The Gaggle

Joe Lieberman: Climate Savior?

Katie Connolly — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:44:55 GMT

Joe Lieberman angered a lot of liberals recently with his declaration of opposition to Harry Reid's opt-out public-option provision. But liberals who also care about climate-change legislation may want to temper their rage. Lieberman has long championed climate-change legislation in the Senate, and is emerging as a critical player in the current effort. Politico reported back in September that Lieberman had been busy meeting with a bipartisan group to figure out a path forward on climate change. In a recent interview with the National Journal, Lieberman gave some insight into his negotiating strategy.

Lieberman knows they won't get to 60 without concessions on four key areas: nuclear, coal, agriculture, and manufacturing. Satisfying a few senators with interests in each of those industries might be enough to get the bill across the line. It looks as though Lieberman and his pals have found people to champion each issue. Tom Carper from Delaware is working on coal, Debbie Stabenow from Michigan is taking the lead on agriculture, and Sherrod Brown from Ohio is active on manufacturing. It sounds as though Lieberman himself will be central to nuclear negotiations, which makes sense given that he's close to Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain who care deeply about expanding the nuclear sector.

The notion of concessions to farmers and coal burners probably makes environmentalists shudder. But it's also the only way a bill will pass in the Senate. They should consider that a bill, even an environmentally weak one, is better for the planet than no bill. Regulatory frameworks can be modified once they are passed, but it's usually passing them in the first place that is the hard part.

Lieberman has been around the block on this one—indeed the last major attempt at this legislation in the Senate bore his name. He's become somewhat of a realist on the topic and he likely knows that cobbling together an unholy alliance between coal, nuclear, manufacturing, and agriculture is the only way a climate bill will move through the Senate any time soon. Liberals may not like the idea of giving props to the wandering independent, but on this one, it looks like they'll have to.

Newsverse: Two Inconvenient Poems

Newsweek — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:48:20 GMT

By Jerry Adler

I. Carbon Country

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

Beneath which cows metabolize

All those amber waves of grain

And fill the heavens with methane.

For purple mountain majesties

Whose glaciers melt and lakes won’t freeze

Yes, my country, ‘tis of thee--

Land of private property--

I sing. And of the fruited plains

Which someday soon will sprout plantains.

And coconuts to fill the cargo

Holds of ships that dock in Fargo

When shining sea meets shining sea

In Iowa or Tennessee.

II. The Deep Blue Sea

Could global warming be a plot

To erase a certain spot

From the map, say, one specific

Island chain in the Pacific?

A clever scheme by hard-core birthers,

And others better called flat-Earthers,

To raise the ocean all around

Hawaii, till the place is drowned?

That’ll show Barak Obama!

It won’t matter who his mama

Was, because he’ll have been born in

A state from which you can’t be sworn in.

Because it isn’t on the map!

And on the flag we’ll leave a gap

For Hawaii’s missing star.

And appoint a Coastline Czar

To assure no son or daughter

Of a state that’s under water

Ever gets to raise a hand

To take the oath to rule the land.

Another Ding for Crist on the Stimulus Flap

Arian Campo-Flores — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:22:46 GMT

I would add one thing to Holly's post on Charlie Crist yesterday. As she notes, Crist's denials that he ever endorsed President Obama's stimulus package are deeply unconvincing. Today, the St. Petersburg Times's PolitiFact amply documents the many ways Crist has displayed support for the program. The fact-checking crew there delivered a resounding "Pants on Fire" verdict.

But let's assume for a moment that Crist's pants aren't on fire. Let's accept his comment to CNN on Wednesday that "I understood [the bill] was going to pass, and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians." Well, if that was the case, he hasn't done a very good job. As The Miami Herald reported back in August, Florida ranked last among the states for federal stimulus dollars promised per capita. It also ranked last in spending the federal highway stimulus money it had been allotted.

