Daily Kos

Try to find ONE Wisconsin Republican this fired up. (Darren Hauck / Reuters)

I speculated a bit ago that Republican recall efforts to recall Democratic state senators in Wisconsin were running into problems, and I attributed it to lack of energy on their (in addition to a lack of solid Democratic targets). Well, here's some confirmation:

While the Wisconsin Democratic Party, with major assists from progressive groups and unions, has harnessed resentment towards the governor into a full-throttled effort to recall eight GOP Senators, neither the enthusiasm nor organizational acumen exists on the Republican side of the aisle.

“It's clear that Democrats and liberal organizations are engaging in an attempt to make recall more than a mere hypothetical possibility for some Wisconsin Republicans,” said Liz Mair, Vice President of Hynes Communications and former RNC Online Communications Director, who has worked closely with officials on the ground in Wisconsin. “Even though Governor Walker acted to end the impasse, Republicans and conservatives should not be acting like this is done and dusted.”

A conservative activist working inside the state on recall efforts was even more explicitly distraught. The Wisconsin Republican Party, the operative said, was not lending resources to the recall campaign groups had launched against Democratic Senators, in turn causing those groups to narrow their target list down from eight lawmakers to just three.

This is also interesting:

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the non-partisan Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, described the recall efforts by Democrats against Republican state Senators as more organized than their counterparts. Whereas GOP-run recalls registered at different times and originated from a random spattering of groups--a Utah-based conservative organization was forced to find a partner inside Wisconsin to make its petitions legally acceptable--all of the Democratic activity has run through the state party.

Utah Republicans have to scramble to find locals to file the proper recall paperwork, while Democrats are united and working toward a common purpose. Those Utah Republicans have to narrow their list of targeted Democrats, while Democrats have no such problems. And those Utah Republicans have to beg for money and attention from conservative heavy hitters, while the netroots alone has pumped in $2 million into the Wisconsin Demorats, with MoveOn, DFA, and DCCC looking to spend much more on paid media in support of the recall effort.

There should be no doubt that the Roves and Kochs will engage, but they'll likely do so in defense of their incumbent Republicans. There is a reason why Republicans have refused to give updates on signatures gathered -- they just don't have the juice to make it happen.

We all know about progressive efforts to recall the eight Republican state senators currently eligible for recall. We've been a bit obsessed over those efforts here at Daily Kos. But did you know that Republicans are attempting to recall at least five of the eight Democratic state senators also eligible for recall?

You wouldn't be faulted if you missed it. It's not like anyone is talking about it. Certainly not the Wisconsin GOP. Look at the home pages of the two parties:

Wisconsin Republicans are clearly in a defensive crouch, not playing offense like Wisconsin Democrats.

What about media buzz?

Other than brief notices that paperwork had been filed against five of the Senate Democrats, I've seen little. The best I came up with was this lame quote in the National Review last Friday:

Republicans have mounted recall efforts of their own against the eight Democratic senators eligible for recall. [Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Mark] Jefferson says there’s “a lot of enthusiasm on the ground right now” for the recalls of Democrats, but he has not yet released any numbers on how many signatures have been gathered.

While Democrats provide regular updates on the progress of their recall petition gatherings, Republicans refuse to give the slightest indication of their progress. So is it a stealth Koch-Brother-funded effort, or are things so quiet on the their front because they have nothing to report?

The five Democrats supposedly being targetted are Minority Leader Mark Miller, Spencer Coggs, Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch. David Nir collated presidential results by district (that's the district number in parenthesis):

Not a lot of territory there for Republicans to mine. Holperin holds the most competitive district, and that was still +7 Obama. The rest are dominantly Democratic. Compare to the targeted GOPers:

See the problem for Wisconsin Republicans? The reason that five of their guys are in trouble in the recall is because they represent Democratic districts. Not only is that important for the recall election itself, but offers petition gatherers a wealth of Democrats to sign those petitions. There are fewer Republicans in those Democratic districts to sign petitions, much less collect those signatures.

There's certainly no excitement in the GOP ranks. Koch and Co. had to bus in their hundreds of "protesters" that one day to try and counterbalance the tens of thousands of progressives who took over the capitol for over three weeks. The effort was so pathetic that Republicans made little effort to try and replicate and improve on it.

