South Dakota Politics

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.

Farms

In the old days, i.e. pre-election, I followed the developments in Zimbabwe fairly closely because land was so central to the disputes.  It appears the same arguments are now taking place in Namibia.  What does this have to do with SD politics?  Well, there's a tenuous connection.  SD, along with states like NE, MN, MO, IA, have all adopted restrictions on land ownership by corporations to eliminate "corporate farming" and the displacement of family farmers.  I once told a professor of corporate law at Berkeley about this and he nearly did a spit-take.  He had no idea such restrictions existed.  Anyway, for lots of background on this you can see the chapter about it in my book American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly.  That's the reason I follow land fights and government experiments with "land reform."  Here's a New York Times article about Namibia and here's an excerpt:

That a seemingly routine dispute can suddenly explode into a showdown between the races underscores the fragility of white land holdings here - and the powder keg that long suppressed tensions over land in southern Africa threaten to become. Neighboring Zimbabwe, where the government has seized farms from thousands of white commercial farmers, has demonstrated how extreme measures can plunge a country into economic ruin, racial violence and widespread suffering.

Merry Christmas

The Senate Race Factors

A few emails like this have come in from Daschle supporters/workers:

granted, there are some good points in the 26 factor list and in the other list you put up from 'anonymous.'  But you haven't explained how Tom was smeared and lied about.

Well, you tell me, dear readers, what are the "lies"?  Seriously, this is an important matter to sort out.

Judges

From today's Washington Post:

President Bush announced yesterday his intention to renominate 20 people previously blocked by Senate Democrats for federal court seats, setting the stage for a renewal of the bitter partisan battles over the makeup of the federal judiciary.

The president's list includes seven appeals court candidates whose nominations were stalled on the Senate floor by Democrats, who said the nominees' conservative views were out of the mainstream. The other nominations never made it to the full Senate. Buoyed by his reelection and a four-seat Republican gain in the Senate, Bush said he will submit the nominees' names when the Senate returns to work next month.

...

"The Senate has a constitutional obligation to vote up or down on a president's judicial nominees, and the president looks forward to working with the new Senate to ensure a well-functioning and independent judiciary," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. He said 16 of the 20 people being renominated have been waiting for more than a year for a vote.

Bush's nominations promise to rekindle the battles waged in the Senate over many of his judicial nominees. They will also provide a preview of the all-out fight expected when Bush makes an appointment to the Supreme Court.

During Bush's first term, Democrats would did not allow a vote on 10 of the 52 appointments he made to fill vacancies on federal appeals courts.

Note that the 10 judges referred to in the previous sentence are appeals court judges, i.e. the judges on the courts above the federal trial courts and just below the Supreme Court.  Appeals court judges had not been filibustered before the Daschle-run Senate in the 108th Congress, i.e. they received actual votes in the Senate, up or down.  That's why Daschle was called an obstructionist. 

CBS

That CBS reporter who was criticizing the Dakota Alliance a few weeks ago looks more and more absurd.  Note this from Polipundit:

David Paul Kuhn, the “Chief Political Writer” for CBS, proves just how laughably clueless the Old Media is. Check out these gems from his article purporting to analyze the 2004 election:

Only by redrawing Texas House districts to their own benefit, resulting in five new Republican seats, was the GOP able to hold the House.

Actually, without Texas redistricting, the GOP would have retained a clear majority in the House. The GOP picked up 4 House seats nationally this year, including exactly 4 seats from Texas redistricting.

And then there’s this gem:

“Every election we see these articles about realignment and it’s almost never true,” Sabato said. “And I doubt it was true this time, 48 to 48 [in the Senate], changing to 51 to 48, really is not that much of a difference.”

Notice the “[in the Senate]” parenthesis. Kuhn is apparently under the hopelessly misguided impression that the GOP had 48 Senate seats before the election, and 51 now. As any polipundit.com reader knows, the GOP had 51 Senate seats before the election, and picked up 4 more in 2004. Sabato was obviously referring to the popular vote margin in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.

And to think Kuhn wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago criticizing bloggers as irresponsible!

Powerline has more.

WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has posted its article listing the 15 people to watch in 2005, which includes Harry Reid:

Harry Reid, incoming Senate minority leader

As the new leader of the Senate's Democrats, the veteran Nevada lawmaker will find himself at the nexus of some lively battles. Paramount among the looming fights is the selection of a successor to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is widely expected to leave the Supreme Court in 2005. Mr. Reid has promised to "screw things up" for the GOP, but Republican Leader Bill Frist has vowed to crush any attempts to filibuster nominees. Mr. Reid also has said he wouldn't consider Clarence Thomas, whom he calls "an embarrassment," for the post of chief justice. The differences with Republicans don't end there; Mr. Reid is also a staunch opponent of Social Security privatization. But he may have some bones to pick with his own party. His stated opposition to abortion could fuel discord with the Democratic establishment, particularly if former presidential candidate Howard Dean is chosen to succeed Terry McAuliffe as party chairman.

One More Time

You can never say we don't have great readers.  One fixed--I'm not sure how--the problems with that earlier post, so people can now read the comments sent in by an expert/insider on the Senate race.  Please read and comment.  And thanks to our fearless reader:

I have read the "26 Factors" several times and have shared the list with several political junkies and even normal people. Here are some reinforcements for existing factors and some additional factors:

John Thune The Candidate:

We cannot ignore the obvious. John Thune was a great candidate against Tom Daschle. Far too often, incumbent Democrats in SD have had the luxury of running against extremely weak GOP challengers. Tim Johnson's victory over Senator Larry Pressler was paved by Johnson's previous House races, in which he faced relatively weak Republican candidates. Those races got thousands of registered Rs into the habit of voting for Johnson and feeling comfortable doing so. Running a weak candidate damages more than just the instant election; it often has a long legacy. Could any Republican candidate other than JT have defeated Tom Daschle in 2004? I doubt it. In 1980, George McGovern was ripe; many different Republicans could have probably beaten him. In 2004, Daschle was not ripe, but he was vulnerable -- with the right candidate running against him. John's name recognition, his exiting of the 2002 campaign with class, and his maturation as a candidate by going through the 2002 defeat made him the right person in the right place at the right time.

