16 grassroots sportsmen organizations are asking Congressman Rehberg to rethink his recent vote to cut the Land and Water Conservation Fund by 80%. What sort of lands are we talking about? From the groups' press releases:
In Montana over the past 45 years, LWCF has provided approximately $408 million to help protect clean water, wildlife habitat, and working landscapes, and provide access for hunting and fishing. Thanks to LWCF investments, Montanans can enjoy the Flathead and Gallatin National Forests, Red Rocks and Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuges, Bighorn Canyon, Meeteetse Spires, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Swan Valley, the Rocky Mountain Front, as well as close-to-home recreational opportunities across the state.
Mark this as yet another in a long recent line of strange attempts by Montana's lone Congressman to play every side of conservation issues.
For example, after introducing legislation that would have just said that the ESA doesn't apply to gray wolves (a much further-reaching solution than the Tester rider, which simply held that a previous Dept of Interior solution fit within Congress's intent, contrary to a court ruling), Rehberg had the temerity to criticize Tester's much more restrained solution for not allowing access to courts (pretty reasonable given that the Tester bill clarified legislative intent, not calling any Constitutional principles into question).
Of course, for Rehberg, of all people, to be complaining about lack of access to courts is unbelievable. The jester of a Congressman has made big news for suing the city of Billings for not making his dead grass priority #1 during the 4th of July but also has introduced bills to restrict normal citizens' access to the courts over legitimate claims.
Consider this my standard, irregular rant for Left in the West and your latest reminder that Congressman Rehberg is a lousy public servant. Smart money says that tomorrow he'll be taking credit for hunting access he's denying today.
Yesterday, we asked if Congressman Rehberg really meant it when he said that subsidies to big oil were really on the table when it came to addressing the deficit. Asked and answered. Just now, Rehberg voted to maintain giant tax breaks for the world's biggest oil companies, at a time of record profits (and gas prices).
Two predictions:
Montana newspapers won't have time to cover this on their news pages since reporting is underfunded.
Montana opinion pages will give him space to talk about how he firmly believes everything must be on the table, despite all evidence being to the contrary.
Congressman Rehberg keeps saying that oil and gas subsidies are on the table for cuts. He said earlier when ThinkProgress picked it up. He said it again during a CityClubMissoula meeting. Here it is:
Here's some good news: tomorrow, Rehberg will have a chance to prove that he's willing to take on the oil and gas industry. Note that I said "take on" not "take the money of," which has been his record historically.
(It looks like Bill Owens won NY-23, and this post is a nice reminder that all elections are local, something to keep in mind as folks rush to frame yesterday's outcomes to national trends... - promoted by Jay Stevens)
I know Doug Hoffman- we worked on alumni stuff at North Country Community College together. He is a nice enough guy - and I can only imagine that he is quite caught up in a maelstrom this past week. He is a fiscal conservative and he probably is pro-life...but my sense is that he's just a guy in a little town who never got into politics but just agreed to step up because he didn't care for Dede Scozzofava...
I also know Bill Owens. What's interesting about him is that he served in the same law office as State Senator Ron Stafford - who was probably the longest serving and most beloved politician to ever serve that part of NYS. Ron was chair of the Senate Finance Committee - a guy who had the uncanny ability to remember your family's names and circumstances and always took the time to speak to you (not at you). Ron was a Republican with a big, gentle heart and a larger soul. Bill could not have worked in that office without some of that spirit rubbing off. What's more, people in the district will associate Bill with Ron and that cannot help but be a very good thing.
Even my brother (who is a pretty conservative guy) wrote to me (the bleeding-heart-liberal of the family) to ask my opinion on this race...
I can't every remember my brother asking MY opinion on anything related to politics.
So, you can be sure that voters are confused and conflicted and the added national attention to this race will not help things. I expect many will stay home to avoid the whole mess...
Chuck Johnson has a story this morning on the oddness of Democrats winning the land board unanimously while losing control of the legislature.
The explanation offered in the article -- that leg race outcomes don't correlate with upticket support or statewide candidates -- is a pretty incomplete argument. It is offered both by our Governor and by a poli sci professor from UM. Bottom line, they say that because of the small size of Montana's House districts1, voters make their decisions differently.
