Tonight, a bill to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits for the long-term unemployed failed in the Senate, 58 to 38. The vote was technically only one short of 60; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) voted no for procedural reasons. Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine voted for cloture on the $34 billion bill, which was not offset and therefore increased the deficit. But Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) refused to cross the aisle. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) voted with the Republicans. Without Sen. Robert Byrd’s vote — the 92-year-old veteran of the Senate passed away earlier this week — Senate Democrats found themselves one vote short. Reid says the Senate will vote on the bill as soon as Byrd’s replacement is in place. He offered this statement after the failed cloture vote: These are difficult days for thousands of Nevadans and millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and there are few words that can comfort these workers who go to sleep every night worried about their economic uncertainty.  That’s why Democrats tried again tonight to extend unemployment benefits that workers and their families depend on as a lifeline while they continue to look for work. It is beyond disappointing that Republicans continue to stand almost lockstep against assistance for out-of-work Americans — especially since many of these same Republicans spent months protecting Wall Street and preserving tax cuts for CEOs who ship American jobs overseas. We will vote on this measure again once there is a replacement named for the late Senator Byrd.  In the meantime, I sincerely hope that Republicans will finally listen to the millions of unemployed Americans who need this assistance to support their families in these tough times. These Americans and millions more demand that Republicans stop filibustering support for unemployed workers. By the time Byrd’s replacement is in place, in mid-July, 2 million Americans will have lost their benefits. The bill extending them will have languished in the Senate for something like 11 weeks.

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Unemployment Extension Fails – Again – in the Senate

This Gallup poll , in some ways, is tautology: Republicans are conservative about the role of government, and Democrats are liberal. Members of the GOP believe that the government has overextended itself wildly — trying to convince businesses to hire more workers, cajole banks to reform and give more loans, persuade consumers to purchase more goods and save millions of American families from the economic ravages of joblessness. Democrats believe the government is not doing enough. In the past few months, deficit spending has become the battleground for those beliefs. On the Hill, Democrats are desperate to push through legislation that would do much to help the poor and the jobless — providing Medicaid and unemployment benefits, as well as a host of other measures. There, Republicans have drawn the line in the sand. What is interesting to note is that Republicans are winning. They killed legislation that should have been unremarkable, even popular. And they have managed to shift the argument to deficits, to convince the government to trim its programs back, despite economic consensus that the economy needs sustained governmental stimulus until demand returns.

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Republicans: Stop Doing So Much; Dems: Do More

The jobs bill, which includes an extension to unemployment benefits among other provisions, could be passed if Democrats would be willing to pay for it with stimulus money and offset other spending, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in an interview with TWI sister site The Iowa Independent . Last week the bill failed to garner the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. “Ninety percent of the bill isn’t controversial,” Grassley said, concluding that the big problem is that he and many other lawmakers don’t want to add to the federal deficit. He chided Democrats for refusing to pay fully for the legislation with offsetting savings, revenue increases or the remaining federal stimulus funds. Even though Democrats repeatedly cut the bill in an effort to win Republican backing, the latest version would have added $55 billion to the nation’s $1.4 trillion deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Grassley said he’s heard from his constituents that they are tired of the government running up huge debt, and that the message is starting to get through to Democrats as well. “It wasn’t just Republicans who voted against the bill in the U.S. House,” he said. “There were plenty of Blue Dog Democrats who don’t agree with this type of spending either.” He added that in February, he and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) put forth a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits and other important items in the jobs bill, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) killed the measure. “It was paid for,” Grassley said. “We could have passed that in three days instead of wasting three weeks.” Reid said at the time that the Baucus-Grassley bill wouldn’t do enough to show voters that the Senate was serious about addressing the unemployment problem, focusing too much on tax cuts and not enough on job creation. Critics also pointed out that extensions of both unemployment and COBRA benefits would have run only three months in Grassley’s legislation.

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Grassley: Unemployment Extension Will Pass If Dems Can Pay for It

Via Matt Yglesias , the latest Gallup poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly support more deficit-increasing stimulus to create new jobs and jump-start the economy. Interestingly, the poll also shows that more Americans favor carbon regulation than Wall Street regulation right now — perhaps as the conference committee merging the financial regulatory reform bills is out of the daily news cycle, but BP’s disastrous handling of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is not. And the poll also shows a strong break on party lines. Self-identified Democrats and independents want stimulus, carbon regulation and Wall Street reform. Self-identified Republicans want none of those things.

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Americans Want More Stimulus

Next week, the Senate returns from recess to a months-long battle over the extension of expiring programs providing benefits to millions of jobless Americans. In March, the House passed a $9 billion bill to prevent benefit loss. The Senate rushed to pass the House version before the congressional recess started on March 26, but faced opposition from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who demanded that Democrats find a way to pay for the extension. Senate majority and minority leaders Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) started negotiations on the issue, but failed to reach a compromise before recess. While senators were in their home states, on April 5, some Americans actually started to lose their benefits – at a rate of 200,000 a week, the National Employment Law Project estimates . Indeed, this month alone, up to 1 million people will lose aid if some extension bill does not pass. Members of Congress from both parties have stressed that the jobless benefits are not stimulus so much as necessary aid. “We will have to do things like extend unemployment benefits,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Fox News . “That’s not a job stimulator. … We will do those things to take care of the families that are suffering right now.” Thus, the pressure is on for Congress to act. According to parliamentary procedure, it will take a bare minimum of four days for the Senate to pass the benefits extension — and likely longer. To provide benefits to those who have lost them since April 5 and to those who will before the bill’s passage, Senate Democrats plan to push through a provision making the extension of benefits retroactive. Two Senate aides say that Republican senators will offer pay-go and possibly other amendments to the benefits extension. Those amendments will likely delay the passage of the bill — meaning more people will lose benefits, if only temporarily. If and when the Senate passes this month-long extension, it will need to take the exact same issue up again by May 5 — a point annoying Senate Democrats, a Senate aide says. Therefore, Democratic leadership has placed a long-term jobless benefits extension into the Tax Extender’s Act , currently in the House. But Democrats are scrambling to find additional funding sources for those benefits.

