By Azi Paybarah

February 17, 2009 | 4:59 p.m

Michael Bloomberg might have gone and hired John McCain’s former director of communications, Jill Hazelbaker, but it's going to take more than that to impress Phil Ragusa.

 “I don’t really know who she is," said Ragusa, the Queens County Republican chair. "Is she from New York?”

Hazelbaker, is, in fact, from Oregon.

“I wish her lots of luck, but she’s not a local person,” said Ragusa. “I think he has to do a lot more than that.”

Bloomberg is set to meet with Republican county chairs on February 25, when they will decide whether to allow him to run in their party’s primary.

By Jason Horowitz

February 17, 2009 | 1:18 p.m

In a move to boost his credibility with Republicans, Michael Bloomberg has hired former McCain campaign spokesman Jill Hazelbaker to work on his reelection bid.

The hire comes in the run-up to Bloomberg's February 25 meeting with the city's Republican county chairs, who will decide whether to allow him to run in their primary.

(Asked by Azi at a press conference today about the fact that he still hasn't guaranteed himself a spot on the Republican line -- or any other, for that matter -- Bloomberg offered a terse non-response: "I don't know who you're addressing the question to. I'm not running the campaign. If you're talking about my election, you'll have to talk to the campaign.”)

Bloomberg has already hired a string of Democratic operatives to work on his reelection including Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Bill Thompson, and Basil Smikle, who was working on Anthony Weiner's campaign up until recently.

Bloomberg aide (and former Clinton campaign spokesman) Howard Wolfson sent out the announcement about Hazelbaker in an email, which includes a quote from John McCain:

 

By Leon Neyfakh

January 5, 2009 | 1:07 p.m

Against all odds, the first book out of the gate on the 2008 election comes not from The Washington Post’s Daniel Balz, Time’s Mark Halperin, or Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, but Niall Stanage of Ireland’s Sunday Business Post, whose account of Barack Obama’s fight for the nomination and his victory in the general election has been available in bookstores on the other side of the ocean since early December.

Mr. Stanage, who regularly filed pieces from the campaign trail for this paper in addition to the reporting he did for the Sunday Business Post, said his book—entitled Redemption Song: An Irish Reporter Inside the Obama Campaign—is being officially released in the United States today.

How did Mr. Stanage get it done so fast?

"Around February, I realized that there was something fairly special going on with Obama," he said, "but I knew that no publisher would take it on until he was the nominee, or at least the overwhelming favorite to be the nominee."

In May, he secured an agent, and flew to Ireland to meet with publishers the following month after the primaries ended. A few were interested, according to Mr. Stanage, but in the end a decision was made to go with a relatively young but well-established independent house called Liberties Press.

"I started actually writing the book on the weekend of July the 4th, and by election day I had everything but the final chapter and the preface written," Mr. Stanage said. "Those were submitted exactly a week after election day."

The bulk of the editing was already done at that point, so Liberties was able to send the finished book to the printer around November 18th and have it in stores less than two weeks later.

Finding an American publisher who could move as quickly proved difficult, Mr. Stanage said, so Liberties linked up with the distributor Dufour Editions and just shipped the Irish edition here instead. This explains the subtitle—"An Irish Reporter Inside the Obama Campaign"—which Mr. Stanage, who has been living in New York for five years, said he would have preferred to scrub from the American edition because it makes the book sound like more of a niche product than it is.

"The 'Irish' thing is slightly odd," he said. "There's only one chapter in the book that deals with Irish-related issues, and other than that it's a pretty straight account from the 2004 speech to the night he was elected president. The Irish thing is quite a small component."

The alternative, Mr. Stanage said, was to wait until April or May, which would mean giving up a big chunk of his advantage over competing projects from Newsweek's Evan Thomas (which according to Amazon.com is out this week from PublicAffairs), Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson (whom Viking has scheduled for the second half of 2009) and Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (whose account of the election is coming from HarperCollins in the fall).

"It's difficult for a book that is identified as being from an Irish writer from an independent publisher rather than one of the big corporations to make a big dent in terms of bestseller status," Mr. Stanage said, in response to a question about his expectations for the book. "That said, I don't think it's out of the question that it'll do reasonably well. It's a substantial enough book that’s out there early enough to do something."

