The meaning of it all, Florida fun, and Mehlman's folly

I’m on fumes at the moment, a common condition at the end of an election week, compounded by an early morning deadline for a Sunday print column on how various ’08 Republican hopefuls can benefit from the ’06 Republican meltdown. So consider this a quick survey of the landscape today:

Not surprisingly, liberals are interpreting the midterm election results as a triumph for liberal principles, while conservatives see the results as a reaffirmation of conservative principles. That’s the fascinating thing about politics; there’s selective evidence for every conceivable position.

Paul Waldman, a liberal scholar and author based in Washington, argues today that, even the new Democratic congressional majority does include some freshmen conservatives from the South and the Midwest, “overall it is made up of candidates who held traditional Democratic positions….All of them support increasing the minimum wage, and all oppose privatizing Social Security. Nearly all support embryonic stem cell research. All except a few are pro-choice. And all of these positions enjoy majority support” from the American electorate.

True enough, as far as it goes. But if most of these Democratic candidates nationwide had loudly and repeatedly articulated much of what they truly believe – abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, speedy troop withdrawals from Iraq, cancellation of the Bush tax cuts at the high end of the income scale – I wonder whether they would have attained their majorities. It seems irrefutable that the center of gravity in American politics has edged a few ticks to the right since the era of Ronald Reagan.

Similarly, on the right we have columnist Charles Krauthammer, who says that the results Tuesday night merely underscored his view that America is basically a conservative country. He cites the passage of anti-gay marriage referenda in seven of the eight states that put it on the ballot. He cites the passage of an anti-affirmative action referendum in Michigan. He says that a lot of the House and Senate races this year were very close, and, most importantly, “a switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican.”

But hang on: If that’s his criteria, then we could always reargue the 2000 presidential election. We could make the case that, if thousands of little old ladies in Palm Beach County hadn’t misread the butterfly ballot and voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore, then the latter might still be president and Krauthammer’s conservative thesis would not appear to hold water.

Anyway, nobody ever really wins these arguments. Read them here and here, and decide for yourself.

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Speaking of Florida: A great, albeit underreported, story is unfolding as you read this. It’s material grist for a short story writer. First, bring in Katherine Harris. She was the Florida election official who gained national fame (or infamy) for presiding over President Bush’s controversial 537-vote victory during the hanging chad affair. Her high profile later propelled her into Congress, representing the district that includes Sarasota County. This year she left her seat to run for the Senate (she got slaughtered on Tuesday), and that set the stage for a hot House race in Sarasota. So guess what happened in that House race:

The results are all in limbo. The Republican candidate leads the Democratic candidate by only 368 votes, pending a total recount…and an investigation into whether the new touch screen machines failed to record thousands of intended votes, most notably in a predominantly black and heavily Democratic neighborhood of Sarasota. As Governor Jeb Bush put it, the tallies in this district seem to be “an unusual anomaly.” Or, as the French might put it, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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Ken Mehlman, the peripatetic Republican national chairman, is bowing out after six years on the job, having toiled with mostly great success as Karl Rove’s general contractor. But let it also be said that one of Mehlma’s signature initiatives – reaching out to the African-American community - ended in abject failure.

One of his big ideas was to promote the high-profile candidacies of black Republicans, as a symbol of the GOP’s desire to broaden its appeal. Indeed, there was considerable media hype about Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, Maryland senatorial candidate Michael Steele, and eight black House candidates.

Every one of them lost.

White voters apparently didn’t believe that the presence of black Republican candidates was proof that the GOP had become a more tolerant party. And black voters somehow didn’t take the hint that they should favor a Republican just because the candidate shared their skin color.

Black votes were undoubtedly influenced by other factors, as well: the slow federal response to Katrina and the needless deaths of black New Orleans residents; the anecdotal and statistical Census evidence showing that the gap between black and white income has widened during the Bush years; the inescapable fact that big government (and federal government employment) has benefited the black workforce. And Mehlman certainly didn’t help his own case, when he defended a GOP campaign ad in Tennessee that resurrected Old South fears about black men consorting with white women.

In the end, the exit polls show that only 11 percent of blacks voted this year for Republican congressional candidates, the usual share. Nor will his successor do any better merely by running black candidates. Nothing short of a fundamental shift in the GOP’s governing credo will really work, but, as the exit polls also demonstrate, the party more than ever is rooted in the Old Confederacy (the only region that voted GOP this year). As the Republicans regroup, the last thing they'll want to do is risk their base. Black voters can expect nothing more than cosmetics for the foreseeable future.

I hereby nominate the '06 winners and losers

As we continue to sift through the ’06 Republican wreckage, here are some of the people who wound up looking good, and came off looking bad:

THE WINNERS

1. George H. W. Bush, the former president...I can best explain this one by sharing a garden-variety anecdote from my own youth. When I was 19, I took the family car for a wild midnight spin on a back road. Being 19, I decided to exit the road itself and tear across an open field. But it was literally a dark and stormy night, so naturally the car got stuck in mud and I couldn’t dislodge it. So I hiked a mile to the nearest house, phoned my dad, woke him up, and he came to my rescue with a AAA tow truck.

Similarly, the 60-year-old in the White House is now so stuck in the mud that he needs his dad to bail him out. Dad wrote in his memoirs nearly a decade ago that a U.S. occupation of Iraq would be a strategic disaster abroad and a political disaster at home, and dad’s friends repeatedly echoed this warning before the occupation commenced in 2003. Now dad and his friends have been proven correct, so the next step is to call AAA.

Which is why Robert Gates is going to the Pentagon, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. A member in good standing of the senior Bush team, Gates is from the Republican “realist” school of foreign policy, as opposed to the neocon ideology school; he’s also a key player on the Iraq study commission that is co-helmed by another of dad’s players, James Baker. Translation: Even though dad is still parachuting out of planes well into his eighties, he still has enough leftover moxie to mop up for his kid.

2. Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer...JFK once said that “victory has a thousand fathers,” but Emanuel and Schumer probably deserve the most credit for the ’06 Democratic triumph – Emanuel for his recruitment of House candidates, and Schumer for working the Senate side. They broadened the appeal of the Democratic party by finding moderate and conservative candidates to run in moderate and conservative states and districts, thereby undercutting the party’s liberal stereotype. Liberals were slow to appreciate some of these efforts – in Pennsylvania, they resented Schumer for tapping the socially conservative Bob Casey Jr. to run against Rick Santorum, but in the wake of Casey’s solid victory, I hear no complaints today.

(By the way, on the subject of victory having a thousand fathers, here’s one of the Democrats who’s trying to claim patrimony this week. I will simply quote from the headline on his Wednesday email: “John Kerry’s Commitment Helps Bring Democrats to Victory.”)

3. Joe Lieberman...Last August, President Bush’s favorite Democrat refused to accept the verdict of antiwar Connecticut Democrats when they denied him the ’06 party nomination for another Senate term. He stuck around anyway, essentially created the Joe Lieberman party, and won re-election anyway as an independent. And soon he will be at the fulcrum of power in the Senate; in ’07, he will caucus with the Democrats as they take over that chamber.

In a sense, he owes the Democrats nothing. And now he becomes the crucial 51st vote as they organize their majority. In a closely divided chamber, he will have clout. He can stick with the Dems on some issues, defect to the GOP on others, and, perhaps most often, work across party lines with the GOP moderates. His season of humiliation has passed; as the voters made clear the other day, bipartisan centrism is in. And he has the liberal bloggers over a barrel: they really can't afford to keep harassing him for his past fealty to Bush on the war, because they need him now within the Democratic ranks.

4. John McCain...It was noteworthy, during the ’06 campaign, that he was in far greater demand than Bush. Few candidates wanted the president anywhere near them, whereas they panted after McCain. He earned a slew of IOUs from these candidates, and he can arguably cash them in during an ’08 presidential run. And he can plausibly argue that the GOP’s ’06 debacle was caused by the party’s profligate special-interest spending on Capitol Hill – the pork-barrel earmarks, for instance. McCain has been inveighing against those practices for years, as no doubt he will remind fiscally conservative voters as he stumps for himself in the runup to ’08.

5. Joe Biden...Yes, the Democratic senator from Delaware is sometimes terminally voluble, but the fact is that he will soon become the party’s most visible player in the Iraq debate. The Democratic takeover of the Senate puts Biden in the chair at the Foreign Relations Committee, a national platform. His idea about how to clean up Bush’s mess in Iraq is not universally popular – he wants to create a “federalist” system, with separate regional governments for the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis – but, unlike most Democrats, at least he has something specific to talk about. And talk about.

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LOSERS

1. Dick Cheney....The man who insisted 18 months ago that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes”; who predicted at the outset that we would be “greeted as liberators”; who insisted, long after conclusive evidence to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein agents had met personally with 9/11 suicide killer Mohammed Atta, now appears to be outflanked in the retooled Bush White House. Rumsfeld, who once predicted that the Iraq war would probably not last six months, was Cheney’s kind of guy; Gates, a longtime resident of the reality-based community, clearly is not.

2. George Allen....Only last spring, he was widely viewed as a serious contender for the ’08 GOP presidential nomination; fawning magazine profiles talked about his sunny Reaganesque machismo. But today, having apparently blown his re-election race in pivotal Virginia, the lame duck senator is widely viewed as a joke, and jokes don’t get elected to the White House. Calling a dark-skinned Virginia native “macaca” was bad enough; assailing his opponent for writing fictional material in fictional books was worse (especially since the books are taught in military academies).

