U.S. Sen. Jim Webb: "There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains: 'If you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight.'"

The AJC's Political Insider reports on this morning on appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” [he also was on MSNBC last evening] of U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and his describing the cool feelings of the white working class toward Obama:

This is a very powerful cultural group that’s always underestimated, and it’s not simply in the Appalachian Mountains. But that original settlement that I wrote about began in Pennsylvania, went into Pennsylvania, went down the Appalachian Mountains into northern Georgia, northern Alabama, then spilled west.

They formed sort of the core group in terms of value systems of working class white America, and we shouldn’t be surprised at the way that they’re voting right now.

And the reason I would say that is — black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to all of the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it’s, “if you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight.”

The fact that they would line up and vote this way is not so much a comment on Barrack. I think Barack is saying a lot of good things that will appeal to this cultural group in time.

When I hear people say this is racism, my back gets up a little bit, because that’s my cultural group. This isn’t Selma, 1965.

This is the result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white, and these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it. And they’re basically saying, hey, let’s pay attention to what has happened to this cultural group in terms of opportunities.

If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government.

While Bush repeatedly scorns the idea of talking to enemies without first getting preconditions met, administration policy has been far more nuanced.

From The New York Times:

Israel, America’s staunchest ally in the Middle East, just became the latest example of a country that has decided it is better to deal with its foes than to ignore them.

The announcement that Israel has entered into comprehensive peace talks with Syria is at odds with the course counseled by the Bush administration, which initially opposed such talks in private conversations with Israelis, according to Israeli and American officials. A week ago, President Bush delivered a speech to the Israeli Parliament likening attempts to “negotiate with the terrorists and radicals” to appeasement before World War II.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Mr. Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

But in many ways, the Bush administration’s own policies appear to be at odds with his thesis.

While Mr. Bush and his advisers have repeatedly scorned the idea of talking to enemies without first getting preconditions met, administration policy over the last seven years has been far more nuanced. In fact, the United States under the Bush administration has shown a sliding definition of just when it is beneficial to talk to whom.

Under Mr. Bush, the United States has held direct talks with Libya (which has admitted responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people); sent envoys and a warm presidential letter to North Korea (which detonated a nuclear device in 2006); and even participated, through American diplomats in Iraq, in talks with Iran (which the United States has accused of backing attacks against American forces in Iraq).

American diplomats do not talk to Hezbollah or Hamas — both militant Islamic organizations that Washington considers terrorist groups. But while the Bush administration long ago withdrew its ambassador from Syria, the United States does business with its government, which backs Hezbollah, and which the State Department has designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

So what was Mr. Bush talking about last week when he compared negotiations with terrorists and radicals with “the false comfort of appeasement”?

Inside the administration, many officials, particularly at the State Department, concede that the United States does not hew to one policy on engaging its enemies. “I’d rather be right than consistent,” a senior Bush administration official said, in explaining the willingness to talk to North Korea, which the administration accused just last month of trying to help Syria build a nuclear reactor. He said the United States wanted to make sure that talks were “purposeful engagement, not witless engagement.”

To that end, the administration has tried to be sure preconditions are met; for instance, it repeatedly says that it restored diplomatic relations with Libya only after Libya renounced terrorism in 2003. But Bush administration officials were in talks with Libya before that happened, and many credit the negotiations with leading to Libya’s change in behavior.

As for Hamas and Hezbollah, which have both refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist or to forswear violence, the administration official said that a criterion for talks with the United States would be that “they’d have to change their behavior.”

But Israel is in indirect talks with Hamas, with Egypt serving as the go-between, over a cease-fire in Gaza. Under the proposal that the two sides are considering, Israel would end its blockade of Gaza in exchange for a Hamas agreement to stop the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, among other things.

Sometimes expediency makes former enemies temporary allies. In Iraq, which the administration has frequently called the front line in the fight against terrorism, former insurgents are now on the American payroll as members of citizen patrols in what is called the Sunni Awakening movement, and they have contributed to an overall decline in violence.

