One of the few real Democrats speaks up

This is even more amusing than Bob Dole snapping "Tell him [then-Vice President Bush] to stop lying about my record!" back in 1988.

Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) on John Edwards:

The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.

When you had the opportunity to vote a certain way in the Senate and you didn't, and obviously there are times when you make a mistake, the notion that you sort of vote one way when you're playing the game in Washington and another way when you're running for president, there's some of that going on.

Honestly, I've never understood how Edwards gets any support. Were people just not paying attention when he was in the Senate?

As much as I hate to agree with Krauthammer (and trust me, I hate to agree with him), Candidate Edwards' campaign, full of patronizing positions that Senator Edwards never held and didn't support with his votes and coated in his mawkish "A'hm jus' one of you regula' fellas 'cause ev'n tho today A'hm a filthy rich lawyer, back when Ah was a little boah mah Daddy worked in a meeyul" stump speech is a massive affront to real Democrats. Russ Feingold has every right to be grumpy, and between Edwards and Hillary Paul Wellstone should probably be spinning in his grave, if not coming back from the dead to kick them both in the ass for what they're doing to his party.

Don't get me wrong - there are people just as fake as Edwards on the GOP side. Hell, Willard Romney might even get the fool's gold medal of all the 2008 candidates. But I see a lot of people who should honestly know better supporting Edwards right now, people who would call Willard Romney a phony (or much worse) in a heartbeat. Just as Romney is no conservative, Edwards is no progressive. Both men, along with Hillary, are all politicians of the stripe who will say and do anything to get a vote.

Senator Feingold, I owe you a drink.

• What are Nevada's rules on recall elections for senators? Can they take back Harry Reid? Please? Please? I'm sick of this crap.
• However, in happier news, Giuliani is all but toast.
• Fred Thompson won a caucus the night he dropped out of the race.
• Woo! Two brokered conventions!
• The gloves are off. Staying above the politics of personal attacks was a nice idea while it lasted. Naturally, Hillary has already picked up on this and has her talking points out.
  
• Seven years ago, Al Gore was widely criticized for dissociating himself with the Clinton presidency. Hillary, on the other hand, has the opposite problem: while she can claim a role in the successes of the 90's, everyone's getting real squeamish about using Bill as her pit bull.

Okay, I've got like fifty years of catching up to do, so here it is:

• Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson are out. However, the controversy over whether or not they were actually in will continue. Hunter is supporting Huckabee, which is no surprise because Huck has already mentioned his name as a potential Secretary of Defense. Fred Thompson probably won't endorse anyone until doing so is completely meaningless.
  
  
• Hillary won the Nevada caucuses, which both surprised me (because caucus environments strike me as ideal for Obama, who has an exceptional grassroots organization and a significant edge as far as the enthusiasm of his supporters) and disappointed me (because now he's the underdog again and Hillary has that much more momentum).
  
  
• Everyone in the GOP but Mitt Romney is out of money. Huckabee's people and Giuliani's people are working without pay, and McCain is holding emergency fundraisers.
  
  
• This photo says, in a nutshell, why The Daily Show is just so great.
  
  
• How would a second President Clinton deal with civil rights issues? Probably not so well, actually. This demonstrates my contention that Hillary will make a deal with anyone and cut their throat the second the donation check clears and the election is won, which is my principal reason for not wanting her to be president.
  
  
• Obama and Clinton and the role of fear-mongering in American politics.
  
  
• Mike Huckabee supports your First Amendment right to believe in his religion.
  
  
• Some people didn't realize that The Manchurian Candidate wasn't a documentary (courtesy Yglesias).
  
  
• A controversial new study shows that people like being able to afford health care. As a shocking corollary, the study also shows that the Republican presidential candidates have no strategy to accomplish this, nor even the intention.
  
  
• Bush's Middle-East trip was apparently intended to persuade locals that he's more than just an ideological warlord.
  

  President Bush's self-image continues to amaze. Wrapping up an eight-day Middle East trip, the man who has launched two wars and may be hankering for a third told ABC News yesterday that he is terribly misunderstood in the region. [...]

  "But yeah, look, I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker."

  Bush said he had something to prove on his trip. But, he said, "it's not so much to prove for my sake. It's really to prove for peace."

  How does he intend to turn his image around? "You just have to fight through stereotypes by actions," he said, adding that he intends to let "the results speak for themselves. . . ." [...]
  
  "Look, I know I've been accused of being a hopeless idealist. On the other hand, I don't see any alternative, if you believe it's an ideological struggle. . . ."
  

• Wonkette explains why Hillary's win in Michigan, in addition to being pointless, is also not very good for her at all: "Why 236,723 Democrats would come out to vote in a delegate-less primary for no one lends new weight to the concept of “mindfuck,” but one can interpret it (and we know that Matthews boy probably will!) as votes against The Clintons."
  
  Karl Rove's opinion on same: "She's running against nobody and nobody gets 40% of the vote. The other 5% of the vote went to three other people. 27,924 votes went to the guy who believes in UFOs, the guy who dropped out and the guy who last held public office somewhere around 1855."
  
  
• Lord knows I'm not a big booster for paranoia about terrorist influence in mainstream America, but it does seem like sort of a big deal to me that a former United States Congressman has been indicted for allegedly funneling money to Al Qaeda.
  
  
• This special episode of "Sesame Street: Iraq" has been brought to you by the number 935.
  
  
• Rudy "Also-Ran" Giuliani is now claiming that he doesn't have to win Florida to win the GOP nomination. I'm wondering if he'll say the same thing in the days before Super Tuesday.
  
  
• I won't say much about Heath Ledger's unfortunate death, other than to comment that I'm surprised and rather impressed with the public outpouring of grief for him. I'll be honest, I've only seen him in one movie (Brokeback Mountain) but on that evidence alone, he had an incredible talent. It is a tragedy indeed. The only other thing I'll add to that, in consideration of the inconclusive autopsy report, is a link to an article indicating that Mr. Ledger may have had a morbid fixation with songwriter and suicide victim Nick Drake.
  

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Clinton Is Change.