I checked on the updated figures, and they're not much better. In terms of federal stimulus funds awarded per capita, Florida now ranks 49th out of 50 states, barely beating Pennsylvania. And as far as spending federal highway and bridge money, the state has climbed up to 35th place--a modest improvement, but hardly something to crow about. For someone who calls himself a "pragmatic conservative" and claims he was merely trying make the best of a stimulus package that was rammed down his throat, he didn't exactly deliver.

To be fair, I checked with Don Winstead, Crist's special adviser on the recovery act. He explained Florida's abysmal slot in the rankings this way. The bulk of the stimulus money has come in the areas of education, transportation, and energy. In all three, he says, Florida is at a disadvantage because of factors beyond its control. It gets less education money because its population skews older, it gets less transportation money because of what he considers unfair funding formulas, and it gets less energy money because of the state's moderate climate, which doesn't generate as much weatherization and heating needs. As for spending the transportation dollars Florida was awarded, that has been slowed by the fact that the state is pursuing more-ambitious projects that take longer to get going.

All of this is mighty complicated to convey succinctly, though. So count on Crist's opponents, who have bashed him in the past on this issue, to keep at it.

Conservative Media on Fort Hood Shooting

David A. Graham — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:37:11 GMT

A look at the conservative media this morning shows a variety of approaches to the Fort Hood shooting. While most commentators are interested in addressing the question of Islamic terror, and particularly homegrown Islamism, there's clearly a concern in many quarters to avoid generalizations or overstatements--although others, like Michelle Malkin, have decided to go full-speed ahead. But that caution has not prevented sharp criticism of mainstream media reporting or of President Barack Obama's response to the incident.

Several outlets are counseling caution before jumping to conclusions about alleged shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The National Review's Corner blog is characteristically prolific but is hewing close to the facts, mostly noting what's being reported about Hasan, much of which deals with his religion. The magazine's Victor Davis Hanson, however, grapples directly with the question of Islam in the case, and argues that Americans' understanding of Islamic terror has not progressed in the last eight years and needs to be updated.

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

Sean Linnane, writing for Frum Forum (the site formerly known as New Majority), points out that there has been a spate of recent arrests and episodes relating to Islamist terror plots, but also argues that it misses the point to focus solely on Hasan's--or anyone else's--creed:

Terrorists all the same, regardless of ideological or political stance–that is all posturing. Example: in the 1980s the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya mounted a bombing campaign against U.S. and British targets in Europe. Several of the bombings were carried out on their behalf by the Baader-Meinhof gang, a secular group of Communists...It doesn’t matter whether it’s Islamic-themed, or Neo-Nazi, or Communist-inspired, terrorism is always the same: it is sheer lunacy, plain and simple.

Linnane's editor, David Frum, offers a series of pictures of the gravestones of Muslim soldiers killed serving in the U.S Army during the Iraq War and asks that people keep them in mind throughout the day.

This measured tone is a marked contrast from the tone at some more aggressive sites. Frontpagemag interviews Dave Gaubatz, who it identifies as a former civilian federal employee in Iraq. Gaubatz says Hasan is not a lone-wolf actor, but is a trained terrorist:

Malik Nabal [sic] Hasan is a terrorist supporting the ideology of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and yes, CAIR. In Palestine, the leaders send out the young and vulnerable to carry out the murders in the name of Islam. The same is happening in America.

Gaubatz's allegations are a bit bizarre; he doesn't offer any evidence for Hasan's involvement with Al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hizbullah, but instead relies on common talking points that link the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a mainstream political organization, with the terrorist groups (Gaubatz, who claims to have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has recently published a book called Muslim Mafia about CAIR). Michelle Malkin takes a similar tack, emphasizing Hasan's Muslim ties and decrying "political correctness" in the media, which she and others say has tried to whitewash any jihadist ties, an argument Mary Katherine Ham also makes at The Weekly Standard.

