Over the past few weeks, we've spent a lot of time attempting to divine the identity of Obama's VP pick.  And although the Chicago version of Kremlinology has been fun, it's clear that we've been lax in studying the entrails of the sacrificial Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani.  It's time that we focus on McCain's choice.

Analysts generally agree that McCain needs to look for a candidate who meets a few key criteria.  He should go with: A) someone from a major swing state, preferably in the Midwest; B) someone who's not too young -- so as to avoid making McCain look ancient by contrast -- but also; C) someone who isn't that old, so as to avoid making the GOP ticket appear to be a Boca shuffleboard partnership; D) a candidate with serious Washington experience, to bolster the message that the Republicans can be trusted more than the brash young Obama, but also; E) a candidate who's spent some recent time outside of the Beltway, and who can credibly run as an outsider.

It's a tough set of guidelines, one that rules out most contenders.  But there's one clear choice who satisfies all of them -- and while he had appeared to be out of the running for circumstances beyond McCain's control, he's now available for service.  This 54 year-old Ohio native spent a decade in the House, during which time he rose to chair a key committee.  But he left the House a few years ago, retreating to a contemplative life in the heartland of America.

Did you guess Rob Portman?  Well, good try.  But that's not the Buckeye McCain should be tapping.

Robert W. Ney -- the former congressman now officially known as federal prisoner No. 28882-016 -- will complete his sentence Friday, less than two years after pleading guilty to corruption charges stemming from the investigation of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with Congress.

Ney, 54, an eight-term Republican from eastern Ohio, entered a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va., in March 2007 and transferred to a halfway house in Cincinnati in February, according to federal prison officials. Sentenced to 30 months, Ney will have served 17 1/2 months.

McCain-Ney '08!.  The words roll off the tongue.  

The veepstakes buzz today appears to be that Barack Obama is seriously considering selecting Evan Bayh as his running mate. And while there have been a number of other boomlets for VP candidates in recent weeks, the timing of this one -- coupled with the fact that Bayh, unlike a number of other names in the news, hasn't been assigned a speaking spot at the upcoming Convention -- indicates that the buzz might have the ring of truth.

Regardless of Bayh's merits as a running mate and potential vice-president, his selection would carry with it one immutable and giant negative: the inauguration of Vice-President Bayh would very likely create a new Republican senator. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is a Bush loyalist who has a substantial, 10-15 point lead over Democrat Jill Long Thompson in his bid for reelection.  As much as we'd like to hope for the best, it's improbable that Long Thompson is going to defeat Daniels.  

Now, Indiana Democrats will point out that Long Thompson has done well in fundraising, and that the presence of Bayh on the ticket would undoubtedly help her. But the fact remains that Daniels is more likely than not going to win the race.  And that means that he would have the ability to appoint Bayh's successor in the Senate. Perhaps he'd choose Steve Buyer, a wingnut who advocated for the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Perhaps he'd name himself.  

In any case, Daniels would not pick a Democrat to replace Bayh. He would pick a partisan Republican. And that means that President Obama would lose a precious Senate seat at a time when he will need every vote that he can get to defeat near-certain filibusters.  Obama wants to push serious energy reform --  but he won't be able to get it unless he can muster 60 votes in the Senate. He wants to enact the Employee Free Choice Act -- but without the vote of every Democrat, and a handful of Northeast Republicans, the bill will die.  

Democrats can expect to come out of November with 55-58 Senate seats, not including Joe Lieberman, who'll probably go along with the Democrats on a number of cloture votes. That puts us in a very good position to beat filibusters on a number of crucial legislative initiatives.  But every seat that goes to a far-right Republican is a body blow to our ability to really take advantage of our majority. Barack Obama needs to ask himself whether Evan Bayh is worth possibly losing meaningful health reform or immigration reform.

He isn't. No VP candidate is. It's not Bayh's fault -- but circumstances dictate that he is most valuable to an Obama presidency as a senator from Indiana. Someone else can fill in as Obama's running mate. And it should be someone whose accession to the vice-presidency doesn't come at the cost of Obama's legislative agenda.

The Hill brings us news of one of the greatest feats of statesmanship in American history -- the story of how House Republicans lowered gas prices . . . WITH THEIR MINDS:

House Republicans on Tuesday said their protest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) decision not to allow a vote on expanded offshore oil drilling has helped lower gas prices.

Heading into a third day of speeches in the near-empty chamber, Republicans acknowledged that the average price of gas and oil has declined in recent weeks. But they claimed credit for part of that reduction.

"I think the market is responding to the fact that we are here talking," said Rep. John Shadegg* (R-Ariz.) at a joint press conference with other GOP lawmakers. "I think the market realizes this kind of pressure from Congress may, in fact, lead to a change in policy."

The Republican members did not answer questions about whether they would take the blame if gas prices go up again.**

Yes, indeed.  From the Keyboard Kommandos who won the Iraq war by blogging hard, to the House Republicans who lowered gas prices by bloviating about them in a closed, dark room, today's Republican Party is solving America's problems through a bold new plan: hoping and wishing and holding their breath until reality conforms to their wishes. One can only pray that the McCain campaign is embracing this innovative approach, and is abandoning traditional, effective campaign tactics in favor of visualization exercises.

In all seriousness, this is pretty pathetic.  It wasn't that long ago that when you disagreed with Republicans, you found yourself holding grudging admiration for their hardball approach to politics and legislation.  But with this, the Republican Party has finally taken its final step away from anything resembling Burkean conservatism -- and even away from effective, if evil, Atwater/Rove ratfucking -- and into pure, ideology-free, sweaty ineffectual huckster venality. They've become the party of The Secret.  Which, all things considered, makes sense.


