Here's a question. In the world of today's media, you'd think that if a reporter learned that a 52 year old single male member of Congress had sent a 16 year old boy some creepy emails, that would be the makings of a pretty damn big story. So why did the St. Petersburg Times sit on the story for almost a year? (via Cillizza):

The boy, who is not being identified because of his age, told the St. Petersburg Times in an interview last November, when the Times first learned of the e-mails, that he cut off correspondence with Foley. [emphasis added]

What gives? Did the boy ask the St. Pete Times not to print? Why would that be if a) he'd already sent excerpts from Foley's emails back to Congressional staffers and b) he agreed to be interviewed by the paper? Maybe the paper held off purely out a concern about libel, but the suddenness of Foley's resignation (and the fact another page has apparently come forward) suggests this wasn't necessarily the toughest nut to crack. And since Brian Ross and ABC News had no problem breaking the story wide open, the libel argument doesn't seem to hold much water.

So if the St. Pete Times could have nailed the story down a long time ago and didn't, that leads us to two fairly divergent pieces of speculation: Was the paper planning on springing the story closer to the election and got scooped by CREW and ABC News? Or was the paper deliberately ignoring the story in an effort to cover for Foley? Neither seems all that likely to me, so I'm at a loss as to what motivated the St. Petersburg Times to keep a lid on this story for the better part of a year.

UPDATE: Looks like the St. Pete Times may not have been the only group sitting on this story. Josh Marshall asks the same question of the House GOP leadership: what did they know about Foley and when did they know it?

Stan Greenberg and James Carville have released a new strategy memo based on recent polling conducted in the 45 most competitive Republican-held House districts. The full memo is here (pdf) . Full poll results here (pdf) . Those crunched for time can get the gist of the findings from Carville and Greenberg's concluding paragraph:

Democrats are winning the 15 most competitive Republican-held districts by a 3-point margin and have the opportunity to expand their lead further if they develop a sharp critique of Congress. Clearly, this election could break further and most likely for the Democrats.

The AP reports Republican Congressman Rep. Mark Foley of Florida has resigned after questions were raised this week "about e-mails he wrote a former male page, according to a congressional official."

Foley represents the 16th district, which stretches from North Palm Beach on the eastern side of the state all the way across to Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda on the Gulf Coast. The district has a Cook PVI of R+2 and voted for Bush over Kerry 54-46 in 2004 and for Bush over Gore 53-47 in 2000.

Well...whaddayaknow. There ain't no stinkin' 2006 electoral wave.

The conventional wisdom seems to have been wrong. For months upon months (upon months upon months) every pundit was explaining to us that this was a "national" election in which voters would not even be thinking or caring about local issues. They weren't even going to see the names of the local candidates on the ballot. All they would see is "Yes to George Bush / No to George Bush." As Bush is so hated, no Republican would be capable of stopping the tide.

For my part, I have disagreed with this assessment since I first started writing for this site. I have been arguing for months upon months (upon months upon months) that there is no such thing as a nationalized House election -- that, rather, there is at best a localization of national issues. Most voters do not view their votes as proxies on the state of the nation. They view their votes as decisions regarding two individuals. I have been arguing that national conditions mostly set the context by inducing one party to run better candidates.

A quick scan across the electoral playing field indicates that "I" was right. Or, more specifically, a quarter century's worth of scholarly consensus on congressional elections was right. The major effect of national conditions was to induce strong Democrats, but weak Republicans, to declare candidacies. So, we see more Republican than Democratic seats on the table because Republican challengers have short resumes and no funds while Democratic challengers have long resumes and plenty of funds. Nevertheless, almost all of these races are being fought on local issues and local personalities. Look at the polls that show Republican candidates who should be getting bowled over in a wave looking fairly respectable. More importantly, look at the recap of advertisements and campaign maneuverings that the House Race Hotline offers every day -- in district after district, the fight is local. It is all about the personalities in the race, and who would best represent the district's values in Washington.

What, you might ask, about the "wave" elections of 1974, 1982 and 1994? Weren't the rules of the game thrown out then? Nope. They never were. None of those elections were national in the sense that the pundits take them to be. They were all explicable according to this basic "strategic politicians" theory. The only real exception was 1994 -- which is further explicable by arguing that national issues were localized by crafty Republicans who tied Clinton's liberal legislative record to conservative Democratic incumbents.

