election

“This is a state that Democrats said was going blue, or least purple,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, on Virginia. “How do they explain it if they lose?”

CNN is reporting that a “Western source close to the Afghan leadership” is saying talks for next week’s runoff election between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah have broken down and over the weekend Abdullah will drop out. Christiane Amanpour’s only other source in the piece is Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and [...]

I’m hearing some smart Republican pushback to today’s Quinnipiac Poll – given its record in the state, one of the more credible surveys — showing Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) pulling out of a year-long rut and leading Republican candidate Chris Christie by five points.
The main Republican critique of the poll, which contradicts Public Policy Polling [...]

The new Rutgers-Eagleton poll for New Jersey’s gubernatorial race piles more bad news onto the campaign of Republican candidate Chris Christie, seen just a few months back as the all-but-certain next governor of the state. The topline numbers are bad enough: Christie trails Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) by three points, 39 percent to 36 percent, [...]

Just released from the White House:
I welcome President Karzai’s statement today accepting the Independent Electoral Commission’s certification of the August 20 election results, and agreeing to participate in a second round of the election. This is an important step forward in ensuring a credible process for the Afghan people which results in a government that [...]

So it’s looking like Hamid Karzai stole an election. What now? One option, apparently favored by the United States, is to try and persuade robbed rival Abdullah Abdullah to join Karzai’s government. Andrew Exum, an adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan strategy review, worries that this may prove to be the “moment when historians will [...]

Speaking of the Afghan election, Brian Katulis, a foreign policy analyst with the Center for American Progress, is in Kabul to observe the vote, and Politico prints this report from him:
At a small gathering in a private home last night, I met journalists and aid workers who have years of experience in the country and [...]

Please, everyone: let’s skip around the manufactured outrage over the news that Hamid Karzai is bringing back Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord responsible for 2001’s mass killing of Taliban prisoners, so Dostum’s clout among Afghanistan’s Uzbek minority can secure Karzai’s reelection. The only thing surprising is that anyone is surprised. In September 2004, Karzai sacked [...]

The Iranian regime is able to shut down access to e-mail (by limiting bandwidth), SMS and Facebook. Lots of protesters and would-be protesters are unable to make phone calls or otherwise communicate with each other, thereby limiting the ability of the opposition movement to gather strength. But the regime is unable to shut down Twitter, [...]

Very little is clear in the Iranian election, aside from the fact that the opposition does not credit for a moment the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning more than 60 percent of the vote to Mir Hossein Moussavi’s 30 percent. Juan Cole has a sober and detailed post giving reasons to disbelieve the official results. [...]