And on Wednesday, the Bush administration was singing the praises of an Arab-mediated deal in Lebanon which would, in essence, give Hezbollah veto power over the Lebanese cabinet.

While the United States will continue its policy of not holding direct talks with Hezbollah, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the agreement “a positive step” and was even on the phone over the past few weeks with Egyptian and Saudi officials to help find a resolution to the Lebanese stalemate, administration officials said.

“Bush’s rhetoric is completely disconnected from everything on the ground,” said Martin Indyk, head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “While he’s giving his speech against appeasement last week, Hezbollah was taking over control of the Lebanese government.”

The events in Lebanon, Mr. Indyk said, show that the administration ought to put more pragmatic considerations ahead of principle.

The Israel-Syria announcement, in particular, offers an interesting case study, because Israeli officials have said for months that the United States was the only obstacle blocking talks with Syria, which both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak advocated.

In particular, Elliott Abrams, Mr. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, has cautioned against an Israeli-Syria negotiation, according to Israeli and Bush administration officials. Administration officials said they feared that such a negotiation would appear to reward Syria at a time when the United States was seeking to isolate it for its meddling in Lebanon and its backing of Hezbollah.

But a few weeks ago, Israeli officials told their counterparts at the State Department that they planned to begin the negotiations, which are being mediated by Turkey.

“They weren’t asking our permission,” one senior administration official said. Another Bush official characterized the Israeli announcement as “a slap in the face.” But he said that United States officials believed that Mr. Olmert made the decision with his own domestic political considerations in mind: He is facing several criminal investigations involving events before he became prime minister in 2006, but while he was serving in government. He has denied wrongdoing, and other experts said that Israel had its own compelling reasons to engage Syria: to blunt Hezbollah’s growing power in the region.

As we remember Hamilton Jordon, I reflect back on the service to his country of the great Georgian Bert Lance.

Today's headlines and news stories are all about Hamilton Jordon, and well they should be. I had the pleasure of meeting him years ago here in Douglas. What a figure; was a true visionary.

While everyone else will be writing about Hamilton Jordon, I want to reflect upon the service to his country of another great Georgian whom I met in December 2004 at an all-day Saturday meeting in Atlanta of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party of Georgia. In a 12-20-04 post about that meeting, I noted:

Bert Lance [is] someone for whom I have always had a lot of respect and a very high opinion, [and have] my strong feelings about how he was treated in D.C. Getting to meet him and being able to chat with him for an half hour was a personal highlight of the day.

A month or so later I did a 1-13-05 post on my day in Atlanta at the Democratic National Committee Southern Caucus meeting where seven candidates launched their bids for the DNC chairmanship, replacing retiring Terry McAuliffe.

In that post I wrote:

Prior to sharing my thoughts and reflections, I cannot resist telling you that I got a mild case of the bighead at the meeting. How so? I got to sit at the head table.

Not the one up front with Chairman Bobby Kahn and the seven candidates, but one in the audience. On my left sat Bill Shipp; on my right Bert Lance. Was I ever in hog heaven. What hallowed company! What great Georgia Democrats!

Today Matt Towery, writing about Hamilton Jordan in InsiderAdvantage Georgia, remembers:

[M]any of the problems attributed to [Carter's] presidency -- massive inflation, an impossible situation in Iran, a growing energy crisis -- were all inherited from the administrations of Nixon and Ford.

Hamilton Jordan had the courage of his convictions. He believed in the plan he created for Carter’s upset takeover of the Democratic Party and the White House in 1976. He took the potshots and slights that came his way from a D.C. Establishment that resented not only Jordan and [Carter Press Secretary Jody] Powell, but also close friends of Carters like former Office of Management and Budget Director Bert Lance.

Lance was unfairly and shabbily treated by a “company town” media for issues that, compared to this current administration, would never have caught anyone’s eye. He went on to be one of the Democratic Party’s most influential behind-the-scenes movers and shakers.

All of these men took the shots and aggressively tried to serve their nation.

[B]ecause they were southerners surrounded by an old guard elite in D.C., they learned to circle their wagons and rely on their best attribute -- loyalty to one another.

