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KINSHASA, Congo (AP) – After days of tension in Congo’s capital as the nation awaits election results, traffic began to flow once more, women selling cassava leaves took up their usual positions on the sides of roads and a few international airlines allowed their planes to resume flights to Kinshasa on Thursday. But anxiety remained high that the Central African nation stretching over a territory as large as Western Europe would descend into violence, with supporters of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi vowing to take to the streets if President Joseph Kabila is declared the winner. Outside the headquarters of Tshisekedi’s party, police fired tear gas and live rounds to push back the agitated crowd earlier in the day, witnesses said. Victory seemed certain for the incumbent based on partial returns. Those results, representing 90 percent of the vote cast, gave Kabila a more than 14-point lead over Tshisekedi, who had 34 percent. In the capital’s best hotel, Kabila’s party had rented a ballroom and his supporters wearing T-shirts printed with his photograph were already holding a victory celebration before the election commission had named the winner. Instead of issuing results as promised Thursday, the country’s election commission chief called a hasty news conference to announce another one-day postponement. “We need to double-check the results,” Daniel Ngoy Mulunda said late Thursday. “We are before a very demanding public.” A spokesman for Tshisekedi’s party continued to say that Tshisekedi, not Kabila, had won and appealed to supporters to fight for their victory. “We call on the Congolese people to mobilize themselves so as to protect this victory. Each person can do this in their own way, and in the manner that they see fit so that it will be felt everywhere, especially by this dictatorship which wants to impose a verdict based on cheating and on electoral fraud,” said Jacquemain Shabani, the secretary general of Tshisekedi’s party. The election was marred from the start by massive technical shortcomings, from the late delivery of ballots to the chaotic tabulation centers where ballots were being dumped by the millions. There were not enough computers for poll workers to enter the data. Frequent power cuts plunged counting centers into darkness. The election commission failed to meet its Tuesday deadline for releasing results. They announced a 48-hour extension, which has now turned into a 72-hour one. Kinshasa residents continued to cross the river separating Congo’s capital from Brazzaville, the capital of the smaller Republic of Congo, Congo’s northern neighbor. Bobette Nzeuzi, a mother of two, was among the people waiting to cross the river swirling with eddies. She held her 5-month-old daughter on her lap, while her 7-year-old sat next to her. At their feet were three hastily packed bags, a bottle of deodorant poking out of a pocket with a half-closed zippers. “The city is in trouble. My entire neighborhood has emptied out,” she said as she waited for the boat to leave. “I wanted to leave earlier, but we had to wait for my husband to get paid.” Although international observers said the vote was flawed, they have stopped short of calling it fraudulent. Most say the irregularities were not widespread enough to have caused a change in outcome. However, the perception among opposition supporters is that Tshisekedi won, setting the stage for a confrontation. Diplomats, who have met the 78-year-old Tshisekedi in recent days in an attempt to convince him to not incite his supporters to violence, say that the candidate is convinced of his victory. A Western diplomat who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media said: “There’s a real disconnect. On the one hand he says, ‘Obviously, I will respect the will of the ballot box—but I won.’” The impasse has led some analysts to say that the provisional results should not be published right away, and that instead steps need to be taken to create transparency in a badly muddled process. For example, foreign embassies and international observation missions have impressed on election officials the need to publish results by polling station. So far, the results issued by the electoral commission have been aggregated by province, making it impossible for political parties to check if the vote count they witness inside a specific polling place was correctly tabulated at the regional level. “A week after presidential and legislative polls, the Democratic Republic of Congo faces a political crisis that could plunge it back into major violence,” according to a statement from the International Crisis Group. “To avert violence, Congolese authorities must take urgent measures to salvage a reasonably representative result out of a badly flawed process.” Congo’s enormous geography has proved challenging both for the electoral commission organizing the vote as well as for the country’s government. Its vast rain forests in the east still harbor vicious rebel armies, including remnants of the Interhamwe, the militia responsible for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

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Incumbent President of Congo Likely to Win Reelection, Opponent Alleges Fraud

