Censored Whig Letters

The Death of the Permanent Republican Majority
by brownsox

Well, that Permanent Majority sure didn’t last long.

Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi, which yielded an eight-point victory for a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican district, has signaled to all observers what we’ve known, or at least hoped for, for years; Republicans are doomed.

This has been the case for quite some time-the 2006 elections certainly seemed to indicate serious trouble for the Republican Party-but Mississippi pulled the curtain on the current sad state of the GOP. In the aftermath of Travis Childers’ election, it has become impossible to ignore or deny the fact that the Republican Party is on the verge of disaster.

The GOP had absolutely no legitimate excuses for losing this election, as DavidNYC wrote on Wednesday. They had a decent candidate (in their fashion), running in a strongly red district, they spent vats of money, used all kinds of popular surrogates which we couldn’t match, and engaged in the same tired old “Liberals are EVIL!” scarecrowery that they’ve practiced for twenty years.

None of it worked, apparently. Not only did they lose the seat, they got beaten quite badly. They tried everything to hang on to a seat that should never have been competitive in the first place, and they failed in grand fashion. It is the perfect indicator that the Republican brand is in historically dire straits-they’re in the worst position they have seen since 1974, perhaps since 1964, perhaps since 1932- and the nation is poised for a genuine Democratic ascendancy.

And everybody knows it.

The traditional media has noticed; indeed, as as DemFromCT notes, they can’t get enough of this new narrative about the diseased Republican Party.

And the Republican Party has most definitely noticed. NRCC Chairman Tom Cole, who will presumably take the brunt of the blame for GOP losses this fall, commented

“I think obviously when you lose three of these in a row you have to go beyond campaign tactics,” Cole said, adding that it brings up the question: “Is there something wrong with your product?”

This is a rather remarkable statement, considering that just a few short years ago, Republicans truly believed that this “product” would enable them to build a Permanent Republican Majority, ultimately restricting Democrats to the status of a regional party.

Cole is far from alone in noting the grand failure of selling traditional Republicanism. Rep. Mark Kirk, a moderate representing a Democratic-leaning district (whose reelection bid is in serious trouble), feels the same way.

The GOP’s loss in Mississippi on Tuesday underscored for many Republicans that the party’s old playbook — one that relies heavily on branding Democrats as liberal tax-raisers, rallying around social issues such as abortion and guns, and using the president and vice president as campaign surrogates — isn’t working any more.

“The playbook hasn’t worked in my district ever,” said Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who has been pushing his party to adopt an agenda geared toward more moderate suburban voters for the past three years. “The politics of the 1980s when that playbook was written is out of date.”

Even rock-ribbed conservatives, like rising GOP star Eric Cantor, understand the party’s need to rebrand itself.

Cantor acknowledged that efforts to brand a candidate as “too liberal” or “too out of sync” won’t cut it with voters.

“What does work, though, is a realization that the paradigm has been shifted,” Cantor said. “This country is tired of excuses and doesn’t want to hear about ‘too liberal’ or ‘too this’ or ‘too that.’ What they want to hear is solutions.”

The paradigm has shifted, indeed. We are entering a new era in American politics, and the Republicans have to figure out how to live in it. Their old ideas, old tactics, and stale brand are hopelessly out of place.

Republican Rep. Tom Davis, one of the better strategic minds in the GOP, has gone so far as to raise the spectre of a permanent GOP minority:

Don’t just put a new wrapper on the product and hire a new sales crew. Let’s revamp, consistent with our principles and remember that this election is about independent voters. Even if we get every Republican out to vote, we lose without Independents. Forget the Democrats. They’ve been waiting to get back since the Florida recount. It’s all about the Independents, or we drop to a 170-180 seat permanent minority. Yes, we’ll be comfortable in our caucus, but we’ll be irrelevant for the next decade.

