Last week, third-party candidate and eventual Republican favorite Doug Hoffman announced that he was retracting the concession he'd made on election night. The right's favorite bogeyman, ACORN, had stolen the special Congressional election and thus New York's 23rd district from him, Hoffman said.
But as absentee ballots were tallied, it quickly became clear that Hoffman had no shot at victory in the initial count, and probably couldn't win a challenge, either. So on Tuesday he conceded one last time.
In a statement noticeably free of the accusations of theft and fraud that had accompanied his un-concession, Hoffman said:
Yesterday, the remaining ballots were counted in the 23rd Congressional District special election. The results re-affirm the fact that Bill Owens won.
Since, the morning of November 4th, many of my supporters have asked me to challenge the outcome of this race. Their concerns centered on the veracity of the new voting machines used, for the first time, in the majority of the eleven counties that make up the Congressional District. Over the past three weeks, we nearly cut Bill Owens' lead in half. Sadly, that is not enough.
The shift in support since election night highlights one fact; the Boards of Elections, both state and county, need to work closely to ensure the seamless use of these machines in the 2010 statewide and midterm elections.
I would like to thank my supporters for everything they did over the past four months. They proved that average Americans can stand up and make their voices heard, all the way from Watertown to Washington. They proved that the voters are sick and tired of wasteful government spending, high taxes and an ever growing deficit. And most importantly, that when it comes to politics: principles do matter.
While we may have lost the election, this race proved that Americans are sick and tired of the status quo in both Albany and Washington.
In case anyone was still wondering, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells the Wall Street Journal in an article published Tuesday that he opposes all possible forms of a public option, and he's going to be "stubborn" about it.
The Journal's Gerald Seib asked Lieberman if he could support some compromise form of the public option -- if not the one currently in the Senate bill, which allows states to opt out, then perhaps the "trigger" plan advanced by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine? The answer, reportedly, was no to all possibilities. Asked whether any form of a public option would lead to his voting to support a filibuster, Lieberman replied, "correct."
On a related topic, in the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart has an interesting article exploring Lieberman's history and his current stance. Beinart asks why, given his record as a liberal on domestic policy, the senator's staking out the position he is, and has this answer:
For close to a decade, he got nearly perfect scores from the American Public Health Association, which backs a single-payer health-care system, and in lieu of that, the “public option.” Now, all of a sudden, he’s so outraged by a public option that he’s threatening to filibuster any bill that contains it. The arguments he makes on behalf of his new position are remarkably weak: He says the public option will raise costs, even though the Congressional Budget Office has said no such thing, and even though logic suggests that by competing with private insurers, a government plan will actually drive costs down. Some have accused Lieberman of shifting right in order to win backing from the insurance industry in preparation for a 2012 reelection run. But, in fact, he gets relatively little insurance money, and Connecticut politicos mostly think he won’t run.
So why is he doing this? Because he’s bitter. According to former staffers and associates, he was upset by his dismal showing in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. And he was enraged by the tepid support he got from many party leaders in 2006, when he lost the Democratic primary to an anti-war activist and won reelection as an independent. Gradually, this personal alienation has eaten away at his liberal domestic views. His staff has grown markedly more conservative in recent years, and his closest friends in Congress are now Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham. For Lieberman, the personal has become political, and it has pushed him further to the right.
President Obama’s agenda this year has involved a number of big-ticket items: the stimulus, some of the bailouts, healthcare and cap-and-trade. And though some -- or arguably, all -- of these will actually increase federal revenue in the long term, they clearly give the impression of the government handling a lot of money, which can sound an awful lot like “the government is blowing through wads of your cash.”
