The 109th Congress and the energy bill

The New York Times has a report for tomorrow's edition headlined "Bigger Republican Majority Plans to Push Bush Agenda."  Excerpt:

Nine new senators and 41 House freshmen will be sworn in as the 109th Congress opens at noon on Tuesday, but the ceremony could be quickly overshadowed by a resumption of the sharp partisanship that was a hallmark of the Congress that ended last month. ...

Senate Republicans gained four seats in the November elections, enlarging their majority to 55 to 45 and putting them closer to the 60 votes needed to break filibusters. The seven new Republican members include a core of fiscal and social conservatives moving across the Rotunda from the House who are strongly against abortion and for tax cuts. ...

Bolstered by the new majorities, lawmakers involved in energy policy would also like to shake free a long-stalled energy measure that provides incentives for new domestic oil and gas production as well as money for research into new sources of fuel. Republicans say they may now have the votes to win approval for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which has long been opposed by national environmental groups and most Democratic lawmakers.

Senator Daschle's failure last congress to get just two Democratic votes to pass the energy bill with its ethanol provisions is one of the issues that spurred John Thune to mount his successful challenge against Daschle.  If the energy bill passes in the next few weeks, it will be due in large part to Senator-elect Thune defeating Daschle.

Thune/Obama

See CNN's "Political Plays of the Year":

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- What would New Year's Eve be without party favors?

So before auld acquaintance is forgot, we're going to bring to mind the top political plays of 2004 -- with favors for both parties.

Play number five: The Senate class of '04 produces two rising stars.

One GOP victory was especially sweet -- South Dakota, where Rep. John Thune knocked off Democratic leader Tom Daschle.

"We prayed a lot about it as did a lot of other people and finally concluded that this was something that we needed to do," Thune said.

Did the Democrats produce a star? They sure did.

"The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too," said Barack Obama in his speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 27.

Obama won a stunning 43-point victory after wowing Democrats with his spellbinding oratory at the Boston convention.

Meanwhile, in today's newspaper the Sioux Falls Argus Leader takes a 'we'll-be-watching-you' tone:

As mentioned earlier, Tom Daschle was defeated in his quest for a fourth Senate term by John Thune. The question many ordinary citizens are asking is: Will it matter? Republicans say no, that their man Thune will deliver the goods for projects such as the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, moving railroad tracks in downtown Sioux Falls and roads, roads, roads.

This seems a rather blinkered view, given the bigger issue of how the Senate has changed/will change and what will happen to important bills to South Dakotans (like the energy/ethanol bill) which were previously blocked in the Daschle Senate.  To narrow Thune's victory to the question of "roads" doesn't say much about the broader promise and prospects of politics.

Corporate farming

After the successful challenge to South Dakota's ban on corporate farming, a Nebraska state legislator is challenging that state's ban, according to an AP report in the Yankton Press & Dakotan headlined "Lawsuit To Challenge Nebraska's Corp. Farming Ban."

In other local legal news, the AP has a report headlined "EEOC suing Sioux Falls business over discrimination allegation."

Diamond

If you haven't seen Jared Diamond's new book "Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed," you might want to look over his long editorial in today's New York Times.  Then check out Sioux Falls Lincoln High School in the Rose Bowl parade and then turn on the Iowa game.

Blogs

ABC News has named bloggers their "People of the Year."

Third Party

The short-lived third party candidacy of Tim Giago caused a stir in this year's Senate race.  Sibby analyzes some of Giago's, um, conflicting statements.

Newspapers

If you're into criticizing newspapers, take a look at this analysis of the LA Times' coverage for 2004.

Bishop

The Bishop of Sioux Falls, Robert Carlson, is moving to Michigan.  Here's an Argus Leader story which notes some of the political impacts of the bishop:

Phyllis Justice of Milbank said she thinks Carlson's strong pro-life stance played an influential role in the 2004 election, where Republican John Thune defeated U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, a Roman Catholic who had supported abortion rights.

Stephanie Herseth, also a Democrat, won election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Had Daschle been able to get the backing of the Democrats in Minnehaha County as did Herseth, he would be back in the Senate," Justice said. "I think (Carlson's) strong stand for life had a great deal of influence."

That level of involvement in politics, particularly during the last year, turned off some Catholics. Pat Cannon of Sioux Falls said he recognizes the huge responsibility of a spiritual leader such as Carlson.

"He was in a difficult position, and I know he was sincere," said Cannon, a 57-year-old self employed developer of medical products. "But I think the issues were broader than his approach would suggest."