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As 200,000 Lose Jobless Benefits Each Week, Senate Plans Unemployment Insurance Extension

Lawyer: Dem fundraiser, banker will plead guilty The Associated Press … investment banker who was once a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and other big-name Democrats intends to plead guilty in a federal bank fraud case, … and more

The Senate this evening took a long stride toward (finally) passing an $18 billion proposal designed to tackle the nation’s jobs crisis , voting to end debate on a bill granting tax credits to businesses that hire unemployed workers. The vote was 61 to 30 to block a GOP filibuster. Six Republican senators — Kit Bond (Mo.), Scott Brown (Mass.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Susan Collins (Maine), James Inhofe (Okla.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) — voted for cloture, while just one Democrat — Ben Nelson (Neb.) — voted against it. It marks the second time around for the so-called HIRE Act. The Senate last month passed a similar measure, only to have moderate House Democrats balk because the entire cost wasn’t offset elsewhere in the budget. House lawmakers tweaked the proposal to include that pay-for, and the new version is what the Senate is considering now. Today’s cloture vote blocks a GOP filibuster by limiting debate on the bill to 30 hours. Republicans, though, are threatening not to allow Democrats to count the hours after adjournment tonight toward the 30-hour clock, setting the stage for a possible all-night session. That would put the final vote somewhere near midnight Tuesday, though Democratic leaders are hoping that a deal can be worked out beforehand to stage the vote sooner.

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Senate Moves One Step Closer to Passing Hiring Tax Credits

Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) decision to block an unfunded 30-day extension of unemployment insurance, COBRA benefits, and Medicare doctor payments has been largely a one-man endeavor. No longer. This morning, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the chamber floor in defense of Bunning, who has rejected the Democrats’ $10 billion proposal because it’s not paid for. “All that the senator from Kentucky has asked for is that we do what every American family has to do,” Cornyn said, “and what every small business has to do, and that is [to] be honest in our accounting of the public’s money.” He added: We know that there’s broad bipartisan support for the legislation. … All the senator from Kentucky has asked for is that it be paid for — that we not add $10 billion more to the federal deficit. They aren’t entirely wrong. The national debt has become a national disgrace (and a menacing one). But it’s also difficult to take seriously any claims of fiscal rectitude coming from Bunning or Cornyn, both of whom voted in 2003 for the GOP’s Medicare prescription drug benefit , which is projected to cost $550 billion through 2016 — and not a cent of it offset. Suddenly $10 billion in deficit spending doesn’t seem like the problem anymore.

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To Bunning’s Rescue

Examiner.com Arizona Democrats introduce foreclosure relief bill Examiner.com The bill has numerous provisions including measures that protect homeowners who are facing foreclosure from scam and fraud , a 60 day relief period for … and more

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) (EPA/ZUMApress.com) As job creation continues to be the caboose of economic recovery, employment experts of all stripes are hiking the pressure on Congress to tackle the crisis by encouraging employers to cut hours rather than firing workers. And more and more lawmakers are taking heed. Seventeen states have already adopted so-called “job-sharing” programs, which encourage employers to reduce workers’ hours in lieu of firing them outright. The state government, in these cases, then steps in to make up a portion of the lost wages. Between 300,000 and 350,000 workers are participating nationwide, saving roughly 100,000 jobs that would have otherwise been scrapped, according to Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research and a long-time supporter of the concept. Image by: Matt Mahurin Share Yet that’s just a drop in the bucket relative to the 12-million-job crater the country is in, leading many economists — not all of them liberal — to push Congress for a much larger federal investment in job-sharing programs. Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told lawmakers this week that such programs are among the most targeted and cost-effective ways to tackle the nation’s jobs crisis, which has left nearly one in five workers without a job or underemployed. The concept is simple: Rather than laying off a few workers during lean times, businesses instead could spread the pain by reducing work hours for many. In Hassett’s example, if five workers had their hours cut by 20 percent it would prevent one worker from being fired at no cost to the company. And if Congress were to alter its policies surrounding emergency unemployment insurance, those workers could then access a portion of those benefits — in this case, 20 percent. Workers benefit by keeping their jobs. Employers win because they don’t have to train new part-time workers. And states would gain because their share of the partial benefits would be less than they would otherwise have to pay. “Right now the government only really shares in supporting that worker if you lay the whole worker off,” Hassett said Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee , advocating a policy that isn’t supported by the Republicans who invited him to testify. “By adopting job sharing, we could give firms an incentive to slow job destruction.” The call is timely. Even as the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent last month, the number of long-term unemployed — those without work longer than 27 weeks — jumped to a historic high. Economists are projecting not only that unemployment will rise later this year, but also that it will remain above 8 percent even two years from now — higher than the peak jobless rate in either of the last two recessions. Hassett pointed out that the job numbers coming out of the Labor Department each month are net figures reflecting the difference between the millions of jobs created and the millions of jobs lost — a constant churning that he says represents a vital opportunity for lawmakers interested in reducing unemployment. “There is already a massive amount of job creation out there,” he testified. “If we can slow job destruction even a little bit, then we will have set the stage for big increases in net job creation.” Reducing involuntary job losses by 10 percent, Hassett estimates, would be the equivalent of adding 200,000 jobs a month to the economy. Job-sharing policies in Germany have kept unemployment rates steady, Hassett said, even while that country’s GDP has tanked almost as drastically as that of the United States. And an additional perk: job sharing would be particularly beneficial to black workers, Hassett said, for the simple reason that blacks are often the first folks to be laid off in tough economic times. Congress is paying attention. Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called Hassett’s proposal “very useful.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) offered to give him an extra five minutes to testify. And Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) called job sharing “a wonderful idea.” “I turned to my staff and said, ‘Go draw me a bill that will do this kind of sharing, if nobody else has introduced that bill,” Watt said. Turns out, the legislation is already out there. Bills sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) would provide more money to the 17 states already operating job-sharing programs, while offering additional funds to other states that choose to adopt similar initiatives. The White House, Baker said in a phone interview Wednesday, is supportive, though officials there seem intent to let Congress design its own jobs legislation. Not everyone, though, is on board. Republicans, claiming that the first stimulus hasn’t done anything to help the economy, are near-united in opposition to another large spending bill — regardless of what it contains. “I’m really surprised that we’re even debating the need for a new stimulus in light of our experience with the old stimulus,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus (Ala.), senior Republican on the Financial Services panel. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) agreed, arguing that the Democrats’ $787 billion stimulus bill was “a complete failure.” “I’m not even sure that John Maynard Keynes would have [supported] that particular stimulus program,” Hensarling said. “And here we are contemplating another one.” Testifying before the House panel Tuesday, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, carried another message, warning lawmakers that current interest-rate and deficit-spending levels leave policymakers will few remedies should the country slip back into recession. With that in mind, Zandi urged panel members “to be aggressive” in crafting more stiumulus measures. “If we have another recession, we will have no policy response,” he said. “We have to err on the side of doing too much.”

