Dems a PERMANENT MAJORITY... IF they survive Election 2008? Lawrence O'Donnell, Dem wunderkind...

Lawrence O'Donnell
11.14.2006
A Permanent Majority?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/a-permanent-majority_b_34114.html


I haven't had the time to type a word for HuffPo since the election because I've been too busy gloating on TV. Having predicted every Senate election correctly as well as the outcome in the House and the governors' races, I have been taking every opportunity on MSNBC and the McLaughlin Group to say a few self-congratulatory words and sit back and watch my Republican counterparts' befuddlement.


In my latest round of this, Joe Scarborough asked why I knew who was going to win the elections and Karl Rove, the genius, Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain," didn't know. By the way, how smart do you have to be to be Bush's brain? I didn't want to give up my secret for election predicting. I like being one of the few pundits to accurately predict all the Senate races. Fellow geniuses Eleanor Clift and Mark Shields got it right too, but they're not the gloating type and they never appear on MSNBC, so I was hoping to create a sort of Rove-level genius aura for myself, at least among MSNBC talking heads. You know, maybe "Olbermann's Brain," something like that. But I couldn't come up with a Rove-like rap about metrics because I had never actually used the word in a sentence, so, to avoid the horror of dead air, I went to my fallback position--the truth.




I admitted that the secret of my election pundit genius was public polls. Any study--okay, 'study' is too strong a word--an occasional glance at the publicly available polls during the two weeks before the election told you exactly who was going to win. When a challenger like Claire McCaskill was running a tie at 47 or 48 against incumbent Jim Talent, that poll is telling you that the challenger is going to beat the incumbent. It helped that I happen to know that Talent never polled above 50 against McCaskill and it helped that I had seen McCaskill campaign and knew she was a great campaigner. That's what provoked me to predict she was going to win months ago. But the rest of the predictions I made were based on nothing but public polls.

The MSM loves the image of Rove as genius almost as much as Rove does, but, showing no embarrassment for their years of dutiful transcribing of Rove's notion that he was building a permanent Republican majority, they are now moving on to the first-woman-Speaker story in which the word genius has yet to appear. Which brings me to my next big prediction in answer to the question of how long will the Democrats hold the House?

This is a tricky one because so much turns on how good a Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be. The early signs are not good. The day after she backs Arianna's hero John Murtha for majority leader, the Washington Post goes after her with both barrels--a front page story about Murtha and his history of ethics problems, including (unindicted) involvement in Abscam, and an editorial slamming Murtha and endorsing Steny Hoyer for the job. When was the last time the Post made an endorsement in a party leadership race? Ever? There's no possible win here for Pelosi. If Hoyer wins, the new Speaker gets publicly humiliated on her first vote. If Murtha wins, the Pelosi promise of "the most ethical Congress in history" will fall apart quickly with Sean Hannity running Murtha's Abscam FBI video endlessly.

But the damage Murtha's ethics history can do to the Pelosi Speakership is nothing compared to what Alcee Hastings can do. Pelosi is feuding with her California colleague Jane Harman who is in line to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee. Pelosi wants someone else. Next in line is Alcee Hastings, a member of the Black Caucus, which is championing his candidacy for Intelligence chairman. No one outside of the Black Caucus would be happy to see Alcee Hastings in a chairmanship. I first saw Alcee Hastings in his impeachment trial in the Senate.

Hastings was a Florida federal judge who was indicted for extortion and bribery and was found not guilty by a jury. A judicial panel then recommended his removal from the bench, which, for a federal judge means impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate. Hastings was convicted by the Senate in 1989 and removed from the bench, whereupon he ran for Congress and won. That's where Alcee's sweet revenge story should end. But Pelosi is actually considering him for the chairmanship.

If Rove had been smart enough to make Alcee Hastings a household term during the campaign, the Democrats would not have won as many seats. If Pelosi makes Hastings a chairman, Rove won't miss the shot this time. The Democrats would instantly take over as the party of corruption. Voters would get a terrible more-of-the-same feeling right off the bat and their throw-the-bums-out attitude would not subside. The first woman Speaker could be a two-year story.