He contends powerful political forces can hijack moral issues to advance their own causes in elections, and Carlson may have unwittingly helped them. "Good people can disagree," said Cannon, who stresses he doesn't know the bishop personally. "Those decision are made in private."

Here's an article The Weekly Standard which reported that Carlson asked Daschle to stop calling himself a Catholic because of his abortion views.

Powerline v. Minneapolis Star Tribune

Here's a long round-up post about the Powerline/Star Tribune battle over in the Twin Cities:

Considering the extent of Coleman’s slander, the response by Power Line was surprisingly muted. As John “Hindrocket” Hinderaker wrote, “I'd like to respond to his charges, only I can't figure out what they are.” The post itself was little more than the blog equivalent of waving off a heckler but the ripple effect it produced was nothing short of astounding. The bloggers that picked up on the story included:

Instapundit, Captain’s Quarters, Shot in the Dark, SCSU Scholars, Betsy’s Page, Dave Friedman, The American Thinker, Kerry Spot, Hugh Hewitt, Blogicus, Pejmanesque, Running Scared, La Shawn Barber, Poliblogger, Brain Shavings, Reagan Republican, Tiger Hawk, Loaded Mouth, CounterPundit, PrestoPundit, dustbury, Jay Reding, bogus gold, Small Town Veteran, Secure Liberty, The Senescent Man, Cake Eater Chronicles, Tulsa Topics, Shameless Self-Promotion, Side-Lines, Scribe, The Volokh Conspiracy, Powerpundit, The American Mind, Radio Brian Scott, Brain Terminal, and Little Green Footballs.

The fact that such a large number of blogger wrote about the incident is rather extraordinary. But the true significance lies in the number of people who read about Coleman’s gaffe on these blogs. Together these sites have a daily hit count of over 350,000* while the Star-Tribune itself has a circulation of approximately 380,000. If we assume that ever person who bought the newspaper today read Coleman’s column then we can deduce that for every three people who saw the piece slamming Power Line, two people read a defense of the bloggers. (Blog readership, however, has a great deal of overlap so that has to be factored into any conclusions that might be made about the overall site visits.)

Essentially, what we have are two “brands” going head to head for what Hewitt calls “mindspace” – the attention, respect, and trust of information consumers. At first it might appear that Coleman retains a slight advantage. He not only has more (potential) readers but he has them all in a central geographic location while the PL defenders are spread across the country.

But think about the implications from the perspective of “brand management.” Both Coleman and the PL crew live in the same city and both have their work accessible on the Internet. Yet Power Line was able to have a national effect and get their message across in a way that Coleman could only dream about.

Mitchell

From the editors of the Mitchell Daily Republic:

The vote is in, and the top story in South Dakota - according to editors and broadcasters - was the defeat of Tom Daschle by John Thune. Or was it the win by John Thune over Tom Daschle? The outcome is the same, but the question lingers. Did Daschle lose the election, or did Thune win it?

We believe it was a mix of factors that caused the first Senate leader in 52 years to be turned out of office. It wasn’t that Daschle had done a poor job for South Dakota. On the contrary. He effectively brought projects, money, jobs and identity to a low profile state. At the same time, his seniority and consequent leadership forced him to take high profile positions on volatile and emotional issues: gun control, abortion, gay rights, and flag burning, to name but four.

Daschle supporters contended the “cultural” issues shouldn’t decide the election, and perhaps they didn’t. But the impact was there. They cost the one-time Senate majority leader key support.

AP

Here's an Associated Press story entitled "GOP Weathers Changing of the Guard."  Excerpt:

Some South Dakota Republicans wondered about the party's fortunes when longtime party leader Bill Janklow resigned from the U.S. House in January, but the GOP had a strong showing in the November election. "When it comes to success stories, this was a very successful year for South Dakota Republicans," state Party Chairman Randy Frederick said. Janklow, a former four-term governor, was involved in a fatal car crash in August 2003, was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and resigned from Congress in January. But in this year's elections, the GOP gained a Senate seat when former Rep. John Thune beat Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, held its two-thirds majorities in both the state House and Senate and gained a seat on the state Public Utilities Commission. Janklow's resignation and Daschle's loss at the polls mean both parties are going through a changing of the guard with the loss of two dominant forces in South Dakota politics for more than a quarter century. Democrats seem to face the toughest challenge as they rebuild a party organization that had been so closely tied to Daschle. Meanwhile, the South Dakota GOP has regained Thune, who served six years in the U.S. House before losing a Senate race against Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson in 2002.

