me that there are enough provisional and absentee ballots outstanding for him to reverse Chris Hagenow’s 141-vote lead (out of more than 16,000 votes cast).

UPDATE: Johnson County voters narrowly approved a controversial bond measure. The proposal was designed to generate

$20 million in a 20-year period to conserve open space.

By collecting taxes for two decades, the Johnson County Conservation Board will have the funds to buy and preserve remnant areas of land scattered throughout the county from willing sellers.

Can’t say I’m too surprised. The Des Moines Register has the story.

Barack Obama had an incredible showing last night. Not only did he win just about every “swing state” from 2004, he won several states that have long been considered safe for Republicans.

Who seriously thought Indiana, which last voted for a Democrat for president in 1964, would go for Obama? He flipped Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina, and may yet win Missouri.

But the down-ticket races have been disappointing in many states. Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler underperformed Obama and Tom Harkin in Iowa’s fourth and fifth Congressional districts.

Minnesota Democrats failed to pick up any Congressional seats and may not win the U.S. Senate race either, even though Obama won the state by double-digits.

Oregon’s U.S. Senate race is too close to call, despite a huge Obama victory in that state. Democrat Jeff Merkley has led all the recent polls in that race.

We didn’t win as many down-ticket races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida as many people expected.

Republican incumbents in Alaska who trailed in all the recent polls may keep their jobs.

A lot of analysis needs to be done to figure out what has happened. Perhaps the Republican scare-mongering about “socialism” failed to turn voters off from Obama, but helped convince them to vote for divided rule in Washington. Maybe with so much media commentary about the presidential race being a foregone conclusion, Americans wanted some checks and balances on Obama.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Swing State Project runs through what Democrats won and lost in the U.S. House races. With some districts still too close to call, we have picked up 21 Republican-held seats while four of our own incumbents lost (two who captured heavily Republican districts in 2006 wave). We lost a lot of seats that had seemed to be trending our way, as well as some districts where we outspent the Republican candidate in the final weeks (MN-03, MN-06).

Jerome Armstrong has some thoughts about the apparent swing against Democrats in a lot of the close U.S. Senate races.

Having slept on it, I realize that one wrong assumption I made was that the universal commentary about McCain being toast would depress the Republican vote.

Instead Republicans seem to have turned out in large numbers to prevent one-party “socialist” rule in Washington. Perhaps also a lot of independents voted for gridlock (Obama plus GOP down-ticket).

Of course the presidential landslide is the most important result from yesterday, but I can’t help feeling like wise-beyond-his-years Populista:

Couldn’t this election have nicer frosting? The cake is great but this frosting makes me sick.

Becky Greenwald is losing by 20 points in D+0 IA-04 and appears to have lost all 28 counties in the district. I wasn’t optimistic about winning that race, given the lack of tv and radio advertising on her behalf, but I thought she’d come closer than she did, with a strong turnout for Barack Obama and Tom Harkin in the district. I absolutely expected her to win Story County at least.

Ultimately, Greenwald lacked the resources to define her opponent or even respond to his ads that defined her. Tom Latham’s last radio ad pulled quotes from the Des Moines Register’s endorsement of Greenwald, making it seem as if they had rejected her for toeing the Democratic line. If you heard the ad but hadn’t read the paper, you would think the Register endorsed Latham because of his bipartisan leadership.

Latham was able to run away from his voting record, with a big assist from the Democratic leadership that gave him two chances to vote against the unpopular bailout bill.

Latham might have survived even against a well-funded challenger who ran a perfect race. Instead, he faced an under-funded challenger who made her share of mistakes.

Greenwald got in the race late and had to spend a lot of money to get through the Democratic primary. Then she spent most of the summer fundraising instead of getting out in the district to raise her name recognition.

Probably her biggest error was to go up on tv in mid-September with a commercial that did nothing to make the case against Latham. It wouldn’t have been terrible as the first in a series of tv ads, but it was completely inadequate as a stand-alone ad–especially since Greenwald was hardly able to run any commercials during the final month of the campaign.

This gamble might have paid off if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or EMILY’s List had decided in late September to commit to this district. However, it looks like a poor call in retrospect. Greenwald should have saved her cash for a strong direct-mail campaign in October, or perhaps two weeks of tv ads right before the election.

It’s also important to look at Iowa’s fourth district in the context of House races nationwide.

As in 2006, this is shaping up to be a Democratic wave election in which Democratic women candidates are not doing nearly as well as Democratic men.

“Sam” Bennett lost by double digits in D+2 PA-15.

Linda Stender lost in R+1 NJ-07 (an open seat and one I thought she’d win, because she almost beat the retiring Republican incumbent in 2006).

Victoria Wulsin lost by a big margin in OH-02.

Anne Barth didn’t come as close as many people expected in WV-02 either.

I hope Darcy Burner pulls through in WA-08, but the early returns are not encouraging.

Jill Derby also doesn’t appear likely to win in NV-02.

Former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes was considered a great candidate but didn’t come very close in MO-06.

Most surprisingly, incumbent Nancy Boyda lost in KS-02.

(UPDATE: Matt Stoller has a more comprehensive list of Democratic women challengers and how they did.)

The DCCC put a lot of money behind quite a few of these women challengers, but it wasn’t enough to carry the day, even with the strong presidential-year turnout.

There were a few bright spots for Democratic women challengers tonight. Jeanne Shaheen won the Senate seat from New Hampshire, and Kay Hagan won the Senate seat from North Carolina. Betsy Markey beat the horrendous Marilyn Musgrave in CO-04, and Dana Titus may win in NV-03.

But there’s no escaping the fact that women Democratic challengers for the U.S. House are for the most part falling short. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is.

UPDATE: NCDem Amy reminds me that North Carolina just elected its first woman governor, Bev Perdue. Also, some people at Open Left think I am writing off Darcy Burner too quickly.

Final note, to the person whose diary on IA-04 I deleted earlier tonight: exposing the real name or other identifying details of any Bleeding Heartland user is prohibited on this blog. More site guidelines are here.

I will update this thread with results from the races in Iowa as the evening goes on.

Presidential election results and Congressional races in other states will go in the other thread.

What are you doing to celebrate Barack Obama’s victory?

UPDATE: Iowa was immediately called for Obama and for Tom Harkin. KCCI-TV has called the third district race for Leonard Boswell.

Not much news yet from the statehouse races. In Polk County, Democrat Bill McCarthy was elected sheriff and Republican E.J. Giovanetti beat John Scarpino to hold his seat on the board of supervisors.

UPDATE 2: Huge disappointment in the down-ticket races. House district 59 has been called for Chris Hagenow by a tiny margin (about 141 votes)–Hagenow and Jerry Sullivan each had 50 percent of the vote. There were a lot of negative ads and lit drops against Sullivan in recent weeks, but most people I talked to seemed to think that race was trending Democratic.

It looks like Eric Palmer is behind in House district 75 as well.

I wonder whether a lot of Obama voters weren’t voting at all in the down-ticket races, or whether they were splitting their tickets.

KCCI has called IA-04 for Tom Latham.

UPDATE 3: On the plus side, McKinley Bailey and Tim Hoy are narrowly ahead, but I don’t know how which parts of their districts haven’t reported yet.

UPDATE 4: All of the incumbent members of Congress are winning by huge margins. Boswell leads by more than 10 percent, Loebsack leads by more than 15 percent, and Braley, Latham and King lead by more than 20 percent.

Harkin has over 60 percent of the vote, but Obama leads McCain only by about 8 percent, which is a smaller margin than most of the pre-election Iowa polls predicted.

In the coming days I am sure the Iowa Democratic Party will be looking closely at what happened in the down-ticket races. Were people in IA-04 and IA-05 voting for Obama and Harkin but also for Latham and King? Or was there a big drop-off with a lot of people not filling out the whole ballot?

I wasn’t optimistic about beating Latham and King, given the lack of television advertising, but I certainly thought those races would be a lot closer and that Obama and Harkin would have some coat-tails in rural Iowa.

UPDATE 5: I am not seeing any results on the Secretary of State’s website or the Iowa House Democrats’ blog.

KCCI is only showing results for House races in the station’s viewing area. I am not hearing anything about any of the eastern Iowa House or Senate races.

Bleeding Heartland readers, please e-mail me (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) or post a comment if you have results from the contested statehouse races in your area.

UPDATE 6: Some Iowa House races are still too close to call. Otherwise, it’s a mixed bag. I don’t think the Republicans can win a House majority, but Democrats may end up with a smaller than expected gain.

Good news first: McKinley Bailey won in House district 9.

Sharon Steckman won in House district 13.

John Beard won in House district 16.

Kerry Burt won House district 21.

Gene Ficken won House district 23.

Nate Willems won House district 29.

Eric Palmer won House district 75.

Phyllis Thede won House district 81.

Elesha Gayman won House district 84. (contrary to the earlier report on the Des Moines Register website)

Larry Marek won House district 89.

Swati Dandekar won Senate district 18.

Steve Sodders won Senate district 22.

Tom Rielly is leading in Senate district 38.

Bad news: Gretchen Lawyer lost in House district 36

Tim Hoy lost in House district 44.

Jerry Sullivan lost by a hair in House district 59.

Alan Koslow lost in House district 60, but not by a big margin considering how little the Iowa Democratic Party invested in this district.

Matt Pfaltzgraf lost in House district 70, but again, not by a big margin considering how little the Iowa Democratic Party invested in this district.

Elesha Gayman lost in House district 84. CORRECTION! The Des Moines Register changed the results on their site. Gayman wins!

Frank Wood lost Senate district 22.

House district 81 is almost exactly tied with one precinct left to report. That may turn out to be the closest race in the state, although Hagenow only won district 59 by 141 votes.

Rob Hubler is under 40 percent in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district. Clearly a lot of voters were splitting their tickets. Very disappointing result after an outstanding effort by Hubler.

UPDATE 7: For some reason, the Des Moines Register shows Gayman losing in district 84, but the Iowa House Democrats’ blog shows Gayman as the winner.

The Register shows district 81 as too close to call, but the Iowa House Democrats’ blog shows Phyllis Thede as the winner. UPDATE: The last precinct came in, and Thede won!

Keeping in mind Mark Blumenthal’s cautionary note about exit polls, I am trying not to get too excited about these early exit poll numbers that point to a massive landslide win for Barack Obama in Iowa and elsewhere.

What are you doing tonight? Are you going to an election night party or watching the returns come in at home? I am making one of my favorite dishes for dinner, which I haven’t cooked in many months.

I’ll update periodically tonight as results come in.

Note: David Yepsen thinks McCain should have picked Mike Huckabee for vice president. I think that would have been a less-bad choice than Sarah Palin, but McCain still would have faced an enormous gender gap and problem with suburban moderates.

I still think the Republicans would have done better to nominate Mitt Romney, and that Romney must be kicking himself for not knocking out McCain earlier this year.

UPDATE: At around 6:30 pm I got a robocall from Barack Obama, reminding me that I still have a few hours to vote in this historic election, and asking me to go out and vote. A different voice then reminded me that polls are open until 9 pm and gave me a toll-free number that I could call to find my polling place.

Best. GOTV. ever.

UPDATE 2: Obama is only down a few points in Indiana, and several Democratic strongholds (like Gary and Indianapolis) have not reported. Also, exit polls suggest Obama is only losing white voters in Indiana by about 3 percent, which would be groundbreaking if true.

