|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Elections & Legislation |
|
Voters Ready to Dump Incumbents in Congress: Poll |
Current rating: 0 |
by Reuters
(No verified email address) |
07 Aug 2006
|
|
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed called themselves ''anti-incumbent'' -- nearly the same as the 54 percent who identified themselves as such in the summer of 1994 when Congress was still under the Democrats' control. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American voters are as ready to dump incumbent lawmakers as they were just before they handed control of Congress to Republicans in 1994, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.
Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, stand to lose the most in the November elections because of strong anti-incumbent sentiment and they trail Democrats in support among registered voters, the poll showed.
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed called themselves ''anti-incumbent'' -- nearly the same as the 54 percent who identified themselves as such in the summer of 1994 when Congress was still under the Democrats' control.
While the percentage of anti-incumbent Republicans was lower in the poll than the percentage of anti-incumbent Democrats in 1994 (33 percent versus 46 percent), the share of anti-incumbent independents rose to 61 percent from 57 percent in 1994.
The telephone poll, which has a 3 percentage point margin of error, was taken between August 3 and August 6 among 1,002 adults.
Among registered voters, 52 percent said they would support the Democrat in their congressional district if the election were held today. Only 39 percent said they would vote for the Republican, the poll showed.
Republicans are being hurt by Americans' anti-war sentiment, the poll showed. Thirty-eight percent of those polled said they would be more likely to oppose a candidate who supports President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, compared with only 23 percent who would back such a candidate.
But the poll also showed that Democrats have yet to win over Americans, who remain evenly split on whether the party offers the country a clear direction that differs from that offered by Republicans.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Ltd.
http://www.online.reuters.com/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
|
Has the De-Liebermanization of the Democratic Party Begun? |
by John Zogby
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Aug 2006
|
Connecticut Democrats will go to the polls on Tuesday and the choice will be a defining moment for both the Democratic Party and the nation. While I will stop short of a precise prediction, let me suggest that polling evidence shows that Senator Joseph Lieberman will lose the Senate primary to businessman Ned Lamont by a substantial margin.
Enough of a margin, in fact, to convince his Senate colleagues and friends that he should forego a promised independent run and bow out gracefully. We already see good friends like New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg suggesting that Lieberman will have to drop out and the pressure will build.
At the same time, we have seen Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton begin the process of pulling away from her aggressive pro-war stance in last week's compelling confrontation with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Referring to the Bush administration's policy in Iraq as a "failure" was a big change for Hillary who has been booed in recent months by fellow Democrats for her support for the President.
I have stated on The Huffington Post several times that the Democrats will have a tough time convincing that they are ready to take back control of Congress without offering any clarity on the Iraq War. Lieberman has been patently clear on Iraq but way out of the mainstream of his party's own voters. Clinton as well runs the risk of having her landslide victory in New York tainted by a below-expectations showing because New York liberal Democrats want her to be against the war.
Let's just look at the numbers from my most recent national poll (July 21). Overall, only 36% of likely voters told us that they agree that the war in Iraq has been "worth the loss of American lives", while 57% disagree. But the partisan splits are more revealing: only 16% of the Democrats polled said the war has been worth while 82% disagree and only 26% of Independents agree the war has been worth it while 72% disagree. On the Republican side, 64% said the war has been worth it, while 23% disagree. The war has been the principal cause of the nation's polarization in the past three years. The polling evidence shows the degree to which Iraq has become a Republican war. And these latest numbers are also noteworthy in that they show that about one in four Republicans have now pretty much given up on the war.
All of which is to suggest that Democratic candidates will now probably be emboldened to take a stronger stance against the war. If principle doesn't win the day, at least the polling numbers are pretty clear what their base wants. Indeed, the polling numbers were pretty clear what Democrats and Independents wanted in 2004 - and the fact that they didn't receive the opposition to the war they were looking for from their standard-bearers is the main reason that they lost both the Presidency and did not pick up seats in either house of Congress.
Meanwhile, look for Ned Lamont, who is running a strong antiwar campaign, to be the new face of the Democrats in 2006 and perhaps beyond. And look for Democratic voters to push harder for even more clarity on where Democrats stand. Lieberman will be gone and Clinton will be distancing herself from her previous stand. But calling an obvious failure a failure will not be enough. The next step in offering voters some clarity on Iraq will be to develop an exit strategy.
