The Auditor’s race was even tighter than we thought. The following numbers come from the SoS website:

Martha Abbott, Underhill, Progressive 23,545 9.3%
Randy Brock, Swanton, Republican 111,486 44.4% 
Jerry Levy, Brattleboro, Liberty Union  4,229 1.6%
Thomas M. Salmon, Rockingham, Democratic 111,349 44.4%
Write-in Votes  108 0.0%

That’s a measly 137 votes seperating Douglas’s right-hand, GOP go-to guy in the Auditor’s office from Dem challenger Tom Salmon Jr. This means a couple things – one, that Salmon should call for a recount, as I’ve seen more than half that number turn around in a single house district. Two, it means that if just six-tenths of one percent of Martha Abbott’s voters had voted for Salmon instead, Brock’s political career would be over.

Now clearly, if Abbott hadn’t been in the race, it’s indisputable from looking at these numbers that Salmon would’ve won. So although I would rather she hadn’t gotten into the race months after Salmon had already made his intentions known, it may surprise you to read that I’m not all that worked up about it. The fact is that Salmon’s race was so non-existent, it felt almost insulting to me as a voter. Abbott, on the other hand, busted her butt and had a solid campaign. So sure, if I ran the zoo, I’d rather have Brock out and Salmon in, but I aint shedding any tears over it, and can hardly bring myself to blame anybody for feeling so annoyed at having their vote taken for granted by Salmon that they decided to withold it. Candidates have a responsibility to run for the office they float their names for. If they don’t feel the need to, I have little use for them.

But as I’ve said before, if this is the best Brock can do against an opponent like this, Democrats have no excuse not to find a candidate who will actually campaign and bounce him right outta there in 2008.

( – promoted by odum)

Cross-posted at The Next Hurrah and Daily Kos. Which I tell you, because I was told people cared.

So, Democrats have won back the Congress. Impeachment is “off the table,” but Pelosi apparently stands by her assertion that the most valuable part of the victory will be "subpoena power." We’re going to have investigations. And the environment is "target rich" enough, it seems, so that Rep. Henry Waxman, the presumptive chair of the Government Operations Reform and Oversight committee (the Republicans changed the name from Operations to Reform and Oversight in the wake of their 1994 victory, perhaps preemptively overcompensating for their later intention not to conduct any) says, “The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose.”

But as we’ve discussed in the past, (albeit at other blogs) it’s entirely possible that the "administration" may simply refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas (or may comply only very selectively), whether by invoking the power of the "unitary executive" to block the service of those subpoenas and/or the prosecution of charges of contempt of Congress (the presumptive penalty for non-compliance), or by engaging in a delay-and-litigation strategy aimed at running out the clock before the issues are settled in court — if they can be settled there at all.

Recall that Congressional subponeas are served by the U.S. Marshals Service, and contempt is prosecuted at the discretion of the U.S. Attorney, both under the control of the "unitary executive." And that Cheney has said he will not testify, even if subponaed. And that the "administration" is apparently promising to resist any effort to curtail executive power with "a cataclysmic fight to the death" that will  include a program "to assert that power, and they’re going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."

Now, some would describe the "cataclysmic fight to the death" as the nightmare scenario. But that scenario at least has a likely ending that’s capable of settling the question: impeachment. The nightmare scenario for me — and likely for emptywheel, as well — goes like this:

Investigations proceed (whether necessary or not). Subpoenas are issued. Assuming their proper service, the "administration," depending on who gets the first subpoenas, perhaps asserts the "tradition" argument. As Cheney put it to George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve talked a lot about the consequences of the Democrats taking over congress in the last week. Nancy Pelosi said this: “we win, speaking of the  Democrats, we get subpoena power.” If you’re subpoenaed by the Democrats, would you go?
CHENEY: I have no idea that I’m going to be subpoenaed. Obviously, we’d sit down and look at it at the time. But probably not in the sense at that Vice President and President and constitutional officers don’t appear before the Congress.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s your view of executive power? You?re not going to go up and testify.
CHENEY: I think that’s been the tradition. I can’t  remember the last time a President did appear before the Congress. Or a Vice President.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Gerald Ford, I think.
CHENEY: That’s right. But not on a subpoena, he did it on his own.