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Economists Push for Federal Job-Sharing Program

At a mid-day press conference on Capitol Hill, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) launched a “Declaration of Health Care Independence” — a statement of principles that they hoped Democrats and voters would sign onto, but not one that would be backed by legislation or one that could be posted at their websites. “On the 18th of April, 1775, there was a shot fired in Massachusetts that was heard around the world,” said Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). “Last week, Massachusetts fired another shot heard around the world.” After speaking, Akin, like the other members, knelt down and signed a blown-up version of the declaration. Bachmann said that the plan had been set in motion before Scott Brown’s upset election in Massachusetts, but all of the members at the conference agreed that Brown’s election had restarted — not killed — the health care debate. I asked whether any had spoken to Brown about his health care ideas, as Brown had backed a health care bill in Massachusetts that’s anathema to conservatives, and that includes a mandate that defies this declaration. “The principles I heard him talk about during the campaign,” said King, “as distinct from the specific bill that you mentioned, I think are consistent with the language here.” “One of the things you have to love about Scott Brown is — while I’m not familiar with that vote, since then, certainly, he has been in his pick-up truck, and he’s been talking to people,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). “It gave him access to what the people really think. What you heard him espouse are the same principles we’re talking about here.” “It seemed from his campaign that he wasn’t too favorable about what had been concocted [here],” said Akin. King said that every Republican in the House basically agreed with the declaration and that non-Republicans might sign on. “I think some Democrats will,” he said, “some conservative ones will.”

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Bachmann, King, House Conservatives Launch ‘Declaration of Health Care Independence’

Politico’s Laura Rozen catches Hillary Rodham Clinton indicating to our old friend Tavis Smiley that she doesn’t envision staying on as secretary of state for two terms. Nothing really surprising: Dean Rusk, I think, was the last secretary of state to serve for eight years during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. And she didn’t suggest she was out the door, either. But either way, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is set to call dibs like he was waiting for his friend to finish playing Call Of Duty 2.

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Somewhere, John Kerry Is Updating His Resume

Greg Sargent hears something similar to what I’m hearing about Republican plans for a possible Democratic push to pass elements of health care reform through reconciliation. [A senior GOP aide] said the leadership — Senators Mitch McConnell , Jon Kyl , Lamar Alexander , etc. — are discussing how to exploit the fact that the reconciliation process allows for an “open-ended amendment process.” That means there’s no limit on the number of amendments GOPers can offer, the aide said, or on their subject matter. A senior Democratic aide confirmed that this is the case — and that it’s a concern weighing on Dems. “If you bring a reconciliation bill to the Senate, it’s a free for all of amendments,” the GOP aide said, cautioning that this was only part of the overall strategy. “There is no way to limit the number of amendments that are voted on. You can’t close debate. Democrats will have to vote on every politically perilous amendment that you can possibly think of.” There’s a consensus that reconciliation is too politically thorny for Democrats to use right now. Earlier today, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) shook his head when I asked him if Democrats could use the process — it was “tradition,” he said, only to use it for budget issues, which was why reconciliation was fine for deep tax code changes but not fine for health care reforms.

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The Drama of Reconciliation

Those reports about an $80 billion Senate jobs package? “Wrong,” a Senate Democratic aide told TWI. The staffer indicated this afternoon that Democrats are weighing a number of proposals to tackle the unemployment crisis but remain undecided about which route they’ll go. The $80 billion package, the aide said, was just one option that happened to leak to the press. “Everything that was in that document has changed,” the aide said. “It is not at all where we are now.” One detail from those reports, though, is probably accurate. The Democrats will likely push an extension of unemployment and COBRA benefits separately, the aide said.

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Dem Aide: Reports of $80 Billion Jobs Bill Are Wrong

The National Republican Congressional Committee  is up on the air in South Carolina with an ad not-so-secretly aimed at getting Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) to reconsider his career options. But the striking thing about the ad is its claim that “Spratt’s the architect of legislation Democrats may use to ram through a government takeover of health care.” What does that mean? The NRCC spells it out in the press release that was sent to reporters. They’re knocking Spratt “for his authorship of a budget plan that would allow Pelosi and Congressional Democrats to ram government-run healthcare through Congress using an arcane procedure known as reconciliation.” They explain: The budget that Spratt designed allows Democrats to strong-arm the government takeover of healthcare through the Senate with only 51 votes necessary to advance the bill, instead of the 60 votes required in the upper chamber. So whether or not Democrats use the tools available to them and pass the health care bill, they’re going to get hammered on it. This has been obvious for weeks.

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Running Against Reconciliation

When the health care reform bill passed the House in November, I reported that anti-abortion rights groups thought they’d pulled a number on Democrats by backing Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) anti-abortion funding amendment instead of demanding that conservative members kill the bill outright. In a Friday interview with CNSNews, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) looked back and agreed with the pro-life activists. I want to give great credit to the pro-life Republicans and Democrats who took a stand in the House of Representatives on the traditional language that was encompassed first in the Hyde Amendment and then in the Stupak-Pitts Amendment – so, I think it played a critical role. There was some anger from libertarian-minded activists that Republicans didn’t kill the bill back in November–pro-life groups argued that Democrats would have found the votes anyway, and that Supak-Pitts would cause trouble for the majority down the line. It looks like a smart strategy.

