I keep thinking about this post by Stoller, where he lays out just how much Obama has changed American electoral politics in this cycle. I've been saying all along that the story is not the horserace, but the turnout. Which of these centrist Democrats got the nomination didn't matter that much. What matters is the composition of the Congress. Rather than engaging in pie fights, we should be looking down ticket
Fourlegsgood remarked last night in comments on how well Noriega is doing against Cornyn in the Texas Senate race. Light bulb!
One of the questions Matt raises in the post above is what Obama is going to do with his massive fundraising capability.
One email from Moveon to their full list can bring in between $100k to $1M for a candidate, with $1M being the very top end of the range. With one good email to his list, in a few months, Obama will probably be able to bring in $1-3M for a Senate candidate under attack or split that among several. 10-20% of the money going to Senate candidates this cycle might come from Barack Obama's internet operation. Stunning.
I say what Obama will do is support freshman challengers. The only Democrat playing defense in the Senate this cycle is Landrieu in Louisiana. The netroots claims credit for narrow wins like Tester's in Montana. Obama will be able to much more credibly claim credit for Senate and House seats he targets, just because of the sheer quantity of cash he can deliver. He also, following Dean's lead, has adopted his own 50 state strategy that can be used in support of candidates like Noriega, LaRocco and Begich.
MyBarackObama.com is the cornerstone of the campaign, and it will have between 10-15 million opt-in members by election day. This group can be used for lobbying on legislation, GOTV, and donations. It's a cross between Moveon.org and the DNC, and with the White House, it can transform progressive politics and further amplify the power of the Presidency. As coordinated campaigns pick up, and the top of the ticket brings coattails, organizing power is going to further flow to the Obama campaign.
This is a game-changing situation, coming at a pushmi-pullyu moment in the Republican party,. Looking at MS-01 (a 28 point swing), they want to run away from Bush, but can't create any space between them. McCain is flipping as hard as he can, but he's still attached.
Obama's bucks, and Obama's field represent very big coattails. And all those freshman will have a big chit in their pocket that says "Obama."
While I generally try to avoid as much as possible the genre of "anonymous campaign aides dish on campaign" journalism, I've generally enjoyed Michelle Cottle's contributions this season as they've tended to give voice to multiple perspectives within the campaign instead of the all too typical "find a source to provide a quote to fit a narrative" examples we usually get.
(CNN) -- Sen. Edward Kennedy was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital in Massachusetts Saturday morning, a well-informed, prominent Democratic source in that state told CNN.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, shown in May 2007, reportedly was rushed to a hospital Saturday morning.
The source said the 76-year-old senator had "symptoms of a stroke."
Kennedy was taken to the hospital around 8 or 9 a.m. from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis, according to the source. The source said the senator would be transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
It was a pretty awesome moment when Gavin Newsom started issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. There was something exciting about it. People were lining up to get married, and random people all over the internet were sending flowers to the couples in line.
Plenty of my gay and lesbian friends have mixed feelings about marriage being the centerpiece of the gay rights movement, especially as it crowds out everything else. I can understand that, but nonetheless it is in both real and symbolic terms an important step in making gays and lesbians equal under the law.
Newsom's actions were derided by many at the time as just a stunt. Perhaps it was. But it ultimately led to this week's ruling. Hopefully California voters don't bring on the stupid in November and change their constitution.
This could be a very important issue in a key race in a swing state. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has either chaired or been the ranking member on the Committee On Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in recent years.
In that role she is charged with looking into war contracts, which has been a mess in Iraq and she has seemingly done very little to investigate. Below, the video contains the crux of Congressman Allen's (D-ME) charge
The ad Allen is running is at the link.
I'm from Maine. My mom was active in the Republican party, and I worked for a couple of candidates in HS, including a Senate race. Mainers are centrists--two independent governors in my lifetime. This is a race we can win, even though we're behind.
Thursday night, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to reverse the Federal Communication Commission's December 2007 decision to let media companies own both a major TV or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city.
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who introduced the rarely used "resolution of disapproval," said last night that "the FCC is supposed to be a referee for the media industry, but instead they've been cheerleaders in favor of more consolidation. ... We already have too much concentration in the media."
One of the hallmarks of this administration has been to have agencies flout the law and legislative intent rather than pass new legislation.
BUSH: No, I don't. I think I agree with the energy secretary that the strategic petroleum reserve is meant for a national wartime emergency.