By Steve Kornacki

December 14, 2008 | 10:06 p.m

Like the sun rising in the east and the L.A. Clippers losing more games than they win, you can count on the losing candidate in any election talking about putting the nastiness of the campaign in the past and giving the winner a chance to succeed.

In that sense, John McCain’s comments in an extended interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday were utterly unremarkable. Asked to define his role in politics now that Barack Obama will be president, the vanquished G.O.P. nominee replied: “I think my job is, of course, to be a part of and hopefully exert some leadership in the loyal opposition. But I emphasize the word loyal.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but not different from anything we’ve heard from the losing side in past presidential elections. When he and the first President Bush were forced from office by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, for instance, Dan Quayle said of Clinton, “If he runs the country as well as he ran his campaign, we’ll have nothing to worry about.” But Quayle and his fellow Republicans treated Clinton to one of the roughest presidential honeymoons in memory.

But there is something different about the position McCain is in right now compared to past non-incumbent presidential losers: He’s still in office (and recently announced plans to seek another six-year Senate term in 2010) but, at 72 years old, has absolutely no illusions about ever running for president again. We really haven’t seen this combination in modern times.

Some losing candidates have stayed in office like McCain, but they all believed – however irrationally – that another White House run might be in their future if they played their cards right.

John Kerry is a perfect example of this. When it became clear that he’d come up short on election night 2004, he made sure to offer a quick and gracious concession the next morning, the better to avoid the “sore loser” tag. Then, after offering a few weeks' worth of obligatory bromides about uniting the country and pulling for the president to succeed, he moved into 2008 campaign mode, loudly objecting to George W. Bush’s agenda in the Senate in an effort to convince the left he would be in 2008 everything he hadn’t been as a candidate in 2004.

Kerry’s plan, of course, was never going to succeed. He had blown an election that Democrats believed could and had to be won. There are no second chances after that kind of failure. But Kerry didn’t grasp this. Clear through 2005 and 2006, he was running for president again, even headlining a major Democratic dinner in New Hampshire weeks before the '06 midterm election. The proximal reason he didn’t end up running was the toxic reaction to his “botched joke” on the eve of the '06 vote. Absent that, who knows if wiser voices would have ultimately prevailed on him and kept him out of the '08 race? What is clear is that Kerry returned to the Senate after his '04 loss not to legislate, but to run for president again.

The same has been true of the other sitting senators who have lost modern presidential elections. George McGovern, even after coming within inches of a 50-state wipeout in 1972, still believed he could secure a future Democratic nomination. He won reelection in South Dakota in 1974 and then began positioning himself to step in late in the game and claim the 1976 Democratic nod. (Back then, it was still customary for major candidates to skip some or all of the primary season and to bid for the nomination behind the scenes.) His plan failed, and even after losing his Senate seat in the Republican landslide of 1980, McGovern still wouldn’t drop his White House dreams. He ran for the Democratic nomination again in 1984 (his best showing was third place in Massachusetts) and even toyed with trying again in 1992, when he was 70.

Hubert Humphrey was not actually a senator when he lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon (he had given up his seat four years earlier to become Lyndon Johnson’s vice president), but he successfully returned to the chamber two years later, in 1970, so that he could position himself for the presidency again. He sought the 1972 Democratic nomination, losing out to McGovern, and while he never officially entered, he did all he could do to entice Democrats into “drafting” him in 1976. Like Kerry and McGovern, his post-campaign Senate service was hardly focused on finding ways to work with his old opponent’s administration.

Other unsuccessful nominees have simply disappeared from politics. Walter Mondale, a former vice president when he lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984, exiled himself to his native Minnesota, where he began practicing law. He briefly considered running for the Senate there in 1990 (when he begged off, Paul Wellstone entered the race) and emerging once again in 2002, when Democrats needed an emergency candidate after Wellstone’s death days before the election.

Michael Dukakis still had a job when he lost to George H. W. Bush in 1988, but when he returned to the Massachusetts governorship, he found a state in fiscal collapse, with an ugly recession looming. Within months, he swore off a 1990 reelection campaign and watched his popularity slip under 20 percent in his final year in office. He has been in academia since 1991.