Hold on to your hats — here’s where I compare Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. Perhaps I should explain. When it comes to politics and presidents, everyone’s always looking for precedents. For parallels. Which is why you’ve been hearing so many references lately to 1994. “This is just like 1994!” the pundits cry. “A first-term Democratic president’s first midterm election, and the voters are really angry, and they take it out on the president’s party, and the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in generations!” Not a bad comparison. Decision 2010 may turn out to look a lot like Decision 1994. Then there’s the 1980 comparison; I’ve been leaning toward the 1980 comparison lately. Another first-term Democrat in the White House, running for re-election this time, with a terrible economy at home and endless frustration abroad (the Iranian hostage crisis, for instance). But the parallel for me isn’t the Democratic president going down to defeat in November, but all the Senate Democrats who went down with him. See, anytime you have a slew of competitive seats, there’s a tendency to say, “Well, OK, it’s a bad year for our side, so maybe we won’t do as well as the other guys. A dozen seats up for grabs? Maybe we’ll only hang on to five.” But it doesn’t always work that way — and it certainly didn’t work that way in 1980. The results weren’t “a few more here, a few less here.” The results were a virtual sweep. Practically every competitive Senate race in 1980 fell the same way — to the Republicans. They took control. Many of the contests were close, but in almost all of them, the result was the same. A Democratic loss, a Republican pickup. Which to say: When it goes bad, it can go really bad. So 1980 isn’t a terrible comparison either. It’s hardly beyond imagining, even with the likes of a Sharron Angle or a Rand Paul or a Christine O’Donnell on the ballot, that the GOP runs the table — that it picks up the 10 seats it needs to grab the Senate. Unless, that is, the best comparison of all is to 1972 — but not the way you think. This is the part where Barack Obama gets to play Richard Nixon. In 1972, it was a Republican president — Nixon — running for re-election against George McGovern. George McGovern was that year’s darling of the left flank of the Democratic party — against the war in Vietnam, against a bigger military budget, in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. That sort of thing. Equally important, the McGovern campaign was… untidy. Undisciplined. Liberated women. Hairy kids. Multiple skin tones. A nominating convention so blissfully self-indulgent that by the time the candidate got his moment in the sun, it was the middle of the night. And — here’s the point, here’s the possible parallel: It took the Nixon campaign roughly three milliseconds to make its move on the rest of the Democrats. “Your party has been captured by the McGovernite wing,” the Republicans declared. “You’re every bit as appalled as we are.” “It’s not your party anymore,” Nixon and his pals told those disaffected Dems. “Come find a new home with us .” And millions did just that — they crossed party lines for the first time in their lives. They voted for Nixon and the Republicans. Many of them never came back. “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” they told themselves. “The Democratic Party left me. ” You think there aren’t millions of sensible, middle-of-the-road Republicans today who are looking at the sudden rise of the Tea Party — hearing the ravings of the Angles and Pauls and O’Donnells, the Palins and the Becks — and thinking exactly the same thing? “This isn’t my party anymore.” So the question is: How many milliseconds should it take for Obama and friends to put out the welcome mat? Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.

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Rick Horowitz: No, Really — Dems Should Party Like It’s 1972

