So I wrote this diary the other day and it’s sparked in me, if not for those who commented passionately about it, a real mental debate.

I’ll summarize the thesis: We (I’m an out gay man in my 20s) have a achieved in large part the goal set forth by elder homosexuals of gay "pride." To my thinking, homosexuality has been accepted, though admittedly not embraced, by a majority of Americans. I realize that, living in a liberal New York, gays have long been less the pariah than we are in other areas, but my personal experience is that acceptance, or better,  acknowledgment, is no longer the objective. Based on that, "gay pride" in its current form is unhelpful and largely immature. It needs to be reformed in order to accomplish loftier goals than "We’re here, we’re queer, get used to us."

So my goal now is to contribute to the dialogue on this site. This is, after all, pride month. I’d like to hit a range of topics over the course of the next few days or weeks in a recurring series. I got a diverse array of feedback based on my first diary. I’m hoping for the same this time.

So, let’s start where it all begins, the closet.

The New Hampshire debate was a proud day for Democrats, at least on one front. Not only do we very obviously have a better field of candidates that do Republicans, but we’re on the right side of history.

I’m speaking of the "show of hands" asking whether or not President Clinton’s policy of "Don’t ask-don’t tell" should be revised. All eight of our candidates agreed it was time to move forward.

As a young gay man and a professional in the media it offered me a moment of pause. Of reflection upon how when I embarked on my career in journalism just five years ago, I never thought this would happen, and certainly not this quickly.

Sure there’s progress to be made and occasionally the gay community is its own worst enemy, but the party reaffirmed my belief in progressivism. We saw it on stage that night.

Sorry I don't have more in the way of interesting commentary, but I'm in a big hurry. Below the fold is the release sent by Rep. Louise Slaughter (already of today's recommended box) on the Homeland Security response to her FOIA request. It was filed with John Conyers on Judiciary a month and a half ago. Nice to see the Bushies have gotten around to it....

Finally we'll get any info they have on everyone's favorite male escort and how he knew about undercover CIA agents and classified information. Take a look at the full release below.

After reading [bhurt's diary http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/134320/464]and the ensuing threads debating liberal "elitism" and exactly how angry we can be at people like "Roy" who is detailed there (he's the plumbing guy at Home Depot, or the mechanic who fixes cars that cost more than he makes in a year), I've come to something of a conclusion. We're just not alike in a lot of ways, and the only way we'll ever get their respect is to show them that at the end of the day, we're more alike than we think.

More below the fold...

So all this talk about "Red State Welfare" got me to thinking. As a bona fide opposition party, what can we do through out legislative agenda to spin out the Repug traction in Red States while building up a core of support and a true majority of Congressional seats in the Blue States?

Here's my answer: Introduce a bill in both houses requiring the federal government to spend tax dollars in proportion to how much is collected from each state. In other words, lets get back what we put in.

I really think this idea has legs. See below the fold...

All day long I was moping around. I had to go clean out my desk at my (former) campaign headquarters after getting our asses kicked in a State Assembly race. After staying awake for nearly a full day (from 5 a.m. to 3:30 a.m.) on E-Day, I was exausted. I woke up just in time to hear CNN tell me the AP had Kerry conceeding.

So I avoided media for the entire afternoon, and whenever I talked to people I just changed the election subject.

And then I read this, from The Good Doctor:

We won't know if we REALLY won the debate until we see a bump. That's it, plain and simple. We all agree that Kerry won, but it doesn't matter unless the numbers go up. The flash polls all came back big for Kerry, most had him winning by 20 points (Gallup actually had him in the 80's for a win, I believe) so that's the story tomorrow.

Reporters will take a poll over a partisan pundit every time. So now we just have to make sure that the three days between the flash polls and the real polls stays positive for Kerry. No big surprises, just nice and easy. A few photo ops, a couple of pleasant sound bites from campaign stops and in a week we'll have pulled dead even, with two more debates to go and the Bushies without momentum heading into the final weeks.

I don't remember if there were instant polls in 2000, but Repugs can talk all they like, they can't argue that Kerry won with those kind of numbers. Already they've retreated to the "but it won't change people's minds" spin, which won't hold water. People don't not change their minds  just because Karen Hughes was on the MSNBC post coverage telling them they wouldn't (sorry for the triple negative).

Here are the news cycles as I see them through the weekend:

Friday: polls show Kerry won decisively; Bush's handlers say it won't influence voters, calling the evening a wash.

