FINAL UPDATE FOR THE NIGHT 10:55 – My laptop battery is almost toast, so you all are on your own. If we take the US House or Senate, I’ll post the Spongebob victory song again, but until then, yer on yer own…

UPDATE 10:43 – Welch is giving his victory speech, and after being so gloomy and pessimistic about this race, it sure is a relief to hear. There are also 8 net pickups in the US House across the country so far, and three in the Senate. Vrginia Senate is still too close to call, buts it’s looking like Allen’s at this point – which would mean a 50-50 is the best we could hope for (assuming the victorious Joe Lieberman in Connecticut keeps pretending to be a Democrat…. what the hell were CT voters thinking??)

UPDATE 10:17 – It hasn’t been officially called by anybody, but Douglas and Dubie will be back in easily. What’s interesting is that Auditor is still too close to call, despite the fact that Tom Salmon Jr. hasn’t even run a campaign, for all intents and purposes…

I’m having a terrible time getting a solid signal from the Dem Victory Party here in Burlington. Bernie just wrapped his victory speech, and the early word is looking great for Dems in much of the state – including a return to Democratic hands of Rutland City! That veto-proof majority is looking increasingly likely.

nationally, news is mixed. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Ohio are all reporting Dem Senate pickups, but Virginia is looking sketchy. House races are solid, and I recommend folks go visit dKos for breaking news, particularly on the US House races, which are looking very, very good – with pickups in state like Indiana and Kentucky…

…still too early to tell for Scudder Parker and Matt Dunne, but it’s not looking good.

Let Spongebob spread the word, more blandly told by the traditional media…

The following scandals-to-be never gelled in the public consciousness. Whether or not they would have changed anybody’s vote is an academic question now, but it’s still interesting to review…

• Porngate: Martha Rainville’s alleged coverup of an illegal porn video made by those under her command was at first brought to the surface by three anonymous letters (that we know of). SInce then, Rainville herself has confirmed the essence of the story, and that there is an investigation, but the details are still unclear.
• Wildergate: After news of Jim Douglas’s tanking of the Wilderness Act that had all-but-passed in Washington, came a verifiable email trail indicating that members of his administration had worked behind the scenes with anti-environmental interests to devise strategies against wilderness protection. This story never caught on like the initial scuttling of the act did. Clearly it wasn’t pushed as heavily as one might expect from either the Parker campaign or the state Democratic Party, and the institution that was in the best position to make political hay out of it (the Democratic Legislative caucuses) have showed little interest in assisting the top of their in-state ticket, going back as far as the Health Care debate last session. Odd, that.
• Alohagate: Members of the press seemed almost bored with election coverage and were content to allow Lt. Governor Brian Dubie to skate by on his “disclaimer” that essentially said his accounting of his time performing official duties, officially demanded by the Dunne campaign, simply may or may not be accurate. The notable contradiction was his Hawaiian vacation that was unreflected in his schedule which may be an understandable omission – or it may not be. Given that nobody bothered to look into it in any meaningful way, we’ll never really know.
• Multi-million-dollar-government-fraudgate: Okay, maybe not the catchiest title. This is the one you probably never heard about unless you’ve been reading this site for a while. It concerns Rich Tarrant’s firing and direct involvement (while running IDX) of the case of a high profile whistleblower (IDX’s Director of Informatics) who accused IDX (with the full knowledge of higher-ups) of defrauding the US government of millions of dollars under a federal contract. The whistleblower was fired and his case is currently under appeal. While his original lawyer had his license suspended, Dr. Mauricio Leon found other counsel, and insiders close to the case indicated to me a high probability of a successful appeal based on the questionable ruling by the first judge. This one even has the hint of the possibility of a supressed Department of Justice report that may have reflected poorly on Tarrant, the GOP Senate candidate.

So there you have them. Porngate and MMDGF-gate we may very well hear more about in the months to come, but the other two, I’m afraid, will simply be consigned to the dustbin of history. I do hope I’m wrong about that.

Every Election Day I go a little crazy. I age a couple years in the course of weeks. My blood pressure goes up, my blood sugar goes down, and I gain yet another ten pounds in a matter of days.

I’d thought it might be easier this year – the first I hadn’t actually worked on a campaign since time immemorial – but, boy, was I wrong. If anything it’s worse. Without the opportunity to channel some of this fretting into frenetic running around from one herculean task to the next, fueled on by red bull and a desperate desire not to let my candidate or the world down, I now get to add nausea and nervous tics to the list of ill effects.

Right now, I just want it to be over. Not just for the opportunity to get some sleep (my two-year old willing), but to move onto the post-election world. Elections always bring out the worst in people – myself included. I’m sure I don’t have to explain that statement to anyone. And I don’t think there’s a soul who doesn’t completely ignore the Democratic process that’s wholly immune. With the stakes so monumentally high this year, the effects on our collective (and individual) psyches are that much more pronounced. It’s a real shame because Election Day should be a celebration of our Democracy. A joyous coming together, where diverse opinionholders agree to disagee, and cast their lots into a collective pool from whence an uneasy but peacefully-arrived-at dialectic synthesis arises.