So -- what exactly has happened in the last month? There are two hypothesis that explain the change in tone. I'll let you pick which one you think is correct.

Hypothesis #1: There was never a wave coming because waves, in the sense that media pundits mean them, do not exist. The appearance of a wave existed because the campaigns had not actually started yet, but the pundits had to write about the campaign. So, all they did was talk up the national data points. They received "confirming" evidence of their theses from meaningless summer polls that queried voters who had not put any independent thought into the election and were just parroting back the media storyline ala John Zaller's RAS theory (i.e. respondents Receive only a little information about politics, Accept the few data points that they manage to pick up, and Sample from those data points to respond to queries by pollsters) . When the campaign actually started, the debate in each election "became" local because that is the way it always is. The candidates change the storyline, voters get different pieces of data, and, ultimately (and once again), everything comes down to voters' evaluations of candidates.

Hypothesis #2: This was going to be the first ever modern nationalized election. For the first time, voters were not even going to be thinking about the candidates. It was all gonna be about the President. But then, around Labor Day, George Bush -- the man whom a majority of the country has tuned out (not to mention the man who was inducing the anti-GOP wave in the first place) -- gave a few speeches about the global war on terror and turned the races local. His job approval ticked up between 3% and 4%, and that was it for the wave.

Some concluding points -- does the absence of a "wave" mean that the Democrats stand no chance to pick up the House? Of course not! As I said, the media-type wave does not exist. Voters do not suddenly, magically switch from voting locally to voting nationally. Most of them always vote by the same method. What changes is almost entirely on the side of the candidates. So -- there really has never been a "wave" in that sense. That's a good thing, too. If you need a "wave" to switch the House, the Federalist Party would still be in charge.

So -- that means that the Democrats do not need a "wave" to take the House. This is what we have to wrap our minds around: the whole Wave = Dem Win/No Wave = GOP Win is a false dichotomy, one that was always going to wind up damaging the appearance of Democratic prospects come Labor Day (Side note: for a long time, I have thought that (a) the media has a Democratic bias, but that (b) this bias damages Democratic electoral prospects more than it helps them. This wave business seems, to me, to be another instance of that occurring. Ultimately, the problem for the Democrats is first that the media understands very little of how American politics operates from a broader frame than just the day-to-day Washington soap opera; and second that since they know so much about the soap opera, they incorrectly presume that they know just as much about the broader frame). The Democrats were always going to win or lose the House depending upon candidate recruitment, candidate fundraising and the quality of their candidates' campaigns. National conditions have aided them greatly in putting together a good slate of candidates. But the GOP has a lot of incumbents running. More than usual for this type of national climate.

So what is going to happen? The truth is that I do not know. As everybody has been shifting their estimates toward the GOP, I have found myself shifting toward the Democrats a bit. The reason is that there are a whole swath of GOP seats where, on an individual level, the party looks obscenely weak. I am thinking (in order of obscenity): TX 22, AZ 08, IA 01, CO 07, OH 18, PA 10, NC 11, IN 09, IN 08, IN 02. That's 10 seats. Half of them look like "gimme's" for the Democrats. That's 1/3rd of what they need. That is a lot. I am starting to think that the performance of stronger-looking incumbents in swing districts -- FL 22, PA 06, PA 07, CT 02, CT 05 -- is not so much a sufficient condition for the GOP to hold the House, but really more like a necessary condition.

And this, of course, was before Foley resigned. Here's a fun question: just how many more Republican congressman are going to resign before Election Day and, as a consequence, essentially cede their seats to the Democrats? At this point, at least 20% of what the Democrats need will come from this type of seat.

Make no mistake -- this is bad news for the GOP. Tim Mahoney, the Democratic challenger, has no experience as an elected official. However, he is self-funding, so he has the cash to capitalize on this. And, as National Review is reporting, Foley's name stays on the ballot (though, according to what they have on their site, any votes he receives goes to whomever the Florida GOP designates as the nominee -- though, if this is not cold comfort for the GOP, that metaphor has no significance whatsoever).