What I think the president ought to do is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots. One reason why the price is so high is because the price of crude oil has been driven up. OPEC has gotten its supply act together, and it's driving the price, like it did in the past. And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price.
And if in fact there is collusion amongst big oil, he ought to intercede there as well.
I used to be in the oil business. I was little oil -- really little oil. And so I understand the -- I understand what can happen in the marketplace.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Bush on Tuesday urged Saudi Arabia and other members of OPEC to consider the strain the high cost of oil was having on the American economy, addressing an issue that has begun to color the last year of his presidency and dominate the presidential election campaign.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — With the price of oil hitting record highs, President Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production and was rebuffed yet again.
upyernoz points out that since John McCain has been on every Sunday gabfest since 1874, it shouldn't be too tricky to find footage of him saying something that directly contradicts whatever he's confusedly pandering about during the campaign.
Now that the Wright business is behind us (yes I know they'll swiftboat Obama using him), I do want to note the one thing that left me irked. I’ve worked with church people on a number of projects, and over time they introduced me to the concept of the “teaching moment,” an event or a comment that serves as a springboard to the elucidation of a difficult idea.
When he was put onto these national platforms, with all lights on him, Jeremiah Wright was given a teaching moment, one in which he could have introduced the American Hegemony Project into the public discourse. As Glenzilla likes to point out, this topic is simply not permitted by the Serious People who serve as gatekeepers.
The “chickens come home to roost” sermon was about American imperialism, following the theme of Chalmer Johnson's Blowback. It was a really fine sermon, exploring issues of American exceptionalism in a striking way. If, when the klieg lights came up, he had translated those ideas from the language of an inner city pulpit into secular foreign policy speak he could possibly have influenced the public dialogue. And, just by the way, he could have refuted the stereotyping taking place, as he did on Moyers.
Instead, he chose to reinforce the stereotype.
Update: To be clear, the formation of al qaeda and the WTC attacks are precisely what Chalmers Johnson writes about. Al qaeda came together as an organization because of US and Saudi support for them in Afghanistan, through the Pakistani intelligence service. (See Steve Coll's Ghost Wars)
One reason I'm always quite amused when Villagers retire to their fainting couches over all of the naughty words those uncivil bloggers use is that while I haven't spent a lot of time around members of Congress, I have spent some, and Joe Biden isn't exactly the only one who feels free to throw out the occasional four letter word.
Approximately 12,000 articles will be written between now and November about how Jewish voters have a problem with Obama, and then they will go to the polls and overwhelmingly vote for him. Despite this, no articles will be written about how Jewish voters have a problem with McCain.
I bet 95% of Americans couldn't come up with even a sorta correct brief explanation of what Hamas is. Still it's a word which is vaguely associated with scary brown people, so it's bad. But Huggy Bear was for talking to them before he was against it.
McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain's statement on Hamas, "I don't think that anybody should take that seriously." Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That's why they say such things.
But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News's "World News Tonight" program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:
I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"
McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."
SAN FRANCISCO -- -- The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental "right to marry" that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June.
The majority opinion, by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, declared that any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will from this point on be constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate by race or gender, making the state's high court the first in the nation to adopt such a stringent standard.
The decision was a bold surprise from a moderately conservative, Republican-dominated court that legal scholars have long dubbed "cautious," and experts said it was likely to influence other courts around the country.
Good for Matthews for actually trying a wingnut to explain just what he means. Wingnuts have created a whole lexicon of totemic phrases that they just appeal to, often devoid of real meaning. Additionally, usually any national security "attack" is assumed to just be some all powerful weapon which causes everyone to just cry and whimper.
They are desperately trying to back away from the war.
It's too late. So they're trying to find gimmicks to make the Democrats co-owners. It's not gonna work. Matt Stoller:
Today, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting 'present'. They are trying to hand off the war to the Democrats, but even Democrats were able to increase their 'no' vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed. In a separate bill, Republicans also voted against timelines, for torture, and accountability for military contractors, including various elements of a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. This bill passed with 227 votes; last year, it passed with only 218 votes, for a gain of 9.
Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs. This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans.
This is what Schumer expected in the summer of 07. When it didn't happen, the Dems let the Senate Republicans continue the occupation.
But MS-01 makes it clear that they've finally noticed that they've driven themselves off a cliff.
Like Wile E. Coyote, they're spinning in space looking for a handhold.
.jpg)