And some commentators are using the shooting as an opportunity to make a political point. WorldNetDaily says Hasan was an adviser to Barack Obama's transition team (a claim The Washington Independent debunks here). Michael Graham (no relation to your writer) asks how the massacre might tie into a death-penalty fight in the Massachusetts Senate race. The National Review's Jonah Goldberg poses perhaps the most interesting political question, wondering aloud about Obama's slow response to the shootings yesterday, and questions whether Obama's famed coolness could become a political liability by coming across as aloof and uncaring.

Club for Growth Calls Out Crist on the Stimulus

Holly Bailey — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:51:44 GMT

You knew it was coming. A day after Charlie Crist told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he “didn’t endorse” the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, Club for Growth is up with an ad featuring TV footage of the Florida governor onstage with President Obama earlier this year praising the bill. “We know it’s important to pass this stimulus package,” Crist said at a joint rally with Obama in early February, a clip that opens up the club's ad. The group then goes through a litany of statistics suggesting how the stimulus has not helped Florida, including the state’s rising unemployment numbers, as well as the increasing federal deficit.

On Wednesday, a day after GOP primary opponent Marco Rubio debuted a Web site trashing Crist’s appearance with Obama, the Florida governor defended himself on CNN, offering up the most unconvincing line we’ve heard since "I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “I didn't endorse it. I didn't even have a vote on the darned thing," Crist, who also signed a letter urging the bill’s passage, told CNN. “But I understood that it was going to pass, and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians.” Today, speaking to reporters at the statehouse in Florida, Crist dug himself a little deeper, suggesting he wouldn't have even voted for the bill. Crist says he viewed the bill as taxpayer dollars coming back to Florida to “benefit” residents. “I, like all other Republican governors, utilized that money for the benefit of the people in my state,” the governor told CNN. “And that's what a pragmatic conservative does—a CEO, if you will, of a state does that.” That seems like a fair and reasonable argument: Crist was doing what he thought was best for Florida. But his attempts to walk a thin line between supporting and endorsing the stimulus has muddled all of that. You’d think Crist, who is a pretty savvy politician, would have known better.

Another Reason 2010 Isn't Exactly Like 1994

Katie Connolly — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:19:23 GMT

Earlier this week Holly wrote a really interesting piece about the electoral parallels between now and 1993—and the fact that the GOP is hoping for a dramatic Democratic defeat in next year's midterms, similar to what happened in 1994. Holly points out several flaws in the analogy: Republicans have more baggage going into next year's elections than they did in '94, congressional Republicans have exceptionally low approval ratings, the GOP lacks strong national leadership, and there's damaging infighting between conservatives and moderates. But I'd like to add another difference to the list: health-care reform.

The dismal failure of the Clinton health-care plan in the summer of 1994 helped crystallize support for the GOP. Its final whimper came just months before the '94 congressionals, ending a long, fierce battle on an abysmal note for Democrats. This time around, health-care reform will pass. It won't be an ambitious overhaul along the lines that Clinton had envisioned. And, in the end, it may not even include a public option (although the White House assures me it will.) But health-care reform, in some fashion, will be passed, and it will be done well in advance of the election. By the time the voting booths open, the health-care debate will be done. (Until, of course, it is revived, probably in the middle of the next decade, when the reforms have been implemented and either ambitious liberals attempt to strengthen it or conservatives try to stymie it.)

To be sure, the health-care debate has been damaging to the Obama administration, just as it was to the Clintons. But by the time midterms roll around, it won't be sucking up all the oxygen in the room, as it is now, and as it did in 1994. Sure, Republicans will try to attack vulnerable Democrats over the plan. We'll probably see more protests like the one on Capitol Hill today. Anti-abortion activists will no doubt remain energized. But my prediction is that health care won't be top of mind for most Americans in November next year. It won't be the vote winner it was in '94. It won't be the divisive force it was then (or it was this past August, for that matter). In all likelihood, Americans will be far more concerned about their economic security than a health-care plan they haven't started feeling the effects of yet.