This being the last evening before my semester starts here in Madison, part of me wonders why I wasted it watching three presidential candidates I won't be voting for debate in South Carolina. Surely there would be much more pleasant ways to spend that last evening of peace, but, after flipping back and forth between Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the debate during Keith's commercial breaks, in some sadistic sense I realized it was necessary for me to witness this debate.

It was necessary because, while I've not had my head buried in the sand for the last sixteen years, with every day and every Bush Administration policy misadventure since January 2001, it seems as though the acid-scarred side of Bill Clinton's Two-Face'd presidency recedes into the shadows of our present catastrophe. The worse Bush 43 appears as a result for his own debacles as President, the better the nostalgia-tinged days of the Clinton Administration seem to Americans with inadequate memories.

Consider for a moment that Bill Clinton's presidency so polluted and polarized the political environment of this country that it helped to create the festering cesspool from which George W. Bush was able to claim the Presidency, and thus wreck his own particular brand of havoc upon our nation. Essentially laying the foundational conditions for both the GOP's "Contract with America"-fueled mid-term Congressional victory in 1994 (including a 54-seat swing in the House, passing it into Republican control for the first time since 1954) and severely damaging the chances of a Democratic successor in the White House at the end of his administration should be considered defining characteristics of Bill Clinton's legacy.

Perhaps many of us don't remember when Bill Clinton famously stated that electing him would get America two presidents "for the price of one." Though at the time it appeared he was making an unprecedented statement about his wife's role in policy-making (a role which proved disastrous for a key Clinton initiative), his words echoed in my mind while witnessing tonight's return to the Original Recipe Clinton-era slimeball politics which ravaged our nation for eight years and helped lay the groundwork for our present crisis. Senator Obama was forced to point out in tonight's debate "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes" in response to the smear campaign waged against him by both Hillary and former President Clinton, and it should serve as a reminder to Americans: electing Hillary Clinton to the White House is going to bring back the caustic political climate of 1993-2001 and the revival of a political legacy which has the demonstrated potential to lead to disasters on par with - or possibly even worse than - the bottom-feeding presidency of George W. Bush.

In his live-blogging of the debate, Talking Points Memo's Joshua Micah Marshall repeatedly referred to the signature tenacious negativity and calculated slander utilized by Hillary Clinton in her attempts to marginalize Barack Obama's challenge to her efforts to continue the repugnant dynastification of the Oval Office. A few quotes:

8:29 PM ... Man, this can degenerate pretty quickly, can't it? Each side got in a couple really low blows there. I still think Hillary is just intentionally misrepresenting what Obama said about Reagan. It makes me cringe. As much I like her, it makes me cringe.

8:43 PM ... Just when I'm seeing Hillary's side of things, she comes back with crap like this 'present' stuff. Anybody who's looked into this knows the whole 'present' thing is garbage. It's a standard thing in the Illinois legislature.

9:00 PM ... I find myself refinding my positive feelings for Hillary, my gut level support, when she talks about herself as a fighter, about her never giving up, being there today and tomorrow. And then she launches into these attacks and she starts to lose me.

9:07 PM ... A somewhat contrary view from TPM Reader SM: "To the extent that her "humanizing" moment of emotion helped her win NH, I'm wondering whether Sen. Clinton's jarring, attacking, and frankly groundless personal attacks against Sen. Obama will re-instigate the pre-NH narrative about her, namely that she is cold, calculating, triangulating, and when threatened, resorts to the politics of personal destruction. If she thinks this kind of performance is going to play well in the general election, she is wildly mistaken. This kind of performance will alienate independents, not motivate them."

Change is a nebulous concept on which to base a presidential campaign. Though he admirably refuses to point it out (because, unlike Hillary, he appears to understand that policy is more important than one's personal demographics), in his physical person Barack Obama represents the kind of change which represents the best of what America aspires to be. John Edwards would be a change - America's closest semi-viable option to an outright socialist in the White House since FDR. Mitt Romney changes his policy stance so often that one suspects he might be Change Incarnate. Mike Huckabee would like to change the Constitution to reflect the tenets of Evangelical America. Ron Paul would like us to actually read the Constitution for a change.

Hillary Clinton represents change as well, for one can almost certainly foresee a change in the party occupying the White House in 2016 (and in Congress' makeup perhaps much sooner) given the national reaction to the Clintons' well-poisoning the first time they gave us a "two for the price of one" deal.

The most important thing Americans should have learned from this debate is that, despite the short-comings of Senator Obama as a candidate (and don't get me wrong, there were a few big ones on display tonight), the price of another Clinton in power in the White House is too high.

The word of the day is "clusterfuck"

So, in my rush to deal with a bunch of other stuff yesterday (including getting sentimental about Chicago), I completely ignored the fact that yesterday was the primary in Michigan. In a nutshell:

• Willard "Mittens" Romney took the win by a solid 9 points over John McCain, and 23 points over Mike Huckabee. The Bill Buckleys of the world are breathing a sigh of relief: Romney has a harder road to the White House than the others, but the GOP would rather have a punching bag from the opposition party in the Oval Office (say, Hillary Clinton) that would unite them again, rather than a punching bag from their own party that they can't control and don't want to bother defending.
• Hillary Clinton took the win from the Democrats, which is allegedly a hollow victory. There is still talk of the Michigan delegates being seated at the convention, which would give her another nudge, but as far as its effect in the sort term, there's a lot of debate over whether this will give her any momentum or whether people see it as a hollow victory and ignore it, because most of the people I've talked to have no damned idea what's happening with the "undecided" delegates (the best explanation of this debacle is, ironically enough, from the BBC).
• The GOP, after the initial primaries, still has three considerable front-runners (and one ex-front-runner who keeps losing to Ron Paul and Fred Thompson) going into Super Tuesday, and they each have their target audiences that will show up and give them some delegates. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is up on delegates, but we won't have an idea who's really going to win until at least Super Tuesday, and maybe not long after that. Edwards is doing his damnedest to keep his numbers up so he can act as a spoiler/kingmaker, waiting until someone needs him enough to cut a deal and take his endorsement and his delegates. As a result, political junkies (people like me) are foaming at the mouth at the thought of not just one but two party conventions that may actually mean something.
  

