More like this, please

By Kathy G.

What Nicholas said.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting Darcy Burner at Yearly Kos. I attended nearly all of the feminist and women's sessions, and so did she. She was most impressive. Here's what was really cool about Darcy: unlike other candidates, she didn't just swoop in, introduce herself, make her little speech, and swoop out. She stayed. She listened. She seemed to care about what people had to say. And she made valuable contributions to the sessions.

For example, at one of the meetings we decided we wanted to create a wiki of women's media resources. Darcy volunteered her services and website to do this. And guess what? It was up the next day.

A little about Darcy: she's from the Seattle area and was a top executive at Microsoft. She's especially strong on women's issues, the environment, and civil liberties. In 2006 she came very close to beating her Republican opponent. She probably would have won if not for a last-minute dirty tricks operation, in the form of Republican headquarters making upwards of 500,000 phone calls spreading malicious lies about her (telling voters that she was going to be indicted, for example).

You can make a contribution to Darcy's campaign here.

Who wants to be a President?

By Kathy G.

Via Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has a unique and highly diverting solution to the low-information voter problem. He proposes a multi-part game show for the candidates:

Coase it Out: Presidential candidates have 12 hours to get a bitterly divorcing couple to divide their assets in a mutually agreeable manner. (Bonus points are awarded if the candidate convinces the couple to stay together.)

Game Theory: Candidates compete in a game of Diplomacy. I would also include several ringers - say Robin Hanson, Bryan Caplan and Salma Hayek. Why these three? Robin is cold, calculating and merciless - make a logical mistake and he will make you pay. Bryan is crafty and experienced. And Salma? I couldn't refuse her anything but presidents should be made of stronger stuff so we need a test.

Spot the Fraud: Presidential candidates are provided with an economic scenario (mortgage defaults are up, hedge funds are crashing, liquidity is tight). Three experts propose plans. The candidate must choose one of the plans. After the candidate chooses, the true identities of the "experts" are revealed. One is a trucker, another a scuba diver instructor and the last a distinguished economist. Which did the candidate choose?

It takes a special breed of economics nerd to imagine something like this, but I kind of like it.

One objection I have is putting Salma Hayek on the Game Theory panel, because unless a male equivalent is added, Hillary would have an unfair advantage. So I suggest we include George Clooney as well. I already think Hillary is tougher than the rest of the candidates put together. But if she can withstand a sultry glance from Clooney without dissolving into a warm puddle on the spot, she truly is an Iron Lady. Or made up of far sterner stuff than I am, at least.

N.B.: Tabarrok says he is dead serious about this. What do you think?

And do you think part of Tabarrok's attraction to Salma Hayek might be his unconscious association of her with this dude, who shares the same last name?

Words of Wisdom

By Kathy G.

What Max said.

Adding, that the argument that Hillary shouldn't be the nominee because she's too "divisive" never made a lot of sense to me. I agree with Ezra that she probably wouldn't be the best choice for the nomination, because by temperament she's an extremely cautious centrist and I think we need a Democratic president who's far more willing to pursue strategies and policies that are about change.

But let's face it, by the time of the Democratic convention, the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, is going to be portrayed by the media, and is going to be seen by a significant swathe of the public, as "divisive." They did this with candidates as bland and moderate as Gore and Kerry, so what's going to stop them from viciously smearing Obama or Edwards? As Max points out, Obama will be tarred as "an Islamicist version of the Manchurian Candidate."

As for Edwards, Ann Coulter has already unveiled the ultra-classy Republican strategy of dealing with him: call him a faggot! If he's the candidate, come November '08 I predict that at least 30% of the electorate will be convinced he's gayer than Gay Gayerson at the Gay Pride parade.

And actually, I think the allegedly "divisive" Hillary has an advantage, in that she'll exceed expectations. In the fantasy world of the wingnuts, of course, Hillary is a shrieking Marxist harridan from hell, but in debates and speeches, she sounds reasonable, quietly authoritative, like a normal person. People will see this, and I think even a lot of the Republicans who are so hostile to her will calm the fuck down a little. They'll never like her or vote for her, but they may be a lot less motivated to defeat her than people think.

It leaves me with a question, though: why aren't Democrats doing more to aggressively discredit the Republican candidates? It's essential that we shape the negative narratives about those bozos right now, before it's too late. Yet none of the operatives on our side seem to be doing that. Why is it that the Republicans always seem to be thinking and planning at least three steps ahead of the Democrats?

Chuck Todd on Hillary and Obama

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Usually my coverage of the Democratic primary race has an Edwards-related focus, but this piece by Chuck Todd on Hillary, Obama, and what you can tell about their campaigns by their responses to the Imus situation is too good not to link to.  (Or maybe I'm just surprised to see original thought in a MSNBC analysis piece!)  Short version: Hillary wants to be known as "the female candidate"; Obama doesn't want to be known as "the black candidate."

Commitment vs. Comprehension

Noam Scheiber's critique of the problems Obama's unifying, reformist message poses for his campaign is very smart. Scheiber writes:

The problem with Obama's reformist message is that it prevents him from singling out Bush and the GOP in a way that's very satisfying. In his speech to the fire fighters, for example, Obama only assigned blame elliptically. "It's a noble calling, what you do. ... But sometimes Washington forgets," he said. "Instead of making your job easier ... they try to cut funding so you couldn't buy masks and the suits that you needed." Later, he concluded: "What keeps Washington from doing all that it needs to do to better protect our fire fighters ... [is] the smallness of our politics."

But it's not Washington that has tried to cut funding for first-responders and won't give them the equipment they need. It's Bush's GOP. It's not the smallness of our politics that's holding these things up. It's the smallness of their politics. Pretty much every Democrat in Congress, given the chance to fix these indignities, would do it in an instant.

That's quite true, and quite smart. But I think the problems with Obama the message stem from problems with Obama the candidate. A week or so ago, a reader suggested I watch this Townhall with Obama. And I found it striking. The first question comes from the town's mayor, an older woman who's not yet eligible for Medicare, but can't afford her insurance, which has more than doubled its premiums since 2000. She'd love to get all those tests the doctors are recommending, she says, but she just can't afford them.

Obama stands up, looks at her, and says, "Well, your situation is obviously not unique." And he's right, it's not. But that wasn't the wisest response. From there, Obama takes what should be a morally impassioning issue and delivers a cool, calm, smart, and bloodless disquisition on various problems within the health care system. He's too removed. There's no sense that this grabs him in his gut, or that he'd stay up nights thinking about her plight. He answers the question, in fact, much like I'd blog the question. Facts and figures, calm analysis. That's good for a blog. Not so much for a candidate. And that's because a blog and a candidate reach different audiences looking for different things.

It's been said by others that Democratic primaries usually feature "a struggle between a candidate who draws support primarily from upscale, economically comfortable voters liberal on social and foreign policy issues, and a rival who relies mostly on downscale, financially strained voters drawn to populist economics and somewhat more conservative views on cultural and national security issues." But what that obscures is that Democratic primaries also feature a contest between two types of voters.

The first are high-information partisans, of the type who supported Dean, Hart, or now, Obama. By definition this group is more involved, more engaged, more educated, more politically aware. They like a candidate whose message is about "us," because they want to be involved. And that's what Obama's reformism is: It's about "us." That "we" can iron the absurdities and indignities and idiocies out of our political life, and create something shinier, better, newer, smarter. They understand what's wrong, and want a candidate who shares that understanding.

By contrast, primaries also feature low-information Democratic voters, most of them economically downscale, somewhat older, somewhat less engaged on a daily level. They don't want to be involved for the next four years. They want someone they can trust to fight for them. Hillary's prominent flaunting of her years in the Democratic trenches comforts these voters, as does Edwards visceral populism, as did Bill Clinton's preternatural empathy. And this is what Obama lacks. Until he can project some sense that he's "with" these people on a gut level, he won't win them over. Because they're not looking for comprehension of the cause, but commitment to it. And that's what Obama's unifying reformism doesn't display.