And yet it never really feels like that.

But I’m stepping back as I type this (figuratively – ’cause I dont want to have to stretch for the keyboard), and reminding myself that nature has a tendency to find its own balance. It’s a yin-yang sorta thing, and it’s just as true in culture and psychology as it is in the wild. The truth is, you can also see where Elections bring out the best in people, if you know where to look. People giving of their time to do the dreariest work, and often in the dreariest weather. People talking to their neighbors and really caring about the world and the people in it. It’s always easier to notice the bad over the good, but everytime you see someone standing in the rain waving a sign for their preferred candidate – all because they want to try to make the world a little bit better – that’s the good you’re looking at right there.

SO take a deep breath, go out and do your duty, and maybe – if the stars are right – we’ll all wake up on Wednesday morning to find out the world is now an ever-so-slightly better place.

See you at the polls.

The Welch team caught this ad in the St. Albans Messenger supporting Martha Rainville today. It’s paid for by the “National Federation of Independent Businesses.” Take a look at the word the Welch campaign has highlighted…

Aren’t we lucky to have such a fighter for Wisconsin running for congress?

Cookie cutter candidates get cookie cutter ads, I s’pose. Who cares about the details, right?

[Originally published in the Vermont Journal]

“Stay the Course”

“Cut and Run”

“Tax and Spend”

Government isn’t supposed to be like this. Like, well, like politics.

People routinely lament the coarsening of the political dialogue. Of course, anyone who’s been paying attention can tell you that it’s nothing new. Sure it’s gotten worse in the last decade, particularly since the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which at the time seemed to permanently lower the bar for what is acceptable in the political realm.

The truth is that recent polls suggest a bottoming out. In states like Virginia, where desperate incumbents have seen the anti-Republican wave batter their poll numbers and have reacted with campaign sleaze attacks, the result has been an increase in their own negatives and the continued deterioration of their poll numbers.

After the better part of a generation of extreme, shrill distortions and mudslinging from the party in power, much of the swing voting public is becoming numb to it. This leaves politicians who live by the smear – stuck. After all, when you’ve had the slime turned up to eleven nonstop for a decade, where else is there to go?

So the American public can survive the politics of the soundbite. The simplistic three word slogans that are meant to condemn your opponent (“tax and spend”), force him or her into a corner (“stay the course”) or paint them as unworthy (“cut and run”).

But we’ve been in a brave new world for the past six years. Behind the scenes, we’ve taken for granted that the simplicities of the soundbite must always give way to the complexities and nuances of actually governing the most powerful and complex nation in history. We?ve assumed that the posturing is to large extent for show – even if it does crudely present a general governing philosophy for public view, and that when it comes to actually running things, the policy makers behind the scenes are too smart for their own soundbites, right?

Not anymore.

Under one party rule, weve seen the posturing before the cameras become the policy behind them. No longer is a line like “stay the course” merely a marketing and branding tool for the microphones, it aptly describes the actual governing of our nation.

Under soundbite government, every answer is an easy answer. Under soundbite government, anything that isn’t simple is to be rejected, ignored, thrown out, discredited.

This includes questions, the complexities of foreign policy, inconvenient disasters (such as Hurricanes), due process, morality, any who advocate looking before leaping, and even the facts themselves.

When reality proves complex and unwieldy, reality itself becomes the enemy – and reality, as it turns out, can be suppressed and subdued by going trillions of dollars into debt.

But only for a while.

One party rule has begun to cripple and destroy our nation. It’s time to force the simpletons who would hammer our country and its people into acting out their simplistic, self-serving worldview to account.

It’s also time to admit that those local or state officeholders who have enabled those in power in Washington, through their explicit or implicit support, are neither worthy nor qualified to hold positions of authority in Vermont. It’s time for the definitive termination of soundbite government.

On Election Day, it’s time for a big, big change.

If you need a reminder of what we’re up against, both nationally and locally, take a look at this piece that was mailed across the state last week:

And so we’re clear, this was not mailed from Washington, this is a piece paid for and mailed by the Vermont Republican Party. And they are saying that you and those you support want to make it “easier for terrorists to attack America” (among other things). Need I mention whose policies have made this country and the world less safe?

Let’s beat these bozos.

From the Herald-Argus:

Dunne asked for, and eventually got, Dubie’s schedule for his four years in office, but has pointed out there are discrepancies between what the schedule said and where Dubie actually was. For instance during a family trip to Hawaii, Dubie’s schedule still listed events in Vermont.