The Daschle Campaign Failed Daschle:

The McLaughlin and Associates tracking poll shows that during the months running up to the November election, Daschle was essentially a flat-liner. His campaign kept spending millions, but his support stayed at 49% or under. At some point in lavishing all the millions upon South Dakota, you would think that somebody in the Daschle campaign would have said, "Hey, wait a minute, we've spent X million, and Tom's numbers have still not moved. Before we spend X+1 million on more of the same advertising, marketing, and promotions, perhaps we should figure out how to spend it more effectively." I read somewhere that the Daschle campaign ran 75 different TV spots in SD during that election. How's that for a mixed message? Of course, many of those spots were responding to Thune ads and initiatives; the Daschle camp, was for the first time, playing catch-up. Even after chalking up 26 years of incumbency and spending $20,000,000, Daschle was the road team in this game. One Republican political strategist told me earlier this week that he felt that in the face of inelastic tracking poll numbers, Daschle should have resorted to the old "come clean" tactic, running a spot that said, "I got the message. I hear you. I have strayed, but now I'm coming home." (Remember when Illinois Senator Chuck Percy used that tactic successfully many years ago?) This same strategist also believes that Daschle would have never even considered this tactic -- because of his overwhelming ego. Daschle had come to believe that most South Dakota voters were such dunces that he could forever get away with being liberal in DC and appearing conservative in SD.

The Thune Campaign Was Better Than The Daschle Campaign:

At the onset of his 2004 campaign, John "reintroduced himself" to the voters by starting his media with soft, friendly, biographical spots. It was almost as if John were "born again" politically. It reminded me of how a good attorney "rehabilitates" his star witness after a rugged cross-examination. John's reintroduction wiped away the 2002 defeat and made him a fresh, new candidate in the eyes of many voters. John's daughters were absolute media stars. They should seriously consider careers in TV or the theater. They softened his image with sensitive swing-voters. All too often, over the years, Republicans have gotten mean and surly with their Democrat opponents, and their message and media have, over the course of the campaign, become heavier and heavier. Near the end of the 2004 election, the Thune advertising actually lightened up. When Daschle's campaign was expecting the Thune camp to use a bludgeon, it instead used a rapier. The football/obstruction spot was hilarious, and the "In his own words" spot was devastating. Both had a strong element of cleverness to them -- and I have not been able to say that about very many Republican spots over the years. (Also, the timing of the "In his own words" spot was perfect. It was placed early enough to make a difference, but late enough so that Tom did not have time to slither out from under it.) The tag line, "It's time", succinctly captured the sentiment that the handful of undecided voters needed to feel when they walked into the polls. Finally, I liked the idea that at the end of the campaign, John flat out asked the voters for their support. That is a really old-fashioned concept, but many people in SD still want businesses to ask them for their business and politicians to ask them for their vote.

The Accident:

Bill's Janklow's August 16, 2003, accident ended the public careers of both Bill Janklow and Tom Daschle. Had both men run for re-election in 2004, both would have been re-elected handily (barring, of course, any Acts of God or seismic political shifts). Bob Burns's research shows that in every federal election in SD, about one-fifth of the state's registered Republicans will vote for a top tier Democrat. As Burns wryly remarks, however, his research does not show that in every federal election in SD, one-fifth of the state's registered Republicans will vote for two top tier Democrats. With Janklow and GWB on the 2004 ballot, and with Dusty Johnson's superbly organized and relentlessly carried-out campaign eliminating Jim Burg as a magnet for registered Republican voters, the classic Republican ticket-splitters would have had only one race to prove their "open-mindedness" -- the US Senate race. (The Democrats and the MSM in SD have conveniently forgotten that prior to Janklow's accident, Herseth had publicly announced that she was "not interested in running against Janklow again". With Herseth out of the picture, the Democrats would have been bereft of a quality candidate to run against Janklow.)

Stephanie Herseth:

I have heard many Democrat partisans say that you can explain Tom Daschle's loss in two words: Stephanie Herseth. (For a good laugh, read David Newquist's rantings. _____ is fond of saying that many voters "traded in" Tom Daschle for Stephanie Herseth. Those thousands of ticket-splitting registered Republicans saw Tom as their good-old pickup truck that they had used for a hundred thousand miles. They saw Stephanie Herseth as a brand new shiny red convertible sports car. The pickup had been great, but it was time for a trade. As the previous paragraph contends, these ticket-splitters were going to vote for one D, but not two. If you look at the geographic erosion of Daschle's support in 2004, it occurs along the I-29 corridor -- the home of legions of those moderate, ticket-splitting registered Republicans who voted for Daschle in his previous elections. By the thousands, those people voted for Thune and Herseth. Many Democrats also say that Herseth's (patently phony) conservative positions on several issues made Daschle look too far left. After the 1986 election, many of Lars Herseth's supporters complained bitterly that Tom Daschle's campaign had cost them the election. As you know, Lars Herseth made up huge ground in the weekend before election day, with about 90% of the apparent undecideds swinging to him. The Herseth people contended that on election day, the Daschle campaign dragged to the polls absolutely everybody who was solid Tom or leaning Tom, even if they knew that these people were also going to vote for Mickelson. To this day, the Daschle people laugh off that theory, saying that Lars just ran a shitty campaign. Ironically, many Daschle supporters now blame Lars Herseth's daughter for costing Tom this election. The Herseth partisans now say, "Tom ran a shitty campaign."