The problem for Obama is is that I'm not sure this can be generated. Clinton's warrior persona is deeply felt; she's spent decades engaged in a vicious battle against the right, and her enduring presence on the national stage is proof positive of her commitment. John Edwards grew up in the white working class and spent decades as a trial lawyer battling large corporations; his populism is effortless and obvious. But Obama has not fought the same fights. His ascension into public life has been mostly positive, his toughest races against Democrats rather than Republicans, his treatment from the right largely -- or at least atypically -- positive. He feels the possibility of unity, of bringing people together, because his experience has taught him that that's possible. His reformism is deeply held. But it may not be what Democratic primary voters want.

Does Money Equal Votes?

What sort of surprises me about Obama's mega-take is how disconnected it is from his apparent momentum. He appears to have functionally matched Hillary's fundraising, despite routinely trailing her in national polls. Moreover, he's not only been unable to gain much early traction in Iowa, where Edwards leads, but he just ceded second place in New Hampshire to Edwards (with Hillary in first).

We may be seeing the further disassociation of fundraising from widespread support. Take Obama's haul. Given the remarkable 100,000 donors, I'd guess you're seeing widespread support from the "netroots," broadly defined. In other words, from computer literate, highly-informed, well-educated, fairly young, political junkies who, due to the sophistication of online fundraising techniques and their particularly high response rate to such appeals, are emerging as an actual funding bloc even as they remain weak as a voting bloc. That said, most primary voters, as we saw with Dean, are not computer literate, highly-informed, well-educated, fairly young, political junkies. We'll see whether Obama could build the bridge that Dean could not. Clinton, meanwhile, has the broadest support but not the broadest donor base, because he supporters skew older, poorer, and are less politically involved.

On the other side of the aisle, it looks like Romney's huge haul relied heavily on donations from the Mormon community, which presents an even more extreme version of this problem. Most primary voters really aren't Mormons, and it's an open question whether they're comfortable with a candidate funded heavily by that demographic. In his case, the money may actually turn into a liability

McCain's Miscalculation

Steve Benen writes:

According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, Sen. John McCain is “facing unexpectedly formidable challenges,” and now trails Rudy Giuliani in a head-to-head match-up by 20 points nationally. The WSJ adds, “All told, 2008 is shaping up as the worst presidential year in three decades to be the candidate of the Republican establishment, the spot some in the party think Mr. McCain has assumed.”

Remember four years ago, when John McCain was the maverick? When John Kerry was feeling him about to be his vice-president? When the Washington Monthly was running cover stories begging him to run for the Democratic nomination?

The tragicomic part, for McCain, is that in 2003, he was the perfect candidate for...2008. But he spent the intervening years sucking up to Bush and cozying up to the establishment and making nice with Jerry Falwell and generally debasing himself to coalesce the Republican Party around him, only to find, for the first time in memory, that that may have been a sucker's game. It's possible that, when all is said and done, not only will he have humiliated himself only to lose, but he'll have lost because he humiliated himself. It's downright Shakespearean.

The Edwards Health Plan

I need to get back to spraying Zicam and complaining about my cold, but I'd be remiss not to offer a quick rundown of John Edwards's just-released health plan (pdf). The short answer: It's good.

Here's how it works: On first blush, the plan is much like the Wyden initiative, though it puts the onus of the responsibility for funding health coverage on employers, a decision I don't quite understand. The employers can satisfy that responsibility by either providing comprehensive care, or helping employees purchase from a menu of insurance options provided by newly formed, state-run "Health Markets."

As of now, the plan doesn't explain how much employers must provide towards health market coverage, but it's a safe bet to assume that it's somewhat less than the total cost of health care, and so the incentive will be for employers to encourage their employees to purchase from the HMs. And that's where things get interesting. The HMs will offer a menu of private options that are totally community rated. The plan "will require insurers to keep plans open to everyone and charge fair premiums, regardless of preexisting conditions, medical history, age, job, and other characteristics." These days, though, community rating is a common enough.

Where the Edwards' plan takes a big step forward is in mandating, along with the private options, that HMs offer "at least one plan [that] would be a public program based upon Medicare." And the intent is explicit: "Health Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it. Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan."

In other words, the public sector will finally be allowed to compete with the private sector, and consumers will be able to decide which style they prefer. For Democrats, this is a significant step forward. From there, the plan offers the usual mix of sliding subsidies to ensure affordability, individual mandate to universalize coverage, pay-for-performance promises, and public health fixes. You've heard those bits before. What's new, and what's important, are the community rated health markets that include public insurance. Indeed, the plan satisfied every plank of my progressive health reform test from last week.

The plan will cost between $90 billion and $120 billion a year, and according to Edwards, taxes will have to be raised to pay for it. Readers should remember that this is the first full health reform plan from a major candidate in the 2008 election. As such, it has widened the field of the debate, and unless the other candidates want to explain why they lack the boldness of Edwards' plan, they'll have to offer similarly comprehensive proposals. What they will have to match is full community rating, a public insurance option, total universality, scaleability towards more public involvement, and a willingness to propose something comprehensive enough to require revenue increases to fund. In other words, the goalposts have been moved. To the left.

Crossposted to the lovely Tapped.

Bye Bye Biden

I know all the other blogs have it, but I don't think you can repost Joe Biden's description of Barack Obama enough:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

The first. What's about Oprah? Or Harold Ford? Or, uh, Martin Luther King Jr.?

Defend Biden how you will, ascribe the most generous meaning to his words possible, assume it's just a genuine compliment with unfortunate resonances. This guy's not a rookie. He's not an amateur. He's not new to political campaigns. If, after approximately 112 years in the political spotlight, he's still making gaffes like this one, then that alone eviscerates the rationale for his candidacy.

Update: Josh Marshall writes:

I think at this point you have to say that Biden suffers from what one might with real generosity call chronic racial grandpaism. That is to say, the penchant for making comments that are not only racially offensive but also extremely silly and the sort of things that are sometimes excused or at least passed over from men, say, over 80 on the reasoning that they're from a different era and why get into it. Actually, the clock has probably even run out on that excuse when you figure that a man who is 80 today was forty in 1966. But however that may be, excuses that fly in the retirement community or family reunions just doesn't cut it in a man who aspires to the presidency.

Cash Money

These points on the money primary, coming from the other Klein, are sound:

I think that [money is] less important than it's been in recent campaign cycles for several reasons. I mean, why do politicians feel compelled to raise gazillions? To buy television advertising, mostly negative...Negative advertising, which was used overwhelmingly by Republicans, didn't seem all that effective in 2006, which may be a sign of things to come. Of course, candidates do need to raise some money--the Democrats' ability to respond cleverly to Republican trash was an important aspect of their 2006 victory--but they don't need to raise as much as they think they need to raise.

Second, I think the perambulations of various money people--Bob Farmer, for example--are less important than they used to be. I'm far more interested in money raised on the web as a thermometer for what's going on in a campaign.

So why do journalists obsess about The Money Primary? Because it's quantifiable. Journalists overvalue things you can count: money, poll ratings (which are completely meaningless at this point--except, perhaps, in places like Iowa and New Hampshire) and endorsements.

That's all true, at least so far as the primary election goes. Competing in Iowa and New Hampshire just isn't that costly an exercise, remember where Dean's millions got him. Better, candidates who excel in either testing ground will find their coffers full by lunchtime the next day -- particularly given the internet's capacity for accelerating and absorbing funder excitement.

That said, if California does move up to February 5th, money becomes significantly more important. A few days ago, I opposed the primary move for just that reason. A few other bloggers (Kevin and Atrios, I think?) suggested that, in fact, what the Golden State would test were the real operative skills of modern campaigners -- media control, fundraising ability, and telegenicism. But while a California primary may let Obama, Clinton, or even Edwards demonstrate their media savvy, it won't do the same for potentially adept candidates the press hasn't already decided to cover. If a candidate expertly dodges a question, but no reporter was there to hear it, did he even make a sound? Moreover, fundraising skill is fine and well and good, but it relies more on expectations of electability than talent, and a small candidate facing the California primary is going to present a dim bet. That said, covering primaries is the sort of thing my job allows me to do, and so it's hard for me to really oppose moving California, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico into more prominent positions.