Also diminishing health care's electoral potency will be the shellacking the Republican alternative plan received from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last night. Ezra Klein has the lowdown on the CBO analysis:

[In 2019] the Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent. The GOP's alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit. The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan.

This is a major embarrassment for the Republicans. It's one thing to keep your cards close to your chest. Republicans are in the minority, after all, and their plan stands no chance of passage. It's another to lay them out on the table and show everyone that you have no hand, and aren't even totally sure how to play the game. The Democratic plan isn't perfect, but in comparison, it's looking astonishingly good.

Sure, Republicans are already eyeing health-care reform as a battering ram for next year's elections, but a heck of a lot can happen in a year.

In Round One of the Census Battle, Vitter and Bennett Lose

Arian Campo-Flores — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:17:21 GMT

Here's an update to an entry I posted last week. As I noted then, the 2010 census has sparked a battle over whether undocumented immigrants should be part of the count and thus included in state tallies used to reapportion Congressional seats, as has been the case in past cycles. The opening round of that fight was a proposed amendment sponsored by Republican Sens. David Vitter and Robert Bennett that would have added a question to the census survey asking whether the respondent is a citizen or not. The aim was to later strip out non-citizens when it came time for reapportionment.

Well, the senators lost that round. Earlier today, the amendment was blocked when the Senate voted 60-39 to end debate on an appropriations bill. But don't expect the issue to go away anytime soon. A Vitter spokesman, Joel DiGrado, says the senator will try to find other legislative vehicles for the amendment and will continue to press the matter. He's "not going to just stop talking about the issue," says DiGrado.

Those opposed to including illegal immigrants in the census count are studying other options. One possibility would be to craft some alternative legislative challenge in Congress, says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates reduced immigration. Legal action is a possibility, too, though a FAIR lawsuit in 1980 over this issue was thrown out for lack of standing.

The pro-immigrant forces think these tactics will fail. Senate Democrats have just shown they've got the votes to turn back future attempts to include a similar amendment. And in the House, the math just doesn't favor a measure like that, argues Andres Ramirez of the New Democrat Network. The undocumented are concentrated in the biggest states with the largest number of representatives, who won't exactly be keen on shrinking their ranks. Plus, says Ramirez, imagine if California were forced to subtract its population of illegal immigrants and lost five seats. When it came time for the Democrat-controlled state legislature there to redraw Congressional districts, guess which party would come up short? Same goes for other big Democrat-controlled states like New York and Illinois.

Still, Ramirez has no doubt that Vitter & Co. will keep the illegal-immigrant issue alive. "What they're trying to do is win in the court of public opinion," he says. "They want to get people riled up about it." That worries him and his allies, because the more controversy there is surrounding the census, the tougher it'll be to get comprehensive immigration reform passed next year.

The Maine Vote: Why Gay Marriage Is a Generational Issue

Katie Connolly — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:33:43 GMT

Marriage-equality proponents are staring blankly into their coffee mugs today, wondering just what went wrong in Maine. It was supposed to be the place that proved the national tide is turning on gay rights. Yet voters endorsed a proposal to overturn an existing gay-marriage sanction. It's certainly a setback for the movement, but it's not the end. Not even close.

I tend to think of gay rights as a generational issue. Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight blogger who builds extraordinarily insightful electoral models, finds that support for banning gay marriage is eroding at a pace of 2 percentage points each year. Young people tend to be more supportive, and over time, I think that view will prevail. In years to come, opposition to gay rights will be as outdated a mindset as denying women the vote seems today. The train is moving in one direction, and, like many movements before it, young people are driving.

