Ray Fair is a Yale economist who has been using an econometric model for a number of years to predict the outcomes of presidential elections.  It has a fairly good predictive value.  His prediction for this November's election is that Bush will win in a landslide, with almost 59% of the total vote.

Looks like Dean is on the attack, no more "mister nice guy".  He is speaking at Lansing, in Michigan, and his remarks are posted on the BfA.  I wonder if he will be attacking tonight in the debate?  Some of his remarks are shown below.

The Dean campaign is starting to turn things around and I liked the good doctors on Diane Sawyer's interview.  But Iowa appears to have been a  mess: precinct captains not trained, too much reliance on inaccurate hard ones, an invasion of volunteers and a flood of phone calls who may have turned off a lot of caucus-goers, and not very inspiring campaign ads.

(AP) State and federal lawmakers who are Roman Catholics in the Diocese of La Crosse and support abortion rights can no longer receive Holy Communion a bishop ordered in a decree signed Nov. 23 but made public Thursday."

This apparently includes Dave Obey, one of the senior Democrats in Congress.  

Is there no limit to which these right-wing nuts and religious fundamentalists will go?  Lawmakers are elected by, and represent, the people of their districts, not the RC church.

This is a revision of a comment I made on a thread.  I'm wondering if we are seeing a remaking of the Democratic party that will make it effective far beyond anything we have experienced since at least the 1970s.  The Democrats won with Clinton in '92 and '96, but more because of Clinton than any prowess of the party.  Meyerson's article (referenced in the DHinMI's McAuliffe thread) makes clear the relative ineffectiveness of the party machinery in years past.  

But Terry McAuliffe has gotten my respect by remaking the party infrastructure, by making light-years' worth of improvement in the party's finances and voter/donor lists.  These are things long overdue.  The development of the 527s as financial complements to the DNC, and their GOTV efforts, are going to have important and long-run, positive effects on the party. The article did not say anything about recruiting new blood into the party as either party officials or as exciting new candidates.

And that's what I'm really excited about with the current campaigns, especially Howard Dean's, and perhaps also Wes Clark's.  These campaigns are bringing a lot of new people into active local and not-so-local Democratic politics.  When I visit the Dean blog, I see a lot of happy, naive optimism.  But I also see a lot of people busting their tail ends in a big way on Dean's behalf.  And they are holding now a series of Grassroots Summits to help their volunteers understand how to be more effective on the campaign trail.  Importantly, some of these people are getting hooked on politics and are already getting involved in local party organizations and many more will over the next year.  Some very likely will even become stand for office in the few years. I think we are seeing the first stages of a new, active generation of party officials being developed, and these are not the standard, afraid-to-speak-out, stand-for-nothing types of people.  

George Bush is his, and the RNC's, own worst enemy:  he has caused a revulsion among Democratic voters that is revitalizing the party and will make it once again a party of the people, not of corporate America.