McCain is different from all of these men. His Senate seat makes him an automatic player in national politics, but his age makes it pointless for him to use that role to position himself for another presidential campaign. Theoretically, this puts him in position to do what every losing candidate promises (and fails) to do: to help the winning candidate govern successfully.

A comparison to one more defeated candidate, Bob Dole, might be relevant. Dole, like McCain, long harbored presidential aspirations, and actually ran for the job three times. Through it all, he was never particularly liked or respected by the Republican Party’s conservative base, and it could be painful to watch Dole pretend to share their values in an effort to keep them from revolting against him and denying him his dream. The same, roughly, was true of McCain these past few years.

Once Dole lost to Clinton in 1996, though, he recognized that the it was over. He was 73 years old. He’d actually quit his Senate seat six months earlier in an effort to jump-start his campaign with a dramatic gesture. Dole was free to be Dole. There was no pressure to sabotage Clinton and to attack Democrats at every opening, no fear of fomenting a mutiny on the right. It’s not that Dole underwent an ideological overhaul, but he was publicly complimentary of Clinton and even found ways to work with his old foe. Clinton even awarded Dole the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

McCain, like Dole after '96, doesn’t really need to fear the right anymore. If he really is at odds with his party’s base on issues like immigration and the environment or, for that matter, on cooperating productively with the Obama administration -- he has the freedom to express those differences without worrying much about the political cost. And, with his clout in the Senate, he is in position to do more than just talk.

Whether he’ll take advantage of his position to work closely with the new president is anyone’s guess. But the fact that it’s even plausible is nearly unprecedented.

By Azi Paybarah

November 20, 2008 | 11:10 a.m.

Jennifer 8. Lee noted today that a number of Hillary Clinton's would-be successors were in one place this week when Governor David Paterson visited the New York congressional delegation in Washington D.C.

Among the most talked-about potential promotees in the delegation are Brian Higgins, who has the distinction of not being from New York City or downstate, Nydia Velazquez, who was described by one Paterson aide as "a twofer," since she is a woman and a Hispanic and Kirsten Gillibrand, who is, well, a woman from upstate.

The argument for each of them, in other words, is based largely on demographics.

But maybe that's the wrong way to think about it.

Political consultant Joe Mercurio, for one, is of the view that we're supposed to be beyond all that now.

In an email to me this morning, Mercurio said, "Identity politics should be dead in the new Obama political era. Paterson would gain politically by a selection process that favored the best and the brightest to replace Hillary, and he would ultimately be harmed if old style tribal politics guided his choice."

By Steve Kornacki

November 13, 2008 | 10:44 p.m

Nothing is official yet, but the momentum seems to be on Joe Lieberman's side in his bid to retain his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Needless to say, this is a distressing development for Lieberman's many passionate critics on the left, who believed that his fervent support of John McCain -- and occasional elbow in Barack Obama's face -- combined with the Democrats' beefed-up Senate majority would be enough for the party's caucus to jettison him once and for all.

But that's not how things have played out since last week's election -- and it really shouldn't come as a surprise.

The Lieberman saga began, of course, after the 2006 elections, when Senate Democrats, locked out of the majority for all but 16 months of the previous 12 years, found themselves with 49 seats. The chamber's two independents, Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders, were needed to put them in control -- and Sanders, who insisted on retaining his independent status while reliably siding with Democrats, wasn't really an issue.

But Lieberman was. Back in those days, he was embittered by his party's abandonment in that fall's Connecticut Senate race and emboldened by the comfortable victory he nonetheless racked up as an independent. Returning to Washington after his home-state triumph, he seemed intent on poking a stick in the eyes of all of his Democratic tormenters. Needing his vote, Senate Democrats had no choice but to abide him.

So it was that Lieberman, declaring himself an independent Democrat (as opposed to his campaign season pledge to return to the Democratic fold), was handed the Homeland Security gavel anyway in January 2007. Then he began settling scores, bluntly attacking his party and its leaders for their posture on Iraq and other national security issues and hinting that he'd be open to backing a Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

Some on the left shouted for Democrats to cut Lieberman loose on the spot, citing an agreement that Majority Leader Harry Reid had worked out after the '06 election with G.O.P. leader Mitch McConnell that didn't provide for control of the chamber to change partisan hands if Lieberman -- or any other senator -- switched allegiances to the G.O.P. Reid and his colleagues resisted, though, in part because the agreement with McConnell was a technicality: In practice, had Lieberman declared himself a Republican, the G.O.P. would have howled (to considerable effect) that Democrats were clinging to fine print in an effort to rule the chamber from a minority position.