That is what leadership is all about and Democrats, fresh from sending the pro-war Lieberman a clear message, will be looking very closely.
John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International, remains by all accounts the hottest pollster in the United States today.
© Copyright 2006 Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ |
|
Democrats Who Oppose Illegal Wars and Torture Want to Reclaim the Party |
by Gary Younge in Bristol, Connecticut
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Aug 2006
|
A grassroots revolt by voters has sparked a struggle for the party's soul, and a New England senator is in the firing line
In 1998, Connecticut's senator, Joseph Lieberman, broke ranks with his Democratic colleagues and railed against the "premeditated" deception of the commander-in-chief. Back then the enduring legacy of this presidential deceit could be found on the dress of a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. And Lieberman, who went on to be Al Gore's vice-presidential running mate, was hopping mad. "Such behaviour is not just inappropriate," he told the Senate, referring to Bill Clinton's affair. "It is immoral."
Recently, Lieberman has been struggling with some infidelity issues of his own. Last year, he was caught in a tender embrace with one other than his wife. Worse still for Lieberman, an opponent of gay marriage, it was another man - George Bush. Bush planted "the kiss" as he worked the Congress floor after his state of the union address. But for Democratic voters of Connecticut it might as well have been the Garden of Gethsemane.
In tomorrow's Democratic primary, Lieberman may well pay for that kiss with his job. Polls suggest he will lose the fight against a previously unknown anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont. Last week's Quinnipiac survey showed Lamont drubbing him 54% to 41% with only 5% of voters undecided. It has been a dramatic turnaround. Just three months ago, 91% of Democrats did not know enough about Lamont to make up their mind.
As one of the wealthiest and best educated states in the union, Connecticut is no bellwether. The Senate seat is so reliably Democratic that when the Republicans nominated their candidate earlier this year some in the convention bleated to signal a lamb to the slaughter. Lieberman, meanwhile, is no regular Democrat. That incriminating smooch didn't come from nowhere. He was the only New England Democratic senator to support Bush's energy policy, one of only a few Democrats who thought the government should intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, and a rare Democrat who said he was willing to work with Bush's failed plan to overhaul social security.
Indeed, it is the very presence of this unreliable Democrat in this reliably Democratic seat that has transformed this primary into a national race, for it tests just how much betrayal Democratic voters are prepared to accept before they assert their electoral clout. The big guns have been pouring in. Recently a forgiving Clinton came to back Lieberman; last week Jesse Jackson was down to support Lamont. Liberal-left bloggers backing Lamont have been in overdrive.
Some have described it as a struggle for the heart and soul of the Democratic party, but a more accurate portrayal would be a battle to establish whether the party should have a soul at all. It raises not only the question of what does the party stand for apart from office but also whether it is prepared to adopt an agenda that could actually win office. This race could set the tone for the 2008 presidential elections.
Less then half of those backing Lamont cite the war as the main reason. "It's mostly about the war but not exclusively," says Christine Koskoff at a Lamont meeting at Bristol's Clock and Watch Museum. "It's about Senator Lieberman articulating the agenda of the rightwingers who run this country. The war sums up everything that's wrong."
In this Lieberman, like his kiss, is more symbol than substance. He was one of 29 Democratic senators who voted for the war. Some have since expressed their regret; most, like him, haven't. Some, like Hillary, face token challenges. Only Lieberman is in serious trouble. For he went one step further, arguing that when it comes to the war the opposition had no right to oppose. "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal last November.
Lieberman's colleagues duly rounded on him. But his real crime was to give explicit voice to their spinelessness. In truth, only a handful had expressed anything but token opposition to the war and even fewer had set out a clear alternative for fear of being branded unpatriotic. They were mad because Lieberman blew their cover. What this race has really exposed is not a rift between him and the Democratic establishment, which has now closed ranks to back him, but between the establishment and both its base and the nation at large.