Looking at the data, though, this is a stretch. Down-ballot voting closely tracks up-ballot voting in every county I've looked at so far. Dem performance typically runs a few points ahead of Obama's performance. I'm not looking at Baucus's or Schweitzer's numbers (or Rehberg's for that matter), because those races were just in their own categories this year. Now, this isn't because Steve Bullock convinced people to vote for their local Democrat. It is because most people vote a straight ticket or something very close to a straight ticket, breaking only very infrequently (and my early analysis suggests split ticket voting declined this year).
Also worth noting for a variety of reasons: Democrats won the popular vote statewide in House races. The count is 228,888 to 219,490, with a hair over 4,000 scattered to third party, independent, and write-in candidates.
Note that this means that Dems in the legislature outperformed Linda McCulloch's statewide numbers (but also pretty solidly underperformed the rest of the Dem Tier B candidates).
Now, this doesn't mean that Democrats win the Montana House. Legislative races are the World Series, not the Super Bowl. You don't just have to get the votes -- you also have to get them in the right places.
Perhaps ironically, the more local races get, the less information voters are using to make their decisions and the more likely they appear to be to revert to partisan inclinations. That appears to be an especially strong impulse this year.
1 Note, though that Montana's house districts aren't the smallest in the nation. That prize belongs to NH, where its 400 House members each represent roughly 3,000 people apiece.
Just came off the doors, back at the office, prepping for the next two days.
We're at 50 hours 'til the clock runs out -- and less than two days until polls start to close in some states.
Polls show McCain may be tightening the race up a bit nationally. We'll see. I'm still very optimistic, but now would be a stupid time for anyone to rest on their laurels.
It was about an hour later than this time four years ago that I realized John Kerry was definitely going to lose. The networks weren't calling states that were supposed to be landslides per exit polls. Something was wrong. I was running a phone bank in downtown Missoula and by the time I was done at 7:45, I knew the White House was Bush's for four more years.
I don't know for certain what will happen in the next 48 hours, but I know that anyone who cares about the country will wish they had done something if things go wrong and will be full of pride if they help and things go right.
Doors are where it is at, people. I haven't given the Obama campaign a minute of my time cause I'm focused elsewhere, but they've got a damn good operation and will be easy for any supporter to get linked in with.
While everyone else polls McCain/Obama and finds a close race, Daily Kos goes the extra mile to find McCain is vulnerable in 2010 to a challenge from Janet Napolitano. By "vulnerable," I mean he'd be lucky to survive.
Honestly, that in a nutshell is why Daily Kos is the site that it is. A lot of smart political writers out there. Markos pulls himself out of the meta and does brilliant crap like this.
I'd be real surprised if that poll doesn't work its way into a narrative of whether -- with an impending loss in the Presidential race and a tough re-elect ahead -- McCain's political career is about to come to an end.
Nothing like a death narrative for the last four days of a campaign.
Update -- This is good news for McCain's team, though. They've got some form of job security. While everyone else in GOP politics will be scrambling for pay soon, they'll have a difficult re-elect campaign to work.
Everyone spending time on doors or phones, what are your stories?
We're still finding some hard R's out there, but surprisingly, we're finding a ton of crossovers. Traditional Rs who are voting D, sometimes in a lot of races.
CQ reports this morning that election administrators nationwide are awash in new registrations and that voters are likely to face long lines at polling places, despite record levels of participation through early voting.
If there is a year that even more than 2000 and 2004 makes the case for increased funding for election administration in America, it will be this one.
Just note the numbers:
A number of key swing states around the country are reporting significant increases in voter registrations, an early indicator of how many people are likely to vote come Election Day. Among battleground states with the biggest gains in voter registration are Nevada, up 30 percent, Virginia, up 11 percent and North Carolina, up 9 percent.
[...]
Ohio's Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland and its suburbs that has a history of election problems, has seen a 10 percent increase in registered voters compared to 2004 and St. Louis, Missouri is seeing the highest registration levels in a quarter century.
Overall, 13 battleground states have already received 3.4 million new registrations as of Oct. 14, compared to 1.8 million new registrations in 2004, according to Laura Quinn, chief executive of Catalist, which tracks voter registration for progressive organizations.
This is certainly an issue in Montana. Since the primary in June, 31,000 net new voters have been added to the rolls. But this burden isn't shared equally among counties. Missoula and Gallatin each saw a 5,500 increase, while the larger Yellowstone County saw a 4,000 increase.