By the end of 2007, Lieberman formally endorsed John McCain, whose G.O.P. primary campaign was in the beginning stages of its revival at the time, and began touring the country at his side. As it became clear that McCain would secure the Republican nomination and face Obama in the fall, Lieberman's visibility increased, with McCain strategists seeing him as the perfect ambassador to independent voters.

McCain's primary-season triumph also introduced the possibility that Lieberman might be asked to serve as his running mate, a development that would have made him the first person ever to serve on the national ticket of both major parties. Lieberman was publicly dismissive of such talk (as all good would-be VPs are), but his moves telegraphed genuine interest. McCain, it became clear over the summer, was just as excited by the idea.

As this vice presidential intrigue was building steam, something else was becoming clear: The Democrats were going to be in better -- much better -- position in the Senate come 2009. By this past spring, Democrats were beginning to dream of a 60-seat majority. Not a single Democratic incumbent appeared to be in danger, while Republicans in some of the deepest red states were fighting for their lives, swimming against an anti-G.O.P. Congressional tide every bit as strong as the one in 2006.

These two developments -- McCain's desire to put Lieberman on the G.O.P. ticket and the Democrats' overpowering strength at the Senate level -- put Lieberman in a tricky spot. To mollify a skeptical G.O.P. base and secure McCain's VP slot, he'd need to ratchet up his attacks on Obama and begin distancing himself from some of his more liberal views, particularly on social issues. But the harsher his attacks on Obama, the worse position he'd be in to bargain with Senate Democrats if he had to return to the chamber after the election.

Lieberman tried to preserve both options. In the spring and summer months, as his VP prospects seemed to brighten, he launched a series of sharp and widely reported attacks on Obama.

"If we did what Senator Obama wanted us to do last year, Al Qaeda and Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized," he said in one Fox News appearance.

After Obama appeared at the AIPAC conference the day after clinching the Democratic nomination in June, Lieberman held a conference call in which he questioned Obama's commitment to Israel and his understanding of Iran. That led Obama to personally confront Lieberman on the Senate floor. When it became clear that Lieberman would speak at the Republican convention, he seemed on course for an irrevocable split with his fellow Democrats.

But then he cooled off. The reason: Conservative activists and Republican establishment figures, many of them eager to secure the No. 2 slot for Mitt Romney (to position him for a future White House run) launched a campaign to deny Lieberman a spot on McCain's ticket. McCain tried to fight it (he noticeably burnished his own anti-abortion credentials over the summer) but ultimately gave in, opting instead for Sarah Palin.

That, in turn, led Lieberman to pivot. Had he been tapped for the G.O.P. ticket, he would have been all-in with McCain, ready to burn all of his bridges with Democrats in the fall campaign in an effort to win the White House. His sharp spring and summer rhetoric would have been a mere preview of his general-election assault against his old party and its candidate. But after McCain snubbed him, Lieberman was forced to consider his future in the Senate -- and the reality that Democrats would be its dominant party after the election, and probably for years to come. So, instead of shredding Obama, he switched gears and began instead focused on talking up McCain. His much-anticipated G.O.P. convention speech, for instance, was devoid of red meat (and just about any mentions of Obama, for that matter) and put much of the audience to sleep. A VP nominee Lieberman, no doubt, would have delivered a much sharper address.

Lieberman, clearly, was thinking ahead to life in the Senate. He stuck by McCain through the fall, but mostly resisted lashing out against Obama. (It could have been much worse.) At the same time, he continued voting with Democrats on most issues outside of foreign policy.

As a result, the campaign ended last week with Senate Democrats in a forgiving mood, even if the party's grass roots still want blood. Most Democrats in Washington are happy to have Lieberman aboard for most Senate votes -- especially with the party now so close to a filibuster-proof 60 votes -- and wouldn't be inclined to move against him just because he endorsed a losing presidential candidate. They needed more motivation than that, and by reining himself in this fall, Lieberman didn't provide it.