Failing that, the next fallback position is litigation, with a particular eye toward running out the clock. What to litigate? Well, litigators themselves know that you can sue over just about anything. And those who’ve watched this "administration’s" litigators know that they’ll go to court with cases that a few short years ago would’ve had you pissing your pants with laughter. So why should this one be any different? They’ll be claiming that for Congress to compel testimony from the executive — and particularly from certain high-ranking officials on matters bearing on "national security" — is… a violation of the Constitutional separation of powers.

And, if you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor and are ready to move on: they’ll be right.

Or at least, they’ll have a colorable claim. Because there really is some truth to that. For the legislative branch to be try to compel some particular action from the executive does raise exactly that issue. Now, it’s true that the legislative branch orders the executive to perform particular actions all the time: furnish thus and such information, prepare a report on this or that by some date certain, etc. Or at least, that used to be the case. But those who’ve followed the story of Bush’s record-shattering numbers of signing statements know that the "theory" this president most often relies on in issuing them is his "inherent power" to act as the nation’s sole authority in matters of "national security" (and maybe others, or any), unconstrained and unconstrainable by either the Congress or the courts.

The intent, of course, is to run out the clock until January 2009, and then moot the whole thing, leaving the Nixon/Reagan/Bush doctrine locked in place by this "ratchet" system, waiting to be pushed forward by the next Republican elected to the White House.

But along the way, Democrats who had counted on taking impeachment "off the table" and depending instead on their plan to expose the wrongdoing of the Bush "administration" will find that they’re once again stuck defending the "nuanced" position, against a White House brazenly claiming the mantle of True Defenders of the Constitution, as always, in defiance of all logic. We’ll be stuck in the position of seeking to violate the separation of powers in order to nail the "administration" for violating the separation of powers — a doctrine we were for, before we were against, I guess. And at the end of the rainbow? A pretty good chance the courts will say, "This is a political problem. You know what your remedy is."

Then, the clock strikes noon, a successor is sworn in, and so it is that this panoply of impeachable crimes joins those unpunished in the wake of Iran-Contra.

(JD’s been busy. – promoted by odum)

So, Peter Welch is going to be our next congressman.  Have you ever asked yourself where his contributions come from? Well, you can find out at Open Secrets, by the Center for Responsive Politics. There’s a wealth of information here, including breakdowns of business, labor, PAC’s, etc. You can look up any U.S. Senator or Congressperson.

So who donated to Peter and, based on that, what can we expect? In political action committee (PAC) contribution breakdowns, Peter got 11.8% from business, 43.4% from labor, and 44.8% from ideological/single issue PAC’s. So it is a safe bet that Peter will be a friend to labor interests. Hopefully, he will support trade policies that will benefit the American worker, and will not support more NAFTA-like agreements. His top contributors were unions of different stripes; teachers, firemen, you name it.

Of the companies that were in the top, Burton snowboards and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters were ones I noticed. Better than Exxon-Mobil, no doubt. Nothing surprising about large Vermont businesses giving donations to political candidates.

I looked up a few of the PAC’s… ‘Forward Together PAC’ seems to be a PAC set up for the purpose of electing Democrats. I couldn’t find much info on it, but ‘Our Common Values PAC’ seems to be of the same kind. Committee for A Livable Future is another Dem PAC, but its purpose is ‘to help elect Democratic Members of Congress who support the policies and principles that will make the U.S. government a partner in building and maintaining livable communities that embody smart growth principles.’ That one sounds pretty good to me. Welch also received $10,000 from the abortion rights group, NARAL.

