South Dakota Politics

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.

THUNE LANDS SEAT ON MAJOR COMMITTEE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, December 20, 2004

THUNE LANDS SEAT ON SENATE

ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator-elect John Thune announced today that he has secured a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Armed Services Committee is regarded as a “Super A” committee (one of the top four committees in the Senate), and as such is one of the most coveted committee assignments in the Senate.

According to the book “Congress Resurgent: Foreign and Defense Policy on Capitol Hill,” the Senate Armed Services Committee has been and remains one of the most attractive committee assignments in the Senate.  Similarly, Congressional Quarterly’s “Guide to Congress” states that the Senate Armed Services Committee is one of four “elite” committees in the Senate.

“The events of September 11 and the war on terror make this an unprecedented time in our nation’s history, and many of our fellow South Dakotans are wearing the uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere,” Thune said.  “I look forward to using my seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee to ensure that America is strong and safe, and that our men and women in the military have the tools they need to get the job done.” 

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.

The Armed Services Committee has legislative oversight of the nation’s military, including the pay, promotion, retirement, and other benefits and privileges of members of the Armed Forces.  The Committee is responsible for any activity undertaken by the Department of Defense or by the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.  The Committee also has oversight of military research and development, national security aspects of nuclear energy, the Selective Service System, and other matters related to national defense policy.

Senator-elect Thune will be officially sworn into the Senate on January 4, 2005.

The Dems and abortion

Here's an interesting article published in the Boston Globe yesterday headlined "Democrats eye softer image on abortion."  It's interesting to note that during the South Dakota campaigns for federal office this year, Senator Daschle worked hard to cloak his position on abortion, while Rep. Herseth never denied her position on the issue.  Herseth won, and Daschle lost.  Perhaps the key to winning elections in this state is to spare us the acrobatics on the issue.

WSJ

From today's edition of the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary:

Year of the Blogger

President George W. Bush had some real competition for Time's Person of the Year. He almost lost out to the Bloggers, who helped transform coverage of American politics and the media this year.

In the end, Time stuck with the safe choice but it did showcase the Blog of the Year in its latest issue. The editors chose Power Line, which was started in 2002 by two conservative Minneapolis lawyers who were later joined by a Washington D.C. based lawyer. Power Line achieved celebrity status when it became the first to shoot holes in Dan Rather's infamous "60 Minutes" report attacking President Bush's service record in the Air National Guard. "In 2004, blogs unexpectedly vaulted into the pantheon of major media, alongside TV, radio and, yes, magazines, and it was Power Line, more than any other blog, that got them there," concluded Time.

Scott Johnson, one of Power Line's three bloggers, recalls looking at the memos CBS posted on its web site to back up its National Guard story. He quickly questioned whether or not they were forgeries in a blog posting and linked his skeptical entry to another blog that was also raising the issue. The controversy spread through the "blogosphere" within hours and soon CBS was under a siege that will not lift until it releases its internal report on the story.

Power Line has since exploded in popularity and has started taking ads for the first time. But its annual profit is still only barely in five figures. Mr. Johnson says the blog is a labor of love and that he is thrilled to see how the Internet is empowering people and shaping political coverage. Some still point to the millions of amateur bloggers and dismiss them as nerdy faddists and their work as largely trivial. Most bloggers will burn out and move on to something else. But a handful are slowly building a shadow media infrastructure that will become a significant component of the media in the 21st century.

"Day by Day" pokes fun at Randell Beck

You can scan all of Chris Muir's cartoons HERE.

UPDATE:  You can access the column in which Beck made his famous Hitler comment HERE.  Interestingly, that column announced the formation of the Argus Leader editor's abortive attempt at blogging.

Thune Award from National Journal

From the National Journal:

COMEBACK of the YEAR John Thune

A high-profile loss in a 2002 squeaker didn't seem like a promising prelude to victory over the most powerful Democrat in the Senate -- not to mention a three-term incumbent who trampled his last challenger. But Thune's native-son angle dovetailed brilliantly with his attacks on Tom Daschle's outsider status, and those independent-minded South Dakotans sent him to D.C. after all.

Yahoos No More

Powerline:

UPDATE by Hindrocket: The Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which had its own encounters with blogs last fall, has a story that emphasizes my South Dakota roots: "New honors go to blog co-founded by native of S.D.".

The Argus doesn't mention the severe lashing it took from Time's "Blog of the Year," of course.  Remember when Argus editor Randell Beck called Powerline a bunch of "yahoos" from "outside the walls of South Dakota" who should be ignored?  If not, see this for some links. 