By Matt Haber

November 13, 2008 | 10:56 a.m.

Martin Eisenstadt, principal of the Eisenstadt Group and Senior Fellow at The Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy is on a the mind of a lot of bloggers and cable news talent bookers lately. Apparently Mr. Eisenstadt, as an adviser to Senator John McCain, leaked the story that former G.O.P. Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent and not a single country. That bit of news was picked up by many, many media sources including Fox News, whose Carl Cameron's on-air telling of the anecdote Media Mob saw fit to include in a round-up of post-election bashing of Governor Palin. He also spread the rumor that Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher was spotted "canoodling" with Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig and that he might appear on The Bachelor. That little story made it to Politico's Shenanigans blog, written by Anne Schroeder Mullins, and then the New York Post on Nov. 4, in a "Campaign Morsels" sidebar that is not online, but was recounted in New York magazine's Daily Intel blog.

And who can forget back in August when Mr. Eisenstadt revealed that Paris Hilton's family was offended with the McCain campaign for an ad that compared Senator Obama to Ms. Hilton and Britney Spears.

This election year, Mr. Eisenstadt has been full of great scoops. He's also been completely full of it.

As The New York Times' Richard Pérez-Peña reports today, there is no Martin Eisenstadt, no Eisenstadt Group, and no Harding Institute. Mr. Pérez-Peña is not the first to reveal this—Daily Intel actually picked apart Mr. Eisenstadt, with the help of SourceWatch—in their retraction of the Joe The Plumber/Kristen Wiig story, but The Times has a lot more info on the men behind the fake G.O.P. adviser.

Mr. Pérez-Peña reveals that "Martin Eisenstadt" was created by Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish to make a point about the gullibility of the media (and, natch, pitch a TV project). Writes Mr. Pérez-Peña:

While blogs and 24-hours cable news channels may be a new playground for pranksters to pull their shenanigans, Messrs. Gorlin and Mirvish are far from the first media-savvy hoaxers to prey upon reporters and show bookers. Alan Abel and Joe Skaggs were pulling off these sorts of stunts when the two would-be filmmakers were still in short pants.

Adding to the confusing hall-of-mirrors (fake G.O.P. advisers! fake think tanks!), Mr. Pérez-Peña also reports today (with Brian Stelter) on yesterday's fake New York Times, which prompted Martin Eisenstadt—Or is it Eitan Gorlin? Or Dan Mirvish? Who knows anymore?—to proclaim on his blog Hoax New York Times puts hoax version of Martin Eisenstadt on front page!

How does Mr. Pérez-Peña even know he was speaking to the real fake Martin Eisenstadt? He apparently asked an unnamed colleague, as he explains in a somewhat cryptic aside:

Whatever. Just take the red pill.

 

By Steve Kornacki

November 12, 2008 | 10:18 p.m

In the middle of the 20th century, the national Democratic Party was being pulled in two radically different and fundamentally incompatible directions, the most loyal components of its coalition divided by racial politics.

Since the Civil War, the party’s most reliable base of support had been in the South, where voters were known to boast that they’d sooner cast a ballot for a yellow dog than for a Republican. At the same time, Democrats also leaned on big-city machines in the North, whose leaders – heeding the cries of liberals like Hubert Humphrey – had concluded that their continued hegemony depended on reaching out to black voters.

For a while, the party tried to finesse the dispute, with mixed results. In 1948, Southerners walked out of the convention and nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond to run as a third-party candidate; he snagged four states worth 38 electoral votes, but – amazingly – Harry Truman still managed a slim Electoral College majority. The South largely returned to the Democratic fold in 1952, 1956 and 1960, but in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson was forced to choose once and for all between the two regions. As he prophesized at the time, his signature on that year’s Civil Rights Act essentially signed the South away.

From that point, a decades-long political realignment unfolded, one that mostly favored the Republican Party. A solid South helped elect one G.O.P. president after another, and ultimately produced a Republican Congress in 1994. By 2004, when George W. Bush and that Republican Congress were reelected with essentially unanimous Southern support, G.O.P. boasts of a “permanent Republican majority” were widely accepted as fact.

