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Looks like trouble is ahead for Senator Charles Schumer, D-New York, Chairman of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Daily Kos and assorted Lefties are already whining about their 2006 prospects, Dem Senate Candidate Recruitment Woes.

The 2006 mid-term Senate elections are now just 16 months away. Given how expensive state-wide elections are these days, it’s imperative to get an early start. But the Dems seem to be faring pretty poorly at recruiting candidates in a bunch of key Republican-held states

Bob Brigham has the full details - here’s the summary:

OH: The state GOP is mired in scandal. In Survey USA’s last 50-state poll, OH had one of the two lowest Bush approval ratings for a red state. And yet, we have no one running. (Though hopefully Sherrod Brown will.)

NV: The red state with the lowest Bush approval rating. And yet – gack – it appears that Harry Reid is giving John Ensign a free pass. I can’t stomach things like that.

IN: With Tim Roemer out, this seat is probably hopeless. As Bob observes, the guy wanted to run the whole party, but doesn’t want to even take a stab at his home-state Senate seat? C’mon.

ME: Olympia Snowe is actually more popular among Dems than Republicans. But Bush is hated up in ME. It’s well past time we try linking these so-called GOP “moderates” to the radical extremists in their party – a vote for Snowe is a vote for Frist/Lott/DeLay politics. We need someone who can draw that connection.

VA: No sign of Mark Warner running here yet.

MO: Nada, as far as I know.

PENNSYLVANIA: Rick Santorum is an anti-women theocon. The party bosses cleared the field for anti-women theocon Bob Casey, Jr. To date, the DSCC has failed to recruit a non-theocon for the race.

In Montana, Democrats have a dream candidate in Jon Tester. But we’re looking very weak everywhere else. And Nevada, what the fuck is up with that? Watching the DSCC flail and fail at candidate recruitment, I think it is clear that the top-down, Washington based days of candidate recruitment are over. It is time for the grassroots to run candidates, let the voters decide instead of the bosses, and get some movement. Once, the party committees were the only game in town, now they are one of many committees. Their relevance has been sinking for years and refusing to recruit and/or doing a piss-poor job is only reminding everyone they aren’t as relevant as they were and not as useful as they could be. It is still early, so maybe Schumer can turn it around. But in the first half of 2005, it is clear to all he has failed.

We do have some good candidates elsewhere, particularly Jon Tester in Montana. And I realize we have to play defense in a number of Dem-held states, such as Florida and Minnesota. But if we ever want to retake the Senate, we have to play more than a little offense too. Chuck Schumer, all eyes are on you.

Hugh Hewitt thinks their difficulty in recruiting good candidates is because of their bankrupt conspiracy theories and positions on the GWOT and the hole they are digging themselves on the upcoming SCOTUS nomination hearings.

Flap agrees but will go further – the Democrats have no issues upon which to campaign against an incumbent Senator. Historically, most Senators are re-elected unless their constituents perceive the country heading in the wrong direction or their Senator is not representing their state.

Senator Schumer has a tough job at the DSCC.

Sixteen months before the election, Flap forsees few Democrat Senate gains.

And to compound Leftie misery, PoliPundit has this piece about a possible Republican pick-up of a seat in Vermont, 2006 Vermont Senate Race.

Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner for the Senate seat in Vermont, prides himself of never having to run a negative ad in his bids for the state’s lone seat. Republicans hope that their nominee, Richard Tarrant, a likely self-funder, can spend a few million dollars knocking Sanders’ favorable ratings down. Given Sanders public pronouncements on both domestic and foreign policy, the possibilities are endless.

As I have said in the past, I am of two minds on this one. While I believe that the open Senate seat and the presence of a very strong Republican candidate presents the possibility of a pick-up where we least expected it (tempting), I also think that Republicans might benefit from having Sanders in the Senate so that every Democrat can have his or her record compared to his at election time (just as tempting).

— Alexander K. McClure

Yup, a tough row to hoe, Chuckie!

Happy family . . . Arnold Schwarzenegger walks through Sacramento’s Capitol building on the way to his inauguration as governor of California on Monday. With him are his wife, Maria Shriver, and their four children, from left, Christopher, Patrick, Katherine and Christina.

And despite poor poll results, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, should be smiling. Dan Weintraub in this piece in today’s Sacramento Bee, Surreal life of Capitol Democrats explains why.

These are strange times for the Democrats in the California Capitol. For them, it’s like being a kid with a hot sports car in the garage – but Dad has taken away the keys.

The Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, as they have for most of the past half century. They hold every statewide office but two.

One of those two is held by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Schwarzenegger’s approval rating has plummeted, and his plan to make 2005 his Year of Reform is teetering. He has already abandoned one proposed ballot measure, on public pension reform, and now another, to change the way political boundaries are drawn, is facing a potentially serious legal challenge because of discrepancies in the way the signatures were gathered. His proposal to overhaul the state budget process, meanwhile, is trailing badly in early polls.

Yet somehow, the Democrats still find themselves on the defensive.

