Often biased, always thoughtful.

The Coleman campaign’s ridiculous challenges

As I’ve already mentioned today, MPR has a great feature with pictures of challenged ballots. As should be expected, the Coleman campaign has made some outrageous challenges, proving once again that they don’t respect our votes. Check these out:

Apparently, the tiny dot in Dean Barkley’s oval is more important than the completely filled-in Franken oval.

Incompetent? Yes. Difficult to figure out intent? Hardly.

Norm, when will you decide that Minnesotans’ voices need to be heard?

Is Coleman the answer to Republicans’ problems?

Wow. A true sign that the GOP is lost in the wilderness.

On the chance that Coleman doesn’t win the recount in the MN Senate race (which is becoming more likely by the day), some think he’d be an excellent choice for chair of the Republican National Committee:

…a Republican colleague of Mr. Coleman’s on Wednesday floated his name as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“Somebody like Norm Coleman would be great,” said the senator, speaking to a small group of reporters at a Capitol Hill steakhouse on the condition of anonymity.

He’d be a “great” choice to lead the Republican party? A man who always makes the politically expedient choice, who changes his identity every year or two, and whose convictions still aren’t clear after six years in the Senate? Coleman would be one of the worst possible choices. He’d just reinforce the Republican brand of dishonesty and political gamesmanship.

But please, don’t let me stop you. I’d love to see Norm as RNC chair — especially because it would mean he’s no longer representing me.

[via MyDD]

Why we needed a recount

MPR has a great piece showing some of the ballots that have been challenged so far. This is a great primer on exactly why we need this recount. Our enlightened state law says that voter intent determines who to count a vote for. Our electronic vote-scanning machines are a good shortcut, but this is not a test on whether voters can operate a scantron machine. In a close election, such as this one, we go through by hand and figure out who each voter intended to vote for.

Here’s an example of a clear vote for Franken that was not counted by the voting machines:

Read more »

Franken makes big gains on day 1 of the recount

More accurately, he’s made big gains compared to the size of the Coleman lead. Everything seems magnified when the race is this close.

Yesterday, Franken gained a net 43 votes, to decrease the Coleman lead to 172. About 15 percent of the votes have been recounted. If we extrapolate — and take this with a grain of salt, because we really shouldn’t extrapolate — Franken should have enough votes to win. By my math, he’d end up leading by 63 votes.

There’s one catch, though: challenged ballots. So far, Franken has challenged 106 ballots, and Coleman has challenged 115. How these challenges are resolved will almost definitely decide the winner of the Senate race.

Morning podcast: November 20

This morning on the podcast:

• Obama transition update
• The “Big 3″ don’t deserve a bailout, but we have to give them something
• Senate update — only 2 seats still undecided!

Listen:

Podcast intro music by Daniele Torelli

2 liberals who are smarter than me, and their thoughts on Lieberman

I know I promised I had given my last thought. I have. These are some other people’s thoughts; go check out these posts from around the liberal blogosphere.

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Good idea: Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Over 100 military leaders are calling for its repeal.

I’ve never been able to understand the logic of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I disagree with the anti-gay marriage crowd, but I can at least understand why they feel the way they do. I don’t have the slightest idea how it could make sense, though, to throw gays out of the military. In fact, I don’t see what sexual preference has to do with serving in the military at all.

So far as I can tell, here’s what DADT really boils down to: Our soldiers are too unprofessional to do their job without regard for each other’s sexual orientation. There’s simply no other interpretation that makes sense to me; if you can better explain the point of this ridiculous policy, please do so in the comments.

So, is it true? Are our soldiers really incapable of doing their jobs properly if they know that a member of their unit has a different sexual orientation that them? The very notion is absurd and offensive — our soldiers are the best and the most professional in the world. DADT is offensive, stupid, and makes it harder to recruit soldiers. It’s time to repeal it immediately.

BREAKING: Ramsey County court rules in favor of Franken

On day 1 of the recount, a new twist. The Ramsey County district court has upheld the Franken campaign’s request to gain access to data on rejected absentee ballots. Here’s the key sections from the ruling:

With each passing hour, the Franken Campaign is irreparably harmed in its efforts to ensure that each valid vote is properly counted and to prepare for the procedures that will decide this election. By contrast, the County of Ramsey will suffer no harm from providing information that, even absent plaintiff’s request, it must organize and maintain.

