As John Garamendi touts in a diary here, the most recent SurveyUSA poll shows the Lt. Governor with a comfortable lead in the CA-10 primary set for Tuesday. I am surprised that another candidate hasn't talked it up as well, however, because the only candidate showing movement from the previous SurveyUSA poll is Anthony Woods.
In fact, this new poll, from 8/26-8/27, has Garamendi at 25%, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier at 16%, Asm. Joan Buchanan at 12% and Anthony Woods at 9%, with 5% undecided. The last poll, from 8/10-8/11 was Garamendi 26%, DeSaulnier 15%, Buchanan 12% and Woods 5%. I don't think there are enough undecided voters to push Woods much further, but he's running the only race drawing undecided voters, if the polls can be believed.
Among those who have already voted, the numbers are similar: Garamendi 27%, DeSaulnier 18%, Buchanan 13% and Woods 10%.
Certainly, Garamendi looks very strong for victory, and there aren't likely to be enough voters Tuesday to favor a late riser, but Anthony Woods is running the only race moving from no built-in support to a credible challenge. As for the relative flatness of the two state legislators, I'd say the choice by Sen. DeSaulnier to decide on a monomaniac focus on Garamendi's residency issue, which simply has not moved voters in numerous other instances, instead of giving voters a reason to support him, would offer some answer. Buchanan has run a self-funded campaign focused mainly on finding female support, but not necessarily a larger message. In an environment with three safe or fairly lackluster campaigns, the expected form is holding. Only Woods appears to be taking in new support, but his uphill battle was perhaps too high to climb.
This is hilarious. Please vote in the poll about who gave the quote. Currently, there is a three way tie for first place between Steve Maviglio, Katie Merrill, and Garry South.
Over at CMJ, Katie Merrill lists her betting lines on the 2008 Democratic Presidential field. Setting aside the fact her lines add up to a total probability of 196% (meaning over time she should expect to pay out $2 for every $1 bet), she says:
Her opportunity: Sen. Clinton has just begun her campaign. Her web announcement was virtually flawless, and reintroduced her as a softer, more approachable candidate.
First off, Clinton has not just begun her campaign. The same night she announced the opening skit on Saturday Night Live was about how Hillary expected everyone to know she had been running since she was five.
Maybe the next line was a joke (web announcement = virtually flawless...hehe). But Clinton's web announcement was a great example of the problems facing Hillary Clinton's campaign in both strategy and execution.
If last week was defined by Katie Merrill catapulting a primary campaign against Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, this was the week that Tauscher tried in vain to distance herself from Joe Lieberman.
Counterproductive Katie Merrill seems to have been outdone by Ellen Tauscher's congressional staff, whose website scrubbing has traveled wide and far through the internet tubes.
While it is quite clear that Tauscher's current team only knows how to be counterproductive online, the larger problem is that her campaign should lack the ability to hire a netroots consultant who knows better. Working for Tauscher would be a career killer for a blogosphere coordinator and while the money might be good, it would be likely to cost other clients (a Democratic candidate would be a fool to waste money on an internet firm facing the wrath of the progressive blogosphere for selling out in this marquee race).
Not only has the fallout from this week's missteps catapulted a primary campaign, but in all likelihood it prevented Ellen Tauscher from hiring anyone more productive than Katie Merrill.
UPDATE This is not what Tauscher wants to be reading in the Hotline on a Monday morning:
Rep. Ellen Tauscher's (D-CA) vote for the Iraq war, her perceived coziness with K Street and Pres. Bush, have already made her netroots target number one for '08's primary season.
If Katie Merrill had the goal of preventing a primary campaign against Ellen Tauscher, it might not have been the best strategy to provoke the publisher of the most widely read political blog in the world into declaring, "So in CA-10, we will have a candidate, and there will be a primary."
But as Jane Hamsher noted, Tauscher has greater problems than netroots. Sure, California bloggers are going to cover this race closely (Calitics is averaging more than a post a day on Ellen Tauscher in December of all months and Markos lives in the east bay). And sure, if things get interesting the national blogs will have the ability to get the race nationwide attention. But all of that will be focused towards understanding and supporting what is actually going on in California's 10th congressional district.
upon blogswarm's recomendation I have x-posted this from Ruck Pad.
Katie Merrill, Tauscher's former campaign manager has penned an utterly predictable post on CMR about the recent rumblings in the blogosphere about her former employer. It starts out with the typical smear on blogosphere fueled primaries and then goes on to talk about what a great Democrat Tauscher is, just look at all of these wonderful scorecards...yada yada. While I am glad she has joined the conversation, here is my response. This is from the beginning of her post:
Shhh. Don't tell anyone. I'm going to let you in on a little secret as part of our getting-to-know-you process in the blogosphere. Ok, here it is. I am a political Luddite… a technology rebel… a wireless outlier. That's right. You heard me. I am declaring myself, at least for the purposes of this piece, anti-technology. I am not completely anti-technology of course. I am, after all, writing this entry on my computer. For the launch of a new blog, no less. It's just that I think that the whole notion that the Internet and wireless technology are changing the way we win elections is… well, a bunch of hooey. Incendiary remarks, I know. And bygones up front to my friends and colleagues in the mobile media, net roots, viral marketing, online activism world. But here's the thing, I just don't think any of those things actually win campaigns. At least not yet. And not in California.
So, to the netroots, I say this: It's time to get constructive guys. Roll up your sleeves and help our party leadership govern. And lay off the moderate Dems. They actually share your values. We as Democrats have a tremendous amount of work to do in the next 23 months. It's time for you to focus on beating Republicans, not Democrats.
In just three and a half months, she went from admitting she didn't have a clue about how much we don't matter to trying to tell the netroots that we need to get "constructive" and listen to her when it comes to focus?
A grim milestone approaches as California currently stands at 299 deaths in Iraq.
This picture is dated from the summer of 2002, during the run-up to the war, just a few months before Representative Ellen Tauscher voted with George Bush on Iraq. Just days before the vote, Gwen Ifill interviewed Ellen Tauscher during the debate over the resolution. Representative Tauscher defended the resolution and the deal she cut for her support:
And I am happy to say that have we moved this resolution very far away from where he where it was originally, which was almost a blank check and where we effectively gave the president a rubber stamp -- where Congress has really inserted itself - and I think that's in the best interest of the American people.
That's right, the deal Tauscher cut was for congress to act as a rubber stamp for the Administration. By doing this Tauscher failed during the most important issue of our time:
Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Network, faulted the administration on its representation of intelligence, but refused to blame the White House entirely.
"It's clear now that they cherry-picked intelligence, amplified some things, played down dissent. [But] we all got it wrong," she said.
That's just not true, not all of us did get it wrong. The problem is that Tauscher marginalized and ignored the voices who have since been proven correct.