More Hillary Absurdity

Yesterday, I got on the press for its absurd, idiotic focus and commentary of Hillary's "evil, bad men" joke. Today, from Greg Sargent, we get the actual video, and some more bizarre commentary. First, the video:

Now, back to Sargent, who writes:

Many are trying to interpret this as a sly reference to someone in her past -- Ken Starr, perhaps, or even that guy she lives with whose first name is Bill. She later said it had been what it sounded like -- a reference to Osama Bin Laden.

Is that really what it sounded like? Hillary slyly rephrases the question to say "what in my past prepares me to deal with evil, bad, men," gets a laugh line, cracks up herself, and Sargent thinks she was talking about -- what? Reading news coverage of Osama bin-Laden? Speaking to her husband after the bombing of the Cole? That's what we're to believe she finds funny?

Hillary was making a joke. She said she was making a joke! '“You guys!” she chuckled after the third question from a reporter on the topic. “I thought I was funny. You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I’m being psychoanalyzed.”' She was using a form of humor called "exaggerism," a "witticism that overstates the features, defects, or the strangeness of someone or something." That's a good thing. I thought there was nothing I could want less than to watch the press misinterpret and psychoanalyze her every stab at levity for the next year. But I was wrong. To watch progressives then react in a precisely opposite, perfectly proportional way will render an intolerable situation absolutely excruciating.

Watch that clip again. You know the saddest part of this whole controversy? Hillary's joke was actually funny. The sort of sly playfulness that makes a campaign bearable both for candidates and voters. She was funny, the swell of voter laughter rich and genuine. It was, and is, the press that couldn't crack a smile, and now I bet Hillary isn't either.

Is McCain Unelectable?

Steve is right. McCain's vaunted electability -- which even I've bought into -- is a myth, a sham, an illusion. Poll after poll shows him losing to Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or Barack Obama. And McCain certainly doesn't lack for name recognition or media exposure. Indeed, unlike Clinton, McCain really does strike me as being near his ceiling. The media's portrayal of him is unfailingly positive and laudatory, but the campaign will inevitably unearth his vast array of extremely conservative, hawkish, unpopular views. If his talkshow ubiquity and leftover goodwill isn't translating into imposing leads now, he's in real trouble.

Hillary's Ceiling

There's an emergent consensus that Clinton's notoriety renders her current poll numbers a ceiling. Americans already know what they think of her, the theory goes, and so her support is currently maxed out. She's nowhere to go but down. But watch her announcement video. Support for Hillary's reputation may be at its peak, but the actual Hillary is a considerable more engaging, authoritative, interesting figure. She's going to be much better in practice than in theory, particularly if she can shed her cautious impulses and craft a platform featuring a few inspiring planks. I agree that Penn's spin is annoying, and the unceasing professionalism of the Clinton team may well smother the spontaneity and warmth the campaign needs to catch fire. But if, to steal a phrase, they let Hillary be Hillary, I think folks may be surprised how well she plays.

He Doesn't Mean It

I'm having a hell of a time parsing Todd Purdum's long profile of John McCain (see my two Tapped posts: 1, 2). The entire piece reads like a litany of McCain's panders and straddles -- but not because Purdum trolled the vote records and the speeches. Instead, McCain, in front of Perdum, cops to it all, asking his aide John Weaver if he'd fixed a gay marriage gaffe or demanding to know if his staff had had their morning glass of ethanol (McCain's a longtime opponent of ethanol subsidies) before touring an ethanol production facility. McCain's not a moron: He knows that Purdum is in the car, and the audience, and the entourage. And he knows that Perdum will write his experience. The only conclusion is that he's unermining his panders purposefully, hoping James Dobson doesn't read Vanity Fair.

Indeed, McCain's done something like this before. In a quote Perdum grabs from McCain's second book, the Senator writes:

By the time I was asked the question for the fourth or fifth time, I could have delivered the response from memory. But I persisted with the theatrics of unfolding the paper and reading it as if I were making a hostage statement. I wanted to telegraph to reporters that I really didn't mean to suggest I supported flying the flag, but political imperatives required a little evasiveness on my part. I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president.

I think that made the offense worse. Acknowledging my dishonesty with a wink didn't make it less a lie. It compounded the offense by revealing how willful it had been. You either have the guts to tell the truth or you don't. You don't get any dispensation for lying in a way that suggests your dishonesty.

McCain's not theatrically unfolding a piece of paper, but by letting a national political reporter peer behind the facade and report on his sad, willful pandering, he's trying to accomplish the same thing. He wants the press to know, for savvy politicos to know, that he doesn't mean it. McCain won't govern as he campaigns, and he hates having to campaign this way. Forgive him pundits, for he knows exactly what he does.

Edwards vs. the Deficit Hawks

By Ezra

Des Moines is a very charming town, with some truly fantastic steakhouses. That's particularly if some of your fellow reporters are feeling generous with expense accounts. But I digress.

I spent much of yesterday in Iowa watching Edwards do the Townhall thing. And believe me: The boy got skillz. Speaking to a room of a 1,000+ people (the campaign estimated 2,500; the papers 1,000), Edwards easily outdid his announcement speech from the morning, going far deeper into the policy and at far longer length. And it was an impressive performance, particularly compared to his relative insecurity when discussing such issues in 2004. Afterwards, I couldn't find a member of the crowd -- not that there were none, just that I couldn't find him -- who wasn't now supporting Edwards in 2008. As I said, an impressive performance, But Nick's post on the deficit reminded me of a fairly remarkable exchange from the Q&A that I want to transcribe here. Do follow below the fold, it's worth it:

Q: No one seems to have talked about the deficit, and I see that as a twofold problem. Not only are we going into debt, but we're mortgaging our future to the Chinese -- last time I noticed, they weren't really allies of ours, weren't really our friends. I wonder what would your approach to the piling up of the deficit be?

Edwards: Well, I have to first off say what everybody here knows...when George Bush came into office we had surpluses as far as the eye could see, and now we have deficits as far as they eye can see. I think the honest answer to this question is that there's a tension between our desire to eliminate the deficit and create a stronger economic foundation and eliminate some of the debt our children will inherit, there's a tension between that deficit and our need to invest and make America stronger for the 21st century.

I think that, if we're honest, you cannot it, it's just common sense in the math, have universal health care, and invest in energy, and make a serious effort to eliminate poverty, to strengthen the middle class, and do some of the work that I think America needs to be leading on around the world, and at the same time, eliminate the deficit. Those things are incompatible. And anybody who claims -- politicians who say 'I'm going to give you a big tax cut, and give you health care, put more money into education, and oh by the way, we're going to balance the budget in the process,' it's just make-believe, it isn't the truth. So I think there's gonna be hard judgments that have to be made -- my commitment is to have universal health care, to do things that have to be done about this energy situation and global warming, because I think they're enormous threats, not only to the people of America but to the future of the world, for America to lead on some of these big moral issues that face the world, and I think America has to do something about poverty, I just do. Those are higher priorities to me than the elimination of the deficit. I don't want to make the deficit worse and I would like to reduce the deficit, but in the short-term, if we don't take a step to deal with these other issues, it in my judgment, undermines the ability of America to remain strong in the 21st century.

That's a genuinely important admission, and one that very, very few Democrats are willing to make. It's the opposite of Clintonomics, which took deficit reduction as the transcendent priority and, as Robert Reich long regretted, forsook most investment spending. It's different than most campaigners, who both promise deficit elimination and heightened spending, and so offer no real clue of how they'll conduct themselves in office. Indeed, it's a relatively rare progressive moment in national politics: A forthright argument for the importance of, and an increase in, public spending, one not shackled by a desire to drive the deficit into nothingness just so the politician can say it's been done. In addition, Edwards answer was a direct refutation of his questioner's premise, and not what many in his audience probably wanted to hear. As I said, an impressive performance, and one that was actually quite revealing so far as the evolution of the Edwards ideology goes.

The Announcement

By Ezra

Yesterday, John Edwards spent the day shoveling, flattening, and recreating Orelia Tyler's yard.  Today, outside that same yard, at 8:03 in the morning, he announced for president.  The speech was more casual than most in the announcement genre, at least in my experience.  Edwards was dressed in blue jeans, and a plain white undershirt peeked out behind his unbuttoned collar.  The address didn't soar or sing; standing atop the wreckage of the second America, he appeared uninterested talking about it.  Instead he focused on what you -- not he, not the president -- could do about it. 

