Good morning everyone,
I woke up to a decent amount of snowfall which is a bit of a pain because a recent move left me without an ice scraper for the car. (I swear I took one along with a shovel, where did they go?) For those of you in the sunnier parts of the country we have invented an entire industry of snow removing equipment to ensure our bodies and property are secure in this long stretch of freezing cold weather.
Anyway here is your roundup:
Michelle Mittelstadt and Eun Kyung Kim write in the Houston Chroniclelooking into politics not as usual concerning recently elected (and defeated) Shelley Sekula-Gibbs’ who won a special election vote to replace Tom Delay in the House until January but lost the election to keep the seat when the new Congress starts its session. Not long after coming to Congress a good chunk of her staff walked out for mysterious reasons and many see her hopes of an ‘08 run for the seat as lost.
Ronald Brownstein writes about the changing electoral map in the L.A. Times.
William H. Calhoun writes about the lack of conservatives potentially running as Republican’s in 2008 and looks at the potential for third-party conservative candidates in the Magic City Morning Star.
David A. Lieb from the Associated Press looks at some 2006 results from Missouri and how it played against conventional voting wisdom.
Programming Note
This week starts the weekly Sunday morning The Chris Matthews Show special series Eight for ‘08 where Matthews assembles a panel to look at the candidates in-depth. This week on the list was John McCain with a bit of Giuliani. This is a really interesting series that weighs the positives and negatives of each candidate but unfortunately for the uber political geeks they don’t podcast or sell the show online so its kind of hard to spread the show to you. I am adding a copy to my personal vault so I can go back and see what they were right and wrong about but it would be nice if more news programs offered up their shows in new mediums.
The RoundupÂÂ
The New York Timesbrings together the thoughts of some political heavyweights to offer Giuliani some free advice on how to run for the presidency. The Timesalso writes about Giuliani’s intentions and the process of setting up an exploratory committee. Reports are that Gov. Mitt Romney is not racing to setup an exploratory committee or start a run in the near future. He is taking his time and looking into his options.
George Will writes about NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg whom he says heavily considered a run for the presidency as a third party candidate but has decided against it. (The column is a great insight into Bloomberg himself
The Philadelphia Inquireris reporting that Republican Senator Rick Santorum who was recently defeated for reelection will not seek the presidency in 2008.
Democratic Senator and potential 2008 Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been invited to the ultra conservative evangelical Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. which reportedly boasts an attendance of 20,000. Obama will visit on World AIDS Day to talk about HIV/AIDS and has reportedly struck a friendship with Pastor Rick Warren who co-founded the chuck with his wife who are vocal advocates of patients living with the disease.
Straight Talk Saturday
In John McCain news his campaign has hired Liberty Universities debate coach Brett O’Donnell as an adviser.
The Senator gave a glimpse of his 2008 strategy calling for “Common Seense Conservatism” at a GOPAC dinner. He then talked about a new commitment toward imited government and the rule of law at a Federalist Society dinner. Both show the potential for a 2008 bid that will speak to traditional conservative values during his upcoming campaign. Nara Liasson reports on both for NPR.
The Boston Globeis reporting that Governor Mit Romney, a likely Republican candidate in 2008, has hired ad maker Alex Castellanos as a political consultant to work on his image. Castellanos has worked for President Bush, Bob Dole and Jesse Helmes in the past and is noted for his reliance on very negative campaign ads.
Greg Giroux looks ahead in the New York Times at the 2008 Senate races.
InformationWeeklooks at the database used by the Democrats during the 2006 mid-terms.
Political Wire reports that 7 House elections from the mid-terms are still being decided.
Finally the Des Moines Register is reporting that former Wisconsin Governor and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson will likely enter the presidential race as a Republican.
- Quick polling data for today. The Poughkeepsie Post reports on some polling data saying that in NYS Senator Hillary Clinton is the favorite amongst Democrats for the nomination in 2008 while Former NY mayor Giuliani had virtually the same support 1/3rd of those polled, as Arizona Senator John McCain. Though it should be remembered McCain has been in the presidential limelight a lot more these past few months.
Trailing in the polling was outgoing NYS Governor Pataki who only had 7% of the support. In a match up between Clinton and Giuliani the poll has Clinton by a wide margin, however two earlier polls showed different numbers. This is coming off a landslide election win for Clinton so in the months to come those numbers could well even out.
As for some polling issues there is actually a pretty interesting debate happening about polling at the moment which strikes at the heart of big media vs. Web and independence. Many traditional pollsters and newspaper critics and the like aren’t very happy about the way online poll watchers like electoral-vote.com and pollster.com tabulate their data.