Saddened:

Daschle's partisan pot shot about his being "saddened" over the president's failure of diplomacy that led us into war in Iraq was the stupidest thing he ever said, and it came back to haunt him. It has always been an unwritten law in American government that "politics stops at the water's edge" -- that partisan political differences should not color our foreign policy. Daschle violated that law. First, he took a whack at GWB on the eve of the president's first trip abroad. Then, he became "saddened" over Saddam. The "saddened" remark really galvanized anti-Daschle sentiment all over America. It may have made him a hero to many Ds, but it certainly made him a bum in the eyes of many Rs, and in SD, Rs outnumber Ds. (For weeks, SD newspapers carried anti-Daschle letters to the editor that pilloried Tom with humorous variations of, "I'm saddened.") Many people who had previously supported Daschle said to me just before the 2004 election, "I'm not going to stick with him this time because he just cannot get along with the president." Daschle's campaign realized that he was vulnerable on this issue and particularly because of the "saddened" comment, and that was the genesis of the ridiculous pandering in the "hugging the president" TV commercial run by the Daschle campaign. Unfortunately for them, they could not get the toothpaste back into the tube.

Unilateral Disarmament:

Why did Tom Daschle, at the onset of the campaign, unilaterally announce that he did not want any "outsiders" coming into the election on his behalf? Did he think that Thune was moronic enough to follow suit? When an individual says, "I'm going to beat up you -- and all your friends." -- it sounds like an unfair fight -- not to mention suicide to me. The anti-Daschle "outsiders" that jumped into SD helped close the funding and advertising gap between Thune and Daschle, and by attacking Daschle upon a vast variety of issues, they helped create an environment in which people started thinking that Tom's baggage had finally become too heavy for them to carry. One week before election day, the Democrat Senatorial Committee came bursting through the saloon doors to plop $600,000 of advertising down on the bar, but the bar room brawl was already over. The Daschle campaign's defense of the desperate maneuver ("We have no control over these guys.") was, of course, the Thune campaign's defense of Thune-friendly 527s that the Daschle people had ridiculed earlier in the campaign. The last-minute arrival of Tom's friends merely made Daschle look desperate, hypocritical, and "cloutless".

Watering The Plant To Death:

Most houseplants that die do so from overwatering, not underwatering. I still cannot understand why the Daschle campaign ran bazillions of commercials for months and months and months and months -- long before Thune started advertising and long before the campaign had started in most peoples' minds. They kept telling me that they were "solidifying the base". Actually, at the time, I thought that they were spending money merely because they had it. (Bill Richardson has observed that both campaigns -- Daschle and Thune -- had "more money than they could spend wisely". I think that his comment rings truer with Thune's 2002 campaign than his 2004 campaign.) The Daschle campaign kept up this early, constant, and heavy bombardment despite the fact that it was just not moving the polls. What the carpet bombing did accomplish was to increase "Daschle fatigue" among the voters.

Trying To Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too:

Tom and his campaign staff fumbled the abortion issue badly. Rather than trying to delicately carve out some middle ground on this issue, he should have just said, "I am pro-choice. I do not think that the federal government and its bureaucrats and judges should stick their noses into an issue that is moral and ethical -- and not political. Now, you might disagree with me on this issue, but at least you know where I stand, and we probably agree upon a whole lot of other issues." Of course, there was a big, fat reason why Tom could not take an unambiguously honest position on this issue. While he had drifted into the pro-abortion camp (and then lurched into it out of national political necessity during his abortive run for the presidency), he had allowed large numbers of South Dakotans (especially older people in small towns and on farms) to believe that he was still the anti-abortion altar boy from Aberdeen. It was too late to tell the truth. Tom's campaign staff frenetically tried to keep him firmly on both sides of this issue, even to the point of having SD Planned Parenthood (which endorsed Kerry-Edwards and Stephanie Herseth) put "None" under its United States Senate endorsement in its 2004 Voters Guide. Ultimately, to many moderate, ticket-splitting registered Republican voters, (the secret of Tom's past successes), the real issue ultimately became not abortion but integrity -- or the lack thereof. And that translated into, "Maybe he's been there too long."

Crying Wolf Once Too Often:

Over the years, Democrat incumbents in federal offices in SD have religiously clung to victimization status in order to keep their jobs. The ham-handed Republicans, of course, have been eager to make the strategy work, plastering the Dems with vapid, brainless attacks on non-issues. George McGovern won many elections because, by election day, thousands of Republicans felt sorry for him. Note how fast Stephanie Herseth picked up on this time-honed tactic. Every time Larry Diedrich criticized her on her record (fabricated and flimsy though it may be), she blew her rape whistle and started screaming, "He's distorting my record!" There is considerable evidence that this tactic was counterproductive for Herseth, both in June and in November. Tom Daschle has played the victim artfully during his long career. Yet, in an election year when being a "macho man" seemed somehow important (with Kerry feeling the need to stress time and again that he would "KILL" terrorists, while Bush partisans ridiculed Kerry for throwing footballs and baseballs "like a girl"), Daschle finally overplayed the victim card. Two years ago, the dominant feeling out there in SD was, "I hate negative campaigning." This year ,the dominant feeling out there in SD was, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Blogging and Flogging:

The new Web logs in SD were a critical factor in Thune's victory; he would not have won without them. The blogs had two salient contributions. First, they did the deep research that undressed Daschle, or, more tellingly, revealed him to be a political cross-dresser. Because of modern-day newspaper, radio, and TV economics, only the largest media have the resources to dedicate to "actual research". The Argus Leader falls into that large-enough category, but the Argus purposefully constricted its coverage of the 2004 general election because it was trying to protect its political and pecuniary investment in the status quo: the incumbency of Daschle and Herseth. When you measure the Argus's actual news coverage of DvT against the fact that DvT was the most-watched Senate race in all of America, you are left wondering, "Where's the beef?" The Argus's preposterous decision to print only a tiny handful of letters pertaining to the election was part of its deliberate and desperate attempt to keep Tom in office. In the past, that tactic would have worked, but along came the bloggers, like Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox". They did the research that the media could not do and would not do. Their second major contribution was distributing the research to a growing audience all over the state and beyond our borders. I have always thought that in the old adage, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", the second part of the exhortation is especially powerful because it has immediately measurable results. The conservative bloggers did not waste their time writing emotional mumbo-jumbo, they handed out real ammunition -- hard evidence that Daschle had become one kind of person in SD and quite another in DC.

Jon, if you use any of these ideas or concepts in any way, do not attribute them to me. They are not my ideas. Rather, they are a summary of what I have been hearing on the street for the past several weeks. You will probably reach 50 good reasons for John Thune's victory without stretching the fabric of the truth, because the number of critical election factors and the margin of election victory are, of course, inversely proportional.

Herseth

In the most stunning news of this holiday season, the Argus Leader reports that Congresswoman "Herseth will run again in 2006." 

Showdown

Note this story in The New York Times about the Bush administration's decision to fight for the judges that Senator Daschle blocked in the Senate during the 108th Congress:

President Bush plans to renominate 20 candidates for federal judgeships who have been unable to win confirmation in the Senate, the White House said today, in a signal that the president is ready for a showdown early next year.

"An effective and efficient judicial system is vital to ensuring justice for all Americans," the White House said. "The president nominated highly qualified individuals to the federal courts during his first term, but the Senate failed to vote on many nominations."

...

Republicans picked up several seats in the November elections and will effectively have an advantage of 55 to 45 when the new Senate convenes early in January. (There are 44 Democrats and one independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, who generally sides with the Democrats.)

JASON ADDS:  The AP also has a report on this topic headlined "Bush to Renominate 20 for Judgeships."  It seems Harry Reid has stolen a page from the Daschle playbook:

"I was extremely disappointed to learn today that the president intends to begin the new Congress by resubmitting extremist judicial nominees," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement. "Last Congress, Senate Democrats worked with the president to approve 204 judicial nominees, rejecting only 10 of the most extreme."

Sen. John Cornyn is quoted in the AP article too:

"The dynamics of 2006 are in play here," Cornyn said. "Those Democratic senators up for re-election in states Bush did very well in have to be looking at what happened to Tom Daschle in South Dakota and wondering if the same fate is in store for them if they continue to obstruct and prevent up or down votes on the president's nominees."

Daschle's Nov. 2 election loss cost him his Senate seat and the job of Senate minority leader.

The Book (and Harry)

Harry the pug and I are busily working on the book about the big Senate race.  Please see the latest analysis here if you haven't read it yet.  And thanks to those Daschle supporters for sharing their comments.  I've already added them to my notes.  Fear not--I want all sides presented, so keep them coming.  Also, if some Daschle supporters have an analysis of the race they want to send in (such as the one above) we'd be very interested in publishing it.  Anyway, here are some shots of Harry 'helping' me.

Here's Harry and the heater, his best friend.

Here's Harry in a pile of some of this week's unread mail:

Book Review Anniversary

It seems like a century ago, but it was only one year ago at this time that I was wrapping up a review of Senator Tom Daschle's newly released book for The Weekly Standard.  They entitled the review "Daschled Hopes."  Excerpt:

IN SOUTH DAKOTA, Tom Daschle is known for wooing the opposition. And, the truth is, he has to woo--since South Dakota Republicans have a ten-point registration advantage over Democrats. In 1992, he even called to woo me, a lowly college junior at the time, and we visited for over forty minutes. The subject was a column I had written for the college newspaper asking why he voted with northeastern liberals such as George Mitchell. It was the early stages of Daschle's rise to power under Mitchell's tutelage, and he was clearly nervous about the friction between serving under Mitchell and representing a very non-Mitchell sort of state.

In his new memoir, "Like No Other Time," Daschle concedes that the "majority of South Dakotans are conservatives." But the contradictions between Daschle's leadership obligations and his state's conservative leanings have so far not hobbled his Senate campaigns. Since he began his ascent under Mitchell, Daschle's opponents have been unknown and unfunded. The 2004 race could be an ordeal, however, as Daschle's ability to woo his way around the contradictions may finally collapse.

QOTY

Ryne notes that Tim Blair's quote of the year candidates are up.  Isn't the winner obvious? 

Argus Leader executive editor Randell Beck: "If Hitler were alive today, he'd have his own blog."

Time's "Blog of the Year," Powerline, covered the quote here. 

That Analysis of Factors in the Senate Race

Here is that very important analysis of the race that I referred to below (it's in Word):  Download 2004FACTORS.doc  PLEASE READ.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why the text is all jumbled up and can't be fixed.  Anyway, please read and send in comments. 

The ripple effect

After the Argus Leader's smackdown article about John Thune's committee assignments yesterday (emphasizing that Thune didn't get on the Ag committee, while ignoring the fact that Thune was one of only two GOP freshman to get on  an elite committee), it's illuminating to observe that article's ripple effect.  The AP picked up the AL article and the Aberdeen American News ran with the AL spin.  Then the Yankton Press & Dakotan ran the article with the AL spin.  Then the Rapid City Journal ran the article with the AL spin. 

