There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama

In honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Stimulus Hypocrisy

(Steve Kelley, copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate)

It seems the GOP has changed their stance on deficit spending rather quickly--where were Republican calls for lower spending during the last eight years of outrageous deficit spending?

Don't forget, Republicans, Obama is inheriting the problem that you all created.

Good times for the Democrats!

For all the hard work, for the teamwork, the engagement, the energy, the passion, the drive: YES WE DID!

It's 3A.M., and your cell phone is ringing

You pick it up, and it's Barack Obama, telling you he's selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. Well, 3A.M. if you lived on the East Coast. ;-)



Here are the videos from Saturday in Springfield, Illinois, at the first event with the two together.



And here's Joe Biden with a personal message to everyone after being selected.

House Dems capitulate to Bush, allowing illegal spying of Americans

Un-fucking-believeable. Steny Hoyer (who's recently gotten over $12,000 from the telecoms) has reached a "compromise" bill that would grant retroactive immunity for the telecoms and the Bush administration for illegally spying on our phone calls. If this passes, the wording seems to show that we CANNOT pass another law next year repealing this. So we can NEVER hold Bush accountable in a court of law for violating the Constitution. He gets off scot free.

Thanks to Steny Hoyer. A "Democrat". Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald explains just how bad this is.

The provision granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Section 802(a) provides:

[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was --

(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States" and

(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.

So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words -- the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists -- and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

That's the "compromise" Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now -- according to very credible reports -- pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It's full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we'll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it -- the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected.

And for those of you who think Obama will do anything about this, because he could definitely stop the bill in its tracks if he applies pressure on the House to do so, Glenn also shows it looks like Obama will do nothing about this, and will let Bush get away with this.

Political Pokemon

ROFLMAO!!!

Lakers lost... Democrats win?

Now, I know that many of my fellow Bruin Democrats were cheering on the Lakers as they battled the Boston Celtics for the chance to take home a NBA championship ring. I, more of a Warriors fan myself, was cheering the Lakers on, hoping that UCLA Alum Jordan Farmar and Trevor Ariza would bring another championship to L.A.

Yet, despite MVP Kobe Bryant and all the prayers of L.A., the Lakers lost to the Celtics in a pretty nasty game five defeat. And while our home team may have lost, this bodes well for a Barack Obama win in November.

Every year the Lakers have won a NBA Championship during an election year in recent history, the Republican candidate has won.

In 1972, the Lakers won, paving the way for a Nixon victory that fall. In 1980 the Lakers won again, as did Ronald Reagan. The 1984-85 season started with Reagan's reelection and was punctuated with--you guessed it--a Lakers championship. The Lakers won again in 1988 and so did George Bush Sr. George Bush was 'elected' in 2000, while the Lakers won another championship. And, as we all know, Bush was reelected in 2004 despite the Detroit Piston's best efforts (they beat the Lakers in the finals 4-1).

I am sure many Democrats would have enjoyed a Laker win followed by an Obama win in November. But at least the Laker's loss is joining a strong tide of unfavorable conditions for Republican John McCain.

So, sorry Kobe, and thanks Boston for making this a good year for Democrats to take back the white house.

Wanna win PA and OH?

SurveyUSA, the best pollster of 2004, has recently come out with some VP pairings for Obama and McCain. Sorry Hillary fans, she's not included in their polling. But what's interesting is who seems to help Obama the most in those seemingly crucial swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Check it out, and click on the graphs to see the crosstabs.





And for good measure, he'd even help Obama win Virginia, which hasn't voted Democratic since 1964.



Even here in California, Edwards would help Obama rack up the biggest victories.



Now I now what some of you (Aria?) are saying. This is simply name recognition at this point. Granted, that's part of it. Probably 99% of the country (and possibly quite a few Bruin Dems too) have never heard of Kathleen Sebelius or Tim Pawlenty. (FYI, they're the governors of Kansas and Minnesota, respectively.) But notice Edwards helps Obama more than Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell does for Obama in his home state of PA! This isn't just name recognition going on here.

Paul Rosenberg of OpenLeft has much more on this, an in-depth 3-part series as to why Edwards would make a great VP pick for Obama:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Also last year, I debunked the talking point that Edwards couldn't win North Carolina for John Kerry. This argument is based on some pretty bad logic and ignores what actually happened in North Carolina, as opposed to 47 other states in 2004.

I'll add this to Rosenberg's diaries. My feeling is that given how long this process is taking (thanks to Hillary threatening to take this fight to the convention), we're not going to get much time to introduce the country to our VP nominee. So if you really want the VP to help Obama first win the election so he can actually implement the necessary changes, then it would behoove you to have him pick someone with an already high name ID. And note how much better Obama/Edwards does in every matchup than the generic Obama vs. McCain matchup without any VP names given. For all the others, you'd have to hope that after building up their national name recognition, they would provide as much a boost to Obama's numbers, and there's no guarantee that will happen, as the GOP will be trying to define an unknown Democratic VP nominee at the same time to drive up their negatives.

Obama's electability & coattail advantage over Hillary

silver spring recently did an excellent analysis of the SurveyUSA numbers that show Obama has greater coattails than Hillary. This coattail effect was shown last week when Democrats took control of Dennis Hastert's former seat in Illinois. Regardless of who's president, unless the Democrats get a supermajority, expect to see the remaining Senate Republicans filibuster all good progressive legislation, especially under a Democratic president. So the issue of coattails becomes important.

