Tag: 2008 elections

If Senator John McCain were the DEMOCRATIC nominee for President, the Republican Party, in the guise of Rush and Sean and Anne and Michelle, would destroy him as follows:

I’m a happy clam today folks. A new poll was released showing Jeff Merkley within three points of Republican Gordon Smith. Now I understand why Republican Gordon Smith just unveiled an attack ad on Jeff Merkley. He doesn’t want to face Merkley in the general election because Merkley will beat him! Here’s a snippet from Rasmussen:

Gordon Smith, United States Senator from Oregon, remains below the 50% level of support for the third straight month in Rasmussen Reports polling. Any incumbent who polls below 50% is considered potentially vulnerable and this month’s polling contains even more bad news for Smith-support for his potential Democratic challengers is increasing.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Oregon voters finds Smith leading Jeff Merkley by just three percentage points, 45% to 42%. In late March, he enjoyed a thirteen point lead. In February, he was ahead of Merkley by eighteen points.

During the primary race in Oregon there have been a number of signs that Republican Gordon Smith fears his possible Democratic opponent House Speaker Jeff Merkley. Whether it was his campaign’s decision to release their fundraising numbers early to counter the positive fundraising press the Merkley Campaign was receiving or his ridiculous email blast I wrote about yesterday. Now, Smith’s campaign is on the attack like never before and they’ve got their sights set on Oregon Senate candidate Merkley. Could this be another indication that the Smith Campaign does not want to face Jeff Merkley in November?

As Buhdy did in his essay a few days ago, I’ve been trying to imagine what our current political situation looks like to those who are not immersed in the blogosphere and the news…in other words, to people who are NOT political junkies.

I combine that with the fact that it looks like the long nightmare of our Democratic primary season might be about to come to an end. It seems obvious that we are going to have a race between McCain and Obama. For most folks here, that is not the choice we would have liked, but its what we have. That is unless we want to sit it out or cast a “conscience” vote for someone else. I will not judge anyone’s decision in these matters. But for me, the choice is easy. And that’s because I think that, with Obama, we’ve gotten about as good as we could get in our current political climate.

We’ve got alot of work to do in helping educate and motivate more people to take a deeper look into where we stand as a country. But I can see some progress in the outcome of our current race for the white house. And for me, Booman summed it up well today in a diary titled What This Means.

Thanks to Sarah Lane at EENR for supplying the links in this entry.

When the Supreme (Kangaroo) Court upheld an unconstitutional poll tax last week that was passed in the form of a voter suppression law in Indiana, some people (like Injustice Antonin Scalia) were quick to dismiss the horrendous effects. But as that state held its primary yesterday, reports about voters being turned away because they did not have the poll tax began coming out.

Twelve elderly nuns-NUNS, for crying out loud-were told they could not vote because they didn’t have the required state or federal ID card. They are all in their eighties and nineties. Vietnam and Gulf War I veteran Russell Baughman was denied his right to vote, because his identification wasn’t considered good enough.

People unable to obtain the draconian Indiana poll tax ID-nuns, veterans, the disabled, students, and poor folk-are being denied their right to vote. Denied because they cannot meet the requirements to obtain state-issued identification. Bradblog reports that in order to obtain the necessary items to get a state-issued identification card (a state-issued copy of one’s birth certificate), a state-issued identification card is needed. It’s a vicious and ultimately dangerous catch-22, making it impossible for the disenfranchised to meet the poll tax requirement. Bradblog also reports that at least 43,00 Indiana residents have been prevented from exercising their right to vote in this fashion.

This is what the Supremes upheld, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty states, including Ohio, have mandatory ID laws designed to suppress the votes of minorities, the elderly, students, veterans, and the poor (an economic situation that affects all the other categories of disenfranchised to one degree or another). Although the Buckeye State was able to counter this in part by allowing fewer restrictions on absentee voting, others-including Indiana-enjoy no such protections. This is what America has come to: another banana republic, another dictatorship, that suppresses the rights of its citizens and engages in sham elections.

Original article by Ralph Nader, subheaded The Story of Lisa Kelly, via Counterpunch.com.

We tend to pay less attention to down-ballot state races, as if their only real importance lies in the creation of strong political benches, a sort of stockpiling of talent for the future. Even so, just reading the names Katherine Harris and Kenneth Blackwell reveals that we do actually understand that Secretary of State is among the most important political jobs in the country. From the opposite end of the spectrum, Californians proved it, yet again, when Debra Bowen was elected, last year. Now, it’s Oregon’s turn.

A few years ago, it came to the attention of some Portland activists that Portland General Electric (or PGE- and not to be confused with California’s PG & E- Pacific Gas & Electric) had been charging rate-payers for its federal and state tax liabilities, even though it wasn’t actually paying the taxes. The Public Utilities Commission had given PGE a waiver. So, PGE was using false pretenses to over-bill its customers. In the amount of $150,000,000 a year! The total came to over $1,000,000,000! These activists thought it might be a good thing to stop this outrageous practice; so, they approached a prominent state legislator with the idea of passing a law that would forbid it, and that would require utilities to refund to ratepayers the money they were charged for taxes that the utilities did not pay- plus interest. The legislator didn’t want to do it. PGE is enormously wealthy and politically powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it had never suffered a legislative defeat! The activists approached a second legislator. A third. A fourth. A fifth. None had the political courage. The sixth legislator they approached was Vicki Walker, a state senator from a mostly rural Willamette Valley district that also includes Oregon’s second largest city, the university town of Eugene. Walker said she’d do it.

Oregon’s Democratic Governor, Ted Kulongoski, refused to take a stand on Walker’s effort. Even he lacked the guts to confront PGE. But Walker ushered the legislation through both the Senate and the House, and Kulongoski signed it into law. It was one of those extremely rare examples of a government standing up to a powerful special interest, on behalf of the people. And it was the first time PGE had ever been defeated in Oregon’s legislature! And Vicki Walker was singularly responsible for making it happen. And Oregon’s utilities tried to make her pay for it. Eugene’s popular mayor ran against her, in the next election. Eugene’s mayoral candidates need not declare party affiliation, so until this mayor challenged Walker, many of his constituents probably didn’t even know he was a Republican. So, he could run as a liberal Republican, a species with which Oregon actually has a long, and often happy, history. And needless to say, he was very well-funded. He was actually favored to win. And then they had their debate, and Walker was so much smarter, and so much better versed on the issues, that all the local media agreed she had soundly defeated him. And that turned the election, and led to her victory. Now, Oregon has the opportunity to bring her intelligence, integrity, and courage to state office.