They are on the defensive despite an excellent media campaign, thus far unanswered by the Governor, because of Proposition 75, which Weintraub calls “A Dagger Aimed For Their Heart”:

Public Employee Union Dues. Required Employee Consent for Political Contributions. Initiative Statute.

Prohibits public employee labor organizations from using dues or fees for political contributions unless the employee provides prior consent each year on a specified written form. Prohibition does not apply to dues or fees collected for charitable organizations, health care insurance, or other purposes directly benefiting the public employee. Requires labor organizations to maintain and submit to the Fair Political Practices Commission records concerning individual employees’ and organizations’ political contributions; those records are not subject to public disclosure. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Probably minor state and local government implementation costs, potentially offset in part by revenues from fines and/or fees.

Remember what former California Assembly Speaker Jess Unruh called MONEY – the Mother’s Milk of Politics. Thus,

The unions, and the Democrats who depend on them for much of their political money, fear this provision could seriously weaken their campaign firepower.

As a result, Democrats have left open the possibility of negotiating a truce with the governor in which he would renounce the measures he already has qualified for the ballot, plus the union dues initiative. In return, they would help him place a new slate of compromise proposals on the ballot and campaign with him for those measures.

“We’re keeping an open mind toward negotiating with the governor,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said Thursday. “We have been in talks with the governor about a peaceful solution.”

Make no mistake….. it is imperative for the unions to defeat this measure!

and…..

even if the Governor loses every measure in November 2005 – he still wins!and Weintraub agrees:

But even if they cut a deal with Schwarzenegger or defeat his measures in November, that still leaves Democrats with only the status quo, at best, from their perspective. And prospects for the near future beyond November are not much better.

Today’s best estimates show that in January the governor and lawmakers will be confronting another projected shortfall between revenues and spending, to the tune of about $5 billion.

The perpetual deficit – a result of the long hangover from the dot-com boom and bust early in this decade – means that, once again, Democrats will be fighting just to maintain the current level of state services, with any growth in spending going simply to provide the same services but to a growing population. Nobody is talking seriously about actually expanding government by adding significant new programs.

Núñez would like to raise income taxes on the most affluent Californians to increase education spending. But after floating that proposal in May and vowing not to pass a budget that didn’t include it, the Assembly leader quickly backed off, realizing that raising taxes, even on the wealthy, was not a winner in California’s current political climate. Any such move would likely have to come at the ballot box next year, after the dust settles from this year’s ballot fight.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are bottled up. Despite their superior numbers in the Legislature, they can’t do much to move their agenda forward in Sacramento, and they’ve been forced into a tactical retreat to defend their position in November. Until they regain the governor’s office, that speedy car of theirs is going to remain stuck in neutral.

Dan has it RIGHT and Flap will be looking to meeting and discussing these issues with him at the Bear Flag League Summer Conference in Pasadena next Sunday.

Won’t you join Flap and Dan Weintraub?

Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson

There seems to be Much Ado About Nothing about Karl Rove and Valerie Plame in the new Newsweek story regarding Matt Cooper’s sourcing of the Wilson-Plame affair, Matt Cooper’s Source, What Karl Rove told Time magazine’s reporter.

Captain Ed over at Captain’s Quarter’s has the correct analysis of this piece, Thin Reed On Rove.

In other words, Rove did not reveal Plame’s name, nor did he tell Cooper that she was on a NOC list or performing any kind of covert work. Moreover, he told Cooper the truth, as the Senate Intelligence Committee found out. As the Washington Post reported almost a year ago, Wilson repeatedly lied about the role Plame had in pushing him for the assignment to Niger, as well as the information contained in his report on Niger. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson or the public-relations offensive Wilson had launched to discredit the Bush administration by pointing out the conflict of interest that Wilson never acknowledged.

So far, this lead has gone nowhere in the Plame leak. Patrick Fitzgerald has done nothing but embarrass himself by jailing a reporter and turning her into a martyr over something that probably doesn’t amount to a prosecutable crime in the first place. It will be damned difficult to generate any outrage on behalf of a CIA agent who sent her husband on a public mission to undermine the American government during a time of war, mostly through lies and half-truths, and who now wants to hide behind a covert status that no one can actually establish applied at the time.

Fitzgerald needs to close the case and let Judith Miller out of jail.

While Leftie David Corn over at Huffington’s Post has Time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march?

The Left wants Karl Rove so badly because they cannot defeat him at the Polls.

But…… not this time OR EVER!

Individuals who should be prosecuted and frog-marched are Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson for being the double-crossing, self-serving dumbasses that they are.

And to the LEFT….. get another conpsiracy theory or YES blame the MSM, like Time and Newsweek.

Update #1

Dafydd over at Captains Quarters has this piece: If It’s Rove… Part Deux

It is easy to predict that the Left is going to have a field day with this, as indeed they should. In their usual nuance-trampling, black-and-white mode of attack, they will spin the Newsweek story like a top, twisting it to make it seem as if it “vindicates” all of their charges. But in reality, it explodes them like a soap bubble.

And from the profane comments that Flap has been moderating, it looks like the Moonbats are out ……. and the sun has not even set in the West!