I want to extend what silver spring did by looking at Rasmussen's state numbers. Now, I trust SurveyUSA the most, as they've consistently shown themselves to get very accurate results. In 2004, they did the best job of any polling firm, and their track record's holding this year too. The second best pollster from 2004 is Rasmussen Reports. Let's look at their state numbers. I've bolded which Dem does better against McCain in each state.

State	Dem	Rep	Dem Margin
California	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
	Clinton 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
Colorado	Obama 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
	Clinton 35%	McCain 49%	Lose by 14%
Connecticut	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
	Clinton 47%	McCain 44%	Win by 3%
Florida	Obama 43%	McCain 47%	Lose by 4%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 47%	Lose by 7%
Iowa	Obama 44%	McCain 41%	Win by 3%
	Clinton 37%	McCain 47%	Lose by 10%
Michigan	Obama 41%	McCain 44%	Lose by 3%
	Clinton 43%	McCain 46%	Lose by 3%
Minnesota	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 47%	Lose by 5%
Missouri	Obama 40%	McCain 42%	Lose by 2%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 43%	Lose by 1%
Nevada	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 49%	Lose by 9%
New Hampshire	Obama 49%	McCain 36%	Win by 13%
	Clinton 43%	McCain 41%	Win by 2%
New Jersey	Obama 43%	McCain 45%	Lose by 2%
	Clinton 50%	McCain 39%	Win by 11%
New Mexico	Obama 44%	McCain 44%	Tie
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Ohio	Obama 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
Oregon	Obama 49%	McCain 40%	Win by 9%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 45%	Lose by 3%
Pennsylvania	Obama 43%	McCain 44%	Lose by 1%
	Clinton 44%	McCain 46%	Lose by 2%
South Dakota	Obama 38%	McCain 48%	Lose by 10%
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Virginia	Obama 44%	McCain 49%	Lose by 5%
	Clinton 41%	McCain 51%	Lose by 10%
Washington	Obama 44%	McCain 45%	Lose by 1%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 48%	Lose by 8%
Wisconsin	Obama 44%	McCain 43%	Win by 1%
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%

And for you visual types, here it is in graphical form, based on the Democratic margin of victory.



In 14 of those states Rasmussen surveyed, Obama outperforms Hillary against McCain. In only 3 states does Hillary do better, and only in one of them does she actually have the lead over McCain, in New Jersey. And no, a Democrat is not going to lose New Jersey, no matter what some Hillary supporters are saying. A "safe" blue state is not suddenly flipping red in 2008.


Now, regarding what I said earlier about the polls agreeing? When do SurveyUSA and Rasmussen agree on who does better against McCain? Well, pretty much, they agree who does better almost every single time. So let's look at who does better against McCain, starting from Obama's most favorable to Clinton's most favorable, per Rasmussen, with the SurveyUSA margin in parentheses. I've also bolded the ones where there's a key Senate race going on.

Colorado, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +15)
Nevada, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +13)
Minnesota, Obama +20 (SUSA: Obama +3)
Iowa, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +14)
Wisconsin, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +7)
New Mexico, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +7)
Oregon, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +13)
New Hampshire, Obama +11 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Connecticut, Obama +9 (SUSA: Obama +11)
California, Obama +8 (SUSA: Obama +1)
Washington, Obama +7 (SUSA: Obama +16)
Virginia, Obama +5 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
South Dakota, Obama +2 (SUSA: Obama +8)
Ohio, Tie (SUSA: Tie)
Missouri, Clinton +1 (SUSA: Clinton +2)
New Jersey, Clinton +13 (SUSA: Clinton +5)


Only three states give contradictory data, and with the margins so close, you can't really say that there's contradictory data for Michigan. In the other two, Rasmussen has Obama doing significantly better than Hillary.

Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
Michigan, Tie (SUSA: Obama +1)
Pennsylvania, Obama +1 (SUSA: Clinton +6)

(Yes, I know, New Jersey has a Senate race too. But after Estabrook dropped out, in terms of it being a "key" Senate race, well... it's not. For now.)


Now, just because Obama or Hillary does better than McCain in those numbers I've listed above doesn't mean they'll actually win those states. Sometimes it's a matter of not losing by as much as the other person.

Strangely enough, both Rasmussen and SurveyUSA show Clinton and Obama performing the same against McCain, though Rasmussen has both of them losing by 6 points to McCain, while SurveyUSA has both of them handily beating him by 10 points! Now that's unexpected, unless you think that Ohioans really don't care which person's the Democratic candidate. But that still doesn't explain going from losing the state by 6 to winning the state by 10.

But for the most part, the two polling firms agree on who does better against McCain, thus making us more sure in stating that that candidate really does indeed have an advantage over the other one. And in terms of possible coattails, it's almost pretty obvious Obama will do a better job. Especially in Colorado and Oregon, where both firms show Obama does considerably better than Clinton against McCain, the coattail factor may be critical in ensuring a Democrat wins those two Senate seats, especially with the polling in those two Senate races not exactly in our favor right now.

Of course, all this just a snapshot in time, and things can change if some revelations come to light in the next couple weeks or months on any of the candidates. But for now, it does seem that the talk about Obama being a map-changer is justified by the polling data, from both SurveyUSA and Rasmussen.

IL-14: Success! Democrats win Hastert's seat!

