Here’s a guessing game – how many thousands of dollars did DHS employees drop on unused dog booties? $10,000? $30,000? That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
Update: Canine lovers, here’s our follow-up on the booties.
Something worth considering about the State Department’s “very well thought out” evacuation plan for American citizens in Lebanon.
So a run-off it is. On August 8th, Rep. Cynthia McKinney goes up against Hank Johnson, Dekalb County Commissioner. And from looking at the numbers, it seems like McKinney is in a bit of trouble.
The final results (98% reporting) were McKinney (47.1%), Johnson (44.4%) and Coyne (8.5%).
Both Johnson and Coyne were running clearly as anti-McKinney candidates, if of different flavors. So there seems to be a clear anti-McKinney majority among Democrats. From what I’ve heard too, Johnson didn’t really get that much attention before the first ballot and therefore wasn’t able to raise much money. And that will almost certainly now change.
Just because Republicans often attack McKinney (sometimes in scurrilous ways) I feel like there’s a tendency to run to her defense among Democratic partisans. For my part, I think folks in 4th district of Georgia could do a lot better. What do you think?
Lieberman rules out accepting the GOP place on the ballot from CT Republicans.
If you’re curious about how a doctored exploitation of 9/11 looks, you can see it here, courtesy of Sen. Mike Dewine’s (R-OH) campaign.
In the wake of Ralph Reed’s defeat, Republicans are worried about corruption as an issue this year — but it’ll take just a couple of indictments to really convince them it’s a problem. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
With all the combustion about the Lieberman-Lamont race over the last month or so — and the general expectation that Lamont can or will beat Lieberman in the primary — what’s always been knocking around my head is that there’ve been a number of public polls and none of them showed Lamont actually ahead.
Well, until now.
The highly respected Quinnipiac poll has a new sounding out with Lamont topping Lieberman 51% to 47%, though Lieberman still appears to win decisively in a three-way match-up between him, Lamont and Foxwoods regular Alan Schlesinger.
TPM Reader NR chimes in …
So when Joe Lieberman is being primaried and there is a real chance he will lose, common wisdom says it is because the liberals are demanding ideological purity. But when Cynthia McKinney is being primaried and there is a reach chance she will lose, common wisdom is nonexistent.
Just ’cause the talking heads like Lieberman and don’t like McKinney doesn’t change the fact that grassroots, rank and file voters are using the primary process to select the candidates they like the best. That’s the way it is, and the way it should be.
Sounds about right to me.
Jim VandeHei has a piece this morning in the Post explaining that Ralph Reed’s defeat Tuesday in Georgia has put political strategists in both parties on notice that the issue of political corruption has real traction, at least for candidates directly implicated in the on-going investigations.
He begins the article with this lede: “While political corruption has failed so far to take root as a national issue, the defeat of scandal-stained Ralph Reed in Georgia on Tuesday showed that federal investigators could tip some key House and Senate races this fall, according to party strategists.”
Now, I know that national polls haven’t registered too strongly on the issue of corruption per se. And readers might fairly wonder whether I have some professional investment in the issue of corruption, given that I founded a site dedicated to muckraking. But I’ve wondered for a while whether the conventional wisdom VandeHei is stating here is really accurate. It seems to me that the constant stories of indictments and pay-offs and lobbying scams have, all together, had a strong atmospheric effect, weighing heavily on the popularity of the Republican majority. When we see the GOP double digits behind the Democrats and voter perceptions that they’re out-of-touch, not serving the voters’ interests, self-seeking, etc., I think the corruption issue has had more to do with that than people realize.
What do you think?