Will Allen run for president, anyway? It’s hard to imagine that GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will warm to the man who is perhaps most responsible for ushering in the new Democratic Senate majority.

3. Dennis Hastert....When last seen by photographers, a week or two ago, the House Speaker was slipping into a hearing room to answer for his role in the Mark Foley scandal. (For Republican candidates, that visual was probably as helpful as a video of Bush in his flight suit on Mission Accomplished day.) But now, with the GOP headed for minority status, Hastert says he just wants to return to his first love, representing the people of his Illinois district, and being just one of the backbench boys.

4. Tom DeLay....He’s certainly not acting like a loser this week, because he’s popping up every night on the cable TV gabfests. But the fact remains that, a mere two years ago, he had a nice house on the perimeter of a golf course in Sugarland, Texas, plus a nice job whipping the House Republicans into a disciplined team. Today, he has the nice house in Sugarland, plus lots of free time to sit there with his lawyers and figure out how might be able to beat his indictment for election fraud. Long before Mark Foley became the face of GOP corruption in Washington, DeLay owned that particular title, and starting in January his deeply-red district will be represented in Washington by a Democrat.

It should also be remembered that the revolt of the suburban moderates against the GOP picked up steam in 2005, thanks to DeLay’s vocal insistence that the Republican Congress should intrude into the private life of the Schiavo family.

5. Karl Rove....Well, duh. I won’t dwell too long on the obvious. Suffice it to say that his alleged genius, extolled by many members of the Beltway political press, was nowhere in evidence on election night. Nor was it evidenced during the campaign, either, because Rove somehow kept believing that if Bush showed up to campaign for a candidate, it would be good for that candidate. Tell that to Missouri’s Jim Talent, who will soon be packing up his Senate office. Nor was his genius evidenced last year, when, after guiding his boss to the narrowest re-election victory of any president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916, he somehow believed that privatizing Social Security would be a political winner.

Rove’s aura was essentially based on the idea that swing voters don’t matter anymore, and that you win by merely nurturing and expanding your base. Here is ABC’s Mark Halperin, making the case for Rove last month in a New York Times op-ed column; in his view, Rove magic could well work again in the '06 elections:

“Two years of controversy over the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, and the perils of high gasoline prices and low poll numbers, have led many Americans to believe that the Republican Party's strategy of fighting from the base has worn out its welcome. Therefore, this view holds, a campaign that appeals to moderates, one waged from the center, is the only way for the party to maintain control of the Congress. Interesting theory, but it probably won't work. If the Republicans want to keep their majorities in the midterm elections, their best chance is to stick with the old, base-driven electoral strategy followed by President George W. Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove….Bush's opponents may be imprudently lulled by the current storyline and broad national polls, both of which miss the power and consequence of a Republican base that may have one more victory to give.”

I saw the national exit poll this morning. The independents broke for the Democrats on Tuesday night, by 59 percent to 41 percent, and so went the election. And so went the “power and consequence” of Karl Rove.

Downsizing the presidential swagger

Just one week ago, George W. Bush was lavishing praise on Donald Rumsfeld for his “fantastic” performance at the Pentagon, bringing to mind the Katrina declaration that “Brownie” was doing “a heckuva job.” The bottom line, according to The Decider, was that Rumsfeld was staying put until 2009, no matter what the cut and run crowd wanted; and Bush’s bottom line, out on the campaign trail, was that a Democratic victory in the ’06 elections would be a bad day for a nation under terrorist threat.

But now that the voters have actually delivered a stinging rebuke – what Bush once called “an accountability moment” – the trademark presidential swagger has been drastically dialed down. Bush basically ate crow at his press conference today, serving notice that he is scrapping the Karl Rove philosophy of partisan governance (tend to the conservative base, write off Democrats and independents) that has sustained him since Day One.

Back then, you may recall, he came to the job after losing the popular vote by 600,000 – and proceeded to reign as if he had won a landslide mandate for conservatism, a strategy only enhanced by the 9/11 trauma. But his penchant for governing without substantive input from the opposition party won’t work anymore, because the voters told him to knock it off.

So today, watching his press conference as he switched to conciliatory mode, here’s what filled my notebook (in chronological order): “Let’s work together with Democrats and independents on the great issues facing this country…We can work together over the next two years…find common ground in the next two years…try to work through our differences…intend to work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way…work together to address the challenges facing our nation…to find common-sense solutions…confident we can work together...”

And my personal favorite: “…I’m confident we can avoid the temptation to divide the country into red and blue.” That, of course, would be the “temptation” that drove the Rove political strategy, which was all about playing to the red base at the expense of the blue.

The new mantra, apparently, is that Bush, seeking to make a virtue out of a necessity, intends to return to the governing philosophy that worked in Texas, when he broke bread with state legislative Democrats. This was a big theme during the distant 2000 presidential campaign (the “compassionate conservative” campaign), when we in the political press were regaled with stories about how Bush always reached across the aisle to crusty Texas Democrat Charles Bullock.

Today, he insisted he can behave likewise with Nancy Pelosi. In the president’s words, “this isn’t my first rodeo.” Hence, as peace offering, the delivery of Rumsfeld’s head on a platter.

When a cocksure guy like Bush admits that he took a “thumping,” you know that the damage must have been bad enough to pierce the presidential bubble. And it surely was: the Democratic takeover of the Senate was made possible by victories in three red states (Ohio, Missouri, and Montana), and an apparent victory in traditionally red Virginia. The decisive Democratic takeover of the House was greased by the defeat of Republican incumbents in red states such as Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Kentucky. The exit polls showed that nearly 60 percent of the voters were dissatisfied or angry with Bush, primarily because of the war that he launched three long years ago, and there’s nary a Republican in sight who is bothering to spin that one away.

So it would seem that an era of comity is at hand, with a chastened president doing the people’s business with the new guns in town. But don’t be so sure.

There is a lot of bad blood, going back years, and it won’t evaporate just because the votes have been counted. Nancy Pelosi is no Bob Bullock (she hardly fits the profile of a Texas-style Democrat), and she has said some nasty personal stuff about Bush, calling him “incompetent” and “dangerous.” And the Republicans just finished a campaign that sought to paint Pelosi as a wild-eyed loon who’s in hock to the “radical homosexual agenda.” According to a Time magazine report today, Bush’s charm offensive is all about going through the motions; as one White House source told Mike Allen, the Bush strategists are “not in the mood for it, and they don’t think it would work.”

Indeed, Bush’s conciliatory rhetoric contained an important caveat. By talking up his willingness to meet the Democrats half way, he was essentially daring them to match his gesture and give up any impulse to investigate, with full subpoena power, the administration’s past behavior. Only once in the press conference today did Bush make this clear: “The Democrats will have to make up their minds how they are going to conduct their affairs.” He is putting the ball in their court. He is warning that if they start probing and issuing subpoenas, then they will be guilty of reigniting partisan passions, not him.

But how Bush would substantively reach across the aisle without ceding his own ideological principles isn’t clear, either. If he goes to the Democratic majority with a Social Security privatization plan, he’ll get nowhere. If they come to him with something he deems too liberal, he’ll wield the veto pen. As he put it today, referring to Pelosi, “She's not going to abandon her principles and I'm not going to abandon mine.” The grounds for agreement may prove to be quite narrow.

The Democrats now have the upper hand, however, for the first time. And he’s the lame duck, the target of voter ire, and the intended recipient of instructions to govern from the center. If he fails to find ways to do that, his presidency will be effectively finished.

A vote for checks and balances

So much for the purported genius of Karl Rove and his vaunted plans for a permanent Republican majority.

Americans have voted tonight for checks and balances. By turning the House over to the Democrats, and by putting the Senate within reach (thanks to competitive races in three red states, no less), the voters have basically honored James Madison's dictum that it is wise to divide power between "opposite and rival interests," in order to "control the abuses of government."

Americans have put the brakes on one-party rule. They have judged the GOP to be guilty of hubris - a vice that typically afflicts those who wield clout without accountability - and so they have decided on the punishment, which is that now President Bush, in his lame duck years, must share power with those whom he only recently demonized as bad for America. He has basically spent the political capital that he boasted about in November of 2004, and now the bill has come due.

Americans decided tonight that Bush should be held accountable for the $2-billion-a-week stasis strategy in Iraq, and that his party should be held accountable for the institutional corruption in Washington. They did not signal a rejection of conservatism per se, nor did they endorse a return to liberalism. Their essential message was far more practical. They said to the ruling Republicans: you had your shot at doing things your way, you've screwed up, so now the other side gets a chance.

That's generally how the system crafted by the Founding Fathers has always worked. As a guide to his final two years, Bush might want to read the Federalist Papers. Number 51.

A short bellwether list for a potentially long night

Anybody who is dying to know, at the earliest possible moment tonight, whether the Democrats are actually going to win something significant (or whether they ought to be consigned to the ashbin of history, along with the Whigs) would be well advised to consult a handy tip sheet of bellwether House and Senate races. Troll through the newspapers and cyberspace long enough, and you’ll find all kinds of advice on the best campaign indicators.

I have come up with my own likely bellwethers. It’s not nearly as comprehensive as some of the others out there, but, in the interests of personal sanity, this is my list and I’m sticking to it.

First, regarding the fight for control of the Senate: This is the potentially the easier task. The Democrats can’t win this chamber unless they essentially run the table, by defeating six Republican incumbents while successfully hanging on to virtually all of their own existing seats. Therefore, to best chart the Democrats’ fortunes on the Senate side, I plan to keep a close watch on one seat they are trying to defend.