The AL spun Thune's committee assignments as something less than they were.  The AP picked up the spin, and newspapers in every major population center in the state distributed the spin.  That's the famous Argus Leader ripple effect.

Factors

Please review, if you haven't, the 26 factors posted here after the election which contributed to the outcome of the Daschle/Thune race.  Then review the following analysis/collection of thoughts put together by a long-time South Dakota political veteran/insider, which is very much worth your time:

I have read the "26 Factors" several times and have shared the list with
several political junkies and even normal people.  Here are some
reinforcements for existing factors and some additional factors:

John Thune The Candidate:  We cannot ignore the obvious.  John Thune was a
great candidate against Tom Daschle.  Far too often, incumbent Democrats in
SD have had the luxury of running against extremely weak GOP challengers.
Tim Johnson's victory over Senator Larry Pressler was paved by Johnson's
previous House races, in which he faced relatively weak Republican
candidates.  Those races got thousands of registered Rs into the habit of
voting for Johnson and feeling comfortable doing so.  Running a weak
candidate damages more than just the instant election; it often has a long
legacy.  Could any Republican candidate other than JT have defeated Tom
Daschle in 2004?  I doubt it.  In 1980, George McGovern was ripe; many
different Republicans could have probably beaten him.  In 2004, Daschle was
not ripe, but he was vulnerable--with the right candidate running against
him.  John's name recognition, his exiting of the 2002 campaign with class,
and his maturation as a candidate by going through the 2002 defeat made him
the right person in the right place at the right time.

The Daschle Campaign Failed Daschle:  The McLaughlin and Associates tracking poll shows that during the months running up to the November election, Daschle was essentially a flat-liner.  His campaign kept spending millions, but his support stayed at 49% or under.  At some point in lavishing all the millions upon South Dakota, you would think that somebody in the Daschle campaign would have said, "Hey, wait a minute, we've spent X million, and Tom's numbers have still not moved.  Before we spend X+1 million on more of
the same advertising, marketing, and promotions, perhaps we should figure
out how to spend it more effectively."  I read somewhere that the Daschle
campaign ran 75 different TV spots in SD during that election.  How's that f
or a mixed message?  Of course, many of those spots were responding to Thune
ads and initiatives; the Daschle camp, was for the first time, playing
catch-up.  Even after chalking up 26 years of incumbency and spending
$20,000,000, Daschle was the road team in this game.  One Republican
political strategist told me earlier this week that he felt that in the face
of inelastic tracking poll numbers, Daschle should have resorted to the old
"come clean" tactic, running a spot that said, "I got the message.  I hear
you.  I have strayed, but now I'm coming home."  (Remember when Illinois
Senator Chuck Percy used that tactic successfully many years ago?)  This
same strategist also believes that Daschle would have never even considered
this tactic--because of his overwhelming ego.  Daschle had come to believe
that most South Dakota voters were such dunces that he could forever get
away with being liberal in DC and appearing conservative in SD.

The Thune Campaign Was Better Than The Daschle Campaign:  At the onset of
his 2004 campaign, John "reintroduced himself" to the voters by starting his
media with soft, friendly, biographical spots.  It was almost as if John
were "born again" politically.  It reminded me of how a good attorney
"rehabilitates" his star witness after a rugged cross-examination.  John's
reintroduction wiped away the 2002 defeat and made him a fresh, new
candidate in the eyes of many voters.  John's daughters were absolute media
stars.  They should seriously consider careers in TV or the theater.  They
softened his image with sensitive swing-voters.  All too often, over the
years, Republicans have gotten mean and surly with their Democrat opponents,
and their message and media have, over the course of the campaign, become
heavier and heavier.  Near the end of the 2004 election, the Thune
advertising actually lightened up.  When Daschle's campaign was expecting
the Thune camp to use a bludgeon, it instead used a rapier.  The
football/obstruction spot was hilarious, and the "In his own words" spot was
devastating.  Both had a strong element of cleverness to them--and I have
not been able to say that about very many Republican spots over the years.
(Also, the timing of the "In his own words" spot was perfect.  It was placed
early enough to make a difference, but late enough so that Tom did not have
time to slither out from under it.)    The tag line, "It's time", succinctly
captured the sentiment that the handful of undecided voters needed to feel
when they walked into the polls.  Finally, I liked the idea that at the end
of the campaign, John flat out asked the voters for their support.  That is
a really old-fashioned concept, but many people in SD still want businesses
to ask them for their business and politicians to ask them for their vote.

The Accident:  Bill's Janklow's August 16, 2003, accident ended the public
careers of both Bill Janklow and Tom Daschle.  Had both men run for
re-election in 2004, both would have been re-elected handily (barring, of
course, any Acts of God or seismic political shifts).  Bob Burns's research
shows that in every federal election in SD, about one-fifth of the state's
registered Republicans will vote for a top tier Democrat.  As Burns wryly
remarks, however, his research does not show that in every federal election
in SD, one-fifth of the state's registered Republicans will vote for two top
tier Democrats.  With Janklow and GWB on the 2004 ballot, and with Dusty
Johnson's superbly organized and relentlessly carried-out campaign
eliminating Jim Burg as a magnet for registered Republican voters, the
classic Republican ticket-splitters would have had only one race to prove
their "open-mindedness"--the US Senate race.  (The Democrats and the MSM in
SD have conveniently forgotten that prior to Janklow's accident, Herseth had
publicly announced that she was "not interested in running against Janklow
again".  With Herseth out of the picture, the Democrats would have been
bereft of a quality candidate to run against Janklow.)