But what wasn’t appreciated in 2004 is, in the wake of the 2006 and 2008 elections, finally becoming clear now: The realignment triggered during the civil rights era triggered another realignment, with other regions of the country reacting to the Southern dominance of the Republican Party.

The first signs of this, in hindsight, were evident in the mid-1990s, when the Northeast, once a region defined by progressive Republicanism, shifted dramatically into the Democratic fold. The trigger was the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, when the culturally conservative Southerners who’d begun drifting to the G.O.P. in 1964, declared their takeover complete by taking charge of the U.S. House.

Independent voters in the North, who had long seen the G.O.P. as a fiscally conservative party that had among its members a scattering of Southern lunatics, could no longer fool themselves. States like New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont, once very competitive at the presidential level, painted themselves deep blue. New Jersey, for instance, voted for Ronald Reagan twice and George H. W. Bush in 1988, and Bill Clinton won the state by just two points in 1992. But in 1996, two years after the G.O.P. revolution, the state sided with Clinton by 18 points, and it hasn’t been competitive since.

In 1994, eight Republicans held Congressional seats in New England, including two in Massachusetts. That number has done nothing but decline since then, and with the defeat of Christopher Shays in Connecticut last week, it has hit zero. In '94, five New England Republicans served in the Senate; today there are two. And Northeast states that already leaned toward Democrats have only grown more blue. Fueled by the defection of educated suburbanites outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been reliably Democratic in the last five presidential elections. Maryland and Rhode Island now regularly produce some of the widest Democratic margins in the country. And New York, after 40 years, has finally elected a Democratic majority in its state senate.

It’s just as true now as it was 50 years ago that the themes that resonate in the South are met with revulsion in the North, and vice versa. Just as it took some time for Southern voters to realize the extent and depth of the national Democratic Party’s abandonment of them, it’s taken a while for the Northeast to fully reject the G.O.P. But now, up and down the ballot, the region is overwhelmingly Democratic.

But that’s not the end of the story for the G.O.P., which could survive even without winning a single Northeast state; after all, the region, thanks to stagnant and declining populations, is only waning in influence. The problem is that the early signs of a similar realignment are now evident in other regions

Just consider the electoral map produced by last week’s election. John McCain handily won solid victories in nine Southern and border states (including West Virginia, even though it isn’t technically a border state) worth 69 electoral votes. Add in a handful of Prairie and Western states worth 22 electoral votes (Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Kansas and all of Nebraska except one congressional district) and you have what has become the die-hard Republican base – 91 predominantly Southern electoral votes.

Where can the G.O.P. build on this in future elections? Well, the Northeast is out of the question, as long as the party continues to be a vehicle for the Deep South. Plus, the Northernization of Virginia, Florida and North Carolina has made those states somewhat resistant to the appeals that have worked so well for the G.O.P. in the heart of Dixie. While the G.O.P. can win all of those states in the near future – McCain came very close to doing so, particularly in North Carolina – the longer-term prognosis is questionable. Georgia, which McCain won by five points, is probably safe for the G.O.P. for now, but it is also changing (albeit more slowly).

Texas has also been an anchor state in the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy, and its 34 electoral votes -- a number likely to increase in the next round of redistricting -- will probably be safe for the G.O.P. (except in a landslide) for the next few elections. But the growing clout of Hispanic voters, who have swung sharply to the Democrats in '06 and '08, portends more long-term trouble for a G.O.P. defined by narrow Southern interests.

Without a lock on the South and with no chance to make inroads in the North, that leaves the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states as future targets for the G.O.P.

But here, too, their Southern strategy seems to have caught up with them. Colorado, Nevada and Mew Mexico – worth a combined 19 electoral votes – defected from the G.O.P. fold this year, a combination of rising Hispanic influence and a turn against the G.O.P. by independents. New Mexico and Nevada, which gave Obama lopsided victories, may be lost for good for Republicans; Colorado could still be competitive. Arizona, where McCain’s home-state status keyed his win, is in danger of slipping from the G.O.P. column for the same reasons, as is Montana, where McCain narrowly won. Voters in these states, like those in the Northeast 14 years ago, seem to be deciding that they don’t want to be identified with a party that defines itself by culturally divisive politics.