Once again, this is not just about the war. Thanks to money and name recognition, the best guarantee that you will be elected in the US is to be elected already - more than 90% of incumbents are usually returned. Being a congressman is the closest thing to tenure you can get outside of academe. If Lieberman, who has served for three terms, can be ousted by a restless party then who's next? Such is his sense of entitlement that Lieberman has vowed that if he loses the primary he will run in November as an independent - at that point the establishment will probably turn against him.
But the war is central. The partisan divide over Iraq is greater than over any other war in living memory bar Grenada. Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to the war and in favour of setting a date for troop withdrawal; Republicans are the opposite. According to the non-aligned Pew Research Centre, the difference in how the two parties viewed the Vietnam war never exceeded 18 percentage points. The most recent poll on Iraq suggests a partisan gap of 50.
Yet while the Bush administration gives full throated expression to its supporters' pro-war sympathies, Democrats rarely find their views echoed by the party. A Quinnipiac poll last month showed 93% of Connecticut's Democratic voters disapprove of Bush's handling of the war; 86% think the war was a mistake. On this key issue their representative does not represent them.
This could be, as most of the media and Democratic establishment has painted it, a militant grassroots being restrained by a pragmatic, moderate leadership. But the truth is the views of the Democratic membership chime more closely with the rest of the country than those of its leadership. Polls show more than half of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq, support either setting a timetable for or immediate troop withdrawal, and believe Congress is not questioning the president enough about the war. This gives the lie to the claim that Lamont's challenge represents a bid by radicals, urged on by the blogosphere, to hijack the party. If only.
Bloggers can appeal to an ideological constituency, but they cannot create one out of thin air. Addressing the meeting in Bristol last weekend, Lamont, a millionaire and heir to great wealth, could have been a candidate for social secretary at a country club. If this is the face of US radicalism, then it will reassure some to know that it is evenly tanned and neatly coiffed. Those who follow it are similarly respectable. Of the 200 or so who cheered him most were middle-aged white professionals and retirees.
The joke is not on Lamont or his followers, but on those who brand them insurrectionists. Opposing illegal wars and torture are not radical positions. These are ordinary people, indignant at the "premeditated" deception of their commander-in-chief. And, like Lieberman eight years ago, they think it is time to speak up.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329546933-103677,00.html |
|
Lieberman, Lamont and the Future of the Democrats |
by John Nichols
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Aug 2006
|
The last time that Democratic primary voters turned out a nationally-known U.S. Senator because they did not like where he stood on an issue of war and peace was in 1970, when Texas Democrats rejected anti-war incumbent Ralph Yarborough and replaced him with Lloyd Bentsen, a former congressman who favored taking a tougher line against the Vietcong in Vietnam and against student protesters on the campuses of the United States.
The Texas result was big news nationally, and it played a significant part in the decision of the Nixon White House to try and stir up a "silent majority" backlash to congressional liberals in that fall's Senate races.
Thirty-six years later, in a very different state, Democratic primary voters may avenge Yarborough's loss and set in motion a backlash of another character altogether.
If anti-Iraq War challenger Ned Lamont defeats pro-war incumbent Joe Lieberman in today's contest for the Democratic Senate nod in Connecticut, and if Democrats in Washington finally figure our that no message energizes their base so much as the "Bring the Troops Home" signal that Lamont has sent, then the 2006 election could yet be the referendum on George W. Bush's misguided policies that Democrats denied voters in 2002 and 2004.
There were a lot of "ifs" and "coulds" in that previous paragraph. Here's why: Though Lamont took a poll lead several weeks ago, there were some indications in the final days of the race that Lieberman was making something of a comeback. A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday had Lamont at 51 percent and Lieberman at 45 percent – suggesting a closer contest than the one seen in polls from last week, which had Lamont up by 10 to 13 points.
Could Lieberman still win this thing? It's not beyond the realm of possibility. Though his reelection campaign has been pathetic, and though he is dramatically out of touch with Democrats on the war issue, the incumbent retains strong name recognition, he has most of the major endorsements from interest groups and newspapers in the state, and he has spent a lot of money on a bitterly negative television advertising campaign against Lamont.
It is the prospect that Lieberman could have a little more going for him than has seemed to be the case through much of the primary fight that has the Lamont campaign working harder than ever today. The narrowing of the polls is likely to bump turnout, perhaps to an unprecedented 45 or 50 percent of the potential primary electorate. The best bet is that this will help Lamont, but the uncertainty about who all these new voters might be – in a state where it is relatively easy for Republicans and independents to reregister as Democrats and participate in the primary – will have everyone on edge until the results are in this evening.