Andrew Sullivan, by way of my good friend Wyl, has just informed me that today is the 30th Anniversary of William Shatner's performance of "Rocket Man" at the Science Fiction Awards. I've been known to have sort of a . . . perverse taste in music. Shatner is one of my favorites. I love his stuff, and not in an ironic way. So unlike that Sullivan fellow, I'm going to be kind and embed the video.

I hear America singing...and I don't like the tune.

The youth of America today is
So wonderful
And I'm proud to be a part of
This gigantic mass deception

- Frank Zappa, Flower Punk

With Willard Romney winning his (second) firewall state last night, the identity of the eventual winner of the Republican nomination has been rendered all the more unpredictable. For Romney, the media, and political junkies, this latest development in the knock-down, drag-'em-out GOP primary is a dream come true. For Romney's chief rivals, Senator John McCain and former Gov. Mike Huckabee, as well as any American concerned about the survival of the nation, this is potentially very bad news.

The GOP field is littered with less than ideal candidates. The candidate most palatable to the majority of voters - McCain - has proven himself as inconsistent in winning delegates as he is famously steadfast in his policy practices. While admirable for his willingness to say what he thinks no matter the cost to his political stature, McCain has run a considerably less convincing campaign than he did eight years ago (when he should have been nominated), and has yet to expose the majority of his rivals for what they are - absolutely undesirable in any situation.

Governor Huckabee continues to amuse the country with statements about Constitutional amendments likely to run afoul of the Establishment Clause, cementing his status as America's answer to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I might happen to agree with Huckabee's statement in the most broad and general terms, the same way I agree with George Washington and former Czech President Václav Havel on our responsibility to the Order of Being, but that's as far as I'd be willing to support Gov. Huckabee's position. Anything more would violate this nation's rules of the game.

Even given Senator McCain's frustratingly inconsistent primary results and Gov. Huckabee's status as a smooth-talking theocrat with absolutely no foreign policy credentials, Willard Romney is by far the worst still-relevant Republican candidate.

(Rudy, beating Dennis Kucinich by a mere three thousand votes in Michigan should get you kicked out of the next debate. That, and the fact that you have won fewer delegates than Ron Paul. Sadly, it probably won't.)

Scarily, it looks like Romney's chances at the nomination have improved, particularly when one considers the previous "long march to the nomination" scenarios figured he'd merely need to finish a strong second to McCain in Michigan to stay viable. As Ross Douthat put it a week ago, "He’ll [Romney] still have the NR [National Review] endorsement. If he seems viable, he’ll have Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and the rest of talk radio in his corner. And he'll be up against one candidate who - so far - only does well in GOP primaries when independents are allowed to vote, and another guy whose appeal still looks awfully sectarian."

At this point, according to CNN Romney's sitting in the lead in terms of delegates with 42. That's double Huckabee's total (21) and even more again than McCain (19). If Romney survives South Carolina, he stands a good chance of winning Florida and sewing up the primary on Super Tuesday. This despite Romney's carte du jour policy stances, his blatant lies, overwhelming negative campaigning, and his "'I'll say anything! Anything! I'll fit your hubcaps with crushed diamonds!' campaign" in Michigan. What the hell are Republicans thinking?

On the Democratic side of the primary, Hillary Clinton continues to look strong. She dodged a bullet with Obama's dampening of the racism plot line, despite Tim Russert's efforts to revive the issue during last night's debate in Nevada. I doubt either Senator Obama or John Edwards care to start a discussion about the Clintons' suspect Civil Rights credentials, though they might be wise to do so, and thus she continues to evade karma after her campaign's latest marginalizing, mudslinging venture. Hillary seems to be deepening her siege on the Democratic nomination, and it's looking less and less likely that she'll be unsuccessful.

As a reader of Andrew Sullivan noted, what we might be faced with, then, is an incredibly polarized Willard vs. Hillary race "despite the unpopularity of both among the American people as a whole, simply because the majority of Republicans still like Bush and therefore like Romney, while the majority of Democrats still like Bill Clinton and so like Hillary -- with the majority of Americans in the middle of the spectrum getting shut out of the process completely, as they usually do."

This has the potential to be both a complete disaster and the best possible scenario for American politics, depending on what your outlook is. Both candidates stand a chance at splitting their parties' coalitions. Romney's nomination would fit the GOP the same way Bud Selig fits Major League Baseball, but it would serve to piss off any Republican hoping for a change in course or even a chance of winning in 2008. Hillary's nomination is going to piss off a ton of people, Democrats and non-Democrats alike.

Both Willard and Hillary essentially represent a continuation of Bush 43 by other means, an entirely unacceptable proposition in light of the economic catastrophe facing the country, to say nothing of the dilettantish foreign policy credentials of both candidates.

Polarized (paralyzed?) between Willard on the Neo-con right and Hillary on the Establishment left, the vast majority of the American voting public would be unrepresented. Economists might call that a "market inefficiency. " I call that the best chance to save the election and simultaneously critically weaken the two party system. The problem is finding a candidate who can both seize the opportunity and pay some of the freight necessary to wage a national campaign.

Some mayor ain't gonna cut it, no matter how much scratch he has.

Five Years in Chicago

On a personal note, today marks five years now that I've been living in the city of Chicago. In that time:

• I have had a total of eight roommates, and lived with (at various times) four dogs, five cats, one corn snake (and a freezer full of dead baby mice), and an indeterminate number of fish.
  
  
• I have had four apartments. My current abode is my first of those four to be south of Wilson Avenue.
  
  
• I have had three jobs.
  
  
• I have gone from having no friends and all the time in the world to surf the internet at home and watch baseball to someone who has friends, and now has no time to surf the internet (outside of work) and catches, at a guess, 14 innings a season. Go Cubs! This is our year!*
  
  
• I have seen the CTA standard fare rise from $1.50 to $2.75 (as of this coming Saturday at midnight, unless the state legislature pulls off a miracle). Thanks Mayor Daley!
  
  
• I have voted for Mayor Daley twice, despite his frequent mismanagement of this city, because of a lack of a good option to replace him. I also voted for a Republican for the very first time because I couldn't stomach the thought of voting for Todd Stroger, and my very first Green Party candidate, because I couldn't stomach the thought of voting for Rod Blagojevich or Judy Baar Topinka.
  