Unsurprisingly, then, being a deficit-hawk is back in vogue among Republicans. It’s been one of the GOP’s main lines of attack against, well, everything -- but particularly healthcare reform. One major policy debate, however, has managed to avoid any discussion of costs, even though the expenditures could total hundreds of billions of dollars, with little promise of return. That policy, of course, would be any escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
So Democrats who are skeptical of the war have started trying to play at the GOP’s game. Powerful House Democrats are speaking up in favor of some sort of new tax to defray the immense costs likely to be incurred in Afghanistan in coming years. The group includes Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who runs a crucial armed forces subcommittee and Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., the number-four guy in the Democratic caucus.
One of the ideas floating around is a graduated surtax on income, the size of which would depend on how much the war ends up costing. Says Frank, "It's conditional, but if we're going to add 40,000 troops, people ought to know what the costs are. It's important for people to understand how these wars are adding to our deficits."
As of now, the White House is staying neutral on this. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs points out that, as no decision has been announced about a broad policy approach for Afghanistan, there's no public proposal on how to pay either, though conversations are going on in private.
Still, some administration-watchers have taken note of the presence at the Afghanistan meetings of Peter Orzsag, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. When asked about Orszag's attendance, Gibbs explained simply, "Cost is a concern."
Give Glenn Beck a little credit: Every time you think he can't possibly get any weirder, or go any further over the top, he does. (That's not necessarily a good thing, of course, but still -- the man is apparently capable of more eccentricity than just about anyone else.)
Following up on his big announcement of vague plans that seem to involve maybe, possibly supporting a third party, Beck had a rather interesting idea for his show on Monday: In order to dramatize what he believes is the death of the two major parties, he had people on set building coffins for both of them.
No, seriously.
Video below, via Mediaite.
For weeks now, President Obama's been under pressure to announce his next move in Afghanistan. And for weeks, the White House has tried to buy him some time. But now it appears that he's ready to unveil the decision he's made.
Politico's Mike Allen reports that Obama is likely to make the announcement next week, perhaps in a prime-time address to the country on Tuesday, Dec. 1. Obama held a final meeting Monday night, leading White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to release a statement in which he said, "After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days."
It seems certain that the president will decide to send more U.S. troops to the country -- the question is how many. Liberals, at this point, are disillusioned with the war, and would like the number kept low, or would like a withdrawal begun, but Obama's under pressure to conform to recommendations from his commanding general, who's said he needs about 40,000 additional soldiers.
With the eyes of the chattering class upon Fox News due to the White House's "war" on the network, now is not the time for its employees to be making glaring errors. But that's what's happened in several instances recently, and the channel's been embarrassed by it. So now network executives are cracking down, and according to an internal memo obtained by FishbowlDC, "jobs are on the line."
Perhaps the most embarrassing of the recent errors -- certainly the most high-profile -- was the use of footage from a conservative protest held on the Capitol lawn this September during a story about another protest that took place earlier this month. The clip, which made the November rally appear larger than it really was, aired on Sean Hannity's program, and was caught by "The Daily Show," leading to much mocking from Jon Stewart and an on-air apology from Hannity.
That wasn't the only mistake of that kind, though. A week later, there was another mix-up with old footage used for a new story: This time, it was video of Sarah Palin from the 2008 presidential campaign in a piece about her book tour. Again, the clip used made the crowd appear larger than it was.
Not all of the mistakes have favored the right, though. The network has repeatedly shown the cover of "Going Rouge," a parody of Palin's memoir "Going Rogue," when the actual memoir was the subject of discussion. That, apparently, was the last straw, and the network is going back to basics until it can start getting things right.
From the memo:
We had a mistake on Newsroom today when a wrong book cover went on screen during a guest segment, the kind of thing that can fall through the cracks on any day with any story given the large amount of elements and editorial we run through our broadcasts. Unfortunately, it is the latest in a series of mistakes on FNC in recent months .... Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors. Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the "mistake chain," and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews. So we now face a great opportunity to review and improve on our workflow and quality control efforts. To make the most of that opportunity, effective immediately, Newsroom is going to "zero base" our newscast production. That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today's meeting: "It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on." We may then build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again. Please know that jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough.
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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