That was the theme of the entire speech, in fact: How much could be done without public office, without winning primaries, without legislation.  "This campaign," Edwards promised," will be a grassroots, ground-up campaign where we ask the people to take action."  As part of that, there'll be monthly Days of Action, the first on January 27th, which will exhort volunteers and supporters to enter their communities and work on a particular issue.  "Americans," Edwards kept saying," have to be patriotic about something besides war," and that means taking individual initiative to ease poverty, conserve energy, and create the Good Society even without holding office. 

The announcement was striking for sounding less like a campaign for the presidency and more like a telethon. His campaign would certainly like to lead in the polls, but Edwards seemed more interested in leading a movement. The virtue of the message is obvious, but its magnetism, urgency, and electoral efficacy are less so.  It'll be interesting to see if he's any more explicitly political in Iowa later today.  A few other disconnected thoughts:

• The announcement used race in a rather explicit way.  The site was found by the NAACP, the homeowner is a middle-aged black woman, and the smiling children behind Edwards were all African-American.  The city (New Orleans) and the subject (poverty) are both racially charged as well.  It occurred to me that Barack Obama, a black man, couldn't run such a campaign, while Edwards, a white man, can. 

• Edwards explicitly condemned the "surge" plan for Iraq.  But he didn't call it the surge.  "It is a mistake," he said, "for America to escalate the war in Iraq."  That's the term the blogs have adopted as well, and its prominent placement, used before he mentioned the word "surge," struck me as a possible dog whistle to the left. 

• I can't shake the impression that very little was said about poverty or the Two Americas in this announcement, and that was, in some essential way, odd.  The theme was civic action, a verb, not a noun.  It's an interesting organizing strategy, but it didn't sound, even here, like a message.  And that's fine, it may not be.  This announcement, so far removed from primary voters, appeared more intent on creating a national base of engaged, involved, supporters than articulating a sharp-edged political theme. It'll be interesting to see if his focus at the Iowa townhall is significantly different.  For now, though, Edwards is doing a better job explaining why you should volunteer with him than vote for him. 

The Incumbent Protection Program

And the perpetual campaign perpetuates:

The 110th Congress has not even been sworn into office. But in a measure of the determination not to surrender the majority in two years, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive speaker, has instructed aides to begin acting immediately to help Democrats who won by small margins in districts where President Bush did well in 2004 or who coasted in because their opponents were mired by controversy. Those new members are methodically being given coveted spots on high-profile committees, in particular the Financial Services Committee, a magnet for campaign contributions, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, a platform from which to send money for projects back home.

Their names will be affixed as co-sponsors atop big-ticket measures on ethics and stem cell research that are to be voted on in the first 100 hours of the new Congress, Democratic leaders said.

The special group has attended orientation sessions on topics like delivering constituent services and getting their names regularly into local newspapers.

The sessions were led by members of Congress who have won in tough districts, including Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the new head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Several said they were being told that given a choice of voting the party position and casting a vote that would help them in their districts they should feel free to retreat from the Democratic line.

Those poor freshmen. No sooner did they finish one campaign then they're already starting the next. And how screwed is it that one way of protecting incumbents is to put them on the Financial Services Committee, where banks and credit companies will shower them with donations? When are Democrats going to make campaign finance reform a serious agenda item again?

The Warner Strikes Back

Amid the rumors that Mark Warner is rethinking his exit from the presidential race, I just got this e-mail from his organization:

Dear Friends,

We wanted to take just a moment out of your busy holiday schedule to wish you and your family a happy holiday season and best wishes for a new year full of hope, health and happiness.

Mark, Lisa, Madison, Gillian and Eliza

Now, you've got to understand something.  Mark Warner and I aren't friends.  We're acquaintances at best.  So this reminder of his existence isn't entirely necessary.  That said, for Warner, pulling out and the popping back in may prove a smart move.  If he waits till the press corps takes its post-Obama breath, Warner could get a burst of publicity that, as a known and expected quantity, he wouldn't have gotten otherwise.  Meanwhile, he got a lot of elite respect around the time of his exit -- apparently, somebody who doesn't really need to be president is the sort of guy you want to be president.  I don't really buy that, but it fits into Warner's successful businessman narrative fairly well.  I still can't imagine a scenario wherein Warner gets the nomination, but with John Warner apparently running for Senate again, this wouldn't be a bad way for Warner raise his vice-presidential potential and, in the absence of that, get a year or two of free Virginia media.

Which Obama Is Which?

John Heilemann has an Obama assessment in this week's New York that rather exactly tracks the arguments I made in The LA Times last month. Indeed, that's as you'd expect, because the argument is fairly obvious and the only wonder is that more people aren't making it. I want, however, to particularly emphasize one element:

God knows the last thing I’d argue is that Obama ought to pad his CV by loitering for years in the Senate, an institution that prepares one for little besides the exercise of pomposity. But, substantively speaking, Obama hasn’t even made the most of his brief time there. The legislation he has offered has been uniformly mundane, marginal, and provincial—securing additional funding for veterans, to cite but one example.

Obama’s response to such criticism is to point out that he’s been constrained by his status and circumstances: a freshman senator in the minority party. “I’ve got a lot of clout,” he jokes. “I went from 99th to 98th in seniority this year.”

A clever line, sure, but patently bogus—for, given the extent of Obama’s celebrity, he’s hardly an ordinary backbencher. Yet how many times has he used his megaphone to advance a bold initiative or champion a controversial cause? Zero. Instead, Obama has tempered his once-fiery stances on such issues as Iraq and health care; his proposals on alternative energy and global warming are weak beer compared with those of, say, Al Gore. He seems a man laboring to stay something of a cipher—a strategy no less calculated than Hillary’s conspicuous lunges to the center or McCain’s lurches to the right.

I call this the Two Obamas Dodge. Talk to his staffers about Obama's superstardom, his presidential prospects, or talent, and they'll gush with praise and enthusiasm. Ask them why he hasn't used that silver tongue to consecrate some treasured, important progressive policy initiatives and they'll explain that he's only, like, 10-years-old, and can't be expected to step on any Senate toes. By which logic we can expect he'll cede the primary to Dodd, Biden, Kerry, and Clinton, and in that order. Wouldn't want to step on any toes, after all.

Obama can be the dutiful backbencher preparing for life as a legislator. Or he can be the rocketing talent seeking support for a presidential campaign. But he can't be both. No candidate seeking the presidency can avoid specificity on grounds that he wouldn't want to usurp his place in the Senate. It's absurd. And Obama will, slowly, shed the generalities and create a platform specific to him. What that will look like, however, is anyone's guess. Is he willing to lose the affection of David Brooks and George Will? To go from stratospheric approval ratings to merely sub-orbital? Or will he be trapped by his own popularity, his own hope of being a unifying force, and create a platform of bland incrementalism gussied up in his soaring eloquence?

The Post-Dean Primary

Evan Bayh's decision to forego the 2008 campaign is an interesting one. Bayh joins with Mark Warner and Russ Feingold as serious candidates who, in an open year and facing a broad field, decided to ease off the trigger and unload the gun. And the three of them make for an illuminating bunch. Warner and Bayh were both supposed to uphold the New Democrat consensus, the triangulating Southern moderation perfected by Bill Clinton. Feingold, on the other hand, was supposed to play the insurgent, the serious lefty in a field Hillary had tilted right.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the caucuses. In presidential primaries, "space" is the definitional attribute. Niches get filled, interest groups sated, and constituencies satisfied. And so it has happened in the Democratic primary. Hillary has settled on the center, while all of the excitement and other candidates have veered to the left. Obama, Edwards, Gore -- say what you will, but this crew currently controls the buzz, the assumptions of "electability," and the excitement of the base. And every one of them is a progressive.. Warner and Bayh both dropped out because there was little space to Hillary's right and even fewer voters waiting in it. Feingold dropped out because he couldn't be Howard Dean -- the campaign was packed with progressives who appeared more likely nominees than he. The dynamics of this field are friendly only to liberals, and serious, electable ones at that. Indeed, for better or worse, this is the first presidential in recent memory where the initial action and jostling is happening in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Howard Dean should be proud: He really did change the party.