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Did the ‘Stupak Bomb’ Explode?

The upshot of the news that Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden–son of the vice president–won’t run for the state’s open Senate seat is that Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) is now prohibitively likely to take the seat over for Republicans. Delaware Democrats, who have dominated the state for the better part of a decade, have a bench of second-tier candidates to draw on. But Castle, who’s held statewide office in Delaware since the 1980s, is the most popular politician in the state. And Biden’s pass on the race will be national news, an indication that Democrats are panicking about bad polls and bad economic numbers and don’t want to stake their careers on the whims of 2010 midterm voters. A secondary effect of Biden’s decision may come when Tea Party activists–they’ve got a strong presence in Delaware–take a second look at Castle and decide whether it’s worth backing a primary challenger to protest his vote for cap-and-trade legislation. GOP activist Christine O’Donnell had been considering a race; with the stakes considerably lowered, expect to hear more about a possible challenge there.

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Beau Biden Out; Republicans Look Set to Take Delaware Senate Seat

A new Rasmussen poll has Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) trailing Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)–rumored to be interested in a challenge, in the wake of the Massachusetts upset–by only three points. Bayh, who was on nobody’s list of endangered Democrats last month, is the sort of senator who found himself endangered in last two elections of the Bush presidency. He regularly visits TV studios to state his concerns with the administration’s policies. But he never really votes against them. Complaints about, for example, how much Congress is spending, are matched with votes for more spending. It’s a tactic that’s sapped Bayh’s credibility with conservatives and angered liberals.

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Pence 47, Bayh 44

So suggests Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who ushered the Democrats’ health reform bill through the Senate HELP Committee last summer. Party leaders have been scrambling for ways to pass some version of their sweeping reform proposals in the wake of Scott Brown’s astonishing Senate victory in Massachusetts Tuesday. Today, Dodd told reporters that the best course might be to “take a breather [from health care] for a month, six weeks,” The Hill reports . That would allow Democrats to move on to legislation addressing double digit unemployment. But how it would help them to pass health reform remains to be seen. In fact, it would only allow critics more time to drum up further opposition among voters — a sport at which they’ve been pretty good up to now.

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A Six-Week ‘Breather’ on Health Care Reform?

Perhaps the strangest element of Capitol Hill’s months-long health reform debate has been that Democrats — proposing to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans while banning the worst abuses of the insurance industry — have been branded a public enemy, while Republicans — hell bent on killing the reforms — have somehow been cast as populist heroes. Continuing that theme, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), senior Republican on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, told reporters today that GOP leaders have no interest in getting health coverage for everyone, Merrill Goozner reports . His idea of reform? Allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines; limiting medical malpractice awards (”enough to pay for reform,” he said); creating high-deductible, high-co-pay plans for the uninsured (”we’re not trying to get to universal coverage”); and setting up special pools to make insurance more affordable for small business. If that sounds familiar, it should because it is essentially the same plan that was offered by Sen. John McCain and rejected by voters just 14 months ago. Surprising? Not in a town where tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also celebrated as a victory for the middle class.

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GOP Congressman: ‘We’re Not Trying to Get Universal Coverage’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) press conference at the Capitol this morning is churning dramatic headlines about how health reform is dead. But she really doesn’t say that. In fact, she says just the opposite. “We have to get a bill passed — we know that,” she said . “That’s a predicate that we all subscribe to.” She added: “I don’t see the votes for it at this time. … In every meeting that we have had, there would be nothing to give me any thought that that bill could pass right now the way that it is.” [Emphasis mine.] And that may be true. But remember that the same could have been said at almost any point during both the House and Senate debates last year. It required all kinds of concessions and back-room deals to get Democrats on board, which is exactly how these things work. Don’t think for a second that similar negotiations aren’t happening right now to get reluctant House Democrats behind the Senate bill, which remains the quickest way for party leaders to pass their top domestic priority and move on to the economy , which needs some addressing if they want to fare better in November than they did this week in Massachusetts. The health care bill, under this scenario, couldn’t be altered. But there’s nothing to prevent the persuasive sweeteners from showing up in some other must-pass bill further on down the line.

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Pelosi: House Can’t Pass Senate Health Bill ‘At This Time’

BOSTON — At his morning press conference, Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) seemed more miffed than flattered by a question about whether he had “presidential timber.” He apologized for being tired, and meant no disrespect, but it was a “silly question.” Nonetheless, Max Fisher is collating the Brown-for-president talk on the web, which starts with Matt Drudge, who has had a “will he run for president” headline leading his site for around 15 hours. From my vantage point, it’s cute but ridiculous. If voter anger at the Democrats has taught us anything, it’s that a superstar can fall very fast, and Brown has perhaps the least-examined record of anyone elected to the Senate in modern times. How many Republicans are aware, as he reminded reporters today, that Brown voted for the Massachusetts health care plan? Still Brown’s rise as a positively adored GOP superstar is going to scramble the alignment of power and influence in the party. It’s not yet clear how it will happen. But watching Fox News’ re-runs of election coverage last night, and watching Sarah Palin literally phone in comments about a campaign she had nothing to do with, seemed significant.

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The Brown-for-President Boomlet

Josh Kraushaar , Mike Allen, and Jim Vandehei get the rumor mill churning with their report that Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), considered a dark horse 2012 candidate for president, is now looking at a 2010 run against Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). None of them have quotes from Pence that point more to 2010 than 2012 (”American people are telling Washington, DC enough is enough”), or more than this assertion: Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who now might draw a challenge from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said the party needs to rethink its entire approach to governing. Whether or not Pence runs, this is the sort of thing the GOP needs — credible threats against incumbent Democrats to scare them into voting down their party’s agenda. Bayh, who’s never lacking for a platform to trash his party for not governing in a “moderate” enough way, is a good target for this.

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Mike Pence for Senate?

