Unlike every single presidential candidate the Democrats have proferred forward from 1968 through 2004, it appears that we as Democrats are finally learning how to win and win big.  If elections are about issues, the RW GOP can NEVER win and conservatism will go the way of the Edsel. Conservatives know this reality better than anyone.  

Many of us understand that the way for Democrats to win on the issues is simple:  1)  Protect middle class economic interests (education, progressive tax code, affordable health care, consumer rights, clean environment, labor rights, etc..)  2)  Keep government out of your personal lives; 3) Maintain a security based (not Halliburton based) foreign policy; 4)  Govern with integrity and transparency and 5)  Understand that certain issues (i.e. guns) are best left to the local level.

We hear them again and again, not always from the same people, not always in the same era, but they continually return and effortlessly roll off the tongue. An appreciable number of Americans have grown to love or at least to be cajoled those magical slogans. In fact, they have become such a staple of politicians and power brokers that they can take on a life of their own. They are slippery little things that spread like a virus when people are backed up against the wall of immanent failure or are streaking toward a defeat and have nothing substantial to say.

So, here is a list of my favorites. After them there will be translations from "Captain Subtext." He’s a demented soul who has a bizarre view of reality; that means that he knows the Bush-Cheney-Republican-Neocon mind. (I have resurrected Captain Subtext from the British comedy "Coupling.")

I want my country back and thanks to the Daily Kos I see that Democrats are fighting to make that happen. I wasn't surprised to discover that Americans voted George Bush into office for his first disastrous term despite the controversy around the election results. It was when he was voted in for a second time that I really thought my country was headed towards some of the worst times. Clearly we have been bullied and misled into going a long way down that road in the wrong direction. Now thanks to a wave of Democratic victories across the country that only seems to be building there is hope that better times are ahead. Props to the Daily Kos below.

Today's edition was a bit lighter than the recent run on delegates, with Californian Congressman Pete Stark being the only delegate endorsement of the day.  Apparently nobody wants to be relegated to the Friday afternoon news dump.  Nonetheless, advantage Obama as he continues to pull away from Clinton.

Congressman Stark said, "Senator Barack Obama has captured the imagination of Americans in a way we’ve not seen for decades.  He’s inspired millions of young people to register to vote and join the ranks of our Democratic Party, he’s consistently opposed the war, he advocates universal health care, and he delivers a message that transcends party politics at the same time.

"I have the greatest respect for Senator Clinton and for her many years of service, but I believe the time has come to unify our party.  The outcome we need in November is a Democratic President.  To achieve that, we must turn our focus squarely on Senator McCain and his quest to continue another four years of the failed Bush agenda.

"Barack Obama is the person we need as the next President of the United States of America.  I’m excited to help him achieve that goal."  

KCRW’s weekly round-up of punditry on politics, policy and popular culture featuring Matthew Miller, Arianna Huffington, Tony Blankley and Robert Scheer. Broadcast from outside the beltway, on the west coast's top NPR affiliate, KCRW-Santa Monica 89.9 FM and www.KCRW.com.

From Dependent Arisings:

Where are we today in the realm of presidential politics? After a long, overdrawn nomination process, we finally have not one, but two, "Black Swan" candidates. According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the eponymous book, a Black Swan is "large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations." In other words, we didn't--and couldn't--have possibly conceived that McCain, the erstwhile frontrunner-cum-longshot-cum-heir apparent would simultaneously benefit from Mike Huckabee's precipitous rise and fall (due as much to anathema from the social conservative establishment as National Review types), Fred Thompson's splitting Huckabee's social conservative vote in South Carolina, and Mitt Romney's grating unctuousness raising the ire of everyone in the party other than National Review types. And lest I forget to mention, in toto, Rudy Guiliani's campaign strategy?

Bush has been getting smacked around for the past couple of weeks with veto-proof legislation getting passed left and right.  He must fell rather... lame.

Obviously Republicans in Congress are jumping off the sinking BushCo ship.  

Cause: Congress passes veto-proof legislation for stopping the filling of the strategic petroleum reserve.

Effect: despite George and Dick's whining, the filling will get stopped in July due to the Democrats' veto-proof legislation, see below fold for more on that.

This is a clear victory for Democrats.  If history is any indication, this might actually help with gas prices, unlike the gas tax gimic.

Stop it.

Stop these diaries, these "open letters."  Stop explaining to me where Hillary went wrong as if you are doing me, or any of us, a favor.

And most of all, stop telling me sexism doesn't matter.

The Democratic Party is Changing for the Better.

It's taken me a bit of time to come to this conclusion.  I've carefully considered the issue of post nomination Party Reconciliation and whether or not we may need to a Shotgun Marriage to repair the wounds that have been gouged into the Democratic Party by this Primary Season.

But I've finally realized we don't need to break out the spackle, silly putty and super glue in order to re-stitch the Democratic party back together.  With Barack Obama's candidacy we ourselves are Becoming the Change that we need.

