The Blame Game has begun over the Kennedy special election in Massachusetts yesterday. The Atlantic has a list of what's being said.

Many Democrats are operating under the assumption that Democrat Martha Coakley will lose today's election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. In the debate over how Democrats could possibly lose the race--which has major repercussions for President Obama's agenda--Coakley herself is taking more and more of the blame. Some Democrats and liberals aren't waiting for the polls to close to turn against Coakley and her campaign. Here's a taste of what they're saying...read on

Digby:

According to Chuck Todd, the trouble in Massachusetts comes down to two words: Health Care.

Andrea Mitchell say's the two words are: Big Government

I say: Bad Economy (and Political Malpractice)

The SEIU is getting involved in the Coakley race.

The polls are all over the place and it looks like this race is going to be close, but one thing is certain. Martha Coakley needs to win in MA. It would be a travesty if Sen. Kennedy's seat were to go to a teabagger. And to someone that isn't supporting a tax on the bankers.

Democrats believe President Barack Obama’s proposed, $90 billion tax on big banks will box in Republicans, giving them the choice between siding with the bankers or breaking with the GOP’s antitax base.

If so, Republican Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown has taken the bait. His Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, embraced the bank tax and spent the day goading Brown to take a stand.

“Now is the time for Scott Brown to tell us what side he’s on, and who he wants to fight for. Despite his tea party rhetoric about never supporting a tax hike, the truth is that he has supported more than $300 million in new taxes and fees on middle class families. We’ll find out if his “no tax” pledge only applies to the privileged,” she said in a statement.

Responding to The Wall Street Journal, the Brown campaign said this evening, “Scott Brown is opposed to higher taxes, especially in the midst of a severe recession. Raising taxes will kill jobs. Martha Coakley’s tax-raising policies will make it harder to get our economy back on the right track.”

The Massachusetts race has been closely watched because it is far closer than expected. The special election will be held Tuesday to fill the Senate seat that had been held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The teabaggers are dropping cash into the race too. If Coakley loses, it will have a dramatic impact on health care legislation. So sayeth the House Democrats.

Nate Silver picks up an interesting point: Much of the opposition to healthcare reform comes from the left - about 25%. We need to keep pushing on the final bill, because if there's one thing politicians understand and fear, it's bad poll numbers:

Ipsos/McClatchy put out a health care poll two weeks ago. The topline results were nothing special: 34 percent favored "the health care reform proposals presently being discussed", versus 46 percent opposed, and 20 percent undecided. The negative-12 net score is roughly in line with the average of other polls, although the Ipsos poll shows a higher number of undecideds than most others.

Ipsos, however, did something that no other pollster has done. They asked the people who opposed the bill why they opposed it: because they are opposed to health care reform and thought the bill went too far? Or because they support health care reform but thought the bill didn't go far enough?

It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.

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From Morning Joe, Nov. 24, 2009, Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin think Obama's poll numbers have dropped because he's too polarizing. Of course by "polarizing" they mean pretending that he's governed from the left, which he hasn't. They go on to compare him to Palin and say he's only playing to his base like she is. What's up is down and down is up...and round and round we go with these two. Obama's numbers are down because he's ignoring his base and not following through on his campaign promises, not because he’s run too far to the left.

Obama officials went on the offensive on the talk show circuit last Sunday, reminding America and the corporate media that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization.

Staying true to their entertainment format, on Monday Fox News responded by putting up a poll on their website and what do you know...all of the choices are incorrect and none of them allow for the possibility that Obama is right.

What a knee-slapper! Feel free to re-write your own reality-based poll for them in the comments.

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I generally don't watch Fox News; it's bad for my blood pressure and health. Further, my husband got tired of me looking for something to throw at the TV. So I leave the Fox viewings to other members of the team. But I happened to be flipping channels and caught this exchange on The O'Reilly Factor and it had me reeling from the Wonderland topsy-turvy nature of it. Dave already discussed this clip a little.) In contemplating Rush Limbaugh being dropped from the group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams. Juan Williams, for whom no conservative can do wrong, predictably defends Limbaugh, saying that all of Rush's statements do not constitute racism, but comedy. Seriously.

But then it took a turn into weirdness:

The Washington Times reports on the entire back-and-forth that continues this afternoon. While discussing “Barack The Magic Negro” song that Rush Limbaugh played, Williams and Ballentine, both African American, disagreed on whether that was “racial”.

Just before the end of the segment, Ballentine said, “You can go back to the porch, Juan. You can go back. It’s ok.”

He was almost gleeful while bragging about it on Twitter: “ok howd i do u hear me tell jaun back to the porch lmao” he wrote, among several other comments. Today, he wrote, “You gotta love how now Iam the racist LMAO gotta love the washington post and the GOP.”

The Times also has a clip of his web radio show, and he wasn’t remorseful in any way:

Now if you want to take what I said about Juan Williams as racial, you go right ahead. All I said was he could go back to the porch. I didn’t call him a house negro. I said he could go back to the porch. Now if you took it as such, that means you took it as such.