  
• I have gone from being someone who illegally downloaded almost all of my music with my turntable gathering dust in the corner, and who considered a trip to the record store a rare luxury, to someone who works part time at a record store to pay for what I spend on records (as in records, not as in CD's or mp3's).
  
  
• I shook the hand one of one future president after he gave a speech in a cafe in Rogers Park.
  
  
• Lived on the same block as the former abode of one famous Chicago poet.
  
  
• I have ceased to want to move back to New York: whereas I was once fantasizing about it constantly and considered it only a matter of time, there is now no city that I know of that could convince me to leave this one.
  

*It really is our year. It's the 100 year anniversary of being cursed. In 2008, the goat is going down.

• I'm aware that Jonah Goldberg stands somewhere to the right -- well, I don't want to say "right," I really just want to say "dumb" -- of much of his party, but it bothers me that people think this:
  

  Jonah Goldberg: The benefit of Bush’s compassionate conservatism [in 2000] was that it was majorly a marketing slogan…

  Alex Chadwick: You mean you’re worried Mike Huckabee might actually mean it?

  Goldberg: Yes, that’s what I’m terrified of.

• We should start a list of aspects of the executive branch that the Bush Administration thinks are subject to review by the courts, because it would be a hell of a lot shorter than the stuff the administration think isn't subject to review.
  
  
• The best laid plans of Kenyans and Clintons . . . (another Andrew Sullivan argument in favor of Obama)
  
  
• A solid explanation for why John Edwards remains in the race:
  

  And what of Edwards? It is hard to see where he will win, or when he will start winning, but he maintains a solid base of support -- 15.7% nationally, 11.7% in Nevada, 15.3% in South Carolina. As long as Clinton vs. Obama is a dead heat, it makes sense for Edwards to stay in -- if not as a realistic candidate for the nomination, then as a possible king (or queen) maker.

  
  
• Chris Dodd is now successfully doing Harry Reid's job for him.
  

Catalog of Dumb Stuff Politicians Do, Pt. 126

• When the deficit becomes so great that the federal government has to stop paying certain bills, what gets cut? First it was No Child Left Behind, then it was body armor for troops in Iraq, then it was Walter Reed, then it was health insurance for children, and we were all sad. Now it's the wiretaps that the government uses to listen to you without legal authorization to do so, and somewhere, Chris Dodd is laughing his ass off.
  
  
• Remember when LBJ made up some story about a confrontation in the Gulf of Tonkin, and used it to get permission from Congress to get us hopelessly entrenched in a seemingly endless war that we couldn't win, even though we did reinstate the draft and were fighting a military that was considered vastly inferior to our own?
  
  
• Al Qaeda appears to have an early retirement plan, because apparently there are no terrorists over 50.
  
  
• So you know how people are saying that Barack Obama has no real legislative record from his time in the Senate? Yeah, well, here's the thing about that . . . (thanks for the heads up, Anna)
  
  
• D'oh! (and again, the nod goes to Anna for the tip)
  
  
• With presidential primaries, it's all about the loopholes: Obama and Edwards may still be able to squeeze some delegates out of Michigan after all.
  
  
• McCain is looking like he might be able to derail Huckabee.
  
  
• The pollsters all agree: they suck.
  
  
• The ground beneath Rudy Giuliani's feet is disappearing and he's going down in flames. Much like the Emergency Command Center that could have helped him properly manage the crisis on 9/11. In other words, tortoise and hare.
  

Farewell from Bill Richardson

Ron Paul sent out an email yesterday talking about Orcs. It was funny, but not funny enough to post.

However, Bill Richardson's email announcing his withdrawal from the race was very good and summed up pretty nicely why I was so excited with the field of Democratic Candidates this year (before they all went away), and why I am so optimistic about what can happen next year, even though common sense tells me that things are going to suck for quite a while longer.

Dear Friend,

It is with great pride, understanding and acceptance that I am ending my campaign for President of the United States. It was my hope that all of you would first hear this news from me and not a news organization. But unfortunately, as with too many things in our world today, it's the ending of something that garners the most intense interest and speculation.

I knew from the beginning that this would be an uphill climb. When I entered the campaign, it was clear that we, as Democrats, had the most talented field of candidates in my lifetime running to change the direction of our country. And in the end, one of them will.

Despite overwhelming financial and political odds, I am proud of the campaign we waged and the influence we had on the issues that matter most to the future of this country.

A year ago, we were the only major campaign calling for the removal of all of our troops within a year's time from Iraq. We were the only campaign calling for a complete reform of education in this country, including the scrapping of No Child Left Behind. And we were the campaign with the most aggressive clean energy plan and the most ambitious standards for reducing global warming.

Now, all of the remaining candidates are coming to our point of view. I am confident that the next President of the United States will implement much of what we've been urging for the last twelve months, and our nation and world will be the better for it.

There are so many of you who gave so much to this campaign. For that, I will be forever grateful. Running for president has been, at times, humbling and at other times, exhilarating. I have grown and learned a great deal from the experience, and I am a better person for it.

Also, because of your close friendship and support throughout the ups and downs of what is a very grueling and demanding process, I have never felt alone.

Running for president brings out the best in everyone who graces the stage, and I have learned much from the other candidates running. They have all brought great talents and abilities to the campaign.

Senator Biden's passion and intellect are remarkable.

Senator Dodd is the epitome of selfless dedication to public service and the Democratic Party.

Senator Edwards is a singular voice for the most downtrodden and forgotten among us.

Senator Obama is a bright light of hope and optimism at a time of great national unease, yet he is also grounded in thoughtful wisdom beyond his years.

Senator Clinton's poise in the face of adversity is matched only by her lifetime of achievement and deep understanding of the challenges we face.

Representative Kucinich is a man of great decency and dedication who will faithfully soldier on no matter how great the odds.

And all of us in the Democratic Party owe Senator Mike Gravel our appreciation for his leadership during the national turmoil of Vietnam.

I am honored to have shared the stage with each of these Democrats. And I am enormously grateful to all of my supporters who chose to stand with me despite so many other candidates of accomplishment and potential.