Nah, the energy is all coming from a single direction. Ours. We're gathering signatures and raising money (nearly $2 million just online, here and here). They are, er, "standing" with their guys, waiting for Koch to call the next shot, and wondering why their governor is stupid enough to get punk'd on the phone. That sure is motivational.

If you ask me, Republicans won't collect the necessary signatures. They won't even come close. But let me admit something—I hope they do. I hope they get those Democrats on the ballot for a recall effort later this summer. Let this be an honest-to-goodness debate around real issues—not whether Obama wants to kill grandma or whether Nancy Pelosi wants to make you gay. Rather, force these elected officials to talk about things like "middle class jobs" and "collective bargaining" and a vision of how Wisconsin sees itself. I'm pretty sure it ain't the teabagger utopia.

Yes, we'll face Koch's millions, Rove's ads, and Fox News' propaganda. But those guys are already fighting hard to prop up Scott Walker's standing with the voters, and it just ain't working. So let them put our guys on the ballot, and let the voters speak. A Democratic sweep of their own seats would only amplify the voter's voice that much more clearly.

Alas, Republicans will likely fall short in their own recall efforts. But let me admit something else—I'm okay with that too. Whether Republicans fail at the petition level or at the ballot box, the bottom line is the same—the GOP's failure.

Update: Great point by Inland in the comments:

Recall effort by Rs tactical error: they

would be better off asserting that democracy allows for recalls only in the most extreme situations. The party in the majority in the legislature with a pissed off populace probably shouldn't encourage recalls, period.

Union supporters protest during Gov. John Kasich's State of the State address on March 8 at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus (Matt Sullivan / Reuters)

There's buyer's remorse, then there's whatever you'd call this regarding the 2010 Ohio governor's race:

Those startling new numbers come from PPP, which finds that Ohio has turned viciously against its new Republican governor. While Kasich has gotten less attention than Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the Ohioan has been following the same anti-union playbook. And the results have been just as disastrous for him.

We find him with just a 35% approval rating and 54% of voters disapproving of him. His approval with people who voted for him is already all the way down to 71%, while he's won over just 5% of folks who report having voted for Ted Strickland last fall. Particularly concerning for him is a 33/54 spread with independents.

What's driving these numbers? SB 5, which eliminated collective bargaining for public unions. But don't worry, because Ohio voters have something called the "citizen veto", which allows them to overturn laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

Ohio Senate Bill 5 may not be in effect for very long...54% of voters in the state say they'd repeal it in an election later this year while just 31% say they'd vote to let the bill stand.

The support for repealing SB 5 is reflective of a high level of support for unions and workers in Ohio, more so than we saw in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago. 63% of voters in the state supportive collective bargaining for public employees to only 29% who oppose it. 52% of voters think public employees should have the right to strike, to 42% who think they should not. And 65% think public employees should have the same rights they do now- or more- while only 32% believe they should have fewer rights.

There are two things particularly notable in the crosstabs on all of these questions. The first is that non-union households are supportive of the public employees. 54% support their collective bargaining rights to 36% in opposition and 44% say they would vote to repeal SB 5 to 38% who would let it stand. Obviously that level of support is not nearly as high as among union households but it still shows that the workers have even most of the non-union public behind them.

This is going to be a great fall—we get to engage on issue-centric election campaigns in both Wisconsin and Ohio, helping shape that all-important media narrative heading into the 2012 cycle. Consider this—the Republicans will be locked up in a Race to Crazy in their presidential contest, while voters in key Middle America battlegrounds deliver stinging rebukes. And of course, we get to recall Walker in early 2012. I can't think of a better way to turn the tide and begin reversing the pile of suck that was 2010.

Kasich, like his buddy Walker in Wisconsin, grossly overstepped his boundaries in a bid to impose his rigid anti-middle class ideology on the state. He is now paying for it in popular support. And while Ohio does not have Wisconsin-style recall laws on the books, voters in the state can vote to overturn the governor's worst excesses at the ballot box and start organizing for 2012.

Because as painful as the likes of John Kasich, Scott Walker, and Florida's Rick Scott might be, they are also shaping up as our best weapons for holding those key battleground states in 2012.

From greywolfe359's excellent Wednesday diary, a replay:

My future wife, if us dastardly liberals have our way!

Find out what that picture above is all about, below the fold.

Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle

Since when are teabaggers relativists?