There are lots of reasons young people are less bothered by gay rights than older folks. Young people are more comfortable coming out than ever (although I imagine it's still no easy feat). More and more young people know someone who is openly gay, and research conducted by Gallup indicates that people are more likely to support gay rights, like marriage, if they personally know someone who is gay. A Hattaway Communications/Lake Research Partners poll conducted earlier this year in Massachusetts also found that opposition to gay marriage had diminished significantly since that state first legalized it more than five years ago. As Massachusetts residents grew accustomed to having gay married couples in their state, the poll found that they even began to associate marriage equality with promoting family values.

Another, albeit less concrete, indicator of shifting political terrain is the contemporary abundance of positive representations of gays in popular culture, usually in TV shows that skew toward a younger demographic. I remember when Matt, the gay character on Melrose Place, seemed groundbreaking. Nowadays it's entirely commonplace to have a permanent gay character. Think Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Glee, Modern Family, The Office, Entourage—even as far back as Will & Grace, Dawson's Creek, and Buffy. All these shows appeal to younger audiences, and none has suffered serious backlash from the presence of gay characters. Certainly this isn't a scientific measure, but cultural representations, particularly those embraced by youth, often presage broader social change.

The Maine vote is truly disappointing for gay-rights activists, the fate of the minority again being decided by an unsympathetic majority. But it should be considered in context. It was an off-cycle vote, and such elections always have lower turnout than presidentials. Off-cycle demographics also tend to skew older, into demographics far less supportive of gay rights. There was also the odd wording of the ballot itself, which required proponents of gay marriage to vote no.

In many civil-rights movements, change can be slow, incremental, and suffer setbacks before making progress. As the movement gains traction, resisters dig in, the prospect of change prompting them to hold more fiercely to their position. It's a classic dance—two steps forward, one back. Maine is one step back, for sure, but I believe time will show we witnessed the real long-term trend in Washington state.

Making Sense of Maine

Newsweek — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:59:47 GMT

By Jesse Ellison

Yesterday, Mainers turned out in unexpectedly high numbers to vote yes on 1, which actually meant voting no on gay marriage. Voting yes to say no wasn't the only thing that happened that might confound those watching from out of state. Despite making a socially conservative choice on gay marriage, voters made the fairly liberal decision not to limit state government spending, and an almost radical move to expand and regulate the distribution of medical marijuana. Together, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

So what happened? Opponents of same-sex marriage waged essentially the same campaign run last year in California, with endless television ads claiming that not repealing gay marriage, which Democratic Gov. John Baldacci had signed into law in May, would mean that it would be taught in school. One of them showed a forlorn-looking couple from Massachusetts claiming that since their state had legalized same-sex marriage, "our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys. He's in second grade." In another, a Maine teacher implored voters to "vote yes on Question 1 to prevent homosexual marriage from being taught in Maine schools." The state attorney general publicly disputed the claims, but there's no question that they were effective.

Not unexpectedly, and perhaps more important, poll results also show that votes fell sharply along an inland-coastal split. Liberal enclaves along the coast generally voted overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex marriage, while inland, more rural areas voted against it. The split reflects a much deeper divide. And here's where things get delicate. Generally speaking, southern, coastal residents are wealthier, more liberal, and better-educated. Inland, rural areas, particularly up north, tend to be poorer, more conservative, and religious. Throughout Maine, there is a certain wariness of people who are "from away" (meaning another state), but that's especially true inland. It's not surprising that voters there would be more reluctant to change, particularly if that change is perceived as being driven by outside forces. One of the ads that ran encouraging voters to choose "No on 1" included an ominous line about "outsiders" trying to make gay couples feel ashamed—seemingly directed squarely at the voters most likely to vote yes.

But Mainers also voted 60-40 against putting spending limits on state and local governments and requiring voter approval of tax hikes, and for expanding access to and distribution of medical marijuana, both relatively liberal positions. Taking a socially conservative stance on one issue and a liberal one on two others says more about the state as a whole than it does about any internal divide. And politically, Maine is nothing if not independent. The standard notions of "conservative" and "liberal," "Republican" and "Democrat" simply don't apply. Since 1974, the state has had three independent governors; the last time any other state had an independent governor was Oregon in 1930. And Maine's current senators are Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republican women known for their unwillingness to conform strictly to party lines. Last month Snowe was the sole Republican senator to vote in favor of a Democratic health-reform bill.