Watch Maryland, in other words. The Republican candidate, Michael Steele, has been running a strong race in a heavily blue state. Steele, who is black, has been buoyed in recent days by support from influential members of the state’s African-American political establishment. And his opponent, Democrat Ben Cardin (who is seeking to move up from the House) is not an inspiring campaigner. If Steele pulls off an upset here – and this is possible – Democrats might as well say goodbye to their dreams of a Senate majority, because it would then mean they need to knock off seven GOPers.

And, speaking of knockoff targets, watch Rhode Island. Defeating Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee is essential to the Democrats’ national hopes, and this task seemed to be a slam dunk a few weeks ago, particularly since Chafee’s party leader, President Bush, is more unpopular in deep-blue Rhode Island than anywhere else in the land. But Chafee, who is personally popular, and is recognized statewide as no mere Bush rubber stamp, has reportedly closed the gap. If he survives tonight, that’s another major blow to Democratic majority dreams.

And watch Virginia, where the polls close early, at 7 p.m. Democrats need to defeat incumbent Republican George Allen, and for that they will need a massive turnout in the populous (and increasingly Democratic-trending) suburbs of Washington. If the Democrats come within sight of winning the Senate, their hopes will ultimately hinge on the results in Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee. They will need to take two out of three. Tennessee appears to be the toughest (will Tennesseans really elect the first black senator from the Old South since the Reconstruction era, 130 years ago? I doubt it), so also watch Missouri, where Republican incumbent Jim Talent is imperiled in part because his staunch opposition to advanced stem cell research has turned off a lot of science-friendly suburbanites.

All told, here’s the potential road map for Democratic Senate victory: Hold every existing seat, and defeat GOP incumbents in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine in Ohio are deemed to be toast, but the overall Democratic hit list still seems like a tall order to me.

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On the House side, I list 10 races that could signal whether the Democrats will (a) take the chamber at all (because I make absolutely no assumptions), and (b) win the chamber so decisively that it can safely be said that the election constituted a national rebuke of Bush and his performance in Iraq. Democrats are clearly gunning for (b), but, given their track record of disappointments, they would probably settle for (a) and try to spin it as (b).

At minimum, the Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats. But before I list my 10 pet bellwethers, I would advise everybody to start the night by watching Indiana.

This traditionally red state finishes voting at 7 p.m. EST, so we may see results there before anywhere else. And Indiana features three imperiled Republican House incumbents: Mark Souder, John Hostettler, and Mike Sodrel. In good years, all three have been buoyed by having a popular president leading the charge. Not so this year; at last check Hostettler was down by seven point in the polls, and Sodrel was down by five. If all three of those guys, or even two out of three, wind up biting the dust, then it could portend a good night nationally for the Democrats. (Ditto Kentucky, where the polls also close early. If Democrats can take out one of three imperiled GOP incumbents, that would be a bonus.)

Indiana and Kentucky aside, here’s my alphabetical top 10:

Arizona, 5th district. There are reliable reports that Republican incumbent J. D. Hayworth, an anti-immigrant conservative and national talk-show regular, is in deep trouble; apparently he has some ethics baggage, due to some ties to disgraced GOP superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, but, more importantly, his seal-the-border rhetoric has not been the clincher that everybody expected. And Latinos, a growing electoral force, are unhappy with him. If Hayworth loses, that’s probably one symptom of a major Democratic wave.

Colorado, 7th district. If Democrat Ed Perlmutter wins this traditionally Republican seat in the Denver suburbs, it would demonstrate that the Democrats are making inroads in the interior West, which has been inhospitable to the party for decades. This district has been changing rapidly; independent voters are flooding in, and, reportedly, a lot of Republican voters this year are fed up with the Iraq war. If Perlmutter loses, it’s another potential indicator of a bad Democratic night.

Connecticut, 2nd district. This state also features three imperiled Republicans – Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson, and Rob Simmons – but the 2nd district’s Simmons, who represents the eastern side of the state, has generally been viewed as being in the best shape, particularly because he has always brought home the bacon to the defense industries in his district. But can even a likeable Republican, running in a heavily Democratic district, survive a potential wave? If the Democrats are going to score big tonight, they will need to defeat people like Simmons and thus solidify their growing dominance in the Northeast.

Florida, 22nd district. Republican incumbent Clay Shaw has held the seat for 13 terms. But plenty of seniors are reportedly upset about some of the key provisions of the GOP-enacted Medicare drug prescription plan, and there is plenty of anger over the Iraq war in this district – where voters favored John Kerry over Bush in the 2004 election.

New Hampshire, 2nd district. Republican incumbent Charlie Bass has become more imperiled with each passing day, according to state pollsters. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Bass, politically, except for the fact that he shares the same party affiliation with the broadly unpopular Bush. If Bass goes down, that would be symptomatic of a pro-Democratic national wave.

New York, 26th district. The upper Empire State is normally strong GOP turf, but this seat in Buffalo currently belongs to one of the GOP congressional leaders who missed the obvious warning signs about the predatory Mark Foley. If incumbent Tom Reynolds loses his seat as a result of voter disgust, the national symbolism would be obvious.

North Carolina, 11th district. If the Democrats are going to gain a seat anywhere in the Old South, it will be here in the mountains on the western side of the state. This race is a virtual laboratory for the Democratic strategy of recruiting candidates who can fit the district. Hence, they came up with ex-NFL quarterback Heath Shuler, who is pro-gun and anti-abortion, and runs TV ads about his “mountain values.” There can be no big national Democratic wave unless they can defeat GOP incumbent Charles Taylor, who has been trying (in vain, according to the polls) to link Shuler to the national Democratic party’s alleged “homosexual agenda.”

Ohio, 15th district. The polls in this key state, as well as the polls in North Carolina, close at 7:30 pm EST, so these might provide more early readings. The GOP incumbent in Ohio’s 15th is Deborah Pryce, a prominent player in the House leadership, and her seat is imperiled, again, largely because of the seemingly pro-Democratic mood. It’s not just about Iraq, though. Ohio Republicans have been demoralized for several years by widespread corruption in the state government under their control. (Pryce holds one of three imperiled Republican seats in Ohio. If the Democrats sweep all three, that's 20 percent of the seats they need to take the House.)

Pennsylvania, 8th district. I could have singled out a number of races in Pennsylvania, another northeastern state where the Democrats absolutely need to make gains – and appear poised to do so. (And no wonder: GOP incumbent Curt Weldon's defense is, "The FBI investigation against me is really a liberal conspiracy," and GOP incumbent Don Sherwood's defense is, "I did not try to strangle my mistress.")

But the 8th district race in the Philadelphia suburbs is well worth watching, because Republican incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick seems to be in the best shape to survive. He separated himself early from Bush, stressing his independence by running TV ads about a new course in Iraq, and he seems to have gained some traction by painting his Democratic challenger as a novice carpetbagger with no firm stance on Iraq. But if Fitzgerald loses anyway, that also portends a strong Democratic wave.

Virginia, 2nd district. A freshman incumbent Republican, Velma Drake, who supports the Iraq war and off-shore oil drilling, is being seriously threatened, even in a heavily-Republican enclave centered around Virginia Beach. She’s depending on a big turnout from the religious conservatives who like her opposition to gay marriage and federal stem-cell research. This race could be a key test of the Christian right’s enthusiasm level. A Drake loss would also portend a Democratic wave.

Lastly, here’s another potential indicator: If the Democrats get through the night without losing any of their House and Senate incumbents, that too would signify a national wave (just as the GOP caught its own wave in 1994, when not a single Republican incumbent was defeated). On the other hand, if the Democrats cough it up tonight big time, suicide counselors will be standing by. And those despairers who decide to live another day might well feel compelled to console themselves with this little holiday item.

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Of course, I reserve the right to tear up this list and start over if election night becomes totally unpredictable. I am going to attempt some live blogging; the rest of the time, I will be in the studio at WHYY in Philadelphia (Channel 12), helping with live TV commentary between 9 p.m. and midnight. Other guests will share the burden.

The libertarian factor: Can the Democrats actually win seats in the interior West?

Twenty four hours to go. Political junkies are busy drawing up their lists of bellwether states and districts, in the hopes of divining, at the earliest possible moment, whether the Democrats are really destined to share power during the final two years of the Bush era. I’m in the process of listing my own bellwethers; they will be posted here tomorrow. But there are many other ways to look at these elections, starting with the electorate itself.

One can slice and dice the electorate in all kinds of ways. How will the suburban “security moms” of 2004 (suburban women with kids who gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt) opt to vote in 2006? Will Latinos, angered by the GOP’s strong anti-immigrant rhetoric, break heavily for Democratic candidates in new swing states such as Arizona and Colorado? Will Christian conservatives shrug off their multiple grievances with the GOP and become sufficiently enthused at the eleventh hour? Will African-American voters, mindful of Bush’s Katrina legacy, vote en masse to punish Bush’s party – while, in Maryland, sparking a GOP victory by helping to elect black Republican senatorial candidate Michael Steele?

But there’s another grouping of voters that has been somewhat overlooked in recent months, and they definitely deserve a mention. They don’t fall neatly into either the liberal or conservative camp. But they number in the millions, and while many live in pivotal northeastern congressional districts (in the Philadelphia suburbs, for instance), they are particularly populous in the interior western states – places like Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. And their restiveness this year may well help the Democrats gain ground in these states, which have not been particularly hospitable to congressional Democrats in recent decades.

These voters – typically nicknamed “libertarians” – are classic believers in small government. They are fiscally conservative (they like balanced budgets), but they are socially tolerant (they want the federal government to stay out of their private lives). In the past, they have generally voted with the GOP, because they saw the Democrats as big government spenders. But now their sentiments may be shifting – because the governing GOP of the Bush era has become the party of big spending and record deficits, and the party of big government intrusion into private lives.