UPDATE 3: Doors are closing for McCain. Pennsylvania has been called for Obama, and he still looks like he has a chance to win Indiana and North Carolina. Ohio also seems to be turning blue.

In the Senate races, we have picked up seats in New Hampshire, Virginia and North Carolina. We probably are going to lose Kentucky. Looks like I was wrong about Georgia being the closest U.S. Senate race–Republican Saxby Chambliss seems to be leading there.

My husband got tired of the talking heads and switched over to the BBC America channel. It brought back too many traumatic memories for me–I stayed up all night in England watching the 2000 election returns on the BBC. It was around 3 am when they announced Florida was no longer in the Gore column, but was “too close to call.”

UPDATE 4: That’s all she wrote. Fox News just called Ohio for Obama. There is no mathematical way for McCain to get 270 electoral votes.

To put some icing on the cake, Obama leads in Florida with half the votes counted. McCain clings to narrow leads in Indiana and Virginia, with some heavily Democratic areas not counted yet.

Also, we picked up a fourth U.S. Senate seat (in New Mexico). Minnesota has been called for Obama, but that Senate race is too close to call.

UPDATE 5: No one is calling Florida yet, but things sure look good for Obama if you compare his share of the vote in the counties that are in to what John Kerry received four years ago.

We picked up at least one House seat in Florida and lost FL-16, but good riddance to him as far as I’m concerned. Let the record reflect that even though I am a yellow dog Democrat, I would not have voted for that creep Tim Mahoney in FL-16.

Virginia and North Carolina both appear within reach, but still too close to call.

CBS is showing an incredible celebratory scene at Howard University (a black college) in Washington.

UPDATE 6: I was putting my son to sleep and missed McCain’s concession speech. Mr. desmoinesdem said it was gracious.

Florida, Colorado and Virginia have been called for Obama. Only North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri and Montana haven’t been called yet, as far as I can tell.

UPDATE 7: Nice victory speech by Obama. He’s not going to rub it in the Republicans’ faces. He will reach out to them. I predict more than a token Republican or two will be in his cabinet–perhaps even Colin Powell.

North Carolina has been called for Obama.

I feel bad that Obama’s grandmother did not live to see this moment. However, he did get back to see her a couple of weeks ago, and she did cast an absentee ballot before she died. I’m sure she must have known that he was going to win.

Apparently Obama has offered Rahm Emanuel the job of White House chief of staff. That’s got to be a tempting offer, but if Emanuel stays in the House of Representatives he might become speaker someday.

It’s perfect weather for voting in Iowa, and my polling place was busy this morning. Of about 1200 registered voters in my precinct (Windsor Heights 2), 125 had already voted in person by 8:30 am. I don’t know how many people voted by absentee ballot in my precinct, but statewide it was about a third of the electorate, so I assume several hundred people in my precinct voted early.

The “mystery pollster” Mark Blumenthal posted this cautionary note about any exit polls that may be leaked later today. He also linked to this piece from two years ago, which explains how exit polls are conducted.

If you encounter any problems with voting, don’t hesitate to call the Obama campaign’s voter protection hotline:

1-877-US-4-OBAMA (1-877-874-6226)

The non-partisan Election Protection also has a hotline:

1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683)

Swing State Project’s final House race ratings can be found here. They have IA-04 as “likely Republican” and IA-05 as a “race to watch.”

Lots of websites will be tracking results closely tonight. For presidential and Congressional results, I will be hopping back and forth between Open Left, Talking Points Memo, Swing State Project, MyDD and Daily Kos, and will highlight notable results here.

It could be an early night if Virginia and Pennsylvania look to be going Obama’s way. Polls close in those states at 7 pm eastern time.

The Iowa House Democratic Caucus blog will have live results on the House races tonight, but I don’t know where to go for live results on the state Senate races.

UPDATE: More voter protection numbers:

ACLU Voter Protection Hotline (1-877-523-2792)

Lawyers’ Committee Hotline (1-800-OUR-VOTE / 1-800-687-8683)

Here’s a funny story from Talking Points Memo about some flaws in the vaunted Republican microtargeting operation.

Republican spin doctor and focus-group master Frank Luntz tells it like it is: “I cannot foresee a scenario that John McCain is elected the President of the United States.”

Here it is:

Schedule for Election Day, November 4th

Greenwald Votes in Dawson, IA

10:00 AM

Dawson Fire Station/Community Building

108 S. 1st

Dawson, IA

Greenwald Visits Waukee GOTV Office

12:00 PM

Becky Greenwald for Congress Office/Obama Campaign for Change Office

144 E. Laurel St

Waukee, IA

Greenwald Visits Iowa State to Get Out the Vote

2:00 PM

Iowa State Memorial Union

2229 Lincoln Way

Ames, Iowa 50011

Election Night Victory Party with Story County Democrats

5:30 PM – Doors open to the press

Legends Restaurant

119 Stanton Ave

Ames, IA 50014

Thanks to all the volunteers helping to get out the vote in the fourth district!

UPDATE: Noneed4thneed has video from Greenwald’s event in Marshalltown last night:

http://commoniowan.blogspot.co…

Which candidates and interest groups did you hear from on the eve of the election?

On Monday afternoon at 1:40 pm I got a robocall urging me to “get the facts” before voting. The “facts” are that Jerry Sullivan (Democratic candidate in House district 59) supported the Project Destiny proposal that Polk County voters resoundingly rejected in a July 2007 referendum.

I think the robocall erroneously claimed that Project Destiny would have raised my property taxes, when in fact it would have reduced property taxes while increasing the local sales tax.

The robocall went on to say that Sullivan is financially backed by groups wanting to pass some kind of legislation I couldn’t hear, because my son was making a lot of noise in the background. It may have had something to do with unions or collective bargaining, because when I called Sullivan’s campaign manager to tell him about the call, he said Republicans were lit-dropping a piece yesterday saying Jerry Sullivan will force you to join a union.

The robocall concluded by saying that the fact is we can’t afford Jerry Sullivan, and that the call was “proudly paid for by Iowans for Tax Relief PAC, working to protect family budgets.” I stayed on the line with my pen in hand, waiting to write down the phone number, but the robocall did not give a phone number. I thought that was required by law. The robocall did not mention Chris Hagenow, the Republican candidate in House district 59.

Sullivan’s campaign had volunteers out in the most Republican part of the district yesterday (the wealthy Clive 4 precinct). They were dropping positive campaign literature, along with a piece about the nine mayors in the Des Moines metro area who have endorsed Sullivan, including Clive Mayor Les Aasheim.

I’m happy to report that the GOTV machine in Iowa is engaged on behalf of Democrats at all levels. I’ve received several robocalls from Democrats in recent days like Governor Chet Culver and Senator Tom Harkin, inviting me to GOTV rallies.

Also, on Sunday I received a robocall from the Iowa Democratic Party, authorized by the Obama campaign for change, that mentioned voting for the “Democratic ticket” (not just Obama) twice. At the end it asked me to hold before giving me the name and address of my polling place. The same day, a volunteer left a door-hanger at our house, reminding us of the date of the election, the hours polls will be open, the phone number for Obama’s toll-free early-voting hotline, our precinct number, the name and address of our polling location, and all the names on “your Democratic ticket” (in our case Obama, Harkin, Congressman Leonard Boswell, Jerry Sullivan, plus three Democrats seeking Polk County offices).

Who has contacted you lately about the election, and what did they say?

Republican operatives have no shame when it comes to voter suppression tactics.

Iowa Independent reported today that Republican attorneys challenged the validity of 50 absentee ballots filed by Grinnell College students.

Did they have reason to believe the voters in question were not really students enrolled at Grinnell? No.

Did they have reason to believe the voters in question were trying to cast ballots in more than one location? No.

Did they have reason to believe the voters in question were not entitled to vote for some other reason? No.

Poweshiek County Auditor Diana Dawley said the ballots were challenged on the grounds that the students do not reside at the address they listed when they registered to vote.

The students registered to vote at 1115 8th Ave., which is the address on campus where they receive mail. However, it is not the physical address of their dormitories, Dawley said, which brought on the challenges.

The Grinnell College Campus Democrats claimed in an online posting that students who voted early at satellite voting stations were told by Poweshiek County elections officials to register in that way because the inability of students to receive mail at their physical address made it difficult to produce proof of residency.

This challenge is pathetic. Of course these students will list the address where they receive mail, rather than an address the post office wouldn’t recognize.

Republicans should be ashamed of such a scheme to deprive citizens of their right to vote. What a great introduction to politics for college students who are voting in their first presidential election.

I remember how excited I was to fill out my absentee ballot in the 1988, the first year I was old enough to vote for president. It is despicable for Republican attorneys to challenge voters on such flimsy grounds.

I’ve got news for the Republicans: the House district 75 race between Democratic incumbent Eric Palmer and former state representative Danny Carroll isn’t going to be close enough for them to steal.

Make a statement against voter suppression by sending a few bucks to Eric Palmer’s campaign.

UPDATE: This Daily Kos diary has more details on the situation in Grinnell. Also, it mentions that apparently Republicans in Virginia have challenged ballots cast by college students who listed their dorm address rather than the address at which they receive mail on campus. It figures that they are just trying to find any excuse to throw out students’ votes.

Later this afternoon vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will headline a Republican rally in Dubuque (why I don’t know).

If you’re watching on television or following the coverage online, post your thoughts and comments here. I will update this post later as well.

I’m curious to see whether state senator and first district Congressional candidate Dave Hartsuch will get to speak today, or at least be acknowledged from the stage. As John Deeth reported, Hartsuch was entirely left out of John McCain’s recent rally in Davenport.

Iowa may be a lost cause for the Republican ticket, but I predict Palin will draw a larger crowd in Dubuque than the approximately 1,100 people who came to hear John McCain in Tampa, Florida this morning. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank called that “a disastrous showing for an election-eve event in this big, Republican town.”

After the election it will be entertaining to watch the pro-Palin and anti-Palin camps in the Republican Party blame each other for the loss.

UPDATE: I forgot to update this post yesterday. Chuck Grassley went a bit far in defending Palin’s qualifications while warming up the crowd:

“You know from watching television and the debates that no one is more qualified to vice president of the United States,” [Grassley] said. “All you got to think about is the governors that have gone to Washington to be the chief executive. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about her qualifications.”

She’s halfway through her first term and already has been found to have abused her authority, but I guess to a Republican that makes her highly qualified to be president.

The Des Moines Register reported that more than 5,000 people came to see Palin in Dubuque. Some of them are already looking forward to her return to Iowa as a presidential candidate someday.

If this poll of Republicans is accurate, Palin trails Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Getting back to the current election, Palin declined to say whether she voted for convicted felon and Republican incumbent Ted Stevens in the U.S. Senate election today:

I am also exercising my right to privacy and I don’t have to tell anybody who I vote for. Nobody does, and that’s really cool about America also.