Yesterday, the Waco Tribune-Herald ran an interesting story about the race for Tom DeLay's old seat, Texas 22. The lead:

The national Republican Party has joined the fight to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, donating more than $100,000 to the Republican candidate's write-in candidacy and sending Vice President Dick Cheney to a Houston fundraiser for her next week.

This is interesting -- and a sign that the national Republicans might not have up on Texas 22.

The story goes on to indicate that the money is going to be spent on GOTV operations -- which is consistent with the theory that internal numbers show that in a head-to-head matchup, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs runs well against Nick Lampson, and the strategy is to get her name into voters' minds so that it is effectively a head-to-head matchup.

For those of you who might not know, Texas Democrats challenged the right of Texas Republicans to put a new name on the ballot after Tom DeLay withdrew. The Democrats won in court, and so Democratic candidate and former Representative Nick Lampson is running without major party opposition. The Republicans, meanwhile, rallied around Houston city councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs as their write-in "nominee."

Despite the district's partisanship, which is heavily Republican, most analysts have written off this district. Lampson wins by default, right? However, this thesis seems inconsistent with the GOP sending money to Sekula--Gibbs -- not to mention donating the time of the the Vice President. You do not give sparse resources to a lost cause -- at least not if you are a strategic utility maximizer.

Scholars have found that the national political parties are indeed strategic in their allocation of resources. They tend not to give money to hopeless quests (although they do tend to over-donate to incumbents -- but Seuka-Gibbs is not an incumbent). You get money if the party thinks you can win with their help. What is more, scholars have found that the National Republican Campaign Committe is the most strategic of all the national committees. So, if the NRCC is chipping in $100K, then it must believe that the GOP still stands a chance in the district. How much of a chance is unclear -- $100K is just a drop in the bucket against Lampson's warchest, which by now must be at least $2 million. However, the NRCC doesn't give $100K because you have a pretty face.

Personally, this surprises me. My inference was that the seat was lost when the courts ruled against the GOP, and that the coalescing around Sekula-Gibbs was merely a way to establish a presumptive nominee for 2008. That Governor Rick Perry has scheduled a special election on November 7 to fill the rest of DeLay's seat seemed to me to be consistent with that (though certainly its intention was also to give Sekula-Gibbs a final, in the voting booth, name recognition bump for the general). However, you don't donate $100K of scarce party resources, and send Cheney down to Sugar Land, if your intention is to set yourself up for 2008.

So keep your eye on NRCC and RNC activity here in the next few months. If we see them sending more dollars and fundraisers into the district, then that is a sign that their internal polling is telling them that, even though Sekula-Gibbs is a write-in, she can still win the full seat. $100K is a sign that they think there might be a chance, and is therefore worth spending some dough to take a closer look. It is not, in itself, a sign that they believe victory is possible. If they send more money that way, that will tell you the GOP still thinks the seat is a toss-up.

Again -- this is not enough to allow us to confidently infer GOP intent. There are other red-flags about the seat's actual competitiveness that emerge from this article. Sekula-Gibbs' campaign manager had once boasted that they expected $3 million from the national GOP, which is a sign that the campaign manager might not be all that great. I doubt she heard that. There is no way the national GOP would ever contribute that much. I do not think, given the limitations imposed by BCRA, that such an allocation would be rational. Almost all of that would be bought up in advertisements, which eventually have a diminishing marginal return. Also, the article notes that Sekula-Gibbs is not one of the candidates the NRCC is supporting. An NRCC spokesman claims that this is an oversight, but she is still not up on their page yet. Interesting.

Bottom line -- it might be too soon to write off Texas 22.

Just to add a thought to John's post yesterday about Lieberman's strength in CT. Lamont is certainly hurt by the fact that the Republican in this race, Alan Schlesinger, is a total dog. But he's also hurt by the Democrats' recently improved chances of winning back the Senate.

Connecticut was always a heart vs. head matter to a certain degree, but now it is without question a total waste for Dems to pour resources into this internecine battle when they have real opportunities in Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia - not to mention they have a candidate fighting for his political life in a must win race in New Jersey. Believe me, Chuck Schumer is not dumb enough to waste money trying to drag Ned Lamont across the finish line when he has a halfway decent chance to win back the Senate.