The Senate

Here's a Christian Science Monitor article entitled "How Five Newcomers Could Change the Senate."  Excerpt:

With a 55-45 edge in the 109th Congress (counting Independent Sen. James Jeffords with the Democrats), Republicans have a better shot at moving the president's agenda. An early test will be judicial nominations. Last week, President Bush announced that he is renominating 20 judicial candidates who did not get a vote in the 108th Congress. Senate majority leader Bill Frist assigned Senator-elect Coburn and Sen. Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas, both strong opponents of abortion, to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate majority leader has also signaled that he may propose a rule to limit the minority's power to filibuster judicial nominations. While moderate Republicans have expressed doubts about this move, the GOP freshmen say they are open to supporting it.

The right to unlimited debate has been one of the defining differences between the House and Senate.

The new conservative senators will also boost GOP efforts to move legislation to cap medical malpractice lawsuits, as well as a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

New Blog

Here's an article in The Weekly Standard entitled "The Philosophers' Blog" about a new blog run by professors from around the country.  They want to convince voters of the error of their ways, i.e. voting Republican.  Article excerpts:

OF ALL THE LEFT-wing responses to Bush's reelection--the crying jags, the applications for Canadian citizenship, the bulk orders of Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint--perhaps the strangest of all can be found online at left2right.typepad.com, where a roster of academic all-stars have embarked on a mission to save American liberalism, one blog post at a time. There was no shortage of volunteers for the job: Left2Right, as the site is dubbed, boasts an astonishing 26 co-bloggers, representing 19 American universities and including such luminaries as Princeton's Kwame Anthony Appiah and Stanford's Richard Rorty (who has not yet, alas, contributed a post). ...

The first wave of posts from Left2Right's contributors--no great surprise here--were thus concerned less with reformulating liberalism than with re-shouting its most strident talking points from the political rooftops. For Seana Shiffrin, of UCLA's philosophy department, the lesson of November was that Kerry should have made Abu Ghraib the "centerpoint" of his campaign; for Elizabeth Anderson, who teaches philosophy and women's studies at Michigan, the best way to "get through to the Right in the face of its mass mobilization of individual and group antipathies" was "by standing up for ourselves, proudly defending our positions, ideals, and identities, and exposing the Right's tactics for what they are: ugly, nasty, small-minded bigotry. . . . It is time for the Left to make the Right feel ashamed of its nastiness."

So it's going to be tough love for red America once the philosopher-kings finish revamping American liberalism. But at least the Left2Righters weren't falling into the trap of talking down to conservatives--except when Anderson called the Right's ideas "benighted," or when J. David Velleman of Michigan explained that the religious publishing industry feeds off people who feel a "widespread sense of personal disorientation and directionlessness."

Those lapses aside, there was no condescension at all. Except, perhaps, for this explanation, courtesy of K. Anthony Appiah, for why so many GOP-voting types seem to resent academic elites:

Some of those right-wing evangelicals apparently care whether or not we have a good opinion of them. (If they didn't, the resentment they display toward the "liberal media" would make no sense.) Whereas I know no one among the liberal media elite or among liberal academics who cares very much that many right-wing evangelicals have contempt for us. We care how they vote--for instrumental reasons; we may even care that they are mistaken, for their sakes; but we don't feel diminished by their contempt. . . . (The situation is analogous to the one that obtains with respect to social respect in class-and status-based hierarchies: a peasant can spit when milord walks by, but it won't damage his lordship's self-esteem. But when milord brings his handkerchief to his nose as the peasant approaches, the peasant is stung.)

It's just an analogy, right? It's not as if Appiah is saying that evangelicals actually are peasants, and that he and his co-bloggers actually are noblemen, is it? ...

[T]here are enough bright, theater-of-the-absurd moments to repay an occasional visit to the site. Consider the post in which Jeff McMahan, professor of ethics and political philosophy at Rutgers, seems to discover "support our troops" bumper stickers for the first time:

Vehicles in New Jersey are covered with decals representing little ribbons inscribed with the legend: "Support Our Troops." I have done a lot of driving recently and have noticed geographical disparities in the distribution of these symbols. . . . They are also disproportionately displayed on SUVs and vans, which isn't surprising given that the owners are disproportionately reliant on the oil supplies that our soldiers are in Iraq to protect (among their other purposes). . . . What is it exactly that these decals exhort us to do? How can I, or anyone, support the troops themselves? What can we possibly do for them? It seems that the message is really an exhortation to support the war.

Having cracked the peasants' code, presumably Milord McMahan will turn his attention to the implicit warmongering in The Star-Spangled Banner. With intellectual enemies like these, do conservatives really need friends?