To be honest, I didn’t see anything to disturbing or shocking. I was expecting something questionable to show up. His top industry contributor were lawyers and law firms ($107,650), no surprise, especially considering that Welch himself is a lawyer. He did receive $2000 from defense industry PACs. Not surprising either.. it’s small, and there are a few defense industries in the state (it would be nice if he didn’t take it, though).

You can even see expenditures there. He spent $34 at Dunkin’ Donuts… if that doesn’t send up a red flag, what will?

So, what does this all mean? Well, as I said before, Peter’s going to be a friend to labor. He’s solidly pro-choice. I think he’ll work to get contracts for the small defense industry (something Pat Leahy has done quite well), good or bad depending on where you stand on that. And he probably won’t support much in the way of tort reform or lawsuits that limit corporate liability (good). All in all, I think it’s a mixed bag, but definitely one that is more in support of our values than against. We’ll see what happens. Whatever the case, as I’ve said before, we need to be vigilant with the Democrats and if they don’t  do the right thing, we’ll let them (and others) know about it.  There is another whole issue underlying this as well… the very idea of how much money gets tossed around in campaigns and wondering what is expected in return. That’s also a big part of the problem.

ADDITION – Tues A.M.: I cross posted this to my site and Daily Kos. On my site, former VT  U.S. Congress candidate Dennis Morriseau asked me about  pro-Israel contributions to Welch. Here was my response:
I spent about an hour researching this, and couldn’t come up with anything. I then called someone I knew who used to work in the State Department and also worked with AIPAC. Apparently, AIPAC does not contribute money to candidates. Their main focus is lobbying. Welch did not take money from the Women’s Alliance for Israel PAC, nor from the Women’s Pro-Israel National PAC. Bernie didn’t either. There is a list of pro-Israel PAC’s here that you can go through (I don’t know if they are single-issue Israel or PACs that are multi-faceted as well as Pro-Israel) here –
http://www.opensecre…
I looked through a few of them and couldn’t find any contributions to Welch. The only thing I could find was a voter guide on the National Jewish Democratic Council’s Voter Guide, at http://njdc.org/take…
It says, according to the questionnaire they sent him, that he is a ‘strong supporter of Israel’, but I couldn’t find any specifics other than that.

You can read more of JD Ryan at five before chaos. But why would you want to?

If you haven’t heard already, Windham Senator Peter Shumlin has returned to his old position as Senate President Pro Tempore, defeating Windsor Senator John Campbell for the post.

Congratulations are due to Shumlin, an able legislator and articulate spokesperson for Democratic values. As I previously diaried, there was reason for optimism and concern had either candidate won, but Shumlin has often reached out to the activist left and has come out in favor of many issues near and dear to the hearts of progressives (such as IRV and state-initiated impeachment options), so there is certainly reason for optimism.

However, Shumlin did earn a reputation last time around for playing political hardball, not only against political opponents, but on occasion against allies as well (such as progressive advocacy groups and some Democratic colleagues). In this era of blogs, citizen journalism and an energized base that expects a bit more from its elected representatives, that sort of thing is not liable to fly. I’m optimistic that Senator Shumlin will be able to step up as a true leader who will respect both his caucus and the voters and help continue the process of making Vermont a national leader in progressive policy.

UPDATE about 5 minutes after I posted this: I’m even more confident now. I guess when I come home and blog, I oughta check my inbox first. Waiting for me was an email from Sen. Shumlin in response to the diary from yesterday, and sent before this afternoon’s meeting where the leadership was decided. It was a great and encouraging email, and I don’t think he’d mind me reprinting this last paragraph:

It is a close race, and I am grateful to John Campbell for running a thoughtful and ethical campaign.  We have done the same. At the end of today we will put our arms around each other and work together.  We have much to do based upon the challenges that Vermont is facing and not enough time to get it done.  Working harmoniously will be our key to success.

Amen, Peter, and welcome back.