Lamont claims his fundraising is going well, but earlier this week he had to write his campaign a personal check for $750,000 to keep pace with Lieberman down the stretch. All the big names in the Senate who've said they support Lamont aren't going up to campaign for him (except one, that is, who really, really wants to be President in 2008 and thinks becoming a darling of the nutroots is the way to do it) because they see Lieberman with a good chance of returning to the World's Most Exclusive Club in November. So there are a number of factors working against Lamont that make it really hard to see how he pulls this one out.

I know George Allen wants to fight back against the smear campaign currently being conducted against him, but this strikes me as one of those predictably pathetic gestures politicians turn to when they're in trouble.

Don't pander. Stand up, have a press conference, tell voters what you've done to beneift black Virginians over the course of your career, and bring out some African-American character witnesses to reassure voters that you are who you say you are.

I sat down with Senator John McCain on Wednesday. The following is a transcript of his remarks on various subjects which has been slightly edited for clarity. I began by asking McCain for his thoughts on the leaking of the National Intelligence Estimate:

McCain: First of all, I think the timing has got to be political. It was issued in April, and now here we are in October, September-October, so what do you think? So I think it's clearly political. Also, only parts of it were leaked. And I don't know what the whole thing is still, because the administration released their parts of it, but the casual observer would conclude it's political and designed to damage the administration there's no doubt about that. So when I say that's the only conclusion that I draw.

Second of all, I guess, that there's clearly some validity to the fact that when we have not had the success that we had hoped in Iraq, that always emboldens our enemies. That's what happens in wars. And I would still argue that, if that's true, then it makes a more compelling case for us to succeed in Iraq because if we fail further, then that will embolden them more. So in a way, they bolstered our argument, my argument, that the benefits of success in Iraq are enormous and the consequences of failure are catastrophic.

By the way, I don't mean to stray from the subject but a really entertaining thing happened day before yesterday. The Democrats had this hearing with two generals and a colonel, and it was a Rumsfeld-as-pinata encounter. But the interesting thing is that at the very end they made a terrible, cardinal error: they asked the generals and the colonel what we should do and they answered "stay the course," "more troops," "can't afford to lose." Oops. Hearing over. I thought it was wonderful. I'm sure they weren't pleased to hear the generals say we need more troops and we have to stay the course and we can't afford to lose. I'm sure some staffer probably got reprimanded or fired for allowing such a question to be asked.

So, look, have we got problems in Iraq? Sure. Anyone who doesn't believe that isn't observing events on the ground. Have we made mistakes in Iraq? Sure we have. Have there been significant problems in Iraq? Yes. But, we cannot afford to lose this. The Iraqi army is getting better, that's the good news. The police aren't. In fact Talibani told me that yesterday, for us to say that's not true. I met with President Talibani yesterday, and he complained about the police.

Are some parts of Iraq very much under government control, peaceful, and things are getting better? Sure. Anbar province is a disaster. Parts of Baghdad are obviously at unacceptably high level of sectarian violence. Do we need more troops over there? Hell yes.

RCP: How many more, do you think?

McCain: Oh, I was asked that on Sunday and I said twenty to thirty thousand, but that really translates into closer to one hundred thousand, because if you're going to have twenty or thirty thousand there, you've got to have double that number back in the reserves so you can rotate.

RCP: Do you think the NIE as a political matter, is doing damage at the moment? Or do you think this is this not real news because it was from April?

McCain: It's not real news, but it helps Democrats refocus on Iraq from the war on terror. So that, I think, would probably - an objective might say that part's helped them. But as far all the sudden swinging American sentiment - Americans have pretty well made up their mind about the war.

RCP: Let me ask you -

McCain: But I want to mention this about the war. Americans are frustrated, they're saddened, and they want to get out. But they don't want to get out according to a calendar. They want to get out according to conditions on the ground. And still, significant majorities, although frustrated and may think that we shouldn't have gotten in there in the first place, sill don't agree with this set a date with for withdrawal. Thank God.

RCP: What should be done about the continued leaking of classified information? How would a McCain administration deal with leaks?