Remember Dennis Hastert? He lost the Speaker of the House to Nancy Pelosi when Democrats took back the House in 2006. Well, without his precious Speakership, he decided to take his ball and go home, and soon resigned from Congress. Nevermind that the people in his district re-elected him to serve a two-year term. And so, there was a special election on Saturday for his seat. So what happened?

Physicist Bill Foster, the Democrat, won! He beat back Republican ice cream magnate Jim Oberweis, 53%-47%.

Bill Foster  (D): 53% (52,010)
Jim Oberweis (R): 47% (46,988)

The House Democrats' chief fundraiser said the victory in today’s special election for the Illinois seat vacated by Republican former Speaker Dennis Hastert is only the beginning of the hurt his party is going to lay on the GOP this fall.

“Despite spending 20 percent of ... their cash on hand, the [National Republican Congressional Committee] was unable to hold a seat easily won by President Bush and held by Speaker Hastert for 20 years,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen crowed. “Americans of all political stripes are rejecting Republicans’ divisive, status quo politics and turning to Democratic candidates for change.”

Democrat Bill Foster, a physicist running his first campaign, scored a 52-48 upset over Republican Jim Oberweis, a dairy owner who was expected to hold Illinois’ 14th Congressional District for the GOP. Foster won even in Kendall County, Hastert’s home base, reliably Republican – until now.

The NRCC took exception to Van Hollen’s analysis.

“The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend,” spokeswoman Karen Hanretty said. “In fact, there has been no national trend this entire election season. The presidential election is evidence of that. The Democratic candidates are trading election victories from week to week and the nomination could hinge on a few news cycles. The one message coming out of 2008 so far is that what happens today is not a bellwether of what happens this fall.”

Van Hollen said Foster’s victory “sends a political shock wave across America this election year.”

“It is a stunning rejection of the Bush Administration, its Republican allies, and presidential nominee John McCain,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Republican candidates learned tonight that Senator McCain, who campaigned with the Republican nominee, cannot save them from defeat this November against strong Democratic challengers, even in districts that voted overwhelmingly for President Bush.”

The GOP is trying to spin this away as simply being an Illinois thing, nevermind that this is a "red" district that gave Bush 55% of the vote in 2004, and Hastert still got 60% of the vote in 2006 even with the Mark Foley scandal hanging over his head. And the NRCC had tried to pull out all the stops in retaining the seat, spending about 29% of their entire cash on hand in this race. This is the first special election in four years where the party affiliation has changed, since Democrats won two special elections in Kentucky (Ben Chandler) and South Dakota (Stephanie Herseth Sandlin).

And yes, Obama played a key role here, cutting a commercial for Foster, while McCain campaigned with Oberweis. It was seen as a proxy fight between the two camps. Hillary Clinton, for whatever reason, did not even bother to endorse Foster in this race. And guess what? By becoming a Congressman, Foster will also be certified as a superdelegate, and yes, he's supporting Obama. This race can be seen as the first sign of Obama's coattails in a downticket race. Remember, unless we get to 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, expect to see 41 or more Republican Senators filibuster just about every good piece of legislation with a Democratic President.

Now, Foster has said he'd caucus with the Blue Dogs, so he's not exactly an out-and-out progressive. But given the makeup of his district, that may not be a bad thing. And on some key issues where the Blue Dogs have stabbed us in the back and sided with Bush, Foster doesn't seem to be making the same mistake, coming out strongly against telecom immunity.

Oh, and John Laesch, who ran against Hastert in 2006, and narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Foster this time around, has withdrawn his recount petition (there were some irregularities) for the sake of the party. Good on him. Look for his name in the future.

Young vs. old; partisanship vs. compromise

I was struck while reading Julia Grey's diary, and reminded about what happened at the Bruin Dems' "mockus" two weeks ago. Things got a little heated when someone mentioned the youth vote supporting Obama, versus the older people supporting Hillary. Well, be careful about that. History can be a hard lesson to learn.

I was a teenager in the 60s. The politically active Boomer cohort of that era -- roughly the same demographic that seems to dominate this site, educated people ages 18-29 -- was saying the same things about the Democratic candidates at the time. There was even a very colorful and influential (in all the wrong ways) riot at the party nominating convention by young people who objected to the nomination of "business as usual" Democrat Hubert Humphrey...perhaps you remember him? The one who lost to RICHARD NIXON?

We didn't like the influence old folks had on politics, either. They were "in the way," just like we Boomers are today. If they would just let us take over the party, we'd clean the joint up and send all the corporate fiends packing, yesirree. Well, we did kinda take over the party in '72, nominating George McGovern...who also lost to RICHARD NIXON.

So you can pretty much see where a lot of us got our cautious, practical, reality-based political streak. What you call our cowardice. We started looking at what could be done and how it could be done and all that boring stuff that comes after the bright shining moments of wild enthusiasm and righteous dreams.

I know it irritates you that the Democratic party is like the biddy going 60 in the fast lane. Just fast enough to be a pain in the ass to pass, but too slow for the idealistic traffic coming up from behind her at 80. "Your" party is just poking along, maybe even with her left turn signal on...blink.blink.blink.blink.... It's maddening.

But you're stuck with us, I'm afraid. Millions upon millions of us baby-boom oldsters between you and your vision of total non-corporate bliss. Even worse, we're reliable voters!