At Tapped, too.

But Did Anyone Tell His Political Advisors?

I don't know how this process works, but Mitt Romney has named his two primary economic advisors for the 2008 campaign, and, to his credit, they're proponents of, quite arguably, the most politically radioactive ideas in economics. Greg Mankiw's current obsession is a significant gasoline tax, a policy he's so committed to he's created a Facebook group to promote it. Meanwhile, Glenn Hubbard provided crucial backup support when Mankiw admitted that outsourcing was good for the economy -- a position that doesn't play so well in The Rust Belt.

In a weird way, both these moves speak well of Romney. Mankiw's "Pigou tax" obsession is arguable policy, but it's an undoubtedly serious -- and even unpopular -- attempt to deal with a profound threat. And taking a fatalistic view of outsourcing, while again up for debate (which I'll leave to Dean Baker), is at least ideologically honest. Both these guys are serious about policy -- more so, in fact, than they are about politics. And Romney's willingness to embrace them, impolitic statements and all, is evidence that there's a current of such seriousness in him, too.

As further evidence, I did a story on Romney's role in passing health reform awhile back. I concluded that he didn't deserve nearly so much of the credit as he'd been given, but even though the outcome was rather predetermined, everyone involved had honest and lavish praise for Romney's attentiveness to the policy issues and willingness to run an open and honest process -- a welcome change from the current occupant of the White House.

What's the Matter with Indiana?

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

In preparing Yet Another Al Gore Speculation Post, I was thumbing through the SurveyUSA 50 state approval ratings. The one I find most striking is Indiana's. Over the past three months, Bush has lost 10 points in the Hoosier State, but only 6 in South Dakota, 5 in neighboring Ohio, and 5 in Michigan. On the flip side, he's lost 15 in Kentucky. Can anyone explain these discrepancies? I always though of Indiana as one of the most Republican states in the nation ... why are they giving up on Bush? Is it just a combination of frustration with Bush, Governors Daniels (R-IN) and Fletcher (R-KY), and job losses in the auto industry? Are there other factors at play here?

Discuss.

My Al Gore Worries

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Lots of my friends are very excited about the possibility of a Gore 2008 candidacy. (I remember when the announcement hit Daily Kos that Gore had hired back one of his consultants from 2000. The Kossacks were so excited that Gore might be running again that they actually forgot to complain about consultants who lose presidential campaigns.)  I feel the need to express some of my worries, on the theme of whether Gore could actually win the general election. So if you’re a big Gore fan, here are some pitches for you to swing at:  

First: What image of Gore will be distributed by the national media in 2008? For all the disintermediation talk, in the 2008 general election, the vast majority of voters are going to be getting their information through the mainstream media. The media, including its nonpartisan elements, was particularly brutal to him in 2000. Now, the new Gore’s image is clearly going to be different from the old Gore’s, which is good. But what is it going to be?

I’m not optimistic that this turns out well. We live in an age where flip-flops damn you to public-image hell, and where Tim Russert and his clones obsess over inconsistencies real and perceived in a candidate’s record. It’s unclear to me how the new Gore explains what happened to the old Gore in a way that fits together and looks appealing. Somewhere in the darkness, clawed hands are sewing a flip-flopper costume and a crazy liberal costume, and cold eyes are looking in from the shadows to see which one will fit him better. Tell me how Al doesn’t end up getting stuffed into either of these loser suits. Because if that's how most swing voters see him, he loses the election.   

Second: Does Al Gore help out with any swing voter constituencies, or win us any states? If Mark Warner could get Tim Kaine to win Virginia, he should be able to carry the state himself, and perhaps have some broader Southern appeal. Bill Richardson’s people say he can help with the Hispanic vote. Evan Bayh supposedly puts Indiana into play. A certain son of a mill worker has excellent favorability numbers even beyond our party, has the Southern appeal, and was born into the white working class (who are as susceptible to identity politics as anybody else, except that people don’t call it identity politics). Which extra votes does Al Gore win us?

Gore’s strongest support comes from folks in the netroots – generally, savvy and critical consumers of media who see through right-wing spin and the dumber things said by mainstream pundits. The speech on the decline of the media that he gave back in October was awesome, and made bloggers (who’ve been paying attention to the phenomena that he described) love him. The trouble is that lots of Americans, including the mostly-disengaged swing voters whose voting decisions are based on the caricatures the media feeds them, aren’t savvy about this stuff and wouldn’t see it if it was pointed out to them, especially with a defensive media and the Republican Party trying to point them away from it. A country that was smart enough to see through the bullshit and vote for Al Gore wouldn’t have the problems that Gore is so good at diagnosing.

Now, let me present the way that Gore could win a general election. He’d remind people of how awesome things were in the Clinton years, and say that voting for him was the path out of the Bush disaster and back into the awesomeness.  This message would have a fairly wide appeal.  (And by 2008, disgust with the GOP might be so intense that any Democrat could win.) Things would be somewhat better if Hillary weren’t Gore’s main potential rival for the 2008 nomination – lots of Bill stumping for Al would be nice, but I don’t know how enthusiastic Bill will be after a hard-hitting Al vs. Hillary primary. And I'm not sure that Al has everything it takes to hold the Clinton voters together -- a high Bubba quotient will get a lot of people not to tune you out from the start, and Gore doesn't have that.

There’s one part of the online Gore lovefest I don’t dissent from – I think that he’d make an excellent president. But I’m having a hard time seeing how we get there. Recent polls show Gore in pretty bad shape. In the latest head-to-head poll I’ve seen, he loses to McCain by 17, same as Kerry, while Hillary trails by 10 and Edwards by 6. His more recent net favorability numbers are below Hillary and Kerry, and way below Edwards.  These numbers aren’t written in stone – his ratings are probably a lot more malleable than Hillary’s, for instance. But I need to hear the story of how they’re going to get fixed, considering all the challenges Gore faces in selling himself to people who rely entirely on media-processed news. So let me request a little more explaining before we continue with the lovefesting.

Bipartisan Maverick Destruction Advice

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

I think George Allen is a more likely 2008 Republican candidate than John McCain, but it doesn't hurt to have a plan for every possibility. And given my mad Edwards love, I'm itching to put this bit from the latest Marist Poll where everybody can see:

Senator McCain has a strong lead against all the top Democratic presidential contenders except for John Edwards. When posed in hypothetical match-ups against the leading Democrats, John McCain breaks fifty percent against Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton and outpaces each by double-digits. Senator McCain’s lead is fueled by the majority support he receives from independent voters in each of these contests. McCain would face a more competitive race against John Edwards. McCain receives the support of 47% of registered voters compared with 41% for Edwards.

Previous polls have shown similar results, with Edwards outpacing other Democrats against McCain. Gore and Kerry, by the way, each lose by a whopping 17% to McCain in the latest run. And there's reason to think that Edwards would have a particular advantage against McCain in the general election.

A lot of McCain's appeal comes from his image as a bipartisan maverick. It's not just that people like bipartisanship, it's that his lack of an obvious partisan bent allows voters to project their fantasies onto him. Before seeing any specific data about his position on abortion, for example, it's easy to imagine that he's one of those moderate pro-choice Republicans (who don't actually help pro-choicers when the chips are down, but let's set that aside for a moment). As it turns out, he's in favor of banning abortion with no exceptions except rape, incest, and the life of the mother. When you look bipartisan, a big group of voters in the middle find it easy to project their preferences onto you, as long as you can keep quiet about your actual views.

The key to beating McCain is to destroy his bipartisan reputation. This is supported by Ezra's observation that McCain does a lot worse when you call him "John McCain, the Republican" and poll him against someone who you describe as "the Democrat." Polls like this better approximate how McCain will be seen in the heat of an election. It's easy to look like a bipartisan maverick when you're brokering compromises in a congenial Senate, and you have lots of control about which issues you want to address. It's a lot harder when you're actually running for office. It's well-nigh impossible if you've voted against minimum wage increases and other pro-worker measures throughout your career, and you're up against a mill worker's son who can drive the minimum wage issue harder than anyone else. The old stereotype of Republicans as mean old men who don't care about workers will replace McCain's bipartisan reputation.

