Wolf Blitzer is saying right now that we have picked up the fifteen seats we need, so that gives us control of the House, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, John Conyers chair of Judiciary.

Denny Hastert isn’t quite conceding right now, but he doesn’t sound optimistic.

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.

Vermont’s 19th century version of instant runoff voting is still alive and well in the Green Mountain state. The legislators would gather in early January, and if any of the statewide races had finished without a candidate getting more than half the vote, the newly elected legislature would meet in joint session and “instantly” conduct a “runoff election.”

Jim Douglas 2002-2004 is the most recent Governor elected by the legislature — a legislature dominated by Democrats. That sad happenstance occured because Democratic candidate Doug Racine and his advisors concluded that (a) he would be the leading vote getter with something like 45% of the vote and (b) the GOP would retain enough of its majority in the VT House that it would offset the Dem majority in the Senate, and be able to elect Douglas.

So they started campaigning and asking legislators to pledge to “vote for whoever got the most votes.”

Sadly, the Racine campaign and Dem Party bosses who were in on this brilliant “strategery” hadn’t consulted with their state committee or with a broad cross-section of the party faithful who were working their asses off on House and Senate races, and didn’t realize that come election night (a) the Democrats would have solid majorities in both houses and (b) the rank-and-file would be in revolt over “the pledge.”

Fortunately for the Democrats, Scudder Parker was the party Chair that night, and understands, as do most of the party leadership and activist base, that Vermont’s founding fathers had it right when they decided the best way to insure representative executive officers was to put the election in the hands of the people’s representatives if the people were not able to establish a majority vote.

Legislators are smart and independent enough to weigh all the factors in situations like this — where the votes fell for minority candidates and who the next-best choice of those voters probably would have been; the public understanding of the legislative election and their expectations; the feedback from constituents; the urgings of their partisan supporters; the history of the candidates, the partisan reality of the state — and cast an informed ballot.

So I sincerely hope that if any of the statewide races result in a legislative election we will see leadership from all parties use the situation to inform and educate the electorate about Vermont’s existing ‘runoff’ procedure, and that elected legislators insist on exerting their right to conclude the election on behalf of their constituents, their conscience, and their political philosophy.

It’s a time to defend democracy.

I encourage all GMD readers to join in an interesting experiment in civic participation by going to Exit Voices.

Here’s the description from the About page…

Exit Voices is a place for Burlington voters to share their thoughts and concerns about the people and issues on the ballot. On election day, this blog serves as an online coffee shop where citizens can discuss Vermont politics. All are welcome to participate. Exit Voices is a joint collaboration between CCTV Center for Media and Democracy, Vermont Community Access Media and Candleblog.

The Exit Voices crew (that would be Bill Simmon) is also asking that if you have a blog of your own that you cross-post any of your blog entries on election day in the comments section there. And that would apply to diaries here, too.

As Bill said via email: “Ideally, we would like to use Exit Voices as an aggregator of Vermont political blog posts as well as make it a place for non-bloggers to congregate and discuss the elections.”

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?

Ok, time for self-aggrandizing pundit minute.. predictions… Lest any of you bite my head off because you don’t agree with some of them, I’m doing this as an observation, not a ‘rah-rah’ thing. Sorry.

First, VT Gov – Jim Douglas, at least 10 points

Lt. Gov. – probably Brian Dubie (sigh) by a small margin, but I’m not 100% certain.

VT House – at least 10 more seats, possibly a veto-proof majority (let’s hope)

VT Senate- I think they’ll pick up at least 3 seats. As far as my own Washington County race, jeez, I really don’t know. I do think that if our candidate Donny Osman wins, it will be from bumping off Republican Phil Scott or fellow Dem Anne Cummings. Republican Jim Parker will come in 6th, of that I am certain. And who knows about the Doyle factor?

National races… I’m expecting a lot of Republican dirty tricks, they’ve already started. Those and Diebold will cost the Dems a few seats, but I think the Dems will take the house with at least a 10 seat majority. The Senate, I don’t have a clue but I think worst case 50-50, and I think regardless, we’ll have the Senate 2 years from now.

Of course, like most pundits, I’m probably full of shit. We’ll see on Wednesday.

you can read more of JD Ryan at

[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.