Rob Hubler may be campaigning in a town near you today or tomorrow. Come out to see him if you can:

MONDAY, November 3, 2008

9:15 a.m. LAMONI – meet supporters and activists                              

128 S. Linden, Lamoni

10:15 a.m. OSCEOLA – encourage and thank volunteers                      

Intersection of Highways 34 and 69 (former service station)

11:30 a.m. CRESTON – thank and encourage volunteers                      

209 N. Maple St. Creston

1:15 p.m. RED OAK – thank and encourage volunteers                    

909 Senate Ave., Red Oak

3:00 p.m. COUNCIL BLUFFS                            

Campaign Office, 708 Creek Top, Council Bluffs          

7:00 p.m. GLENWOOD – Glenwood Optimist Club                              

104 S. Walnut St., Glenwood  

TUESDAY, November 4, 2008

9:30 a.m. SIOUX CITY – thank and encourage volunteers                  

Sanford Center, 1700 Geneva St., Sioux City

10:15 a.m. SIOUX CITY – thank and encourage volunteers                    

CWA Hall, 1325 Lewis Blvd., Sioux City

11:00 a.m. SIOUX CITY – make phone calls with volunteers                  

Campaign Office, 506 Nebraska, Sioux City

3:00 p.m. COUNCIL BLUFFS – make calls with volunteers          

Campaign Office, 708 Creek Top, Council Bluffs    

9:00 p.m. COUNCIL BLUFFS – ELECTION NIGHT PARTY                      

Amerisports Bar, 2200 River Rd., Council Bluffs   (in Ameristar Casino)

It’s not too late to volunteer to make phone calls or knock on doors tomorrow. If you can help, call Hubler’s campaign headquarters at 712-352-2077, or call one of the other field offices in the fifth district (the addresses and phone numbers are here).

Swing State Project has posted a useful map and chart showing poll closing times and key races across the country.

Also, Swing State Project has maintained an incredible independent expenditure tracking chart so you can see how much various interest groups have been spending on the Congressional races, and in which districts. I noticed that EMILY’s List has not been spending in many of the districts where they endorsed a candidate.

Fivethirtyeight.com runs 10,000 presidential election scenarios every day. On Sunday, they came up with 624 McCain victories out of 10,000. Nate Silver shows you the most likely McCain victory maps in “What a McCain Win Looks Like.”

Daily Kos is running its first election prediction contest, and you have until 3 am central time on Tuesday to enter. It’s better than Bleeding Heartland’s contest in that they ask fewer questions and are giving the winner a brand new 2.0GHz Apple MacBook.

On the other hand, you have to have been a registered Daily Kos user for a least a week to participate, and your chances of winning are a lot better here. They will probably have thousands of entries at Daily Kos, and you have to guess the national popular vote percentages within a tenth of a point.

What websites are you reading, and where will you be watching the election returns come in?

In addition to the many other Democratic campaign events going on around the state today, fourth district Congressional candidate Becky Greenwald will hold four get out the vote rallies:

Schedule for Monday, November 3  

10:00 AM – Charles City

Campaign for Change Office

216 N. Main St., Charles City, IA

12:00 PM – Mason City

Campaign for Change Office/Cerro Gordo County Democratic HQ

517 1st St. NW, Mason City, IA

3:00 PM – Boone

Boone Airport

424 Snedden Dr., Boone, IA  

8:30 PM – Perry

Hotel Pattee

1112 Willis Ave, Perry, Iowa

If you live in or near the fourth district, are you seeing or hearing ads supporting Greenwald? I loved her final television commercial but haven’t heard whether it’s been running over the weekend. I saw it before Obama’s infomercial a few days ago.

Representative Steve King has so little to show for his six years in Congress that he used his first television commercial to take credit for a Highway 20 widening project, even though the funding for that project came from the state (not a federal appropriation).

Apparently King just can’t let go of this fairy tale:

FOR RELEASE:                                                                            

Sunday, November 2, 2008

STATEMENT BY CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE ROB HUBLER

Rep. Steve King continues to mislead voters about state funding for Highway 20 project

       During an interview with KMEG-TV yesterday, Rep. Steve King continued to mislead his constituents about the funding of the forthcoming improvements to Highway 20.  While he acknowledged the appropriation of state funds–which King had nothing to do with, contradicting the claims he is making in his radio and television ads-King still can’t admit that the state had to step in pay for the project rather than wait for King to obtain the federal funding needed to widen the highway.

       For six years, King failed to do his job in Congress to obtain four-lane federal construction funding for his top priority – improving Highway 20.  As State Senator Steve Warnstadt has stated, the Iowa legislature worked in a bipartisan manner to provide state funding for critical projects like four-laning Highway 20.  

       When the state announced that it was stepping forward with funding three weeks before the election, King shamelessly tried to take credit for the project when he clearly had nothing to do with the granting of state funds.

       Steve King is right about one thing.  He told KMEG that people should be offended when a politician “intentionally and willfully misinforms the public for their political gain.”   He should talk to the mirror about that.  He has misinformed the public to get re-elected, by claiming credit for the $48 million in funding that was recently announced by the Iowa Department of Transportation.

       That is separate and unrelated to any federal funds that may have gone toward the highway in the distant past, and not part of some “pool,” as he now claims.  And if such a pool did exist, King has done nothing to contribute to it.  

       If I’m elected to Congress, I will follow the example Rep. Leonard Boswell has set with the widening of Highway 34 in southern Iowa, obtaining funding for at least 10 miles every year.  Had Steve King done that, we would have had at least 60 miles completed for Highway 20.

ATTACHED DOCUMENTS:

Iowa DOT Press Release:                  

http://www.news.iowadot.gov/ne…

Steve King Quote:            

http://www.kmeg.com/global/sto…  

If you can afford to do so, please make one last donation to Hubler’s campaign. He’s up on television now with three ads you can view here (scroll down past the text of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement).

UPDATE: Got this e-mail last night from Hubler:

Dear [desmoinesdem],

Have you seen the ads? Heard the radio spots? Or seen the thousands of barn signs, bumper stickers and yard signs out? Travelling the district this week I have been amazed at all the green and white I see popping up amongst the changing leaves of fall.

The seasons are changing and so is the 5th district.

Everywhere I go there are signs that things are moving here on the ground and the whispers in D.C. have turned into rumbles as they talk about the campaign that is going to kick out Steve King.  Check out this blog posted today:

http://downwithtyranny.blogspo…

The latest polling shows we’re coming up behind him but this is still a tight race. We can win. And we will win. But we still need your help.

In less than 48 hours the polls will close but before that happens we need your help to get out the vote. Call your local office, email John (our field director), or call us at our headquarters 712-352-2077. But I am asking you to do everything you can between now and 9 PM on Tuesday; to get people to go out and vote in all the great democrats we have on the ticket this year from top to bottom.

Talk to people in the line of your local grocer, bug your neighbors, your relatives, and your friends and make sure they do their part.

After the polls close, come on over and watch the results roll in with me.

Ameristar

2200 River Road

Council Bluffs, IA 51501

Or contact your local county party to find a results party closer to you.

Peace and Justice,

Rob

The Des Moines-based American Future Fund is exploiting loopholes in rules governing political advocacy groups in order to run campaign advertising in targeted races without disclosing its donors.

The Des Moines Register provided the latest evidence in this article from Saturday’s edition: “National group airs ads on Iowa House.”

For background on the American Future Fund, a 510(c)4 organization “formed to provide Americans with a conservative and free market viewpoint,” you can read this piece by Iowa Independent’s Jason Hancock, this TPM Cafe story by Mrs. Panstreppon, or Paul Kiel’s report for TPM Muckraker.

The American Future Fund is associated with heavy-hitters in the field of campaign advertising. Its media consultant is Larry McCarthy (creator of the 1988 Willie Horton ad), and its legal consultant is Ben Ginsberg (who was involved with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004).

Representatives for the American Future Fund deny that the group seeks to influence elections. For that reason, they are not subject to campaign disclosure rules governing political action committees and other groups that make independent expenditures during election campaigns.

However, the American Future Fund’s radio and television commercials this year have focused on candidates running in competitive Senate races, such as Republican incumbent Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Democratic candidate Mark Udall of Colorado, and Democratic candidate Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. You can view many of those ads at the AFF’s You Tube channel. Note that while these commercials ostensibly are focused on generating phone calls in support of a particular issue position, they haven’t been aired in states without a contested Senate seat.

Now the AFF is weighing in on key Iowa legislative races. From yesterday’s story in the Des Moines Register:

On Wednesday [October 29], AFF launched television ads in Iowa that criticize Democratic Reps. McKinley Bailey of Webster City, Paul Shomshor of Council Bluffs, Elesha Gayman of Davenport and Art Staed of Cedar Rapids. All four are incumbents struggling to hold onto their seats in the face of strong Republican challengers.

Other ads that compliment Republican Reps. Doug Struyk of Council Bluffs, Jamie Van Fossen of Davenport and Dan Rasmussen of Independence. Struyk is a Republican leader whose opponent has spent little; the other two are dealing with strong Democratic challengers.

AFF’s spokesman explained the timing of the political messages by saying it took months to compile analysis on the legislative session, which ended in April.

What an amazing coincidence. Analysis about legislative action completed more than six months ago resulted in television ads that appeared six days before a general election.

In another amazing coincidence, the AFF’s ads happen to focus on candidates running in six battleground districts being targeted by both parties. Dozens of legislators who voted the same way on those issues, but represent uncompetitive districts, are not subject to AFF’s advertising blitz.

I could only find two of the American Future Fund Iowa’s tv ads on You Tube. One praised the Republican incumbent in Iowa House district 81, Jamie Van Fossen, and the other criticized the Democratic incumbent in House district 9, McKinley Bailey.

It’s worth noting that while urging viewers to call legislators, these ads give the phone number for the switchboard at the State Capitol. However, the switchboard is currently closed, because the legislature is not in session. The AFF spokesman explained that the law requires advertisements to use official phone numbers, but he is evading the issue.

These commercials cannot be intended to generate citizen communication with legislators if they are giving a phone number that no one is currently answering.

Clearly the AFF selected the subjects and timing of their advertising in order to influence the outcome of legislative elections in Iowa. (The Republican Party of Iowa is concentrating its resources on making gains in the Iowa House, where Democrats have only a 53-47 majority.)

The tv ads direct viewers to the web site of the AFF’s Iowa chapter: www.iowa.americanfuturefund.com.

AFF spokesman Tim Albrecht

told The Des Moines Register last month that AFF is a group that focuses solely on national issues. “At that time we were, but after a lot of analysis and reviewing what had occurred in the last legislative session, we decided to open an Iowa chapter,” he said.

It is AFF’s first state-based chapter in the country, said Albrecht, who is a former spokesman for Iowa Republican legislative leader Christopher Rants and AFF’s only paid staff member.

Earlier this year, the Iowa Future Fund was incorporated by the same people behind the American Future Fund, and the Iowa Future Fund ran television ads criticizing Democratic Governor Chet Culver. (Here is one of the Iowa Future Fund’s ads against Culver.) In March, the Iowa Democratic Party called for an investigation into the Iowa Future Fund’s advertising campaign and failure to disclose donors. In April, a press release announced the creation of the Iowa Progress Project to replace the Iowa Future Fund. In theory, the the Iowa Progress Project was going to focus on state issues, while the American Future Fund focused on national issues.

It is unclear why the American Future Fund decided to create an Iowa chapter, rather than have the Iowa Progress Project pay for television commercials about Iowa House incumbents. If anyone has any information regarding the Iowa Progress Project or the decision to create an AFF Iowa chapter, please post a comment or send me a confidential e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com).

Can anything be done to force the AFF to disclose who is paying for these commercials? Charlie Smithson, executive director of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, told the Des Moines Register that his office had received a complaint about the ads, but that campaign disclosure laws do not apply because the AFF ads do not urge viewers to vote for a candidate.