For Democrats left dumbfounded over Republican Scott Brown’s shocking Senate win in Massachusetts yesterday, the short response statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) probably won’t offer much solace. “Regardless of the size of their minority caucus, Senate Republicans have always had an obligation to join us in governing our nation through these difficult times,” Reid said. “Today’s election doesn’t change that; in fact it is now more important than before for Republicans to work with us rather than against us if we are to find common ground that improves Americans’ lives.” Translation: “Republicans, please cooperate and help us pass our legislative agenda before the mid-terms.” To which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is already saying, “Think again!” There has, of course, been no indication that Senate Republicans are interested in anything at all outside of stalling the legislative process this Congress — to the point that it took weeks of procedural maneuvering last year for Democrats to pass even the most popular and uncontroversial measures (think: unemployment insurance ). And that was in a non-election year. Much of that was the Democrats fault for biting on claims that Republicans were ever interested in compromise. Remember that it was Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) who agreed to take the Finance Committee’s health care negotiations into the August recess, as if the Republicans’ idea of give-and-take was ever something other than to demand that Democrats accept a GOP bill. (It wasn’t.) “A president with an activist agenda met a Senate all but incapable of action,” Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson wrote today. The string of delays meant that Democrats couldn’t focus on the economy to the degree that the Great Recession demanded. Meanwhile, unemployment skyrocketed and foreclosures soared. Health reform might be vital, but the results of the months-long debate haven’t been tangible — a message screamed by the voters in Massachusetts Tuesday. For Democrats, the troubling thing about Reid’s statement is that it pretends that Republicans will now change their strategy for some reason — as if McConnell wasn’t rooting for Brown yesterday. For Republicans, this is a win-win situation. Not only have they been successful in blocking the Democrats’ legislative wish-list, but they’ve reaped the political rewards of the inaction they’ve caused. If Reid and the Democrats now think that GOP leadership will suddenly become cooperative in the run-up to the mid-terms, they should prepare for the worst.

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Did Reid Get the Message?

BOSTON — At 9:20, the first rumors of Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race started to work around the room. A moment later, Doug Flutie turned around from a TV interview to face the crowded Park Plaza Hotel ballroom, give a thumb’s up, and say “won!” But nothing was official until 9:25 p.m., when Scott Brown’s daughter Ayla announced that Democratic candidate Martha Coakley had conceded the Senate race. The roaring applause lasted for two minutes before Ayla–a former American Idol contestant–serenaded the crowd with “Dancin’ in the Streets.” There’s no overstating the enthusiasm in the room. After the song, the crowd began chanting “Seat him now!”–a reference to rumors that Democrats will see how long they can hold onto the seat before Brown is sworn in. Then: “John Kerry’s next!” And then, most bitterly for Democrats: “Yes we did!”

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MA-Sen: Brown Wins

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who’s done plenty in recent months to alienate Democrats, won’t improve his standing with his comments today to Fox News. Asked by Neil Cavuto if he would switch to the Republican Party if the GOP somehow took over the Senate in this year’s elections, Lieberman declared that he has “no idea.” “That’s a big hypothetical a long away from now,” he said. “I was elected as an Independent but I remained a registered Democrat, so I’m with the Democratic Caucus.” Today’s tight Senate contest in Massachusetts, Lieberman added, is indication that Capitol Hill has grown too partisan — and voters are fed up. “The independents are speaking loudly around the country today and they’re telling us, one, to get together here in Washington,” he said. “The second thing really is to do something about the economy and move to the center and worry about things that [independents] are worried about.” That’s no music to the ears of liberals who were hoping that the pendulum swing away from the Bush administration might arc longer than just a year.

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Lieberman Calls for ‘Move to the Center,’ Doesn’t Rule Out Switch to GOP

With all eyes on the outcome of today’s shockingly close special Senate election in Massachusetts, Washington’s prognosticators are wondering what the Democrats will do on health care reform should GOP candidate Scott Brown steal the seat. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered two possibilities today, telling reporters that if Brown wins, Democrats could still get the bill to the White House before he’s sworn in — in which case Senate Democrats would still control the 60 seats needed to defeat a GOP filibuster. If that plan falls through, Hoyer added, House leaders are ready to rally the lower-chamber Democrats behind the Senate bill, which passed on Christmas Eve. “The Senate bill,” Hoyer said, “clearly is better than nothing.”

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Hoyer: Senate Health Bill Is ‘Clearly Better Than Nothing’

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) announced his retirement today , mixed–but mostly dire–news for Democrats, who were hopeful that he could hold on and defeat his likely, scandal-tainted GOP opponent Tim Griffin. One of the possible reasons for the retirement? A poll conducted by SurveyUSA , paid for by the progressive blog Firedoglake, which tested negative messages about the health care reform bill and whether it made voters sour on Snyder. A sample question: Under one proposal, if a person does not carry health insurance from a private insurance company, they would be fined up to 2% of their income. Is this fair, or unfair? The poll found that Snyder, already losing badly to Griffin, was four points further behind if he backed the bill. The question, raised by Nate Silver and others: Is Firedoglake trying to scare vulnerable Democrats into retirement in order to kill health care reform? All indications point to “yes.” I’m hearing that FDL will conduct more polls in vulnerable Democratic districts, based largely on this chart of the “top 20 Democrats who could lose their seat over health care vote[s]. Snyder was at the top of that list, posted by FDL’s Jane Hamsher on Jan. 6. (One irony: Snyder is a fairly progressive member of Congress, and not a member of the Blue Dogs.) Tension between FDL and some other progressive sites has increased since the Senate’s health care compromise took shape–Hamsher has campaigned aggressively to “kill the bill.” A month ago she predicted that “left/right populist outrage” would do so, and she hasn’t slowed down since.

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Did Firedoglake Take Out Vic Snyder?

Organizations connected to the Service Employees International Union reported spending $759,000 in independent expenditures on the Massachusetts Senate race in the past seven days, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The SEIU’s Committee on Political Education spent $665,000 on a television ad supporting Democratic candidate Martha Coakley and $20,000 on Internet ads and a newsletter opposing Republican Scott Brown, according to independent expenditures reported to the FEC. The group’s political action fund spent $74,000 on robocalls on Tuesday. Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund dropped $10,000 today on get-out-the-vote phone calls for Coakley and The League of Conservation Voters Inc. spent $350,000 on an ad supporting Coakley in the past week. Brown has his own share of issue advocacy groups stepping in to aid his campaign during its final days. The National Rifle Association spent $19,800 on postcard mailers for Brown, while the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, connected to TeaPartyExpress.org, spent $146,000 to support Brown through media buys and online messaging in the past week. Candidates are prohibited from coordinating with groups that choose to make independent expenditures on federal races.