Bears

In neighboring Montana, according to The New York Times, grizzly bear deaths are increasing.  Excerpt:

Thirty-one grizzly bears in and around Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana have died this year as a result of human actions, the largest total in any year since grizzlies were listed as a threatened species three decades ago and about double the number killed in 2003.

Seven were hit by trains or cars. Ten were killed illegally, often shot and left to die. Thirteen were killed by wildlife officials because they had menaced humans or otherwise become a nuisance. One was killed in self-defense.

State and federal wildlife officials attribute the rise in part to the movement of more people into bear territory and a poor berry crop that pushed more grizzlies out of the woods in search of food. Those officials say the number is not yet cause for alarm.

Vacuum

Here's an Associated Press story entitled "Democrats moving on without Daschle."  Excerpt:

But Democrats face a tough rebuilding job after the November defeat of Sen. Tom Daschle by John Thune, two of the state's top political science professors said.

"I think Democrats are going to have a more difficult time of it because Tom Daschle basically had put together the statewide Democratic Party. He ran the leadership institutions. He certainly worked very hard to cull and train and cultivate the next generations of young Democratic officeholders," Bill Richardson, head of political science at the University of South Dakota, said.

"The Democratic Party really has a tremendous challenge," Bob Burns, South Dakota State University's political science head, agreed.

"There's a tremendous amount of organization and building and recruitment that has to occur in order for Democrats to regain some kind of foothold in state government, and that's not going to be easy," Burns said.

With Daschle gone, Sen. Tim Johnson will continue to be a leader in the Democratic Party. But Burns and Richardson said they expect that Democrats will look particularly toward Rep. Stephanie Herseth, who won the state's lone seat in the U.S. House, to rebuild the party.

"On the Democratic side, I think there's a real vacuum or void right now. I suppose it falls to Congresswoman Herseth to pick up the baton and provide the leadership on the Democratic side," Burns said. "I think Democrats are probably looking for a fresh face to develop that leadership."

Draft

Today the Sioux Falls Argus Leader editorial board says the nation might have to re-instate the draft:

Everyone's dancing around the real effects of this, though. The recruiting shortfalls call into question the continued viability of our all-volunteer military. When 40 percent of the troops in Iraq are made of National Guard and Reserves, it's easy to see why there's concern. ... As distasteful as the idea may be, we may have little choice but to consider a draft.

Powerline

Over in the Twin Cities, our friends at Powerline (you know, Time's "Blog of the Year") have been in a running battle with a rather obnoxious columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for quite some time.  Here's the latest exchange.  I thought this salvo from the Trib columnist quit rich:

Time magazine's "Blog of the Year" is not run by Boy Scouts. It is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee.

Anyway, read the exchange if you want.  What's interesting to note is that a certain political columnist in South Dakota has come in for some tough criticism from the Dakota Blog Alliance for the past few years, but has not responded in his column or ever really addressed the criticism (although he does complain behind the scenes that bloggers are out to "get" him).  Whatever.  What's important now is, as Michael Barone noted, the MSM doesn't have a monopoly anymore and can't get away with what they used to.

Sontag

Edward Said, then Jacques Derrida, and now Susan Sontag, all icons of the intellectual left, have all died this year.  They were a far cry from the intellectual "Brains Trust" that helped FDR solidify the Democratic Party's hold on power for 40 years.  And a good case could be made that the intellectuals of the left have contributed to the shrinking success of the once majority party.  But today is not the day for that discussion.  Here's a balanced obit on Sontag:

Susan Sontag is dead. Let us not pretend that Sontag was a conservative, nor on her way to being conservative; but we can at least take a moment to acknowledge some of the service she rendered to conservatism in its various missions. She was capable of meaningful introspection, or irritating vacillation, depending on where you stood -- and it was noteworthy that you were more prone to the latter view the further you stood to the left. Take Vietnam, for example, whose tyrannical regime, as conflated with the totality of the Vietnamese people (excepting, of course, those countless numbers with the poor grace to flee on the high seas), Sontag celebrated, in the way that self-styled intellectuals did in those days. Vietnam fought America, and America was the enemy, the enemy of which was one's friend. So Cuba too and the Communist experiment in general fell into the orbit of Sontag's approval.

In this she was hardly alone; where she parted ways with her compatriots of those heady days, including those who eventually secured the Democratic nomination for President, was her reevaluation of her love affair with the hardcore left's war on humanity. Viewing with mounting dismay the Communist crushing of Solidarity in Poland, she famously declared to a gathering of fellow-travelers in the 1980s that "Communism is Fascism with a human face," upon which they transformed with a chorus of boos into erstwhile fellow-travelers. The storm of condemnation that rained down upon her for this was so much whining, with the predictable outlets -- The Nation, of course -- serving as mouthpieces for the irate defenders of America's enemies. Inasmuch as Sontag could divorce herself from that crowd -- even if she never could, Horowitz-style, fully and explicitly turn against their peculiar madness -- it was to her credit, and a service to the conservatism that she was never identified with.  ...