It's sort of like the way Bush was able to redefine Kerry. Since Bush was seen as a decisive and forceful leader, he was able to easily cast Kerry as indecisive and flip-floppy while reinforcing positive perceptions of himself. Edwards' blue-collar roots allow him to do the same when he casts Republicans as enemies of the working man. Lots of Democrats try this, but it works best when a candidate can first get working-class people to identify with him. For Edwards against McCain, the ethos, pathos, and logos are all in place.

In the comments to my last post, Iron Lungfish was concerned that Edwards' lack of experience in foreign policy would cause him trouble against McCain. My answer, basically, was that I've never heard of an American whose vote in November was determined by experience on any issue. Michael Dukakis showed us that competence doesn't win elections, and what is experience supposed to give you beyond competence? In fact, one could argue that the more experienced candidate has lost the last 30 years of American presidential elections. If you can get people to nod more when you talk about an issue, you win that issue, regardless of how experienced or inexperienced you are. And with McCain's view that we should send even more troops to Iraq, I don't like his chances against Edwards in the nodding game.

And that's how you destroy McCain's biggest asset. Run John Edwards, and shout it from the rooftops -- Republican John McCain is no friend of working people.

Edwards, Civil Liberties, and Abortion

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Lindsay Beyerstein has explained why she likes Russ Feingold for 2008.  Two of the major reasons she's put forward are his support for civil liberties and his liberal views on social issues.  As one of the foremost Edwards supporters in the blogosphere, it falls to me to respond by describing the virtues of John Edwards on these two topics. 

People are often surprised to learn about Edwards' opposition to the flag burning amendment. When the Constitutional Amendment to ban flag desecration reached the Judiciary Committee, Edwards was the only red-state Senator to vote against it.  He was one of only two Senators from the old Confederacy to vote against it on the Senate floor in 2000.  (The other one, Chuck Robb, was defeated that year, and George Allen used the flag vote to argue that Robb had lost touch with the citizens of Virginia.)  Since the passage of the Patriot Act, Edwards has consistently argued for repealing or not renewing the most troubling provisions (many of the provisions were scheduled to 'sunset', or expire, in 2005). 

Now, nobody's going to beat Feingold for the Civil Liberties championship.  He was, after all, the only guy to vote against the Patriot Act the first time up, and he's been filibustering to block renewal.  But I'd submit that this isn't as massive a political risk as Edwards took in voting against the flag desecration amendment as a Senator from North Carolina.

On abortion, there's nobody who can beat John Edwards and his 100% NARAL rating.  While he wasn't actually a Senator for either of the Supreme Court nominations, his One America Committee opposed the Roberts nomination, and he was running a petition drive against Alito.  He's got the same civil unions position that all the Democratic presidential contenders do. 

Here's the kicker: Despite very progressive views on these and other issues, Independents and Republicans  like John Edwards.  The most recent poll to ask this question has him at a 48% favorability rating among Republicans and 68% among Independents -- more than any other Democrat polled.  What you want in a Democratic nominee is a genuine progressive who somehow has appeal to everybody, even those who disagree with his progressive views.  Somehow, John Edwards can do that. 

Sometimes You Feel Like a...

Does it not seem that the GOP's 2008 primaries are going to prove particularly chock full o' nuts? Democrats always have the odd liberal outlier or two, but Republicans, now, have Tom Tancredo commanding an army of xenophobes while Sam Brownback promises to install Christ back on the Oval Office. And these guys may be marginal figures, but they're atop serious constituencies with real power in the right's presidential primaries. It all goes back to the odd value judgments made on interest groups.

It's well known that Democrats are in hock to unions and blacks, environmentalists and baby-killers. Indeed, for Clinton to win, he had to prove himself independent of these forces. But somehow, the crazies comprising the GOP's base never got tarred with the same brush, never became similarly unacceptable. Republicans need not disavow them, it's Democrats who need to constantly profess respect. It's bizarre. Maybe post-Schiavo, Brownback and his orcish forces will prove as repellent as they did in Florida, while Tancredo and his minutemen will do for Republicans nationally what Pete Wilson's prop 187 did for them in California. Given the flack Democrats have received for helping minorities and working folks, it'd really be only fair.

More on Gore

Arianna Huffington's got an interesting post on the many Hollywood funders who're tiring of Hillary and beginning to turn their attention towards Gore. Regular readers know this is one of my favorite drums to beat, so it's nice to see party bigwigs picking up the tune. As Arianna tells it, the basic story is that Hillary's centrist positioning is turning off many progressives who realize, rightly, that it's not an act, that Hillary is a moderate, that the mere fact that Republicans despise her is not the best way to understand her political views.

Good to hear.

The second, more implicit portion of the story is that Democrats seem to realize they need a Name for 2008. Republicans have this down -- the Guiliani/McCain talk is an effort to nominate a character familiar enough to Americans that they'll trust them to guide us through Iraq, around terror, past the coming fiscal crises. Democrats need a bigfoot as well, whichb is why Hillary and her enormous pumps dominated the field for so long. But Gore's got boots too.

He was the Vice-President -- part of the ticket! -- for the Clinton years, a leading voice on foreign policy in Congress, aware of global warming and energy crises long before the rest of us. He can be trusted. He's won the vote before, he's got the experience to handle Iraq, and now, lo and behold, he's shed the stilted, stentorian tone of his campaign speeches for the sort of wonkish, visionary progessivism liberals love. I'm glad to see the funders have noticed. If the Gore 08 whispering campaign continues slinking through the papers, racking up blind quotes from moneymen and strategists, the ground for a Draft Al campaign will be well laid. If the rest of the field is unable to effectively challenge Hillary, the Democratic primaries might end in a media-grabbing, attention-attracting struggle between two party titans, and with McCain and Giuliani giving foot massages to reporters in Iowa, that may be just what we need.

WaPo Hearts Haley Barbour

By Pepper of the Daily Pepper

Ezra put out the call for posts on Indian Genocide Columbus Day, and I had something on my mind ...

The Washington Post ran one of those sweet little puff pieces about what politicians are really like this morning. It read a lot like those interviews in Entertainment Weekly that are supposed to warm the public up to chilly celebs.

The subject of all this love is a rather unlovable man, Good Ol' Boy Mississippi governor Haley Barbour. Readers get to find out all about his adorable habits. He likes dirty jokes about doing something weird with frozen food. He drinks Maker's Mark. He has more friends than Kathleen Blanco.

Oh, and the WaPo buries the lead after mentioning how Barbour might spearhead a "Mississippi Renaissance": "This renaissance, if it occurs, could be a springboard into a run for president in 2008 -- something Barbour had been considering before Katrina."

No mention of how he said he would be "ruthless" with looters and essentially ordered those who were armed to shoot on sight following the aftermath of Katrina. Ya'll better duck and cover if this man gets anywhere near the White House.

Before the article, I didn't like a single thing about Haley Barbour. Now that I've read it, he has only one point in my favor - he drinks Maker's Mark. And that ain't much.

Gore 08 -- Vote for the Firebreather

Man, I don't know what happened to that wooden dude we had a few years back, but these days, each time Al Gore opens his mouth barns everywhere spontaneously burst into flame:

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.
[...]
The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.
[...]
[I]n order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.

The speech, in addition to being great rhetoric, is a brilliant discourse on emergence of this weird media moment. I'd no idea Al was so erudite -- rarely does a single talk range from John Galbraith to Walter Lippman to Jon Stewart and all the way back to Athens.

Would this be a good time to renew my call for Gore '08?

I Heart Huckabee

This is fairly interesting. Via advertiser AltWeeklies, the Arkansas Times has an article on Mike Huckabee. It's a dirty laundry piece, but some of it seems well able to stick, particularly the Dumond story, which strikes as Willie Horton but with an element of Clinton paranoia:

Another issue sure to come up if Huckabee contends for national office is his involvement in the 1999 parole of rapist Wayne Dumond, who went on to murder a woman in Missouri. A 2002 cover story in the Arkansas Times detailed Huckabee’s personal intervention in the Post Prison Transfer Board’s deliberations about Dumond’s release. Huckabee supported Dumond after being influenced by conservative activists who said Dumond got a raw deal because his victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton.

