In a 7 page feature article subtitled "A Portrait in Power",The Chicago Tribune examines Rahm Emanuel's role in the Democratic victory on election day.

During the past year, the Tribune had exclusive access to the strategy sessions, private fundraisers and other moments that shaped this victory. The newspaper agreed not to print any of the details until after the election. Now that the votes have been counted, the story of how Emanuel helped end an era of Republican rule can be told.

He did it, in large measure, by remaking the Democratic Party in his own image.

I don't think any one person was responsible for the Democrat's win. I'm sure Howard Dean, Charles Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, as Chairs of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Demcoratic Congressional Committee, as well as the netroots, all played a part.

The article is a major puff piece for Emanuel. As to his basic strategy:

Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy:

On Veterans Day, I am thinking about all the veterans who, after serving our country in the military in support of our nation's commitment to liberty and freedom, discover that our sentencing laws give little or no credit for their service.  I specifically have in mind the decorated soldiers Patrick Lett (story here) and Victor Rita (story here), both of whom now have their futures in the hands of appellate courts trying to figure out what Booker really means for federal sentencing.

More broadly, I wonder how many thousands of veterans are subject to all the severe collateral consequences that can often follow a conviction.  For example, I wonder how many veterans are unable to vote because they are disenfranchised by state law or how many veterans cannot live where they want because of residency restrictions or how many can no longer purchase a firearm because of a prior felony.

Pachacutec over at Firedoglake gives 12 reasons not to trust Chuck Schumer. Why is Schumer an issue? Because Harry Reid has asked him to stay on as the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for another two years.

Sources said Schumer has agreed to Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Harry Reid's request that he stay on as head of the Democratic campaign committee for another two years, partly to counter the growing influence of liberals like Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Reid and other party bosses believe Schumer's middle-of-the-road strategy in recruiting a fistful of moderate candidates to knock off GOP incumbents in red states is the only way for Democrats to hold onto or increase their power.

"You have to save the party from not drifting too far over," Schumer told The Post yesterday.

I'll add another reason: Schumer's checkered past endorsement of excessive wiretapping.

With the newly Democratic-controlled Senate, four of President Bush's terrible judicial picks may finally get axed for good, according to Neil Lewis in Sunday's New York Times.

There is a strong consensus that the four most conservative of Mr. Bush’s nominations to the federal appeals courts are doomed. Republicans and Democrats say the four have no chance of confirmation in the next several weeks of the lame-duck Congressional session or in the final two years of Mr. Bush’s term.

• William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s chief lawyer who was responsible for the much-criticized military interrogation policies;

• William G. Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for the mining and ranching industries and a critic of environmental regulations;

• Terrence W. Boyle, a district court judge in North Carolina; and

• Michael B. Wallace of Mississippi, a lawyer who was rated unqualified for the court by the American Bar Association.

As to Bush's options at this point:

Conservative blogger La Shawn Barber and I were on MSNBC this afternoon discussing possible 2008 contenders. I got to bash John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Not surprisingly, La Shawn agreed. They aren't conservative enough for her and are too conservative for me.

We also talked about Hillary and Obama. Both La Shawn and I thought Obama needs more experience and didn't know if Hillary would run. I said I'd like to see a woman in the White House, La Shawn thought she's too polarizing to win. Neither of us were big on Tom Vilsack.

As for who we would like to see run, I said Russ Feingold and John Edwards. La Shawn said Tom Tancredo, at which I burst out laughing.

If you'd like to watch the segment, you can do so here, courtesy of Hot Air. It was fun because I like LaShawn, and even though normally we don't agree on a lot, we did today.

In response to Greg Sargent's strong piece on the lesson of 2006 on Iraq, Ed Kilgore tries to rewrite the DLC history of support for Bush's Iraq Debacle. First Sargent:

Early on, anyone who suggested that Dems shouldn't be afraid to call for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq or to oppose President Bush on wiretapping or torture was subjected to a steady stream of withering scorn from allegedly in-the-know pundits. Those who backed Ned Lamont's antiwar candidacy were dismissed by David Broder and others in the D.C. opinionmakers guild as crazy, extreme, beneath contempt. In one typical example last February, Marshall Wittman charged that opposition to Bush's warrantless wiretapping program showed that "the Democratic Party is increasingly under the influence of modern day McGovernites," warning: "Let's get serious." It's a good thing indeed that Dems didn't heed the advice from Wittman and others that they get "serious," now isn't it.