Now that my time in this national campaign has come to an end, I would urge those who supported my candidacy to take a long and thoughtful look at the remaining Democrats. They are all strong contenders who each, in their own way, would bring desperately needed change to our country. All I ask is that you make your own independent choice with the same care and dedication to this country that you honored me with during this campaign. At this time, I will not endorse any candidate.

Now I am returning to a job that I love, serving a state that I cherish and doing the work of the people I was elected to serve. As I have always said, I am the luckiest man I know. I am married to my high school sweetheart. I live in a place called the Land of Enchantment. I have the best job in the world. And I just got to run for president of the United States.

It doesn't get any better than that.

With my deepest appreciation for all that you have done,

Bill

Governor Bill Richardson
The Governor's Mansion
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Music Related

I'm going to mention a couple of music-related things, because I feel they're worth mentioning.

1) Dave Day, the electric banjo player from The Monks, has died. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Monks, they were a group of American ex-G.I.'s living in Germany in the mid-1960's. In 1966, they released an album called Black Monk Time, rock and roll so wild, crazy, and stripped down that it has retroactively been acknowledged as a precursor to punk rock. They may not have had the name recognition of the Velvet Underground, Stooges, or MC5, but they belong in the same category. It's a shame that a Google news search for his name yields no matches: the Monks should be legends. At least Pitchfork got it. Thanks to Melissa for the heads up.

2) My friend Mike was looking at one of the paper inner sleeves for a record of mine yesterday. It was one of those Warner/Reprise sleeves from the 70's, which any record collector has seen a million of (I always noticed them because they all feature this photo on one side). However, I never looked very closely at the other side. The other side is an ad for the Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders series of popular music compilations. Take a look at the text accompanying the product information:




My favorite parts:

• "We (and they) feel it's more important that these albums-about-other-albums be heard."
• "If our Accounting Department were running the company, they'd charge you $9.96 for each album. But they're not. Yet."
• ". . . if you're as suspicious of big record companies as we feel you have every right to be . . ."
• "It's our fervent hope that . . . you'll be encouraged to pick up more of what you haer on these special albums, at regular retail prices. That's where the profit lies."

I've made my disdain for the RIAA's war on music known, so it's just fascinating to me to see evidence that as recently as 1974 (the date on the sleeve), one of the biggest labels in the world was selling records at an 80% on good faith that people who enjoyed the music would pay for it. Sigh.

The Pollster's Walk of Shame

• Chris Matthews writes off Hillary Clinton's entire career as a sympathy vote based on Bill's philandering.
  
  
• I think the early states are a bunch of assholes. I think they're deliberately going back and forth just so they can keep it close going into Super Tuesday, so that the media stays baffled long enough that they don't call the election 10 months before it happens. All in the name of "democracy" and "making sure everyone's votes matter. What a load of crap. Why do I think that the early states are doing this on purpose? Aside from the rampant speculation that Hillary won New Hampshire on the "spite for Iowa" vote, the SEIU in Nevada and the Nevada Culinary Union both just backed Obama (whose combined memberships are close to 80,000 potential voters). While I haven't seen any especially recent polling numbers for Nevada, this definitely puts the state in contention for Obama, while it used to be solidly Clinton.
  
  
• The Obama campaign's take on their prospects, in a nutshell: they're well-organized in caucus states, their money is being well-spent in big states and the numbers appear to be closing, they're still pulling in healthy amounts of money, and they're expecting a lot of superdelegates to go their way.
  
  
• As has been discussed, Giuliani's strategy is to ignore the early states where everyone hates him, and then come in and make a big play starting in Florida on January 29 and then power through on Super Tuesday. Of course, if he finishes in fourth place again in Florida, he's in a tough spot. I'm sorry, but I'm really enjoying watching him going down in flames.
  
  
• Completely off-topic: Jay Reatard has signed to Matador. What the hell?
  
  
• Re: asshole voters in Iran: uh-oh.
  
  
• All of the coverage of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism at Sadly, No has been entertaining, but today Bradrocket posted about the list of tags on its Amazon page, which is pants-wettingly funny. My personal favorites from the complete list are:
  
• "ten pounds of crap in a five pound book"
  
• "if Michelle Malkin is over your head"
• "books written while high on cheeto dust"
• "social security is like treblinka" (the winner)
  

Election night

• 8:20 p.m. -- We're at 40% reporting, and Hillary's ahead by three points. I'm a little hot under the collar, but her margin is slipping with every batch of new results they get in.
• McCain's victory speech -- I disagree with him on a lot of issues, but I cannot bring myself to doubt his intentions. He's not a great speaker: he read far too much of his speech, and the pundits on MSNBC are currently slamming it. But I do believe that the reason he's running for president is because he wants America to be a better place. I know some people are going to yell at me for not being liberal enough here, but I can't bring myself do dislike him personally. As Josh Marshall paraphrases his speech, ""I came to you not as a dickhead like Mitt Romney but to tell you the truth ..."
• Romney's concession -- MSNBC is currently raving about his speech, but I don't trust the fact that he said, right at the beginning of his speech, that he was going to ditch his notes and "talk from the heart." It sounded to me like he was playing to counteract the over-rehearsed reputation he has.
• 8:40 -- Some guy is talking now about how people are being sympathetic to Clinton because she got ganged up on at the debate and people think that they should just back off. If that is indeed the case, it's bullshit. If she's president, no one's going to back off. It all comes onto her, and she needs to be up to it.
• 8:43 -- Scarborough keeps saying Obama's only been in Washington for two years. 2005, 2006, 2007. By the time of the election, 2008. Learn to count, Joe. Furthermore, as Wyl just pointed out to me, Rudy Giuliani has never done anything as an elected official in Washington.
• 10:07, Hillary's victory speech -- she just mentioned college opportunities and student loan issues, and the crowd flipped the hell out. I had a hard time believing that all of the independent voters pulling the democratic ballots in unpredicted numbers were going for her, but there it is.
  