I always knew they'd pin a killing on Clinton, I just didn't know the causal factor would be that their hatred for him had become so great they'd begun pardoning rapists whose victims were connected to the family.

Huckabee's wife, incidentally, seems a sort of Hillary Clinton figure, wholly uncontent to wait on the sidelines, and in fact quite comfortable parlaying her husband's celebrity into a campaign for office:

His wife, Janet, has had her ups and downs, but the one public referendum on her wasn’t encouraging. She suffered a 62-38 percent defeat in the 2002 election for secretary of state. She is a force of personality in her own right, a genuine outdoorswoman comfortable in camouflage and the duck blind — think of her as the red-state version of Hillary Rodham Clinton or Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Also on the bright side, Huckabee has expanded health coverage for low income kids, raised taxes, and generally proved himself a fiscal pragmatist, though nevertheless a social conservative. I'm not really sure where his constituency would come from in a presidential race, but you never know. In any case, the article's good -- if you're interested in the guy, give it a read.

Been A Long Time Since I Had This Feeling

When I got an e-mail alerting me to John Edwards' latest speech on poverty, I expected the usual hand-wringing about a country so great and a shame so large and an inequity so massive and so forth. That's not to dispute the truth of it, but it's a debate that Americans have long ago been inured to and, unless Edwards was bringing something new to the table, rehashing it would be good for the soul but far from the center. And then I read this:

The trouble is that for too many Americans—not just in the Gulf but everywhere—the American Dream has become too distant. You can see it in the numbers: millions of parents work full-time but still live in poverty. The typical white family has about $80,000 in assets; the typical Hispanic family, about $8,000; the typical African-American family, about $6,000.

“Income is what you use to get by, but assets are what you use to get ahead.” This huge asset gap is one reason so many families are barely getting by. And again, it’s not just the poor: middle-class incomes are stagnant, and more people file for bankruptcy than graduate from college each year.

Assets couldn't be more crucial. And almost nobody mentions them. Poverty is usually discussed in platitudes, a Bad Thing requiring either random cash or the magic of personal responsibility. Edwards, here, is light-years beyond that crap. Reading him, I got goosebumps for the first time since the debates. And they they kept a-coming:

In the 1960s we fought a war on poverty. Our intentions were good, but sometimes we expected government to do things that only individuals and communities can achieve.

Sometimes we gave too much money to bureaucracies, not people. Yet those efforts still helped cut the poverty rate by 43 percent from 1963 to 1973.

Again, in the 1990s, the Earned Income Tax Credit and welfare reform helped lift 7 million more people out of poverty. If we are going to fight poverty, we have to commit ourselves once more, more deeply than ever before.

What!? He's not fleeing from the Great Society? Not promising to outsource government? Not putting it all on black families? Surely you kid!

Sorry, I wasn't expecting to quote so much of this speech, but I also wasn't expecting it to be so good. More after the jump:

Where I come from, what matters the most isn’t how much you have, it’s how much you give. Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities. And so the President is wrong: America is not, and never wished to be, a Wealth Society.

To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it. In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.

In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it – a home of their own, an account where their savings and paycheck can grow.

In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.

In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.

In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain—to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.

The first test of the working society will be in the Gulf. And the central principle of our effort should be the one I just outlined: We can only renew the Gulf if we renew the lives of the Gulf’s people by encouraging and honoring work.

The President doesn’t get that. At a time when a million people have been displaced, many already poor before the storm; when the only shot many people have is a good job rebuilding New Orleans, the President intervened to suspend prevailing wage laws so his contractor friends can cut wages for a hard day’s work.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the President never suggested cutting million-dollar salaries for the heads of Halliburton or the other companies profiting from these contracts. A President who never met an earmark he wouldn’t approve or a millionaire tax cut he wouldn’t promote decided to slash wages for the least of us.

Seventy-five years ago, our government was led by a President who actually succeeded in navigating America through a disaster. Faced with the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt saw that relief requires more than food and shelter; it requires the dignity that comes from a job at a decent wage. And he saw something else: as Allida Black put it at a forum here last week, we have to “build to last.”

Many of our children still go to schools that the WPA constructed; many of our homes are lighted because of dams that the PWA built; many of our families still hike on trails that his CCC blazed. That’s why trailer parks are not the answer.

In fact, if we know anything from a half century of urban development, it is that concentrating poor people close to each other and away from jobs is a lousy idea. If the Great Depression brought forth Hoovervilles, these trailer towns may someday be known as Bushvilles.

We can do better.

While reading this next quote, pay special attention to what I've italicized; this should be the progressive response to school vouchers:

Today, a single mom with two kids who works full-time for the minimum wage is about $2000 below the poverty line. The erosion of the minimum wage is a disgrace; we need to raise it to at least $7.50 an hour. Unionized workers make 30% more, so we need to give them back a real right to organize. And we need make sure that people can enter the workforce and change jobs without losing their health insurance.

It’s not enough to say that people who work full-time shouldn’t live in poverty.

We need to help every American develop the assets they need to get ahead—to send their kids to college, buy a home, or just have the piece of mind that there's a little breathing room should catastrophe -- in the form of a hurricane or lost health insurance - -comes into their lives.

First, let’s help folks buy a home they can actually keep. Today, the rich get subsidies while the poor get ravaged by predatory lenders. We should do something different: crack down on those lenders and offer a new deal to poor families just going into the workforce: for the first five years you are working, we will set aside up to $1,000 in an account to help you make home payments. After five years, you’ll have up to $5,000 for down payments.

Next, I’d help families save. We should offer low-income Americans “work bonds”—an extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit that helps families save for the future. Low-income working families would receive an extra credit of up to $500 per year that would be directly deposited into a new account held by a bank or a safe stock fund with low fees.

If families put away more, the amount in the account would grow, and it would be available not just for retirement, but also for a small business or a personal emergency. It’d be there for a rainy day and a better future.

Third, work should give you a good education. I could give a whole speech about education alone, because we will never end poverty unless we improve our schools. But here’s just one idea that would help with both education and housing.

This President likes to talk a lot about school vouchers; I’d like a major effort to give working parents who are poor housing vouchers so they have a chance to move into neighborhoods with better schools. That will not only expand opportunity; it will build healthier communities through “cultural integration,” as David Brooks called it.

Poor people don’t need new bureaucracies; they need access to the same banks and jobs and markets that most Americans take for granted. The chance to go to college meant everything in my life, and young people need to know that if they work hard they’ll be able to afford it.

For years now, I’ve talked about an idea I call College for Everyone: if you stay out of trouble in high school and agree to work your first year in college, you ought to get your first year of tuition at a public university or community college free. In a couple weeks, I’ll be announcing a new pilot project in North Carolina to test out that idea in an entire county.

And we also need policies that help strengthen families. Though the 2001 tax bill eliminated the marriage penalty for the middle-class, poor families can still get hit with a $3,000 marriage penalty. That makes no sense. We need to finish the job of welfare reform. It caused millions of mothers to go out and get jobs, but it left poor young men right where they were.

In communities where 40 percent of young men are unemployed, we can get more poor men into the workforce by connecting them with more jobs and supporting their wages, the way the EITC already does for families.

Read it all. The only bit missing is health care. So what say you, John? Ready to be right on everything?

Why Hillary Will Lose

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

The old CW on Hillary's presidential aspirations was that they'd be crushed under her liberal reputation. The "socialized medicine" attacks on her health care reform plan stuck to her more than they stuck to Bill. And while Bill's upbringing and red-state governorship made him acceptable to Southern regionalists, Hillary's Chicago roots and New York Senate seat marked her as someone from the strange liberal cities that many small-town folk still regard as foreign to their way of life.