I think we've gotten to a weird, non-reality-based place when two African-American men on Fox News Channel look at and/or trade racial slurs and then argue they're not racial.

But then again, weirdness and non-reality is par for course for FNC. After all, the media channel that operates as a propaganda arm for the GOP, hires Glenn Beck and keeps him on no matter how embarrassingly stupid and wrong he is and yet fires a liberal commentator for "having a reputation of defending cop-killers and racists"m, apparently for defending Van Jones. Or for example, publishing the results of the internal poll they took of an imagined mano a mano between FNC and the White House.

From the internals of the new Fox poll:

The Obama administration is criticizing FOX News Channel for its coverage of the administration. If the disagreement between the Obama administration and FOX News Channel continues, who do you think will come out on top?

Administration 39%

Fox News 43%

Breaking: Fox finds more think Fox will defeat the White House! I wonder if this will persuade the White House communications team to drop its crusade.

I don't think Fox can even convince themselves they're a credible news organization anymore.

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The right's favorite talking point on Thursday, with Ted Kennedy's funeral dominating the news, was to compare the event to Sen. Paul Wellstone's funeral and kvetch that Democrats were being crudely opportunistic in using Kennedy's death to help push harder for liberal health-care reform.

Laura Ingraham, filling in for O'Reilly on The Factor, was right in step, saying Dems were "playing the death card" and promising that such opportunism would cost them at the polls. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.

I think Amanda Marcotte has precisely the right response.

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Ed Schultz goes through the poll numbers that show just how badly so many Americans are buying into the outright lies on health care/insurance reform that are being put out there. There needs to be a real debate about just what's actually potentially going into these bills where the public is going to end up on the short end of the stick and put at the mercy of the health insurance companies without the distraction of having to debunk this other nonsense as well.

Ed talks to Aaron Carroll, author of Don't Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health to talk about the hurdles with overcoming that misinformation.

It took less than one year for Sarah Palin to go from being the Governor of Alaska, to VP candidate for the GOP, to civilian. She knows how to whip a crowd of bigots into a frenzy, she knows how to be folksy, but apparently, even Fox News fans don't think she's fit to hold political office. They chose for her instead, the job of homemaker: (warning: link goes to Fox News)

About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).

College professor? I'm not touching that one. It's widely known that Palin is testing the talk radio waters, but so far she's not having much luck. Radio giant Clear Channel has already passed, saying she's not capable of sustaining a full three hour show. I'm sure she could easily talk for three hours, but man, I'd need a barrel full of painkillers to make it through.

Blue Gal chimes in: Assuming that Sarah Palin's proper job is "homemaker" may appear sexist, but the question itself was sexist. Looking at the raw data for the poll (warning, also a FOX link, but essential in determining how the questions were slanted) the ONLY choices given to respondents were those listed above: President, VP, talk show host, college professor, and homemaker. Democratic respondents clearly thought the question was a joke when 45% of them said "homemaker," in other words, "stay home, Sarah." I'd like to know why 10% of Republican respondents admitted they "don't know" what job would be best for her: comin' up empty, Mister Steele? I've always said, quite sincerely, that Sarah Palin would be a huge success on the Crystal Cathedral/Focus on the Family mega-church lecture circuit.

Since Walter Cronkite's passing, new focus has been put on the decline of legitimate news sources in America. The big three networks have fallen the way of the corporate cable news/propaganda networks and people are turning to alternate sources like The Daily Show to get a little truth with their news. That's why it came as no surprise that Jon Stewart was voted Most Trusted Newscaster In America in a recent Time poll.

Here's the breakdown of the results:

Jon Stewart - 44%
Brian Williams - 29%
Charles Gibson - 19%
Katie Couric - 7%

Not to take away from Stewart's accomplishments, but it does speak volumes about the way the American people view the major networks and their "news" departments -- and that they would take the word of a comedian more seriously than high profile, highly paid network news anchors.

Stewart has long taken on the corporate media, beginning with his notorious smackdown of the feckless Tucker Carlson on CNN's Crossfire in 2004, which lead to the eventual demise of the show. Since then, he has been relentless in his pursuit of the truth, and C&L has been posting videos from The Daily Show for years, along with many other blogs, big and small.

You gotta love it when a long shot wins - and it wasn't even close. Creigh Deeds took 50 percent of the vote in a three-way primary. [Note for political junkies: McAuliffe beat Deeds in only one district, the 3rd - where he sent Bill Clinton to campaign for him in the African-American community.] Deeds, a well-liked and personable guy, is also moderately conservative. Watch as the Democratic-consultant lemmings everywhere decide this means he won because he's a conservative, not in spite of it, and start yanking candidates ever rightward:

R. Creigh Deeds, a longtime state legislator from rural Bath County, won a stunning come-from-behind victory in the Democratic primary for Virginia governor last night, overwhelming a pair of better-funded and better-positioned opponents.