The Cato Institute, arguably the only Washington think thank that devotes itself exclusively to libertarian concerns, released an October report which cited broad voter disillusionment with the GOP’s “overspending, social intolerance, civil liberties infringements, and the floundering war in Iraq…The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizeable enough to swing elections.”

One of the big reasons why President Bush and Vice President Cheney have spent so much time this past week in normally red states such as Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho is precisely because Republican incumbents are imperiled by the shifting mood of western libertarians. Ryan Sager, a conservative analyst (and author of a new book, The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party), wrote in a New York Post column yesterday that these voters “are sick to death of a party that has dispatched with any and all concern for cutting the size of government, and instead spends its time perpetuating its majority and pandering to the religious right.”

That last factor is potentially important. In an article last week about a bellwether House race in a Seattle suburb, where a Democrat might win the seat for the first time, some libertarian voters sounded off about the religious right’s influence in the national GOP. A services manager at Microsoft complained about Republican intrusions into personal affairs: “The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay. Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to interfere with these things.”

Others, citing the issue of stem cell research, complained that the GOP was allowing religious morality to trump science. A partner in a software firm, whose father had Alzheimer’s disease, said that he was “outraged that a mere politician would interpret science for me.”

But the GOP, recognizing that these voters are crucial out west, still has a weapon in its arsenal. Bush stopped in Montana the other day, seeking to shore up support for embattled Senate incumbent Conrad Burns, and his main pitch was that Democratic challenger Jon Tester, if elected, would vote to raise taxes, just as he voted to raise taxes as a state legislator. This argument was seconded in Republican TV ads – and it might be working.

A few weeks ago, Burns was deemed to be toast, a casualty of the Jack Abramoff scandal, but now he appears to have a decent shot at survival, because the GOP is pushing libertarian buttons about those high-taxing Democrats. The question is, will the traditional libertarian fear of the Democrats to trump their misgivings about the track record of the party in power?

If Bush and the Republicans escape major damage tomorrow night, or even manage to hold both congressional chambers, it will probably mean, particularly out West, that most of the libertarians came home.

"It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter..."

As I contended this morning in a new print column, nobody should assume that the war planners in the Bush administration will budge an inch on Iraq even if the ’06 elections signify a massive public repudiation of their behavior in Iraq.

It’s clear that the people running this war – most notably, Vice President Cheney – view Tuesday’s event, in which voters exercise their traditional democratic right to have a voice in the affairs of their government, as an irreverent trifle that will have no bearing whatsoever on how they choose to proceed in Iraq.

And it's clear how the Bush team plans to spin a bad election night. If the Democrats retake the House, the team will merely say: So what?

Cheney virtually said this today on ABC News. When it was pointed out to him that the vast majority of Americans have broadly turned against the war (either because of the Bush administration’s inept execution, or because it should not have been initiated in the first place), Cheney simply replied:

“It may not be popular with the public. It doesn’t matter – in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. We’re not running for office. We’re doing what we think is right.”

It may not be popular with the public. It doesn’t matter….That remark encapsulates the governing philosophy of this administration – that, as an expression of the public’s desire for accountability, this election will not matter. Cheney was clearly signaling that, even if Bush is humbled by the voters on Tuesday night, he will not humble himself by substantively shaking up his approach to Iraq.

In other words, anyone who thinks that Bush will react in that fashion is probably dreaming. Take David Gergen, for example. He has served in virtually every White House going back three decades, most visibly for Ronald Reagan. He wrote the other day that if the Democrats win big on Nov. 7, Bush would be smart to humble himself. Here’s the speech he envisioned Bush delivering:

“My fellow Americans, I have always believed in the wisdom of the people. You were the ones who first gave me a chance to become your president and by your overwhelming vote, you returned me to this office. Now, in your wisdom, you have spoken again—this time to send a clear message that you want a change of course in Iraq. You have sent many new Democrats here to Washington to carry that message for you. I have heard you loud and clear and I respect what you say. Therefore, I am embarking tonight on a serious re-evaluation of our policies in Iraq and I am asking Democrats in Congress to join me in shaping that policy.”

Don’t bet on anything like that happening, no matter how politically isolated Bush might be. And there are indeed fresh indications this weekend of the extent of his isolation. It’s one thing if Democratic and even independent voters dismiss the Bush team as incompetent, because, at this point, that’s to be expected. But when the neoconservative thinkers, who wanted the Iraq war in the first place, start publicly complaining about Bush team incompetence…well, that’s worth noting.

Most of the leading neoconservatives will speak up in the January issue of Vanity Fair, but the magazine has released excerpts. Here’s neocon and former Pentagon insider Kenneth Adelman, who predicted before the war that Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” He sounds like he belongs in a Democratic TV ad: “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

Here’s neocon Richard Perle, surveying the bad decision-making and then contending, “At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.” And one other little detail: he now thinks that maybe we shouldn’t have launched this war after all. In his words, “Could we have managed that (Saddam Hussein) threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have.”

But, on ABC, Cheney dismissed them as well: “I think there is no question that it is a tough war, but it is also the right thing to do.” So the unhappy hawks don’t “matter,” either. (Perle and some other neocons issued a statement today, released by the White House, complaining that Vanity Fair had broken a promise not to release any quote excerpts prior to the election. Perle also wanted to make it clear that he opposes a precipitious withdrawal. Adelman did not sign the statement.)

Cheney, in his ABC interview, also managed to undercut some prime administration spin. When the topic of World War II came up, he said that he rejected any "analogy" between the fight against fascism in the '40s and the fight against terrorists today.

And yet, back in late August, the administration's entire PR strategy was based on drawing exactly that analogy. For instance, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld specifically invoked the Nazi threat in an Aug. 30 speech, and said: "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges..." Bush invoked the same analogy that week, in a speech to the American legion. But it would not have been in character for Cheney to acknowledge that what he was saying now was flatly contradicted by what the administration was saying before. To acknowledge such a thing would be tantamount to saying that somebody was wrong.

All told, it’s clear that even if the Democrats take the Hill this week, they will have a tough time in ‘07 dealing with a White House that has stacked the sandbags against all critics and retains unshakable faith in its own rightness.

"How to build a nuke," courtesy of the congressional GOP

During the ’06 campaign, the third straight national security election in the aftermath of 9/11, the governing Republicans again have been advertising themselves as the people who can best keep Americans safe. This pitch worked in 2002 and 2004. The vote on Tuesday night will tell us whether it has worked again. All the late polls indicate, however, that the GOP is battling a strong headwind – and now these reports, circulated today, can’t possibly be helping.

It turns out that the congressional Republicans, still convinced that Saddam Hussein must have possessed weapons of mass destruction, and still looking for ways to justify their war authorization votes, recently set up a website that would supposedly demonstrate Hussein’s prewar lethality. Yet now it turns out that, in their eagerness to make their case, the Republicans have managed to post some pre-1991 Hussein documents that give our potential enemies all kinds of handy tips about how to build nuclear weaponry.

This little detail triggered alarm bells at the International Atomic Energy Agency (which says it was "shocked by the explicitness of the contents"), angered various diplomats and weapons experts - and now the press exposure has compelled our director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, to suddenly take down the entire website, pending the usual “review.” And no wonder: According to former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, it now turns out that Negroponte had warned some time ago that these documents were being posted “at some risk.”

The best way to really understand the political dimension of this incident is to simply imagine, purely as a hypothetical, that a Democratic president had taken us to war in Iraq by claiming that WMDs were being aimed at America; that we had then discovered that not only were there no WMDs being aimed at America, but that in fact they did not appear to exist; and that a Democratic Congress had then set up a website seeking to justify the decision – and, in the process, had wound up posting a nuclear tip sheet for the axis of evil.

Here’s how the Republicans would play that news in their TV campaign ad:

Grainy black & white images of terrorists, and a thrumming bass guitar chord.
“Our enemies are gathering. Just waiting for their moment to attack you and your children. Yet the liberal Democrat party in Congress has actually been helping them out, giving them aid and comfort and new ideas about how to hit us as we’ve never been hit before. On November 7, don’t reward the incumbent party of weakness. Vote Republican, because your life depends on it.”

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Nevertheless, back here in real life, the incumbent GOP will still try this weekend to play the Hussein card. It did not escape notice, two weeks ago, that Iraqi justice officials had decided to postpone the court verdict against Hussein until Nov. 5, which, as the calendar demonstrates, falls on the final Sunday of the U.S. election season, 48 hours prior to voting. I will leave it to others to speculate, in the absence of a smoking gun, as to whether this decision was wholly a coincidence.

But even if the new date is a coincidence, there’s little doubt that the GOP will seek to invoke the verdict (presumably, guilty) as part of their final pitch for re-election – seeking, it would appear, to justify the Iraq war by demonstrating that Hussein has been found accountable in a court of justice. Whether this will be enough to mollify independent swing voters who have long rejected the war as a debacle, I can’t help but wonder. More likely, the White House will probably seek to invoke the verdict as part of their final push to motivate their conservative base.

Anyway, White House spokesman Tony Snow launched the effort last night on Fox News, with minimal prompting from the usual helpful host.

Q: “Is there November surprise coming out of Iraq? Will the Iraqi court find a guilty verdict for Saddam Hussein and a possible death sentence? Rumors are flying that it’s going to come down this Sunday, November 5th — which of course will dominate the political news cycle, in the last two days in the midterms. Tony, what can you tell us about this?”