The Midwest, where McCain lost every state to Obama, is at least theoretically a better target for the G.O.P. going forward, since it does contain many socially conservative voters who are willing to live with the kind of rhetoric that plays in the South. McCain had limited success tapping into these voters, but the task might have been impossible this year – they are more liberal on economic issues and, with the collapse of the economy, were furious with the ruling Republican Party.

If the G.O.P. is intent on pursuing its Southern strategy in the years ahead, it must realize that this will mean not just writing off the Northeast, but also wide swaths of the West and the South itself. The only hope for the party, then, would be to break through in the Midwest, which would mean balancing cultural conservatism with an economic populism that could play in the Rust Belt. This, needless to say, would be a wholesale departure from the party’s traditions of fiscal conservatism. But it may be the only way to build a winning coalition.

By Jimmy Vielkind

November 11, 2008 | 4:49 p.m

ALBANY—An analysis of election returns shows two red spots in New York, a state that otherwise got much bluer last week.

In Niagara County, John McCain lost to Barack Obama by 357 votes, compared to George W. Bush, who in 2004 lost the county to Senator John Kerry by 461 votes. (You, too, can have fun playing with the NYT's map.)

Does this mean McCain is a better candidate than Bush? Obama a worse candidate than Kerry? Or nothing at all, because it is in no way statistically significant?

"We did what we could in terms of get out the vote, and McCain performed very well in our county and we were pleased with the results," said Henry Wojtaszek, chairman of the county Republican committee. Two candidates that won down the line, incumbent State Senator George Maziarz and Chris Lee, who defeated Alice Kryzan for an open congressional seat, also helped.

The other red spot is Montgomery County, which surrounds the City of Amsterdam on the Mohawk River. McCain actually beat Obama there (he carried two dozen around the state) by a margin of 1,836 votes. That's 63 votes less than Bush's margin of victory of Kerry, but the difference in percentage points for each candidate (McCain won by a 9.4 point margin, Bush by 8.9 points) appears to have been caused by an increase in the vote for third party candidates.

By Steve Kornacki

November 11, 2008 | 1:18 p.m

For a man who often found himself likened to Bob Dole during the presidential campaign, it's only fitting that John McCain will make his first post-election appearance on a late-night comedy show.

McCain is scheduled to appear on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" tonight, a move that calls to mind Bob Dole's visit to David Letterman's "Late Show" just three days after losing the 1996 campaign to Bill Clinton.

Dole had actually informally declared his candidacy on Letterman's show in early 1995 – "Yeah, I'm gonna run," he admitted as the host prodded him – but grew irritated during the campaign as Letterman savagely mocked his old age (73 on Election Day) night after night. So it was something of a surprise when Dole agreed to stop by on the Friday after the election.

And what a smart move it was. Dole had long been known in Washington for his dry self-deprecation, but his humor never translated through television during the campaign; all most Americans saw was a dour, gruff old man – the guy who fell off a stage in California and talked about "the Brooklyn Dodgers." (Many also remembered watching him growl at George H.W. Bush to "stop lying about my record" during their 1988 G.O.P. primary campaign.) But the Dole who sat down on Letterman's couch was full of punchy one-liners, showing a comedian's knack for turning every question into a quip.

"Bob, what have you been doing lately?" Letterman asked, upon introducing Dole.

"Apparently not enough," came the reply.

A full transcript of the appearance can be found here. (I searched in vain for a video clip.)

The Letterman appearance launched an unexpected second career for Dole, who had resigned his Senate seat in the spring of '96 and found himself unemployed after the election. His good-natured, lovable loser persona caught on. A Super Bowl ad for Visa – in which Dole returns to his hometown, only to find the locals unwilling to take a check from him – was cut and appearances on other talk shows and even a few sitcoms followed, as did a book of political humor. When he appeared on NBC's Meet the Press in November 1997, a year after his lopsided defeat, Dole was told by Tim Russert that he had become the most respected political figure in the country.

As a presidential candidate, Dole never caught on, and his campaign is justifiably remembered as one of the most aimless and least inspiring of the modern era. But in defeat he finally got his due as a genuinely funny and decent person – and his Letterman appearance played no small role in it. That's probably the same effect that McCain, who adopted an angry personality this year that masked his better nature, is aiming for right now.