Basically these online sites use public polling data, take the newest polls, average out the numbers, then use somewhat similar methodology to make a prediction about winners. It’s a pretty basic, somewhat common sense and logical way to do things. It also isn’t a) the only way and b) in my opinion it demystifies polling data to a level most people can follow as opposed to how it is often presented in more traditional press.
Most important of all it is giving traditional poll watchers a bit of a run for their money.
Granted it has been a slow two news days BUT if you have had the television on at all in the last twenty-four hours plus you would know that Giuliani is seeking the presidency. (Though technically he won’t announce for a bit.) What is interesting is how quickly the media jumped onto the “It will be McCain vs. Hillary” bandwagon and now that other candidates are announcing they have had to shift their attention.
Almost every report about Giuliani has included a breakdown of how he matches up against McCain. I can imagine that the same will happen with all potential Democrats against Hillary. I don’t entirely know where the McCain/Hillary wisdom started but it seems to have seeped into the entire media machine. My guess is the Giuliani news will carry for another couple of days and then turn back to McCain/Hillary.
My favorite breakdown thus far has been from the Washington Post which said of the other potential Republican candidates:
Dick Armey, Sam Brownback, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter and George Pataki have all visited Iowa. But their candidacies would need a series of plane crashes and assassinations imaginable only in Hollywood to move to the front of the pack.
You cannot put things more plainly then that. Still there is a lot of political maneuvering to come. Giuliani and McCain represent the centrist vote that turned out in 2006 but not the Religious vote that turned out in 2004 for the Republicans. Will it matter? Will the attempts by each to play to the right work? Will Duncan Hunter fever sweep the nation? Only time will tell.
Politics & Opinions
Glenn Thursh in the Detroit News Onlineasks if Senator Barack Obama is truly ready for 2008?
Katherine Mangu-Ward looks at the failure of the predictions markets to call the 2006 election for Reason Magazine.
Former Mayor of NY Rudy Giuliani moved a step closer to running for president today when it was announced he filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc. to start raising money to run. Giuliani became known as “America’s Mayor” after 9/11 and is seen as a moderate Republican who has supported rights for gay couples, gun control and being pro-choice.
Giuliani has also run into problems in the past over issues in his personal life.
In spite of this he has enjoyed high rankings in polling over the last few years and has spent much of his time since leaving office as Mayor of NY because of term limits promoting and campaigning for Republican candidates, potentially sowing a good deal of support across the country.
Luckily today has been a somewhat slow news wise. Yesterday Senator Joe Biden announced he is interested in a run for the Democratic nomination in 2008 however he also said an exploratory committee wouldn’t be announced until early in 2007. Democratic Senator Russ Feingold announced he would not run and John McCain is waiting for the official announcement.
Not much else at the moment to report.
Site Related
One of my plans for the rest of 2006 and start of 2007 is to consume as much written material directly from the candidates as possible. Since it looks as though John McCain is going to run and is at the moment in the lead when it comes to polling for potential runs in 2008, I have begun with his memoirs. The first on my list is Faith of My Fathers which details McCain’s life up to his release from a Vietnamese POW camp and emphasizes the lessons McCain learned from his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy.
I plan on parsing information about each candidate from their books but in addition am using them to get a better sense of the people. When it comes to voting for a president there is often more then vote histories or campaign slogans. There are people behind the decisions that need to be made and the more we can all learn about those people, the better we can make a judgment.
With that said it looks like a LOT of people are going to be running in 2008 which means a lot of reading for this Geek.
One final note, I started adding content to the Resource section. Just links to polling sites at the moment. There is so much to do and though there are two years it feels like so little time to do it.
John McCain said on Meet the Press today he will wait until after the holidays to make a formal announcement on whether or not he will run. His team is following the legal guidelines needed to continue to raise money, including the possibility of setting up an exploratory committee, but no official announcement yet.
Meanwhile another potential Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter praised the service of outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld saying he did “a great job for our country.” Hunter is currently the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee but will lose his position when the Democrats take office in January 2006.
The Politics of 2008
Bill Lambrecht of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has some thoughts on the move to moderate candidates in 2006 and its potential to shape the 2008 race.
The 2008 election isn’t one for just the president but for a number of key Senate seats as well. Today Arkansas’ Senator Mark Pryor a Democrat announced he will seek re-election. He is the son of former Senator David H. Pryor and interestingly he is ranked the least powerful Senator by Congress.org.
It is being reported by the Associated Press that Senator Barack Obama is still mulling over a potential bid for the presidency in 2008 as a Democrat. Meanwhile Tom Vilsack is reported by the Washingtonpost to have announced his candidacy early because of the need for fund raising. Vilsack is considered a long shot candidate for the presidency.