*If you want to retire John Shadegg's magical thinking, help out his Democratic challenger, Bob Lord, at Orange to Blue.

**Jared Allen of The Hill needs to take a bow for getting that last graf past his editor.  Kudos, sir.

John McCain thinks that a "tech freak" is someone who reads emails on a computer, rather than having them printed out on paper by staff.

GOP presidential candidate John McCain, fundraising in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the nation's technology capitals, acknowledged Monday that he isn't a "tech freak" or entirely comfortable with the Internet, BlackBerrys or e-mail. But he strongly disputed criticism that he is "out of the loop" as unfair.

As former head of the U.S. Senate Commerce committee, McCain said, he has been a driving force to oversee legislation that helped the Internet flourish - even as he is still learning to get comfortable with it himself.

"Am I a tech freak? No," he said in an interview Monday with The Chronicle. "And I don't like to text message because I'd rather call somebody on the telephone."
. . .
"It doesn't mean that I have to e-mail people," he said. "Now, I read e-mails," he added, saying his staff is "constantly showing them to me as the news breaks during the day."

"Meghan!  Ask the Google whether Ted Stevens is gonna screw me over in Alaska, and print out its answer for me!"

I was going to term this a cattle call, because I love writing cattle calls, but in the end I realized that I had no plans to actually rank the candidates.  I'll leave that to you guys, as I know that there's no quadrennial summertime pastime more fun and popular than BSing about who the presidential nominees are planning to tap for Vice-Presidential purgatory.  No, instead of ranking the candidates, I wanted to put in writing the reasoning that's led me to conclude that -- when it's said and done -- Barack Obama is very possibly going to select . . .

Tom Daschle.

Now before you throw me off a cliff, let me state two things: 1) this isn't who I want to get the nod -- it's my prediction as to whom Obama will pick, and; 2) I have a minor track record in this sort of thing, as my GOP cattle calls stuck with McCain's chances of winning the nomination long after he was written off by the bigfoot pundits.  That said, I recognize that this one is a call from deep left field.  But bear with me.

I start from the premise that Barack Obama doesn't need anyone to make his candidacy complete. He's already up in the polls, both nationally and in key states.  Intrade has him at a 63% likelihood of winning, and Nate Silver has him at 67%.  But more importantly, he knows that he's a bona fide, no-joke rock star.  He doesn't need a charismatic running mate.  He doesn't need a missing piece, someone who implies that Barack Obama is something other than all that and a bag of chips.  Hell, I think he'd run solo, if the Constitution and practicality allowed him to do so.  The Obama campaign is all about Barack Obama -- it simply doesn't need that brand altered in any way.

So as a threshold matter, I just don't see Obama going with anyone who has any real downside. He doesn't need to take risks in picking a veep, because he can't expect any individualized reward from a veep. No individual candidate can bring enough to the ticket to justify a trade-off. Consequently, it follows that Obama is going to take the Hippocratic ("first, do no harm") approach to picking a running mate. That eliminates a host of the big names that you see folks floating -- first and foremost, the Senators with Republican governors. Chris Dodd, Jack Reed, and Evan Bayh all hail from states with GOP executives.  If one of them becomes VP, we lose a Senate seat.  Obama's legacy will in large part depend on being able to overcome filibusters to move his agenda.  He can't afford to lose any Senators. And not one of them is so special, so critical to the success of the campaign, that it's worth giving up the seat.

Similarly, I think he's unlikely to pick Tim Kaine, whose lieutenant governor is an arch-conservative Republican.  It's taken the Democratic party 40 years to get to the point where it's a majority party in Virginia -- I just can't see willingly handing over the governor's mansion to a Republican, even if it is for only one year.  And for what?  Kaine's not necessarily that helpful in Virginia, as Silver pointed out yesterday.  I mean, Tim Kaine's a great guy and everything, but does any marginal improvement that he adds to Obama's campaign offset the damage of coronating a Republican governor in Richmond?  I doubt it.

That knocks out most of the "short list" names that you see in veepstakes columns.  I'd argue that the Hippocratic principle also eliminates Joe Biden (loose lips sink campaigns), Chuck Hagel (alienates Democrats), Hillary Clinton (could overshadow Obama, unnecessarily polarizing), and John Edwards (see your grocery checkout aisle).

So that leaves you with Kathleen Sebelius and Sam Nunn from the pack that regularly get mentioned. Of those two, I'd say Sebelius has a way better shot (in fact, I doubt that Nunn is really under consideration), and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Obama picks her. After all, she's an Obama loyalist, she's got a Democratic LG, and she's lacking any glaring flaws. In fact, I'd say that she's probably the frontrunner. But the calculus also points toward Daschle -- who's been with Obama since the very start, whose staff comprise the core of Obama's staff, and who is utterly solid, yet unremarkable.  He can't hurt Obama, he's got no presidential ambitions of his own, and he's guaranteed to be loyal. Unlike Sebelius, there is no imaginable way that Daschle could take the spotlight off of Obama. And unlike any other candidate, he may well be in a position to confide with Obama about the pick -- not dissimilar to the spot that Dick Cheney was in during the summer of 2000. All of which makes him, in my eyes, the most likely candidate.  He does no harm, and hell -- he might do a little good.  And that's all that Obama needs out of a running mate.

Daily Kos is pleased to announce that Jon Powers, Democratic candidate for New York's 26th Congressional District, is our newest addition to the Orange to Blue slate. It's my happy duty to explain why.