A letter that accompanied the schedule when it was sent to Dunne includes a disclaimer that it may not be entirely accurate, since it wasn’t updated when meetings were added or cancelled.

This may be disappointing to other Dunne supporters, but I say halleluia. The question has been posed and answered, which is all I, for one, was clamoring for (note: I still think there’s more to talk about on this, but I also don’t think it’s worth persuing at this point, when it’s GOTV time). Still, the last forty-or-so hours since the Dunne press release went out has been very informative for me, and I’ll see if I can explain why.

First of all, I/we received essentially four responses from attempts to reach the traditional media gatekeepers during all this…

• Stony Silence
• Stony silence in direct response, but some response in print/internet (e.g. Allen and Porter above and Freyne in his blog)
• A back and forth with one media insider who completely considered it a non-story
• A back and forth with a sympathetic media insider

In today’s Darren Allen piece on the Vermont blogosphere (which, when he spoke to me, he made a point of telling me right up front with an eye-rolling tone, that this was an “editorial-driven” piece, by which he was presumably telling me “If it were up to me, no way in hell I’d be bothering to waste any time talking to you…” – which may explain the piece a bit, if you were wondering), I get to hold forth a bit on what was at the time a spur-of-the-moment description of the quality and relevance of the political blogosphere.

There’s a flow of information, largely geographically located between Montpelier and Burlington, but made up of politicians, special interests, some government employees and the press. It’s a small, fast moving current, and what comes out of that flow into the public consciousness is a spigot controlled by the press… and they have both a quota of information that is allowed to flow from that spigot, as well as rules for what makes it into the spigot’s pipeline.

Consider the Dubie story. It was generated by a press release from the Dunne campaign, yet when I spoke to someone on the phone at the AP, he hadn’t heard anything about it. Why? He’d gotten the same release I had, right?

Well, the rules have not quite been followed by the Dunne campaign. In recent weeks, the Dunne Team has been flooding the media with press releases. In all honesty, most look like they were schlocked out in a few seconds. They are often poorly organized, replete with typos, WAY too long, and in one case even misnamed a local reporter (you know they just love that). In the case of the recent press release that caused me to post on this whole matter, you actually had to scroll down a few paragraphs to reach the salient point. In fact, they had tried to cram 2 or 3 different points in, so you really had to read it directly in order to find the material.

In these waning days, the press is doubtless getting inundated with press releases. To get their attention (especially when you’ve been hitting them with multiple releases they may be feeling inclined to disregard), you need to be concise and to the point, and hit them with a thesis statement in the title that’s relevant. That wasn’t the case. The Dunne peole didn’t play by the rules, so the AP reporter I talked to didn’t know what I was talking about.

There’s also the timing. I already knew that these operations were short staffed on weekends, but what I learned is that there’s a structural bias against last-minute “gotchas” the weekend before an election. The press doesn’t want to get played for patsies and are dubious about anything that falls into that time frame. This made it all the more crucial that the Dunne press release be concise and to the point, coming as it did Friday at noon.

All this is to say that I’m not as riled up as I was that we had to jump up and down and scream for coverage of an issue that, on it’s face, was as I said – a bombshell.

But we still shouldn’t have had to make such a fuss.

As guardians of the “spigot,” press professionals make themselves the gatekeepers of what is worthy for discussion, and what the parameters of that discussion will be. And they often make little allowance for just how subjective the judgments made in the service of that guardianship are. In my own experience in the last day, I’ve seen just how broad the range of that subjectivity runs. On the one hand, I had a press pro telling me this was a non-story and “propoganda.” On the other side, I had another press professional telling me that his colleague had it “exactly wrong” and that it was indeed an issue. Then, to complete the spectrum, there was what actually made the papers; a short, perfunctory acknowledgement and response waaaay down in an omnibus election piece. The question asked and answered (which, I should mention, is ALL I ever cared to see – the question responsibly asked, and responsibly answered, whatever that answer turned out to be).

In other words, a very few informational gatekeepers had as broad a range possible of opinions on whether or not to open the gate for this story. This demonstrates just how subjective this process is, and therefore how prone to all the biases and human frailties these decisions actually are. There is no formula a story is plugged into to gauge its worthiness. No empirical analysis. These people are going with their gut – a gut informed by journalistic experience, sure, but that gut is also entirely situated within the context of the insulated information flow described above, and qualified by the power inherent in being guardians of the spigot.

Now consider how the political blogosphere changes things. Questions are answered by facts, and facts inevitably generate more questions. The guardians of the spigot have had the luxury of shorthanding the process by asking and answering the questions themselves before deciding what flows into the public consciousness.

But now there are blogs, and bloggers have an uncanny habit of finding the raw facts for themselves. In this case, there were facts that raised questions; Dubie released a schedule after dragging his feet in response to Dunne’s request. That schedule (which he was loathe to release) contained a bright, shining, verifiable contradiction. That led a to a big question, and we in the blogging world waited for it to be asked in the press.