SNOW: “Larry, that is when this verdict is scheduled to come down. I’m not going to tell you what it will be, because I don’t know. But you are absolutely right, it will be a factor.”

For the record, Snow also denied that the White House will invoke the Hussein verdict as a way to justify the war, because, as the White House sees it, there is no need to justify the war:

“What you now have is an Iraq where people are fighting and working actively to build a democracy where they don’t have to worry about that kind of reign of terror in the future. This (verdict) is a benchmark episode, where the Iraqi people are taking control of their own destiny and saying to the world, we are going to be free, trust us, watch us, help us and that is what the United States is doing and that’s what we are going to do. We are going to finish the job.”

The Fox News host, of course, failed to ask Snow whether the Iraqi people would be wise to worry about the ever-worsening current reign of terror.

In any event, not all imperiled Republican incumbents plan to invoke the Hussein verdict on their own behalf in the final days. Rather, many would seem to prefer to ignore the war altogether. As imperiled Ohio congresswoman Deborah Pryce said yesterday on CNN, “What’s happening in Iraq is not a direct reflection on me.”

Forget what he says about foes, just watch where he goes

Even though the Republicans will argue, again today, that John Kerry’s joke-telling ineptitude is a momentous national issue, and even though they still officially exude optimism about holding both the House and Senate in Tuesday’s elections, it might be wise to remember the political adage that was well-coined four decades ago by Nixon attorney general John Mitchell:

“Watch what we do, not what we say.”

President Bush and his Republican strategists may be saying for public consumption that the ’06 elections look bullish for the GOP – indeed, Bush is saying that even the Iraq war looks bullish, given his claim last week that “absolutely, we are winning” – but we would all be well advised to look past the words, and assess what they are actually doing.

The best way to really gauge the Bush team’s thinking is simply to track the president’s physical movements along the campaign trail. Here is the Bush itinerary, a rundown of his stump appearances over a span of six days:

Two days ago, he was in Texas and Georgia.
Today, he is in Montana and Nevada.
Tomorrow, he is due in Missouri and Iowa.
Saturday, he is expected in Colorado.
Sunday, he is expected in Kansas.

Spot the pattern yet? Every single pit stop on the Bush tour is in a “red” state that voted for Bush in 2004. At every stop, either he will be defending Republican turf generally, or seeking to salvage the prospects of imperiled Republican incumbents.

For instance, in a normal political year, there would be absolutely no need for a Republican president to spend time, during the final week of a campaign, deep in the heart of his own home state. But because Tom DeLay got himself into criminal trouble and felt compelled to cough up his congressional seat, and because –amazingly enough – a Democrat (Nick Lampson) might actually win the seat down in Sugarland, Texas, the president from Texas felt compelled to stop there and try to put his proverbial finger in the dike.

Ditto Montana, today. Montana hasn’t voted Democratic in a presidential race in more than 40 years, yet Bush has to spend time there to shore up the endangered Republican senator Conrad Burns, a potential casualty of the Jack Abramoff scandal. Tomorrow, Bush will need to stop in Missouri, to shore up the endangered Republican senator Jim Talent, whom swing voters may judge to be on the wrong side of the stem cell issue.

And, in perhaps the most vivid demonstration of the GOP’s dire straits, plans are afoot to dispatch Bush to Kansas, to spend the final Sunday of the campaign helping to shore up a five-term Republican congressman, Jim Ryun, who is locked in a tight race with a Democratic challenger whom Ryan handily defeated two years ago.

Kansas is a deeply red state where Democrats virtually never win federal elections. So what has changed since 2004? GOP Kansas Senator Sam Brownback offered his diagnosis the other day: “I think what you're seeing is a lot of watching and concern about the war in Iraq. Without that, I don't think that this election cycle is what it is.”

So while the Bush team can talk all it wants about election day optimism, it is not acting optimistic. In the field, it is playing defense. Bush is not spending time invading the opposition’s turf, or traveling to traditionally Republican-leaning congressional districts, such as the suburbs of Philadelphia (where the GOP candidates don't want him around anyway). Rather, all his final week actions signal that the Bush team is back on its heels, preoccupied mostly with staving off disaster.

In other words, it’s likely that their internal polling numbers mirror the latest non-partisan polling stats. The respected Washington analyst Charlie Cook, looking at his own latest figures, stated flatly yesterday that, in the House, “it would take a miracle for the GOP to hold onto their majority.” He also says, with regards to the Senate, “the best case scenario” is that the Republicans will barely hold onto the chamber.

Bush is also spending all his time in red states because the religious conservative base is still deemed to be insufficiently motivated. The latest CBS-New York Times poll, released this morning, has one eye-opening stat: self-described evangelicals, when asked whether they favor a Democratic or Republican congressional candidate, opt for the Democrat by 42 to 41 percent. This may help explain why the GOP and its conservative allies are working so hard to keep the Kerry gaffe alive.

So watch that Bush itinerary. If the president suddenly scraps his weekend schedule and flies into blue states, you can bet that the national mood, as reflected in the internal polling numbers, has shifted in some dramatic fashion. But if, for most voters (particularly independents, who at last check still see this election as a referendum on Bush’s war stewardship), this election ultimately is viewed as a choice between a failed ’04 candidate who can’t tell a joke, and an ’06 commander-in-chief who can’t run a war, then odds are the Democrats still have a fighting chance next Tuesday.

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Here's a new report that takes note of the defensive Bush itinerary - and cites some red destinations that had escaped my notice: Florida, Arkansas, and Nebraska.

So I just took a look at Nebraska...and it makes the case all by itself. The 3rd congressional district hasn't elected a Democrat since the era of black & white TV - 46 years, to be exact. The district's voters, two years ago, favored Bush over John Kerry by more than 50 percentage points. The district's registered Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts by a margin of 2-1. The big newspaper in Lincoln calls the 3rd "the reddest congressional district in a crimson state."

And yet even here, late polling reportedly shows that the GOP is being pushed hard. It appears that Democratic candidate Scott Kleeb (a rancher by trade, the kind of background much prized in red states by Democratic candidate recruiters) really has a shot at winning. Certainly the Republican National Committee agrees, because it's dumping a ton of TV advertising money on a place that should never need to see an RNC ad. And the Bush team knows the score as well, or else Bush wouldn't be compelled to cool his heels on crimson turf with the clock running out.

A beleaguered Republican party says, "Thank you, John Kerry"

Ever since the winnable 2004 election, most Democrats have been fervently hoping that John Kerry would just give it up and go away, after permanently stowing his White House fantasies inside Al Gore’s lockbox.

Instead, he has stuck around, emailing news of his every move to activists and journalists nationwide, seemingly on a thrice-daily basis, in an effort to prove that if given another chance, he would be a much better candidate – that is to say, at the very least, a more verbally nimble candidate.

But it’s not so easy for an old pol to teach himself new tricks, and that brings us to yesterday’s incident, in which John Kerry put himself in a beribboned gift box and mailed himself to Karl Rove.

The gift card read, “Don't despair. I’m your October surprise.”

It’s highly debatable, of course, that Kerry’s latest characteristic outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease will be enough to reverse the meta-narrative of the ’06 election season – i.e., that the congressional races are a virtual referendum on President Bush and his demonstrably failed stewardship of the Iraq war – but his self-confessed “botched” joke about Bush and the troops has infuriated fatalistic Democrats everywhere. The reasons are clear: By making it appear that he was belittling the soldiers (which he did not intend to do), he gave the GOP a short-hand headline (to wit: "Kerry attacks U.S. troops").

The Republicans have spent weeks playing defense, flailing wildly and unsuccessfully at whatever scary enemy they could concoct: Osama bin Laden, Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers. But now the ’04 presidential nominee has come along, offering himself up as punching bag, as a reminder of everything that swing voters may not have liked about Democrats two years ago, and, sure enough, the GOP message machine (as evidenced by the umpteen emails that have landed in my box over the past 16 hours) has been only too happy to comply by taking the offensive.

In a moment captured on YouTube (further proof that no politician can afford to err in this era), here’s what Kerry said yesterday, at Pasadena City College: “You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Rove could not have written it better, because, in their view, it underscores their longstanding caricature of the Democratic party. They are now citing that sentence as further proof that Democrats are condescending elitists who malign our fighting men and women as people who don’t study hard, don’t do their homework, and are not smart. They can invoke that sentence to say that ’04 Democratic standard-bearer is branding the troops are losers who are fighting in Iraq only because they can’t cut it in civilian society.

Apparently, what Kerry meant to say was this joke aimed at Bush: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”

One can plausibly argue, of course, that the GOP has a lot of gall to exploit Kerry’s botched sentence, given the fact that it’s the Bush White House and the Bush Pentagon that sent those troops into Iraq without sufficient body armor and without a rational postwar plan to secure the peace. Democrats can certainly contend – as they have been doing – that the congressional Republicans, by failing to hold this administration accountable, are the people who have truly been most disrespectful to the fighting men and women.

And perhaps that argument will still hold sway with the majority of voters next Tuesday. But, for the moment, what we have instead is the familiar spectacle of John Kerry trying to set things right and explain what he really meant to say – thereby taking up valuable air time and press coverage that might otherwise be focused on the GOP’s political woes.