Growing up in Western New York in the early '80s was not necessarily a recipe for an optimistic adulthood. Kids raised in Buffalo, Rochester, Niagara Falls, and the surrounding communities during those years were bombarded from an early age with seemingly endless news of job loss, factory relocations, urban decay, and the imminent demise of their hometowns. Just days after Christmas 1982, when Jon Powers was a 4 year old kid in suburban Buffalo, Bethlehem Steel shuttered its Western New York operations with almost no notice -- putting around 10,000 folks out of work overnight.  Most of the other industrial giants that had made the Niagara Frontier and Rochester prosperous for decades soon followed suit, either laying off entire workforces, or downsizing to skeleton crews. It seemed like every day throughout the '80s and '90s, the message to kids growing up in the region was that our city, our home, was dying. It was a message that left a lot of young people cynical about politics, despairing about the American Dream, and eager to leave Western New York.  

But not Jon Powers.

Fighting with the Army's First Armored Division (the unit featured in the Iraq War documentary Gunner Palace) in Baghdad following Saddam's capitulation, and witnessing the stupendous mismanagement and corruption of the Bush cronies in charge of the occupation, could have left a soldier disillusioned about the promise of America. When Jon saw billions of dollars being wasted on contractors in an unaccountable fashion while garbage piled up in Baghdad's streets, when he saw Blackwater "security" personnel pulling down six-figure salaries while Army grunts were left without body armor . . . it would've been enough to cause a lot of patriotic Americans to give up on the hope that our government could do better.

But not Jon Powers.

And coming back home to teach high school in Western New York, after serving in Iraq and founding a charity for Iraqi kids displaced by the war, to find that fabulously sleazy Republican Tom Reynolds managed to get reelected in your Congressional district after being exposed as the ringleader in the Mark Foley page-molesting cover-up . . . well, that sure could snuff out most people's faith in the transformative nature of good government.

But not Jon Powers.

Jon Powers has earned a spot on Orange To Blue because he's the model of of a modern patriot. He's a soldier who fought in Iraq, saw the flaws of the war up close, and resolved to make it better by helping out the kids who were most affected. He's a guy who stuck with his hometown through the bad times, and who gets excited when talking about the potential for building it into something great again. He's an optimist who believes that government can be a real force for good, both at home and in the world -- and he believes that the key is empowering regular Americans to get involved. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Powers campaign is his "call to service" -- a plan that would address the critical shortages in the nursing and teaching professions, and which would foster service and volunteerism in all walks of life.  It's the product of a candidate who spends a lot of time thinking about how we can make our country work better -- not just about getting elected.

That said, Jon does need our help getting elected.  Not only is he running in a Republican-leaning district that was home to the odious Tom Reynolds, but he's got a tough primary coming up on September 9 -- in less than two months -- against Jack Davis, a self-funding millionaire ex-Republican obsessed with self-aggrandizement and beating up on immigrants.  (Davis is also responsible for the worst campaign song of the cycle.)  NY-26 is a very winnable seat -- but there's no point in winning it if Jack Davis is the "Democratic" candidate.  Jon needs our support if he's going to end Jack Davis's ego trip, free the Republican hold on NY-26, and bring his strong, progressive optimism to Washington.

It's a tough proposition, and a lot of candidates would be scared to take it on. But not Jon Powers. He's a breed apart, and that's why he's our newest Orange to Blue candidate.  

You can contribute to Jon's campaign right here.

Over the past few weeks, we've been asking you to give your hard-earned money to our Orange To Blue candidates.  And there's a good reason for it -- as Markos has discussed a few times now, O2B is about taking our House and Senate majorities and making them better majorities.  In the years since our first Kos Dozen, we've gone from desperately needing "more and better Democrats" to being able to focus on the "better" part of that equation.  And that's what O2B is all about -- it's about finding the best Democratic challengers from the hundreds across the nation, and elevating their profile. It's about our community showing respect and support for those Democrats who are willing to stand as tough progressives against a Beltway establishment that still doesn't understand that there's a change brewing in our party.  And it's about electing Democrats who are with us on the issues that unify Daily Kos as a community.  

To that end, we've come up with a simple set of questions to see where prospective O2B candidates stand on the issues that define Daily Kos.  The questions won't serve as a "litmus test," but they will give us insight into where the candidates that seek our support stand on our issues:

1. What is your position on leaving residual forces in Iraq?  If you support maintaining residual forces, please outline the size and duration of such forces.

2. How would you have voted on the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (roll call no. 108 in the House/no. 44 in the Senate)?

3. How would you have voted on the Protect America Act of 2007 (roll call no. 836 in the House/no. 309 in the Senate) and the FISA Amendments of 2008 (roll call no. 437 in the House)?

4. Do you agree that any immigration reform bill should:

• Contain a meaningful path to citizenship - one that does not include overly-punitive fines or a poison-pill touchback requirement - for law-abiding undocumented immigrants currently in the United States;

• Ensure that expanded legal permanent immigration, rather than expansion of temporary worker programs, serves as the United States' primary external answer to workforce shortages; and

• Ensure that any non-agricultural temporary worker programs maintain current caps on the total number of non-agricultural temporary worker visas issued, and also include a meaningful prevailing wage requirement keyed to the Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon Act?

Those aren't questions that all Democrats will answer the same way.  Those are four questions that separate the Blue Dogs and the corporate Democrats from the tough progressives that we love at Daily Kos.  

Blue Dogs believe that:

• residual forces make them look like tough realists;
• civil liberties are for dirty hippies;
• bankruptcy is for poor blacks;
• and amnesty makes Democrats look weak, while a cheap-labor guest worker program makes them look "business friendly"

Tough progressives -- O2B Democrats -- believe that:

• residual forces are just another way of perpetuating Bush's mistakes;
• civil liberties are at the heart of what it means to be American;
• unfair restrictions on bankruptcy are an attack on the working class;
• and a path to citizenship rewards hard work and love of America, while a guest worker program turns immigrants into indentured servants, and undercuts wages and working conditions for citizens and permanent residents.