Stephanie Herseth:  I have heard many Democrat partisans say that you can
explain Tom Daschle's loss in two words:  Stephanie Herseth.  (For a good
laugh, read David Newquist's rantings. ______ is fond of saying
that many voters "traded in" Tom Daschle for Stephanie Herseth.  Those
thousands of ticket-splitting registered Republicans saw Tom as their
good-old pickup truck that they had used for a hundred thousand miles.  They
saw Stephanie Herseth as a brand new shiny red convertible sports car.  The
pickup had been great, but it was time for a trade.  As the previous
paragraph contends, these ticket-splitters were going to vote for one D, but
not two.  If you look at the geographic erosion of  Daschle's support in
2004, it occurs along the I-29 corridor--the home of legions of those
moderate, ticket-splitting registered Republicans who voted for Daschle in
his previous elections.  By the thousands, those people voted for Thune and
Herseth.  Many Democrats also say that Herseth's (patently phony)
conservative positions on several issues made Daschle look too far left.
After the 1986 election, many of Lars Herseth's supporters complained
bitterly that Tom Daschle's campaign had cost them the election.  As you
know, Lars Herseth made up huge ground in the weekend before election day,
with about 90% of the apparent undecideds swinging to him.  The Herseth
people contended that on election day, the Daschle campaign dragged to the
polls absolutely everybody who was solid Tom or leaning Tom, even if they
knew that these people were also going to vote for Mickelson.  To this day,
the Daschle people laugh off that theory, saying that Lars just ran a shitty
campaign.  Ironically, many Daschle supporters now blame Lars Herseth's
daughter for costing Tom this election.  The Herseth partisans now say, "Tom
ran a shitty campaign."

Saddened:  Daschle's partisan pot shot about his being "saddened" over the
president's failure of diplomacy that led us into war in Iraq was the
stupidest thing he ever said, and it came back to haunt him.  It has always
been an unwritten law in American government that "politics stops at the
water's edge"--that partisan political differences should not color our
foreign policy.  Daschle violated that law.  First, he took a whack at GWB
on the eve of the president's first trip abroad.  Then, he became "saddened"
over Saddam.  The "saddened" remark really galvanized anti-Daschle sentiment
all over America.  It may have made him a hero to many Ds, but it certainly
made him a bum in the eyes of many Rs, and in SD, Rs outnumber Ds.  (For
weeks, SD newspapers carried anti-Daschle letters to the editor that
pilloried Tom with humorous variations of, "I'm saddened.")  Many people who
had previously supported Daschle said to me just before the 2004 election,
"I'm not going to stick with him this time because he just cannot get along
with the president."  Daschle's campaign realized that he was vulnerable on
this issue and particularly because of the "saddened" comment, and that was
the genesis of the ridiculous pandering in the "hugging the president" TV
commercial run by the Daschle campaign.  Unfortunately for them, they could
not get the toothpaste back into the tube.

Unilateral Disarmament:  Why did Tom Daschle, at the onset of the campaign,
unilaterally announce that he did not want any "outsiders" coming into the
election on his behalf?  Did he think that Thune was moronic enough to
follow suit?  When an individual says, "I'm going to beat up you--and all
your friends."--it sounds like an  unfair fight--not to mention suicide--to
me.  The anti-Daschle "outsiders" that jumped into SD helped close the
funding and advertising gap between Thune and Daschle, and by attacking
Daschle upon a vast variety of issues, they helped create an environment in
which people started thinking that Tom's baggage had finally become too
heavy for them to carry.  One week before election day, the Democrat
Senatorial Committee came bursting through the saloon doors to plop $600,000
of advertising down on the bar, but the bar room brawl was already over.
The Daschle campaign's defense of the desperate maneuver ("We have no
control over these guys.") was, of course, the Thune campaign's defense of
Thune-friendly 527s that the Daschle people had ridiculed earlier in the
campaign.  The last-minute arrival of Tom's friends merely made Daschle look
desperate, hypocritical, and "cloutless".

Watering The Plant To Death:  Most houseplants that die do so from
overwatering, not underwatering.  I still cannot understand why the Daschle
campaign ran bazillions of commercials for months and months and months and
months--long before Thune started advertising and long before the campaign
had started in most peoples' minds.  They kept telling me that they were
"solidifying the base".  Actually, at the time, I thought that they were
spending money merely because they had it.  (Bill Richardson has observed
that both campaigns--Daschle and Thune--had "more money than they could
spend wisely".  I think that his comment rings truer with Thune's 2002
campaign than his 2004 campaign.)   The Daschle campaign kept up this early,
constant, and heavy bombardment despite the fact that it was just not moving
the polls.  What the carpet bombing did accomplish was to increase "Daschle
fatigue" among the voters.

Trying To Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too:  Tom and his campaign staff
fumbled the abortion issue badly.  Rather than trying to delicately carve
out some middle ground on this issue, he should have just said, "I am
pro-choice.  I do not think that the federal government and its bureaucrats
and judges should stick their noses into an issue that is moral and
ethical--and not political.  Now, you might disagree with me on this issue,
but at least you know where I stand, and we probably agree upon a whole lot
of other issues."  Of course, there was a big, fat reason why Tom could not
take an unambiguously honest position on this issue.   While he had drifted
into the pro-abortion camp (and then lurched into it out of national
political necessity during his abortive run for the presidency), he had
allowed large numbers of South Dakotans (especially older people in small
towns and on farms) to believe that he was still the anti-abortion altar boy
from Aberdeen.  It was too late to tell the truth.  Tom's campaign staff
frenetically tried to keep him firmly on both sides of this issue, even to
the point of having SD Planned Parenthood (which endorsed Kerry-Edwards and
Stephanie Herseth) put "None" under its United States Senate endorsement in
its 2004 Voters Guide.  Ultimately, to many moderate, ticket-splitting
registered Republican voters, (the secret of Tom's past successes), the real
issue ultimately became not abortion but integrity--or the lack thereof.
And that translated into, "Maybe he's been there too long."