Saturday: Weekend black hole. No news is good news. Cable will have campaign clips and a look forward to next week's two debates.

Sunday shows: pundits duke it out on the news shows, but nobody watches them anyway. Papers have editorials praising the guy they're already supporting and spinning the performances as such. Expect a few conservative columnists to call the debate a big step for Kerry and come down on Bush hard. God knows the liberal columnists do it to Kerry when he f*s up.

Monday: Early three day polls will start to come back, hopefully with Kerry having pullled even on the WoT and horserace numbers. There's your story heading into next week's VP and 2nd Presidential debates. Kerry's momentum, can he keep it up/what can Bush do to stop the bleeding?

Here's how you know Kerry won the debate big: the best FreeRepublic can do to criticize JK's performance was to make a half-assed connection to an overnight drop in the S&P 500.

Seriously, let's think about this for a second. The biggest critique of Kerry's performance by the most rabid of Bush's supporters was an overnight dip in the stock market? Talking points aren't going to rescue Bush after that performance.

Just as an aside, I'm not sure if it was humorous or painful to watch McCain, Karen Hughes, et. al. have to say with a straight face that Bush won the debate in the spin room.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we're back in the game!

So I was perusing my hometown daily Buffalo News, which reprints a variety of national columnists on its op-ed page and came across this gem by David Shribman from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Evidently, we were trying to hide our "true support" at the convention in an effort to portray ourselves as a more moderate, centrist party. Check this quote:

"You can't hide your supporters. The Democrats did their best in Boston to portray themselves as the very souls of moderation. That was inside the hall. On television and in the streets, the more strident voices couldn't be silenced. The Republicans tried this very tactic four years ago. Their convention was a feast of diversity, a four-day tribute to tolerance, a conclave of the compassionate who barely and rarely admitted to being conservative. They were no more persuasive in Philadelphia four years ago than the Democrats were in Boston four days ago."

More on the jump...

There was an interesting discussion going on in the Iraq thread and one I thought worth pondering in my own (borrowed) space.

Americans love to declare war on ideas. Ironic, considering we're supposed to be the cradle of idealism; a grand democratic experiment. Think about it: LBJ's War on Poverty, Reagan's War on Drugs, Dubya's War on Terror.

Why, pray tell, do we feel the need to declare war on ideas that, by their very definition, can never be "defeated". The only way to win a war on poverty is to make everyone equally rich. The only way to win a war on drugs is to eliminate the addictive nature of man. The only way to win a war on terror is to get every coward to be brave.

None of these things can ever happen. It's a logical trap: if you view the world in extremes, as we Americans seem to prefer, you can't ever "win". Ossama bin Laden's capture won't win a war on terrorism. Nothing will. Yet, now all of out leaders have adopted this metaphor that could, in theory, keep us in an indefinite state of war. Is that okay? Are we going to accept it?

And, just as an aside, if you think Kerry/Edwards will improve things, see the much ballyhooed "We Will Destroy You" line from Edwards last night. At least Kerry acknowledges the complexities of the "War on Terror" we're in and seems resistant to the disservice that term serves Americans.

Sometimes I think it's just our Puritanical roots in self-loathing that cause us to identify with causes we can't ever win.

Now that I sound like some freakish dove or philosopher, please, discuss.

EJ Dionne raises an interesting question in his column (sorry, I didn't feel like finding the original link, so you get it from my hometown Buffalo News reprint). The question: what does it mean to be a Kerry Democrat? I know what a Clinton Democrat is: centrist, moderate and mostly palatable to Middle America. I know what it means to be a Dean Democrat because I am one: relentlessly in favor of good government and bringing more people into the process through a liberal agenda that benefits everyone.

So where is Kerry in this whole mess? Maybe we find that out tomorrow night, but I have to be honest, after having watched his campaign for near two years now, I still can't answer that question with certainty.

Maybe some of you can help me. What does a "Kerry Democrat" look like?

So I read the monsterious NYT Mag article on the cutting edge of the Democratic Party and it got me to thinking. A friend of mine and I have been kicking around this idea for a PAC: "Take No Shit Democrats (TNSD)". If there are rich bastards out there with millions of dollars just waiting to fund new, innovative liberal "pioneers" why shouldn't this idea get some merit.

So, I humbly submit to you, Kossacks, my plan to return respectability to the Democratic Party's message. Please, read and comment. Hopefully a few of you are still out there and not in bed!

Here's a story that should surprise not a single New Yorker: we've got the worst government in the country running our state.