Even if Lamont wins, there is still that bigger "if." Will Democrats in Washington get the message that the war is the issue that gets voters to the polls and that, ultimately, poses a threat to stay-the-course incumbents of both parties? The answer to that question has a lot to do with the size of the margin in Connecticut.
If Lamont wins narrowly – say, by under four points – Lieberman will claim that Democrats are just about evenly divided and plunge into a third-party challenge to the Democratic nominee as the candidate of his newly-created "Connecticut for Lieberman" party.
On the other hand, if Lamont secures a decisive victory with a margin of ten points of more, then the pressure on Lieberman to accept the result will intensify. It will become difficult for the incumbent to hold onto those endorsements from groups such as the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood and the League of Conservation Voters. And the senator might either forego a fall race or mount a titular campaign that will ultimately be a sad footnote to a lamentable career.
If Lieberman has to hang it up tonight or in the next few days, Democratic Party leaders in Washington are likely – because of the intensity of interest in this contest – to be forced by a suddenly engaged press corps to speak with a measure of clarity about where they stand on the war. Chances are that they will try to firm up a message that on the eve of the primary was still better defined as a "whine" than a muscular challenge to Bush and the neoconservatives.
The prospect that the Connecticut primary could be about more than one state's Senate nomination is what will make tonight a rare moment in American politics. It has been a long time since a Democratic Senate primary shifted the direction of national politics. If this one does, and if it pushes the party in the direction of the anti-war position embraced by most Americans at this point, then this will be a historic day – the day when, after far too long, our politics again became meaningful.
© 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/ |
|
Start of a Trend?: Lamont Beats Lieberman |
by Patrick Healy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Aug 2006
|
Ned Lamont, a Connecticut millionaire whose candidacy for the United States Senate soared from nowhere on a fierce antiwar message, won a narrow but decisive victory Tuesday night over the storied incumbent, Joseph I. Lieberman, in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Mr. Lieberman conceded shortly after 11 p.m. after nearly complete results showed him trailing Mr. Lamont by close to 4 percentage points.
But speaking to his cheering supporters Tuesday night, Mr. Lieberman vowed to continue his fight to remain Connecticut’s junior senator.
“As I see it in this campaign, we just finished the finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead,’’ he said. “But in the second half, our team — Team Connecticut — is going to surge forward to victory in November.” Mr. Lieberman did not say specifically that he would run as an independent candidate in November, as he has suggested in recent weeks, but his defiant tone suggested he would.
He said the he could not let the results stand, “for the sake for our state, my party, and our country.’’ And he added: “But I am not discouraged. I am disappointed not just because I lost but because of all the old politicsof polarization won today.”
Later in the evening Mr. Lamont stood before his supporters and said: “Families still dream of a land of opportunity. With your vote this evening, we’re going to start to make your dreams come true.’’
With 98 percent of Connecticut’s precincts reporting, Mr. Lamont held 51.8 percent of the vote, with Mr. Lieberman holding 48.2 percent.
The Connecticut race drew national and even international attention this summer as a barometer of the mood of American Democrats over the Iraq war. Among political insiders, too, it was seen as a test for liberal bloggers to shape the outcome of a major election, instead of merely commenting on politics in cyberspace.
Mr. Lieberman, a leading moderate Democrat, drew derision from members of his own party for supporting the war and, with particularly forceful language, defending President Bush’s foreign policy at times. But some voters also felt that Mr. Lieberman had lost touch with Connecticut after being a player on the national stage after 18 years in the Senate and as a vice presidential nominee and a presidential candidate in 2004.
Many liberals never forgave him for his friendly manner in a vice presidential debate against Dick Cheney in 2000, and they were further turned off when Mr. Lieberman said on national television last year that he would have kept Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube against her husband’s wishes.
Mr. Lamont, a former Greenwich selectman who, at 52, has never held statewide office, capitalized on the disaffection by spending at least $4 million of his own money on hard-edged television commercials, such as one where Mr. Lieberman’s face morphed into President Bush’s as an announcer said that the senator “talks like George W. Bush and acts like George W. Bush.”
