Campaign logos form the backdrop—literally—of any modern election. Last year, I took a look at the crop of logos in use by the then-current field of candidates, from the good to the bad and beyond. Soon, possibly as soon as a few weeks from now, the candidates will choose their running mates and unveil new logos for the fall campaign, which may be similar to the ones they're currently using or very different. Let's take a look back through history at the logos used in previous general election campaigns and see what worked and what didn't.

"Yeah, I don't do cowering," said Sen. Obama in his now-famous Rolling Stone interview. Compared to the average Democratic elected official, he's right. Sadly, though, when compared to just about any Republican, our nominee still has a bit to learn about not cowering. His follow-up remarks today on Gen. Wesley Clark's comment regarding John McCain's qualifications for the presidency, despite the efforts of some to make them sound a bit more steadfast than they were, were weak tea at best.

General Clark, for his part, isn't backing down, isn't apologizing, and may in fact be Sen. Obama's best hope for demolishing the house of cards that is McCain's campaign strategy. Rachel Maddow, hosting MSNBC's "Race for the White House" today, explains:

Like three-quarters of our fellow Americans, we here at Daily Kos look eagerly toward the end of the unmitigated disaster that has been the Bush administration. Yet for a small, albeit genetically superior, minority of us, the 2008 election gives us something extra to be excited about.

You see, Senators Obama and McCain, though they differ mightily in most respects, have one important thing in common: they are both left-handed. Which means that come Inauguration Day 2009, left-handers will once again have a (cramped, painful-looking) grip on the White House.

Looking for a break from the candidate wars? Try a few rounds of Daily Kos Bingo.

Once upon a time, John McCain was a rare voice of integrity in the Republican Party on the issue of the corrosive influence of money on our political system. His stewardship of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known to most of us as McCain-Feingold, was a rare moment of hope in an era marked by the wholesale purchase of our election apparatus by monied interests and the increasing inaccessibility of the political system to ordinary Americans, a time when horse race coverage has begun to focus more on the money candidates are able to raise and less on the votes they are able to earn. Inadequate and unloved, McCain-Feingold was nonetheless a necessary first step toward meaningful reform.

Well, it's time to take the McCain out of McCain-Feingold. After opting to receive public matching funds for his campaign last summer, the senator from Arizona has thrown the Straight Talk Express into reverse and opted out of the public financing system.

My intention, after John Edwards dropped out of the race, was to go into Washington's caucus on February 9 as Uncommitted. We have two fine candidates, who would both make fine presidents, and with the loss of the only candidate who really spoke passionately about the economic divisions in this country I was in no hurry to make up my mind. Since then, I've spent a bit of time thinking about the presidential race as it stands today, and though I'm under no illusions that anyone really cares what a nobody like me thinks, I've decided that the choice we face now, and the outcome thereof, is too significant to justify remaining officially undecided. One week from tomorrow, therefore, I intend to caucus as a supporter of Barack Obama.

Please, withhold your applause until the end. You may not like what I have to say.

For the past couple of days I've been following the case of Randy Gray, the Midland County, Michigan coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign who is also a longstanding active and vocal organizer for the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan. I called the campaign's press office on Tuesday and again yesterday, asking if they were aware of the situation and if they would like to release a statement. Both times the spokesman I talked to said he'd look into it and get back to me. I never received a call back.

Today, at last, we know what the Paul campaign's response is: they don't have one.

Yesterday I wrote about Randy Gray, the Midland County, Michigan coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign who is also a longstanding active and vocal organizer for the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan. Before I published that diary I contacted the press office of the national Ron Paul campaign in Virginia, explained the situation, and asked if the campaign would like to release a statement on the matter. The press official I spoke to said he would look into it and get back to me. He never did.

Today I called the campaign again and spoke, I believe, to the same press official, who seemed slightly less interested in helping me than he did yesterday but said I'd get a call when he received a statement. The phone hasn't rung, and there's no trace of a statement on the campaign Web site. Meanwhile, Gray remains listed as the official contact for Midland County, Michigan on the Ron Paul campaign's Web site.

As voters in Michigan go to the polls to vote in today's primary, volunteer coordinators for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are working hard across the state. One of these is Randy Gray, a 29-year-old resident of Midland, Michigan whom the Ron Paul 2008 Michigan Campaign Web site lists as the Midland County coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign. Gray's campaign profile page, a cached version of which can be seen here, doesn't go into much detail; there's a picture of Gray with the candidate, along with Gray's statement that "I support Ron Paul because he is in the fight for freedom." The page contains no mention of one of Gray's other roles: organizer with the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan.

Some of you may remember my May 2007 diary Ron Paul, In His Own Words, in which I detailed some very unsavory racist writings from Paul's 1990s-era newsletters. The greatest hindrance to me at the time, and since then, has been that I had never actually seen a copy of the Ron Paul Political Report: the eight-page, typewritten newsletter was only mailed to a few thousand subscribers and never made it to LexisNexis or any other wide-circulation database, and the only traces available to us at the time were secondhand, from Paul fans who'd transcribed them and posted them on the Internet or other online locations.