It’s particularly noteworthy that during their 12-year reign in Congress, from 1994 to 2006, the Republicans were never able to make the Democrats into a “170 or 180 –seat permanent minority”. If the Democratic Party was indeed at its lowest ebb during the Bush administration, we’re actually in pretty good shape indeed.

So the GOP looks to John McCain as their savior now…a man whose entire electoral viability is centered around being seen as a “maverick”, an atypical Republican.

The rise of McCain as their champion is not without irony, since the 71-year-old Arizona senator has quarreled with his own party for years on issues as diverse as immigration, campaign finance reform and global warming.

But it is precisely that independent streak that is drawing Republicans to his coattails, hoping he can cleanse them of the stain of gridlocked Washington.

Eric Cantor, Republican chief deputy whip in the House of Representatives, told reporters that the McCain brand was healthier than that of his party.

“John McCain is a demonstrated vote getter among independents, and his message and what he will be able to do in this election is extremely important.”

Frankly, the only chance John McCain has in this election is to keep selling the nonsense that he isn’t a normal Republican (and it is nonsense)…yet the party establishment is looking to him to help avoid disastrous downticket losses. McCain’s job is to save the party…by running away from the party. The Republican brand is so toxic, at this point, that the only chance for GOP success is to eschew the brand of their own party label.

So, what the hell happened to that Permanent Majority? As DemFromCT wrote this morning, the true beauty of the special elections in Mississippi and Louisiana is that the Republican Party, the folks who once had designs on a Permanent Majority which would relegate us forever to the status of a regional party, have ultimately succeeded in transforming themselves into a regional party.

Their own hubristic eagerness to demonize anything and everything Democratic has ultimately backfired; it is the Republican party which is the extremist party now, and the Democratic party which is the coalition party.

Chris Cillizza breaks down the recent AB/WaPo poll:

Not surprisingly, Obama holds his largest lead over McCain (18 points) in the Northeast — an area that has become increasingly dominated by Democrats in recent elections.

But, Obama also holds a lead in the traditional battleground area of the Midwest — where Obama takes 54 percent to McCain’s 41 percent — and in the Republican-leaning territory of the West where Obama holds a double-digit lead at the moment. And, even in the South, where Republicans have dominated at the federal level for much of the past four decades, Obama is competitive; McCain takes 49 percent to 45 percent for the Illinois senator.

While McCain trails by double digits in three of the four regions of the country, he actually far over performs his own party’s showing in the Post poll.

Asked which party they trusted to “do a better job of coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years,” voters across the country opted for Democrats by wide margins.

In the Northeast, Democrats outpaced Republicans by 29 points while the margin was 26 points in the Midwest. The news wasn’t much better for Republicans in the West (Democrats +18) or the South (Democrats +15).

It is the Democratic party which is making inroads into the West and South, while the Republicans have now failed to hold seats in successive special elections deep within the heart of their Southern stronghold. Even rural voters, long part of the GOP base, are abandoning the party:

Less than six months from the November election, Sen. John McCain is tied with Sen. Hillary Clinton among rural voters in battleground states while the Arizona Republican holds a nine point lead over Sen. Barack Obama.

Republican extremism has driven away a good percentage of the voters who gave them their narrow victories over the past 15 years. It’s easy to say that they should moderate their image going forward, and that probably is what they should do. Unfortunately, they’re hamstrung by their base.

Many things have gone wrong for Bush, but the underlying problem is his relationship to the constituency that elected him. Bush’s debt to his big donors and to religious conservatives has boxed him in and pitted him against the national consensus on various issues. His extremism is undermining Rove’s realignment.

The problem has become clear with Bush’s difficulties in filling Sandra Day O’Connor’s slot on the Supreme Court. The Harriet Miers nomination was an attempt to satisfy both the militant conservative base and the eternally moderate American electorate. With the Alito nomination, Bush has acknowledged that splitting this difference is impossible. Faced with a choice, he has chosen, once again, to dance with the ones who brought him. But by appointing a superconservative, Bush risks propelling his increasingly beleaguered administration even further toward the right-hand margin—a place where his party cannot win future national elections.