Thanks Matt, we needed to be reminded of that.

And Bert, please know that I proudly display my copy of your book The Truth of the Matter in a prominent place on a mahogany lowboy in my office, and try to live up to your kind autographed message therein: "To Sid Cottingham, a "Real" Democrat. Best Wishes. Bert Lance."

I wouldn't have told that brother -- First Congressional District Candidate Bill Gillespie bashs John McCain's military record.

I met Democratic congressional candidate for the First District Bill Gillespie on August 4, 2007, at the State Committee Meeting that was held in conjunction with the Georgia Association of Democratic County Chairs (GADCC) annual dinner to award the Richard B. Russell Public Service Award.

In talking with him in Macon I learned that he served 23 years in the U.S. Army, having retired as a Lt. Colonel. During that time he served in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division, and during his career taught for a while at West Point.

He does not have the outgoing personality of Rep. Jack Kingston, but given the national -- and I also believe Georgia -- anti-GOP sentiment this political season, Gillespie could be a serious candidate, even though he faces Kingston who has been the incumbent since 1992. (Kingston went in two years before Newt's Contract with America group, and thus was grandfathered from the term limits part of the contract that of course has been ignored.)

But something I read in the Savannah Morning News this week by that newspaper's astute political writer and my friend Larry Peterson gives me pause about his candidacy and his campaign strategy.

Having been a Captain in the United States Army myself, I am all the more proud that my father served during World War II, and that my father-in-law -- as did McCain -- attended the Naval Academy, was a Navy pilot taking off from and landing flying on carriers, and after a distinguished Navy career, retired from the Navy as a Captain. (The rank of captain in the Army, Marines and Air Force is well below that of a captain in the Navy.)

But Gillespie sees it differently. In Savannah this past Monday Gillespie noted that McCain was the son and grandson of admirals and called him part of the "Navy royalty."

"Admirals' sons," Gillespie said, "were treated like royalty. They were privileged people. They were given a silver spoon. Their careers were prepared for them."

Go figure . . . Why not point out McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal of the 1980s. And if just had to malign McCain's military career, maybe even point out that he was right at the bottom of his class at Annapolis (894/899) as compared with Obama's high class standing.

But to attack his military career and note that having had a father and grandfather who were admirals in the Navy [meaning they had four stars] gave him a silver spoon and be treated like royalty befuttles me.

Why didn't Gillespie tell those who might not know that while in captivity, McCain's father was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and McCain was offered early release. The North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other prisoners of war that persons with family military connections like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially. But McCain turned down the offer of repatriation; he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.

Mr. Gillespie, as a fellow Obama supporter, I know you are trying to advance his candidacy as well as your own. But please, you are hurting him I assure you. For as you know, Obama has said he respects McCain's service as a decorated former pilot who spent five and a half years in a North Vietnamese POW camp.

Georgia's Dean of Politics and Journalism hopes former Gov. Roy Barnes will come rescue Georgia from chronic incompetence and apathy.

Bill Shipp writes:

Barnes, for the first time in a long time, delivered the traditional Confederate Memorial Day speech at Oakland Cemetery. In olden days, an appearance at this event was a sure sign of revving up to run.

You have to wonder what Georgia would have been like if Barnes had won a second term. Barnes would have been a big player in national politics. More than that, Georgia would not be making the top of everybody's snicker list for worst traffic, worst schools and worst health care.

If Barnes had put in a full eight years as governor, Georgia might be a far different place. His transportation plan already was being hailed as a national model when the teachers unions and gullible flaggers ushered him out the Capitol door in 2002.

Look where we might have been in transportation improvements alone if Barnes had remained:

● More than 220 additional miles of HOV lanes with express bus service would have been built. Just think how that might have shrunk your gasoline bill and commute time.

● Commuter rail connecting Midtown to cities north and south of Atlanta would be under construction.

● Shuttle service to congested edge communities would have been up and running.

● A new intermodal transportation terminal serving as a hub for the region with passenger rail service would have been nearly finished.