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SEIU, Tea Partiers Flood Massachusetts With Cash

The McCain campaign veteran who was a merciless and effective critic of Democrats at The Weekly Standard’s blog is leaving the magazine. “After seven really wonderful years at THE WEEKLY STANDARD,” Goldfarb wrote in an email to friends, “today is my last day. Next week I’ll be joining Orion Strategies here in Washington.” Orion Strategies last made the news when McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann was attacked for his work with the firm, which he founded, on behalf of nations like Georgia. Goldfarb acknowledged the connection in his email: “I guess we’re all Georgians now!”

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Goldfarb Leaves Weekly Standard

That’s how much Scott Brown is reportedly still raising from online donors, a day after Jon Ward of the Daily Caller broke the news of the fundraising surge. There’s very little in the way of Democratic optimism right now–I am hearing that Democrat Martha Coakley’s internal polls show the same floundering that public polls do–but what little exists is bolstered by stories like this one in Politico . All Republican guns are blazing, but that doesn’t translate to a ground game that can compete with the union and machine ground game that Democrats are mustering. It’s Republican activists in states like Texas manning the phones for GOTV calls. Nonetheless, there’s a growing sense that Coakley, by failing to campaign hard and define the race (and Brown) in December, might have created a GOP opening that’s impossible to close.

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One Million Dollars a Day

In the final stretch of the Massachusetts special election for Senate, Republican candidate Scott Brown has focused on “restoring balance” to Washington. He’ll be the “41st vote” to filibuster legislation; the Democrats’ hold on 60 votes has let liberals run the country into the ground. “That’s not what the founders intended,” he said Monday during the final debate. The irony is that if Democrats lose the seat, they will have had a working 60-seat majority for all of four months — much of which was spent with the Senate in recess. They opened the Congress in January with 58 votes, counting the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), not counting Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), whose razor-thin victory was held up by lawsuits from former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). On April 28, 2009, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) switched to the Democratic Party , bringing the Democrats to 59 votes without Franken. When Franken was finally sworn in on into the Senate on July 7, 2009, the badly ailing Kennedy was unable to vote and break filibusters. Kennedy died on Aug.25, 2009, but it took Massachusetts Democrats — who run every aspect of their state government — a full month to pass legislation seating a replacement, Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.). He took office on Sept. 24, 2009. Only then, and only depending on whether Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) was well, did the Democrats have a supermajority. Whatever happens in Massachusetts, I’d expect the clamor on liberal blogs and op-ed pages for filibuster reform to increase in volume. Right now the Democrats have the worst of both worlds — the appearance, but not the reality, of total control of Congress.

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The Four-Month Supermajority

A Survey USA poll has Tim Griffin, the former U.S. attorney from Arkansas who resigned over the 2007 scandal over the politicization of appointments, up by 16 points over Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.). The reason for Snyder’s trouble is, no surprise, the unpopularity of health care reform legislation in a district that went heavily for the McCain-Palin ticket.

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U.S. Attorney Scandal Figure Leads Big in Congressional Bid

The Cook Political Report, calling it “one of the toughest [calls] we’ve had in a long time,” joins the Rothenberg Political report in calling the Coakley-Brown race a “toss-up. The modern electoral history of federal statewide races in Massachusetts argues strongly that while state Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic nominee, could have a close race, at the end of the day it’s unlikely that she ends up losing. After all, no Republican Senate candidate has won in the Bay State since 1972.  But the non-quantitative arguments are quite strong. Republican Scott Brown has been the superior candidate with, by a long shot, the better campaign. The universal agreement that Coakley has botched up an almost un-losable campaign is the only silver lining for Democrats here, as they look toward, best-case, a narrow win.

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Massachusetts: Toss-Up

The Club for Growth is hustling to put up the signatories of its pledge to repeal whatever health care reform bill gets through Congress. The big names among the (so far) 21 candidates: Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio, Republicans who have stunned the establishment GOP by becoming serious contenders for Senate seats. Patrick Hughes, who’s having somewhat less success challenging Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in Illinois, is also on board, as are two of the Republican candidates for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.)  seat.

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Marco Rubio, Rand Paul Sign Health Care Reform ‘Repeal’ Pledge

The first number is how much Democrats say their Senate candidate in Massachusetts has raised since sending out an email appeal yesterday from Vicki Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). The second number is how much MoveOn.org says it’s raised with its own appeal. By comparison, Republican candidate Scott Brown raised around $1.2 million with a “Red Invades Blue moneybomb” on Tuesday. There’s no longer any doubt that Democrats have engaged with the race — Vicki Kennedy is also cutting a TV ad for Coakley — but the candidate can’t quite catch a break. Today’s micro-controversy centers around her comment to a Boston Globe reporter that she considered racking up more endorsements better for her campaign than “shaking hands outside Fenway in the cold,” a remark that’s drawn the ire of Republican former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.

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$700,000 + $600,000 for Coakley

In a post making the convincing case that the national interest in the race has hurt GOP candidate Scott Brown’s chance at an upset victory in the Massachusetts, Markos Moulitsas makes a point I hadn’t heard elsewhere. [H]is moneybomb on Monday was the first real moneybomb conservative activists have ever pulled off (the Paulites are libertarians) . This has definite parallels to OH-02 in 2006, when we raised big money for Paul Hackett. While we narrowly lost that race (like Brown hopefully does), it was a big step ahead for us as a movement, teaching us how to effectively rally around a movement candidate. Well, Brown is the conservative movement’s Hackett. This is important, even if it truncates some history. Republican congressional candidates Jim Ogonowki (2007) and Jim Tedisco (2009) were adopted by the conservative “rightroots” and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in moneybombs, although they lost their elections. But this race quickly confirmed that the conservative base, for all the talk of civil war between activists and leaders, desperately wants to influence the GOP and bring it some election wins. Kos also captures some of the liberal anger at Coakley, whose decision to hoard cash during the one-month campaign–a decision that let Brown go on the air, and define himself and the race, before she did–is being blamed for making Democrats burn through money they’ll need in November.