The Republicans are in thrall to their hard-core right wing base, the Norquists and Dobsons of the world, and this prevents them from recapturing the political center, as DHinMI wrote in his piece on Tom Davis memo. Ironically, Davis’ own U.S. Senate bid was thwarted by the right wing of the Virginia Republican Party, who apparently preferred nominating the weak but reliably “conservative” Jim Gilmore to one of their smartest and wisest strategists.

Since the 1990’s, the Republicans have been willing hostages to their base. Republican office holders are unwilling to go against their base, because they know they will be attacked by their base, and quite possibly targeted by fundie groups and Club for Growth, and most likely draw an extremist primary opponent (like the ones who’ve defeated Republican incumbent moderates Wayne Gilchrest and Joe Schwarz, and who blocked Davis’ own path to the Republican nomination for Senate in Virginia).

I don’t have any sympathy for the Republicans. But I do believe it must be horrible knowing that if they don’t eschew the extreme right positions they’ve adopted over the years, they will get slaughtered in the general election, but breaking from the extreme right means they will not make it through party primaries.

The GOP has fallen this far for a number of reasons, but chief among them is their failure to adequately court middle-class voters who aren’t completely hostile to science. Unfortunately for them, that comprises an incredibly large swath of the country. For some time, they were able to win enough of these voters to hold a majority in Congress and eke out two incredibly narrow presidential-election victories, but they were never included in the coalition.

It’s easy to forget that the Democratic Party was already experiencing a resurgence prior to September 11, albeit not on the grand scale we’re seeing now. Bush, of course, lost the popular vote in 2000, an election which saw the Democratic Party regain a majority in the U.S. Senate. Democrats also managed to gain seats in the House in three successive elections after the 1994 debacle.

The Republican seizure of the national security issue after 9/11 bought them time as a party, but it was hardly a permanent fix. For the GOP to hold national-security voters, two things were necessary; first, the issue had to remain the top voter priority, and second, the Republicans had to actually maintain their credibility on it (which, of course, they did not).

In all honesty, it’s likely that Republican dominance would have fallen even earlier if they hadn’t managed to seize the national-security issue after 9/11. Their mistake, however, was believing that national security alone would keep middle-class voters in their column. Unfortunately for them, their credibility on national security is spent, thanks in large part to the Iraq fiasco.

Now, in increasing numbers, these voters are finding a home in the Democratic Party. This is not because the party has moved appreciably to the center. Rather, it has become the party of the left and the center, the party for everyone who isn’t either insanely wealthy or part of the religious right.

Another component of the Republican fall is their eagerness to practice the worst kind of divisive regional politics. We’ve seen it in their most recent ads in Louisiana and Mississippi, assailing “San Francisco” liberal values. Have you ever seen a Democratic ad criticizing “Alabama values?”

Then there’s Dick Armey’s foul gem from 2004, assailing my hometown:

The state is also a recurring villain among Republicans, a view distilled in a wisecrack by a former House majority leader, Dick Armey of Texas, when Democrats announced that their 2004 convention would be held in Boston.

“If I were a Democrat,” Armey said, “I would feel a heck of a lot more comfortable in Boston than, say, America.”

Strange, but I can’t remember Ted Kennedy ever saying that Dallas isn’t part of America. We don’t do that sort of thing. Republicans do. Creating this us-and-them regional dynamic no doubt helped the Republicans lock down their Southern base, but it also prevented them from expanding into other regions of the country. It’s instructive that the party which wished to create a permanent majority thought it would be a good idea to do so by writing off entire sections of the country, and it’s no wonder that Chris Shays is the last Republican representative from New England.