● Vast improvements to the Georgia 400 corridor and the Highway 316 path would already would have been carried out.

● A more dedicated and less unruly legislature would have approved special bond financing with the feds so the projects could go forward immediately.

Perdue swept all those grand plans under the rug as soon as he captured the Gold Dome.

[R]umor has it that . . . may come roaring back to rescue us from chronic incompetence and apathy. . . . [T]he words "not a moment too soon" come rushing to mind.

Next president will have to manage wearing the straightjacket left in the Oval Office by Bush, resulting in a hesitancy to take needed strong stands.

Tom Friedman writes in The New York Times:

There has been much debate in this campaign about which of our enemies the next U.S. president should deign to talk to. The real story, the next president may discover, though, is how few countries are waiting around for us to call. It is hard to remember a time when more shifts in the global balance of power are happening at once — with so few in America’s favor.

Let’s start with the most profound one: More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications — the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from, what he called, our “addiction to oil.”

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

If this huge transfer of wealth to the petro-authoritarians continues, power will follow. According to Congressional testimony Wednesday by the energy expert Gal Luft, with oil at $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy Bank of America in one month worth of production, Apple computers in a week and General Motors in just 3 days.”

Homeland Security stands by its planned 670 miles of fence along the Mexican border -- $3 million per mile to build the fence. Keep it going.

From The New York Times:

[T]he Department of Homeland Security [is pushing] to complete 670 miles of fencing along the Mexican border by the end of this year . . . .

[K]nown efforts at illegal crossings — measured by the number of people detained at the border — have fallen 17 percent this year, after declining 20 percent in 2007 . . . .

[T]he new fencing has mainly proved useful when it has been backed up with other enforcement methods, like electronic surveillance and aggressive prosecution of illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol.

Technical glitches have plagued plans to expand and enhance the electronic surveillance into a virtual fence, and it remains uncertain when it will be in broader use.

“I don’t believe the fence is a cure-all,” [homeland security secretary, Michael] Chertoff said. “Nor do I believe it is a waste. Yes, you can get over it; yes, you can get under it. But it is a useful tool that makes it more difficult for people to cross. It is one of a number of tools we have, and you’ve got to use all of the tools.”

As many as 2,000 immigrants a day still cross the Southwest border illegally, according to estimates by scholars well versed on the border. Continuing a decades-old cat-and-mouse game, the crossers move away from areas where the Border Patrol establishes control to more vulnerable points, most recently near San Diego.

In addition to the border enforcement, immigrant traffic is influenced by a variety of social, political and economic factors; the recent drop in known crossings, for example, occurred as the economy began to sputter, drying up construction jobs and others that lure immigrants.

Officials of the Homeland Security Department give a broad estimate of $3 million per mile to build the fence, or about $2.1 billion to reach the goal this year, out of $5.2 billion for the Border Patrol this year. The officials have declined to provide Congress with a more exact price tag, saying costs vary depending on the difficulty of the terrain.

Under perhaps the most effective program, which is used in limited areas of Arizona and Texas, federal prosecutors press criminal misdemeanor charges against immigrants caught by the Border Patrol, putting them in detention for up to two months, well beyond the several hours they normally would be held before being returned to Mexico.

John McCain -- The "Straight Talk Express" has derailed.

See Sen. McCain on a YouTube classic.

Suck it up Obama. And by the way, here's to looking for good results for you today.

In a 2-19-08 post entitled "Michelle Obama: Get a script and stick to it or zip it. This was not your best day, and for the record, you owe your country an apology," I wrote:

Michelle Obama to a Milwaukee audience yesterday while stumping for Obama said: "And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

We will be exposed to this statement by Michelle Obama as much as we were to Kerry's "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

I have been hoping Obama would not screw up; I never thought it would be his wife who would make a big mistake.

Will it rise to the level of Kerry's statement at the Grand Canyon where, in this one appearance, he uttered words that may have cost him the presidency? Here you recall Kerry said that, in hindsight, he still would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq, even if he had known then that the U.S. and allied forces would not find weapons of mass destruction.