…and we waited, and waited, and waited.

The fact is that such high-stakes questions of dishonesty in the public service are newsworthy in themselves – no one would argue that. What heppened in this case was that the press’s role in serving as arbiter of those questions was usurped, and the press was all over the map regarding how to respond to that. What to do? Ignore it and eye-roll or cover it thoroughly and completely?

In the end, believe it or not, I am satisfied not so much with the content of the Allen/Porter piece above, but with the process that (I assume) led to its publication. It’s likely that Allen, Porter, and Freyne as well, implicitly realized that there was little point in arguing for the primacy of their informational gatekeeper role – that in this case, that was beside the point. The point is, that a question, raised by facts, and therefore demanding of attention did in fact make it’s way outside of that insulated flow of information without passing through them. That the question was out there, and as such, it became their responsibility to answer it.

And like it or not, the answer was short and rather anticlimatic. The traditional media gatekeepers had more facts than the bloggers did. That’s not a surprise in-and-of-itself, but when the choice to just chuckle about it amongst themselves (and therefore leave bloggers and blog-readers with their worst fears and conspiracy theories about the biases of the media seemingly confirmed), or recognize that the situation had changed, and the matter needed to be directly addressed, different reporters reacted differently – again underscoring the real subjectivity inherent in the whole process.

Porter, Allen and Freyne got it. The others didn’t. And maybe we’ve all learned a little something about the other in the process.

…and with the legislative session looming, this is only the beginning. The blogs create opportunities for people outside the Montpelier-Burlington information flow to tap into it directly, bypassing the gatekeepers. At present, that means we can inject a bit of ourselves into the conversation and impact what squeezes out into the print and television media. And that’s a very big deal.

But the time is coming when the Vermont political blogosphere – like it’s national equivalent – will begin to break down those barriers completely, by bypassing the gatekeepers rather than influencing them, and speaking to other Vermonters more directly.

And when that finally happens, we’re in a brave new world of media…

Vermonter posted this comment a few days ago that got no response. Recent events are highlighting his point.

One likely reason we haven’t and probably won’t get coverage of the Dubie-phony-schedule-release issue (cited below) in the Times Argus or Rutland Herald is the following:

Unfortunately for Dunne, Dubie’s schedule as lieutenant governor is busier than Dunne has made it out to be.

Vermonters have learned to like and respect him [Dubie], not so much for his politics, which are probably more conservative than that of most Vermonters, but because of his honesty, integrity and steadiness of character.

This comes from the papers’ endorsement of Dubie in yesterday’s edition. In making that endorsement based on Dubie’s integrity, they are unlikely to be favorably inclined to report on a story that directly calls that integrity – and by extension the validity and credibility of their endorsement – into question. Similarly, they’ve already passed judgment on the content of Dubie’s schedule. By saying “we endorse this guy ’cause he’s so honest” they look bad if he looks dishonest the very next day for all the world to see. And of course, by touting his schedule in their endorsement, it’s a poor reflection on them if the schedule is proven to be bogus.

These sorts of endorsements do create a conflict of interest of sorts within the traditional media (TM). It wouldn’t have to be a conflict if TM sources really did report the news as dispassionate chroniclers, but of course they don’t. These are people, with investments in their personal and institutional reputations, and like it or not, they wield an extraordinary degree of control over what the topic of discussion is, and what the parameters of that discussion are.

So yeah, given that these things can (and do) play out this way, I’m with Vermonter…

[UPDATE 10:19 AM: Do be nice if you call or email. I just got off the phone with one of the listed reporters who honestly didn’t know what I was talking about. In the rush of last minute election stuff, I guess he just missed it. That can happen, and these guys are only human. But it shows that if we work this, we can maybe get a response (it also shows that many of the political reporters still dont read the blogs — ah well, we’ll keep working on that, too…]

It’s 8:30 AM Saturday morning, and still not a peep about this:

From Dubie’s officially released schedule:

From the AP via kersplebedeb:

Associated Press
February 23, 2005

HONOLULU — A University of Colorado professor who has been criticized for his comments likening some Sept. 11 victims to Nazis defended his position before an overflow crowd Tuesday night at the University of Hawaii.

Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie of Vermont, who was vacationing in Hawaii, was among those who turned out.

And from the Vermont press?

Here are some of the key press players to contact to ask why this isn’t getting the press coverage it seems obvious it demands.

Peter Freyne
Darren Allen
Louis Porter
Stewart Ledbetter
Terri Hallenbeck
Sam Hemmingway

I don’t have email addresses for the numerous others, such as David Gram and Ross Sneyd who write for the AP, but their phone number is 229-0577. If anyone has other contact info, post away. Be polite when you write or call, please.