I think the Republican dream of a permanent majority was always hubris. Their coalition was never that broad, and never that strong, even when they managed to win. And they didn’t do a damned thing to expand beyond that coalition, to win new voters into their country by attempting to find common ground with centrists. At the height of Republican supremacy, 59 million Americans voted for John Kerry in 2004, and the GOP made no effort to court any of those voters into joining them.

One final note on the late Republican Permanent Majority. Karl Rove sought to be the new Mark Hanna, William McKinley’s political strategist in the 1896 presidential election. Hanna’s great achievement was to craft a Republican coalition in 1896 which reduced Democrats to being a Southern regional party, a status they enjoyed essentially until 1932.

Rove and his partners in crime have essentially done the same thing as Hanna did…for the Democratic Party.

http://brownsox.dailykos.com/

Big GOP losses in Congress likely, even if McCain wins

By Steven Thomma and Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/37362.html

WASHINGTON — Whoever wins the presidency this November, it’s all but a slam dunk they’ll be working with a Democratic Congress. And it probably will be a stronger Democratic majority with more votes than it has today.

Even normally optimistic Republicans conceded in recent days that the landscape is stacked against them after losing their third special House of Representatives election in a row, all in what had been safe Republican districts.

“A large segment of the American public doesn’t have confidence in the Republican Party,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the party’s chief political operative for House races.

“It should be a really good Democratic year in both chambers,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report. He’s one of the three most authoritative nonpartisan voices on congressional races, along with Charles Cook of the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

They all predict that Democrats will add to their majorities in the House by six to 20 seats and in the Senate by two to five seats.

They add that the swing could be larger, but none expect the Democrats to gain enough to be able to push legislation past a Republican filibuster in the Senate or a presidential veto in either chamber.

It’s also possible that some of the Democratic gains could come with the election of moderate to conservative candidates — as happened on Tuesday in Mississippi. That would mean that a Democratic president — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — might have a hard time getting even a Democratic Congress to approve all of their proposals on such issues as health care and taxes.

“Obama can propose new programs by the dozen, but odds are the Congress won’t go along with most of them,” said Sabato. “There will be enough moderates in both the House and Senate to force a new president to compromise.”

The prospects would be worse for Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate.

“If it’s McCain,” Sabato said, “he would find his domestic policies dead on arrival. His only real influence with Congress would be in the foreign sphere.”

Why the likely Democratic gains?

A confluence of forces is coming together that includes an unpopular Republican president, an unpopular war, a widespread sense that the country’s on the wrong track and rising costs for food, gasoline and health care. Though Democrats have shared power since they took over Congress in the 2006 election, they have yet to share much of the blame.

“The political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general,” said Cole, who serves as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Another reason is mechanical: The Republicans have more seats to defend and less money to do it.

In the Senate, where about a third of the seats are up every two years, Republicans have to defend 23 seats and Democrats only 12.

In the House, where all 435 seats are up every two years, more Republicans have decided to retire since losing majority control two years ago. Their party now has to defend more than two dozen open seats.

Republicans also have far less money, a reversal of fortune from earlier eras. As of this week, the two Republican campaign committees for House and Senate races had raised $108 million for this two-year cycle and had $24.5 million in cash left unspent.

By comparison, the two Democratic campaign committees had raised $160 million and still had $82 million in cash on hand.

“We’ve never seen a situation where, as a party, Democrats simply had more money and could stretch Republicans thin,” said Cook. The Democrats, he said, can force the Republicans to spend money defending otherwise safe seats and bleed them dry.

The chief political operative for House Democrats, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., warned against expecting too much, noting that it’s rare for a party to gain seats the election after a big tidal-wave election like the 30-seat pickup the Democrats enjoyed in 2006.

In fact, a party hasn’t followed double-digit gains with another gain since the 1970s: The Democrats gained 43 seats in 1974 and a single seat in 1976; the Republicans gained 11 seats in 1978 and 33 more in 1980.

It’s still early. Many House and Senate candidates won’t be selected until primaries this summer, and most voters don’t tune into congressional campaigns until much later.