Here he was this morning, looking for some kind of verbal exit strategy, on Don Imus’ radio show: “Look, everybody knows I botched a joke. It's not the first time anybody's done that, Don. Am I right?...I left out one word. I left out the word ‘us.’ ‘They got US stuck.’ Instead of that, I said, ‘They got stuck,’ and (the Republicans) are taking advantage of it…I said it was a botched joke. Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke. You think I love botched jokes? I mean, it's pretty stupid…But you know what would screw it up is if we shift off the topic of Iraq. Iraq is what this is about. They know it. They're trying to change the topic. They want the topic to be about what they know was a small gaffe. Incidentally, how many times has the president made some kind of a gaff of one kind or another...”

The problem for Democrats is obvious: On a day when the news out of Iraq, is that Bush’s own military hierarchy views his "freedom agenda" as more imperiled by chaos and potential civil war than ever before – news that the Democrats might wish to see emphasized, as part of their ongoing bid to make the ’06 elections a referendum on the president – John Kerry is out in front, dominating the discourse, seeking once again to explain himself, this time by chasing after the elusive word us.

Some Democrats have already felt the need to distance themselves from Kerry (Nebraska Democratic candidate Scott Kleeb calls his remarks “disgraceful and insulting”), and Kerry himself has staged a retreat from the battle by canceling a scheduled appearance tonight in Philadelphia, apparently deciding that he didn’t want to put Democratic senatorial candidate Bob Casey Jr. on the spot.

And late this afternoon, he followed up his apology on the Imus show with a more abject apology: "As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.
I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended."

Yet, even in that statement, he felt compelled to try to give himself some wiggle room, with his claim that his words were "misinterpreted." Uh, no. The words were interpreted correctly; he's the one who spoke them incorrectly.

One exasperated Democrat, a top fund-raising guy, said to me privately today that Kerry "should be sidelined. The Democrats have a great opportunity (next week), and they do not need to have it squandered by his mistakes."

In other words, at this point, what most Democrats nationwide would probably like to hear Kerry say is this:

“Despite all my careful planning, I have decided not to seek the 2008 presidential nomination. I was for it, before I was against it.”

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On the flip side, a case can certainly be made that the Kerry flap is trivial, when compared with the troublesome facts on the ground in Iraq. One political veteran, coming to Kerry's defense last night on MSNBC's Hardball:

"What people care about in Iraq is not what John Kerry -- John Kerry lost a presidential election. The American public's already made that decision. What they care about is what's going on there and how we're going to deal with the situation, not some misspoken statement about whether or he thought the troops were ignorant or not, which I don't think, in any way, you could say he thought that. He misspoke."

Clearly that must have been some left-wing partisan armed with Democratic talking points, yes?

Well, no. That was former Bush pollster Matthew Dowd, one of the prime architects of the president's 2004 re-election victory.

The Bush-Cheney contradiction, and the Duncan Hunter juggernaut

It’s a busy day, compounded by travel, so I’ll be brief:

In furtherance of his ’06 campaign message (which is essentially, “If you vote for Democrats, you are aiding the terrorists”), Vice President Cheney yesterday told Fox News that a Democratic Congress is precisely what are enemies are yearning for.

Cheney’s host, Neil Cavuto tossed the requisite friendly softball: “Do you suspect that these insurgent attacks (in Iraq) are timed to influence our midterm elections?”

And Cheney replied: “That’s my belief. I think they are, very, very cognizant of our schedule, if you will.”

One would not expect Cavuto to follow up by pointing out that Cheney’s “belief” appears to be groundless – because President Bush himself has already said so. Cavuto, of course, didn’t follow up, so let’s do it here:

Nine days ago, Bush was questioned by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. The host, citing the increasing violence that was making October one of the deadliest months of the war, asked Bush whether the Iraqi fighters were “trying to influence the elections” in America.

Bush’s reply: “I don’t know. I haven’t -- I don’t have any intelligence that says that.”

And Bush was right; there is no such intelligence. Military officials in Baghdad have acknowledged this. The violence has indeed increased during October, but it just so happens the ‘06 elections roughly coincide with Ramadan, Islam's holy month – a time frame when the level of violence has increased in Iraq during each of the past three years.

Michael O’Hanlon, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who has been tracking the violence since the war began, tells UPI that he sees no correlation between the current bloodshed and the ’06 domestic political calendar:

“I see no basis for it in the previous three-and-a-half years of experience in Iraq. We did not see a spike before the November 2004 (presidential) election. We have not seen big spikes before other major political milestones. Sure, you can see slight increases in violence due to such things, but the big increases are generally due to changed American and Iraqi army tactics. Increased engagements with the enemy lead to greater casualties on all sides. Political events do not in my experience appear to be big drivers. I'd love to be proven wrong this time, because that would imply a reduced level of violence after Nov. 7, but I'd be very surprised if that happened on a major scale.”

But don’t expect Cheney to abandon his message that the terrorists are killing people in order to help the Democrats, just because Bush contradicted him. With the election drawing near, and with the GOP in the unusual position of underdog, empirical facts take a back seat to message. And that’s where Bush and Cheney are in sync. As the president declared yesterday in Texas, if the Democrats get their way, “The terrorists win and America loses.”

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All aboard the Duncan Hunter bandwagon.

Hunter, a California Republican congressman from San Diego, announced yesterday that he is going to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. You may well be asking, who? And, what’s that all about?

A few thoughts:

This announcement is a sign of GOP weakness, an admission that Republicans are truly worried about coughing up House control to the Democrats in the elections next Tuesday. Hunter is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. If the Democrats take the House, it means that Hunter loses is chair and is relegated to the minority - and, as a longstanding congressman, he well remembers that it’s no fun to be a clout-free member of the minority. As chairman, Hunter often gets booked on CNN and the various Sunday shows. If he’s just the ranking minority Armed Services guy, he can kiss those national bookings goodbye. However, as a prospective presidential candidate, he can sustain some national visibility, and tour the land giving speeches to the GOP faithful.

Which prompts my second thought:

If the Democrats win big next Tuesday, there will be considerable infighting within GOP ranks among those who seek to redefine a winning conservatism. Hunter may sense that he can fill a niche, as a Republican who is actually to the right of many prospective presidential candidates. As a staunch Iraq war supporter and a backer of the Bush White House policies on torture, Hunter has been to the right of John McCain; for instance, he opposed McCain’s (largely futile) attempts to defy the White House’s hardline stance on torture.

There are lots of conservatives in the GOP camp who don’t trust McCain, the purported ’08 frontrunner. Hunter’s presence in the early ’08 jockeying may say less about Hunter himself than about the intense conservative intramurals that may commence within days of a (potential) ’06 election debacle.

Bimbos and strippers and bears, oh my

Keeping score on the hardball competition for the U.S. Senate:

As I mentioned last week, the Republican National Committee has been financing a Tennessee TV ad which resurrects the Old South racist fears about miscegenation. The ad suggested that black Democratic senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr. – who is currently locked in a tight and pivotal race with his GOP opponent - might be tempted to enjoy the sexual favors of white women, thanks to the bare-shouldered model/bimbo who coos into the camera, “Harold! Call me!”

Yesterday, on CBS’ Face the Nation, Republican chairman Ken Mehlman staged an elaborate verbal dance, in his trademark rapid-fire delivery: Yes, he paid for the ad, and, yes, it did say on the air that his committee was responsible for the contents of the ad, but, under federal law as written, he actually had no say over the ad contents because the ad was independently produced, yet despite all that, “I didn’t think it was necessarily a racist ad,” and yet despite the fact that he semi-denies that the ad was racist, “I would not have put the ad up” in the first place.

Got all that?

He’s technically right about the campaign finance laws, which limit how much the national parties can directly spend on individual campaigns – but which permit the parties to spend with unfettered abandon if they set up “independent” committees that operate without any oversight from the party overlords.

But here’s the key point: Mehlman hired the person who in turn hired the person who produced the “independent” Tennessee ad. So even though Mehlman may have been officially in the dark about this specific ad, it strains credulity to believe that he didn’t know what kind of ad his “independent” ad producer would create. Especially since this ad producer would not have been hired in the first place, to act “independently” and provide Mehlman with official deniability, unless he had been sanctioned by top GOP officials.

Or perhaps it’s a total coincidence that the ad producer, Scott Howell, turns out to be a longstanding associate of Karl Rove’s, going way back to the latter’s days as a direct-mail specialist in Texas; and that Howell was one of the producers who in 2002 helped defeat Georgia Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by crafting a TV ad which charged that the triple-amputee Vietnam vet was weak on Osama bin Laden (whose face appeared in the ad).

And perhaps Mehlman would be totally stunned to discover that Howell had been hired for the Tennessee job by Terry Nelson, who in turn had been hired by Mehlman to run the “independent” GOP operations. Perhaps Mehlman had no inkling of Nelson’s own track record, which includes ties to Chris LaCivita, the GOP consultant who helped the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth map their ’04 attacks on John Kerry.

In other words, perhaps Mehlman was truly shocked, shocked at the contents of the “Harold, call me” commercial.

Or perhaps, on this point, he is no different than the Claude Rains character who tut-tutted gambling in Casablanca, then pocketed his winnings.

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Tuning to Fox News Sunday, meanwhile, I was curious to see whether it would further the story which broke last Friday, concerning some smutty novelistic passages that were written years ago by James Webb, the Virginia Democrat and best-selling novelist who is locked in a tight Senate race with incumbent Republican George Allen.

But Fox News said nary a word, a testament to the story's debateable news value.

Allen partisans have been trying to push this charge for weeks, the idea that what Webb made up 15 or 20 years ago should be deemed at least as important as what Allen said in real life on the campaign trail this year (using a racial slur to describe a Virginia-born Indian-American). The Drudge Report finally took the bait late last week, and I even received a grand total of two emails urging me to get with the program.