Last week, as the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy lumbered on and its companion news story, the infamous Koran burning that wasn’t, reached its anticlimactic culmination, we saw a spectacular example of one of the Right Wing’s favorite electoral strategies: pick a target, stoke fear, and reap the political benefits of nativist backlash. The Right is in the midst of a prolific run of fear campaigns — against Muslims, against immigrants, against gay people, against “elites.” In itself, that might not be news; the Right has been doing it for years. What is remarkable is how frequently, in the attempt to narrow the definition of who is a real American, the President of the United States himself is cast as the leader of an amorphous and scary invasion of people who are aren’t from around here . This smear has been floating around the edges of our political conversation since before President Obama was even elected, but it reached a new level of undisguised vitriol when Newt Gingrich — former Speaker of the House and aspiring 2012 presidential candidate — told the National Review that Obama displays “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,” and that he “happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.” Gingrich, at least, can no longer be accused of dog-whistle politics. He has come right out to say what many on the Right have been insinuating since Obama appeared on the political scene — that the President is an un-American outsider who has pulled a fast one on the American people. There is no need to further rebut Gingrich’s remarks on factual grounds — Marc Ambinder and Adam Serwer , among many others, have already demolished the flimsy basis for his assertions. Gingrich’s comments — a response to a column along similar ridiculous lines by Dinesh D’Souza — couldn’t have much to do with the former speaker’s thoughts on Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, they were a deliberate appeal to the idea that the Right has been pushing of Obama as a strange and malicious “other.” Gingrich’s remarks are only the most recent, and blatant, in a long line of right-wing fear-mongering about the president. Just last week, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, chair of the Republican Governors Association and another possible 2012 presidential contender, said of Obama, “This is a president that we know less about than any other president in history.” This remark was factually untrue — Obama wrote a book of his life story and much of the nation celebrated his personal story throughout a very lengthy campaign — but served to advance the right-wing narrative about Obama’s mysterious origins. And that narrative has worked in their favor. Last month, a poll found that a quarter of Americans aren’t convinced that Obama was born in the U.S. In another poll , nearly one in five said they believed that Obama was a Muslim — a sharp increase from the response to the same question a year ago. Kyle Mantyla at People For’s Right Wing Watch blog has been reporting that “birthers” — those demanding copies of Obama’s readily available Hawaiian birth certificate — are now being joined by those demanding proof of Obama’s baptism and Christian faith. The campaign to frame Obama as a foreign invader — and, as Gingrich has said , “the most radical president in American history” — has been intimately tied in with the same fear-mongering that led to the outrageous reaction to the planned Muslim community center in lower Manhattan and that has stoked the kind of fear of immigrants that has led to racial profiling laws in places like Arizona. In troubled times, it’s convenient to blame everyone — both outsiders and those in power. In Obama, the irrational Right won the lottery. The attempt to paint Obama as a dangerous foreign radical has very real, and scary consequences. A year ago, we reported on the revival of violent anti-government extremism in reaction to Obama’s election. Since then, we have seen a violent strain in certain parts of the Tea Party movement — from Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle insisting that “Second Amendment remedies” might be needed against “domestic enemies” to an Idaho gubernatorial candidate last year suggesting the issue of ” Obama tags ” for hunting the president. But the impact of the Right’s whisper campaign against Obama goes far beyond the president. The right-wing leaders who have been pushing, or tepidly refuting, lies about the president are often the same people who are stoking resentment against American Muslims, Latinos, and gay people. They are peddling a very narrow idea of what it means to be, as Sarah Palin once put it, part of “the real America.” This definition of “the real America” doesn’t include immigrants or their children; it doesn’t include people of color; it doesn’t include gay people. When Gingrich and his allies build a myth about a foreign con artist president, they imply that all those who fall outside the narrowly defined “real America” are to be viewed with distrust. That may be an effective electoral strategy in the short run, but in the long run it stokes real divisions and creates real harm. And, it will not be an effective long-term strategy for the Right. The United States is a vibrantly diverse country and is growing more so. If the Right continues to insult and exclude entire groups of people, its politics will rapidly become obsolete.

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Michael B. Keegan: Not From Around Here: The Right’s Campaign to Redefine Obama

HONOLULU — After a bitter campaign marked by mudslinging and contentious divisions over race, religion and gay rights, two longtime political rivals in Hawaii meet in a primary Saturday to decide which Democrat will try to recapture the governor’s seat from Republican hands after eight years. Former U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie and former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who first faced each other in a primary 24 years ago, are competing in a tight race for the chance to succeed Gov. Linda Lingle in President Barack Obama’s birth state. Term limits prevent Lingle, who became Hawaii’s first Republican governor in 40 years when she was elected, from running again. That leaves open the door for Democrats in November to possibly regain control of one of the most blue states in the country, which gave Obama 72 percent of the presidential vote two years ago. Democrats also are looking to retake the congressional seat Abercrombie left after 19 years to run for governor, although that race won’t be settled until November. Republican U.S. Rep. Charles Djou, who won a May special election for Congress, and Democratic state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa hold vast fundraising and name recognition advantages heading into their party’s primaries Saturday, and if they win they’d face each other in the general election. In the Democratic governor’s race, there’s no love lost between the 74-year-old Abercrombie and the 56-year-old Hannemann, who first faced off in 1986 in a congressional primary, won by Hannemann, in which he attacked Abercrombie for being soft on drugs and claimed that he “enjoyed marijuana.” Abercrombie said those assertions were untrue; Hannemann later lost the general election. This year’s campaign has been filled with personal attacks and comparisons of their character, ethnicity, experience and views on gay rights. Abercrombie blasted Hannemann’s campaign following a radio ad by Hannemann supporters that claimed Abercrombie is “unacceptable” because he doesn’t hold “traditional Christian values.” Hannemann is Mormon, and Abercrombie’s campaign has said he was “confirmed as an Episcopalian.” Abercrombie backs same-sex civil unions, while Hannemann has said he would have vetoed civil union legislation that passed the Legislature earlier this year but was vetoed by Lingle. Hannemann also has drawn criticism for telling a carpenters’ union “I look like you,” a reference to Hannemann’s Samoan-German ancestry; Abercrombie is white. A Hannemann campaign brochure emphasized that he was born in Hawaii and Abercrombie in New York. Mudslinging between the candidates could damage the winner’s chances of success in the Nov. 2 general election against the Republican nominee. In the Republican primary, Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona holds a vast advantage over attorney John Carroll in fundraising, campaign organization and advertising. Despite the Democratic candidates’ rhetoric over their character and experience, they share similar plans to improve public education, promote renewable energy and build Honolulu’s rail system. But Hannemann has kept the pressure on by saying Abercrombie is making unfunded campaign promises, received a low rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is trying to “retire to the governor’s job.” The Hannemann brochure also mockingly praised Abercrombie for winning a beard contest. Abercrombie has accused the Hannemann of manipulating Honolulu’s proposed rail line for political purposes and then abandoning the project by resigning from the mayor’s office halfway into his second term to run for governor. Abercrombie, a friend of Obama’s father from their days at the University of Hawaii, picked up on Obama’s theme of change by calling for “A New Day in Hawaii” in his platform. Obama has stayed out of the race, but both candidates say they knew him when he was young and went by “Barry” instead of “Barack.” “The people of Hawaii will have an opportunity to reject politics-as-usual when they cast their ballots,” Abercrombie said. “I am confident that the people will move Hawaii in a new direction.” Hannemann has countered that Abercrombie’s message of change doesn’t ring true after so many years in Washington. “I’m not afraid to make tough decisions,” Hannemann said. “I’m never going to be someone who sits behind my desk and becomes invisible.” Polls have shown Abercrombie in the lead, but Hannemann had nearly three times as much cash left in his treasury as of Sept. 3, according to campaign finance reports. In all, Hannemann has raised about $3.5 million to Abercrombie’s $3 million.

