Archive for October, 2006

As promised, my pumpkin that accidently looks like Vice President Dick Cheney. I decided not to add little glasses, a shotgun or piles of bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions to our outside display — I didn’t want to make it totally scary.

I caught a strong political spot by Lois Murphy this afternoon — and I must say, I’m impressed. She comes across as smart, warm and ready to go to Washington to make changes. If she has enough cash to keep in on the air for a week, it’s a strong positive play — and the best spot produced by her team during the last two cycles. I hope it’s enough, as I note, the numbers are terrifyingly close here in PA-6.

This could be a tough time to be a Republican in Southeast Pa. — looking at the new poll numbers, it looks likely that PA-7 and 10 are going to flip from Republican to Democrat congressional seats, with Murphy in PA-6 in a dogfight, and even Patrick Murphy having a solid shot in PA-8. If all four of those seats go Dem, it should be an indicator of races elsewhere and mean the house flips by more than 30 seats and the senate by at least five.

What seemed so unlikely a year ago, a Democratic house and senate are a very real possibility.

More locally, look for at least three state house seats to flip in the southeast: 156, 167 and 161. I don’t think the Democrats will take over either house in Harrisburg — and they shouldn’t. The Democratic leadership has throttled candidates — prevented them from talking about the pay raise — and it has hurt a number of local races. It is — Bill "thesarus" DeWeese, here’s a word for you — unconsciable.

Until the Democratic Party can look voters in the eye and tell them it leadership is not corrupt, insulated and part of the problem in Harrisburg, the party is not going to get anywhere in terms of taking over the Assembly and shaping the future of this state. Reform, in the county parties as well as the state party must become the no. 1 priority of the state’s rank and file Democrats. The pay raise issue is evidence enough that the fish has rotted from the head — and it is time to cut away the rotten, stinking, putrid flesh.

2007 must be a year of internal reform for Pennsylvania’s Democrats. We must root out corruption and create a clear difference for the voters.

Nothing major today, as once again, health issues intercede. I carved my annual pumpkin — and the kids asked for something scary, so I went for scary. And damned if the thing doesn’t look exactly like Dick Cheney. I’ll post a shot tomorrow.

Love the new Gerlach fiction, uh, campaign commercial on the eminent domain issue. As seems to be the theme of his 2006 campaign, the ads aren’t backed up by facts, but you have to give him points for being consistent. I just wish I could be as sure he’s going to be out of a job as I am about Curt Weldon. Weldon’s  "do a favor for a friend and vote for me" commercials are so touching — and proof that he doesn’t really get it. C’mon Curt, it’s this doing favors for a friend — especially when you know it’s a bad idea — that got you in hot water in the first place. It doesn’t seem fair to expect the voters of CD-7 to share your sense of morals (or lack thereof) right?

Finally, I’m working on a dual review of "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward and "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" by Frank Rich for ihateitall.com. I won’t spoil the punchline here — but you might be surprised by my conclusions.

And now a new, semi-regular feature of this blog: Advice to Democrats.

Today, my advice is to would-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Ms. Pelosi, the guts of my advice amounts to two words: "shut up." It seems lately, every time I hear you say something in public, it is ill-advised or just plain stupid. Enough of us Democrats already are afraid you’re a plant by the Carlyle Group, a sleeper agent primed to kill the Democratic Party should it gain control of Congress.

So, let’s be honest: promising not to impeach G.W. Bush wasn’t bright. A non-committal "until we see clear grounds for an impeachment proceeding, any discussion of it would be irresponsible" would have been great. Now, no matter what comes out (and not to put too fine a point on it, what has come out already makes Watergate look like a church social) — you can’t even consider impeachment.

While I’m not one of those on the left who has been screaming "impeach the bastard," I’m also smart enough to know you don’t cut yourself off from options. It’s bad enough that the Democrats have been enablers for the Bush Administration, but to give them a free pass, specifically, the president, who may have committed multiple impeachable offenses is a back-bencher move. I can only think Thomas P. "Tip" O’Neil is spinning in his grave right now.

Ms. Pelosi, find some brains and guts, or step aside.

I apologize for my lack of posts in recent days….once again, I’m giving birth to a new Web site, www.tektruth.com, which launches formally next week.

The good news is that TT will be the last new site I develop in this cycle…which means more writing time, both for this site, which has become surprisingly popular, as well as my other sites, ihateitall.com and nybaseballcentral.com.

A couple of interesting things:

You probably saw Lois Murphy’s announcement that her polling has her up three points. While she treated it as good news, I don’t think it is. First of all, it’s within the margin of error. Second, it’s her poll. I’d like to see some of the raw data, but my hunch is that the three points in "likely voters" won’t be enough to counterbalance the GOP GOTV effort, which is worth about five points. Again, I can’t make an educated guess without seeing the raw numbers, but it looks like Murphy is going to lose another close one…by about the same 5,000-6,000 vote margin.

Unfortunately, the Chester County numbers will likely be to blame — and while there will be enough individual blame to go around — two glaring issues come to mind for me: Murphy’s failure for the second cycle to bring in local field operations people and poor county party leadership. For three cycles, the GOP has practically begged the Democrats to win PA-6 and looks like it won’t happen — again.

You can put all the rosy comments you want on it, but the only reasonable metric is performance. If Murphy loses in two weeks, two things should happen: Murphy should sit out the next cycle and find some other office to run for and the county party leadership should resign.

The price of failure is too high to accept any more wasted cycles. The loss of this seat could be the difference between controlling the house and not controlling the house. Should that scenario play out, how many people will die in Iraq and maybe Iran and the Koreas because the Chester County Democratic Committee can’t get it’s act together?