In a way, it’s ironic that Allen partisans see the Webb excerpts as a disqualifier for the Senate (actually, they wouldn’t be complaining about the Webb passages at all if Allen was cruising to victory, as originally expected), because Webb the novelist has seemed mainly interested in defending military culture against what he views as weak-kneed antiwar liberals back home. Somehow the Allen partisans overlook this.

It’s undeniable that Webb has written some gamy passages – for instance, about female strippers in Thailand using fruit as accessories, and about a Southeast Asian man who hoists his four-year-old son and puts the boy’s penis in his mouth – but, as a novelist, his overall intent has been to vividly depict the stresses and strains on U.S. fighting men, along with the usual episodes of decadence and deprivation. His efforts have prompted raves from all kinds of reviewers. Here’s praise, for instance, for the book that included the father-and-son scene:

“James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.”

The reviewer was John McCain.

The idea that a candidate should be judged on what he makes up in the fiction realm seems a tad dubious…but I’ll just quote this guy: “I don't think that works of fiction, especially scenes taken out of context, give any enlightenment to the policy position of the candidates. I've written fiction, and plan to do so again in the future. If I depict a brutal murder, does that make me a potential murderer? If I write about a rape, does that make me a potential rapist? I think not, and the notion that this is in any way relevant to the policies of import to Virginians insults the voters both candidates want to convince to support them.”

That’s the guy at Captain’s Quarters, a conservative blog that supports George Allen.

I could also spend time quoting from novels penned by indicted Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby (who wrote a scene that described children being placed in a cage with a bear, for sexual purposes), and by Cheney’s spouse Lynne (who wrote some lesbian scenes), to make the point that this is what novelists, of all political persuasions, sometimes do…but I’ll just quote this commentator: “Are the (Webb) passages…bizarre and perverted? Yes. But they are no more proof of Webb's immorality and unfitness for office than the passages in ‘Sisters’ are proof that Lynne Cheney hates men, or that the passages in ‘The Apprentice’ are proof that Scooter Libby endorses sex between children and bears.”

That’s blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin, the scourge of Democrats.

I guess it’s a good thing that Philip Roth never ran for the Senate in New Jersey.

Programming announcement

A TV tip:

Early this evening (check your local listings), ABC World News Sunday is slated to air a segment on the Democrats' chronic inability to come up with an Iraq agenda. I was interviewed for the segment - the network contacted me after I wrote this column - and they told me today that I will appear. Obviously, I am curious to see what sound bite they pluck from my lips, and what they leave on the cutting-room floor...but, more importantly for you viewers, reporter Jake Tapper will probably examine some of the key questions of the '06 campaign:

Does it matter that the Democrats don't have an affirmative agenda for Iraq? Can they win simply by saying "we're not Bush"? Or do they owe the voters more than that?

The politics of New Jersey's gay ruling: emotion trumps empiricism

Let’s stay with the story about the New Jersey high court ruling on gay civil unions:

As expected, religious right leaders are invoking this decision in order to stoke Christian conservative turnout for the ’06 congressional elections. Gary Bauer, for instance, circulated an email last night: “My friends,if you had any doubts about whether or not it is worth votingthis November, I hope (the) decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court erased any and all reservations. As I noted in Wednesday’s report, the radical Left is using the courts to impose an agenda that would not pass at the ballot box.”

And President Bush, who for months had said nothing about gays until he rediscovered the issue in the wake of the New Jersey ruling, said this in Iowa: “(On Wednesday) in New Jersey, we had another activist court that issued a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage. I believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman. And I believe it's a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended.”

Somebody should give Bush a copy of the New Jersey ruling in Lewis v. Harris, and compel him to read all 66 pages, because only then might he recognize the gap between his political rhetoric and the empirical facts. Ditto Bauer. Ditto Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. I decided to read the actual ruling. It is hardly the work of “another activist court,” or “the radical Left.”

Bush has long stated that he values “strict constructionist” judges who stick to established precedents and the literal meaning of words and phrases. By that definition, New Jersey’s majority contingent issued a strict constructionist ruling. Most importantly, and contrary to what Bush said yesterday, the majority decision doesn’t raise doubt about the institution of marriage. Rather, it specifically declares that it can’t find any language in the New Jersey constitution which would affirm the right of gay people to marry. As the ruling stated, it “cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this State.”

The four majority judges (most of whom were Democratic appointees, by the way…appointed by a gay Democratic governor) simply did what state judges do every day in this country. They took the issue at hand – gay plaintiffs seeking the right to marry – and they checked to see whether their claims squared with the actual provisions of the state constitution, as well as with “the traditions, history and conscience of the people of this state.” And they decided in the negative, ruling against the gay plaintiffs.

If the Republicans and religious-right leaders wish to review the court’s thinking for themselves, I refer them to key passages that appear between pages 27 and 31: “Although today there is a nationwide public debate raging over whether same-sex marriage should be authorized under the laws or constitutions of the various states, the framers of the 1947 New Jersey constitution, much less the drafters of our marriage statutes, could not have imagined that the liberty right protected by Article I, Paragraph I (of the state constitution) embraced the right of a person to marry someone of his or her own sex….Although (some) recent cases openly advance the civil rights of gays and lesbians, they fall far short of establishing a right to same-sex marriage deeply rooted in the traditions, history and conscience of the people of this state.”

The court majority, while rejecting “the right to marry,” did rule for gays on “the rights of marriage.” Indeed, the Republicans, hoping to galvanize Christian conservative voters, have already assailed the New Jersey judges for directing the state legislature to enact a gay civil union law guaranteeing same-sex partners the same legal rights and financial benefits now available to heterosexual couples. The GOP’s tactic is in sync with its longstanding claim that judges are riding roughshod over democracy by bulling the elected lawmakers who better represent the will of the people.

But, even on this issue, the four majority judges did what their colleagues in other states typically do: They reviewed the past actions of the elected state lawmakers. And they found that these lawmakers, acting on behalf of the people, have long been expanding the legal rights of gays – for much of the past 20 years. From page 39: “Perhaps more significantly, New Jersey’s Legislature has been at the forefront of combating sexual orientation discrimination, and advancing equality of treatment for gays and lesbians.” Just two years ago, in fact, lawmakers added “domestic partnership” to the statutory language.

So it’s logical, and consistent, that the court would tell lawmakers to bring their own longstanding policies more squarely in line with the equal-rights language in the state constitution. And by leaving it up to the lawmakers to decide whether to call these relationships “civil unions” or “marriages,” the court is specifically recognizing that the people’s branch of state government should make that determination.

The majority judges also did what “strict constructionists” typically do: They showed a respect for judicial precedent. In ruling for equal rights, they demonstrated that their decision was in sync with the state judiciary’s track record, going back more than three decades. For instance, from page 37: “In 1974, a New Jersey court held that the parental visitation rights of a divorced homosexual father could not be denied or restricted based on his sexual orientation.”

So this is the empirical record: New Jersey’s high court majority issued a strict-constructionist ruling that respected precedent, the role of the democratically-elected legislature, and grounded its findings in the particular culture and history of New Jersey. (The “rights” language in the state constitution is actually more expansive than the language in the U.S. constitution.) In other words, the New Jersey ruling was also in the conservative “state’s rights” tradition.

Of course, whether these factual nuances matter a whit on the political battlefield is another matter entirely. It’s easier, as demonstrated by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, to simply thunder against New Jersey’s “imperial judiciary.” It's easier, as demonstrated by conservative legal activist Mark Levin, to say that the Jersey ruling was "as political as any I've seen," even though the three dissenting judges who actually wanted to endorse gay marriage were all Republican appointees.

But on the soapbox, emotion usually trumps empiricism. The GOP needs to galvanize disaffected Christian conservative voters over the next 11 days, and the fine points of law are the enemy of political action. After all, as Bush is fond of saying, “I’m not a lawyer.”

Is the Iraq issue more compelling than an October surprise?

Last night, while I was assessing the ’06 elections during a speaking gig in suburban Philadelphia, a Democrat in the audience asked me, “Do you think there will be an October surprise?”

The question was inevitable; at the moment, most Democrats – chastened by years of defeat – seem to be living in dread fear that Karl Rove and President Bush will show up in the Rose Garden on election eve with Osama bin Laden in chains. (Although, all politics aside, that would be a good thing.) Or, as Democratic fatalists surmise, maybe the “surprise” will be some lucky event that the Bush team didn’t anticipate at all.

Something, for instance, like the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in favor of equal rights for gay civil unions.

I have no idea whether this development will be pivotal to GOP prospects on Nov. 7, given the tough national political environment that is dominated by the Bush administration missteps in Iraq. But this ruling – bestowing full legal rights on same-sex partners, in accordance with language in the state constitution – may well prompt some of the GOP’s disenchanted Christian conservative voters to rethink the notion of staying home on election day.

Many of these voters – who are crucial to Republican prospects in a number of key House races, in states such as Ohio, as well as in the South – have been soured by the GOP leadership’s failure to enact their agenda and to move speedily in the Mark Foley scandal. But now, for the first time in many weeks, a story has come along to remind them of what they passionately oppose: “activist judges” who imperil traditional morality. And the GOP will be eager to remind them that Republicans, if allowed to retain their majorities on Nov. 7, will continue their longstanding crusade against “activist judges.”

It should be noted that the “activist” terminology doesn’t apply so neatly to the New Jersey high court. All seven judges, Democratic and Republican appointees alike, ruled in favor of equal rights for civil unions. Three of the judges even believe, in accordance with their reading of the state constitution, that the institution of marriage should now be opened gay people – and all three are Republican appointees. But such nuances will not survive in a hot political climate. Christian conservative voters now have a fresh reason to vote, especially in the key states that could decide House and Senate control; as the Family Research Council, a religious right group, declared last night in an email which lamented the New Jersey ruling, “It should be clear to every voter that these elections count.”