Republicans hope they can still fine-tune their message — national security, low taxes, smaller federal government, energy independence — to regain their footing.

But their stronger hope might lie in McCain, an ironic fate given that many conservative Republicans don’t like him.

Yet it’s precisely his willingness to break with them on so many occasions that might make him the perfect leader now. Recent polls show McCain neck and neck in fall match-ups with either Democrat — but show congressional Republicans trailing well behind congressional Democrats.

“McCain will be a tremendous asset,” said Cole. “He’s running better than the party.”

Still, it’s a steep climb for the Republicans to even hold their current status in the House and Senate.

The Democrats now rule the House by a margin of 236-199. They need to gain 51 more seats to have enough to pass laws over a president’s veto.

They hold the Senate by 51-49, a figure that includes two independents who vote with the Democrats. They need to gain nine more seats to have enough to pass legislation over a Republican filibuster, and 16 more to have a veto-proof majority.

The early outlook, according to the experts:

Sabato at the University of Virginia predicts the Democrats will pick up six to 12 seats in the House and three to four in the Senate. “It could go higher” in the Senate, he said. However, he added that he doesn’t think they can win the votes needed to break filibusters. “I don’t think there’s any real chance they’ll get 60.”

Cook predicts the Democrats will gain 10 to 20 seats in the House. “If we’re wrong, it’s likely to be higher, not lower.” In the Senate, he predicts the Democrats will gain four to five seats, with an all-but-certain pickup in Virginia, possible gains in Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico, and less likely but still possible gains in Alaska, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon.

Rothenberg predicts Democratic gains of eight to 12 seats in the House and two to five in the Senate. “It could be a few fewer, it could be a few more,” he said. “But the Democrats have the advantage on message, on money, on candidates.”

SENATE SEATS TO WATCH

Republican seats in play:

ALASKA: Held by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens remains an icon in Alaska politics, but his son has been caught up in a scandal, and Democrats wonder whether Stevens, 85 in November, might opt to retire before the Aug. 26 primary. The likely Democratic challenger is Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage.

COLORADO: Open seat being vacated by the retirement of Sen. Wayne Allard. The Democrat is Rep. Mark Udall, heir to a famous family name in Western politics, who’s benefiting from a strong Democratic tailwind in the state. His party’s captured the governor’s office, the state legislature and the other U.S. Senate seat. The Republican is former Rep. Bob Schaffer.

MINNESOTA: The incumbent is Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who could benefit from an energized base if John McCain picks Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty as his running mate. The Democrat is likely to be former comedian Al Franken.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: The incumbent is Republican Sen. John Sununu, who faces a repeat challenge from former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu won a close election in 2002 that featured dirty tricks by the Republicans, who jammed Democratic Party phones on Election Day.

NEW MEXICO: Open seat being vacated by retirement of Republican Sen. Pete Domenici. The state’s trended toward the Democrats on the local level, holding the governor’s office and other Senate seat by comfortable margins. The Democrat likely will be Rep. Tom Udall, heir to the same influential family name as his first cousin Mark in Colorado. The Republicans haven’t picked a candidate — Reps. Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson are competing in the June 3 primary.

VIRGINIA: Open seat, vacated by the retirement of Republican Sen. John Warner. Democrat Mark Warner, no relation, is a popular former governor who’s favored to take the seat. The Republican candidate is likely to be former Gov. Jim Gilmore.

DEMOCRATIC SEAT IN PLAY

LOUISIANA: The incumbent is Sen. Mary Landrieu, who faces what even her party expects to be a “long and tough race,” according to The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s analysis. A key factor is the exodus of people from the state — many of them Democrats — since Hurricane Katrina. One sign of trouble: The Republicans recently won the governor’s office. The likely Republican challenger is state Treasurer

Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens

By Dana Milbank
Friday, May 9, 2008; A03

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother’s Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, “Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day,” when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

“Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote,” he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt’s request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: “Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother’s Day.”