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The First Republican Moneybomb?

For supporters of the bill to grant Washington, D.C., a voting representative in Congress, it may be 2010 or never. At least that’s the warning coming from former Rep. Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who championed the D.C.-vote bill for years — to no avail. You might remember that the proposal came as close as it’s ever come last year, passing the Senate in February, but not before conservatives attached an amendment scrapping most of Washington’s gun-control laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. That provision created a dilemma for the liberal Democratic leaders in the House, who supported the underlying bill but not the gun amendment. As a result, the bill has been sitting idle for almost a year. But Davis, Roll Call  reports today, says Democrats should hold their noses and pass the whole package this year — or else. “This window closes at the end of this session and probably well before that,” said Davis, who now works at Deloitte Consulting. “I would take the medicine if that’s what you have to do. It’s not the way it should be done, but given the reality, I would take it with the gun language.” The reason for the urgency is this: The bill also creates another House seat for conservative Utah — a provision that won the support of some Senate Republicans, who likely wouldn’t have voted for the bill otherwise. Trouble is, the 2010 Census is expected to yield Utah another lawmaker without congressional intervention. Take the Utah chip away, and Democrats are left without much leverage to gather GOP support — leverage they might need considering that two Senate Democrats voted against the bill the first time around. Roll Call again: “The Utah seat is important,” conceded Ilir Zherka, executive director of DC Vote. “We are very aware of the need to act as quickly as we can so that we can enact a law that fulfills the vision all of us had.” Of course, while this political skirmish continues, the roughly 600,000 folks living in the nation’s capital have no true voice in Congress. How’s that for democracy?

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Running Out of Time on the DC-Vote Bill

The big, Drudge-approved video from last night’s Massachusetts Senate debate is this one , in which GOP candidate Scott Brown says the seat he’s running for is “not the Kennedy seat and it’s not the Democrat’s seat — it’s the people’s seat.” I’ve been following the race for a while and this struck me as odd for two reasons. Reason No. 1: Democrats have fretted for a while now that Martha Coakley’s sleepy campaign hasn’t sold Democrats on the necessity of voting on Jan. 19 to preserve Ted Kennedy’s legacy. And here’s a viral video of the GOP candidate dismissing the idea that voters should preserve Kennedy’s legacy. A fist-pump moment to Kennedy-haters, but there are far fewer of them in Massachusetts than Kennedy-lovers. Reason No. 2: Back on December 29, Brown launched his general election ad campaign with a commercial called “Different People, Same Message.” It began with President John F. Kennedy — who held this seat from 1953 to 1961 — talking about his 1962 tax cuts, and continued by fading into Brown finishing Kennedy’s speech, in his words. Not only did it give away the fact that the Kennedy name remains very, very popular in Massachusetts, it gave Democrats an opening to thwack Brown when he turned around and said, as he did in this debate, that it was unfair to compare him to George W. Bush (”I’m Scott Brown!”) and unfair to call this the Kennedy seat. Coakley, who’s missed a lot of opportunities, missed that one too. Brown then: Brown now:

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It’s Not the Kennedy Seat, Except When It Is

A prominent children’s healthcare advocate in Montana is putting pressure on Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee, to fight for a provision of the Senate’s health reform bill that would preserve the Children’s Health Insurance Program. House Democrats are pushing to terminate CHIP in 2014, but John Morrison, former state auditor and now head of Healthy Montana Kids, writes today that such a repeal would reduce the number of insured kids in the state. From Morrison’s op-ed in today’s Billings Gazette: There are about 9 million American children covered by CHIP. The number is expected to grow to 14 million by 2013 when the House bill would eliminate CHIP. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that many of the children already covered by CHIP will wind up uninsured because their families will not be able to afford the insurance exchange. Baucus, to this point in the debate, has been all over the board on whether to salvage CHIP. Recall that when he first introduced his reform bill in the Finance Committee, he proposed a CHIP repeal similar to that found in the House bill. Just days later though, it was Baucus’ decision to bring up an amendment to reauthorize CHIP through 2019, in effect overturning his own proposal. He then voted for that provision, which was adopted as part of the Senate bill. Even more recently, Baucus  told Montana’s Great Falls Tribune that the Democrats’ successful 2008 push to expand CHIP was the single most significant legislative accomplishment of the last decade. Tough to make such claims and then advocate a full repeal of the program. In Washington, though, stranger things have happened.

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Pressure on Baucus to Fight for CHIP

The GOP’s candidate in the Massachusetts special election raised more than one million dollars — double the goal — in a 24-hour “moneybomb” on the Ron Paul model. The event itself, and its presentation, bespoke the confidence of a campaign that the slapdash organization of Democratic candidate Martha Coakley hasn’t defined as out of the mainstream to Massachusetts voters. It was billed as “Red Invades Blue.” As conservatives from outside the state clicked to donate, a map of the Bay State washed from blue to red. And as the money rolled in, Brown debated Coakley and promised to filibuster Democratic bills if elected as the “41st vote” in the Senate — the framework popularized by conservatives on Twitter.

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$1.3 Million for Brown

In case  you missed it, TWI’s David Weigel spoke with NPR’s Liane Hansen yesterday about Democratic retirements, Michael Steele and the 2010 elections on “Weekend Edition.” Listen after the jump.

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Weigel Handicaps the 2010 Elections on NPR

This is a starling quote from the omnipresent Larry Sabato, who tells the Boston Herald that Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s “light schedule of campaign events” is evidence of a lazy campaign that’s wasted a big lead in the Massachusetts special election. That’s not the money quote; this is. In a competitive state, Coakley would be well on her way to losing. If the Democrats lose, they deserve to have health care go down. That’s right–Coakley’s losing ground not because of health care, but because she’s running a lazy campaign. And if she loses, the Democrats “deserve” to have the health care bill fail. That’s some serious spin — it makes a wintry special election more important than the presidential election, 435 House races, and 34 Senate races that produced the current executive and legislative branches. And expect to hear more of that. The Herald piece also gets into spin I’m hearing from a lot of Republicans — that, in the words of John Feehery, interim Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.) “should’ve just shut up” instead of telling a reporter he’d vote for the health care bill no matter who won the special election. That doesn’t quite wash — Kirk would have caused a firestorm among liberals if he suggested that he’d vote against Ted Kennedy’s life’s work depending on who turned out in a January special election. But it’s become a rallying point for conservatives who, in the face of a less lazy Coakley campaign, are trying to keep up a push against her “arrogance.”