In that light, then, it is a pity that so many of the blogging generation was first exposed to Sontag in her fading years via just that sort of facile sloganeering -- from Andrew Sullivan, who instituted a "Sontag Award" for those who shared her purported "post-9/11 preference for the 'courage' of Islamist mass murderers as opposed to the 'cowardice' of NATO air-pilots over the skies in Iraq."

First Lady

From today's Wall Street Journal Political Diary:

Second Lady of the Land But First Lady of Blogdom

Who would have thought Lynne Cheney would become a Consumer Reports for the blogging community? That's exactly what the wife of the vice president did last week on MSNBC's "Hardball." While being interviewed about her new children's book, "When Washington Crossed the Delaware," Ms. Cheney made a strong endorsement of the Internet as a learning tool for children: "It's a wonderful resource. I do research on it all the time, and I love reading the bloggers."

When the intrigued host asked her what she thought about blogs, Ms. Cheney gushed: "It is a real democratization of information so that people don't have to rely on one or two sources, they've got multiple sources. And I can tell in about two minutes on a blog whether this is someone whose opinion I value or not."

She then proceeded to issue some product endorsements: "I love Hugh Hewitt. I love Power Line. I read Instapundit," she said, rattling off the names of three right-leaning blogs. She finished with a plug for RealClearPolitics.com, which she said she "certainly looked at a lot during the campaign."

If the notoriously individualistic blogging community ever has a convention, they should invite Ms. Cheney to be their keynote speaker.

Fortune

For you business types, here's a Fortune magazine piece entitled "Why There's No Escaping the Blog."

AP

Here's another AP story in which Daschle talks about how he regrets having to block so much legislation in Congress and how he wanted to be an offensive quarterback. 

Work

Here's a great story in the Rapid City Journal.  Excerpt:

Meatcutter still at it after 60 years

By Steve Miller, Journal Staff Writer

BISON -- Ernest Kari is 84, an age most people are content to play golf, watch TV or fish.  Not Kari. He'd rather cut meat. He has been cutting meat for about 60 years at the store he now runs with his four sons. He's not about to quit, even though he had a five-way heart bypass five years ago. You can find Kari at the Bison Jack & Jill Food Store from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Sometimes, he comes in on Sunday afternoons. Kari said he continues to work "because we've got a lot of work to do."

Powerline

One of the bloggers at Time's "Blog of the Year"--Powerline--is Scott Johnson.  He is from Fargo and the Grand Forks Herald does a profile here.  Excerpt:

How did you and Power Line co-founder John Hinderaker hook up?

John Hinderaker is from Watertown, S.D., originally. John and I worked in the same law firm and started, in 1992, to write newspaper columns and magazine articles and research essays. We got things published in National Review, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other newspapers. We had something in the New York Times on Election Day in November. And we've had papers published by the Center for the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in the Twin Cities.

The blog lets us keep writing in that vein with more freedom and immediacy, given the fact that we are not journalists doing it for a living.

Hinderaker, of course, was the keynote speaker at this summer's Dakota Blog Alliance Conference--here's the platform, if you never looked it over.

Top 10

Ed Driscoll's column reviews "top ten events that ricocheted through the Blogosphere in 2004."  Here's number 1:

1. Ra^therGate: This is the big one Elizabeth! The Bush Air National Guard story was rehashed seemingly endlessly back in February. When it was announced that the low rated mid-week 60 Minutes II would be doing yet another piece on the subject on September 8th, most on the right simply rolled their eyes and said, "again"??

But the night that the story ran, CBS also put online some of the documents that they acquired to try to make their case. Members of the popular Free Republic forum noticed that those documents looked…odd. Like something that was done last week on Microsoft Word rather (excuse the pun) than on the typewriters that a 1972 Texas Air National Guard base would have. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs created a blinking gif showing the CBS document in question flashing in sequence with a version he created in Word. And lots of people simply opened their copies of Word 2000 and tried it for themselves.

The result of all this was that on November 23rd, Dan Rather announced he was retiring in March (ironically from his much more visible nightly news anchor position-not his 60 Minutes II gig that caused all hell to break loose) one year shy of his 25^th anniversary as anchorman at CBS.