We're gonna dare to vote in "your" party's primaries for quite a while yet. Because, here's the thing, it's NOT "your" party. It's not the Young Impatient Idealists party. It's the Democratic party. You know the one: the big tent, the party that wants universal health care coverage, liberal judges on the Supreme Court, troops coming home, and serious investments in public goods like education and infrastructure that the Republicans have shamefully neglected lo, these many years.

So, unfortunately, we'll be here a while, annoying the bejabbers out of you with our insistence on using our influence in "your" party, but helping you elect Democrats for at least another couple of decades.

Still, there's hope on the horizon. Eventually, just in the natural course of events, you'll be rid of us at last...just in time to be contemptuously referred to as "old farts" yourselves.

I wonder... will the youth who support Obama right now still vote for a Democrat if he doesn't get the nomination? Because let me tell you, losing in politics is a hard thing to get over. After Kerry's loss in 2004, I completely shut out politics from my life for 9 months, not reading DailyKos again (can you imagine that?) until the week before Hurricane Katrina hit. Others not as dedicated may leave permanently.

Understand that this is a fight for the long haul. We're not going to fix all our nation's problems in a few weeks, or even a few years. And as long as there are 41 obstructionist Republican Senators come 2009, you can betcha that any Democrat in the White House, whoever it may be, will face getting large parts of his or her agenda filibustered to death by the Republicans.

At the California Democratic Convention last April in San Diego, Obama promised us he would find those 67 votes to override a Bush veto to end the war in Iraq. Yeah... how'd that turn out? How do you "work with Republicans" when they're not willing to work with you?

To this end, I'll cite dday, who was in Las Vegas to cover the caucuses. He talks about this sense of compromise and reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans appearing in both Obama and Clinton's speeches in Nevada.

OK, I don't think the battle of the Party is to find unity. It's to find the best ways to push the Republicans and successfully set the agenda. We actually do need a politics based on ideology, unless the "common sense" that Obama suggests is actually ideological.

....

But at the very end... well, let me give you over to Matt Stoller, who was there as well:

After a laundry list of items she's going to get done, she posed a rhetorical question of how all of that would be possible. Her answer? By reaching across the aisle, like she has done in the Senate. I hope she's checked with the Republicans on that one.

She says that all the time, actually, and so did Bill Clinton at his earlier event, highlighting her work with Lindsay Graham and JOHN MCCAIN. Um, don't you two know that you might actually have to RUN against John McCain, and the time for puffing him up to increase your own credibility should kind of be over?

Is there some super-secret polling showing that Americans what to "end the partisan bickering" in Washington and come together for the common purpose? I really don't see that. I see a country who has turned on George Bush and wants to go in a new direction. Yet two of our main candidates BOTH keep stressing this theme of unity, and the third candidate, who actually does reject this, doesn't get any love from the media and has been practically shunted aside. What is behind this?

Actually, I don't think it's so difficult. In a time tailor-made for progressive ideas, when the conservative brand is almost entirely trashed, we have two centrist candidates running to lead the party. They say this every day, and no matter what kind of onion-peeling and "no, what they actually mean is THIS" you try to do, that's pretty much the answer.

The strategy Clinton and Obama appear to be employing is a perfectly normal general election strategy. “Bringing the country together” isn’t all that radical a political theme, and after 8 years of “my way or the highway” conservatism, I can see how it would have some limited appeal. But we’re in the middle of a Democratic primary. I think it was Stoller in a post about a month ago who wondered if we could be pandered to just a little bit before we were ditched for independents and swing voters. It could be that the first few primaries are open to independents. But yesterday I felt like I was watching the candidates for the nomination of the Independent Party of America, and it rankled me.

....

Obama at least talks about how he can’t do it alone, and how change happens from the bottom up. And I’m not averse to talking about “working together” with Republicans. But Republicans ARE, and the conservative movement is not likely to give up so easily and watch as an agenda to which they are diametrically opposed gets installed.

Partisanship is a good thing. It gives people choices. There are legitimate differences about how to meet our challenges. The point in between those two differences is not necessarily the best; in fact it’s often the worst. When one side of the political aisle has leaders who believe in the value of that middle point, and the other side believes in the extreme, guess where we’re going to end up. “Screwed” would be the word I would use.

And frankly, I have seen no indication that Republicans are going to do anything other than stick the knife in our backs the first chance they get. They fucking sustained Bush's veto on SCHIP expansion, which all the polls showed freaking 80% of the country supporting! As mcjoan said, "Bipartisanship only works when the other side compromises, too. Otherwise it's just capitulation." And now from Nevada, we may have seen the first signs of Obama's Reagan comments backfiring.



As Stoller writes:

In Iowa, Obama beat Clinton by 16 points among those who consider themselves as 'very liberal'. In New Hampshire, they were even. And now in Nevada, Clinton simply destroyed Obama within that block by 16 points. In other words, while it's not entirely clear who 'won' Nevada, whatever that means, had Obama run even with Clinton among those who describe themselves as 'very liberal', he would have soundly defeated her at the caucuses outright instead of having to play delegate games.

Both Edwards and Clinton dog whistled hard on Obama's Reagan remarks. Many readers and friends simply don't believe me that the stuff he said about Reagan was bad. Here's what it sounds like to people who lived through that period, which is still a majority of the voting universe. Digby helpfully wrote this in a frame of reference many will understand. Imagine George W. Bush in 2000 saying this.