Mr. desmoinesdem has extensively researched election law and tells me that one relevant case in this area is Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life. Wisconsin Right to Life was running ads urging people to contact their senators about judicial filibusters. Senator Russ Feingold was up for re-election, and the ads did not urge people to vote against him, but the FEC considered them “sham issue ads” that were intended to influence an election and therefore were subject to regulation by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold).

The Supreme Court had previously upheld McCain-Feingold’s provisions on political advocacy ads (in the McConnell vs. FEC case), so the key question was whether Wisconsin Right to Life’s ads were the kind of political advocacy Congress can regulate. With Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority, the court

held that McConnell v. FEC did not establish the test that any ad intended to influence an election and having that effect is express advocacy. Such a test would be open-ended and burdensome, would lead to bizarre results, and would “unquestionably chill a substantial amount of political speech.” Instead, the Court adopted the test that “an ad is the functional equivalent of express advocacy only if the ad is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” The Court further held that the compelling state interests invoked by the government to regulate advocacy did not apply with equal force to genuine issue ads. Neither the interest in preventing corruption nor the goal of limiting the distorting effects of corporate wealth was sufficient to override the right of a corporation to speak through ads on public issues. This conclusion, the Court held, was necessary in order to “give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship.” The dissent by Justice Souter called WRTL’s ads indistinguishable from political advocacy ads and accused the majority of implicitly overruling McConnell v. FEC.

I agree with Souter’s position that so-called issue ads targeting candidates in key races shortly before elections are really political advocacy ads subject to McCain-Feingold. If the American Future Fund were mainly trying to influence Iowans’ views on issues, they wouldn’t be running their commercials only in battleground districts. Also, the timing of the ads only makes sense in the context of this Tuesday’s election. As I mentioned above, no one is currently answering the phone number AFF asks viewers to call.

But Smithson has to look at the AFF’s Iowa advertising from a narrow legal perspective. Clearly the ads are promoting favorable opinions about some Republican incumbents and unfavorable opinions about some Democratic incumbents. But as long as the ads urge people to call a telephone number (even a non-working one), courts would probably not hold that the commercials have “no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

I am not an expert on election law or disclosure requirements for 501(c)4 organizations. Perhaps there is some way Congress could require more financial disclosure of 501(c)4s so that they would not be able to run campaign ads with no accountability.

I don’t know the solution, but I do know that we can help Democrats fight back against the American Future Fund’s ad campaign by giving to the Iowa House Democrats’ Truman fund or to the following individual candidates:

McKinley Bailey (incumbent in House district 9)

Art Staed (incumbent in House district 37)

Elesha Gayman (incumbent in House district 84)

Paul Shomshor (incumbent in House district 100)

Phyllis Thede (challenger in House district 81)

Gene Ficken (challenger in House district 23)

Another day, another poll showing Barack Obama above 50 percent in Iowa and with a double-digit lead over John McCain.

In fact, Selzer and Associates’ final poll this season for the Des Moines Register shows Obama with his largest lead of the year. He’s ahead 54 percent to 37 percent for McCain, with only 6 percent now undecided. Click the link for the details, which are gruesome for the GOP.

I ask again why Sarah Palin is coming to Dubuque on Monday.  

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain, gives you the Bizarro World view in this official memo:

Expanding the Field: Obama is running out of states if you follow out a traditional model. Today, he expanded his buy into North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona in an attempt to widen the playing field and find his 270 Electoral Votes. This is a very tall order and trying to expand into new states in the final hours shows he doesn’t have the votes to win.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, Nate Silver goes over many scenarios that would take Obama to 270 electoral votes. Spoiler alert: none of those scenarios involve North Dakota, Georgia or Arizona.

I’ll be making phone calls for Jerry Sullivan (Democratic candidate in House district 59) this weekend.

What are you doing to close the sale for Democrats on Tuesday?

Please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if I’ve left out any important events.

Saturday, November 1

The Tallgrass Bioneers conference continues in Grinnell.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.gotoplanb.net/bione…

(a link to google map and driving directions is at the top of the page)

To pre-register, visit:

http://gotoplanb.net/bioneersc…

Complete schedule:

http://www.gotoplanb.net/bione…

Leading Iowa Democrats are kicking off a three-day bus tour and caravan around the state:

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S “COUNT ON US” BUS TOUR FEATURING SENATOR HARKIN AND GOVERNOR CULVER

AMES – 8:45 AM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, former Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, 4th District Congressional Candidate Becky Greenwald, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Iowa State University

Memorial  Union – Cardinal Room

2229 Lincoln Way

Ames ,  Iowa

CARROLL – 11:00 AM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, 5th District Congressional Candidate Rob Hubler, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Moose Lodge

200 East 5th St

Carroll ,  Iowa

STORM LAKE – 1:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, 5th District Congressional Candidate Rob Hubler, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

805 Flindt Drive, Suite 2

Storm Lake ,  Iowa

FORT DODGE – 3:15 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, 4th District Congressional Candidate Becky Greenwald, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Fort Dodge Public Library

424 Central Avenue

Fort Dodge ,  Iowa

ALGONA – 5:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, 4th District Congressional Candidate Becky Greenwald, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Berte’s Back Nine

216 E. State Street

Algona ,  Iowa

MASON CITY – 7:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, 4th District Congressional Candidate Becky Greenwald, Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Chicago Dawg Restaurant

687 South Taft Avenue

Mason City ,  Iowa

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S “COUNT ON US” CARAVAN

BOONE – 8:30 AM

Lt. Governor Patty Judge

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

1327 S Marshall St

Boone ,  Iowa

INDEPENDENCE – 10:15 AM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

204 1st Street East

Independence ,  Iowa

TAMA – 10:45 AM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

128 West 3rd Street

Tama ,  Iowa

DENISON – 11:00 AM

Lt. Governor Patty Judge and 5th Congressional District Candidate Rob Hubler

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

128 S. Linden St

Denison ,  Iowa

NEWTON – 12:30 PM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

207 1st Avenue West

Newton ,  Iowa

DECORAH – 1:00 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

421 West Water Street

Decorah, Iowa

KNOXVILLE – 2:15 PM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

206 East Robinson Street

Knoxville ,  Iowa

WAVERLY – 3:45 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

100 2nd Street, Southwest

Waverly, Iowa

LAMONI – 5:00 PM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

128 South Linden Street

Lamoni, Iowa

CHARLES CITY – 5:15 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

216 North Main Street

Charles City ,  Iowa

Sunday, November 2

It’s the last day of the Tallgrass Bioneers conference in Grinnell and the second day of Iowa Democrats’ bus tour and caravan:

WATERLOO – 11:45 AM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Bruce Braley, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Jameson’s Irish Pub

310 East 4th Street

Waterloo ,  Iowa

DUBUQUE – 2:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Bruce Braley, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Labor Temple

1610  Garfield

Dubuque ,  Iowa

CLINTON – 4:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Bruce Braley, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Clinton Community College Auditorium

1000 Lincoln Boulevard

Clinton ,  Iowa

DAVENPORT/BETTENDORF – 5:30 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Congressman Bruce Braley, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

United Steelworkers Local 105

880 Devils Glenn Road

Bettendorf ,  Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS – 7:45 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Dave Loebsack, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Machinist Local  831

222 Prospect Place

Cedar Rapids ,  Iowa

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S “COUNT ON US” CARAVAN

INDIANOLA – 11:15 AM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

602 North Jefferson Way

Indianola, Iowa

SPENCER – 11:45 AM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and 5th Congressional District Candidate Rob Hubler

600 Grand Avenue, 1st Floor (formerly Marcos Restaurant)

Spencer ,  Iowa

WAUKEE – 12:45 PM

Governor Tom Vilsack and Christie Vilsack, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, and 4th Congressional District Candidate Becky Greenwald

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

144 East Laurel Street

Waukee, Iowa

WINTERSET – 2:00 PM

Secretary of State Michael Mauro and 4th Congressional District Candidate Becky Greenwald

Obama  Iowa Campaign for Change office

104 North 1st Avenue

Winterset ,  Iowa

LE MARS – 2:00 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and 5th Congressional District Candidate Rob Hubler

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

27 Central Avenue, Northwest

Le Mars, Iowa

SIOUX CITY – 3:30 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and 5th Congressional District Candidate Rob Hubler

Mary Treglia Community House

900 Jennings Street

Sioux City ,  Iowa

MAQUOKETA – 5:30 PM

Lt. Governor Patty Judge

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

124 West Platt Street

Maquoketa ,  Iowa

COUNCIL BLUFFS – 5:45 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and 5th District Congressional Candidate Rob Hubler

McGinn Law Firm

25 Main Place, Suite 500

Council Bluffs ,  Iowa

CRESTON – 8:30 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and 5th District Congressional Candidate Rob Hubler

Iowa Obama Campaign for Change office

209 North Maple Street

Creston ,  Iowa

Monday, November 3

Did you remember to enter the Bleeding Heartland election prediction contest? You can’t win if you don’t play!

It’s the last day for early voting at your county auditor’s office.

It’s the final day of the Iowa Democrats’ bus tour and caravan:

IOWA CITY – 10:00 AM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Dave Loebsack, Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Vito’s

118 East College Street

Iowa City ,  Iowa

BURLINGTON – 12:15 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Congressman Dave Loebsack, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

Port of  Burlington

400  North Front Street

Burlington ,  Iowa

OTTUMWA – 2:30 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Dave Loebsack, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

UFCW Hall

1305 East Mary Street

Ottumwa ,  Iowa

MARSHALLTOWN – 5:15 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, 4th Congressional District Candidate Becky Greenwald, Congressman Dave Loebsack, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

UAW Hall

411 Iowa Avenue, West

Marshalltown ,  Iowa

DES MOINES – 9:00 PM

Senator Tom Harkin and Ruth Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Congressman Leonard Boswell, Attorney General Tom Miller, Secretary of State Michael Mauro, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, and IDP Chairman Scott Brennan

UAW Hall

411 Iowa Avenue, West

Marshalltown ,  Iowa

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S “COUNT ON US” CARAVAN

TIPTON – 11:30 AM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

500 Cedar Street

Tipton, Iowa

MUSCATINE – 1:15 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Parks and Recreation Building

312 Iowa Avenue

Muscatine, Iowa

FORT MADISON – 3:30 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

819 Avenue G

Fort Madison, Iowa

FAIRFIELD – 5:30 PM

Attorney General Tom Miller, State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, and former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

108 West Palm Road

Fairfield ,  Iowa

If you’re in the Cedar Rapids area and are interested in global warming:

 CLIMATE  CHANGE IN  IOWA TOPIC OF NOV. 3  FORUM:

“The global climate is changing. We know that humans are responsible for a large portion of that change, which will have implications for Iowa.”

That is the central theme of a public forum set for Kirkwood Community College Monday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Kirkwood and several other colleges and community groups will host a “Connections” program in Ballantyne Auditorium on the main Kirkwood campus.

The free forum will feature Dr. Jerald Schnoor of The University of Iowa, speaking on “Mitigating and Responding to Climate Change in Iowa.”  Schnoor is the Allen S. Henry Chair and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research.

Tuesday, November 4

It’s not too late to contact your local Democratic field office or county party to volunteer for a shift on election day. There are many jobs to be done–you don’t have to work the phones or knock on doors.

Bumped. Don’t forget to enter by Tuesday morning at 6 am!

I am still trying to decide whether to go with my optimistic or pessimistic scenario and will post my final prediction on Monday night.

