The election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the appointments following have left some Senate seats open. And there are still Senate races left to be decided. Politics- it’s fluid.
A brief rundown on the seat shifting:
Hillary Clinton’s Seat
Former President Bill Clinton doesn’t want the spot . Governor David Paterson has taken himself out of contention, as has Robert F. Kennedy Jr (who was rumored to be under consideration for the EPA spot) and Rep. Nita Lowey. A long list of names are being floated around as a potential replacement- including Andrew Cuomo and Caroline Kennedy- but it seems that it is mostly speculation. Gov Paterson will make an official announcement in January when Clinton formally leaves her seat for her new job as Secretary of State.
Joe Biden’s Seat
Biden didn’t offer his resignation at the same time as Obama, which struck some as odd. It appeared that Biden might be holding on to his seat until incoming Delaware Governor Jack Markell took office in January. Markell and current Governor Ruth Ann Minner are both Democrats but it was believed that Markell would be more comfortable with replacing Biden with someone who would not want to run again in 2010, thus leaving the seat open for Joe’s son, Beau Biden (who is currently serving in Iraq).
But the wait for Markell wasn’t needed. Gov. Minner announced that Ted Kaufman- friend and former aide to Biden Sr.- would take over the seat until 2010. Kaufman has already stated that he has no plans to run for the seat in two years.
In other words: they’re holding your seat for you, Beau. (Yes, Beau will actually have to run for the seat but since there’s been a Biden in the Senate since humans rode on dinosaurs, it is a sure thing.)
Barack Obama’s Seat
Though Obama gave up his seat a couple of weeks ago, Illinois Gov. Rod “Blago” Blagojevich has yet to put a new body in that position. He formed a vetting committee and rumored candidates include Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., State Sen. Kwame Raoul and V.A. Direcotr (and wounded Iraq vet) Tammy Duckworth
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) will not run for reelection in 2010 and the competition for his seat is likely to be fierce. Speculated Democratic contenders include Rep Ron Klein, Sen. Dan Gelber and possibly State CFO Alex Sink (who had decided not to run before the Martinez announcement and now may change her mind). Potential Republican candidates: Rep. Connie Mack, State A.G. Bill McCollum and- in the long shot column- former Gov. Jeb Bush.
There’s one particular passage circulating the blogs from the New York Times’ article about Obama’s newly announced (but already known) national security team (emphasis added):
Yet all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.
The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.
Whether they can make the change — one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best — “will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently.
But the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three have all embraced “a rebalancing of America’s national security portfolio” after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years.
If the Obama administration is able to pull off a shift towards prevention rather than (over)reaction, it will be a very big deal indeed. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have wiped out our military forces, causing thousands of military deaths and throwing good money after bad…after bad…after bad.
As Will mentioned in his excellent piece about Mumbai, our nation reacted the way the terroists hoped we would when they committed the acts of violence on September 11th. We overextended ourselves and deeply wounded our international reputation. But we’re not so far over that precipice that we can’t return to a better footing regarding national security and our interactions with the global community.
If you’re like me (and God help you if you are), you’ve been wondering why the Obama camp, so disciplined and tight-lipped before the election, now seems to be leakier than a sieve made of Kleenex. First there was the leak of Emanuel’s CoS appointment not only before the guy’d even made up his mind but before Obama had even won the election, then we get leaks of the contents of the Bush-Obama meeting at the White House, and now we get the leak that Hillary Clinton may be the new Secretary of State.
So what’s the deal? emptywheel over at firedoglake is of the opinion that it’s Rahmbo, who always was a leaker extraordinaire. If true, that would mean it’s strategic on the part of Obama. But over at The Field, Al Giordano posits that, at least in the case of the Hillary-as-SoS rumors, it may not be coming from the inside at all:
The whole thing is a media freak show being served up by members of the Clinton factions in the Democratic party and obliged by a national media (some of them also Clinton noisemakers) in search of a story. The speculation is not because Senator Clinton wants the job, but because her people so desperately want to muddy the waters and throw up a roadblock to either New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson or Massachusetts Senator John Kerry - two of the leading contenders - serving in the post, whom they consider turncoats for having endorsed Obama vs. Clinton earlier this year.