What it boils down to is that I was way off on this. I doubled McCain's margin over Romney, and I was close to 20 points off on Obama and Hillary. Giuliani did not lose to Ron Paul (though he didn't keep him out by much). Where the campaign goes from now, I don't know. I'm going to have to give it some deep thought tomorrow. As I see it, it's a horse race through Super Tuesday, and Obama's going to have to work real hard to come out on top.

Best situation for Obama: going into Nevada, neighboring-state governor Bill Richardson jumps and overtakes Edwards. Edwards, showing dismally, dumps all of his money on South Carolina but still loses significantly to Obama. Being broke and out of any sort of momentum, he drops out and throws his support behind the other "change candidate," Obama, just before Super Tuesday.

Crap.

Note: I started a long post a long time ago (during the Norman Hsu debacle) about why I don't want Hillary to get the nomination. I may revive it, so you know why.

Okay, I didn't really have a whole lot of time to get on top of things today, but here are my last-minute comments before the voting closes in New Hampshire and my predictions from yesterday get all shot to hell.

• I was saying months ago (in private of course, never on this blog so I can prove how smart I am) that I thought that Hillary would poll well, but crash and burn when voters got to the ballot box, looked at her name, and realized exactly how difficult her candidacy would be. Now there's talk that she'll abdicate South Carolina and Nevada if she loses tonight (which she will). Her new strategy has become the Giuliani strategy, and we all know how well that's working out for him.
• The popular consensus is that McCain isn't going to beat Mitt by as much as I predicted yesterday. But Mitt's still going to lose to Huckabee in Michigan, so it's irrelevant. It boggles my mind that the two candidates who are currently most viable for the candidacy (McCain and Huckabee) are the two most loathed by the GOP establishment. Even if the Democrats lose the general election, John Edwards is right: change has won and the status quo has lost. Karl Rove's reign of terror is over in a year.
  

With one exception, I have been in Chicago for the beginning of the year for every year of my life. Not once do I recall the first thunder storm of the year happening as early as January 7th.

Chris Dodd

So, after failing to even be mentioned in the Iowa caucuses, Chris Dodd dropped out of the race. I have been an unabashed Dodd supporter over these last few months, and though I knew his cause was hopeless, I am no less grieved that I'll not have the opportunity to squander my vote on his good name. Everyone always asks me why I like Dodd so much, and the short answer is because he actually uses his position as Senator to try to accomplish something. Clinton and Obama and Biden and so on always talk about what they would do if they were president and had some real power, but the truth is that they do, but they spend their time wolfing down hot dogs and cotton candy in Iowa and New Hampshire instead. The long answer can be found by following all of these links:

• A profile from CQ Politics.
• Being boosted to replace the ignominious Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
• A profile from HuffPo.
• Voting against Mukasey for Attorney General.
• Taking on shady student loan practices.
• Dragging Clinton and Obama along on resisting telecom immunity in the new FISA bill.
• Realizing that if you want to win populous states like Michigan in the general election, it's best not to piss them off in the primaries.
• Writing campaign emails that don't sound manufactured, and that sound like the actual candidate wrote it on the back of a napkin when he was cruising to his next campaign appearance, riding shotgun in a Honda.
• Not being afraid to say flat-out that no one will improve Republican voter turn-out than the possibility of Hillary Clinton as president.
• Supporting this new-fangled legal invention called "habeas corpus."
• Demanding a timeline for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
• Talking pretty about the environment.
• Not being afraid to say that if the Chinese keep putting toxic chemicals in toys, food, toothpaste and the like, we should probably reconsider our trade deals with China.
• Impressing Bob Novak by trying to help sort something out in Colombia.

Farewell, Senator Dodd. I hope to see you take your rightful place as Majority Leader soon.

New Hampshire

• It's 66 degrees in Chicago today (January 7). Greenpeace has their hired hacks out on the street hassling people on their lunchbreaks in an effort to raise money to fight global warming. While I generally care a great deal about environmental concerns, can't we just take one day to say "fuck the polar bears," and enjoy the wonders given to us by human collective narcissism in a post-industrial world.
  
  
• Mike Huckabee is giving sermons (like, in actual church services) as part of his campaign. Sermons about how to be a "soldier in God's army." Is anyone else hearing alarm bells? I'm almost hoping for a Mitt Romney comeback just so he can beat Huck.
  
  
• Hillary is going to get her ass kicked by Obama in New Hampshire tomorrow. I'm going to say he's going to win by at least ten points (for the sake of specificity, I'll say 14 points): phone polls are going to consistently underestimate Obama, as his voters are typically younger and more likely not to have home phones. I'll predict a similar result for McCain over Romney (let's say 12 points). Giuliani is going to lose to Ron Paul again.
  
  
• Mitt is in a tailspin right now and unless he can win in Michigan (which is looking dubious), he's toast. He did win the Wyoming caucuses this past Saturday, but no one really noticed or cared. It's the last state he's going to win.
  
  
• Hillary's in a tailspin too:
  

  The Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll shows that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s national polling lead has collapsed. Before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton held a 17 point lead over Sen. Barack Obama. Today, that lead is down to 4 points in a survey with a four-point margin of sampling error.
  
  Nationally, Clinton leads the national race with 33% support, followed by Obama at 29% and John Edwards at 20%.

• Mike Huckabee has learned to stand up. Vertically. Not horizontally, or diagonally. Just vertically. he's going to take our country up. But not down. Just the up part of vertical.
  
  
• Suggestions that Hillary might drop out of the race if she loses New Hampshire in order to save face for a future bid for the presidency. Not only would this be monumentally stupid in terms of a way to save face, but if I understand Hillary, she'll go down kicking and screaming right up through the convention. Still, it's interesting to hear the rumor.
  

The Morning After/The Walk of Shame

I've been covering the permanent campaign since I started this blog in August, and last night something happened which so infrequently: something that matters, that provides solid data to be introduced into the political calculus, so armchair pols like myself can go wild with speculation. And wild is really the word for the news this morning.