Deeds beat Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe in every region of the state, including vote-rich Northern Virginia, despite a pro-gun stance and relatively conservative positions that are out of line with many of the area's voters. His victory was so dominant that he captured 10 of the state's 11 congressional districts, including the one held by Moran's brother, U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr.

All three campaigns and state political experts had agreed that Deeds was coming on strong in the final days of the race, but no one expected him -- or the other candidates -- to come close to winning the 50 percent of the vote that he captured. In an e-mail sent to supporters less than two hours before polls closed, McAuliffe's campaign predicted that "this thing could come down to the wire." McAuliffe came in second, with 26 percent of the vote, followed by Brian Moran with 24 percent.

Deeds, 51, will face Republican Robert F. McDonnell in a general election battle that amounts to a rematch of the race for attorney general four years ago, which McDonnell barely won after a late surge by Deeds.

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Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh said that he wasn't backtracking on calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist like Gingrich did, but now he's saying that he might possibly support her because he likes Catholics and she may like "life" or some nonsense. Now all the rats are running for cover from their racist rants against Sonia.
I imagine some GOP internal polls came out saying that Gingrich and Buchanan and Limbaugh were going too far in their attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" and they are all pulling back.

Limbaugh:You know she would be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court and there are a lot of people worried about that, that does not bother me at all. I know a lot of Catholics and I love Catholics, but Sotomayor is a Catholic and she doesn't have a clear record on abortion and I'm, youuuu....overturning Roe vs Wade, that would be huge. I don't know if it will ever happen. I can see a possibility of supporting this nomination if I could be convinced if she does have a sensibility towards life.

Hahahaha, what a joke.

It's time for Gov. Pawlenty to certify Al Franken's victory so he can take his rightful seat in Congress. We are waiting for the Minnesota Supreme court to rule which is supposed to come in June. It's highly doubtful that they will overturn the election results so Americans United For Change produced this ad to let him know that we're watching. And the state of Minnesota is watching too.

All the polls show that they want this carnival over and Franken to become their new Senator.

According to the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll, nearly two-thirds of the 1,042 adults surveyed believe Norm Coleman should concede the race. A separate poll by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota shows about two-thirds of the 600 people polled believe the recount process was "fair, impartial, accurate, and carried out according to Minnesota law."

The findings come after Coleman filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, following a 3-judge panel's ruling that Franken won the Senate race by 312 votes. In his appeal, Coleman cites that there are over 4,000 rejected absentee ballots that should have been counted.

Political Analyst Ralph Doty, who himself voted for the Independent candidate, said at this point in the game, Minnesotans are being "deprived." Von Thill of Cloquet said he agrees. "There's more important things to get resolved right now, with the economy, and everything else."

Gov. Pawlenty can't succumb to pressure from the Limbaugh National Committee and keep obstructing him. If Norm Loserman wants to go to the Roberts Court, that shouldn't stop Gov. Pawlenty from signing off.

Call 800-657-3717 and tell him to certify Al Franken.

He actually said that:

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

So you African-Americans? According to Byron York, you don't actually count. My buddy and former C&L contributer Steve Benen:

For crying out loud, what the hell does that mean, exactly? I read the rest of the piece, hoping to see York explain why the president's seemingly popular positions are exaggerated or inflated. Why, in other words, these positions "appear" more popular "than they actually are."

But all the piece tells me is that African Americans tend to support Obama in greater numbers than white Americans.

The problem, of course, is that damn phrase "than they actually are." York argues that we can see polls gauging public opinion, but if we want to really understand the popularity of the president's positions, and not be fooled by "appearances," then we have to exclude black people.

There's really no other credible way to read this. York effectively argues that black people shouldn't count. We can look at polls measuring the attitudes of Americans, but if we want to see the truth -- appreciate the numbers as "they actually are" -- then it's best if we focus our attention on white people, and only white people.

I swear the next thing York will suggest is calling for polling companies to consider African-Americans as only 3/5th a person to more accurately reflect reality. I'm sure you can find the historical precedence for it if you try really hard.

You stay classy, Byron.

Dave N: This is actually a not-uncommon species of eliminationist rhetoric, since these kinds of discussions are essentially exercises in imagining the world with a whole class of people effectively excised.

As Adam Serwer observes: "This is another example of a really bizarre genre of conservative writing, which I call 'If Only Those People Weren't Here.'"

Continue reading »

Yes, it's true: the Republican Party is leaderless except for Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney which hasn't worked out very well as new polling shows that Americans are turning away from the GOP in droves.

The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21.

That's the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in a late March poll and at the lowest ebb in this poll since the fall of 1983(!).

In that same poll, 35 percent self-identified as Democrats and 38 percent called them Independents.

These numbers come on the heels of Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential bid, declaring the Republican party a "shrinking entity" last week -- citing the decline of GOP numbers in the west, northeast and mountain west as evidence.

I spit up my coffee when I heard one of those Republican strategists tell a host on MSNBC that the GOP was getting ready to embrace civil unions for gays. Yeah, right. The religious right would immediately leave the GOP if that happens. And they are the largest bloc of voters they have at this point.