Those are the differences between the tough progressives who fight for us, and the Democrats who simply fill out the majority.  And electing the tough progressives is what O2B is all about.

All day today, the contributing editors will be offering different takes on why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary despite having started as the prohibitive favorite. These essays approach the question from differing angles and are not for the most part mutually exclusive, but attempt to address specific pieces of the complexity of this massive, drawn-out primary process.

I first noticed the nutcracker in late December, next to a rack of doomed "Rudy for President" shirts at a National Airport kiosk specializing in ephemeral topical kitsch. At the time, I was taken aback at the sheer misogynist chutzpah of the product, but I figured that it was a niche political product being sold at a niche political store in a niche political city -- Washington -- and that it would disappear from the shelves in a couple weeks, relegated to fringe online backwaters like the Newsmax store. Yet the nutcracker spread from DCA through the airports of the nation like a tacky virus, and soon one couldn't clear security anywhere without being confronted with its stainless steel thighs. Eventually, the nutcracker escaped from the sterile zones and its TSA protection into mainstream American retail, and became minor fodder for late night comics and "wacky news" types like CNN's Jeannie Moos. But the nutcracker never became a serious news or commentary item -- there was very little discussion, at least in the mainstream media, of what the novelty, and its apparent popularity, said about the 2008 campaign or about the nation itself.  

And that was the most remarkable aspect of the nutcracker blight: the manner it which it was just accepted. Here we had a blatantly sexist product which traded on one of the most misogynistic archetypes of the last 50 years -- the castrating, pantsuit-wearing, hyper-ambitious professional woman -- being sold in otherwise anodyne, apolitical stores throughout the country, and no one with a serious microphone was saying anything about it. Anyone with a hint of consciousness about gender politics had to be asking themselves what the hell the deafening silence meant.  Is America irredeemably sexist? Does the fact that a similarly racist Obama doll couldn't be sold without massive public outrage mean that casual sexism is more tolerated than casual racism?  Would any woman running for president be subject to the same mockery, or is Hillary somehow more susceptible than other female politicians?

I wouldn't begin to presume to try and definitively answer those questions, or to seriously decipher the semiotics of the nutcracker -- at least not in an essay as brief as this.  The deeper meaning of the nutcracker is extremely complicated, and myriad intelligent people can and likely will construct wildly divergent hypotheses about its importance and message. But I can, without any hesitation or reluctance, conclude that the existence of the Hillary Nutcracker is symptomatic of a contempt that seriously compromised Hillary Clinton's electoral chances.  Regardless of whether people wanted to dehumanize Hillary Clinton personally, or ambitious women generally, the nutcracker was symbolic of their endeavor.  Regardless of whether any woman would have been as open to the mainstreamed sexist attacks to which Hillary was subjected, the nutcracker showed that in 2008, it was OK to mock Hillary Clinton -- at least -- as a castrating bitch.  The nutcracker was a perfect, plastic, $19.95 incarnation of the invective of Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson and every other talking head who used explicitly sexist language to demean Hillary Clinton with relative impunity.  And just as we wonder whether Tweety and Rush and Tucker would have gotten away with it if their target had been, say, Sebelius or Napolitano rather than a woman who had been hated by factions on both the left and right for over 15 years, we wonder whether a Napolitano Nutcracker would be blithely accepted by the American public.

But you don't need to know the answer to that question to know that Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign was deeply hurt by a casual, mainstream sexism that earned far less of a backlash than one would have hoped when she entered the race.  

For that, all you need to know about is the nutcracker, and the silence that attended it.

Yep, it's yet another story on how the bitter primary left the party in disarray.  Only this time, it's Robert Novak on the Republican Party:

John McCain, who as the Republican candidate for president has spent the past two months trying to consolidate right-wing support, has a problem of disputed dimensions with a vital component of the conservative coalition: evangelicals. The biggest question is whether Mike Huckabee is part of the problem or the solution for McCain.

Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course.

. . .

One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

So the next time some media bigfoot tells you that the Democrats have been mortally wounded by the protracted Obama/Clinton primary, or that our party is somehow irrevocably split down Clinton/Obama lines, just remind yourself: at least we don't have a critical portion of our base, along with the runner-up for our nomination, arguing that God wants our candidate to lose in November.  

It's hard to say which perception McCain fears worst: being seen as yesterday's man -- a man of the last century -- or being seen as a shameless toady who sold his "maverick" soul for a bloated, stinking elephant carcass:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was "losing his bearings" for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president.

. . .

"This is offensive, and I think it's disappointing, because John McCain always says, 'Well, I'm not going to run that kind of politics,'" Obama said. "And then to engage in that kind of smear, I think, is unfortunate, particularly since my policy toward Hamas has been no different than his."

The Illinois senator added: "For him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don't need name-calling in this debate."

McCain's campaign issued an angry response that accused Obama of trying to divert attention from a legitimate question by raising McCain's age.

"He used the words 'losing his bearings' intentionally, a not-particularly-clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue," McCain adviser Mark Salter said.

Really?  Seems that the McCain campaign is stuck between a rock and a hard place here.  

See, my first reaction on reading Obama's comments was to think of how McCain had sacrificed his "maverick" image -- an entirely phony persona, but a powerful one -- to win the booby prize that is the 2008 GOP nomination.  Obama was observing that McCain has been "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination," in the sense that he's lost his steely, maverick moral compass.  Now, Obama understands just as well as you and I that the "maverick" myth was the gossamer creation of a Michael Lewis mancrush, but he also understands that there's great value in developing a semi-tragic narrative in which the flawed hero McCain trades his virtue for a final shot at power.  You can't disabuse the majority of the public of the idea that McCain was at one point a good guy, but you can certainly show them just how irrevocably corrupted he's become in pursuit of the poisoned chalice.