JT in WT

Here's an article from today's Washington Times entitled "Thune aims to be 'reform-minded' doer in Senate."  Excerpt:

John Thune says he's ready to get the Republican agenda moving again in the Senate.
    The senator-elect -- who focused the nation's eyes on South Dakota as he defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle on Nov. 2 -- returns to Washington as a conservative former member of the House of Representatives.
    "I think this is a class that can really be a catalyst for change," the South Dakota Republican said in an interview with The Washington Times. "I hope we put together a record of accomplishment."
    Mr. Thune, 43, joins five other freshman Republican senators who also served in the House under aggressive House Republican leaders.
    As a senator, he said, he'd first like to help "jump-start" bills that got stuck in the Senate during the past few years -- the energy bill, the highway bill and medical-malpractice reform -- as well as several of President Bush's judicial nominees.

AP

From the South Dakota Associated Press:

Daschle defeat tops 2004 state news stories

DENNIS GALE

Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - It doesn't happen very often.

The last time a sitting U.S. Senate leader was turned out of office was 1952.

Then came Nov. 2, when South Dakotans decided Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle should leave after 26 years in Washington. He served 18 years in the Senate - 10 as leader.

The upset win by Republican John Thune was voted the top news story of the year by Associated Press member editors and broadcasters in South Dakota.

Face the Nation

Thune was on "Face the Nation" this morning.  Here's the transcript.

Meet the Press

From this morning:

MR. RUSSERT:  And we are back.

Senators Tom Daschle, Don Nickles, welcome both to MEET THE PRESS.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, (D-SD):  Thank you, Tim.

SEN. DON NICKLES, (R-OK):  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Daschle, 26 years in Washington--what's the most important lesson you learned?

SEN. DASCHLE:  I think the most important lesson you learn is that this really is the greatest country in the world, and democracy works.  Democracy has all of its flaws but it beats the noise of violence.  I think there's just so much we can be proud of, especially this time of the year.  We have a lot of challenges out there, Tim, but the most important lesson is that I think this legacy, this democracy, this incredible republic's going to go on for centuries to come. ...

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Daschle, you told Jamie Gangel on the "Today" show that you always wanted to be an offensive quarterback, but you turned out being a defensive lineman.  Explain that.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Well, what I meant by that was the role that I've had over the course of most of my time in public life, Tim, has been to be the loyal opposition.  We've had Republican administrations, Republican majorities, and as a result, the proactive agenda that I got excited about when I considered politics 30 years ago really wasn't something that we were able to do much about.  Instead, what we did was defend and protect the things that we really believe in, Social Security and Medicare and education, and the commitments that our country has made through government to strengthen our society through the programs that we've been able to address.  So that was really what I was referring to, the role that I've played largely has been defensive rather than offensive.

MR. RUSSERT:  Is there a fine line between loyal opposition as the Democrats would define it and obstructionists as the Republicans would define it?

SEN. DASCHLE:  Well, I think there probably is a fine line, but I think that that role is important.  I don't think you should ever apologize for making your voice heard.  That's--the noise of democracy is something that we have to protect and celebrate, not try to demean and to negate.  I think it's critical that we have that opportunity for full and aggressive debate on things.  It doesn't have to be personal.  It doesn't have to be overly partisan, but I do believe that these vigorous debates are what the Senate is all about, and that is what I saw my role to be.

A good year for farmers?

Today's edition of the New York Times has an interesting article on the federal farm subsidy system that appeared on the front page under the headline "Big Farms Reap Two Harvests With Subsidies a Bumper Crop."  Excerpt:

Farm groups say the subsidies provide for a stable food supply, and ensure that major sectors of American agriculture will be competitive on the global market.

"When people ask me what the justification for this is, I point out that in nearly every country in the world you find government involved in the food supply," said Bob Young, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the powerful trade group for major agricultural producers.

But because nearly 70 percent of the subsidies go to the top 10 percent of agricultural producers, the recent prosperity is not seen or felt among many small to medium-size growers who keep the struggling counties of the Great Plains alive.

Professor Lauck has listed the fact that it was a good year for farmers as one of the 26 factors in the Thune victory (factor #11).

Herseth

Dave Kranz has a column today which mentions the friction between the Daschle and Herseth camps.  Yes, as DVT reported back in June (but which the MSM didn't want to discuss), Herseth's victory in the June House special election hurt Daschle.  I guess it's conventional wisdom now.  Here's a post from June 10th reviewing Herseth's recent victory and noting how it hurt Daschle:

The Verdict: Herseth Victory Hurts Daschle

I've finally reviewed the stack of articles on my desk about the House special election. Here are my thoughts (most of the information cited below was previously reported on the blog, but in scattered bits).