By voting against it?

If Boehner’s explanation doesn’t make much sense, he’s been under a great deal of stress lately.

There’s the case of one member of his caucus, Rep. Vito Fossella (N.Y.); the father of three from Staten Island yesterday announced that he has a fourth, a 3-year-old love child with a woman from Virginia. That admission was prompted by his drunken-driving arrest in Virginia last week, when he told police he was on his way to see his daughter. “I think Mr. Fossella is going to have some decisions to make over the weekend,” Boehner said at his news conference yesterday, cutting Fossella loose. Fossella was spotted on the House floor, in tears, speaking to the chaplain.

For the record, Fossella did not participate in the Mother’s Day vote.

Neither is Boehner likely to be helped by a Senate ethics committee decision yesterday exonerating Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) over his use of the “D.C. Madam’s” call girls. The Senate cleared him because the prostitution occurred when he was in the House — and the House can’t punish him because he left for the Senate. The madam, meanwhile, killed herself by hanging last week.

Then Boehner must grapple with the problematic case of Don Cazayoux. The Democrat last week won a House seat in Louisiana vacated by Republican Richard Baker. The seat hadn’t been held by a Democrat since 1974, and President Bush won 59 percent of the vote in the district in 2004. “The loss in Louisiana is a wake-up call,” Boehner admitted yesterday.

Worse news could come for Boehner on Tuesday, when Mississippi voters decide on a replacement for Rep. Roger Wicker (R) in a district where Bush won 62 percent of the vote in 2004. The seat should be a safe one for Republicans, but Democrat Travis Childers is running even with Republican Greg Davis — a potential sign of things to come in November, when Republicans stand to lose another 10 seats.

Whatever happens in Mississippi, Boehner has enough trouble to preoccupy him here in Washington, where House Democrats have been passing their agenda with little thought for Republican preferences. “The majority has taken, once again, their go-it-alone policy,” Boehner lamented yesterday. “It’s time for Democrats and Republicans to work together.”

To induce this working together, Boehner decided to stop the House from working at all. As House Democrats tried to pass legislation to ease the mortgage crisis on Wednesday, Republicans served up hours of procedural delays, demanding a score of roll call votes: 10 motions to adjourn, half a dozen motions to reconsider, various and sundry amendments, a motion to approve the daily journal, a motion to instruct and a “motion to rise.”

The high point came just after 6 p.m., when, after one of the motions to adjourn, 61 members lined up to change their votes, one by one. Forty-six went from aye to no, while 15 changed from no to aye. The maneuver ate up 28 minutes in all — and caused an eruption by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who accused the minority of a “filibuster by vote changing.”

“I know that probably all of you did polls on that and focus groups on whether or not you should vote aye or nay,” Hoyer mocked. “What just happened is not appropriate for the House for either side, to simply use a device of changing votes, of voting late, of lining up in the aisle and coming down every 30 seconds or so with one more vote.”

But the dilatory maneuvers continued, and the Democrats finally announced that they would postpone the vote on the mortgage bill until Thursday, thereby pushing a war spending bill to next week.

Finally, Republicans decided yesterday to suspend their shenanigans; it was time to catch flights to their districts. “Never underestimate the desire of members to go home,” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith explained.

They might also need some extra time with their mothers.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/Obama-MD

Barack Obama picked up two more superdelegates today, as the Chair and Vice Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party announced that they will be supporting Obama.

This represents quite a shift because Party chairman Michael Cryor and Vice chairman Lauren Dugas Glover originally had announced that they planned to stay neutral until the end of the primary season.

However, pressure has been mounting on superdelegates from all sides asking them to make a decision, since it is obvious that the Democratic primary electorate is deadlocked.

