Vilsack Endorses Hillary In Iowa

This should help her chances in picking the all too important state up. Can someone say Vice President?

Vote Different

Here's the internet ad that's generating a lot of talk.

Obama Won't Be Swiftboated

From politico.com:

This week, the Democratic operatives showed up and it turned un-fun pretty quickly.

During a question-and-answer session, a student got up and directed a question to Mark Penn, a top strategist for Hillary Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton voted for the war," the student said. "How do you convince those of us who are inclined to support her that she isn't inclined to get us involved in another war?"

Penn replied that Hillary Clinton is not the kind of person who would have started the Iraq war. He said that had she been president, she would have found out the truth about the weapons of mass destruction and there would have been no war.

But Penn didn't stop there. Even though he had been asked nothing about Barack Obama, Penn said that Obama's record on opposition to the war was "complex" and that Obama had made statements in the past that appear to support the Iraq war.

Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, was sitting about six feet away from Penn and he was not going to take that.

Axelrod, who is normally soft-spoken and mild-mannered, replied: "I really think it is important, if we're going to run the kind of campaign that will unify our party and move this country forward, that we do it in an honest way, and that was not an honest way."

What's the big deal with that? Don't people on opposing campaigns accuse each other of being dishonest all the time?

No. Not in public, anyway. It is considered pushing the boundaries of what is done and not done.

Axelrod continued, "Are we going to spend 10 months savaging each other or lift this country up?"

"I think that is a false choice," Penn replied. "Are we going to look at everybody's record and everybody's votes and tell people the truth?"

Un-fun. But very interesting.

I have two thoughts about the exchange between Penn and Axelrod:

First, it is a sign that no campaign is going to risk getting "Swift-Boated." Any campaign that is attacked or thinks it is being attacked is going to respond quickly and vigorously.

Second, the Iraq war is not going to go away as an issue within the Democratic Party.

When it comes to the war, who said what when, how they said it and what they say about it now is going to continue to be a very big deal.

After the question-and-answer session, the campaign staffs, some reporters and some students retired to a large, off-the-record dinner.

And I figured Axelrod might use the opportunity to bury the hatchet.

"I want to go on the record to say that Mark is a longtime friend of mine, whom I respect deeply," Axelrod said. "But let's not throw out half-quotes that are aimed at misleading. I did not say a word about Sen. Clinton's choice to vote for the war in 2002."

That's burying the hatchet, all right. Right in Mark Penn's head.

iRack

For all of us political nerds out there who also happen to be tech nerds, enjoy!

The Truth Hurts

A new independent study finds that Democratic proposals for fixing the health care problem in America, are cheaper and more effective than the administrations.

Damn Video Cameras

I think the new spelling of Rudy is P-W-N-E-D.

CNN.com, the American public, and the definition of News

It seems that every time I go on CNN.com or turn on the TV, there is some random and irrelevant story all over the place. Just the other day, I went to CNN.com and the top story was something about Anna Nicole Smith, with a world political event down near the bottom of the page, after scrolling down two times. I turned on the news yesterday and had to follow a 45 mile an hour car ‘chase’ before hearing thirty seconds about the upcoming elections.

What has happened to News as a medium? I get that the average person may not want to hear about important national and world events such as genocides in Africa everyday, but when did the news companies completely give up on at least trying to give us decent information at least fifty percent of the time?

I think that news should hold itself to some sort of standards; standards dictating that they should try to give the public information that really matters, not stuff that merely exists to garner ratings.

Edwards Little Secret

In lue of John Edwards joining us here at UCLA on Friday, an interesting article was written up over at politico talking about how Sen. Edwards may actually suprise everyone, just as he did in 2004 at the first quarter FEC deadline.

Isn't he dreammmmmmmmmmmy?