That is exactly right. Kilgore tries to rewrite history.

I was reading WaPo's writeup on Jim Webb and it provides two perfect examples of the silliness of the Media and its labels and David Broder's independent centrism. First this:

Webb, a former Republican and Reagan administration official, said he might be a bit of a maverick in the Senate, which could frustrate Democratic leaders who poured more than $6 million into his campaign. "I have my own views, and I have a lot of experiences, and I think I can bring the experiences I had to issues rather than having to read off a party briefing sheet," Webb said Friday in an interview.

Of course that is true, but Webb became a Democrat because he agreed with Dem positions. He is an economic populist who is against the Iraq War. The word maverick, also applied stupidly to John McCain, shows how dumb this all is - Webb disagrees with McCain on virually EVERY issue, but they are both mavericks? It is so symptomatic of the Media that rather than look at positions on issues all they can think of is in terms of labels.

It is pretty funny that the Media is trying to turn the Democratic Party into the conservative party and I am all for it. But they have run into a tough reality - the common theme of Democrats is economic populism:

[M]any of these freshmen Democrats are hard to pigeonhole ideologically. Even among the most socially conservative, there is a strong streak of economic populism that is a unifying force.

It's as if William Jennings Bryan won. I am a free trader so this is not really good news for my economic views, but facts are facts.

Kevin Drum does some very good work here:

Why do I keep writing about the exit polls? Because of stories like this from the Washington Post's Alan Cooperman:

Religious liberals contended that a concerted effort by Democrats since 2004 to appeal to people of faith had worked minor wonders, if not electoral miracles, in races across the country. . . .

Once more with feeling: in the the overall national vote, Democrats picked up 5 percentage points compared to 2004.

. . . Among weekly churchgoers they picked up 3 points.

Among white evangelicals they picked up 3 points. . . .

All true. But Kevin, Dems won independents by 18 points and that was NOT a coincidental swing. It was the Politics of Contrast. Good show on this. But don't understate the importance of the Indy swing.

See also digby.

I totally don't get James Carville's attack on Howard Dean as Chair of the DNC. Carville wants Dean out and suggests replacing him with "bible-thumping" Harold Ford.

In an attempt to reinvent himself as a Bible-thumping good ’ol boy, Ford consistently voted — and ran hard — against his party’s mainstream, and even harder against its left flank. He sided with the Republicans on such controversial issues as the bankruptcy bill, the Schiavo bill, the torture, bill, and the wiretapping bill. Throughout his campaign, Ford never missed an opportunity to crow over his ability to frustrate and confound fellow Democrats.

As The Plank notes:

Perhaps he's not aware that under Dean in this midterm election the DNC has raised record cash — all hard dollars — including three times as much from major donors, eight times as much online and made a $30 million investment in the '06 cycle, three times as much as the DNC put into the last midterm. Not to mention we made an $8m overhaul of our voter file which was successfully used in 47 states and through the 50 state strategy invested in states like Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana and Montana where we had critical victories on Tuesday.

President Bush is pressing Democratic leaders to have Congress legitimize his warrantless surveillance program. That and confirming John Bolton to the U.N. are high on his agenda for the remainder of the year.

Happily, Democrats don't seem likely to play along.

Senate Democrats, emboldened by Election Day wins that put them in control of Congress as of January, say they would rather wait until next year to look at the issue. "I can't say that we won't do it, but there's no guarantee that we're going spend a lot of time on controversial measures," Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois said Thursday.

In Senate parlance, that means no.

As to where things stand on the warrantless surveillance bills pending in Congress:

Via DemfromCt, Bush sinks to new low:

President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to just 31 percent, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Bill Clinton’s lowest rating during his presidency was 36 percent; Bush’s father’s was 29 percent, and Ronald Reagan’s was 35 percent. Jimmy Carter’s and Richard Nixon’s lows were 28 and 23 percent, respectively. (Just 24 approve of outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s job performance; and 31 percent approve of Vice President Dick Cheney’s.) Worst of all, most Americans are writing off the rest of Bush’s presidency; two-thirds (66 percent) believe he will be unable to get much done, up from 56 percent in a mid-October poll; only 32 percent believe he can be effective. That’s unfortunate since 63 percent of Americans say they’re dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country; just 29 percent are satisfied, reports the poll of 1,006 adults conducted Thursday and Friday nights.