There are no tangible prizes here–only bragging rights for the winners.

Enter if you dare. Try to come up with guesses for all the questions. Before you complain that these questions are tough, look at the Swing State Project prediction contest.

Your vote percentage guesses do not have to add up to 100 percent if you believe that minor-party candidates or write-ins will pick up a few percent of the vote.

1. What percentage of the national popular vote with Barack Obama and John McCain receive?

2. How many electoral votes will Obama and McCain win? (538 total)

3. What percentage of the vote will Obama and McCain win in Iowa?

4. What percentage of the vote will Bruce Braley and Dave Hartsuch receive in the 1st district?

5. What percentage of the vote will Dave Loebsack and Mariannette Miller-Meeks receive in the 2nd district?

6. What percentage of the vote will Leonard Boswell and Kim Schmett receive in the 3rd district?

7. What percentage of the vote will Tom Latham and Becky Greenwald receive in the 4th district?

8. What percentage of the vote will Steve King and Rob Hubler receive in the 5th district?

9. How many seats will the Democrats and Republicans have in the Iowa House after the election (currently 53-47 Dem)?

10. How many seats will the Democrats and Republicans have in the Iowa Senate after the election (currently 30-20 Dem)?

11. Which Congressional race in Iowa will be the closest (in terms of percentage of vote difference between winner and loser)?

12. Which Iowa House or Senate race will be the closest (in terms of percentage of vote difference between winner and loser)?

13. Nationally, which U.S. Senate race will be decided by the narrowest margin (in terms of percentage of the vote difference, not raw votes)?

14. In the presidential race, which state will be decided by the narrowest margin (again, in terms of percentage of the vote)?

The deadline for entering this contest is 6 am on November 4.

Please don’t e-mail me your predictions. Post a comment if you want to enter the contest. If you’re a lurker, this is an ideal time to register for a Bleeding Heartland account so that you can post comments.

UPDATE: Here are my predictions. I went with my optimistic scenario nationally but my more pessimistic scenario for Iowa, having been emotionally scarred by too many disappointing election nights.

1. National popular vote, rounded to the nearest point: Obama 54 percent, McCain 45 percent

2. Electoral college: Obama 353, McCain 185 (Obama wins all Kerry states plus IA, NM, CO, NV, OH, FL, VA and NC)

3. In Iowa, Obama will win 56 percent, McCain 43 percent

4. Braley 62, Hartsuch 38

5. Loebsack 57, Miller-Meeks 40 (I have no doubt that she will overperform McCain in this D+7 district, but it won’t be enough. She should run for the statehouse someday.)

6. Boswell 55, Schmett 45

7. Heartbreaker in the fourth: Latham 51, Greenwald 49. I expect too many independents to split their tickets. That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Greenwald win this race on Obama’s coat-tails. I just don’t see that as the most likely outcome.

8. Again, I wouldn’t rule out a surprise victory for Hubler if a lot of Republicans stay home tomorrow, but my prediction is (sadly) going to be King 54, Hubler 46.

9. The Iowa House will have 56 Democrats and 44 Republicans.

10. The Iowa Senate will have 33 Democrats and 17 Republicans.

11. IA-04 will be the closest Congressional race.

12. My gut feeling is that as in 2004, an Iowa House or Senate district not being targeted by either party will turn out to be closer than any of the targeted races. However, I have no idea how to select that kind of district, so I’m going to guess that the House district 81 race between Phyllis Thede and Jamie Van Fossen will be the closest.

13. The closest U.S. Senate race will be in Georgia.

14. North Carolina will be the state decided by the smallest margin in the presidential race (this was tough for me, because I also think Georgia and Missouri will be very close).

SECOND UPDATE: I forgot to predict that Obama will carry 61 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

Also, do great minds think alike? I find very little to disagree with in John Deeth’s prediction post. Meanwhile, Chris Bowers’ final election forecasts for the electoral vote and U.S. Senate are identical to mine. I predicted a slightly bigger net gain for Democrats in the U.S. House than Bowers did, though.

Mr. desmoinesdem is among the thousands of people in downtown Des Moines this morning, trying to see Barack Obama in person.

Post any thoughts you have about this rally or any memories you have of seeing Obama live in Iowa.

Also, let us know why you think Obama is visiting Iowa again so close to election day.

Is he sincerely worried about losing the state to John McCain? (I doubt it.)

Is he mainly trying to help down-ticket Democrats? (I think so–this will create some great visuals and free media coverage for Rob Hubler, Becky Greenwald and others.)

Does he like the symbolism of coming back to the state that gave him his first big boost toward the presidency? (Probably a little of that too.)

Did he want to schedule an event close to Illinois today so that he can get home to go trick-or-treating with his daughters? (Someone at MyDD suggested that.)

UPDATE: Congratulations to these dedicated volunteers!

Des Moines, Iowa – Today, the Obama Iowa Campaign for Change announced the winners of the “Iowa Call Challenge.”  The winners will have the opportunity to meet Senator Barack Obama during his trip to Des Moines today.

The call challenge winners completed the most calls to undecided voters between Saturday, September 13th and Saturday, September 20th using our Neighbor to Neighbor online call tool, http://my.barackobama.com/n2n.  Together, they called thousands of Iowans to talk about Barack Obama’s plans to change our country so middle class families have a voice in Washington.

“We want to thank all our volunteers for their hard work over the past months and in the coming days,” said Obama Iowa State Director Jackie Norris.  “As Senator Obama points out, change does not come from Washington, change comes to Washington.  Our Call Challenge winners exemplify the power of each of us to reach out and grow our movement for change.  Now more than ever we need the help of every Iowan who wants to turn the page on the failed policies of George Bush.  Working together we can help put Barack Obama in the White House and turn Iowa blue.”

The winners of the call challenge are:

Gail Dietrich; Victor, Iowa

Kevin Healy; Ames, Iowa

Dennis Lee; Sergeant Bluff, Iowa

Sheryl McNew; Indianola, Iowa

Tim O’Neill; Hedrick, Iowa

SECOND UPDATE: Leonard Boswell led the recitation of the pledge of allegiance. Tom Harkin, Becky Greenwald, Chet Culver and Jackie Norris spoke before Obama. I am trying to find out why Rob Hubler was not there and apparently was not mentioned from the podium.

Obama arrived and started speaking on time, which is amazing. My husband said he sounded very fresh, not at all like he was reading from a script.

The Des Moines Register has the text of Obama’s speech here, and I have also put the full text after the jump. The Register’s article about the rally is here. Excerpt:

“I had confidence in the people of Iowa because I knew that the American people are a decent people and a generous people, willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations,” Obama said to a downtown crowd estimated by Des Moines police at roughly 25,000.

“No where was that truer than here in Iowa. On the day of the Iowa caucus, my faith in the American people was vindicated and what you started here in Iowa has swept the nation,” Obama, who won the leadoff caucuses on Jan. 3, said at the rally in the Western Gateway Park. “We’re seeing the same turnout, we’re seeing the same people going and getting in line, volunteers, people participating, a whole new way of doing democracy started right here in Iowa, and it’s all across the country now.”

The Des Moines Register reported that Sarah Palin will headline a rally in Dubuque on Monday (click the link for details about the event, including how to get tickets).

Why would John McCain’s campaign send her to Iowa the day before the election? He’s trailing badly in all the recent polls, and Iowa Democrats have a big advantage in early voting.

Also, why would she go to Dubuque, which isn’t in a competitive Congressional district and isn’t close to most of the competitive Iowa House and Senate districts?

I posted a diary about this at MyDD last night, and several theories were suggested in the comments:

1. She is laying the groundwork for her 2012 presidential campaign. I don’t buy this, because I don’t think she is in control of her travel schedule. Presumably senior strategists in the McCain campaign are making those calls.

2. They are still making a play for Iowa’s seven electoral votes. I doubt they really think they have a chance here, but maybe they are that deluded. Anyway, there are a lot of anti-abortion Democrats in the Dubuque area, and maybe they think Palin will play well with them.

3. She will try to reduce Obama’s margin of victory in Iowa by going to the eastern part of the state, where he is especially strong.

4. She is trying to fire up Republican supporters for down-ticket candidates or ballot initiatives. If that were the case, I don’t see why Dubuque would be the venue. Anyway, we don’t have any controversial referendum at stake next Tuesday (just the initiative to remove “idiot” and “insane person” from the Iowa Constitution).

5. Palin is hurting McCain in the swing states, so they are trying to minimize the damage by sending her to states he’s already lost. That makes some sense to me.

6. High-ranking McCain advisers who are close to Mitt Romney are trying to damage Palin’s reputation by sending her to states McCain will lose big. That will undermine any possible claims about her broad appeal in the 2012 nominating contest. Supporting this hypothesis, people close to McCain have been blaming Palin for dragging down the ticket. Within the past week, unnamed McCain advisers have described Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”

What do you think?

Survey USA released a new Iowa poll today, conducted for WHO-TV in Des Moines and KAAL-TV in Mason City. Barack Obama leads John McCain 55 percent to 40 percent. The poll reveals a massive gender gap. Among men, Obama leads 48-46, and among women he leads 61-34. Perhaps most significant,

Among the 32% of respondents who tell SurveyUSA they have already cast ballots, Obama leads by 40 points […].

Tom Harkin leads Christopher Reed by 61 percent to 35 percent.

We ought to be able to elect a lot of down-ticket Democrats in this kind of environment. The election in Iowa is a lost cause for John McCain, and that may depress Republican turnout on Tuesday (despite Sarah Palin’s planned rally in Dubuque on Monday).

Give what you can to Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler so they can run ads on tv and radio during the final stretch. The biggest hurdle for a challenger is almost always name recognition.

People across the country are noticing that these races are winnable. Here’s a post from the Down With Tyranny blog, and here’s one from Open Left.

On a related note, you can replay a live chat the Des Moines Register hosted with Hubler yesterday by clicking here.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that you can view Greenwald’s final ad here and read the script here. Hubler’s tv ad is here (scroll down past the text of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement editorial).

The Ames Progressive blog recently featured these races too.

Barack Obama’s rally in downtown Des Moines on Friday morning will grab most of the media attention, but there will be many, many rallies around Iowa this weekend.

Beginning on Saturday and continuing through Monday, Senator Tom Harkin and Governor Chet Culver will headline a 16-stop “Count on Us” bus tour, while top state officials and our candidates for Congress will headline a “Count on Us” caravan.

I’ve posted the full schedule after the jump. No matter where you live, you probably wouldn’t have to drive far to get to one of these events. Feel free to post a diary afterward to tell us how it went.  

While walking the dog this morning, I saw a car with a McCain/Palin sticker on one side of the rear window and “I’m voting for Joe the Plumber” on the other side. Seriously.

Syndicated business columnist Rhonda Abrams had a great passage in her latest piece, which ran in USA Today and many other newspapers:

This week, I intended to write my election-year evaluation of the presidential candidates and small-business issues. When, wham! Suddenly a guy named “Joe the Plumber” entered the arena.

Joe took center stage during the final presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama to discuss how small businesses will fare under the policies of each, and the McCain campaign refers to “Joe the Plumber” in stump speeches.

Please don’t have Joe or his boss represent small business. Joe isn’t licensed in Ohio, and it appears his boss is violating the law by employing Joe. Joe has a lien against him for failure to pay income tax.

So, move over, Joe. And let those of us who run honest small businesses hear what the candidates are going to do for us.

