This morning, I visited one of Russ Feingold's listening sessions.
Some of the topics: Iraq, Social Security, a local environmental issue, jobs, international trade.
The issue of international trade was mentioned during a discussion of who Russ Feingold may endorse for President. As many of you know, he has narrowed it down to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Russ criticized John Edwards for voting for a certain trade agreement with China.
Another topic was Russ' listening sessions themselves and term limits. Russ said , more or less, something like this: the chances of a Senator being elected (who will do these listening sessions) is essentially zero. This was in conjunction with the term limits issue and I don't remember the full sentence. Term limits are bad, he said "term limits would be the greatest gift" to the bureaucracy, because fewer members of Congress with skills would be watching them.
Russ stated that the way to start getting what we want out of a candidate is to make the candidate make some clear committments to whatever policy. And, he went on immediately to say, that he's not seeing enough clear policy statements.