McCain: I'd try and enforce the law. I think that there is significant damage done when classified information is leaked. But I want to add, we also have to guard against governments, whether they're Democrat or Republican, classifying everything which does not bear the need or meet the criteria for classification.

RCP: Do you think that's the case now?

McCain: I think that's the case with every administration. By the way, this does not apply to the NIE. The NIE is classified and should remain classified. But there are times when all administrations, because they don't want negative publicity, will overclassify information. That's just reality. So we have to have, I think, some system where somebody says "this doesn't need to be classified." Time after time I've read information over the years that has been declassified for various reasons and the first thing you say to yourself is, "why was this classified to start with?" But having said that, I think, the leaking of classified information is a danger to national security and we should act accordingly.

RCP: So you think the leakers should be prosecuted?

McCain: Yes, and I think they did that in the.... Frankly, I don't know how this Plame case came out. Seems like the leaker is not the one that's in trouble. But, at least they attempted in the Plame case to try to track it down.

Next, we talked about the status of the military commission bill, which was still in flux at the time but ended up passing the Senate yesterday by a 65-34 vote. I asked McCain on Wednesday morning if he was "totally satisfied" with the bill as it stood, and he replied:

McCain: Oh, you know, if I'd have written it all myself? No. But I'm satisfied with the result. It's a process we go through here. Except the one major bump in the road, we've had good faith negotiations with the White House on it. [Stephen] Hadley and [Steven] Bradbury have been honest brokers, and I know that the President directed them to sit down and work this out because we had the same goal.

(more...)

In picking the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to host the 2008 Republican National Convention, GOP leaders signaled the importance of the upper Midwest to their '08 electoral strategy.

The electorally important trio of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin combine for a not insignificant 27 electoral votes. Al Gore and Joe Lieberman carried all three states in 2000, but with margins unusually small for Democrats. In 2004 President Bush flipped Iowa into the Republican column for a crucial seven electoral votes. Wisconsin was close but Mr. Bush came up short for the second straight time by a little more than 10,000 votes. With the red-blue divide well entrenched in more than half of the 50 states, each party is already strategizing over such key battlegrounds in hopes of reaching the magical 270 electoral votes needed to win the Presidency.

Iowa's seven electoral votes were huge in 2004, providing the Bush-Cheney ticket with a margin in case Republicans did worse than expected in three western battlegrounds of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. Even if he lost two of these states, Iowa would have preserved President Bush's victory. If Republicans in their third shot could finally take Wisconsin from the Democrats, this would provide a cushion against even the loss of the "big" battleground of Ohio. That's why just holding Iowa and flipping Wisconsin into the GOP column would severely complicate Democratic strategy to get to 270 electoral votes.

But the big enchilada for the GOP is Minnesota. The Bush-Cheney ticket won 46% in Minnesota in 2000 and 48% in 2004. Governor Tim Pawlenty faces a tough reelection battle this year, but he's generally believed to have a slight edge. Assuming Mr. Pawlenty can take care of business this fall and remain reasonably popular through the summer of 2008, the 45-year old-will almost certainly be near the top of the short list for the eventual GOP Veep nominee.

Republican wins in the Midwest trio of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa would essentially force Democrats to have to flip both crucial battleground states of Florida and Ohio -- unless they were to make major inroads in the southwest quartet of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona (with 29 electoral votes).

Don't be surprised to see the Democrats settle on Denver for their convention (Denver and New York are the finalists) and also take a long, hard look hard at New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson for VP and maybe Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano if Senator Hillary Clinton is not the Democratic nominee.

Today around 2pm, news broke that Sens. "Smoot" Schumer (D-NY) and "Hawley" Graham (R-SC) gave up for now on their China bashing tariff of 27.5 percent. This is a very good thing indeed.

Placing a huge tariff barrier between American and Chinese trade would have the same effect as imposing a large tax on the consumers, businesses and investors of both countries. It would completely disrupt economic growth worldwide.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson deserves credit for getting this delay and preventing a vote in the Senate that surely would have passed with very bad economic symbolism.

Fortunately, there is no similar tariff bill in the House. Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham apparently will now work through the Senate Finance Committee where Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is generally opposed.

China is far from our best friend in world affairs, but the widening economic links between our two countries is a definite plus for prosperity as well as diplomacy.