While there’s a somewhat heavy dollop of chip-on-the-shoulder conspiracy smoke going on there, Giordano’s on the nose in that, in the absence of actual news to report, the national media will print any random thing it can manage to pull out of its collective ass. In such an atmosphere, there’ll naturally be a lot of finger-pointing and rampant speculation as to who’s responsible.
This merely obscures the larger, more pathetic fact that, starved for any kind of news at all, the media — and bloggers — are all the more susceptible to manipulation by leak, no matter who’s doing the leaking and for what reason.
I’m thinking of calling Andrea Mitchell, claiming to be close to the Obama camp, and telling her that Obama’s reserving a spot on the NEA board for Zamfir, master of the pan flute:
I’m avoiding the traditional media like the plague this week because they’re more interested in exploiting (and in many cases inventing) back room animosity between the Clinton and Obama camps instead of reporting on, oh, something as trivial as what is actually happening at the Convention.
Hillary Clinton gave a fantastic speech last name calling for unity in the Democratic Party to bring about a victory against McCain.
We are not covering the Democratic Convention from Denver. But even though we aren’t hanging out with Kos in an air conditioned tent/blogger command center, we might drop a line here and there about what is reported to be happening out there.
Hillary Clinton is expected to release her delegates Clinton’s meeting with her delegates early Wednesday (before their vote) presumably to thank them. And for all of those obnoxious “the voters were disenfranchised by the system I don’t understand” voices from a few months ago, Florida and Michigan’s delegates were restored to full strength yesterday. There existed a possibility that would happen and it is probably better to let that happen then to have the Republicans turn that ridiculous theme of disenfranchisement via the FL & MI votes against the Democrats.
The McCain campaign has reason to be nervous about the announcement of Joe Biden for vice president. Throughout this primary season, John McCain has tried to position himself as the foreign policy expert, “man of the people” candidate versus Barack Obama’s less experienced, “elitist” candidate. McCain has proved time and time again that he’s extremely weak in foreign policy (and likely to get us into a war with Russia). And his “how many houses do I own?” gaffe of last weak punched some holes into his “man of the people” claim. Then Barack Obama chooses Joe Biden- chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and one of the lowest earning Senators- as his running mate. Not helpful to McCain’s framework.
McCain’s attempting to fight back with two new ads. The first takes two quotes from Joe Biden: one from this year’s presidential debates where Biden said he thought Obama was inexperienced and the other (not identified in the commercial) is from a 2005 appearance Biden made on The Daily Show. That second quote is the more problematic, since Biden states that he would support a McCain presidency and even run with him. But McCain was a different politician in 2005 than he is now and Biden can probably talk his way out of it.
The second McCain ad is meant to further anger the Hillary Clinton supporters who have, by their estimation, been slighted now for the second time by Clinton’s v.p. shutout. Honestly, if someone is still that angry that Clinton didn’t win the nomination, they’re probably not going to be voting Obama anyway.
Nate at Five Thirty Eight has up some Biden related stats that are interesting. The data comes from Ramussen approval ratings that show how various vice presidential picks would’ve played with the general population, divided by political affiliation. Democrats were 77% in favor of Hillary Clinton, 65% in favor of Joe Biden. But only 17% were unfavorable of Biden while 22% were unfavorable of Clinton. I’m going to ignore the Republican data because it seems unlikely that any Democrat V.P. pick would be enough to woo them across the aisle. But Independents are definitely in play and that’s where Biden outperforms Clinton. Biden has a 42% favorable, 29% unfavorable rating among Independents. Clinton would only pull a 39% favorable and a massive 57% unfavorable.
Nate also points out that the newly released Rasmussen data suggesting a gendered backlash against Biden (women are the ones that dislike the choice) means less than it would initially seem:
What’s interesting is that the gender gap is different between the several formulations of the question that Rasmussen employed. There is a big difference in the question of whether Biden was “the right pick” — apparently seeming to indicate that, for many women, any pick other than Hillary was not going to be the right pick. But there isn’t very much difference in favorability scores for Biden, nor upon the prospective impact upon one’s vote. So the message that women seem to be sending is that: (1) yeah, we’re kind of ticked; but, (2) it’s nothing personal against Biden, and (3) we’ll probably get over it.
I personally have no real opinion of Joe Biden either way. He’s got a mixed track record on many issues (and I’ll have a post up about that soon) but that’s to be expected from someone that’s been in the Senate longer than I’ve been alive.
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