And I think that McCain, and his campaign, get exactly what Obama is doing here.  They are deathly afraid of losing the aura of straight-shooting independence that differentiates their candidate from the depraved, cancerous body of lepers that passes for the Bush/DeLay/Fossella/Craig Republican Party.  They know that McCain cannot win as a "Republican nominee" -- his only hope is to run as an independent.  In short, McCain's greatest weakness is the prospect that he might be exposed as Just Another Sleazy Republican Hack.  And Obama's comments, in just a few words, did a marvelous job of setting that narrative in motion in the public eye.  So McCain and his minions pivoted, and attempted to divert the attention away from their greatest weakness.

Problem is, they diverted the attention onto their second greatest weakness -- the fact that John McCain is yesterday's man, a bedraggled lion decidedly incapable of prevailing over the course of six months of toe-to-toe combat with an acutely aware and prepared Obama.  McCain shouldn't ever remind people of his age, of his inability to keep Sunni and Shi'a straight in his mind, of his tired demeanor.  Yet when confronted with Obama's observation that McCain has abandoned his integrity in a last-ditch attempt to win the White House, McCain was so terrified that he preferred to treat the comments as an insinuation about his age.  And in so doing, he raised the age issue himself -- leaving the public to consider whether McCain's problem is that he's past his time, or that he's a chameleon who'll do anything to get elected.  That's the last question that McCain wants anyone pondering.

Maybe he should have just left this one alone.  Because by responding as he did, McCain showed that Obama had hit home.  And Obama is way too good not to sense blood in the water.

Dan Inouye is one of the greatest living Americans.  That ought to be stated at the outset of any post which is critical of the man.  Inouye is a bona fide war hero -- a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient -- who lost his arm fighting for a nation which was simultaneously interning thousands of his fellow Japanese-Americans.  He's a son of immigrants, who after the war joined with a number of other Nisei veterans to found Central Pacific Bank -- a venture which helped provide capital to scores of Japanese-Americans in Hawai'i unable to obtain loans from other sources.  And he was the first Japanese-American elected to the US House of Representatives, and subsequently the first Japanese-American elected to the Senate.  I was lucky enough to live in Hawai'i for a few years, and one of the first things I learned upon moving to Honolulu was how justifiably revered Dan Inouye is in the islands.  He's a truly remarkable American.

That's why it breaks my heart to see that Inouye is hosting a fundraiser for Republican Senator Ted Stevens (currently R-AK; possibly R-FederalPen in the not too distant future):

Putting their friendship above party, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) will headline a fundraiser today for one of the Democrats’ top targets this cycle, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska).

Dan Inouye is a Democratic institution.  He's been part of the Democratic Congressional caucus since Hawai'i became a state.  And coming from Hawai'i -- a state where party discipline is taken seriously -- he knows better than many just why it is so important to maintain party solidarity.  It's deeply disappointing to see a man like Inouye break party ranks to support a conservative Republican with a massive ethics cloud hanging over his head.  And it's even more tragic that he's doing so in a cycle when Democrats have a great candidate in Mark Begich -- a candidate who is tied with Stevens in polling, despite the fact that Stevens is an Alaska institution.  (Hell, the Anchorage airport is named after Stevens.)  

There's no question that there's a natural affinity between Hawai'i and Alaska.  Both states are often forgotten by the "lower 48," and both fight like hell for their interests in Washington.  And it's understandable and even commendable that the Hawai'i and Alaska delegations occasionally cross party lines to work on subjects of mutual interest.  But supporting a Republican in a race against a competitive and attractive Democrat is a line that no Democratic member of Congress can ever justifiably cross.  

I'm willing to cut Dan Inouye a lot of slack in light of his service to his country and his party.  But he needs to undertand that his support of Ted Stevens is completely inexcusable and unacceptable.

Hawai'i residents might wish to contact his office at (202) 224-3934 to let him know what they think.

In news that highlights the big-tent appeal of the Obama campaign, serial third-party footsie-playing semi-Democratic ex-Senator David Boren of Oklahoma endorsed Barack this morning. This is notable largely because Boren is the Broderite Master of Democratic self-loathing -- an alleged Dem who seriously considered running with Ross Perot as an independent in '96, after Perot had already demonstrated his, er, "flightiness"; and who was at the forefront of the Sycophantic Plutocratophiles for Bloomberg faction that fizzled out once it became apparent that Obama had firmly dominated Bloomy's ecological niche. Consequently, it's something of a novelty to see Boren actually endorsing a Democrat.

Of course, Boren's endorsement primarily serves to highlight how irredeemably polluted Joe Lieberman has become. When even David "Third Party" Boren is lining up behind Obama, it's time to realize that there's a true consensus Democrat on the scene. Yet "Independent Democrat" Joe is alone in his own little world, backing an archconservative.

Do you think he understands what a sad, lonely joke he's become?

Today's Washington Post has an interesting graphic in its dead-tree edition that, among other things, lists the top five ZIP Codes in terms of total Q4 donations to each of the presidential candidates. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, washingtonpost.com and the WaPo itself don't seem to coordinate on content, and the graphic doesn't appear to be accessible electronically.  The raw data on Q4 donations is available on the Post site, but without the top five ZIP Code listings.