The court has really gotten to the crux of the matter. This is about making sure every vote is counted. Absentee ballots that were improperly rejected should be heard.

Here is the court’s main order:

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Obama: A team of (too many) rivals?

Between his support for Joe Lieberman, his post-election meeting with John McCain, and his offer of the Secretary of State job to Hillary Clinton, there’s a lot of buzz about Obama’s approach to governing. It’s been no secret that one of Obama’s favorite books is A Team of Rivals, which describes Abraham Lincoln’s decision to fill his administration with former rivals. A lot of political observers — including myself — are very excited to see Obama doing just that.

However, with the Washington Post reporting that Obama may allow Robert Gates to remain the Secretary of Defense, Obama has an increasingly fine line to walk. The Team of Rivals approach is excellent: it will contribute to a more congenial tone in Washington, and hopefully better policymaking as well. However, this is still the Obama administration, not the Clinton administration or the McCain administration. Ultimately, he needs to ensure that the administration accomplishes his goals, not his rivals’.

So far, I don’t think he’s in danger of crowding out his own voice with those of his rivals. But as he goes forward, I hope the President-elect will rememberthat he needs his own loyalists in the cabinet as well as his rivals. Judging from the way he ran his campaign, something tells me he’ll be just fine.

The chutzpah of the auto industry

Want some proof of why the auto industry doesn’t deserve $25 billion? How about this pearl of wisdom from the management, from today’s New York Times:

The cause of their misfortunes was not management mistakes, they said, but the weak economy and the inability of consumers to obtain credit to buy cars.

You’ve got to be kidding me. The American auto industry has been fatally mismanaged. These executives refuse to admit that they have any accountability for their companies’ collapse, and they have the cojones to claim that we should give them $25 billion? By their own admission, this clearly won’t change anything, because they don’t recognize the need to change.

The Democrats now have at least 58 Senate seats

Even if we don’t get to 60, every vote moves us closer and closer to real policy change. The 58th Democratic Senator is Mark Begick of Alaska, who is finally declaring victory:

With 100 percent of Alaska’s precincts reporting, Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, had roughly 47.7 percent of the vote, compared with about 46.6 percent for Stevens, according to unofficial results posted on the Alaska Secretary of State’s Web site.

He appears to have bested Stevens by 3,724 votes, according to the posted results.

Assuming that Joe Lieberman is going to reliably vote against Republican filibusters — and if he isn’t, the Democrats made a major miscalculation — the Democrats only need to find 2 moderate Republicans to help them move major legislation. Of course, there are still two seats open, as well; both Al Franken and Jim Martin have excellent chances, which means we could still reach 60 seats.

I would like to emphasize that just because we can move legislation forward without the Republicans doesn’t mean we should. I desperately hope that, in this new session of Congress, we can see a return to bipartisanship, with Senators on both sides of the aisle willing to work together to contribute to our policymaking.

Morning podcast: Recount rant

This morning on the podcast: I continue to fulminate about Norm Coleman’s behavior on the recount. How does he live with himself?

Listen:

Podcast intro music by Daniele Torelli

Should the Republicans shift to the right or to the center?

There has been a lot of soul-searching amongst Republicans already, and there will continue to be more. Some say the party needs to reclaim the center, while others insist that the only way to restore the party is to return to ideological purity. The latest examples of the ubiquitous struggle were in a New York Times story yesterday:

Some conservatives want a return to basics, arguing that President Bush abandoned conservative principles by expanding government and driving up spending. Others draw just the opposite conclusion, warning that Republicans have tried to appeal to too narrow a base and that the party must update the focus of conservatism, especially at a time when voters are thinking more about issues like jobs and health care than about abortion and gay rights.

Okay, we didn’t really need the Times to tell us that. The debate is pretty widespread; blog readers are probably well aware of it already. The Republican party will have a long time to think about their predicament, and eventually they will come back stronger. They probably aren’t interested in a liberal blogger’s take, but I’ll give it anyway, because the blogosphere gives me the opportunity to pontificate endlessly.

As always, it’s more difficult than the two simplistic options presented. The truth is, the Republicans need to move simultaneously to the the center and to the right. Let me explain.

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Final thought (I hope) on Lieberman

I do hope the Democrats leave themselves an out.

Each session of Congress operates under a set of rules known as the organizing resolution. The Democrats should make sure this session’s organizing resolution gives them the capacity to throw Lieberman out if things really don’t work out.