So if there's any explanation, it's simply that Maine (which, full disclosure, is where I was born and raised) is an odd little state at the end of the earth that refuses to conform. If the choices voters made there yesterday don't make sense, you're probably just from away.

Nancy Pelosi Eats Ice Cream for Breakfast

Holly Bailey — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:41:30 GMT

There are many things to love about New York Magazine’s cover story on Nancy Pelosi this week: the very prominent photo of Pelosi with Obama just over the House speaker’s left shoulder in the lead photograph; how she takes only the stairs in the Capitol, forcing her aides and security detail to huff and puff up and down them all day long; and how she was shocked—shocked—that CIA types were upset when she suggested the agency had lied to Congress about waterboarding. We learn the secret to her political power on Capitol Hill: thank-you notes, flowers, and, sometimes, calls to prominent donors in an individual lawmaker’s district. “Nancy has a minister’s political skills,” Majority Whip James Clyburn tells the mag. Oh, and she also hates to cry. But the most revealing detail about Pelosi: she eats Häagen-Dazs for breakfast. Specifically, chocolate Häagen-Dazs. Here's the proof, courtesy of NY Mag:

Suddenly, a door opens, and a beaming servant zooms to Pelosi’s side, stooping to show her the contents of his platter: a delicate bowl, piled high with two luscious scoops of dark-chocolate ice cream.

She lets out something you’ve never heard from her before, at least not on TV: a tremendously long and high-pitched giggle, like one that would come from a girl about a half-century younger. “Hee-hee-hee-hee,” she goes, pushing her chin to the sky. “Oh, no, Michael,” she says, “I don’t want that now. Later, later!”

Chocolate ice cream is the staple of Pelosi’s diet: She doesn’t cook herself, so except for a salad for lunch and whatever an aide hands her for dinner, that’s what she eats. “I think that’s the first time she’s ever turned it down,” whispers her personal assistant, later. “The other day, she came in at 8:45 a.m. carrying a pint of Häagen-Dazs with an inch left in it—she’d eaten the whole thing on the way in. She handed it off to Michael, and then two hours later, she said, ‘Where’s that ice cream? Can I eat the rest of that?’ ” (At one point, when she mentions to me that she likes artisanal ice cream, I joke, “Oh, elitist ice cream,” and she shoots back: “It’s not elite. It’s not elite. It’s just a small operation.”)

Awesome.

All Good News for Marco Rubio? Not Exactly.

Arian Campo-Flores — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:14:15 GMT

One theme emerging from the post-Election Day chatter is that the results augur well for Marco Rubio, the upstart challenging Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in next year's Senate primary in the Sunshine State. Running as a "true conservative" opposed to Crist's centrism, Rubio has energized some of the same anti-establishment forces that helped elbow aside Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd Congressional District. So, the reasoning goes, Rubio just got a fresh jolt of momentum. National conservatives are fired up and turning their attention to Florida. And Rubio is likely to get lots more attention and a fresh infusion of campaign cash. Already, the Club for Growth, which reportedly pumped $1 million into Doug Hoffman's campaign in New York's 23rd Congressional District, has signaled its interest in Rubio.

Certainly, this is good news for Rubio, particularly in the short term. But I'd point to some caveats. For starters, conditions are likely to start turning more hostile for him. Until now, he's basically gotten a free ride. The mainstream media has largely covered his campaign in inspirational, David-versus-Goliath terms. That won't last much longer. The race, which has already drawn national attention, will now move more fully into the spotlight. With that will come greater scrutiny—of Rubio's record, of his perceived contradictions, of his tenure as Florida House speaker (which came under plenty of criticism).