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Tomorrow’s Conventional Wisdom, Today!

Understanding the Democrats' Scheme American Thinker Many laymen still don't understand how the ACORN scam works. To them, ACORN's excuse that they are merely committing voter registration fraud, … and more

The GOP candidate in the Massachusetts special election for Senate will be on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show tonight , according to David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix. This is all becoming extremely reminiscent of the conservative push for Doug Hoffman in NY-23: After flying under the radar for weeks, he became a cause celebre and made the rounds on conservative talk radio and TV. The timing may have been off; Democrats portrayed him as a tool of extreme right-wingers, and they ended up surging from behind to win the race. The difference in Massachusetts is that Brown, who’s always had major party backing, started organizing on the ground much earlier than Hoffman. The other difference, however, is that Massachusetts is far safer Democratic territory than NY-23.

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Scott Brown on Hannity

This part of RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s press release “On Democrat Withdrawals From 2010 Elections” has all the hallmarks of news cycle giddiness. The successes in Virginia and New Jersey combined with the last month of Democrat withdrawals, retirements, and switches, show that the Republican Party is solidly gaining momentum and is going strong into 2010. The real question is whether Harry Reid, now the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrat, will follow Chris Dodd’s lead and step aside. Clever — Reid is now one of the few incumbent Democrats who trails some of his potential Republican rivals, and The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza ranks him as the most vulnerable non-Dodd Democrat. But there are few measures by which Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col0.) are not more vulnerable, and Reid’s well-known strategy is to batter his second-tier GOP challengers with negative ads and win a new term.

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Steele: Hey, Maybe Harry Reid Will Resign

My colleague Mike Lillis speculates that the retiring Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) could become a major advocate for the coal industry and a strong opponent of climate legislation. It’s a good theory, although I have to say that my initial reaction to the news of his retirement was, well, kind of the opposite: that free of electoral pressures, he’d be more likely to back a cap-and-trade bill. Now, Dorgan has certainly been no friend to cap-and-trade advocates of late — he made that clear enough in his July op-ed in The Bismarck Tribune, “Reduce our CO2, yes … but cap-and-trade, no.” But his criticism of the legislation has centered primarily on the market-based approach to carbon capping, and he’s actually expressed support for a cap in general, provided it mitigates the effects of higher energy costs on consumers. Political realities, however, made it tough for him to put his weight behind cap-and-trade. North Dakota is not only a solidly red state, it’s also a coal state. You can be sure that support for a measure that has a liberal, anti-coal reputation wouldn’t do Dorgan any favors in a campaign against the tremendously popular Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.). Joe Romm of Climate Progress agrees that Dorgan might now be more likely to support cap-and-trade, writing , “Let’s say for now that Dorgan is 50-50 or better to vote for the final bill — and maybe higher for at least cloture.  After all, what possible reason could he give to support a filibuster?” Of course, this is all predicated on a Senate climate bill in 2010 — a hefty assumption, given some Democrats’ reluctance to tackle the contentious issue in a difficult political environment . But since just about everyone expects the Democratic majority in Congress to shrink after the midterm elections, if the Democratic leadership truly wants to pass climate legislation — and it’s given every indication that it does — it’ll have no real choice but to act this year. And Dorgan’s newfound political freedom could prove a boon to the prospects for passage.

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Dorgan’s Retirement Could Be Good News for Climate Legislation

Not many party strategists were talking last night, but come January 2011, that’s who many expect to be filling the Senate seats of, respectively, Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd. Hoeven, the phenomenally popular governor of North Dakota since 2000, was already leagues ahead of Dorgan in polls that assumed the senator would run for re-election. Democrats, taken by surprise, don’t have a deep bench in the state. NRSC and RNC comments on the Dorgan retirement were joyful–it “ highlights just how vulnerable both Senate and House Democrats have become,” said Michael Steele. Blumenthal, the equally popular attorney general of Connecticut since 1990, has frustrated Democrats with his unwillingness to jump into tougher statewide races. But Dodd is vacating the first open Senate seat in the state since 1980. This is the sort of race, say Democrats, that the attorney general has been waiting for–Republican frontrunner Rob Simmons had been benefiting from Dodd’s scandals.

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Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

First it was Byron Dorgan ; now Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has decided to throw in the towel : Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the embattled Connecticut Democrat who was facing an increasingly tough bid for a sixth term in the Senate, has decided to step aside and not seek re-election, Democrats familiar with his plans said Wednesday. Mr. Dodd, 65, will announce his decision at a news conference later in the day in Connecticut.

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Et Tu, Dodd?

Just when you thought breast cancer screening couldn’t get any more confusing, two national medical groups issued new mammogram guidelines Monday recommending that women begin routine screenings at age 40. Issued by the Society of Breast Imaging and the American College of Radiology, the guidelines contradict controversial recommendations released in November by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which suggested that routine screenings shouldn’t begin until age 50. “The significant decrease in breast cancer mortality, which amounts to nearly 30 percent since 1990, is a major medical success and is due largely to earlier detection of breast cancer through mammography screening,” lead researcher Carol H. Lee, a radiologist at the New York-based Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said in a statement. ”It should be remembered that mammography is the only imaging modality that has been proven to decrease mortality from breast cancer. However major efforts continue to build on this success by developing additional methods to screen for early breast cancer.” The Task Force guidelines stirred a storm amidst the congressional debate over the Democrats’ health reform bills, not least because those proposals would  use some of those recommendations in setting coverage floors for insurance plans operating on exchanges.

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New Mammogram Guidelines Contradict Controversial Task Force Recommendations