I don't think so, but it was a major mistake, and she needs to apologize to her country or otherwise clarify what in the world she could have meant and get it behind her.

Now, three months later, Obama, responding to an ad from the Tennessee Republican Party that reruns the "proud of my country" line, Barack Obama warns that his opponents should "lay off my wife."

Has Obama laid off of Bill Clinton. Clinton, like Michelle, joined the fray, her remark having been made in a political speech Although viewed as a gaffe, earlier on the same day she had said almost the same thing word for word, namely, "[f]or the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country . . . ."

Continuing in his response, Obama said:

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable."

Michelle continues to interview with Obama and truly being his surrogate. If he does not want her to be fair game and otherwise off-limits from campaign attacks, he needs to readjust his campaign strategy and her schedule.

Toughen up Obama. This may get you some sympathy -- I too feel that if someone takes on one of my staff or my family they take me on -- but this posture in the context of your running for president with Michelle at your side is silly.

Pandering or an insider's view on the Speaker?

I have enjoyed reading James Magazine since it began publication. It has a great group of writers, including a couple of my favorites, Larry Walker and Dick Pettys. Plus Matt Towery, who has been there and done that, knows about what he speaks and writes.

And although he does not write for the publication, its Vice Chairman is former Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard, a class act if there ever was one. And finally, we all recall that Tom Baxter recently joined its affiliate the Southern Political Report when he took early retirement from the AJC.

In a 1-10-05 post, I wrote:

[Matt Towery's] most recent venture is his launching of James, a magazine targeting politicians and business leaders in the state.

The official selling point for the magazine named after Georgia founder James Oglethorpe is that it touts an insider's view of state politics, as well as edgy business stories.

The unofficial selling point -- which I can report from personal experience Matt Towery loves to hear -- is that it's to be the magazine that Georgia Trend "used to be" (to my knowledge, Matt has not said this, and this is not my assessment, just the unofficial line if you please).

With the above background, I was surprised to say the least to read last night in the March 2008 issue:

House Speaker Glenn Richardson. His head was in the right place when he set out on the GREAT tax plan venture, but in James' opinion, he got ripped off by snake oil salesmen who served as "consultants" on the project. (Not to worry, Mr. Speaker; they hit speakers in several other states, too.) These "experts" were expert enough to be the only ones to reel in any "trickle down" dollars. . .

This might be the only compliment I have heard about the Speaker and in his role in the 2008 session of the General Assembly.

Is this an insider's view of state politics, or has James gotten into the sucking up business?

McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort as McCain Aides Seek to Contain Lobbyist Controversy

From The New York Times:

Mr. McCain’s political identity has long been defined by his calls for reducing the influence of special interests in Washington. But as he heads toward the general election as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he has increasingly confronted criticism that his campaign staff is stocked with people who have made their living as lobbyists or in similar jobs, leaving his credentials as a reformer open to attack.

The process of trying to purge the campaign of conflicts that in appearance or reality might violate Mr. McCain’s stated principles or cause him political trouble has so far focused only more attention on the backgrounds of his aides and advisers.
_______________

From The Wall Street Journal:

Questions on staffers' ties to lobbying continued to dog John McCain's campaign as aides to the Republican presidential candidate sought to contain political damage from the widening controversy.

"All of this was starting to make McCain look more and more like a Washington insider," said Jan Baran, a Republican ethics and elections lawyer in Washington.

Take a week off Galloway. You have outdone yourself in your post on 2 of my favorites Dems, Nunn & Obama (& I'll add I've been liking Dodd as of late)

Jim Galloway of the AJC's Political Insider not only does an excellent job of covering the Republican Convention in Columbus this weekend, but returns home and without skipping a beat on Sunday evening pens a classic background story on former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and how he came to endorse and become an advisor to Obama on national security. It reads in part:

[C]onsider how Nunn, a conservative Democrat, came to settle on Obama, who is not.

For the past year, the former senator had been one of the behind-the-scenes figures exploring a non-partisan bid for the presidency.