Crist partisans sound like they're ready to pounce. As Peter Wallsten noted in a Wall Street Journal piece today, the campaign's oppo researchers are operating in high gear. Among the tidbits they've uncovered: a YouTube video in which Rubio seems to concede that emission caps would become reality, the same caps Rubio has been lambasting Crist for supporting at one time. There's also Rubio's advocacy, during his time in the Florida House, of substituting an increased sales tax for property taxes. That offers Crist an opening to attack Rubio as a tax-hiker. In short, the gloves are coming off.

Moreover, yesterday's results were a victory for centrism. The candidates who ran as moderates (Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell) won, and the one who ran far to the right (Hoffman) lost. So Crist's brand of Republicanism was vindicated, not Rubio's. True, the folks who usually turn out in GOP primaries are more conservative, but Florida Republicans are a big, diverse lot and not dominated by the tea-party crowd. If there's something Crist should be worried about, however, it's the unmistakeably anti-incumbent mood that emerged yesterday, says Susan MacManus of the University of South Florida. "There's an anger right now against whoever's in office," she says. "The question is, how long does that last?"

The Actual Bad Sign for Democrats From Tuesday

Ben Adler — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:03:19 GMT

Unlike the New York City mayoral, or the Virginia governor's race, there is a really bad sign for Democrats out of the East Coast. Via The New York Times, Republicans made inroads in New York's suburbs. "In Westchester County, where Democrats have a solid advantage in voter registration, a Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, upset the incumbent Democratic County Executive, Andrew Spano, who was seeking his fourth term ... In Nassau County, Republicans recaptured the county legislature, and have come close to unseating the Democratic County Executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, in a race that remained too close to call on Wednesday morning."

Why does this matter so much? Because the New York suburbs epitomize the new Blue America. Twenty-some-odd years ago, the economically diverse, but generally affluent, suburbs in Westchester and Long Island represented the success of the Reagan Revolution. White ethnics, often Catholic, whose parents had lived in the city and voted Democratic, were turning to Republicans for lower taxes, strong national security, and traditional family values. But the New York suburbs led the way back to Democratic dominance, arguably presaging the Obama coalition. Pro-gun-control candidates such as Rep. Carolyn McCarthy from Long Island started picked up seats in the 1990s. Growing diversity and concerns about education in the postindustrial economy helped lead to Democratic inroads in local races.

During the Democrats most recent identity crises, after they lost the 2004 election, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer wrote a whole book about how Democrats can and should appeal to voters like the ones in the New York suburbs. He knows just how important they are: traditionally in New York politics, the city votes heavily Democratic and upstate favors Republicans. The suburbs decide elections.

Next door in New Jersey, the dynamic is similar, with largely minority cities such as Camden and Newark supporting Democrats and outlying areas of Western and South Jersey leaning towards the GOP. As Andrew notes, crucial swing suburban counties went Republican on Tuesday. If I were David Axelrod, that's what I'd be worried about.

Maine Looked Like Promising Ground for Gay Rights, Until Tuesday

Eve Conant — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:45:00 GMT

Maine should have been an example of strength in numbers for gay-marriage proponents but instead turned into heartache. If you don't count the District of Columbia, according to Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's school of law devoted to gay-rights policies, Maine "has the highest number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households (so the highest per capita) of any state." So what happened?

With gains on the national front, such as gay marriages being officially counted (with figures released) for the first time in the 2010 census and the recent passage of hate-crimes legislation that includes protection for gays, the movement is seeing more momentum in the past half year than it has in decades.

Maine should have been part of that momentum. The state is known for its moderate, independent electorate, and gay-right activists had mounted a sophisticated media campaign in support of same-sex marriage. But movement on the national stage, it seems, is not translating into progress on the state level.

Just this week the Williams Institute released a widely reported survey, which found that same-sex couples, who say they are spouses, look quite a bit like their different-sex married counterparts.