Crying Wolf Once Too Often:  Over the years, Democrat incumbents in federal
offices in SD have religiously clung to victimization status in order to
keep their jobs.  The ham-handed Republicans, of course, have been eager to
make the strategy work, plastering the Dems with vapid, brainless attacks on
non-issues.  George McGovern won many elections because, by election day,
thousands of Republicans felt sorry for him.  Note how fast Stephanie
Herseth picked up on this time-honed tactic.  Every time Larry Diedrich
criticized her on her record (fabricated and flimsy though it may be), she
blew her rape whistle and started screaming, "He's distorting my record!"
There is considerable evidence that this tactic was counterproductive for
Herseth, both in June and in November.   Tom Daschle has played the victim
artfully during his long career.  Yet, in an election year when being a
"macho man" seemed somehow important (with Kerry feeling the need to stress
time and again that he would "KILL" terrorists, while Bush partisans
ridiculed Kerry for throwing footballs and baseballs "like a girl"), Daschle
finally overplayed the victim card.  Two years ago, the dominant feeling out
there in SD was, "I hate negative campaigning."  This year ,the dominant
feeling out there in SD was, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the
kitchen."

Blogging and Flogging:  The new Web logs in SD were a critical factor in
Thune's victory; he would not have won without them.  The blogs had two
salient contributions.  First, they did the deep research that undressed
Daschle, or, more tellingly, revealed him to be a political cross-dresser.
Because of modern-day newspaper, radio, and TV economics, only the largest
media have the resources to dedicate to "actual research".  The Argus Leader
falls into that large-enough category, but the Argus purposefully
constricted its coverage of the 2004 general election because it was trying
to protect its political and pecuniary investment in the status quo:  the
incumbency of Daschle and Herseth.  When you measure the Argus's actual news
coverage of DvT against the fact that DvT was the most-watched Senate race
in all of America, you are left wondering, "Where's the beef?"  The Argus's
preposterous decision to print only a tiny handful of letters pertaining to
the election was part of its deliberate and desperate attempt to keep Tom in
office.  In the past, that tactic would have worked, but along came the
bloggers, like Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox".  They did the research that
the media could not do and would not do.  Their second major contribution
was distributing the research to a growing audience all over the state and
beyond our borders.  I have always thought that in the old adage, "Praise
the Lord and pass the ammunition", the second part of the exhortation is
especially powerful because it has immediately measurable results.  The
conservative bloggers did not waste their time writing emotional
mumbo-jumbo, they handed out real ammunition--hard evidence that Daschle had become one kind of person in SD and quite another in DC.

Jon, if you use any of these ideas or concepts in any way, do not attribute
them to me.  They are not my ideas.  Rather, they are a summary of what I
have been hearing on the street for the past several weeks.  You will
probably reach 50 good reasons for John Thune's victory without stretching
the fabric of the truth, because the number of critical election factors and
the margin of election victory are, of course, inversely proportional.

Little People

Here's a new article from the Annenberg Online Journalism Review at University of Southern California.  Excerpt:

For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that's played God with the American public, telling everyone what's news and what's not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted.

And most of that shift happened during the crucible that was the presidential election season. The year dawned with Howard Dean getting slavish press attention for his groundswell of Internet support, both in money raised and in activity on his sizable group Weblog. The campaign ended with the blogosphere quickly trashing documents in the controversial "60 Minutes" report on President Bush's National Guard service. Even before there was a full report on what went wrong at CBS News, Dan Rather announced he was leaving his long-time anchor post.

UPDATE

Be sure to read an important update to today's post regarding the Argus Leader's article on Thune's committee assignments.  You can access the updated post by clicking HERE.

Keillor

When I was in law school in Minneapolis (and several times before that, for that matter), I went to Garrison Keillor's show "Prairie Home Companion" at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.  He's become a severe critic of the GOP of late, but I still like him.  He's like no other.  Here are a few snippets about him and the midwest from today's New York Times:

Part of the reason Mr. Keillor loves New York, he says, is that it is full of people, but not long on human interaction. "It's great peace and quiet here," he said. "In St. Paul I know a lot of people, and it's always kind of tumultuous." Continuing, he added: "New York is a city where when I walk down the sidewalk and hoof it around town, things come to me, things just strike me. Can't really explain that. Maybe if I walked along a gravel road in North Dakota things also would strike me, but New York is pleasanter than that gravel road. So I love to come here."

...

As much as he loves New York with the fervor of a Midwestern immigrant, his loyalty is clear. After Mr. Keillor concluded his interview with a reporter at the Adoré, a woman from rural Minnesota dropped by his table to declare herself a fan. He was genuinely interested in what she had to say, and the fact that she is from where he is from, and yet was standing there in a restaurant in Manhattan.

"What appeals to me about Minnesota is that it has a stubbornness, it has a persistence. It treasures its own landscape," he said. "People who live in Minnesota really love to stay. They're not migrants. They're not people who are going to fold their tent in another year and go elsewhere."

Or even when they do, they will always be back.

Keillor will be broadcasting his show from the Corn Palace in Mitchell this spring!

Filibusters

Robert Novak on the new Senate:

A scenario for an unspecified day in 2005: One of President Bush's judicial nominations is brought to the Senate floor. Majority Leader Bill Frist makes a point of order that only a simple majority is needed for confirmation. The point is upheld by the presiding officer, Vice President Dick Cheney. Democratic Leader Harry Reid challenges the ruling. Frist moves to table Reid's motion, ending debate. The motion is tabled, and the Senate proceeds to confirm the judicial nominee -- all in about 10 minutes.