Only five months ago, Nunn and former Senate colleague David Boren summoned a group of centrist Democrats and Republicans to Oklahoma City, where — with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg among them — they decried the crass polarization of political debate, and the lack of any forum that required presidential candidates to address issues in depth.

Say what you will about it, the two party-system abhors a vacuum. Nunn’s complaints that middle America had been shut out of the dialogue coincided with the rise of McCain and Obama, both of whom appeal to independents.

“I suspect we were riding the wave much more than we were causing it,” Nunn said in an interview last week. As the air wooshed out of a third-party movement, the former senator began looking at the presidential candidates still in the race.

Nunn’s top priority is the restoration of the United States’s credibility in the world. You can’t imagine, he said, how much damage the war in Iraq has done.

What must be regained, the senator said, is a non-partisan approach to foreign policy. McCain doesn’t represent change. Hillary Clinton, Nunn said, would find the task difficult — a president who polarizes at home would find it hard to create a unified foreign policy abroad.

Nunn said he’s talked with Obama. But he was also swayed by the good reports about the candidate from Republicans — including the staff of U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lugar has served as Nunn’s partner in a 17-year program to corral the world’s “loose nukes.”

“Lugar’s staff tell me [Obama] is genuine, he’s sincere, he’s very capable and not only is he a fast learner, but he’s got real depth,” Nunn said.

“Even when he’s heading to the left, he always wants to find out what the other position is. I think that’s enormously important. We’ve been heading down an ideological split in this country — it’s been annoying for a long time. It’s gotten dangerous now.”

“Even though I would love for him to have more experience, I think he’s the most likely to listen, he’s the most likely to be non-ideological,” Nunn said. “There are very few people in politics now who let the facts have a bearing on their conclusions.”

Hank Johnson is only one of Georgia's 13 members of Congress who have no opposition this year.

Joe Sports in georgia beat (gabeat.com) observes that:

Of Georgia’s 13 members of the U.S. Congress, only Hank Johnson of the Fourth District will have the good fortune of not having to wage a campaign in 2008. The first term Democrat was the only person to qualify for primary or general election races.

His colleagues aren’t so fortunate: Republicans Jack Kingston, Lynn Westmoreland, Tom Price, John Linder, Nathan Deal, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and Democrats Sanford Bishop, John Lewis, Jim Marshall, John Barrow, and David Scott all have primary or general election opposition.

That's my man Barack . . .

Obama draws a crowd of 75,000 on Sunday in Portland, Oregon. What more can you say.

Gaining Seats, Democrats Find Their House Ideologically Divided

From The New York Times:

While much of the Congressional political focus has been on the declining fortunes and numbers of House Republicans, House Democrats have their own problem: They are winning too many elections.

By prevailing in conservative districts where they ordinarily would not have a chance, Democrats are widening the ideological divide in their own ranks and complicating their ability to find internal consensus. It is a nice problem to have, but it is one that can bedevil party leaders. As their numbers expand, they have to juggle the competing interests of Travis Childers, the newly elected pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-tax representative from northern Mississippi and someone like, say, Nancy Pelosi, a pro-gun control, liberal abortion-rights advocate from San Francisco who sees government as a solution.

In picking up 30 seats in 2006, Democrats walked away with some in Republican territory, with the result that many of the newcomers are representing districts where the voters are not completely in sync with the Democratic agenda.

This intramural ideological divide is not a new problem for Congressional Democrats. Back in the days before the 1994 Republican revolution, Congressional Democrats were always split between the traditional liberal big-city wing of the party and Southern boll weevil Democrats who never met a military project they didn’t like or a social reform initiative they did.

But Democrats were able to hold power for four decades because of their imposing majorities in Congress, often outnumbering Republicans by 100 or more. That cushion meant party leaders could allow dozens of Democrats to take a walk on contentious bills, protecting their voting records while the majority prevailed regardless.

Today, even with this month’s Democratic gains, the partisan spread is 236 to 199, a growing but still relatively small margin for disagreement.

But Democrats figure if they can keep winning, they can enlarge their majority to a point where it does not matter if lawmakers on the ideological edges stray.