Hillary Clinton is a fine candidate, and a fine politician - but she is shown herself to clearly be a politician of the past with her use of divide and conquer, fear-mongering, crush and smear tactics.

It's time we moved away from that kind of politics, and that kind of country.  It's time we embraced the future - and that future is President Barack Obama.

If we apply current conventional wisdom to the presidential campaign, it says:

• Since Barack Obama is having difficulty attracting white, working-class voters, he will not win swing states such as West Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri.

• Since older voters turn out in disproportionate numbers and Obama is having difficulty appealing to them, this imperils his chances of winning in Florida.

• The suburbs for years have been voting Republican and these votes more than offset Democrat’s inner-city advantages.

• African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, whoever they may be, but do not come to the voting booth at the same rate as, say, Jewish voters.

• Though constituting just 1.4% of the population, Jews vote disproportionately for Democrats and because they are concentrated in certain key swing states they are a force to be reckoned with.

This morning on MSNBC Andrea Mitchell broke the story. Those inside the campaign who are closest to Hillary Clinton now acknowledge that the race is over and that they are simply going through the motions.

This may not come as a shock to anyone who was following the math, but the fact that the Clinton camp is admitting they are finished is a dramatic departure from their seemingly un-ending optimism.

Check out the announcement below and weigh in with your opinions:

First super today goes to Obama. Rep. Pete Stark, chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, endorses Obama

Rep. Pete Stark is throwing his endorsement and support as a Democratic National Convention superdelegate to presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

"I could've supported either, but I think he has captured the imagination of the American public, I think he's responsible for bringing millions of new voters, new Democrats into the party, and I haven't seen that kind of movement among young voters since I first ran and saw (George) McGovern do the same thing in 1972," the 18-term incumbent Democrat from Fremont said Thursday.

I'd like to make a quick note to all of Hillary Clinton's supporters who are currently blaming sexism for the fact that your candidate has almost certainly lost: sexism had nothing to do with it.  In fact, it was anything but.

 Sure, Hillary was the victim of some sexism, just as Obama has been the victim of some racism and McCain will be the victim of some ageism.

But that's not what spiked Clinton's chances.  Bill Clinton would also have lost this year.

The truth is that there is a quiet battle being waged for the soul of the Democratic Party.  Your candidate was on the wrong side of that divide.  It wouldn't have mattered if Hillary had been male, and Obama female.  What mattered here was ideology.

 There is so much information, so much outrage, so much news, so much...my head is about to explode!!!

  I was going to follow up on a poorly written diary from yesterday when I heard the president (that term loosely, by the way) say what he did in Israel...in the Knesset...slamming Democrats (particularly Sen. Obama) by comparing ANY negotiation to what Neville Chamberlin did with the Nazis...to a radio hack coming on Hardball thinking he can continue to spout the same garbage to Chris Mathews...to McCain questioning Obama's capability to protect as a future commander in chief...I'm telling you my head is spinning and I am about to blow a gasket!!

 The G.O.P, neo-cons, conservatives, whatever you want to brand them they have gone to far! This "hack in chief" has gone to far! These actions from this "president" and his cabal is sowing the seeds for a summer of discontent the likes Washington D.C. has never seen before.

I am new to DailyKos so I wanted to talk about the news today.

Newt Gingrich writes in the next issue of Newsweek;

I participated in two successful "change" campaigns: the Reagan revolution of 1980 and the "Contract With America" in 1994. Both were built around a limited number of powerful, specific proposals. As a freshman congressman in 1980, working in coordination with the Reagan presidential campaign, we selected five popular themes we knew would help our candidates get elected and create momentum for President Reagan's bold agenda. The clarity of these five positions (the two most important were a three-year, 30 percent tax cut and strengthening the military) helped our candidates in the closing weeks of the campaign. We won the presidency, six seats in the Senate, 33 in the House—and joined with a minority of Democrats to pass the key measures into law.

The state of Oregon will be holding its Presidential Primary next Tuesday May 20. A week after the Clinton blow-out in WV,  Oregon is the 16th "whitest" state in the Union but it's more educated and environmentally concerned populace has been becoming more progressive as the years go by.  They have voted Democrat in every Presidential Election since 1988. 52 delegates are at-stake in the MAIL only primary.

Unfortunately, they only mean "Political Climate." In a memo sent out Thursday, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) warns his pachyderm cohorts of an impending political ice age:

 "Three straight special elections, in once solidly Republican districts    cannot be explained simply by 'bad candidates', or by being out-organized. They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate."

Isn't it tempting to hope that the elephantine beast that is the GOP may suffer a definitive blow in this fall's election, as Rep. Davis warns, and finally go the way of the woolly mammoth?  Is it possible, my democratic friends, that we might have fatally wounded the republican monster?