We're still having the same arguments. It's all around regulations and smaller government and it's all ... even when you discuss traditional values the frame of reference is all around abortion. Well, that's not my frame of reference. My frame of reference is "what works." When I first came out against abortion, my first line was I don't oppose all abortions, specifically, to make clear that this is not a theocratic, you know, snake-handling prayer vigil kind of approach."

I think Lyndon Johnson changed the trajectory of the country in a way that JFK did not and Nixon did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of racism and anti-communism and government refusing to raise taxes to care for the poor and the elderly, I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, we want a return to that sense of community and compassion that had been missing."

Bush would have lost the nomination right then and there. Conservatives simply do not run away from their past, they create narratives that reinforce it as a tradition worth belonging to. What Obama did when lauding Reagan as an answer to the 'excesses of the 1960s' (which you can very well see is a conservative meme by doing a quick Google book search) was attack and insult the liberal traditions of feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, consumer rights, and peace movement work from that time.

....

The past matters. It just does. And if you want to know why, just remember that Bush has rung up a huge credit card debt that we will have to pay off. And if we can't explain that Bush rang up the bill by referencing the past, the country is going to blame Democrats for what Bush did. It's happened before. Just ask Bill Clinton and the 1994 Congressional class of Democrats, who paid the price for Ronald Reagan's binge spending.

We have been fighting Ronald Reagan's psychologically diseased followers and predecessors since, well, since they called themselves the Confederacy and fought for slavery. And we will keep fighting them if we are to retain a republic. That's why the self-identified very liberal Democrats swung away from Obama and took Nevada from him. Because he very self-consciously explained that he is not part of that fight, and they want a leader who is.

Another thing to consider. Many of the February 5th states have closed primaries, so those Independents Obama loves to court will not be participating. If he wants to win this thing, he'll have to wrestle away some of Hillary's support among loyal Democrats. And BTW, right now, Edwards is the reason Obama has the lead in South Carolina. Edwards drops out, and suddenly Obama is tied with Hillary. The two Nevada polls which showed Edwards as weak had Hillary winning Nevada by about 7.5 points; she won by 6. Just something else to consider.

Final polls

All right, let's look at what the latest polls are saying about the state of the race.

American Research Group, Dec. 31 - Jan. 2 (Dec. 26-28 numbers in parentheses)

Clinton 34% (31)
Obama   25% (24)
Edwards 21% (24)

This poll assumes 83% of those that show up will be Democrats. In 2004, 81% of those that caucused were Democrats. The low number of Independents and Republicans showing up in their poll could explain the high numbers for Hillary. ARG's polls have traditionally polled Hillary a few points higher than every other poll out there, so we should take that into account too.


Des Moines Register, Dec. 27-30

Obama   32%
Clinton 25%
Edwards 24%

Now, much has been made of this poll. Namely, it assumes 60% of the caucus goers will be first-timers. Is this realistic? 2004 already set record numbers in attendance, with 45% of them being new. Those 45% aren't new anymore. Is that pool of new people really there? If so, that would mean a turnout the likes of which are unheard of. But even beyond that, some interesting numbers emerge.

Clinton remains the favorite of the party faithful, with support from a third of self-described Democrats. However, Obama is the clear choice of caucusgoers who affiliate with neither the Democrat or Republican parties, with roughly 40 percent of them backing him in the survey.

The support from non-Democrats is significant because a whopping 40 percent (actually, 39%) of those planning to attend described themselves as independent and another 5 percent as Republican. Only registered Democrats can participate in the caucuses, although rules allow participants to change their party registration on their way in to the caucuses.

So the DMR poll suggests that 45% of Iowans that show up to the Democratic caucus... won't actually be Democrats. And that also means a WHOLE lot of Republicans will be showing up. But look what happens. He's getting 39% of the 45% of caucus goers who are not Democrats. He's getting only 27% support from actual Iowa Democrats, who make up 55% of the caucus pool, according to the DMR. That means...

0.39 × 0.45 = 17.55%
0.27 × 0.55 = 14.85%

Of Obama's 32% in the poll, MORE support is coming from non-Democrats than from actual Democrats! Is this realistic, and is this a good thing? desmoinesdem, who is an Edwards precinct captain, doesn't buy these numbers from the DMR, either the turnout numbers, or the percent of non-Democrats that are supposedly going to show up. But who knows, maybe they nailed it, and we're going to see historic turnout tonight.

But Mark Blumenthal has more on what they meant by "Democrat" and "Independent", suggesting maybe the numbers aren't as much out of line as we'd think. It has to do with independent-minded Democrats identifying themselves as "independent" when asked.


McClatchy/MSNBC (via polling firm Mason-Dixon), Dec. 26-28 (Dec. 3-6 in parentheses)

Edwards 24% (21)
Clinton 23% (27)
Obama   22% (25)

They also did a reallocation (.pdf) based on second choices of supporters of the second tier candidates, and found this.

Edwards 33%
Clinton 26%
Obama   26%

This poll assumes about 20-25% of caucus goers will be first-timers.


The rest of the polls don't tell us the percentage of Democrats or first-time caucus goers in the poll.

CNN, Dec. 26-30 (Dec. 14-18 in parentheses)

Clinton 33% (30)
Obama   31% (28)
Edwards 22% (26)


Zogby has been doing continual 4-day rolling averages in the last week.