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Hawaii Primary Election: Neil Abercrombie, Mufi Hannemann Fight For Democratic Gov. Nomination

AP – President Barack Obama has reached out to longtime Republican Rep. Mike Castle after his upset loss to a tea party-backed candidate in Delaware’s Senate primary.

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White House: Obama calls Rep. Castle after loss
(AP)

Caught in a deeply difficult race, Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) went up on air Friday with what is perhaps the most intense ad yet from a Democrat trying to distance himself from President Obama. The Texas Democrat, who was once considered a potential vice presidential choice by the Obama campaign, touts not only his opposition to health care reform, cap-and-trade legislation and the like in the new spot . He also actively declares that he withstood pressure from Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in doing so. When President Obama and Nancy Pelosi pressured Chet Edwards, Chet stood up to them and voted no against their trillion dollar health care bill, and no to Cap and Trade. Chet votes with the conservative Chamber of Commerce sixty-seven percent of the time. And when Washington liberals wanted to take away our guns, Chet said no. That’s why the National Rifle Association has endorsed Chet Edwards over Bill Flores. I’m Chet Edwards, and I approve this message. The mentioning of his endorsement by the NRA and his ideological symmetry with the Chamber of Commerce is the coup de grace in the spot, which sets a new standard for beleaguered lawmakers running away from the White House in this tough political climate. Edwards may very well not end up retaining his seat come November. But the danger for the party at large is that ads like these feed into the narrative of a party dissatisfied with the agenda it has pursued.

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Rep. Chet Edwards Touts His Opposition To Obama, Pelosi In New Ad (VIDEO)

AP – Texas Gov. Rick Perry is criticizing U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner for seeking a possible compromise on tax cuts with President Barack Obama.

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Texas Gov. Perry criticizes GOP leader Boehner
(AP)

Time.com – Democrats know they can’t be too confident about the Delaware Senate race, but they insist they aren’t underestimating the Tea Party threat this time

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Delaware: Can Coons Hold Off the Tea Party’s O’Donnell?
(Time.com)

CQPolitics.com – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, during a wide-ranging interview Thursday on the upcoming elections, said his party must embrace candidates across the ideological spectrum if it hopes to retake control of Congress and block President Barack Obama’s agenda.

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McConnell Embraces Big Tent GOP
(CQPolitics.com)

Earlier this week, much buzz in Washington surrounded Republican leader John Boehner leaving the door open to a possible compromise by only extending President Bush’s tax cuts for the middle class (Altogether, now: What…

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Guy Benson: Boehner 1, Pelosi 0