The [Texas House] bill would make hiring an "unauthorized alien" a crime punishable by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine, unless that is, they are hired to do household chores.

Yes, under the House Bill 2012 introduced by a tea party favorite state Rep. Debbie Riddle -- who's been saying for some time that she'd like to see Texas institute an Arizona-style immigration law -- hiring an undocumented maid, caretaker, lawnworker or any type of houseworker would be allowed. Why? As Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena, also a Republican, told CNN, without the exemption, "a large segment of the Texas population" would wind up in prison if the bill became law.

You might remember Riddle from going on Anderson Cooper and claiming that Middle Eastern women were coming to the US and having "terror babies", with zero evidence for her claims.

Now, she wants to make sure it's illegal to hire an "illegal" alien unless they're indentured servants. Then what? Do those undocumented immigrants get citizenship for mowing Riddle's lawn? Do they get to collect benefits for caring for her grandchildren? Do they get accepted as Americans for washing her dishes?

Or is this all about making sure she can continue to bash brown immigrants while her and her friends can still getting the kind of low-cost manual labor these immigrants provide?

Since when have teabaggers become relativists? If it's illegal to hire an undocumented immigrant, it should be illegal for anyone to hire them. Put half of Texas in jail if you really want to enforce such an idiotic law. It's either okay to hire such people, or it's not. It's either okay for such people to be in Texas, or it's not.

(Via)

Update: Good point by lushboi in the comments:

So it's ok to have illegals as servants
But jail them if they try to rise above their station, is that it?

Afghan children watch US Marines patrol with Afghanistan National Army (ANA) soldiers in Helmand Province, Afghanistan (Getty)

Sickening.

Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.

The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.

So senseless. And for what? In the entire year of 2005, there were 465 insurgent attacks. There were 1,344 such attacks in JANUARY alone.

“As soon as we heard about the attack on the village’s children, all the village men rushed to the mountains to find out what really happened,” said Ashabuddin, a shopkeeper from Manogai, a nearby village, whose nephew Khalid was among those killed.

“Finally we found the dead bodies. Some of the dead bodies were really badly chopped up by the rockets,” he said. “The head of a child was missing. Others were missing limbs.”

“We tried to find the body pieces and put them together. As it was getting late, we brought down the bodies in a rope bed. We buried them in the village’s cemetery,” Ashabuddin added. “The children were all from poor families; otherwise no one would send their sons up to the mountains despite the known threats from both insurgents and Americans.”

Khalid, 14, was the only male in the family, Ashabuddin said. “He was studying in sixth grade of the orphanage school and working because his father died four years ago due to a long-term sickness. His father was a day laborer. He has 13 sisters and two mothers. He was the sole breadwinner of the family. I don’t know what would happen to his family to his sisters and mothers. They are all female and poor.”

The longer we stay in Afghanistan, the more damage we cause, the more enemies we make. Obama has repeatedly promised to begin pulling out in July 2011. He needs to follow through not just on that promise, but on a plan to get us out sooner, rather than however many Friedman units Gen. Petraeus thinks he needs to win this unwinnable war (2014, at last check).

The Democratic National Committee, at the very least, is on it.

Before I get into the numbers, I want to announce a decision I made this week. I've always considered myself a writer above all else. Yet these days, I do less and less of it, and it's been driving me to dispair. But as Daily Kos grows, administrative responsibilities take their toll -- not just taking away time to write, but also time to obsessively follow the news cycle in a way that allows me to intelligently cover my pet issues.

Right now, we're in the midst of the largest expansion in Daily Kos history. We'll be launching several new initiatives in the next three months, and that requires staffing up and making the deals (sponsorships, advertising, partnerships, cashing George Soros checks, etc) that make that expansion possible. In fact, we fully expect to double our headcount by the end of the year (we're at 11 plus several contractors right now), and that puts a serious strain on what is still (and will remain, mostly) a distributed workforce already spread across a half dozen states.

Then there's the redesigned, reengineered site. I've immersed myself in it completely, and already have dozens of usability tweaks on my personal wish list. Beta testers might remember the pre-live-site Publication Manager. It was a mess. But we had time to clean it up, and now it's almost there (I sent over a batch of changes to the developers this morning that should make it near-perfect). Well, there's still a ton of places where the user interface is a mess, or at least sub-par. You know it, and I know it. So I will be dedicating a ton of my time on making what is already the best community platform on the web even better.