Indeed, anti-gay marriage referenda – designed in the first place to lure these voters to the polls – are on the ballot next month in eight states, including Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, and Virginia. I cite those four, because they are hosting potentially pivotal House and Senate races. The Republicans’ bid to hang onto the Senate may well hinge on whether they can keep their seats in Tennessee and Virginia, and Democrats in those states will not welcome any development that could stoke religious right turnout.

On the other hand, this may not rise to the level of an anti-Democratic surprise. Anti-gay marriage referenda helped galvanize the GOP base in 2004, but it is not 2004 anymore. Which brings us to the next item:

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President Bush did little at his press conference yesterday to reassure most Americans (particularly independent swing voters, most of whom have abandoned him) that he has a fresh road map for success in Iraq. He said two noteworthy things, both of which are at variance with factual reality.

First, he insisted that “absolutely, we’re winning” in Iraq, and even the unlimited space available for blogging is insufficient for me to list all the evidence to the contrary, most of it provided by U.S. military authorities in his own government. Suffice it to say that his “absolutely, we’re winning” line is flatly contradicted by a new report issued by the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace, an organization that is helping to sponsor the current reexamination of Iraq policy co-helmed by Bush family loyalist James Baker.

This report - entitled "Scenarios for the Insurgency in Iraq" - urges the Bush administration to “scale back” its lofty goals in Iraq, and establish, as one its top priorities, this more realistic objective: "Avoidance of disaster.” In fact, contrary to the claim that we're "winning," the report has a name for one of the possible future scenarios: "Descent into hell."

Second, Bush said at the press conference yesterday that he would like to see the Iraqis establish some "benchmarks," some performance timetables, so that they can demonstrate measurable progress to the American people. But within hours of his remarks, he was pointedly rebuked by the Iraqi prime minister whom he has repeatedly lauded. Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said he would not let the Americans push him around: “This is a government of the people’s will, and no one has the right to set a timetable for it.”

So, let’s review: Bush would like to see some benchmarks, yet he can’t insist because the Iraqis are now a free people and he doesn’t want to be seen as seeking to big foot these free people, yet at the same time, “America’s patience is not unlimited.”

Nor did Bush clear up these contradictions when he met separately yesterday with some hand-picked conservative journalists. Here are key excerpts:

"They were asking me today, 'put out benchmarks.' Well, it's a sovereign government. You just don't put out benchmarks. You work with the sovereign government to develop a way forward that's got enough pressure on them to move, but at the same time, they're comfortable with. Look, if we wanted to, we could put so much pressure on the Maliki government to topple it. What good would that do? We could put so many demands on them, it might satisfy people in the short-term, but it would defeat the purpose for victory in Iraq.....Part of the benchmark is precisely to create that sense of purpose for this government to have something to aim for....But I believe they're getting more crisp in their decision-making. That's one of the interesting things about Maliki, he appears to be a decision-maker. He doesn't like it when he's pushed too hard."

Part of the benchmark is precisely to create that sense of purpose for this government to have something to aim for....Quite a tongue-twister. We're three and a half years into this war, a big election is looming, but the president's only assurance to conservative voters is that he hopes the Iraqis can create a "sense of purpose."

The other night, a CBS correspondent summed up the White House predicament this way: "On the other hand, they read the polls, and they know that voters want a change in Iraq policy. But as far as any significant change, a White House official tells me, do not expect to see anything significant prior to Election Day. Quoting, 'You're not going to see anything before November 8th. It would be political suicide, and Karl Rove would never allow it.'"

In other words, the White House thinks it would suicide to dramatically change course and thus admit that it has erred on the war. But, more importantly, check out that quote, "Karl Rove would never allow it." That is a stark admission that, Bush policy is hostage to the political calendar, as decreed by the strategist-in-chief.

No wonder anxious Republicans see Iraq as a millstone. It’s also worth noting that the lame duck Senate Majority leader, Bill Frist, told a New Hampshire newspaper the other day that Republicans should “get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues and not on Iraq and the terror issue.”

What a difference four years can make. Back in 2002, word for word, that was precisely the strategy that Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle urged his troops to adopt. Change the subject, he said - and the Democrats got hammered for that in the elections. Then, as now, foreign policy was dominant. But this time, it’s the other party that wants to talk about it.

On the air

No morning post today. Instead, I am slated to be the guest political commentator on Radio Times, the morning show on Philadelphia's NPR station, WHYY (90.9 FM). Topic: the '06 midterm elections. Some Democratic and Republican spokesmen will be joining the show by phone. I'll be in the studio. The segment runs from 10 to 11 a.m.

When imperiled, play the race card

I have long wondered how the Republicans would behave if it became apparent, during the final sprint to election day, that they were truly in danger of losing the House or Senate or both. To borrow a cat analogy, if the Republicans felt cornered, how viciously would they bare their claws?

Well, now we know. Just take a look at what’s happening these days in Tennessee. Basically, they're suggesting that the black Democratic senatorial candidate should be defeated because he might be attractive to white women.

The Republicans’ control of the Senate may well hinge on whether they can hang onto their ferociously contested seat in Tennessee. With the retirement of Bill Frist, the party is pinning its hopes on candidate Bob Corker; the problem is, Corker is being seriously challenged (and even surpassed in some opinion polls) by Democrat Harold Ford Jr. – who, if elected, would become the first African-American senator from the old South.

Which brings us to the present moment, and the GOP’s decision to play the race card.

It is beyond dispute that the national GOP, in recent years, has repeatedly sought to expand its appeal to African-American voters; chairman Ken Mehlman has tirelessly pitched the party to black audiences. He has sought to convince blacks that the GOP was renouncing its old “southern strategy” (a term coined during the Richard Nixon era); under this 30-year strategy, the GOP successfully invited southern whites into the fold by stoking fear of blacks. As Mehlman told one black gathering last year, “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

But now that the Republicans have their backs to the wall in Tennessee, racial polarization appears to be a viable tactic.

In recent days, Mehlman’s Republican National Committee has been running a TV ad (see “Too Hot for Corker”) which suggests that one of Ford’s hobbies is interracial sex. The ad mostly features “real people” who think that Ford, if elected, would vote to raise taxes and try to take away hunters’guns. That’s standard political fare. But the star of the ad, clearly, is the bare-shouldered, and implicitly naked, blonde white bimbo who squeals that she met “Harold” at a Playboy party. She also gets the last word; after the closing slogan (“Harold Ford. He’s just not right”), the white girl returns. She vamps for the camera, suggestively coos, “Harold! Call me!,” and finishes with a wink.

With polls indicating that the Tennessee race may hinge on the voting decisions of white rural voters, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that this ad was not designed to appeal to the better angels of their nature.

The Republican National Committee message – “vote for Bob Corker because we have conjured the image of Harold Ford consorting with white women” – is a throwback to the strategy once employed in North Carolina by Jesse Helms, when the incumbent conservative senator was locked in a tight race with black Democrat Harvey Gantt. A Helms TV ad played on the fear that blacks were taking jobs from white people; the ad showed a white man's hands tearing up a job rejection letter. And as the election tally later demonstrated, the ad worked.

William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine, mentioned the Helms ad in passing the other day, while he was condemning the Tennessee bimbo ad. Cohen said on CNN: “It reminded me of what happened in North Carolina with Harvey Gantt, a purely overt racist approach…..It’s - to me, at least as I watch that (bimbo ad), is a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment…And I think (the Republicans) ought to stop it. I think that they have a candidate, and discuss the – the issues on the merits, and not get into that kind of personal type of an attack.”

GOP chairman Mehlman’s response is noteworthy. When quizzed about the ad by a visibly outraged Tim Russert, Mehlman said that he didn’t think the bimbo insinuations were racist. He said, "I think that there is nothing more repugnant in our society than people who try to divide Americans along racial lines. And I would denounce any ad that I felt did....I think it's a fair ad."

He also said that he had no control over the ad anyway - even though the ad itself tells the viewer that the Republican National Committee is “responsible for its contents.” Apparently, he is right in the technical sense; under arcane and complicated campaign finance rules, in which campaign lawyers help erect legal “firewalls,” the creation of that ad was done as an “independent expenditure” that did not require Mehlman’s official OK.

So here's where things stand: Mehlman says he's fine with the ad and can't pull it down. Meanwhile, Bob Corker, the GOP candidate, is calling the ad "tacky," and tells CNN that, while he has had no role in the ad whatsoever, nevertheless says that people in his campaign have talked to people in Mehlman's office about taking it down...although he can't remember who has talked to whom. And then there is White House spokesman Tony Snow, who insists that the ad is not tacky or racist ("There's always an attempt, when you've got an African-American candidate, to attribute something to the race card"), but nevertheless told MSNBC last night that all responsibility rests with Corker "He can get it pulled. That oughta take care of it."

One could still argue, of course, that Ken Mehlman - as spokesman for the national party - is still free to condemn such an ad, and free to reiterate his 2005 statement that his plans for a big-tent GOP leave no room for strategies that seek to polarize the voting public along racial lines.

But that won’t happen, because the Republicans are fighting to hang onto their power with the clock ticking down, and therefore all forms of hardball – including the old reliables – are now in play. Mehlman’s renunciation of the old GOP southern strategy is apparently a luxury that the GOP can ill afford in its current moment of peril.