But if Pelosi keeps Hastings and Murtha at bay and runs a smooth ship for a few years, the new Democratic majorities in the statehouses could deliver the kind of gerrymandering--I mean redistricting--after the 2010 census that the Democrats need to get another generational hold on the House. Not forty years like last time, but twenty years is not out of the question. I'm not talking permanent majority here. Only a genius like Karl Rove could get anyone to buy an idea like that.

LIBERALS are responsible for THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, winning TWO world wars and preping the way for America to put a man on the moon AND win the Cold War; and over and above all, LIBERAL policies, programs, issues, and wining battles ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR what we now know as 'the American Way of Life."

"Independents" and "moderates" are merely undecided, muddled-middle voters who don't appreciate the FIGHTS that it took to wrench America from a pre-Depression Laissez-faire philosophy to the more modern approach that we Americans are ARE RESPONSIBLE, to a degree, for each other, and that we will not tolerate gross poverty, inequity, or the violence and ______ that accompany gross poverty and inequity in America. (Over the past 30 years, the "Drug War" has been the biggest exception to this more modern outlook, with the vast majority of the 2 million Americans in prisons, jails, or under legal supervision in that condition as a result to some degree on drug laws or alcohol laws, or both.)

Every day, the Right-Wing GOAL of a seeing THE MAJORITY of Americans living in subservient, subsistence conditions, while the extreme wealthy minority basks in luxury and unbridled power, can be witnessed merely by taking a flight to any Central- or South American city. Throughout ALL of South America, OVER HALF of the population survives on wages of TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH, or less. Bump that figure up to $400/month, and it would probably include 2/3rds of all South Americans. (Source: CIA Worldbook or ANY OTHER SOURCE on economic per capita GDP or other economic statistics.)

Of course, with so many living at subsistence wages, the American-style SOCIAL SAFETY NET is close to nonexistent.

THAT is the Right-Wing agenda, and "muddled-middle," "Undecided", "Independent," and "Moderate" voters who do not vote for AT LEAST some degree of two-party OVERSIGHT of the government, are VOTING FOR ONE PARTY RULE, and for THEIR OWN ECONOMIC DISENFRANCHISEMENT.

======================================


Quotes

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote.
Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty.
Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.
Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things � every one.
So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of,
something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up
that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."
-- Matt Santos, fictional Democrat (you can tell - he lists the facts) on West Wing

LIBERALS are responsible for THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, winning TWO world wars and preping the way for America to put a man on the moon AND win the Cold War; and over and above all, LIBERAL policies, programs, issues, and wining battles ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR what we now know as 'the American Way of Life."

"Independents" and "moderates" are merely undecided, muddled-middle voters who don't appreciate the FIGHTS that it took to wrench America from a pre-Depression Laissez-faire philosophy to the more modern approach that we Americans are ARE RESPONSIBLE, to a degree, for each other, and that we will not tolerate gross poverty, inequity, or the violence and ______ that accompany gross poverty and inequity in America. (Over the past 30 years, the "Drug War" has been the biggest exception to this more modern outlook, with the vast majority of the 2 million Americans in prisons, jails, or under legal supervision in that condition as a result to some degree on drug laws or alcohol laws, or both.)

Every day, the Right-Wing GOAL of a seeing THE MAJORITY of Americans living in subservient, subsistence conditions, while the extreme wealthy minority basks in luxury and unbridled power, can be witnessed merely by taking a flight to any Central- or South American city. Throughout ALL of South America, OVER HALF of the population survives on wages of TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS PER MONTH, or less. Bump that figure up to $400/month, and it would probably include 2/3rds of all South Americans. (Source: CIA Worldbook or ANY OTHER SOURCE on economic per capita GDP or other economic statistics.)

Of course, with so many living at subsistence wages, the American-style SOCIAL SAFETY NET is close to nonexistent.

THAT is the Right-Wing agenda, and "muddled-middle," "Undecided", "Independent," and "Moderate" voters who do not vote for AT LEAST some degree of two-party OVERSIGHT of the government, are VOTING FOR ONE PARTY RULE, and for THEIR OWN ECONOMIC DISENFRANCHISEMENT.

======================================


Quotes

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote.
Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty.
Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.
Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things � every one.
So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of,
something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up
that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."
-- Matt Santos, fictional Democrat (you can tell - he lists the facts) on West Wing