The New York Times on the other side of all those "Democrats and Republicans had equal money" stories.
The next Senate was just elected on the greatest wave of secret, special-interest money ever raised in a congressional election. What are the chances that it will take action to reduce the influence of money in politics?
Nil, of course. The next Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has long been the most prominent advocate for unlimited secret campaign spending in Washington, under the phony banner of free speech. His own campaign benefited from $23 million in unlimited spending from independent groups like the National Rifle Association, the National Association of Realtors and the National Federation of Independent Business.
The single biggest outside spender on his behalf was a so-called social welfare group calling itself the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, which spent $7.6 million on attack ads against his opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes. It ran more ads in Kentucky than any other group, aside from the two campaigns.
What is its social welfare purpose, besides re-electing Mr. McConnell? It has none. Who gave that money? It could have been anyone who wants to be a political player but lacks the courage to do so openly — possibly coal interests, retailers opposed to the minimum wage, defense contractors, but there’s no way for the public to know. You can bet, however, that the senator knows exactly to whom he owes an enormous favor. The only name associated with the group is Scott Jennings, a deputy political director in the George W. Bush White House, who also worked for two of Mr. McConnell’s previous campaigns.
Really, is there even a point in running a campaign any more? Today's politicians could emulate the McKinley ideal and never leave their front porch. This isn't because they're so obviously superior. It's because their battles are being won for them by groups more secret than the villains in a spy movie.
Dana Milbank on a big miscalculation.
Back in July, when President Obama was deciding whether to take executive action on immigration before the midterm elections, I got into one of those cable-news debates that offer the president unsolicited advice from the unqualified.
I argued that the move would boost Hispanic turnout and rally a depressed Democratic base. Yes, it might hurt some vulnerable Democratic candidates, but it would cement Hispanic loyalty to the party in the long run: “It’s a question of, whose interest is he looking out for?”
My opposite, Bloomberg News’s Mark Halperin, countered against “inflaming” the Republican base. “There’s almost no competitive races where the Hispanic vote is going to be decisive,” he argued, and “there are a lot of Democratic strategists who say, ‘This will hurt our chances in the midterms. Why not wait until November to do it?’ ”
“So,” asked the host, “why are they even considering it?”
Replied Halperin: “My sources and I, we can’t figure it out.”
Let me deliver two political truths that should have been obvious before, but are more obvious now. 1) Cowardice never sells. It's just another way of allowing your opponents to define you. 2) If you find yourself following Mark Halperin's advice, you should really rethink... well, everything.
Leonard Pitts On the triumph of winning ugly.
“I continue to believe,” said President Obama, “we are simply more than a collection of red and blue states. We are the United States.”
The first time he said this, it brought the Democratic National Convention to its feet and made him a rock star. Ten years later, he’s a president halfway through his second term and he was speaking at a press conference the morning after the midterm elections, the morning after his party was drowned in a Republican deluge.
Doubtless, the president intended it as a statement of defiant principle. Instead it came across, to these ears, at least, as a rhetorical Hail Mary pass. It wasn’t so much that the president’s high-minded assertion was untrue as that it seemed immaterial. You wondered if anyone was still listening.
Even by the not-stellar standards of modern politics, the campaign of 2014 was a disappointment. It was the Year of No Ideas.
The Democrats had nothing to say and said it ineptly... The party presented no compelling argument for itself. It didn’t just lack the courage of its convictions; it also lacked its convictions.
The Republicans also had nothing to say, but they said it loudly and with great certitude: “Obama caused Ebola! Obama caused ISIS! Obama is going to give your job to an illegal! GOP: 2014!”
Now the leaders of both parties are spouting the usual cliches about finding ways to work together. And anyone who believes that will happen probably also believes singing an insurance company jingle will make your agent magically appear.
As always, you should just go read all of Pitts.
Okay. Come on in. Let's see what else is up.
Michael Novacek isn't so concerned with the past week. More the past billion years.
The 1.8 million species of living organisms so far identified and named are but a fraction of the totality of life on Earth. Thanks to the fossil record, incomplete though it is, we can estimate that more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. In a deep sense, our understanding of the future of evolution is rooted in the past.
When I told college friends years ago that I intended to study paleontology, they wondered why I’d want to pursue such a dreary, arcane field. And it’s true that field work is not obviously glamorous.
The search for sauropods and other big dinosaurs takes paleontologists to the barren deserts of Patagonia, western North America, China, Mongolia and South Africa. In the summer, temperatures can rise well above 100 degrees. There is virtually no shade; the wind howls relentlessly. Even with a team, prospecting is often solitary, involving miles of zigzagging up dry streambeds and through wind-scarred canyons.
The closest my wife ever came to leaving me wasn't over money or an affair. It was because I took her along on a dinosaur dig. Yes dear, I am still sorry. But really, what are a few million black flies, heat stroke, sleepless nights in a stifling tent, days of baking heat broken only by a punishing hail storm, compared to moments like this
Within a morning, we knew we had stumbled upon something extraordinary: Dozens of dinosaur skeletons, scores of delicate mammal and lizard skeletons, nests of eggs with embryos, and nesting dinosaurs were splayed out on the surface of a rocky amphitheater not much larger than a baseball field. The oviraptors found nesting on a brood of eggs were the first hard evidence, only hypothesized until then, of parental care among dinosaurs.
Moments that are still happening with amazing regularity.
Frank Bruni and the kind of scare too many of us have experienced.
I was in a surgeon’s waiting room, about to have a crimson hillock carved from my back. This, I’ve learned, is one of the rites of aging: Your body starts generating superfluous things that you wish it wouldn’t — hairs, pounds, moles — and the removal of some is a matter of survival, not vanity. In this instance I had a baby cancer between my shoulder blades, and it threatened, if unattended, to go from relatively harmless to decidedly unfriendly.
...We have tricks of the mind and tools of the spirit infinitely more potent than the ravages of time.
Its passage isn’t something I’m happy about. There’s a whole lot of downside, and I don’t mean just the odd growths, the weakening knees, the blurring vision and the crawling metabolism, none of which got the message that 50 is the new 40, at least not in my case.
I mean the lost ambitions. There’s a point at which you have to accept that certain hopes and dreams won’t be realized, and 50 sure feels like it.
As you might guess, Bruni just turned fifty, but if it sounds like this article is all Debbie Downer, give it a chance.
David Primo and Trung Dang on the no-so-tight relationship between stocks and politics.
How much do investors care about election outcomes?
In the wake of Wednesday’s stock market rally, in which both the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average rose sharply a day after the midterm elections, pundits suggested that the answer was “quite a bit.”
Such things are easy to speculate about — but harder to prove. The main problem is that the buying and selling of stocks at any given moment is a result of many different factors, and you need to somehow isolate an election’s impact on such trading. ...
Are we claiming that congressional elections never matter to investors? No. A 1990 study published in the American Journal of Political Science found a significant effect of the 1980 Republican victory in the Senate — considered by many to be a surprise — on defense stocks. But as that study’s author observed, this event coincided with Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory, so this finding may reflect the “institutional synergy” caused by Republicans simultaneously taking the presidency and the Senate.
Look outside. The sun is coming up. Thanks, GOP!