On June 1st, by fewer than 3,000 votes, Stephanie Herseth was elected to serve-out the term of former Congressman Bill Janklow, defeating Elkton farmer and state senator Larry Diedrich. While the historian’s natural predilection is to examine the issues dividing the candidates and divine whose stands were most popular, such an effort would be frustrating. Dave Kranz of the Argus Leader reported that “[t]hose who listen to Herseth and Diedrich side by side often say there isn’t much difference between them.” 5/16/04 When the Argus endorsed Herseth, the editors also said “there’s hardly a whiff of difference between them on the key issues they would face in Washington, D.C.” 5/23/04 When the Aberdeen American News endorsed Herseth, the editors similarly concluded “there’s not much difference between the candidates.” That’s because Herseth co-opted much of the Republican agenda. As Kranz reported, “Herseth sought to discard the liberal label, saying she was going to be an independent voice for her constituents. She demonstrated that with her support of President Bush for his handling of the war and for a constitutional amendment on marriage.” 6/2/04 Herseth also supported renewal of Patriot Act and touted her A-rating from the NRA. Diedrich told the New York Times: “She has done a very good job of running as a Republican.” With regard to the Presidential candidacy of John Kerry, Herseth practiced what Kranz called the “politics of avoidance.” Asked about Kerry coming to campaign for her, she laughed at the idea: “I just don’t see there would be any interest from my campaign or the national party.” When asked about her political role models, she conspicuously shunned Daschle and mentioned Senator Tim Johnson, who is perceived to be the more conservative Democrat of the two. She constantly said she would be a bipartisan “independent voice” in Washington and join the Blue Dog Democrats in the House.

With few issues to debate, many voters focused on personality, which served Herseth well given her sunny demeanor and her 30-point lead in the polls. Stuart Rothenberg reported that “Herseth has been trying to make the special election a popularity contest.” Roll Call, May 10, 2004. Long-time KELO-Land television anchor Steve Hemmingsen noted the problem of a popularity contest for Diedrich, who was a political “nobody except to legislators and soybean farmers” when the race started. He also noted Herseth’s “Mary Tyler Moore Show innocent spunkiness” and took to calling her “Princess Stephanie” (in the 1950s, the Democrats used to call Karl Mundt, the long-time GOP Senator from South Dakota, “King Karl,” so the royalty moniker is time-worn). The New York Times reported that Herseth had “a star quality about her.” 5/20/04 Some reporters also said that Herseth’s image benefited from the resignation of her 2002 opponent, former Governor Bill Janklow, who was convicted of manslaughter in December after a traffic accident. The final release of a list of some rather strange pardons made by Janklow also became public in the final days of the campaign, which some thought aided Herseth and overshadowed her opponent.

In a campaign about personality, it’s important to be nice, a factor which Herseth promoted. The Argus picked up on the strategy and ran stories under headlines like “Some opt for gentle politics” and “’Nice’ image appeals to many S.D. voters.” 4/29/04 In her TV ads, Herseth said “I’m not going to tear my opponent down.” Charlie Cook said Herseth “tried to set a trap for Diedrich with ads that call[ed] for a positive campaign.” National Journal, May 4, 2004. After a minor spat over the issue of whether tax cuts should be made permanent, Herseth ran an ad saying she was “committed to a truthful campaign. It’s clear that Larry Diedrich is not.” Herseth was responding to a Diedrich contrast ad deemed “downright wimpy” by Stuart Rothenberg which said “on tax cuts, I think they should be made permanent. Stephanie does not.” Rothenberg concluded that “Herseth responded as if Diedrich just accused her of strangling kittens. She badly overreacted, making herself the one guilty of directing a ‘negative attack.’” He added that “Herseth is like the little boy who cries ‘wolf’ when no threatening animal is in sight….Herseth’s response is a classic effort at inoculation. She is trying to make it impossible for Diedrich to identify differences with her, even if they exist.” Roll Call, 5/10/04 While she was attempting to promote her nice image as a clean campaigner, the episode seemed to backfire when her ad seemed snippy and she quickly took down the ad.

There were some other bumps in the road for Herseth. She ran as pro-choice and was supported by Emily’s List, but it was unclear many voters knew what Emily’s List was. She even played down Emily’s List’s interest in the pro-choice issue. Herseth’s support for the President’s gay marriage amendment also caused some blowback in the Democratic ranks. A prominent Rapid City couple cancelled a fundraiser for her and Daschle’s campaign manager demanded his campaign contribution back from the Herseth campaign. Also, on the Sunday before the final week of the campaign, Senator Johnson, who Herseth listed as one of her role models, made a strident remark about the “Taliban wing of the Republican party” which caused a national uproar and certainly didn’t help her clean campaign/non-partisan image. With the exception of the Taliban remark, which caused a few days of newspaper stories, these flaps hardly received any attention.