Back to the point of this post: I can’t believe the Republicans think “I’m voting for Joe the Plumber” is a winning message for them, but if they want to waste their money on those bumper stickers, it’s fine by me.

This thread is for sharing the most absurd conservative slogans you’ve seen on cars, buttons, yard signs or t-shirts lately.

I doubt any of you will be able to top the shirt I saw a toddler wearing in a park a few years ago, but have at it.

Speaking of conservative oddities, how about these devout Christians praying at the Golden Calf Wall Street bull yesterday for God to take over the economy? (hat tip to Daily Kos diarist dhonig) Somewhere I read something about idols and graven images…

Anyone who’s been reading the Des Moines Register for the past few years knows that the editorial board endorses incumbents more often than not, in state-level, city council and school board elections as well as federal races. They like seniority and experience in their elected officials.

For those reasons, the Register has typically endorsed a few Republican incumbents despite the editorial board’s generally liberal orientation. With neither Jim Leach nor Chuck Grassley on Iowa ballots this year, I was concerned that the Register would back at least one of the Republicans running for Congress–perhaps Tom Latham by virtue of his position on the House Appropriations Committee.

As it turned out, the Register endorsed every Iowa Democrat running for Congress for the first time that I can remember (going back several decades).

The endorsements were markedly different in tone, however.

A glowing endorsement of Bruce Braley argued,

this ambitious and energetic congressman sets the standard for what Iowans should expect from their representatives. […] We can’t fit everything Braley has accomplished his first term into the space of this editorial, but it’s obvious he’s worked tirelessly.

Their list of Braley’s achievements in his first term didn’t even include his work on bringing passenger rail to Dubuque and the Quad Cities.

The Register’s editors concluded that Dave Loebsack has worked hard and also deserves re-election in the second district, but it’s clear that they liked Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks a lot:

She’s smart, has in-depth knowledge of health care, has served in the military and has a compelling life story, which includes leaving home at the age of 16 and working her way through school.

Like most campaign newcomers, including Loebsack two years ago, her knowledge of many issues is shallow. But her background indicates she’d come up to speed quickly.

Dissatisfied with Loebsack, she says she took it upon herself to do something about it and embarked on the race without party recruitment.

If Miller-Meeks doesn’t prevail, she should consider running for another public office. Iowa has a shortage of women in politics, and Miller-Meeks’ life experience and potential for leadership could serve the state well.

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like the Register’s endorsement editorial for Iowa’s third district. The paper favored Leonard Boswell’s Republican opponent in 2006 and Ed Fallon in the Democratic primary this year, so I thought there was a decent chance the Register would endorse Kim Schmett, Boswell’s challenger this fall. Instead, they published this under the headline “Iowans deserve more from 12-year incumbent”:

Voters have a dilemma in the 3rd District.

After 12 years of light accomplishment and wrongheaded votes, Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell doesn’t deserve to return to Congress.

But his Republican challenger, Kim Schmett of Clive, also fails to make a compelling case that he deserves a congressional seat.

Iowans deserve better.

However, the Register’s editorial board subscribes to the philosophy that if voters must decide, so must we. So the Register gives a weak nod to Boswell, with a list of expectations:

– During his next term, Boswell should use his seniority and the experience he’s gained to take a more active role in representing Iowa’s interests.

– He should announce early in the term that it will be his last, retiring with Iowans’ thanks for a career dedicated to public service.

It goes on, but you get the drift. I hope Boswell will take the newspaper’s advice after he wins re-election next week.

Evaluating the fourth district candidates, the Register determined that Becky Greenwald has the potential to be a strong, energetic leader. Tom Latham has 14 years of experience and sits on the House Appropriations Committee (which is the main reason the Fort Dodge Messenger and Mason City Globe-Gazette endorsed him), but the Register’s editors found Latham “hasn’t developed the kind of in-depth expertise on issues or demonstrated the national leadership Iowans should expect from their investment in his seniority.”

Making the call in the fifth district race was easy for an editorial board that gave Steve King the benefit of the doubt by endorsing him in 2002 and 2004. The editors have had enough of King’s “divisive, fear-mongering commentary”:

Fifth District voters should not send him back to Washington. Fortunately, they have a promising alternative: Electing Democrat Rob Hubler, a retired minister from Council Bluffs who has brought himself up to speed and staked out reasonable positions on issues Iowans care about, including the Iraq war, energy and health care.

In the U.S. Senate race, the Register also had no trouble choosing a candidate and urged Tom Harkin to be ambitious in his fifth term:

Iowans should without hesitation cast their ballots to return Democrat Tom Harkin for his fifth term in the U.S. Senate. With that investment in seniority, however, comes heightened expectations for him to lead in shaping landmark legislation that will benefit Iowans and the nation for decades to come. […]

In his fifth term, Senator Harkin should aim high and set aside partisan sniping for statesmanship. On the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he should channel his passions for wellness and nutrition into forging legislation that provides health care for all, at long last bringing America into the company of every other industrialized nation. On that same committee, he should shepherd changes in education policy to better prepare all American students for a competitive global economy. And as Agriculture Committee chairman, he should continue his work to expand agriculture’s role in producing alternative forms of energy, thus reducing dependence on oil, while protecting soil, water and air. He has the right vision for overhauling federal farm programs: Instead of paying farmers for what they grow, pay them for how well they grow it.

These would be transformational changes in American life and government: Providing health care for all. Expanding educational opportunities for all of America’s children. Lessening the nation’s dependence on oil while better protecting the environment.

Spearheading significant progress in these areas would create a more compassionate, just and prosperous society – and be crowning achievements for any senator.

I look forward to finding out what Harkin can accomplish as a senior member of a Congressional majority under a Democratic president. He’s been in the Senate for a long time, but Democrats controlled the White House and Congress for only two of those years.

The Register has endorsed some Republicans running for the state legislative or Polk County office, but they’d like to see a Democratic sweep in the federal races.

This is an open thread for discussing any significant media endorsements in races at any level this year.

I’ll update later after watching Barack Obama’s 30-minute infomercial, which is running on CBS, NBC and Fox. Meanwhile, share your thoughts in the comments.

I have to agree with Chris Bowers that it is ludicrous for some analysts to suggest that a half-hour of scripted prime-time national television, which will not be answered by Republicans, could turn out to be a negative for Obama.

Becky Greenwald is running a 60-second commercial immediately before Obama’s ad on the CBS and NBC affiliates in Des Moines and Mason City. It’s unfortunate that she hasn’t been running tv ads for the last few weeks, but if she has very limited funds to spend on television, this was a smart place to spend them.

UPDATE: I have no idea how many undecided voters were watching (I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the viewers were supporting Obama already), but Obama made his case very effectively. If you’ve donated to Obama’s campaign, I think you should be happy about how wisely he is spending your money.

Greenwald’s ad was outstanding and could not have been more clear about the contrast between her and Tom Latham. Click the link to watch the commercial, which made clear that Latham is a Republican who’s voted with George Bush 94 percent of the time–even more often than John McCain. Meanwhile, the ad showed the word Democrat next to Greenwald’s name as the voice-over stated that she is a Democrat who will support Barack Obama’s policies.

I hope they will be able to air this commercial during the final days of the campaign. Please donate to Greenwald’s campaign if you can afford to, so that more viewers will be exposed to this message.

SECOND UPDATE: A fellow former volunteer for John Edwards observed in a private communication that Edwards-type messaging was all over that Obama tv ad. I agree, but the difference is that Edwards would (in my opinion) never have raised enough money to run a 30-minute ad on nationwide television during prime time (even if he had rejected public financing for the general election).

Here’s the script for Becky Greenwald’s new ad. The visuals mark her as a Democrat and Latham as a Republican even more clearly, but you get the idea from this:

Voice-over: In Washington, whose voted with George Bush 94% of the time?

For more tax loopholes for big oil?

Less regulation on Wall Street?

Even rewarding companies that send Iowa jobs overseas?

Republican Tom Latham, that’s who.  

That’s right.  Tom Latham supports George Bush even more than John

McCain does.

Tom Latham supports George Bush 94% of the time. So Tom Latham won’t support Barack Obama’s changes in Washington.

Tom Latham won’t support Barack Obama. But Democrat Becky Greenwald will.

She’ll help Barack Obama protect our savings by cracking crack down on Wall Street.

Promote Iowa-based energy like wind and bio-fuels to end our dependence on foreign oil.  

And protect Iowa jobs by ending the tax breaks that send them overseas.

Becky Greenwald is on our side and Barack Obama’s.

And Tom Latham?  Well, you get the picture?

GREENWALD: I’m Becky Greenwald and I approve this message.  

It’s time we put Iowa’s families first.

Just got this e-mail from Senator Tom Harkin:

Three weeks ago, I announced a second Building Blue contest, to help our Iowa County Democratic Party organizations to make their final push towards election day.  After our nominating round, 10 great counties from every region of Iowa were selected to receive $500 in support and a chance to win $2,500 in the final round.

Now, after more than 1800 total votes from all across Iowa, I am proud to announce the top 3 counties and winners of Building Blue II: Counting the Counties.

The second and third place counties, and winners of an additional $500 for the November election are Muscatine County and Linn County.  The first place county, and winner of an additional $2,500 for the November election is Marion County.

Congratulations to all the county parties that won additional support for their turnout programs.

Speaking of voter mobilization, Senator Harkin will take a Get Out the Vote Bus Tour around the state from Saturday through Monday. Event details are after the jump.

The Des Moines Register has the news about the Iowa Labor Commissioner’s civil fine against Agriprocessors, which operates a meat-packing plant in Postville:

The fines and violations include:

• $339,700 for illegally deducting “sales tax/miscellaneous” costs 3,397 times. The state said that 1,073 Agriprocessors employees were affected by the unauthorized deductions reducing their pay by $72,189.09.

• $9,643,600 for illegally deducting a charge for frocks. State officials said this deduction occurred in 96,436 separate incidences. State officials said that 2,001 workers had their wages illegally reduced by $192,597.

• $4,900 for failing to pay 42 workers their last paychecks on May 16 and May 23 following the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in early May. In addition, seven workers were shorted two paychecks because of the overlapping nature of pay periods, the state said.

The fines total $9.98 million.

Officials also said Agriprocessors owes $264,786.45 in back wages to workers.

Agriprocessors may face other criminal or civil penalties in connection with various investigations related to the May 12 raid of the Postville plant. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office has already filed criminal charges against Agriprocessors for alleged violations of child labor laws.

It’s hard to believe that this election is less than a week away. GOTV!

Tuesday, October 28:

KCCI-TV (Channel 8) in Des Moines will broadcast an interview with fifth district Congressional candidate Rob Hubler at 10 p.m. I will update with a link to the station’s website if they make the video available there.

Wednesday, October 29:

Barack Obama has purchased a half-hour of prime-time on CBS and NBC, which will air at 7 pm central time.

Fourth district Congressional candidate Becky Greenwald will run a one-minute ad just before Obama’s special on KCCI and WHO-TV in Des Moines and KIMT and KTTC tv in Mason City. She will preview the contents of that commercial at a 1 pm press conference at her campaign headquarters in Waukee:

“With just one week to Election Day, when voters will tune in to hear Senator Obama’s plans for change, they deserve to know Tom Latham’s real record in Congress of voting more with President Bush than John McCain. He won’t support Barack Obama in Congress,” said Becky Greenwald. “I will work with Barack Obama to make a real difference for the 4th District.”