Christmas

Powerline has a few comments about Christmas and secularism etc, which caught my eye after receiving the comment below from a friend on the coast who frequently travels to China:

Here's a nice little squib for your blog re the Merry Christmas wars. I had a conversation yesterday w/ a (liberal) religious activist who just got back from China. On getting back he was struck how little public celebration there is of Christmas not there, but HERE. The commercial version of Christmas is all the rage in Beijing, lights are everywhere, everyone’s out buying each other gifts, and everyone is greeting each other with “Merry Christmas.” This is Communist China. In “Christian” America we say, Season’s Greetings… That’s not the whole story, of course. The Chinese government suppresses religious Christmas, but everyone knows its there, and they’re seeking it out. The government does not suppress or disapprove of “Merry Christmas.” Are the liberals more concerned to sweep religion from the public square than the Chicoms?

BOTY

When posting about Powerline being named the "Blog of the Year" by Time magazine, I should have noted that the blogger behind Powerline, John Hinderaker, is a South Dakotan and also was the keynote speaker at the Dakota Blog Alliance Conference last summer. 

Ryne:

And for overall coolness, you can't beat the fact that I once enjoyed an all too brief lunch chat with South Dakota boy John Hinderaker. I should have kept a napkin or something.

Here's one of Powerline's funniest posts of the last year discussing South Dakota political matters.

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

In connection with Jason's post about the Democratic financing of the effort to take Ed Schultz's North Dakota radio program national, note this passage from Jason Zengerle's article "False Dawn" in the November 8th issue of The New Republic (not online)(I'm trying to catch up on the stacks of magazines on the desk):

Liberals had set out to duplicate the right's counter-establishment.  In the past two years, they founded a Heritage Foundation-like think tank, the Center for American Progress, that would come up with liberal policy ideas and make sure people articulating those ideas got on television and radio.  They started two liberal talk-radio efforts, Air America and Democracy Radio, and a slew of liberal blogs.  And they took advantage of a loophole in the campaign finance reform law to create or bolster independent political groups--including MoveOn and Media Fund--that would run advertisements attacking Bush.  Although these groups would all be technically independent of the Democratic candidate's campaign, they would nonetheless work with him to take back the White House.  "Hillary Clinton talked about a vast right-wing conspiracy," one prominent Democrat said last year.  "Well, this is going to be a vast left-wing conspiracy."

Senator Daschle also spent $21 million in South Dakota to get his message out.

North Dakota Senator

From Powerline:

Democrats to investigate Republicans

Cal Thomas, in the Washington Times, tells us that the Democrats have announced plans to hold "hearings" during which they will examine the policies and conduct of the Bush administration. I thought we just finished such hearings in the form of an election campaign.

North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan promises that the hearings will be "about oversight. . .not gotcha politics." That's a relief. During his press conference to announce the hearings, Dorgan held up a picture of Harry Truman. One suspects, however, that Truman's ghost is more interested in an inquest into how the Democrats became so reluctant to confront hostile totalitarian regimes, and so eager to appeal to MoveOn.org and Michael Moore. One suspects, too, that the Democrats would profit more from such an inquest.

History

Back in 1994, I followed the Rwanda massacres in great detail, but have forgotten many of horrible twists and turns which left 75% of the nation's Tutsis slaughtered, mostly by machete.  It's a bit off topic, but you should watch the current documentary on The History Channel reviewing what happened. 

Fineman

Howard Fineman's rather stark assessment in Newsweek:

The vicious, down-to-the-wire race for the White House last November obscured the key fact about political life as it will be lived in Washington starting in January: Republicans, after decades of assaulting the citadel that Franklin Roosevelt built, have taken control of the place more completely than they ever did in the days of Ike, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—each of whom was forced to govern in the midst of what essentially was a city controlled by Democrats. That's not the case anymore. The Democrats are leaderless and reeling, seemingly bereft of inspiring ideas. They face a president who is the first since 1936 to win re-election while boosting his party's majorities in the Congress. The "mainstream" media, historically sympathetic to Democrats, are on the defensive, financially and journalistically; the GOP is even taking over the K Street lobbies, an Alamo of unrepentant Democrats.

The stuff about Kentucky is interesting too.

Powerline

Powerline, the Minnesota-based blog which was one of the Dakota Alliance's big boosters and frequent Argus critic, was named "Blog of the Year" by Time.  Well done.  And congrats!