(h/t poblano for the graphic)


Research 2000, Dec. 26-27

Edwards 29%
Obama   29%
Clinton 28%


Strategic Vision, Dec. 28-30 (Dec. 26-27 in parentheses)

Obama   32% (30)
Edwards 29% (28)
Clinton 27% (29)


Insider Advantage, Dec. 28-29 (Dec. 16-17 in parentheses)

Clinton 30% (24)
Edwards 29% (26)
Obama   22% (27)

Insider Advantage also factored in second choices. After that recalibration, they found this.

Edwards 41%
Clinton 34%
Obama   25%

That's because in their poll, Edwards was the second choice of a whopping 62% of Iowans who supported the second tier candidates.


And finally, from DailyKos, not a poll, but the most concise summary of what the three top Democrats stand for.

Clinton = "Me"
Obama = "You"
Edwards = "Us"


So... what do we know? Um... it's a 3-way race. Any of the top 3 can win this thing.

Clinton-to-Obama switcher switches again

Remember Susan Klopfer? As a Clinton precinct captain, her story made headlines when she decided to switch her support to Obama. The Obama campaign even featured her in this incredibly popular YouTube video.



Well... since then... she's switched again.

When she switched, the Obama campaign made a video that got lots of play, not only on YouTube, but also on cable news programs.

"It got more hits than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. It got the all-time highest over that weekend," Klopfer said of the video's YouTube hits. The video was so potent that the Clinton campaign made an answering video with its own former Obama supporters.

But when Klopfer showed up at a John Edwards house party this morning, it was because she was on the verge of switching again.

"In both of those people I didn't see the experience that I'd like to see and kind of the groundedness that I'd like to see," she said of Obama and Clinton, "so I'm really looking at Edwards, and I'm still really looking at (Bill) Richardson."

Klopfer said she went to see Richardson last night in Mount Pleasant last night and was impressed by him.

"Probably I'll caucus for Richardson," she said after Edwards spoke. "My guess is he won't be viable, and then I'll probably scoot right over to Edwards."

In MSNBC's First Read, she's getting pilloried in the comments section for her switch. MSNBC had more about this yesterday morning, and Keith Olbermann also mentioned her at the top of his broadcast last night.

Obama attacking Gore and Kerry?

It looks like Obama took an indirect swipe at both Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama supporters on DailyKos claimed it must have been a bogus quote from Hillary supporter Taylor Marsh. Except... ABC News then confirmed it too.

On Monday Obama suggested that Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore were divisive.

In an argument about his electability, Obama compared himself favorably with Sen. Hillary Clinton who is viewed negatively by nearly half the country. Obama is viewed far more favorably by independents and Republicans.

Then he said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We've done that in 2004 and 2000. 47 percent of the country on one side, 47 percent of the country on the other . . . We don't need another one of those elections."

OK, there are so many ways in which what Obama said is simply demonstrably false. Digby destroys the Republican talking point that Al Gore was "too divisive" in 2000. His favorability ratings in 2000 were well over 50%. And the excuses that he didn't specifically mention Gore or Kerry by name?? C'mon people, who do you think was running at the top of our ticket in those two years? Was the "next election" he was talking about the state board of equalization race or something? It's pretty damn obvious he was making indirect swipes at Gore and Kerry.

And if he really wants to talk about "electability" based on favorability ratings, Big Tent Democrat points out that Obama would actually making the case... for John Edwards. Check out the latest favorability ratings via Rasmussen:

                Fav Unfav
Hillary Clinton  48   50
Barack Obama     43   51
John Edwards     49   42

And Molly Ivors minces no words at what the Obama campaign is doing.

Let me state the obvious: Dude, the people you are trying to appeal to are never going to vote for you. Despite what David Broder says, there's not really some mushy middle waiting to be addressed by you. If acting more like Republicans were really the key to victories, then why is Harry Reid not King of the Fucking Universe?

I'll tell you why: because it's a bullshit argument. People know that we're in a heap of trouble in this country. The planet is melting and our jobs are evaporating and we're in a stupid fucking war breaking young men we aren't bothering to help fix. It sucks. And sucking up to and adopting the framing of the people who brought us global warming and rewarded outsourcing and lied us into war and smeared vets who dare to speak out is pretty fucking useless, and no way to actually address any of these problems.

So, because of comments like this and other ones in recent days, even Markos is backing away from his previous decision to vote for Obama.

Not being blinded by candidate worship, it's easier to sniff out the bullshit. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter.

One of the things the Bush/Cheney team discovered after 2000 was that the "center" didn't really exist in this country anymore. It's mythical, propagated by the Beltway pundits who orgasm when they hear the word "compromise". People are either on one side or the other. Those who really aren't sure, are those that never bother to vote anyway. They're probably part of that 31% of Americans who don't even know Dick Cheney is the Vice President.

That's why they dropped the "compassionate conservative" pretense in 2004 and ran to the hard right, courting their base. Turn out the base and win, because that "center" no longer existed. Democrats who try to court that mythical center will generally lose. So please, Mr. Obama, drop the right-wing talking points and talk like a true progressive.

Fox News attacks Edwards/Obama

For freezing Fox News out, Edwards and Obama are now subjected to smears and attacks from Fox News. Brave New Films put together a compilation tape of evidence. One or two times may be brushed off, but when you have dozens and dozens of examples, that says something.