Despite Herseth’s astute co-optation of Republican issues and her winning personality, Diedrich did close the 30-point gap and only lost 51%-49%. As the Associated Press reported, the final tally was “much closer than expected.” Herseth joked that “[c]ompared to 524 votes, over 2,000 is a landslide here in South Dakota,” but she was clearly hoping for stronger numbers. Another long-term concern for Herseth was that key Republican counties didn’t turn-out as they could have. In western Pennington County, the state’s second largest county which Diedrich won with 59% of the vote, only 53% of voters voted. In eastern Minnehaha County, the state’s largest county which Herseth won, 59% of voters turned out. Other western Republican counties also had low turn-out: Butte, 50%; Meade, 52%; Lawrence, 46%. If a better-known Diedrich runs in the fall after Herseth has had to make some tough votes in the partisan House and if more Republicans turn-out, Herseth could be in trouble.

The House special election also had implications for Daschle. Hemmingsen wondered if it would hurt Democratic candidates like Daschle in the fall when “inherently GOP South Dakota will be fence row-to-fence row with Democrats in Washington.” It would be the first time since a month in late 1936/early 1937 that the South Dakota delegation was completely Democratic. An Argus Leader poll also indicated that 25% of voters would be “less likely” to vote for Daschle if Herseth won in June. Nationally, Al Hunt, Bob Novak, Larry Sabato, John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, many bloggers, The Hill, Roll Call, and The New York Times, which ran the headline “Could Herseth’s victory in South Dakota hurt Daschle?”, speculated that Herseth’s win would hurt Daschle. In response to a question about whether the all-eggs-in-one-basket argument would hurt Daschle, even South Dakota Democratic National Committeewoman Sharon Stroschein said “I’m sure it would work to some degree.” Sabato said it the most clearly: “I also say that if Herseth wins, it's actually bad news for Daschle. South Dakotans don't want to be represented by three Democrats in DC. One is going to have to go.”

More fundamentally, the Herseth win caused Daschle problems because of campaign strategy—she ran as a non-partisan conservative Democrat, which no longer fits the Daschle profile. As one UK blogger noted, the race was more like a Republican primary than a general election. She used the Daschle model from 1978, but Daschle, despite his attempts to revive it by saying he is still an “independent voice,” only looks desperate. As the partisan leader of the opposition party, Daschle is as far from being an "independent voice" as one can be. Unlike Herseth’s A rating from the NRA, Daschle was severely criticized by the NRA during the winter of 2004. Unlike Herseth, Daschle opposed the federal marriage amendment and has been outspoken in his criticism of the war (except when in South Dakota, where he praises the war effort). Herseth’s clean campaign strategy, which was designed to prevent any contrast ads and which the Daschle campaign was planning to use, also seemed to fall flat and was subject to much ridicule. In short, Herseth's win hurts Daschle's re-election chances, which is why Democrats in Washington are positioning themselves to replace him as leader, as The Hill is reporting.

Ukraine

The exit polls have our man up by 19.5%.  Another Christmas present for the forces of democracy. 

NYT

We sometimes forget that before the CBS memogate there was the implosion at The New York Times and the fall Howell Raines.  Here's a review of a new book about the matter featured in today's New York Times Book Review.  Excerpts:

That stone wall started crumbling around the same time Raines began moving up, and Raines became one of the new transparency's early victims. During his tenure as Washington bureau chief, Raines was regularly mocked in Spy magazine as a petty tyrant who played favorites; one gossip item had Raines ordering reporters to stack books on their desks horizontally instead of vertically. When Raines was elevated to editorial page editor, criticism of his brusque style spread to The Washington Post and The New Yorker. The New York Observer compared Raines to Captain Queeg, the ball-bearing-jiggling control freak in ''The Caine Mutiny.'' ...

Raines also initiated a Times campaign against the Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters Tournament, for failing to allow women to join. A worthwhile subject, to be sure, but when the 32nd story in three months excoriated CBS, which broadcasts the Masters, for ''staying silent'' on the matter, some started asking whether The Times was beating a dead horse.

The crowning blow came when the paper declined to publish two sports columns that disagreed with The Times's position on the matter. ...

A more promising line of revisionism might be whether Raines would have thrived at the helm before our current age of media transparency. He might well have. It was Raines's misfortune to be caught wielding the lash in broad daylight.