Almost all these changes are based on either your suggestions, or feedback on where you are having problems, so I will continue to listen to your constructive criticism and watch how you use the site. Remember, if you have site feedback, diary it and tag id "DK4". I read everything under that tag.

Doing all that takes a ton of time, and has made it impossible for me to write about politics. So instead of feeling guilty about it every day, I've made the decision to cut back from almost all political writing for the next six months. That should give me time to handle the administrative challenges ahead and fine tune DK4 to where I'm completely happy with it. Then, I can get back to doing what I love most -- writing -- just as the 2012 election cycle is fully engaged.

------------------

With that out of the way, let's look at what the stats say about the DK4 transition.

My biggest fear pre-transition was alienating enough of you guys that the site's traffic would suffer a hit. Just look at what happened to two high-profile sites after big redesigns:

Digg (monthly unique visitors):

Gawker (weekly unique visitors):

Digg lost almost half of its traffic when it transitioned to its very own Digg 4. Gawker launched its big redesign just before we did ours, and you can see that it also lost half its unique visitors. Let me tell you, when you're in the midst of your own redesign, numbers like that are terrifying. And of course, every critic on Daily Kos was predicting that the same would happen if I had the temerity to follow through on the new site.

I forged ahead anyway, and it's been two full weeks. I'm not about to declare Mission Accomplished just yet, but the early numbers are VERY encouraging:

VISITORS

Daily Kos (weekly unique visitors):

That "V" in the middle was the Saturday the site was down for the transition. That spike afterward was based on the news cycle (the Wisconsin protests and the HB Gary scandal). Other than that, we've had ... steady traffic. No systemic collapse. (That drop at the end is low Saturday traffic. It'll pick back up Monday). We may have even gotten a bit of a boost, though I'm going to credit Wisconsin for that. Bottom line, we didn't suffer a Digg- or Gawker-style collapse. The Daily Kos audience stuck with the site.

Now that's unique users. But a unique user may visit several times a day. And we're finding that on that front, people are coming by the site more often:

Now a caveat -- the chart above is from Sitemeter, which is a different analytics tool than Quantcast. And the various analytics tools are usually a bit off from each other. It's kind of like two different pollsters covering the same race -- you wouldn't try to build trendlines from the two different pollsters, but you can compare trendlines from each pollster individually. In this case, Sitemeter shows that visits to the site are significantly up since the launch (the yellow bar), and that people are clicking around more when they visit the site (the red bar).

PAGE VIEWS

As you can see above, the site pageviews are significantly higher -- something Quantcast also confirms. "But," the critics will retort, "that's because people have to click around more to find things!" Our internal analytics tool (Google Analytics) doesn't bear that out. People are actually reading more material on the site. You'll have to trust me on that one, since there's no way to give you access to those analytics, but if we take a look where people are clicking, it's stories.

What IS changing is HOW people view the site.

• Since DK4 went live two weeks ago, site pageviews are up 10.27% from the previous two weeks. Per our internal Google Analytics.
• The homepage is up 1.1% -- from 4,082,340 pageviews to 4,123,431 pageviews.
• The Diaries page is up ... 928% -- from 13,118 to 134,863 pageviews.
• There is significant traffic to pages that didn't even exist before -- such as the People, Tags, and Groups sections.

We'll be digging into the numbers even deeper over the coming weeks, and I'll share what we put together. For example, I want to see how traffic to user-generated diaries compares before and after the transition. Eyeballing it, the difference is pretty big. But we'll soon put together something more concrete for you guys.

ENGAGEMENT

Here is where new site shines. And here's where we can best disprove the notion that the extra pageviews stem from lost souls wandering a confusing site. These comparisons are from the weeks of 2/5-11 and 2/19-25. That is the week immediately preceding the changeover, and last week.

Night and day. The new architecture is certainly more diarist friendly -- part of my rationale for the new site:

So in short, what I wanted was a site that:

1) Made it easier for content to be found
2) Made it easier for good content to rise to the top
3) Made it easier to retain good content for future reference; and
4) Made it easier for good writers to make Daily Kos their blogging home, tapping into its large community.