But not anymore. "Angry White Man," an article in the latest issue of The New Republic,  has just become the definitive guide to the racist writings of Ron Paul, with more than a dozen extremely damning scans from the newsletter itself, located by writer James Kirchick in the archives of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Now close your eyes, take another deep breath, and then release it and slowly open your eyes. Go into the kitchen and make yourself a nice steaming mug of herbal tea. Hot tea can be very refreshing this time of year. Go ahead. We'll wait.

Back yet? Good. Now, please pay attention, because this is important.

Campaign surrogates are paid to take the low road. That's their job. In practice, this means they say inflammatory things about other candidates. Many times, what they say is dumb, ridiculous, and offensive.

There is a tendency around here to act like these dumb statements, when made as an attack against a candidate that one happens—coincidentally, I'm sure—to support, are ABSOLUTELY THE WORST THING ANYONE HAS EVER SAID IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE EVER AND THE CANDIDATE WHO EMPLOYS THIS SCUMBAG IS A VILE WORTHLESS HELLBEAST WHO SHOULD JUST DIE. Perhaps you've noticed this tendency.

You're angry right now just thinking about David Axelrod/Evan Bayh/Billy Shaheen/whoever, aren't you? Take another deep breath. Stand up and walk around for a few seconds. Take a sip of tea. Are you back? Good. Now repeat after me:

We're all on the same side here.

There is a prejudice in politics today, a prejudice that the middle-aged men who guard our national discourse are only too happy to perpetuate. Many people believe that this prejudice may prevent Mitt Romney from becoming president... but it also affects one of our own. In fact, it affects millions of good, decent, hardworking Americans, who have silently borne the scorn and stereotyping of neighbors, co-workers, and political pundits who, in many cases, may be wholly unaware of their own bigoted attitudes. It's a prejudice that affects me directly, in a very personal way.

For you see, I, like John Edwards and Mitt Romney and millions of other Americans, have great hair. We did not ask for it, but we do not apologize for it. And we will not put up with the stereotyping and discrimination any longer.

Last Friday, watchers of the upcoming WA-08 congressional rematch between Rep. Dave Reichert and netroots favorite Darcy Burner sat up and took notice of an event with enormous implications for the 2008 congressional contest: state Rep. Fred Jarrett's defection from the GOP to the Democratic Party. Though Jarrett's move is likely to have little direct effect on the upcoming race, his defection from the Republicans is the inevitable result of a long-term demographic shift that will soon end the GOP's longtime dominance of the 8th District forever.

"White House officials have begun quietly circulating among key Senators a short list of potential replacements for outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales," sayeth Roll Call today, "one that appears aimed at avoiding a lengthy confirmation fight with Senate Democrats, according to senior GOP and Democratic aides."

Avoiding a lengthy confirmation fight. If that's true, the Democratic Party is in far deeper trouble than we've ever imagined.

Here's the crazy thing. Before yesterday, I was basically where Sen. Feingold is on impeachment: supportive on principle, but recognizing from a practical standpoint that it won't succeed in removing Bush and Cheney from office and believing that Congress should concentrate on accomplishing concrete things for the American people instead. And what do you know, all it took to turn me into a raving, unreasonable, beady-eyed impeach-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out fanatic was to have the junior senator from Wisconsin come here and tell us about the "seriousness" with which he approached the Clinton impeachment trial.

Because I remember that trial. I remember it like it was yesterday. And I remember just exactly what Senator Russell Feingold—brave, principled Russ Feingold, the great progressive hope of the Democratic Party—did to betray his oath of office, his constituents, and the United States Constitution.

The body of Mike Webb, a late-evening talk radio host for Seattle's 710 KIRO for many years, was found in the crawl space of his home today. The King County Medical Examiner's office has ruled Webb's death a homicide.

I've been a campaign junkie as far back as I can remember. I think it might be because of the campaign logos. Logos are the mainstays of modern political campaigns: always present but rarely mentioned, they grace bumper stickers, yard signs, placards, buttons, hats, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and just about anything you can plaster a logo on, all in an attempt to make you remember a candidate's name and feel good about it. Instead of fast food or clothes, campaign logos sell people and ideas. They follow unwritten but rigidly-defined rules—you got your red, you got your white, you got your blue, and you better put a flag in there somewhere—yet within those rules lie infinite possibilities, that can buoy a candidate up or weigh her down. Like the little girl of yore, when they're good they're very, very good, but when they're bad, they're horrid.

Let's have a look at the current crop of contenders and see what works and what doesn't. Pay close attention, prospective candidates and political consultants of the future: what you're about to learn just might put you in the White House some day.

Daily Kos is very definitely not the place you'd expect to see a lot of fulminating praise for right-wing conservatives. Yet the diaries are full of people who can't find enough nice things to say about Rep. Ron Paul, whose smiling face is at this moment being beamed to America from the site of the Republican debate in New Hampshire--after which, we may be sure, we will see yet another round of diaries brimming with joy about Paul's sweet words against the Iraq war. You, dear reader, may even be considering writing one or more such diaries yourself.

Before you do, fellow Democrat, please understand just one thing: Your affection for Paul is far from mutual. Through his words, his actions, and his votes in Congress, he has made one thing abundantly clear over the decades: Ron Paul hates you. By building him up, by supporting him, by taking him seriously, you are not driving a wedge into the heart of the Republican Party--you are only giving him a helping hand along the road to his goal of destroying just about everything you stand for.