The long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions in Lebanon have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the civil conflict in Iraq

From The New York Times:

The Sunni-Shiite conflict is relatively new in Lebanon, where the long civil war that ended in 1990 revolved mostly around tensions between Christians and Muslims, and their differences over the Palestinian presence in the country. But after Iran helped establish Hezbollah in the early 1980s, Lebanon’s long-marginalized Shiites steadily gained power and stature. They have also grown in numbers. Although there has been no census since 1932, Shiites are widely believed to be more numerous than Sunnis or Christians, the country’s other major groups.

Tensions began to rise in 2005 after Syrian troops ended their long occupation of Lebanon, leaving the country’s factions to broker a power-sharing agreement. Hezbollah established a crucial alliance with Michel Aoun, a former general and one of the country’s most powerful Christian leaders, to oppose the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni.

In late 2006, sectarian street battles began taking place in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, mostly among young followers of [Lebanon’s main Sunni political leader Saad] Hariri’s Future Movement and the Amal Party, a Hezbollah ally. The fighting was prompted by hard feelings after Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the cabinet and its subsequent campaign to bring down Mr. Siniora, who refused to step down despite the resignation of all the cabinet’s Shiite ministers.

One day McCain distances himself from Bus and the GOP, and the next he courts the conservative GOP base that he feels he must have to win.

From The Washington Post:

[McCain continues] the political Ping-Pong game that is McCain's campaign, as he seeks to distance himself from President Bush and his party one day and then court the conservative Republican base the next.

It is a delicate and deliberate balancing act that aides say is designed to reinforce the maverick brand that separates McCain from the rest of his party without angering the traditional core of conservative Republicans. McCain's top strategists say that their candidate will not win in November merely by rallying the GOP base but that he cannot win without it, either.

Key to running against Obama, they say, is attracting white working-class Democrats -- many of whom are gun owners -- to the Republican column. "We're not trying to get a majority of blue-collar Democrats. But if McCain were to get, say, 20 percent nationally of blue-collar Democrats, he wins," McCain senior adviser Charlie Black told reporters recently. But, he added: "We know we have to unify our base and get them to turn out."

McCain's policy shifts will be a reenactment of John Flipflop Kerry's campaign, Part IV -- McCain publicly tries to mend fences with the NRA.

From The Washington Post:

Sen. John McCain, once derided as one of the "premier flag-carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment" by the National Rifle Association, enthusiastically embraced the group's pro-gun agenda at its annual convention here Friday.

His starring appearance in several television ads on behalf of gun-control referendums, and his later sponsorship of a federal gun-show bill, caused the NRA to label him an enemy of gun rights and liberal groups to proclaim him one of their favorite lawmakers.

"John McCain was our number one hero," said Jim Kessler, a founder of Americans for Gun Safety, a gun-control group for which McCain filmed a movie trailer and for which his campaign manager, Rick Davis, was a consultant.

"They were bitter enemies, the NRA and John McCain," Kessler said. "They spent month after month just going after him."

Unlike John Flipflop Kerry, Obama is not about to let the GOP define him. I love this: "George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for."

From The New York Times:

“George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” Mr. Obama said at a midday forum here, listing the Iraq war, the strengthening of Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden’s being still at large and stalled diplomacy in other parts of the Middle East among their chief failings.

His defiance and disdain for Mr. Bush’s record appeared to be a signal that he will push back against efforts to define him or his record as weak on terror or accommodating to foreign foes, a strategy Republicans used successfully against Senator John Kerry in 2004.
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See also The Washington Post.

The North Carolina U.S. Senate race may be the sleeper race of 2008 -- This is amazing.

I got an email today from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) that noted the following:

Think we can't win red states like North Carolina? Look at the latest poll.

North Carolina Senate Poll
Kay Hagan (D) 48%
Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) 47%

That's right. After last week's huge primary win, Democratic State Senator Kay Hagan has surged ahead of endangered Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole in the latest survey.

We weren't kidding last week when we called this the sleeper race of 2008. North Carolina voters are ready to reject Dole's brand of George Bush Republicanism.