In any event, the graphic tells us that most of the candidates' top two ZIP Codes are in very big or very rich cities -- Dallas for Huckabee, Greenwich for McCain, Beverly Hills for Rudy -- but Ron Paul's number 2 ZIP was 52556 -- tiny Fairfield, IA.   Paul also won the caucus in Fairfield.  There's just one notable thing about Fairfield, a town of around 9,000 souls -- it's the home of the American operations of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, best known as the one-time spiritual guru of the Beatles. Rural Fairfield has become a New Age company town over the past couple decades, and now boasts the Maharishi University of Management, a suburb called Maharishi Vedic City, and was the former HQ of His Holiness's now-defunct Natural Law Party.  Although it never attracted the vote totals of the Libertarians or Greens, Natural Law's Presidential candidate did appear on most state ballots in 1996 and 2000.

Given that Fairfield only has 9,000 or so residents, and that it's Paul's number 2 ZIP Code, it stands to reason that the fabulously wealthy Maharishi -- who has exhibited interest in politics in the past, having sponsored Natural Law Parties in a number of Western nations -- is more likely than not involved in directing contributions to the good Doctor.  If this is the case, does it mean that Paul is more likely to run as a third party candidate?   After all, the Maharishi disbanded the US Natural Law Party in 2004, and the Paul campaign might serve as a re-entry vehicle into gadfly third party politics. On the other hand, the Paul-Maharishi connection might just be a weird affection between two fringe characters.  If nothing else, it's amusing.

UPDATE/CORRECTION:  The good folks at MoveOn wrote me to assure me that someone had in fact re-voted using my link at around the time that the second receipt email was sent.  They also pointed out that if I had forwarded the original email from MoveOn, and a recipient of that forwarded email voted using the link, then I would receive the second receipt email.

D'oh.

I did in fact forward the email.  I can only assume that one of the recipients voted using the link.  I can't believe that I was stupid enough not to figure this out before I made an ass out of myself.

I offer my most sincere apologies to MoveOn, and wish them nothing but the best in their endorsement process.  Now, I'm going to go hide under a rock for a few days.

Also, MoveOn notes:

For anyone who was a MoveOn member as of noon Eastern yesterday who didn't receive a ballot: A) Please check your email again -- a few of the ballots finished going out in the early afternoon; B) Please check your spam folder, the ballot has as a subject line "URGENT: Presidential Endorsement: Vote Today!"; C) if you're still unable to find your ballot, please email us at ballothelp@moveon.org.

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I assure you that I only voted once in the MoveOn primary . . . yet here's what my email receipt(s) from MoveOn tell me I did (Click pic for larger image):


This sort of raises questions about the integrity of an endorsement process which could be worth a couple million dollars.

I love primary season.  Last month, I kept finding myself singing "It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" while driving from mall to mall on Christmas errands, and I wasn’t prompted so much by the impending holidays as by the wall-to-wall news from Iowa percolating in through the car radio.  Once every four years, America’s generally distractible attention briefly alights on my horse-race obsession, and for a few months, I don’t feel quite as much like a trainspotter as I do when obsessing over off-year gubernatorial races.

I love primary season, and I love it in spite of the haters.   Hating on the long campaign and the intraparty vitriol is chic – nothing seems to elicit sympathetic nods from thoughtful citizens, even those who generally like politics – as a disdainful essay about the pettiness and superficiality of the process. But that’s part of the game, and if you step back and look at the campaign as a whole, it’s pretty inescapable.  The simple fact is that only a slender minority of the electorate – even the "likely voters" so omnipresent in our thoughts these days – really have the time and inclination to discern the serious policy differences between the candidates.  Consequently, most Americans vote for the candidate that they like, meaning that they vote for the candidate who was best able to use the pettiness and superficiality of the process to his or her advantage.  I’m not saying that this is a good thing – I’m just saying that it’s a big part of politics, that it’s not going anywhere, and that we’re wise to learn to live with it.  And if you can learn to love it, so much the better.

I love primary season because I learned a long time ago to love politics as theater, as sport.  Now, let me make clear right away that I also love politics because of the tremendous effect that progressive government can have on the lives of working Americans.  I believe in the power of government to change our lives for the better, and to create a nation where every citizen knows that if she works hard and plays by the rules, she’ll be able to rest easy at night knowing that she and her family have a roof over their heads, food on the table, and the ability to go to the doctor without going broke.  I’m a committed movement progressive, not a cynic.  But I do know how to enjoy the game within the game.  That’s why I had as much fun writing the Republican Cattle Calls this past year as anything else I’ve ever written for Daily Kos.  Handicapping the Republican primaries is pure spectator sport.  None of the contestants have any serious redeeming qualities; I really can’t get worked up over which one of them is best on the merits, as they’re all awful.  But it’s a lot of fun trying to peel the onion of the Republican psyche and predict which of a motley crew can secure the affections of his party.  And even though I do care about the Democrats and where they stand on various issues, I can also appreciate the relative skill with which they run their campaigns. That doesn’t make me cynical – it keeps me sane.

I love primary season more than most Kossacks, yet I hate the primary system.  I love the theater.  I love the chess match.  I love Road to the White House.  But I do believe that, as a matter of party policy, the idea of having a couple hundred thousand people who aren’t even necessarily Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire – and, to a lesser extent, Nevada and South Carolina – select my party’s nominee is completely insane, not to mention undemocratic.  I mean, the notion that one of the vaunted independents of New Hampshire – one of the dipshits who can’t decide between Obama and McCain – has more of a voting say in the leadership of my party than I do, simply because I have the misfortune to live in Colonial DC – is beyond frustrating.  It’s unacceptable.  I give thousands of dollars every year, both directly and though my union PAC, to Democratic candidates.  I’m a unionist – part of the cornerstone of Democratic electoral success.  Every fall, I canvass is the cold, rain and snow for whichever Democrat happens to be running for whichever seat is up.  I’m a charter member of the netroots.  But I have no voting say in who leads my party.