Mr. Lamont, meanwhile, battled the perception that he was a multimillionaire pawn of the bloggers, trying to broaden his antiwar message with a liberal load of proposed federal programs, such as universal preschool and expanded health insurance.
The returns showed Lamont narrowly winning such cities as Danbury, New London and having a commanding edge in Norwalk and his hometown of Greenwich, where he captured 68 percent of the vote. He also held the edge in incomplete returns from New Haven. Mr. Lieberman was ahead in Stamford, which is in Mr. Lamont’s home county of Stamford.
Lamont aides said Tuesday night that they were cautiously optimistic of victory, and were already plotting strategy for the general election — in particular, uniting state and national Democratic officials to persuade Mr. Lieberman to drop out of the race in the face of an ascendant Lamont candidacy.
Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, which had predicted a 6-point Lamont victory, said that a Lamont victory would scramble Mr. Lieberman’s current edge in polls forecasting the general election.
“Lamont is going to get even more positive news coverage from his win, and Democrats will likely rally around their party’s candidate,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Lieberman will be viewed differently Wednesday — he will be viewed as the losing candidate.”
Mr. Lamont was a virtual unknown among Connecticut Democrats only two months ago, yet, for a relative rookie, he ran a campaign that impressed voters. In the most recent Quinnipiac Poll, 42 percent of likely Democratic primary voters had a favorable impression of him, 18 percent were unfavorable, and 22 percent were mixed. By comparison, Mr. Lieberman was viewed favorably by 40 percent, unfavorably by 34 percent, and mixed by 24 percent.
According to interviews of voters leaving the polls Tuesday, Mr. Lamont appeared to be particularly popular with Democrats who opposed the war in Iraq, young people, African-Americans, liberals, and college graduates.
Polls closed at 8 p.m. after a day of relatively heavy voting. Connecticut officials said that turn-out could be as high as 45 or even 50 percent, state officials said, which would exceed the previous record for a statewide primary in a non-presidential year, 38.8 percent in the 1970 Senate race.
The hard-fought contest took an especially bitter turn during the day Tuesday as Lieberman advisers denounced the collapse of their campaign Web site, blaming unnamed “political opponents.” Yet it was not clear who was at fault. The Lieberman advisers said they had no evidence implicating the Lamont campaign and could not explain the precise nature of the problem, except to say that the campaign server’s bandwidth had been overwhelmed.
Lamont aides and Internet bloggers who oppose the senator said the problem appeared to be that the Lieberman campaign did not spend enough money for a Web site that could handle high traffic.
Mr. Lieberman’s campaign manager, Sean Smith, said the problem amounted to suppression of the turnout, since it disabled e-mail and left aides without a tool to communicate with tens of thousands of supporters on Primary Day.
Mr. Smith said the campaign would file a formal complaint asking state and federal legal authorities to investigate. Another Lieberman adviser, Dan Gerstein, added that as of yesterday evening, there were no plans to challenge the results of the primary on the basis of a charge of suppressing the turnout.
In Bridgeport, a fiercely contested city where Mr. Lamont campaigned repeatedly in the last week, John Stafstrom, the city’s Democratic Party chairman, said he expected turnout to reach 30 percent, a figure he called “amazing” for a primary in the middle of the summer.
Mr. Lamont voted at 7 a.m. at Greenwich High School, and Mr. Lieberman voted shortly before 10 a.m. in New Haven, where he lives.
As reporters gathered yesterday morning at Mr. Lieberman’s polling station, warring supporters of Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Lamont gathered as well, though they were far outnumbered by the journalists. Of a dozen voters who streamed into the polling station after 9 a.m., meanwhile, eight identified themselves as Lamont supporters.
Mr. Lamont, a cable television executive, made a last-minute push for votes in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford, three cities where he is counting on a strong vote. Among the 697,000 Democrats who are registered to vote in the primary, Mr. Lamont has particularly targeted African-Americans, disaffected union members, antiwar Democrats, and liberals as crucial blocs, his advisers say.
Nicholas Confessore, Jennifer Medina and Avi Salzman contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
|