Rob Hubler will be in studio at KCCI doing a live interview on their Early Morning Show at 6:40 a.m.  Then he will be on the Des Moines Register website for a live chat from 12 noon to 1 p.m.  

Tom Harkin will campaign for Obama in eastern Iowa:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH, 2008

2:30 PM

Senator Harkin to Drop By a Phone Bank

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Office

819 Avenue G

Fort Madison, Iowa

4:00 PM

Senator Harkin to Drop By a Phone Bank

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Office

414 N. 3rd Street

Burlington, Iowa

Congressman Leonard Boswell and Republican challenger Kim Schmett will appear jointly on Iowa Public Radio at 10 am.

Chet Culver will headline GOTV events for several legislative candidates:

Marshalltown – 10:30 AM

GOVERNOR CULVER TO HOLD “GET-OUT-THE-VOTE KICKOFF” WITH SENATE DISTRICT 22 CANDIDATE STEVE SODDERS

Marshall County Democratic Headquarters

12 West Main Street

Marshalltown, Iowa

Tama – 11:30 AM

GOVERNOR CULVER TO HOLD “GET-OUT-THE-VOTE KICKOFF” WITH SENATE DISTRICT 20 CANDIDATE RANDY BRADEN

Tama County Democratic Headquarters

128 3rd Street

Tama, Iowa

Davenport – 1:45 PM

GOVERNOR CULVER TO HOLD “GET-OUT-THE-VOTE KICKOFF” WITH REPRESENTATIVE ELESHA GAYMAN AND HOUSE DISTRICT 81 CANDIDATE PHYLLIS THEDE

Scott County Democratic Headquarters

1706 Brady Street, Suite 206

Davenport, Iowa

Clinton – 3:00 PM

GOVERNOR CULVER TO HOLD “GET-OUT-THE-VOTE KICKOFF” WITH SENATOR FRANK WOOD

Clinton County Democratic Headquarters

224 22nd Place

Clinton, Iowa

Cedar Rapids – 5:00 PM

GOVERNOR CULVER TO HOLD “GET-OUT-THE-VOTE KICKOFF” WITH SENATE DISTRICT 18 CANDIDATE SWATI DANDEKAR, REPRESENTATIVE ART STAED, AND HOUSE DISTRICT 36 CANDIDATE GRETCHEN LAWYER

Linn County Democratic Headquarters

1229 1st Avenue, Southeast

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Thursday, October 30:

Harkin will campaign for Obama again:

2:15 PM

Senator Harkin to Kick Off a Canvass

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Office

207 1st Ave. W

Newton, Iowa

5:00 PM

Senator Harkin to Kick Off a Canvass

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Office

500 Jefferson Street

Waterloo, Iowa

Congressional candidate Becky Greenwald and Doug Thompson, Democratic candidate in Senate district 6, will hold an event with the Campus Democrats of Waldorf College at 5.30pm in the Campus Center at Waldorf College in Forest City. The Campus Center is located on South 8th Street. Please come and bring friends.

Friday, October 31:

Obama will hold a rally in downtown Des Moines:

CHANGE WE NEED RALLY WITH BARACK OBAMA

Western Gateway Park Between 12th St. and 13th St., Grand Ave. and Locust St.  

Gates Open/Media Access: 9:30 AM

Program Begins:  11:30 AM

The event is free and open to the public.  Tickets are NOT required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged.  To RSVP, please visit iowa.barackobama.com. Space is available on a first come first serve basis.

Public Entrance: Walnut St. and 12th St.

Parking is limited; car pooling and public transportation are recommended.  The free Downtown Shuttle will be available from any of the Des Moines parking facilities. More information is available at http://www.dmmta.com/downroute…

Rob Hubler will be on Iowa Public Radio at 12:35 pm, which is aired statewide on all NPR affiliates.

From Polk County Democrats:

Pollwatcher and Precinct Reporter Training for Election Day, Friday, October 31st at 6:00 PM at the Campaign for Change, 1408 Locust, Des Moines. With Special guests Secretary of State Michael Mauro and Congressman Leonard Boswell, who will auction off a surprise item.

The Tallgrass Bioneers Conference begins in Grinnell and runs through November 2:

Are you tired of partisan bickering over banker bail-outs, expensive wardrobes, and Joe the plumber?  Ready for a breather before election day and a respite from economic doom and gloom?

Why not take a break this weekend, enjoy the fall weather, get together with friends and come to Grinnell for the 2008 Tallgrass Bioneers Conference. We won’t be hearing politicians promises – just hearing from some great local and national speakers who have gotten past all of

the talk to make a real difference in their communities and the world.

The conference starts on Friday, October 31st and runs through Sunday. Friday features a keynote address by Chad Pregracke, a young guy who

has dedicated his life to cleaning up his beloved Mississippi river, and has lead others to adopt their own local waterways. Friday afternoon features an opening of still/LIFE – an amazing art

installation by Dallas environmental artist Tracy Hicks sponsored by the Faulconer Gallery.  Friday also features live workshops on community renewable energy projects, immigration and local water quality efforts. In the Harris Cinema, we will be showing pre-recorded presentations from the national Bioneers conference, including Ray

Anderson and Alexandra Cousteau.

Saturday features a walking tour of a restored prairie, a tour of Iowa’s first LEED gold certified “green building”, a discussion on

climate and adaptation by survivors of Katrina and the Cedar Rapids floods, a hands-on workshop with Tracy Hicks, and more.  Pre-recorded speakers include Janine Benyus, Bill McKibben and David Orr. Our Saturday keynote is by Alison Gannett – a world champion skier and climate change activist who has converted the world’s first 100mpg

solar SUV hybrid and built the first straw-bale home in a national historic district. The day will be topped off by a local food banquet prepared by Chef Kamal Hammouda of the Phoenix Cafe,  and a dinner speech by organic dairy farmer Francis Thicke.

Sunday, we round out the weekend with a lake clean-up at Rock Creek Lake, a tour of a local sustainably operated farm, historic walking

tour, an intergenerational art workshop,  pre-recorded presentations by Naomi Klein, Rebecca Moore,  Rick Reed and more.

It’s going to be a great weekend of big picture ideas and hands-on experiences, so please join us!

For more information, please visit:

http://www.gotoplanb.net/bione…

(a link to google map and driving directions is at the top of the page)

To pre-register, visit:

http://gotoplanb.net/bioneersc…

Complete schedule:

http://www.gotoplanb.net/bione…

October 31 is the deadline for early-bird registration for the Center on Sustainable Commmunities’ ‘Building a Sustainable Iowa’ workshop being held in Cedar Falls, Ankeny & Fairfield on November 10-15. This course is recognized by the building community as the most comprehensive residential green building training course offered in the state! COSC’s 4th Bi-annual Building a Sustainable Iowa Professional Training workshop will be held the week of November 10th through 15th in Cedar Falls, Ankeny and Fairfield. Each location will host the two day course with Marc Richmond, a nationally recognized green building consultant and educator, as the main presenter. We also bring in local experts as guest speakers. A two-hour homeowner class followed by an exhibit and networking social will be held at each site as well. Registration and agenda details available at www.icosc.com. Scholarships are available through the Iowa Department of Economic Development! Click here for an application. There are only 16 available, so apply now!

Saturday, November 1:

If you’re not attending the Tallgrass Bioneers conference, volunteer for Democratic candidates, wherever you are!

Tom Harkin kicks off his Get Out the Vote Bus Tour. Go here to RSVP for any of these events:

The Cardinal Room

Iowa State Memorial Union

2229 Lincoln Way

Ames, Iowa, 50014

8:45 AM – 9:45 AM

Moos Lodge

200 East 5th Street

Carroll, Iowa, 51401

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Campaign for Change HQ

805 Flindt Drive, Suite 2

Storm Lake, Iowa, 50588

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Fort Dodge Public Library

424 Central Avenue

Fort Dodge, Iowa, 50501

3:15 PM – 4:15 PM

Berte’s Back Nine

216 East State Street

Algona, Iowa, 50511

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Chicago Dawg Restaurant

687 South Taft Avenue

Mason City, Iowa, 50401

7:00 PM – 8:00 PM

For more information on these great events please call the campaign HQ at 515-277-9966 or email Alissa brammer at Alissa@tomharkin.com.

Sunday, November 2:

It’s the second day of Harkin’s bus tour. Go here to RSVP for any of these events:

Jameson’s Irish Pub

310 East 4th Street

Waterloo, Iowa, 50703

11:45 – 12:45 PM

Labor Temple

1610 Garfield Avenue

Dubuque, Iowa, 52001

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Clinton Community College Auditorium

1000 Lincoln Boulevard

Clinton, Iowa, 52732

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

United Steelworkers Local 105

830 Devils Glenn Road

Bettendorf, Iowa, 52722

5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Machinist Local 831

222 Prospect Place

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 52404

7:45 – 8:45 PM

For more information on these great events please call the campaign HQ at 515-277-9966 or email Alissa brammer at Alissa@tomharkin.com.

Monday, November 3:

It’s the last day of Harkin’s bus tour. Go here to RSVP for any of these events:

Vito’s

118 East College Street

Iowa City, Iowa, 52240

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Port of Burlington

400 North Front Street

Burlington, Iowa, 52601

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM

UFCW Hall

1305 East Mary Street

Ottumwa, Iowa, 52501

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM

UAW Hall

411 Iowa Avenue W

Marshalltown, Iowa, 50158

5:15 PM – 6:15 PM

Campaign for Change Office (Chet Culver and Leonard Boswell will also be at this event)

1408 Locust Street

Des Moines, IA, 50309

9:00 PM – 10:15 PM

For more information on these great events please call the campaign HQ at 515-277-9966 or email Alissa brammer at Alissa@tomharkin.com.

 CLIMATE  CHANGE IN  IOWA TOPIC OF NOV. 3  FORUM:

“The global climate is changing. We know that humans are responsible for a large portion of that change, which will have implications for Iowa.”

That is the central theme of a public forum set for Kirkwood Community College Monday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Kirkwood and several other colleges and community groups will host a “Connections” program in Ballantyne Auditorium on the main Kirkwood campus.

The free forum will feature Dr. Jerald Schnoor of The University of Iowa, speaking on “Mitigating and Responding to Climate Change in Iowa.”  Schnoor is the Allen S. Henry Chair and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research.

Ed Fallon, who challenged Congressman Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s third district, e-mailed the following to his supporters today:

Dear Friends,

When I first announced I would run for Congress last January, I promised to support Congressman Boswell should he win the primary.  He did.  Yet many people have told me they plan to write-in my name.  As promised, I plan to vote for Boswell when I go to the polls on Election Day.

The Des Moines Register’s editorial board also recommends supporting Boswell.  To read their endorsement, click on the following link.

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…

Thanks for everything you’ve done in this election, from the caucuses through the primary through the general.  Lynn and I will be doing our part on November 4th to help assure a great turnout, a victory for Obama, and the success of other progressive Democrats.

Ed Fallon

I will also vote a straight Democratic ticket, without leaving any ballot line blank or writing in any candidate’s name for any office.

I agree with the Register’s editorial board, however, that “Iowans deserve better” than the level of representation Boswell has been providing, and that Boswell should announce soon that he does not plan to run for re-election in 2010.  