Politico is having a field day with alarmism and catastrophic predictions for as many people as it possibly foresee a catastrophe for. "Iowa Leaves the GOP in Complete Disarray" is the headline for one article saying that all the Republican candidates are screwed because too many of them survived. Huckabee, who won by a solid margin, is of course in trouble because he'll actually have to work for a decent showing in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton is "fighting for survival," now that Barack Obama has this momentum thing that Clinton's strategists "are uncertain how to stop," despite the fact that she's got 30-point leads in some key states. While she's going to lose some support after last night, and some more after she loses new Hampshire on Tuesday, she's got very solid (20 points or more as of the latest composite scores on pollster.com) leads in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Florida to give her a buffer before Obama gets to South Carolina. There is no way in hell she's going down without a major fight.

In my own reading of this article, Edwards is now cozying up to Obama by declaring that "the status quo lost, and change won." It sounds to me like Edwards is implicitly lumping both himself and Obama into the category of "acceptable 'change' candidates," and hopes Obama will take him along for the ride. Joe Trippi, who was knee-deep in trash talk about Obama on Tuesday, has now set his sights on Clinton: “There are a lot of people who are around the Clinton machine for one reason and one reason only: they’re going to win. And guess what just happened? They didn’t win.” For the record, I think he's absolutely right about that. Hillary's support is broad, but I don't think it's more than skin deep in a lot of places.

The other story that I heard a good amount about last night, and rightly so, was the turn-out. Not only did Barack Obama win, he drew in huge amounts of new voters for the Democrats. AP is reporting a turn-out for Democrats alone of 239,000 voters. For the sake of perspective, that's more than twice the turnout numbers from 2004. More to the point, not only does that 239,000 contrast to 114,000 in 2004, it's also a hell of a contrast to the 115,000 Republicans that caucused this year (compared to 88,000 in their last contested caucus in 2000). Iowa, of course, went to Bush by about 10,000 votes in 2004. Democrats tacked on almost 100,000 voters in the span of four years and the GOP tacked on just shy of 30,000 in eight years. I'm jumping at the thought of what the numbers are going to be in November of this year.

More:

• Obama won on his own numbers, not piggybacked on with Richardson and Biden and the others.
• Rudy Giuliani : September 11 :: Tom Tancredo : Immigration

Iowa Reactions

I'm not going to get too in-depth here, but some initial reactions:

• 10% for Ron Paul, 3% for Hizzoner. Looks like Rudy got Abner Louima-ed.
• Not a great night for McCain. He needed to bump off The Sandman Fred Thompson, but now Thompson has a reason to stick around. He's got to win New Hampshire to stay in this.
• Thompson tied McCain. I'm willing to bet he's as bewildered as the rest of this.
• Ron Paul is on his way to making a legitimate splash in the poll numbers. He may be a gadfly, but he's a well-funded gadfly with an incredibly devoted, vocal following.
• Edwards surprised me. I thought he'd do better. He can stay in it if he beats Hillary again in New Hampshire, but if he doesn't, he's done.
• Hillary's speech has been described as "dirge-like." She's still got 30 point leads in some major, major states, but after the drubbing she's going to get from Obama in New Hampshire on Tuesday, she's going to have to fight like hell to keep that lead.
• If Obama pulls out the nomination (and it is still an "if"), Bill Richardson is going to be his running mate.
• If Romney loses New Hampshire, he'd better start a revolution in Michigan. He's on the ropes. At least Giuliani has the benefit of being able to say, "well, I wasn't even trying." Romney tried real hard in Iowa and lost by no small margin. He's in trouble.
• Chris Dodd is out of the race. I'm upset that I won't be able to vote for him, but I look forward to seeing him replace Harry Reid.

Since Dodd is gone, GO OBAMA!

Hello, Foot. Meet your new friend Bullet.

In non-caucus news, the Recording Industry Association of America is continuing their race to obsolescence by declaring that copyright law extends to the copying of a compact disc into mp3 format on your personal computer, for personal use.

Think about it . . .

Think about it . . .

They're saying that every time you click that little "import" button on iTunes, YOU ARE COMMITTING A CRIME. YOU ARE A THIEF. Even if you don't share it with anyone.

Now think about it some more . . .

The RIAA are trying to prevent you from copying music onto your computer, when Apple sold it's hundred millionth iPod last April, so that you have to purchase the mp3 separately. Why are they doing this? To discourage illegal filesharing so that everyone will have to buy more CD's. That's right. They're trying to stop you from using your CD's for one of their most common functions in order to get you to buy more of them.

Now imagine you go out to Borders (rather than going to an independent record store, which is just dumb) and drop $18.99 on the hot new release from . . . I don't know, Josh Groban or something. Someone who makes awful music that Borders charges nineteen bucks for when they release a new album. You have to go out tonight, but you've got a bit of a trip ahead of you, but you make a special trip home to rip this onto your iTunes so you can drop it on your iPod for the ride to wherever it is you're going. But because of a RIAA lawsuit, iTunes and every other media player will no longer rip that CD. So you have to go onto iTunes and buy the album AGAIN. After spending $18.99 on it at Borders already. Now tell me: how many more CD's are you going to buy?

Meanwhile, all of the indie labels who aren't represented by the RIAA want nothing more than for their bands to be heard. Most of the major indies will actually provide a free download of an album in mp3 format when you buy the vinyl copy of an album, just so you can get the most mileage out of their product. Shellac's most recent album on Touch & Go records, Excellent Italian Greyhound, even included the CD free with purchase inside the LP sleeve. You know how much it retails for? About thirteen dollars.

The RIAA is going to keep inflating CD prices to compensate for diminished sales as well as the massive costs of the lawsuits they keep filing and the preposterous amount they spend on promotion for awful music. As a result, they're going to go broke, and when it comes down to recognizing that they're a completely marginal entity, they will have done it to themselves. Pathetic.

Iowa

Tonight, of course, are the Iowa caucuses. I know I've been silent recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with what's going on there. What is going on there? Chaos. The pollsters are spinning in circles trying to figure out what's going on, and all their polls can tell them is that they don't know a damn thing.

The Democrats

Edwards, Clinton, and Obama have all been at the top of some poll or another in the last week or so, but even if they're not within the margin of error, they're still not comfortable enough to account for the double-digit percentages (and not small ones) of as-yet-undecided voters. When you throw in the viability rule, wherein backers of any candidate who doesn't meet a 15% threshold of support are asked to make a second choice, it gets even more confusing. The polls seem pretty certain that Edwards has the most to gain from second-choice support (which would seem to be why Joe Trippi is talking tough), but both Kucinich and Richardson have gone on record saying that his supporters should back Obama as a second-choice vote. Whether or not either of them have the organization and the loyalty to swing those blocs solidly as directed is very much in question, but is notable nonetheless.