The new CW is that she's moving to the center and leaving the old liberal reputation behind. She supports the Defense of Marriage Act, repositions herself on abortion, and has an incomprehensible position on flag burning that allows her to vote for a ban. But I doubt that she's actually gained any lasting political support through these moves. A candidate just coming onto the political scene might use these positions to get a genuine reputation as a moderate on the issues, which could play into any number of attractive political identities. But given Hillary's history and the way her moves are being analyzed by the press, her new reputation will be that of an unprincipled opportunist -- a reputation that has, in one way or another, defeated our last two presidential candidates.

They said Gore was a serial exaggerator who would make up anything to win; they said Kerry was a flip-flopper whose positions shifted with the political winds. While people identify with and vote for leaders who share their values, there's no identifying with opportunism. The current understanding of Hillary's positions is one that plays straightaway into charges that she's just saying whatever will help her get elected in 2008. Perhaps it's somewhat overblown -- this bit from Media Matters argues that she's not actually changing her positions that much. But perception here matters more than reality, and Media Matters documents the ubiquity of perceptions that Hillary is making opportunistic moves.

Every one of our other 2008 primary possibilities -- save the hapless John Kerry -- has a reasonably well-defined political identity, and staying true to this identity will do a lot to avoid charges of opportunism. Wes Clark is the General, and he can present himself as personally concerned with good national defense and foreign policy. Russ Feingold is the Liberal, and while this has limited appeal, he'll avoid charges of opportunism as long as he just goes out there and does his lefty thing. I'm guessing that Mark Warner will present himself as the Governor, a competent executive who knows how to make a government work efficiently. John Edwards, the Populist, probably has the most firm identity of them all. Who is Hillary? I'm worried that she's the Opportunist.

The Burning Bush

I have to say, I'm starting to think Matt is very wrong on this:

That dynamic [nobody is loyal to Bush anymore because he's not running for anything] will probably get very bad for Bush sometime after the 2006 elections unless the White House political team manages to settle on a favorite standard-bearer and essentially clear the primary field for him.

Matt's been making this argument for awhile now and some weeks find it more convincing than others. This week's not a good one. Bush is currently under 40% in the polls. In Virginia, his existence is proving a negative for Kilgore -- reverse coattails, if you will. So let's say, given all this, and assuming some degree of Democratic pickup in the 2006 elections, Bush and his handlers begin signaling their favored candidate. What happens?

Revolt.

Once Bush picks a candidate, that's it. Every other candidate knows their hopes of a Bush endorsement are over. So what's their probable move? They're not going to give up their presidential dreams just because Bush is signaling away from them. Hell, Bush is massively unpopular and he just led his party to defeat in the last election -- run against him. Separate from the Administration. Run as a champion of restored conservatism (Gingrich, by the way, is almost certainly preparing to do this). Attack Bush on immigration. Assault his handling of the government. Condemn the massive deficit he's created. Lament the growth of government under his tenure. In Bush-talk, git 'em.

If Bush embraces a candidate, that guy gets to spend the next two years walking around with a bull's eye attached to his back. So, for that matter, does Bush. Without the promise of a presidential endorsement vaulting them to the forefront of the pack, presidential hopefuls will have to rely on antagonism to up their profile. And so they will, making the Senate totally unworkable for the President and giving the Sunday shows an almost inexhaustible list of conservative guests eager to take on the President from the right.

Currently, quite a few media darlings have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of their ambitions. Guys like McCain, Giuliani, and Graham would be taking the President to the wall if they weren't expecting their support was a quid pro quo arrangement. If Bush yanks that hope away, the whole lot will filet the Commander-in-Chief, both out of anger and political necessity. Were Bush's conservative credentials unquestioned and his numbers stratospheric, that might prove a bad strategy. But if he continues on his current trajectory, being closely tied to his administration could be poisonous come election season. We may have entered a situation where, not only is it not smart for the Bush administration to designate a successor, but no successor would want their designation.

The nightmare scenario for the Bush administration is that they signal to a successor, but either their popularity or his weakness allows one of the spurned hopefuls to vault ahead of him. Now Allen (or whoever) is looking weaker than McCain and Giuliani, they're leading in the polls and raising more cash, and all through the Republican establishment, functionaries, influence-peddlers, contributors, and wise men are throwing their lot in with the other guy. And since the other guy is making a name by proving himself independent of the Administration, being loyal to him means opposing Bush. Now Republicans are split.

That'd effectively mark the end of the Bush presidency. Matt is right to say that the incentive now is to gain favoritism not with Bush, but with the next Republican candidate. But with Bush at his nadir, there's a real danger that he can't actually pick the next candidate -- that his choice will fail. And if he can't guarantee success, trying, and failing, would set off an internecine war so vicious that he might as well spend all of 07 and 08 back at the ranch.

Update: Matt says he's confining himself to just the folks who work under Bush, making a lot of this post beside his point. Fair enough. It's my opinion that the problems I've laid out here outweigh the benefits of uniting Bush's underlings and will keep the Administration from doing this, but maybe not. Gaming this stuff out is tricky.

No On Phil

Bob Herbert, in a column today, says all that should ever need to be said about Phil Bredesden's presidential ambitions:

The word in Tennessee is that Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, has presidential aspirations. I find that interesting. Perhaps he can run on the success he's had throwing sick people off of Medicaid.

Thanks to Mr. Bredesen's leadership, Tennessee is dumping nearly 200,000 residents, some of them desperately ill, from TennCare, the state's Medicaid program. Cindy Mann, a research professor and executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, concisely characterized the governor's efforts:

"What he's decided to do is save health care costs simply by not giving people health care."

How's that for a solution to a tough public policy issue?

What is happening in Tennessee is profoundly cruel. The people being removed from the rolls - some of them disabled, some suffering from such serious illnesses as cancer and heart disease - are mostly working-poor individuals who cannot afford private insurance. They are being left with no coverage and in many instances are in a state of absolute panic.

"People are going to die because of this," said Carolyn Cagle, a widow from Paris, Tenn., whose 34-year-old son, Lloyd, is a diabetic who has already lost part of his right foot. He is being dropped from the program.

I'm honestly unsure that I could even vote for the guy. What he's done in Tennessee offends everything that I believe in, everything that makes me a Democrat. He should be defeated at home and shunned nationally for the cavalier, technocratic way he's treating the poor.

Cheney 08

Please? Pretty please? I mean, Woodward was wrong about the Saudis-opening-the-spigots thing, but I'd forgive him if he were right about Cheney. Please please please let the GOP run a 69-year old with multiple heart attacks, business ties that make Bush look ascetic, a history of extremist statements, and all the charm of a table leg you just stubbed your toe on. Let Cheney lumber up the stage, mumbling from that impossibly limber half inch on the right side of his mouth and sneering at pesky questioners, reporters, and air particles. I'm sure he'll be quite a hit.

The Democratic party has proven one thing, and one thing only, in its last couple of elections: you don't run candidates who scoff at charisma. Cheney makes Kerry look like a laugh party, he makes Gore look like Hitch. They can run him, but for a party whose main task ("compassionate conservatism") is convincing folks that they're not evil, nominating this artist's rendering of a corrupt plutocrat would be a hell of an oversight.

All of which is to say, "No! Don't run Cheney! We'll never beat him! O', woe is us!"

Hillary Gets It?

Who'd have thought the Democratic politician to best deal with Southern resentment and insecurity might be...Hillary?

Upstate New York, the state's Republican stronghold, is an area accustomed to being neglected in favor of the more populous downstate region. But Clinton has paid it special attention.

She once persuaded dozens of New York City chefs, restaurant owners and wine retailers to join her on a bus tour of upstate wineries and enjoy a four-course meal featuring New York produce.

She recruited investment bankers and the head of EBay to help arrange for rural small-business owners to learn how to use the online auction site to sell their products. She instituted an annual "farm day" reception in Washington to display the state's produce, including apples, oysters and wine.

Not bad. Very smart, actually. And pretty damn applicable. Hillary, by virtue of being a walking spotlight whose New York tenure was assumed to be the simple result of an affection for the Upper West Side, has turned her wattage on Manhattan's little-noticed younger brother, and reaped all the outsized affection that move makes. It's the glamorous girlfriend lavishing attention on the sullen 12-year old at Thanksgiving -- the kid's going to love her for it. And that seems to be