Amazingly, no one has taken me up on my offer to shave my head, die it blue and visit the polling places of the 160th District if someone donates $1,000 to Shawn Diggory.

God knows, there’s enough people in both parties that truly despise me that this should have been a slam dunk. I am startled at the apathy here.

Between a decade of covering local politics as a reporter and four years being involved with various campaigns and serving as both a campaign manager and candidate I’ve seen some pretty stupid moves by candidates and campaigns.

But sending a fundraising appeal to your previous opponent in the last election cycle — well, it’s not really bright.

Not that anyone has ever, ever, accused Steve Barrar of being bright, mind you. Not only did he send me a solicitation for funds — he sent one to my step son, Ed, who has served on the national board of the Young Democrats and was a key part of my state house campaign.

Lazy? Stupid? Oblivious? Yeah, pretty much.

So why is ol’ Steve suddenly panicked about money? Isn’t all that corporate cash enough? Or, maybe, just maybe, Steve’s worried that people are figuring out how lousy a job he’s done — and what a blow hard he is.

So here’s the deal: for the first person (or group, or local committee) who donates $1,000 to Shawn Diggory — the guy running very ably against Barrar this time — I will buzz cutt my hair and dye it blue — and make a tour of local polling places on election day to prove it. Sure, I’ll look like a dork, but it’s worth it.

You know you want to do it….so c’mon!

While a lot of people don’t like to bother with the signup process for commenting here, you can join the ihateitall.com forums and rip me a new one – just for fun. Of course, please read and observe the rules of that forum, but it might be a fun place to take out your angst.

Ciao, baby.

New and very interesting polling data from Democracy Corps (and yes, it’s a Democratic polling company but I’ll explain to you why this data looks pretty clean) showing a big disconnect between the voters and GOP congressmembers – maybe even bigger than the current conventional wisdom having the Dems pick up 25 seats in the house and five or six in the U.S. Sentate.

Okay, so why should GOP’ers be worried about a Democrat poll? Because this looks like the kind of polling campaigns and parties do internally — accurate snapshots to make decisions where the money is going to go. Those polled for this voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry by five points, the same as the final result of the election. But since many of the seats in jeopardy for the GOP are in districts that largely performed better than that in terms of Kerry, there has to be some flop sweat for GOP Bossman Ken Muhlman.

Maybe more interesting for those of you who don’t want to dig into the numbers is the demographics of the poll, which, to me seem skewed a bit old (which should have hurt the Democratic polling data). Also, this polling data used the actual name of the local candidates instead of the usual generic party tag, used in the vast majority of polls released.

For poll junkies — and we know you’re out there — this is the kind of revealing data we rarely get to see if we’re not on a campang staff.

Editor’s Note: As a courtesy to our readers, and because frankly, there’s no columnist at the Delaware County Times (or, in fairness, The Inquirer since Steve Lopez left town) with the cojones to do it, I’ve decided to translate from pol-spin to English the statement of U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon about the FBI’s investigation into his activities, focusing on influence peddling on behalf of his daughter and Delaware County, Pa., GOP power broker Charlie Sexton. It is, of course, just my opinion, but one would hope you’d find it both entertaining and enlightening. The text of the original statement is in black, my translation is in blue.

SPRINGFIELD, PA — Congressman Curt Weldon issued the following statement in response to media inquiries regarding a preliminary inquiry by the Justice Department:

"I have received confirmation that the Justice Department has opened apreliminary inquiry into items previously reported on by the LA Times in 2004.”

Obviously, I knew about the investigation because word had been filtering out for weeks about it looming — I was praying that it wouldn’t become public before Election Day.

“I look forward to providing law enforcement personnel with any and all documents and information that they may seek to review. I will cooperate 100 percent with the inquiry. I am confident that investigators will reach the same conclusions as the House Ethics Committee, which looked into these allegations in 2004 at my request, and found that I had engaged in no wrongdoing.”
Read the rest of this entry »

So much for the denials about an investigation into Rep. Curt Weldon. The home of Weldon’s daughter, Karen, and Charlie Sexton, a major player in the Delaware County Republican Party were searched Monday by the FBI.

Weldon — who at first denied the investigation exists — now claims it is politically motivated and that some one should have let him know. Politically motivated? By George W. Bush’s Justice Department? Who does Weldon think he is kidding?  This should be a killing blow to the long-term congressman and general kook.

So the other day, this really nasty guy calls. Naturally, I assume it’s one of my readers.

But it’s not. Turns out, it’s one of those robocaller thingies — which have been horribly overused this election cycle by both parties. Usually, they’re just annoying and hysterically twisted:

Did you know Lois Murphy eats small children? And worships the devil? And sometimes even eats small children while worshipping the devil? And even worse, during the recent Eagle-Giants game, she was seen rooting for the Giants. Lois Murphy doesn’t share your values and SHE EATS BABIES. This message was paid for the Republican National Campaign Committee, which is pretending, wink, wink, not to have ANYTHING to do with Jim Gerlach.

Okay, maybe a slight exagggeration, but for the second striaght cycle, the NRCC and Gerlach have run with the hysterical football and it’s worked well enough.

Well, that’s who this robocall was from — and well, it was rude. The call basically berated me about Murphy and was nasty — like a robo harassment call. Now, me, I’m used to being harassed — I ran against Steve Barrar and his gang of thugs (sample: "huh-huh-huh, you’re fat"). But for the average, unwashed voter, this is a really, really bad move. The NRCC should be thanking its lucky stars (and no small amount of incompetent work by the DCCC and Murphy’s staff) that Gerlach isn’t 15 points down, not verbally harassing me.

Evidently, Mark Foley wasn’t the only GOP Congressman with a harassment problem.