This was one of the major problems with the scurrilous voter challenges from the Montana GOP that caused a number of local Republicans who have some understanding of election administration upset -- they know that these hard-working county officials are already deluged and that dumping new work on their plates for ridiculous reasons was just mean in its effect if not in intent.
So here's the question -- why can't we effectively fund election administration in this country? It's a line item that not a ton of groups fight to increase, but after seeing these sorts of problems election after election, surely we can agree that funding upfront to avoid the problems later is worth it.
Consider it this way, both liberals and conservatives by their own arguments have pretty good reasons to support increased funding of election administration:
For conservatives who worry about both voter fraud and voter registration fraud, increased administrative capacity increases the chances of oddities being caught. That includes everything from Mickey Mouse being registered to vote to having time to make sure individuals' former election jurisdictions are notified when they move their registrations. At this point, many of these problems are capacity problems.
It's also no amazing feat of logic to think through the fact that election fraud of any sort is the sort of thing we're better off preventing than responding to. Some things, like larceny, can be handled just fine with reactive measures to provide restitution to victims and penalties to criminals. But with election fraud, you want to prevent the act from ever taking place because you can't provide restitution in almost any case. Additionally, a heightened chance of getting caught is a better disincentive to committing a crime than is a stiffer penalty, according to sociology research. So the focus should be on catching perpetrators, not simply on extending jail sentences.
Note: I write all of this believing both that voter registration fraud is very rare and that out-and-out voter fraud is exceptionally rare in this country.
For liberals the key concerns with voting right now is that sometimes counties just can't process the deluge of information. If a county can't process your voter registration by Election Day, you can't vote in many states. If your polling location gets short changed on voting machines and turnout surges, you get to wait in line for an extra hour. You want to increase election participation? Increase election appropriations.
John Stossel, who sports a very amazingly terrible mustache, recently did a special report on whether new voters were informed enough to be trusted with ballots.
My friends at the Oregon Bus Project went and found middle-aged voters in a high-end shopping mall and found that, much like Stossel's new voters, they rarely knew who Joe Biden or Justice Ginsburg was in a photo. Even worse, none of them know who Mos Def is (!):
Obviously, this is all a bunch of crap. And for a member of the media to spend time talking about the uninformed public is borderline hilarious. Hell -- I think I'd be able to name Ruth Bader Ginsburg on sight, but one of the funny things about the Supreme Court is that they still don't allow photos or videos to be taken during proceedings. Why would a typical American recognize all 9 Justices on sight?
Bottom-line, being able to ID prominent political leaders in a photo lineup or knowing exactly how many states or Senators there are is not very relevant information for voting, even if some of us consider it baseline knowledge.
Democracy works in part on the basis that we reach acceptable group decisions by allowing individuals to make decisions based on what they care about. For John "Full Mustache/Empty Head" Stossel to presume he knows better than others what the proper knowledge they should have to make a decision in an election is utterly ridiculous.
It's like insisting that all Americans should have memorized MPG statistics before purchasing cars. Fuel efficiency is something I care about and possibly even a good community goal to be reached through raising standards. But it may not be particularly relevant for someone who has different needs and means than me.
Trust a libertarian to fail to understand how the wisdom of crowds works.
So while I've been a longtime skeptic of Obama's chances to win Montana come November, I wanted to look a bit deeper into the R2K numbers from Daily Kos on the race. That poll showed McCain winning the state by 13.
In fact, it even showed McCain winning the youth vote in Montana by 5.
So I went to some national polling to look at how the white youth vote is going elsewhere to try to get a handle on whether it would make sense for Montana youth to be going McCain (the under 30 vote in Montana is probably about 90% white, a bit more diverse than the state as a whole, but not much).
So I checked out Rock the Vote's latest polling. They have white youth going Obama 48-36. Democracy Corps has slightly older numbers that show white youth going Obama by the wider margin of 46-45.
Both of the polling firms in question are Democratic firms, but they are very respected Democratic firms. How to account for such disparity? While subsamples have higher margins of error, so that could be part of it.
But keeping in mind that the Montana youth vote is 90% white, is it likely that youth in Montana are really going more for McCain than white youth nationally? I'd doubt it. Especially since Montana's white population tends to be more big-D Democratic than whites nationally (I think this is typical of homogenous white states).