CNN poll: Edwards DESTROYS GOP candidates

(also posted on DailyKos)

So CNN released a poll that matched up our top three with the GOP's top four (sans Thompson), and the numbers could not be more stark. John Edwards DESTROYS all the GOP candidates by the widest margins of our top three. So here, I do what I've done before in making a pretty graph to look at the numbers. For each GOP candidate, in the margin column I've bolded the race that would give us the best margin of victory.

CNN poll results (.pdf)

GENERAL	ELECTION	MATCH-UPS
Democrat	Republican	Margin
Clinton 51%	Giuliani 45%	Win by 6%
Obama 52%	Giuliani 45%	Win by 7%
Edwards 53%	Giuliani 44%	Win by 9%
Clinton 54%	Romney 43%	Win by 11%
Obama 54%	Romney 41%	Win by 13%
Edwards 59%	Romney 37%	Win by 22%
Clinton 48%	McCain 50%	Lose by 2%
Obama 48%	McCain 48%	Tie
Edwards 52%	McCain 44%	Win by 8%
Clinton 54%	Huckabee 44%	Win by 10%
Obama 55%	Huckabee 40%	Win by 15%
Edwards 60%	Huckabee 35%	Win by 25%

Notice a pattern? :-)

So, what does that translate to in graphical form? Visually, it becomes quite obvious.




Unfortunately, the CNN poll didn't provide demographic breakdowns like SurveyUSA always provides, so I can't do additional armchair analysis of what percent of Republicans cross over to vote for our candidates, or Democrats that choose to vote GOP. But I think here, the numbers speak for themselves.

The Edwards-Huckabee numbers are especially surprising, given that many of us were worried about Huckabee's economic populist stances taking away from Edwards. But if I may armchair pundit, perhaps we're seeing the reverse of the situation where you have a Republican versus a Democrat running as Republican-lite, and the voters choose the real thing. Here, you have a real economic populist, against a guy who talks a good game, but his Fair Tax bullshit sort of throws that out the window. Looks like voters go for the real economic populist.

It should be noted that some of these matchups differ wildly in other polls. For example, Rasmussen has Hillary doing better against Rudy than Edwards does. And that poll shows Edwards leading Huckabee by only a 44%-40% margin, quite a bit different from CNN's 25-point blowout.

So this CNN poll is just one poll. It may be a good or bad poll, we'll see. I'd like to see other non-partisan polling firms come out with these matchups to more accurately gauge what the national mood is.

But still, these CNN poll questions were asked of the same 912 registered voters, so to go from a 50%-48% McCain win over Hillary to a 60%-35% blowout of Huckabee by Edwards means there was a pretty significant chunk of that group that would prefer McCain to Hillary, but would rather back Edwards over Huckabee. That's a 27-point swing we're talking about. Over one quarter of the entire electorate! That's the difference between a nailbiter that comes down to one state, and the Democrat winning over 450 electoral votes in a landslide.

And assuming they produced about as close to a random sample as you're gonna get with telephone polls, that would indicate that in other samples, we should see similar movement towards Edwards. The problem with the Rasmussen polls I linked to is that those were asked of different samples of people, so the cross-comparison doesn't hold as much meaning. So while their Hillary-Rudy poll showed Hillary up by 3 points, perhaps if they had asked those same people about Edwards-Rudy, Edwards could have had a bigger lead. Who knows? It's just that in a separate poll, they show Edwards tied with Rudy.

So what causes this huge shift in Edwards' favor? Average Republicans. They're willing to vote for Edwards over their party's candidate by at least a 20% clip in quite a few key swing states, including Ohio. (Even 30% or more if the candidate is Romney.) Average Republicans like this woman:




And as mentioned before, the margin of victory is also crucial in that it needs to be greater than the GOP's margin for theft, chicanery, and voter suppression. Did you guys really think the GOP is gonna suddenly stop intimidating black voters or shredding registration forms? I don't think so. A 3-point lead can be stolen, and nobody bats an eyelash, because it was all within the margin of error. But if the polls show our candidate up by double digits, and they lose, most Americans WOULD bat an eyelash over those results.

Krugman on Social Security

When it comes to Social Security, today's column by Paul Krugman has him not-so-happy with one of our frontrunners. The column is titled Played for a Sucker. Obama supporters may want to avoid this piece.

But the “everyone” who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn’t include anyone who actually understands the numbers. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided.

As Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, put it in a recent article co-authored with senior analyst Philip Ellis: “The long-term fiscal condition of the United States has been largely misdiagnosed. Despite all the attention paid to demographic challenges, such as the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, our country’s financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs.”

How has conventional wisdom gotten this so wrong? Well, in large part it’s the result of decades of scare-mongering about Social Security’s future from conservative ideologues, whose ultimate goal is to undermine the program.

Thus, in 2005, the Bush administration tried to push through a combination of privatization and benefit cuts that would, over time, have reduced Social Security to nothing but a giant 401(k). The administration claimed that this was necessary to save the program, which officials insisted was “heading toward an iceberg.”

But the administration’s real motives were, in fact, ideological. The anti-tax activist Stephen Moore gave the game away when he described Social Security as “the soft underbelly of the welfare state,” and hailed the Bush plan as a way to put a “spear” through that soft underbelly.

Fortunately, the scare tactics failed. Democrats in Congress stood their ground; progressive analysts debunked, one after another, the phony arguments of the privatizers; and the public made it clear that it wants to preserve a basic safety net for retired Americans.

That should have been that. But what Jonathan Chait of The New Republic calls “entitlement hysteria” never seems to die.

....