"A basic argument used by traditional marriage proponents is that allowing same-sex couples to marry will bring about this fundamental change in how we think about marriage," says Gates. "They say that allowing same-sex couples to marry amounts to decoupling marriage from procreation, yet nearly a third of same-sex couples are raising kids. With same-sex spouses looking in almost all other demographic ways almost exactly like married couples, that argument seems to be put into question."

But the argument lost. And the loss is especially deep, given that a win would have lent serious legal weight to the same-sex-marriage argument. A a success in Maine would have blunted conservative claims that same-sex marriage is being pushed on them by judges and lawmakers against the will of the public. Instead, yesterday's outcome marks the first time voters have rejected a gay-marriage law enacted by legislature (when California blocked gay marriage a year ago that was in response to a court ruling), handing another significant victory to supporters of traditional marriage.

To find out why Washington's passage of a referendum on same-sex partners is as big a victory for gay-rights supporters as the Maine measure is a defeat, check out this Gaggle post.

Former President Watch: Bush and Koizumi Are Still BFF

Holly Bailey — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:15:17 GMT

Bush and Koizumi, together again. (Photo by JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images)

Ahhh, to be a former president. While we were all consumed with the outcome of the 2009 elections, George W. Bush was overseas in Tokyo, throwing out the first pitch at Japan’s equivalent of the World Series. At his side: Junichiro Koizumi, the former prime minister of Japan and Elvis Presley superfan who was widely considered one of Bush’s best friends, among foreign leaders anyway. Back in 2006, Bush gave Koizumi a restored 1950s-era jukebox full of Elvis tunes and took him to Graceland. Koizumi gave Bush a mix CD of him singing Elvis’s greatest hits. But your Gaggler suspects their friendship was set for life when Bush indulged Koizumi’s real weakness: Juicy Fruit gum. The former PM spotted it in a candy dish on Marine One—“Juicy Fruit!” he shrieked, according to a former Bush administration official, who recounted the story to me later. Turns out Koizumi used to chew the gum as a kid, when U.S. soldiers passed it out to Japanese citizens on the street in the aftermath of World War II. According to the White House, Bush bought him a case to take back to Japan.

This Week in Conservative Media: Is NY-23 Outcome a Sign of Victory for Conservatives?

Eve Conant — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:28:01 GMT

Last week Glenn Beck prophesied that Sarah Palin was on a potential roll with her upcoming book tour, one that might carry her into 2012—as a real rogue. Beck told Bill O’Reilly that her resignation as governor was a smart move, and that “she’s also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I'm sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win,” he said.

Given the Republican victories—and losses in New York—is that idea still alive? We all know that Dede Scozzafava got essentially “ground up in the gears of the Palin machine,” in the words of one Huffington Post blogger, after which Palin told her Facebook fans: "I want to personally thank Republican Dede Scozzafava for acting so selflessly today in the NY District 23 race. Now it's time to cross the finish line with Doug Hoffman so that he can get to work for District 23 and the rest of America."

Whoops.

But…wait…apparently his loss is still a win for conservatives, according to RedState’s Erick Erickson. “Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose. I have said all along that the goal of activists must be to defeat Scozzafava. Doug Hoffman winning would just be gravy. A Hoffman win is not in the cards, but we did exactly what we set out to do—crush the establishment-backed GOP candidate.”

While Erickson says NY-23 is a win for conservatives, he says it’s also a loss for the idea of anyone going rogue. “Secondly, and just as importantly, there has all of a sudden been a huge movement among some activists to go the third-party route. We see in NY-23 that this is not possible as third parties are not viable.” The recipe for success? Conservatives have to work within the GOP and the GOP needs to pay them some attention. A new Web site launched by The Washington Times last week that aims to combine grassroots conservative activists with leading conservative voices didn't touch the third-party question, but did bash the idea of their liberal friends thinking they need to move more to left to woo back independents.

Michelle Malkin is also proclaiming victory for conservatives, not surprisingly. “Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them as outside the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists.”