Lieberman Update
If any of you know the history of Karl Rove, you know he accused one opponent of planting a bug in his office - a bug Karl himself had planted. I'm a little suspicious that Senator Joe Lieberman is now accusing his opponent of crashing his website and calling for a criminal investigation. There's also the standard stories about the gap closing. If tomorrow morning we're reading another story about a big surprise that defies the polls and leads to "a razor-thin margin of victory" for a candidate the White House wants, I will have no doubt what happened here. I've seen this movie before.
posted by Bill McDonald @ 11:26 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
You do recognize the difference between "I suspect what may have happened" and " I have no doubt what happened", right?
Do you actually think it is impossible that hate-filled, vitriolic lefties might have hacked Joe's website?
Besides that, your analysis is all wrong. Rove wants Leiberman to LOSE. Leiberman already said that if he does, he will run as an Independant and he would definitely win in the general election. Rove would like nothing better that the DNC and CT liberals diverting all their precious resources into a protracted general election battle that Leiberman would easily win. And no matter how he votes on paper, the WH would like one less Democrat in the Senate.
lynsa:
Rasmussen - the most accurate polling outfit in the 2000 and 2004 elections - ran a CT poll based upon Lieberman running as an Independent. The Results:
Election 2006:
Connecticut Senate
Joseph Lieberman (I) 44%
Ned Lamont (D) 29%
Alan Schlesinger (R) 15%
That doesn't appear to wash with your (I'm sure well-reasoned) assessment that Lieberman would "lose big time".
If this is the result of Lieberman's staff failing to pay bills or otherwise manufacturing a scandal, why would they ask the authorities to investigate? Surely that would come out in an investigation and make them look bad
and you can't really believe that having the campaign website down on the day of the election is worth whatever marginal good press it generates (and that assumes press from blaming Lamont outweighs the bad press from having the server down).
lynsa: Good call. That poll was taken in late June. It was taken again July 20, and the numbers were as follows:
Survey of 1000 Likely Voters
July 20, 2006
Election 2006:
Connecticut Senate
Joseph Lieberman (I) 40%
Ned Lamont (D) 40%
Alan Schlesinger (R) 13%
However, it should be noted that was when Lamont was trouncing Lieberman in the primary polls and those have tightened up quite a bit. I would guess that if the same poll were taken today, Lieberman would be beating Lamont by 5% or so.
Butch, as far as "no doubt" in a scientific way, of course I don't have that. There is some leap of faith in everything. Just as your analysis assumes Karl Rove hasn't made a deal to swing the election in exchange for Lieberman flipping to the Republicans. Maybe they're just using this as a practise run to get the team ready to rig the elections this Fall. You can't be sure that's not happening either.
Karl Rove has been running dirty tricks since he was in like 3rd grade. He could have decided to stop a few months ago, but I doubt that's what happened. I also doubt if he stayed out of the Georgia primary. Karl Rove needs dirty tricks like large reptiles need the sun. They warm his blood.
Why is it so hard to believe that Rove and Co. would twiddle with this election (Leiberman v Lamont)?
Republicans have fiddled with at least two national elections (2000 and 2004). Why should it be any different now, even if it is for 'only' a Senate seat?
Once you lie, cheat, and steal, you sort of lose your ability to be trusted.
Bill,
You would have valid concerns if Rove and the Republicans had a monopoly on dirty tricks.
I don't buy that Diebold/disenfranchised blacks/choose your conspiracy theory hogwash. But dirty politics are as old as government on both side, whether it is smear campaigns or introducing wedge issues. Yes, there are probably isolated incidents of actual cheating, but it is not at all one sided.
Florida in 2000 is nothing but a red herring as we have since learned that Bush did garner the most votes. Now, that might not have been the intention of FL voters - but remember it was a DEMOCRAT responsible for the infamous butterfly ballot that flipped the election. And don't forget that in 2000, it was Gore/Lieberman that tried to disqualify ballots from military personel stationed overseas.
In 2004, it wasn't Republicans who were arrested for slashing the tires on their opponents get-out-the-vote vans. And it wasn't some black box voting conspiracy that gave Bush the election. It was the most organized get-out-the-vote effort in history - and the sheer number of ballots cast is proof of this.
I know that you want to believe that elections that don't go your way were "stolen" because it makes it easier to accept the loss. That way, you can pretend you are still of the majority opinion. If it makes you feel better, I'm not going to convince you otherwise.
Butch, you really owe it to yourself to check into this. Try reading about Choicepoint and the role that company played in Election 2000. It was also involved in the recent election in Mexico. To say that dirty tricks exist on both sides is to ignore the obvious: Republicans have stolen the last two Presidential Elections. Don't get bogged down in the butterfly ballots. Look at Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris and how they paid a private company to get rid of over 90,000 votes from Florida, most of them African-American and most of them Democrat. In virtually every instance in Ohio the mistake favored President Bush. These people do not have a majority behind them. They have to manipulate either the voters' minds or tamper with their right to vote.
You really should read up on it. It's all there. Don't be fooled by the dimpled hanging chads and all that.
That was a diversion for the mainstream media. The election in Florida was stolen by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. It is documented and it is revolting. It took a crime to make Bush President, and in a way that's a comforting thought.
Your 2004 Ohio argument has been completely and thoroughly debunked. I'll take the easy way and quote from Farhad Manjoo's debunking of Robert Kennedy Jr's rediculous Rolling Stone article about the 'stolen' 2004 election:
" If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data. The first salient omission comes in paragraph 5, when Kennedy writes, "In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots." To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites "Democracy at Risk," the report the Democrats released last June.
That report does indeed point out that many people -- 26 percent -- who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn't say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn't find their names listed. The Democrats' report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a "provisional" ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same -- a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy's claim of "astounding" partisanship."
Heck, the Democratic Party's OWN investigation into Ohio concluded: "Despite the problems on Election Day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio."
Manjoo's article is thorough, well researched, linked to factual data, and not based upon pure conjecture that these stolen election theories are based upon.
The independent media consortium group concluded that after counting ALL OF THE BALLOTS in Florida, Bush won fair and square.
As for the purge list, you're just re-spouting what has become lefty-echo chamber urban legend. Which leaves the "stolen election" crowd with these inconvenient facts: In 24 of the 25 Florida counties with the highest ballot spoilage rate, the county supervisor was a Democrat. In the 25th county, the supervisor was an Independent. And as for the "felon purge list," the Miami Herald found that whites were twice as likely to be incorrectly placed on the list as blacks.
quid:
Lieberman has lead Lamont in every general election poll except for one which had them tied. The one that had them tied was taken when Lamont's lead in the primary was 14 pts.
Lieberman will draw many CT Republican voters because of the weakness of the R's candidate. So yes, I think at this stage, I'd actually put my money on Lieberman. However, that can change.
So, did you put any money on Lieberman?
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