My Pick:
Obama and Edwards will finish pretty closely. I think Obama will squeak out the victory, but no more than four points ahead of Edwards. The clear loser here will be Hillary Clinton, who is going into third by at least five, probably closer to ten points. I think that people who are currently backing Dodd, Biden, Richardson, and Kucinich are interested in a candidate they can love and not just accept, and that leads me to believe that working-class-warrior Edwards and the-future-can-be-bright-and-shiny poster-boy Obama are going to come out way ahead on second choice votes from that viability rule. I also think Hillary's biggest asset thus far has been her perceived electability, which I don't think will play well in a caucus environment this year. If you have to stand up in front of friends and neighbors and make a case for your candidate, you'd better have a good reason. In 2004, electability worked for John Kerry because the Democrats cared about little besides stopping George W. Bush. In 2008, we've got about six candidates that are legitimately qualified and capable of being a good Democratic president, and the GOP field is limper than a soggy pancake right now. Simply being "electable" isn't a good enough reason this year.

The Republicans

The GOP is in the exact opposite predicament. While the Democrats are stuck between too many good candidates, the Republicans have too many bad ones. Rudy Giuliani, while appropriately fascist and xenophobic to appeal on issues such as terrorism, is a god-awful candidate and everyone knows it. He has to deal with the "shag fund" scandal, the three wives, the hatred of his children, his history of moving in with gay men, his pro-choice views, his numerous on-record comments welcoming illegal immigrants, and possibly the most fatal, the fact that his "heroic" post-9/11 leadership wasn't really all that good. But it doesn't matter, because he's not running in either Iowa or New Hampshire, and after weeks of no press or bad press, and infinite hype behind 1-3 other candidates, his candidacy will be dead on arrival on Super Tuesday. Romney doesn't have nearly as many soft spots, but even if we leave out the Mormon issue, he still has to deal with the fact that every political belief and position he currently holds is a long way from where it used to be. If he gets the nomination, the Democrats won't even have to write any new material: they can just recycle old GOP "flip-flop" talking points from 2004, but replace "John" with "Mitt" and "Kerry" with "Romney." Can you imagine how funny it would be to watch a Democrat loudly campaigning against a "Massachusetts liberal?" Huckabee has the hype on his side right now, but it's starting to crumble. His strength with the Christian Right will end up being his weakness if he keeps playing it up as much as he is. The fundamentalists make a lot of noise, but when it comes to Beltway Republicanism, it's money that matters, and Huck is despised for his historical love of social spending. His own party would love to drop him for that one. Fred Dalton Thompson has the distinction of being the first presidential candidate to make narcolepsy into a contagious disease, and Ron Paul has managed to out-raise everyone in his party recently, and is still polling somewhere near Alan Keyes. There's only one candidate left, and he's old, cranky, and unpredictable enough that the GOP isn't going to like it.

My Pick:
Huckabee is going to take Iowa, with Romney coming in about five points behind him. The problem is, neither of them is going to survive their strong finishes there. Huckabee is a god-awful organizer, and his current place as a front-runner is based on a distaste for the rest of the candidates and not a solid and loyal support base. He'll take a few more states and win a respectable amount of delegates, but another month of intense press scrutiny will finish him by the time Super Tuesday comes around. The real winner is going to be McCain, who's going to pull in third with close to 20% despite having barely lifted a finger in Iowa. His victory will be on the strength of his convictions and his resume, and the hype will shift. Fred Thompson is going to bow out and hand his endorsement to McCain. The strong showing in Iowa will roll him well into New Hampshire, where he's going to stomp Romney. Romney has actually run a pretty good campaign, but it's hinged too much on two early states and he's going down in flames as he loses them both. The fun thing about seeing the GOP primaries is going to be watching the bloodbath: I do believe McCain will be the eventual nominee, but I think it's going to be hell getting there. Giuliani's late-state strategy was designed by a mathematician and not a psychologist, but he'll still pull enough to make a showing. As I said, Huck will pull a good showing from the Christian conservatives. Romney will pull just enough delegates to piss everyone else off, and lo and behold, you have a brokered convention.

Stormclouds on the Horizon

1) Ron Paul. There's no way his candidacy ends with not getting the GOP nomination. He's got too much money, and too much energy both from his dedication to his principles and from his rabid fanbase. He's not going to come anywhere near the presidency, but he's going to be a thorn in the sides of nominees from both parties.

2) Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel. Mayor Mike is rich as hell and that tends to help things go his way. He's been successful enough on the surface as mayor of New York to look appealing, and having Chuck Hagel on his ticket would give him authority and standing within Washington. Hagel is a solid and respectable conservative, with the added bonus of being legitimately opposed to neo-conservative bullshit, and in favor of ending the war in Iraq.

The GOP is hobbled as it is already by a lack of money, a lack of good candidates and a lack of consensus on where they want to lead the country. Even if the strongest candidate (McCain) wins the nomination, he's still going to have to convince the country that we should continue the war in Iraq. If he has two extremely well-funded, right-leaning anti-war independent campaigns to battle, the race is lost already.

For a good hypothetical on the fall-out we're going to see tomorrow, depending on who wins and how, check out Chuck Todd's breakdown on MSNBC.

[LATE EDIT: The Political Wire is now reporting that Obama may have cut deals with both Biden and Richardson to give them run-off support in certain precincts where he can win easily, giving them a boost in their numbers, while they would give him support from second-choice ballots elsewhere. If he can push the second-tier candidates as close to Hillary as possible while still taking a victory, he's made both an electoral victory and a PR victory by putting HRC in the same league as the back-burner candidates. Either way, it shows organization, an ability to play the system to his own ends, and an ability to work with his opponents to get what he wants, all of which are absolutely essential qualities for a president. I don't think many people understand how smart Barack Obama really is, and I think they're going to be surprised.]

Happy Election Year!