And people keep asking me why I bother working on a State Assembly challenger's campaign. Not mentioned in the article is that NY legislators have a 99% re-election rate. It's a job for life because once you're in, they gerrymander your district to suit you during re-districting. There is no better example of bad government run amuck.

Some choice excerpts:

I was scrolling through some old emails and came across one from Democracy for America that had in it an AP story on the rise and fall of the Dean campaign.

It's a must read for Deaniacs and there are some real tear-jerkers:

Here are a couple of good things to hear from our presumptive nominee and his wife:

#1 It's about time we called a spade a spade:

Later on Monday, at a luncheon with about 1,400 women, Mr. Kerry suggested that Mr. Bush was using the issues of abortion and a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage to divide the country.

Referring to the amendment, which is expected to come to a vote in the Senate Wednesday, Mr. Kerry accused Republicans of "turning around, and for political purposes, in the middle of a campaign, for the first time in history, trying to amend the Bill of Rights."

Another good diary entry got me to thinking about the convention bump. Once you cut through the expectations game (the GOP is predicting a much larger bump than Kerry's people, of course), what can the Kerry/Edwards camp realistically hope for after August?

A CBS News Poll released yesterday has the horserace at :

Kerry 49%
Bush 44%
MoE 5%

That seems rather soft given Bush's favorable/unfavorable rating:

Fav: 37%
Unfav: 48%

We have all heard the correlation between a President's job approval & his reelection percentage. Given, job approval and favorability are two different things, but they're close.

So, I have to say, I think it's realistic to see Kerry, after we get the Edwards bump and the convention bump, to make up a part of that difference between Bush's horserace and job approval.

Do I think Kerry is walking away from the convention with an 11% bump? No. And actually, I hope he doesn't... that means he's peaking way too early and risks losing momentum by November. But could we be talking about 55%/45% by mid-August? I think that's very realistic.

Thoughts?

Here's a note from Upstate New York: We will pick up one and as many as three House seats this cycle. Am I crazy? Maybe, but that doesn't change the numbers.

First, the NY27- Jack Quinn's old seat. Quinn was a moderate Republican who kept his seat while facing a 60,000 defecit in party registration because he was affable and actually worked for Buffalo. He's retired (another casuality of DeLay's "Hammer" reputation). State Assemblyman Brian Higgins (no website yet) is the odds on favorite to win the seat. He faces a primary, but has plenty of money and good name recognition (plus the support of the many Dems that supported Quinn- the two are cut from much the same South Buffalo cloth).

Second, NY29- Sam Barend (short for Samara) is possibly the most intriguing candidate in upstate New York politics. She's 26 and a fresh graduate from Harvard's Kennedy School. She also has the added bonus of generating $3.2 billion in economic relief and 6,000 new jobs before she turned 20. As an intern with the late Sen. Moynihan she spearheaded an effort to create I-86 running through the Southern Tier. She's got living connections, running Hillary's upstate grassroots effort in her 2000 Senate race. She'll succeed Amo Houghton, the second moderate Republican to drop out in the area this year (actually, he announced before Quinn, but given the rural district it's second banana in the area right now).

And finally, we've got the long shot NY26 (my home district). Jack Davis is a rich old businessman (and former GOoPer) who is running against RNCC Chair Tom Reynolds. It's a longshot, but if you are of the mind that any race can be won with enough money then Davis has a shot. He's an angry old guy with a fortune to spend (literally). And despite a district that links up all of Buffalo's richest (and most conservative) suburbs, there is a feeling of discontent for the Republican's lack of interest in serving his constituents. I can tell you that at least Reynolds is being made to pay attention. I attended a parade for my candidate (Jeff Bono running for NY State Assembly in many of the towns in NY26) and both Reynolds & Davis were there. The two met and shook hands but after that it was all business- both pumping hands and kissing babies. Fun to watch. Davis also ran an internal poll that had him within 10 points of Reynolds, which was cause for some excitement.

So there's the Western New York Update... comments?

In case you haven't read it, the Times Editorial Page was great today. The Leahy amendment on the Geneva convention was a huge step and full marks go to the Republicans who had the chutzpah to ignore the Bushies and vote for it. Don't get your hopes up on the House passage, but it's still an important message.

But the real gem was the Gay Marriage editorial.

Our old friend, soon-to-be Senate minority leader Bill Frist had this quote on why he's bypassed the Judiciary Committee and skipped right to floor debate on the Bush amendment:
"Every day I put it off, more people get married."

Good God, their world view is so warped.