I haven’t written much about ballot initiatives in Iowa counties, but I came across this story from the Public News Service last week:

Iowa Watching Johnson County Conservation Vote

October 22, 2008

Iowa City, IA – In just under two weeks voters across the country will be selecting a new president, but in Johnson County, something else is on the ballot that could have a direct affect on the whole state. It’s a bond issue put forth by the County Conservation Board to purchase land to ensure green space for future generations.

Janelle Rettig, a Johnson County property owner and co-chair of Citizens for Our Land, Water and Future, believes the bond issue could be the model that other communities use to expand green space and help alleviate the flood risk along the Cedar and Iowa Rivers.

“Our mission is to start working on Johnson County watersheds and lead by example, so that other counties and cities will hopefully start looking at what they can do to make a difference.”

Opponents claim that the bond issue is too costly and has no plan for use of the property purchased, but Rettig counters that this helps repair years of environmental damage that added to the flooding potential.

“I believe two dollars a month is not a very high price to pay to make a difference in Iowa prairies that have been torn up and our wetlands which have been drained and replaced with concrete and asphalt.”

Under the proposal, Johnson County will spend $20 million over the next 20 years to acquire land that could be eventually preserved as wetlands, trails, and woodlands.

Dick Layman/Steve Powers, Public News Service – IA

For background on why prairies and other green spaces can reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding, read this Washington Post article published in June: “Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say.”

This thread is for comments related to any bond issue or other initiative Iowa voters will consider, such as the referendum on removing the words “idiot” and “insane person” from the Iowa Constitution.

Barack Obama’s planned visit to central Iowa last week was postponed so that he could visit his grandmother, who is seriously ill. Today the Obama campaign in Iowa announced,

Des Moines, Iowa – With Election Day around the corner, Senator Barack Obama will return to Iowa on Friday to hold a rally in the Des Moines area and urge Iowans to vote early for change. The rally will be open to the public. Further details will be announced as soon as they become available.

Early voting has begun in Iowa.  For more information on how to vote early, please visit www.VoteForChange.com or call 877-IA08VOTE.

 […]

Further details about the event will be released as soon as they are available.

Anyone know who won the September “Iowa Call Challenge” for a chance to meet Obama on his next Iowa visit?

On the donation page of the Obama campaign website you can watch part of the “closing argument” he delivered yesterday to a crowd in Ohio.

Daily Kos user Angry Mouse, who was once a talented telemarketer, just published this piece on phone-banking for Barack Obama. I highly recommend it for anyone who has volunteered to work the phones on behalf of any Democratic candidate in the next week.

By the way, Angry Mouse was one of the most dedicated Hillary Clinton supporters at Daily Kos this spring. Like Bleeding Heartland user lorih, Angry Mouse didn’t let her deep disappointment over Hillary’s loss deter her from supporting Obama.

And like lorih, over time Angry Mouse’s feelings about Obama changed. At first she didn’t like him much but figured he was a lot better than McCain and would be a “decent president.” Then, after hearing Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton speak at the Democratic convention, she admitted that she was “becoming a believer.” By the end of the convention, she wrote,

I was convinced.  After nearly two years and endless debate with my family and friends and fellow Kossacks, after my shock and disappointment at seeing my dream candidate defeated, after swallowing my pride and hopes and trying my best to be supportive of our party’s nominee, and after an incredible week of seeing the all-stars of our party make the case, again and again and again, that we desperately need Barack Obama, I am convinced.

And I am fired up.

And I believe in Hope and Change.

I get it now.  I understand.

Yes We Can.

Yes We Can.

Yes We Can.

It is not just a slogan.  It is not just a silly music video made by celebrities who are want to endorse the next hip thing.

It is our truth, as Democrats and as Americans.  

Yes.  We.  Can.

So this, today, is my moment.  This is the moment I went from being a good Democrat to a proud Obamabot.  Because today, I am going to my local campaign headquarters to volunteer for Barack Obama.  Because helping to elect him may be the most important thing I’ve done in my thirty years so far.

Because now, I believe.

Yes We Can.

This is an open thread for sharing any tips you have for door-knockers, phone-bankers or other political volunteers.

Wherever you live in Iowa, listen to abkad:

Go to www.barackobama.com, find your closest office, sign up for just one hour or more, and you can tell your friends that you won the election.

Don’t believe this campaign is over, because it’s not. Don’t think you’re the only one who doesn’t like making phone calls or knocking on the doors of strangers, because you are sure as hell not. And don’t think that someone else will make up for your lack of effort, because they won’t.

Remember, there are many ways to volunteer. Even if you don’t want to canvass or make phone calls, contact the local campaign office to see what kind of help they need.

I apologize for sounding over-confident (GOTV!), but “things are looking very good” for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign now. Even the grand spinmaster Karl Rove admitted this on Fox tv.

So, who will replace Obama as the junior senator from Illinois?

Bleeding Heartland’s own American007 took a stab at answering this question in May.

Daily Kos front-pager brownsox spun some scenarios here.

Swing State Project user Safi’s take is here.

The Illinois blogger ArchPundit’s take is here. His closing line is amusing:

As I said above, anyone who thinks they know what [Illinois Governor] Rod Blagojevich will do is lying or as delusional as he is so the above may be the most pointless thing ever written.  The only sure thing is that Mr. 10% makes John McCain look like a planning genius.

Swing State Project has become one of my favorite blogs this year. They publish so much detailed information and analysis about the Congressional races.

People also cross-post some fascinating work related to the presidential election.

Swing State Project user Mark wrote this piece about “Detailed County Predictions for the Presidential Race.” Click over to read his predictions for all 50 states. Here’s his take on Iowa:

Iowa–Even when narrowly losing Iowa, Kerry still won 32 of Iowa’s 99 counties.  If Obama is ahead by double digits this year, expect him to win the “Harkin coalition” of 60-some counties, essentially everywhere but the western two tiers of counties, and a few outlying GOP bastions.  Southern Iowa thinks and votes like conservative northern Missouri, so Obama may fall short in most of the territory south of Des Moines.  Still, it seems very unlikely that any of Iowa’s 32 Kerry counties will go McCain.

I take it as a given that Obama will not lose any county where John Kerry beat George W. Bush. Obama’s ground game is light-years ahead of Kerry’s, and the GOP ground troops are not nearly as motivated to GOTV for McCain as they were for Bush.

Obama is likely to win a lot more swing counties in central Iowa than Kerry did.

I wouldn’t rule out some surprises in the Republican counties either. McCain underperforms in rural Iowa because of his opposition to ethanol, and the fact that he bypassed the caucuses in 2000 and 2008.

If Democratic turnout is unusually high because of the massive Obama organization, and Republicans are demoralized, we may expect significantly diminished turnout in some of the conservative counties.

I’ve got a poll up after the jump where you can record your prediction about how many counties Obama will carry in Iowa. You can explain your predictions in the comments.

Bonus trivia question: In which Iowa county did George Bush and Al Gore tie before the absentee ballots were counted? (Gore won the absentee balloting in this county, 8-6.)

Don’t cheat by using Google! I will post the answer sometime tomorrow.

I’m interested in your theories about why John McCain and Sarah Palin visited Iowa yet again this weekend.

The latest Iowa poll, from Lee Enterprises and the Quad-City Times, shows Barack Obama leading by 54 percent to 39 percent. The most recent one before that was from Rasmussen (which usually is more favorable to McCain), and it showed Obama ahead 52-44 in Iowa. In fact, Obama now leads McCain by nearly 12 points in the Iowa polling average.

So, what was Palin doing in Sioux City and Des Moines yesterday, and what was McCain doing in  

Cedar Falls today?

The Des Moines Register recently noted that many Republican political strategists are baffled by McCain’s many Iowa visits (four trips in the past five weeks).

McCain appeared before an “embarrassingly small crowd” in New Mexico yesterday, the same day an Obama rally in Albuquerque drew about 45,000 people. Obama has had a solid lead in New Mexico for some time now.

What is going on with McCain’s travel schedule? Why is he going to states he doesn’t need to win instead of spending all of his time in must-win states like Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia and North Carolina?  

Only two explanations make sense to me.

First, he may recognize that he is going to lose the presidential race. He could be holding events in places near competitive House and Senate races, to try to generate free media coverage for Republican candidates and limit the party’s losses down-ticket.

Or, his strategists may have figured out that his campaign rallies have not been helping him in the swing states. Perhaps these trips have even have backfired. If that is true, then McCain may as well spend time in states he knows he’s going to lose instead of in states that are still close, like Ohio and Florida.

What do you think?  

Last weekend my fellow Iowa blogger 2laneIA published a comprehensive diary on Congressman Steve King’s “greatest hits.” Click the link to read about King’s suggestion that we electrify the border fence with Mexico like we do “with livestock,” his prediction that terrorists will be “dancing in the streets” if Obama becomes president, and his pride in working to scale back funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (which he calls Socialist Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents). I mentioned a few more low points for King in this post.

Yesterday the man Ann Coulter calls “one of my favorites” helped warm up the crowd at Sarah Palin’s rally in Sioux City.

According to Iowa Independent, King suggested that electing Obama could be a step toward totalitarian rule:

“When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship,” King said.  “There is no freedom to the left. It’s always to our side of the aisle.”

Sioux City Journal political correspondent Bret Hayworth wrote on his liveblog,

10:12 a.m.: King gives the first of what will be two speaking opportunities, this one the longer, for nine minutes. He lays out several versions of the words “liberal” and “socialist” in describing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He mentions the ACORN group and earns a big “Booooo.” King said a Google search of “Acorn Fraud” gets you 2 million hits of possible stories.

King said it’s not a stretch to link Obama to the ACORN group, since he worked for them in voting matters. “Obama is ACORN… When I see Obama, I see ACORN branded on his forehead,” King said.

King has embarrassed Iowans with his bigotry and extremism for too long.

If he is re-elected, he won’t just be an irritant for Iowans. King severely disrupted the House Judiciary Committee’s efforts to question Douglas Feith in July, and I’m sure there will be more where that came from in the new Congress.

Iowa’s fifth is an R+8 district, but Rob Hubler has a real shot in this race, for reasons I discussed here.

Send a message to Steve King by donating to Hubler for Congress.

I suspected that Congressman Tom Latham’s internal polling must be showing a close race when he put up a negative tv ad. Now the first public poll of Iowa’s fourth district is out.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos found this:

Tom Latham 47

Becky Greenwald 42

undecided 11

Click the link for the internals.

Key findings:

Latham’s favorable/unfavorable numbers are 42 percent and 38 percent.

Greenwald’s favorable/unfavorable numbers are 44 percent and 35 percent.

Interestingly, the same poll found John McCain leading Barack Obama in the fourth district by 46 to 42 percent. Given the many polls showing Obama above the 50 percent mark in Iowa, I would have thought Obama would be leading McCain in this D+0 district.

If Greenwald is doing as well in IA-04 as Obama, then I feel really good about our chances for an upset in this district. Obama’s superior ground game could easily be worth several percentage points on election day.

Paging EMILY’s list and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: please start spending some money on tv ads in this district! Greenwald has launched a good web ad recently, but she hasn’t been on tv for the past ten days or so.

Please donate to Greenwald if you can.

UPDATE: Supposedly the United Auto Workers are on the air with an anti-Latham radio ad. Has anyone heard it?

Good advice from George W. Bush in this sketch from Saturday Night Live’s election special a couple of nights ago.

This is an open thread for anything related to the upcoming election.

If you were out volunteering today for a candidate, share your story in the comments or post a diary.