And so while I love primary season, I want to kill it.  I want to kill it dead.  I don’t want to rejigger things by rotating other, more representative, states to the front of the line, although that’d be preferable to the farce that we have today.  I don’t want to tinker with the system and still wind up with a staggered process where largely disinterested voters in successive states winnow down the field until the nominee emerges by attrition.  I want to blow the process up, empower committed Democrats, and in so doing make the Convention vital and relevant again.  And while my plan doesn’t have a chance in hell of going anywhere, discussing it is a lot more fun than trying to decide whether Michigan of New Jersey should lead off the 2012 primaries.

Here, then, is the outline of a proposed nominating process that I’d love even more than primary season.

• Members Only.  The Democratic Party is not an arm of the government.  It’s a private entity.  Yet today, the de facto leader of this private entity is chosen in significant part by people who have absolutely no allegiance to, much less membership in, the party – simply because they’re citizens of their states.  Independents are allowed to participate in the caucus/primary process in both Iowa and New Hampshire – and in Michigan, the primary is completely open, as there isn’t even party registration.  (Vote for Mitt!)  Even where the primary is closed to registered Democrats . . . well, what does that mean?  You become a registered Democrat by signing a form you pick up at the post office.  In some states, you can register as a Democrat on election day.  Being a registered Democrat says nothing about whether you’re actually a member of the Democratic Party.  It merely says that you signed a piece of paper, possibly for reasons of pure expedience.  That’s why participation in the selection of the Democratic nominee should be limited to those who actually take the affirmative step to become members of the Democratic Party -- people who believe in the principles of the Party enough to join it.  This means that the Party needs to create a basic membership option – my feeling is that anyone willing to pay $5 in annual dues should become a member, someone eligible to have a say in party decision-making.  Of course, by limiting participation to members, we’d have to . . .
• Get the government out of the system.  There’s no reason to have state and local governmental bodies conducting what is essentially an internal organizational decision.  It’s perverse.  The government doesn’t conduct union elections, or NRA elections – why ought it have a hands-on role in running an internal political party election?  The party should conduct its nomination process itself, at its own expense, and with its own rules – so long as they comport with anti-discrimination laws.  The role of the FEC in overseeing the selection process should be just that – oversight, to ensure that the election comports with anti-discrimination laws and with the party’s own bylaws.  That’s the role that the SEC plays in overseeing corporate elections, and that the Department of Labor plays in overseeing union elections.  Both agencies allow the entities operating under their watch to administer the actual election process.  But ultimately, the union or corporation, not the government, is running its own election.  Why should our party be any different?
• All at once, all by mail.  Since the party is going to be running its own convention delegate selection process, it won't have recourse to the state and county boards of elections and their touch-screen machines, and won't hold elections at the whims of attention-starved state legislatures.  This, needless to say, is a good thing.  Without interference from 50+ states, territories, and colonial capital cities, he party can construct a fair and equitable election system.  I'd propose that all delegates to the convention be selected by mail ballot during a two week period in April of the convention year.  This puts all Democrats on an even footing in influencing the process, and ensures that there's a paper trail should there be any doubt about the accuracy of the counting process.  "Surely," some of you are saying, "this system creates a big national primary where less well-funded candidates can't gain traction?"  That'd be a good point, if we were voting for candidates in my scheme.  But we wouldn't be.  We'd be voting for delegates.
• Delegates, not candidates.  This is likely to be the most controversial aspect of my proposal among Kossacks.  I want to scrap the idea of direct voting for candidates, or even for pledged slates of delegates.  Instead, I want the members of each local party organization to choose delegates from their geographic area based on who those delegates are, and the values that they promise to bring to the convention.  Why?  I have a number of reasons – but here are a few of the best.  

  A) Because removing the idea of pledged delegates allows the presidential race to develop at a slower pace, with candidates not needing to decide that they want to run two years prior to the general election, and consequently not needing to raise obscene amounts of money just after midterms.  Unpledged delegates keep the field open longer.  And that’s good for the diversity of ideas in the party.

  B) Because elimination of the direct primary tends to lessen demagoguery, mitigate the influence of big money, and encourage a focus on germane policy issues.  Party members who are savvy enough to become delegates are also savvy enough to force the candidates to camapign on real ideas and themes, not red herrings.  Now, I'm not saying that a delegate-driven process will eliminate factors such as charisma and general election viability from the calculus -- far from it. Delegates will be as susceptible to personal charm as anyone.  And we wouldn't want to eliminate charisma as a factor, in any event -- we need to win in November.  But the delegate-driven process will greatly diminish the focus on nonsense issues that confuse an unengaged electorate, and which don't contribute to nominating the best candidate.  Moreover, candidates won't have an overwhelming need to spend giant sums on broadcast media in a delegate-driven process -- and that lowers Democrats' reliance on big-money interests.

  C) Because the convention should be a a place where delegates, selected by active, engaged Democrats from throughout the nation, have a genuine discussion about who we are as a party. It shouldn't be an empty ritual, a choreographed pageant where delegates are little more than props in the coronation of a predetermined nominee.  A convention of activist Democratic delegates, rather than a single nominee chosen by apathetic voters of various political stripes, should set the direction for the party.

Of course, I can hear folks saying, "but Trapper -- this is completely antidemocratic!  You're channelling power into the hands of the elites, who undoubtedly will make up the vast majority of the delegate pool!"  That'd be a good point, except I would also . . .

• Increase the number of delegates.  Right now, there are about 4300 delegates to the 2008 convention.  I'd like to up that to about 7500 delegates.  With a number that large, we'd ensure that there are ample opportunities for everyday Democrats to represent their local party members -- after all, the total number of Democrats in Congress and the statehouses doesn't approach 7500.  Sure, elected Democrats will have an important say at the convention -- they do now, as superdelegates.  But under a delegate-driven system, they'll be joined by a large number of working Democrats.  I'd retain most of the McGovern-Fraser reforms, to ensure continuation of the diversity which has admirably characterized Democratic conventions for years.