Now that homogeneity could also mean that we're seeing a racial effect here. This isn't a Bradley effect, mind you, it's people being openly racialized in their voting.
All that said, I think this subsample throws some questions on the 13 point margin.
Bottom line in my book:
I don't think Obama is really down 13 in Montana.
I also still think McCain ultimately wins Montana.
Take all of this with a grain of salt because subsamples are just that -- subsamples.
OMG! Bob Kelleher has (had?) a zipper problem?!?!?!?!?!
Saying he's concerned that Democratic Sen. Max Baucus may use personal smears in the campaign, Republican candidate Bob Kelleher laid out his life's faults Wednesday - and threw a few political punches of his own.
Kelleher, a longtime Democrat who surprisingly won the Republican U.S. Senate primary last month, said Baucus "can't beat me on the issues" and may resort to personal attacks to win. Kelleher referred to Baucus' last re-election race in 2002, when the Montana Democratic Party ran television ads showing embarrassing old footage of Republican candidate Mike Taylor. Taylor dropped out of the race, saying the ads suggested that he was gay.
To that end, Kelleher said he'd beat Baucus to the punch and lay bare his personal shortcomings:
As a 23-year-old man, Kelleher was a friar in a Carmelite monastery and 18 months away from ordination into the priesthood. He dropped out, Kelleher said, because he couldn't handle the vow of chastity.
This could be fascinating. Barack Obama's campaign is pledging to make a play in Montana, according to a major story in today's New York Times.
Senator Barack Obama's general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states - from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana - as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.
Montana gets called out by name twice in the piece, once again later while noting that some of the states "might ultimately be too red to turn blue," while noting that the strategy could serve to force John McCain to expend far more scarce resources holding on to his base.
Obama's campaign is eyeing as much as a 25-swing state strategy, actively running in half the states in the country -- with large field campaigns and paid media. On top of that, my understanding is that the campaign will have at least one office open in all fifty states.
This kind of campaign provides three big advantages to the campaign itself -- in addition to possibly providing a rising tide to life all Democratic boats:
A campaign on the ground everywhere can shift its balance more nimbly in response to changing events. Bob Barr and Ralph Nader make the South or the Rocky Mountain states more competitive? Move in resources.
Real operations in a state will likely at least pay for themselves through increased fundraising from non-swing states. People engaged in the campaign, low-dollar giving, and t-shirt purchases alone can probably cover the costs of the offices and staff themselves, while bringing in more money that can cover operations in the core states.
Running to be the President of the United States, especially with Obama's post-red/blue-state dynamic requires running to seek votes in all fifty states. The move amplifies Obama's messages -- and can take advantage of the very real informal social networks that often cross state boundaries.
Equally important, John McCain just can't compete in terms of resources. So Obama is opening a massive number of fronts, potentially forcing McCain where to steer his few resources.
In other words, it is a game of RISK and John McCain is trying to hold Asia while Obama assaults from North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Good luck.
So what does this mean? That Obama will win Montana's three electoral votes? That's unlikely, according to both the CW and excellent prognosticators at 538. Or it is only as improbable as an electoral landslide for Obama.
But this will still be the most competitive race we've witnessed in Montana since 1992. And with Barr and Nader in the race, we just may see all kinds of activity.
More data from Mason-Dixon this fine morning. Schweitzer is way up on Roy Brown: 55-30. That number is unchanged in the last six months.
Schweitzer's approve/disapprove number stands at 52-23. Brown's is 21-15.
Another friendly number for Schweitzer is the right-track/wrong-track indicator. 73 percent of Montanans are upset with the direction of the U.S. Only 17 percent say we're headed in the right-direction.
But Montana itself is a 180 turn. 60 percent think the state is on the right track. Only 25 percent think we're on the wrong track.
The only bad news in the polling so far for the Democrats is in legislative numbers where the GOP has a lead: 43-37. Independents are breaking 29-25 for Republicans right now for legislature.
Fresh from my in-box, 10 supervolunteers for the Obama campaign will be meeting the Senator tonight just before the rally in Bozeman. Their profiles are after the jump. Congrats to these volunteers and a tip of the hat to all people who roll up their sleeves and do the hard work -- the door knocks, the phone calls, the office hours, the organizing -- of politics.