Unlike the superdelegates who aren’t elected or Party officials, delegates like Cryor and Glover feel a responsibility to carry out the decision of the electorate in their state. Obama beat Clinton handily in Maryland 60%-35%, so it is no surprise that the state leadership would support Obama.

Although these superdelegates count towards the overall total, we have consistently seen that superdelegate endorsements do very little to influence voters at the polls. There are two separate races going on concurrently in the Democratic Party. There is the battle at the polls, and the fight for the support of superdelegates. Voters influence superdelegates, but the superdelegates have no influence on the behavior of voters.

If the Democratic Party wants to end this primary quickly, they can’t afford to wait for the superdelegates to make their decisions in June. I know that Republicans are praying that this race goes on all summer, but I don’t think that it will. I think it will be done by early to mid June, and Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.

Gas Tax Nonsense and Fundamental Energy Industry Change

The idea being promoted by both John McCain and Hillary Clinton of canceling the federal gasoline tax for the summer is a terrible idea. It fails to address the real issue of runaway fuel prices. It has negative consequences for the safety of our roads and bridges. It is essentially a campaign stunt and distraction. The oil profiteers have already gobbled up any benefit consumers might gain from the cut far in advance of the proposed summer suspension.

Runaway fuel prices are largely the result of market manipulation by speculators and oil companies combined with a “nod and wink” approach to government regulation and law enforcement from the Bush Administration. We need serious government intervention instead of cosmetic window dressing.

Gasoline inventories are rising at the same time that prices are skyrocketing! Oil companies have been intentionally closing refineries to raise prices. The Bush administration has been taking huge quantities off the market by continuing to fill a strategic reserve when the federal government should be releasing the reserve to drive down the prices and breaking the power of speculators.

The federal taxes on fuel are a very tiny percentage of the total price. Gasoline prices rose nationally last month by nearly twice the amount of the federal gas tax. While the suspension of the gasoline tax sounds good, it does nothing but slow the price rise for a couple of weeks while gutting our ability to maintain our roads and bridges.

We already have bridges collapsing and citizens dying. Our transportation safety issue is really important. It is already in a crisis situation without following this irresponsible proposal. We need a huge increase in transportation infrastructure spending by the federal government instead of a dramatic decrease. We need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years on rebuilding our national economic infrastructure. We should be training millions of new construction workers by giving our construction unions support for their apprenticeship and training programs. The money has to come from somewhere.

McCain and Clinton are pushing a proposal that is irresponsible and will not even occur under their terms if elected. Neither will be in the White House this summer.

There are some ideas that will help. Aggressive investigations and prosecutions in the oil industry are certainly in order. Illegal price manipulation is likely. Strengthening laws and penalties for market manipulation should be a top priority. All profits derived from illegal market manipulation should be surrendered to the federal government along with huge additional penalties. The law should immediately be changed to make this the standard.

All oil imports should be done through the federal government. The federal government should negotiate the price from a position of strength. Oil companies should not be able to drive up prices by bidding against competitors for imports and using the process as an excuse for price-gouging.

We need a strong “windfall profits tax” on the oil industry. This tax should be used to promote alternative energy and to subsidize the trucking industry fuel costs, which is driving up consumer inflation on other products like food.

Oil refinery closings should only be permitted by the federal government when they do not result in huge price increases. If necessary, the federal government should build their own refineries to supply the American military and feral government vehicles. We should end the Iraq War which is wasting huge quantities of fuel needed by the homeland.

If all else fails, the federal government should consider price controls on fuel and/or nationalizing the oil industry. The oil industry cannot be permitted to control the entire American economy for the benefit of the very, very few.

McCain and Clinton should stop playing politics with the gas tax issue. They should be aggressively pushing for alternative energy solutions like solar, wind, conservation, bio-fuels, Green jobs and technology along with much more federal regulation of the oil companies.

Written by Stephen Crockett (host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com and Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com http://www.midatlanticlabor.com). Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Phone: 443-907-2367.

Feel free to publish at no charge without prior approval.