Not only are diarists producing more material, but the community has kept pace with diary recommendations, which means that those extra diaries are being read. Which leads me to my favorite statistics of all:

Pretty cool, huh? There are so many new ways of finding great stuff. Whether it's the stream, or beefy Diaries page, or kick-ass tags, or the Rescue Rangers, I dare anyone to still claim that they can't find "serendipity" on Daily Kos. I suspect that's why a majority of users are positive on the new site. The naysayers are whittling away.

Everyone is still getting adjusted on the site, and site usage patterns should evolve some more before settling down. Furthermore, as I said at the top, I've made refining this platform my top priority over the next six months. It's only going to get better -- easier to use, with kick ass new features to bolster existing functionality. Just wait to you see what I have in store for groups! (ETA? Two weeks, I'm guessing.)

The tech team is close to solving the insidious cache bug that is behind 70% of site problems. After that is fixed, they'll fix the mojo, which is currently broken. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it works wrong. They're hoping those two big bugs are fixed by the end of this coming week. After that, it's time to smooth out the rough edges, and I can't wait to get started on that.

One final bit of good metrics? More people are accessing the registration page -- from 10,318 to 17,187 pageviews the two weeks before the changeover, compared to the two weeks after. The new site just BEGS people to register and engage.

We are at the start of something great here. We avoided the Digg and Gawker cataclysms and are close to stabilizing the new platform. Seriously -- the worst is behind us and we lived to tell the tale.

p.s. Mobile site? It should arrive any moment now. I was hoping we'd get it Friday, but a few last-minute bugs are holding it up.

We're not out of the woods yet, but this feature is showing signs of life. This week's material below the fold.

(If anyone knows who did this, let me know so I can update with credit.)

• Just got a look at our new mobile version of the site, and it's looking REALLY hot. It's got a few leftover bugs, and those are expected to be fixed by end of day Friday. So almost there!
• Not a single Sunday Morning Talk Show will have labor leaders on. They are, systematically, refusing to bring on the people behind the biggest domestic story of the last two weeks.

  One AFL-CIO official tells me that reps for the AFL-CIO and other unions reached out to all the big three network shows -- ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS' Face the Nation -- to ask if they would invite on any labor officials. Thus far the answer has been cool to indifferent, the official says.

  No labor officials have yet been booked to appear. Carin Pratt, the executive producer of CBS's Face the Nation -- which is hosing Christie -- seemed to suggest as much in an email. "We are doing Gov. Christie for part of the show, with probably a segment on Libya," she said. "We're not only talking about labor."

  But that's cool. I'm sure Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Harold Ford will have it covered. Oh, and Gov. Christie, who is oh-so-relevant at the moment.

• When Fox News is providing better coverage of the Koch Brothers/Scott Walker story, you know that MSNBC and CNN are systemically broken.

  MSNBC, in particular, is a hopeless mess. Maddow is under contract through next year, If she even survives that long (not a sure thing given the network's leadership). In fact, I can't think of a better scenario than having her get fired from MSNBC, and ending up with Keith over at the retooling Current.

  From everything I hear, Current has money, and they're spending it as they begin to transition to truly liberal TV.

• Sane Republicans don't want a government shutdown.

  In the battle over federal spending for the remainder of this fiscal year, nearly two-thirds of the Republican operatives surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll believe that it isn't in their party's interest to see a government shutdown, while most Democrats feel such a confrontation could benefit them.

  Too bad for them, their party is no longer controlled by sane people.

• Orwelianism is alive and well in this country.

  A Senate proposal that has become known as the Internet "kill switch" bill was reintroduced this week, with a tweak its backers say eliminates the possibility of an Egypt-style disconnection happening in the United States.

  As CNET reported last month, the 221-page bill hands Homeland Security the power to issue decrees to certain privately owned computer systems after the president declares a "national cyberemergency." A section in the new bill notes that does not include "the authority to shut down the Internet," and the name of the bill has been changed to include the phrase "Internet freedom."

  "The emergency measures in our bill apply in a precise and targeted way only to our most critical infrastructure," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said yesterday about the legislation she is sponsoring with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn). "We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government finally realizes the importance of protecting our digital resources."

  But the revised wording (PDF) continues to alarm civil liberties groups and other critics of the bill, who say the language would allow the government to shut down portions of the Internet or restrict access to certain Web sites or types of content. Even former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak didn't actually "shut down" the Internet: at least at first, a trickle of connections continued.

  Ha ha, "freedom"!