I've got a lot more that I could write about this proposal, but it's long enough as is.   I can see a number of arguments against the delegate-driven process, but why should I poke holes in my own idea?  I'm sure that Kossacks will do a good enough job of that.

In the midst of the Bush years, at a time when things looked bleakest for American workers, something good happened:

For the first time in the past quarter of a century, in 2007 U.S. unions increased their share of membership among workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) annual union membership report released today. Unions added about 310,000 members last year, raising the unionized share of the workforce to 12.1 percent from 12.0 percent in 2006. . . .

Among women, union membership rose from 10.9 percent of women workers in 2006 to 11.1 percent last year. Rates for men remained unchanged at 13.0 percent. This modest narrowing of the gender gap in union membership was primarily driven by gains among white women, whose unionization rate increased from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent in 2007. African-American men saw their membership rate grow from 15.6 percent to 15.8 percent, but rates for black women fell to 13.0 percent in 2007 from 13.7 percent in 2006.

In the private sector, which accounts for the bulk of employment in the economy, union membership gains varied by industry. Construction unions increased their membership faster than the rate of job growth in that industry, with membership jumping from 13.0 percent in 2006 to 13.9 percent in 2007. Membership in the private health and education sectors grew from 8.3 percent to 8.8 percent. Unions also made headway in the low-paying retail industry, increasing membership rates from 5.0 percent to 5.2 percent.

As the good folks at American Rights at Work point out, times are still really tough for working Americans seeking to organize.  And the increase in union density is pretty small.  But you know what?  It's an increase in union density.  For the first time in my professional life -- hell, for the first time since I was 6 -- the percentage of workers belonging to a union has grown.  No matter how you slice it, it's terrific news.  (Of course, the Bush DoL buried it in the Friday news dump.  Bastages.)

And here's the thing -- if American workers and their unions can grow when the most anti-worker administration in over 75 years is doing everything it can to thwart them, just wait till the political climate becomes more worker-friendly.  After a quarter-century on the back foot, American unions have finally learned to survive, and maybe even thrive, in a harsh environment.  Like Ginger Rogers, they're doing it backwards and in heels.  Just imagine what can happen when working people get to take the lead.

Hard to say who won.  As usual, Huckabee was really charming in a folksy way -- but I'm not sure that it's gonna get it done for him.  It seems his ship has sailed.  Paul was way out there, way beyond Joe and Jane Republican.  Rudy was stammering, unprepared, and generally awful.  The Florida GOP voters are about to perform a mercy killing on Hizzoner's career.

Of the big two, well . . . neither really made mistakes.  Romney had the tougher questions, but wasn't really attacked savagely, and he deflected the shots pretty well.  He's smooth.  But he's not really charismatic,  and it's clear that Huck and McCain are going to team up to try and kill him.  He's just not a well-liked guy among his fellow candidates.  I'm not sure "smooth" will get him over the all-out assault he's sure to face between now and 2/5.

McCain wasn't spectacular, either, but he certainly didn't hurt himself. And his kind words for Rudy were a clear attempt at currying his support for the gang-up-on-Mitt brigade post-Florida.  That said, I'd say it's a wash between the two frontrunners.  I doubt either of them swayed many voters tonight.

But enough from me.  Sounds like the MSNBC heads thought that Romney won, largely because he wasn't attacked enough.  So who do you think won -- from the perspective of a Republican primary voter?

MITT's hair better start attacking, because he's been put on the spot by the last two candidate questions -- from HUCK and RUDY.  Regardless of what Tweety and Russert say as they slurp MCCAIN, these guys clearly see MITT as at least a co-front-runner.

RUDY is against emissions caps.  He prefers to wait "until technology can take over."  Like in The Matrix, I guess.  He does go on to embrace something that sounds vaguely like an Apollo Energy Project, but he lost me when he called for the Rise of The Machines.

MCCAIN says climate change is real, but won't sign an international treaty till China and India blink first.  What happened to the "superpower's burden?"

Commercials.  These guys are boring tonight.  

C'mon.  I want a walker/cane fight!  As Hans Moleman -- a future Boca resident if there ever was one -- said, "we paid for blooood!"

Q to RUDY:  You're polling worse than a gay hooker at a televised Republican Senate caucus.  What's up?

RUDY is incredibly halting, like he didn't expect it.  Lays out an incredibly implausible scenario in which he wins, about as likely as any that DOCTORRONPAUL could spin.

Q to MCCAIN:  Your party doesn't like you.  Thoughts?

MCCAIN:  Ah, I'm likable conservative enough.  (This would be a helluva time to invoke St. Ronnie.  The fact that he's not taking the opportunity says a lot about why MCCAIN has such a hard time with Republicans.)

MITT weirdly says he relishes running against BILL CLINTON, because CLINTON is so . . . unpopular?  Uh-huh.  Then says that HILLARY is everything that's wrong with Washington, and the antithesis of America.   Then he invokes Reagan -- and that's why he might just win this thing.  He can play the chumps in his party like a violin, and he's soulless enough to do whatever it takes to win.  MCCAIN just won't play the game.

MITT refuses to say how much of his own money he's spending.  (God, I hate this guy.  I really, really loathe him.   Maybe worse than Bush.)

Pile on MITT!  Now he's anwering a Mormon question.  He's confident Americans won't apply a religious test.  That'd make them better people than MITT, who has said that he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet.

Asked about Social Security, DOCTORRONPAUL grudgingly admits that it would be a bad idea to cut off 80-year olds right away.  In time.

MissLaura will take you out, guys.