This is the ''nuclear option'' that creates fear and loathing among Democrats and weak knees for some Republicans, including conservative opinion leaders. Ever since Frist publicly embraced the nuclear option, he has been accused of abusing the Senate's cherished tradition of extended debate. In truth, during six years as majority leader, Democrat Robert C. Byrd four times detonated the nuclear option to rewrite Senate rules.

Thus, Frist would set no precedent, would not contradict past Republican behavior and would not strip the GOP of protection as a future Senate minority. The question is whether Republican senators will flinch from the only maneuver open to confirm Bush's judges.

The unprecedented Democratic plan to filibuster judicial nominations that do not meet liberal specifications has exceeded all expectations. None of 10 filibustered Bush appellate court nominees has been confirmed, and another six are all designated filibuster victims. This is intended to have a chilling effect on Bush in filling Supreme Court vacancies.

All 16 of these nominees are dead under present procedures. Even with the net gain of four Republican senators in this year's elections, Frist falls short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate. After early skepticism, I have come to agree with Frist's conclusion that the old-fashioned filibuster-breaker of round-the-clock sessions is a non-starter. Today's Republican senators lack the will to undergo this ordeal. They would have to maintain a heavy presence on the floor while a single Democrat could hold forth.

The Left

In case you've been reading the raft of articles about 'what does this election mean for the Democrats,' here's another one in Mother Jones from the 60s activist and now historian of the 60s, Todd Gitlin:

In the end, the Republicans mobilized bigger brigades with their own combination of movement and machine. Now the huge question is whether the oppositional mobilization is ready to thrive and endure -- whether the "practical idealism" that Al Gore helplessly invoked in 2000 is ready to become liberalism's main spirit. Don't trust anyone who's too confident of an answer yet. Yet this much can be said: The defeat of 2004 will someday be seen as either the high-water mark of a liberal upsurge, or the beginning of its triumphal recovery.

Committees

Washington Times:

Sen.-elect John Thune of South Dakota won a coveted spot on the Armed Services Committee.

First sentence in Argus Leader story:

Republican John Thune did not get onto the U.S. Senate's Agriculture Committee as he had hoped, but is pleased with the assignments he did receive for his work next year in Congress.

The Argus also ignores the history of the Armed Services committee (but does get some thoughts from environmentalists about the committee assignments):

By securing a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator-elect Thune will renew a South Dakota tradition of having one of its senators sit on the Committee.  Senator John Chandler (Chan) Gurney, who was instrumental in creating Ellsworth Air Force Base, was the first chairman of the Armed Services Committee when it was formed in 1947.  (The Committee, which as now named was created in 1947, traces its history to the Military Affairs Committee and the Naval Affairs Committee, both of which were established in 1816.) Senator Francis Case was also a member of the Committee.  Since Senator Case’s death in 1962, South Dakota has not had a senator on the Committee until Thune’s appointment.

JASON ADDS:  I think today's Argus Leader article on Thune's committee assignments indicates the kind of coverage Thune can expect for the next six years.  It's going to be similar to the AL's coverage of Senator Pressler during his tenure in the Senate, which even the New York Times described at the time as "vituperative."  The Capitol Hill publication Roll Call described the AL's coverage of Pressler at the time as "hysterical bashing." 

Bearing in mind the AL's past vituperative and hysterical coverage of Republican senators, today's article is an unsurprising case study in accentuating the negative and eliminating the positive.  The article doesn't indicate that Thune was one of only two freshman GOP senators to get assigned to an elite committee.  (Mel Martinez was assigned to Foreign Relations.)  Yes, Armed Services is a committee of "national stature" but it's crucial to the interests of South Dakota as well.  There's a better chance Ellsworth AFB will gain a new mission because of Thune's seat on Armed Services.  South Dakota soldiers fighting the war on terror will benefit from Thune's advocacy on the committee for better equipment, pay, and benefits.  Yet in reading today's article, one gets the distinct impression that Thune's committee assignments are a disaster because Thune purportedly "lost out" on Agriculture.

What's more, as Jon notes, is that the Argus Leader completely ignores the history of South Dakota's role on Armed Services.  There's no mention that Senator Chan Gurney of South Dakota was the FIRST chairman of the Armed Services committee.  You'd think that would be a nice factoid for readers to know.  Apparently, it's more important to the Argus Leader for readers to think that Thune's committee assignments are a disaster than to actually be informed. 

The truth is, Thune being one of only two freshman GOP senators to get on an elite committee is a spectacular accomplishment, and the Argus Leader has once again done a disservice to its readers by spinning Thune's committee assignments as a disaster.  Mark my words: the AL's coverage of Thune is going to be uncannily similar to its coverage of Pressler, and this is only the beginning.

To see the full list of the Senate GOP committee assignments, click HERE.

Johnson

Note a few items in this column by Denise Ross of the Rapid City Journal:

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is not so worried about his party's stinging losses in the 2004 election as he is about the political climate in his home state. One of his priorities is to calm the political waters in a state hit by tidal waves of national attention and the political debris that comes with it.

Um, ok.  But just for laughs, review the national blow-up that calming-the-waters Johnson caused by calling the Republican Party the "Taliban" (which even the Argus condemned).  Also from the column:

The team's first order of business will likely be the energy bill. The bill, which got derailed a year ago in a partisan fight largely over liability for MTBE manufacturers, will likely be back with slight modifications and with a compromise on MTBE, Johnson said. MTBE is methyl tertiary-butyl ether, the fuel additive that serves the same function as ethanol but turned out to be a pollutant.

Before what happened to the energy bill, i.e. a Democratic filibuster which Daschle allowed to happen without saying a peep, slides down the memory hole, read this.  Perhaps this column could use a little more, um, context.