Which brings us back to Mr. Obama. Why would he, in effect, play along with this new round of scare-mongering and devalue one of the great progressive victories of the Bush years?

I don’t believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is, however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the partisanship of our times — and in this case, that turned him into a sucker.

....

We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists — which is the case for many issues today — you end up being played for a fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama.

There's some more good commentary on the Social Security issue here.

SNL opening sketch

Some of you will absolutely love this sketch. Others won't, as much. This is the opening bit from last night's Saturday Night Live.

Andrew Sullivan Tells Us what 2008 is About

It has been quite a while since I posted on the Bruin Democrats blog. I'm sure our readers are relieved to know that I am, in fact, still alive. Midterms and other commitments have not yet buried me.

I want to share an intriguing piece on Barack Obama written by conservative (note the small "c") Andrew Sullivan. For those of you who don't know, Sullivan is one of the more interesting intellectuals of our time. In the past couple years or so, he has undergone a transformation from one of the Iraq war's most vocal supporters into one of the its most vocal opponents. And, yes, as mentioned a few sentences ago, he identifies as a conservative. Nonetheless, he is still one of Barack Obama's most significant supporters in the blogosphere.

His latest piece on Obama -- which appears in The Atlantic -- discusses how an Obama presidency has the potential to actually build the bridge to the 21st century that President Clinton talked about in his second term. Rather than emphasizing Obama's position on ending the war in Iraq, Sullivan emphasizes Obama's position on ending the culture war. It's a lengthy, but incredible article. I have selected some money quotes for Bruin Democrats' reading pleasure:

"This is the critical context for the election of 2008. It is an election that holds the potential not merely to intensify this cycle of division but to bequeath it to a new generation, one marked by a new war that need not be—that should not be—seen as another Vietnam. A Giuliani-Clinton matchup, favored by the media elite, is a classic intragenerational struggle—with two deeply divisive and ruthless personalities ready to go to the brink. Giuliani represents that Nixonian disgust with anyone asking questions about, let alone actively protesting, a war. Clinton will always be, in the minds of so many, the young woman who gave the commencement address at Wellesley, who sat in on the Nixon implosion and who once disdained baking cookies. For some, her husband will always be the draft dodger who smoked pot and wouldn’t admit it. And however hard she tries, there is nothing Hillary Clinton can do about it. She and Giuliani are conscripts in their generation’s war. To their respective sides, they are war heroes."

"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."

"He is among the first Democrats in a generation not to be afraid or ashamed of what they actually believe, which also gives them more freedom to move pragmatically to the right, if necessary. He does not smell, as Clinton does, of political fear."

"Obama’s racial journey makes this kind of both/and politics something more than a matter of political compromise. The paradox of his candidacy is that, as potentially the first African American president in a country founded on slavery, he has taken pains to downplay the racial catharsis his candidacy implies. He knows race is important, and yet he knows that it turns destructive if it becomes the only important thing. In this he again subverts a Boomer paradigm, of black victimology or black conservatism. He is neither Al Sharpton nor Clarence Thomas; neither Julian Bond nor Colin Powell. Nor is he a post-racial figure like Tiger Woods, insofar as he has spent his life trying to reconnect with a black identity his childhood never gave him. Equally, he cannot be a Jesse Jackson. His white mother brought him up to be someone else."

"At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable."

Why Obama is a good choice for college students

It's not just because he is young and seems to actually care about our age group, not just give it lip service. It is not just because he has written two amazing books. It is not just because he admitted to using narcotics and isn't ashamed of it. It is not because he gave a killer speech in East LA that the Bruin Democrats went to and loved. It is not because he is half-black and the prospect of a black president is very appealing to college students. It is not just that he has the kind of passion that our age group respects. It is not just because he seems to be from the "new Democrats" that are done with the old system of rhetoric and politicking and a lack of results. It is not just because he has the passion that Washington desperately needs. It is not just because he took a chance and voted against the war (which, really, was a chance - because if we had found WMD's or something, or it hadn't gotten out of hand, the hawks would have been lauded). It is a combination of all of this, and it is many more things. Every aspect of his personality, history, and campaign appeals to young voters, and I'm not ashamed to say that it appeals to me and gets me more fired up than any other campaigns, other than Gravel perhaps...

In spite of this, I am voting for Hillary Clinton. True, there are countless reasons not to vote for her, and yes there are aspects of her personality and past (her failed healthcare platform, staying by Bill's side if that is a bad thing) that are not too flattering. But, in my opinion, she is the best candidate. Not just because she is married to Bill and I want him back in office or something like that, and not just because I knew her name before I knew Obama's. She has experience, she knows the system, and she has a vision that, while not as passionate as Obama's, seems much more obtainable. She knows how to get votes, even if some may say that Republicans would never vote with her. She is a master compromiser, knows how to have productive back-office meetings. I am open to discuss these reasons and many more (because there are countless more) with someone willing to have an intelligent discussion and not jump down my throat.

But this post is about Obama, and why he works for college students. Hillary is seen as the stodgy, unimpressive candidate who doesn't get your soul fired up. But she has what it takes to get it done, and she knows how to give her voters what they want. Much like Bill, she knows when to run to the center and when to stick it out on the mid-left, and it is better to have that than someone who I may agree more with ideologically but can't achieve those goals in Washington. I love Obama, I agree with him more, and he appeals to me on every level BUT those of experience and the ability to get it done.