History doesn't repeat itself.  But in American political history, there have been a series of relatively stable and lasting periods of electoral dominance by one of the major political parties.  Since the demise of the Whigs and the consolidation of the Republican party as the alternative to the Democratic party, most historians identify four eras of realignment followed by stability: 1850's to the 1890's, the 1890's to the early 1930's, and the 1930's to the 1970's.  I argued here a few weeks ago that we are facing the end of the Reagan Era.  The New Deal order, which was brought in by big Democratic victories in four straight elections (1930-1936), ended with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and his subsequent attack on Johnson's Great Society and Roosevelt's New Deal.  

The Reagan coalition was driven by many factors, including economic, but the key pressure points exploited by the Republicans were racial and social-cultural (especially anything touching on feminism, the changing family, and issues of sexuality and masculinity, including homosexuality).  Judging it on its overt goals, the GOP during the Reagan Era has been an utter failure.  The Conservatives have lost the culture wars.  They could, with another seat or two on the Supreme Court, overturn Roe v Wade and many other accepted laws, but on issues of racial and social tolerance, Archie Bunker and the social and cultural reactionaries lost.  

Social and cultural issues were, however, mostly a smoke screen floated out by the strategists and leaders of the GOP during the Reagan Era.  They concealed from the public most of their economic agenda.  Republicans talked about opportunity and getting government off the back of the little guy, but the real goal of the GOP's dominant wing--primarily southern and deeply anti-government and anti-labor--was to turn over the spoils of power to their cronies who could bill the government for services and goods, who could exploit the collapse of government regulation to boost profits for low-wage or extractive industries, and to reverse what economists such as Paul Krugman, referring to the amelioration of the worst excesses of income disparity that existed at the end of the 1920's which then led to the creation of the vast American middle class, call The Great Compression.  

What began as the Reagan era became, by the 1990's, the Gingrich/Norquist/DeLay/Rove coalition.  It was a coalition built on deception, as the GOP leaders and their funders and think tankers at places like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and the propagandists like Norquist (with plenty of aiding, abetting and even active participation from the media) concealed their economic goals, which could best be summed up by Norquist's infamous quip that his goal was to shrink government to the point where conservatives could "drown it in a bathtub."  

Americans don't want government to be drowned in a bathtub.  They want it to work.  They can be fooled for a while, but when reality smacks them in the face the way Iraq and the economy have since 2005, they stop believing the lies.  Bush's public collapse began when he finally stopped concealing his intentions and openly supported privatization of Social Security.  The response to Katrina made things worse for Bush and the GOP's long-running attack on government.  Iraq, which was supposed to be a cakewalk, descended in to an open civil war.  And a series of financial market crises, collapsing home values, a massive increase in foreclosures, rising unemployment, spikes in the cost of health care and the number of uninsured Americans, losses of pensions, massive and growing disparities of income and wealth, tight credit and now a recession have made it impossible for most Americans who don't vote entirely on conservative social and cultural issues to maintain any trust in the Republican party.  

Throughout the day some of my fellow contributing editors will post their thoughts on analogies between this campaign season and other recent presidential elections.  My claim that this year could end up being most like 1932 is not necessarily incompatible with what you will read this afternoon and evening.  The candidate face-off is different than in 1932, and has more in common with some recent elections.  But we might be on the cusp of a major shift, where the emotional bonds voters have with a party and which demographic groups most identify with which party could shape our politics for decades.  I've argued since November of last year (here, here and here) that we could be on the verge of a 1932-like election, where the best metaphor wouldn't be a "wave" but that the change would be more geologic.  Evidently Chuck Schumer agrees:

Why will Democrats win? Schumer advanced a theory that this is a "tectonic plate election," as 1932 and 1980 were, where voters aren't just responding to one particular event or circumstance but have fundamentally altered their views of what they want from the government and elected officials. Schumer argued that voters want a "stronger government" and are more focused on Democratic issues like the economy and health care than GOP issues like national security and family values.

There are some significant differences between 1932 and now.  While John McCain is running to extend the Bush policies in to a third term, technically he is not, as was 1932 Republican nominee Herbert Hoover, an incumbent.  Because of the Republican successes in redistricting and reapportionment, there is no way Democrat will gain almost 100 Congressional seats as they did in 1932.  We're at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while in 1932 the US was isolationist and the electorate did not seek to change that stance.  Neither Roosevelt nor Hoover were "outsiders" from what had been the previously dominant social and cultural classes.  In this regard, Obama is probably more like John Kennedy, who had to overcome questions of whether voters would trust a Roman Catholic, while Obama has to overcome questions about his racial background and ties to countries and cultures like Kenya and Indonesia which are to some voters exotic and misunderstood places.  

The economic distress of today is nothing like what Americans experienced in 1932, when almost a third of American workers were without jobs.  Indeed, what remains of the New Deal has and will probably continue to prevent the depth and scope of devastation that happened during the Depression.  But if one looks at the economic distress in relative terms, in comparison to times of greater growth and security, where people were more likely to have health care and pensions and had homes that were creating significant equity and growing wealth, the situation today is a shock.  And the broader insecurities of the financial crises has created major anxiety for many, especially those looking at their 401(k) accounts shrink just as they approach retirement.  

Certainly on the operational/tactical level, things look great at recreating the type of election we had in 1932.  It was a landslide, with FDR winning all but six states.  But his percentage was only 57%, less than his percentage in 1936, and less than the winning percentages of Eisenhower (1956), Johnson (1964), Nixon (1972) and Reagan (1984).  However, in 1932 Democrats picked up 97 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate.  With the NRCC broke and the DSCC with a 2-1 cash advantag over the NRSC, with the Republicans demoralized and Bush polling under 30 percent, with more open Congressional seats than any time since at least the 19th century, and with numerous Republicans in ethical or legal trouble, we could post major gains in both chambers, quite possibly bigger than what we had in 2006.  

In 1932, ethnic Catholics came out in large numbers and strongly supported the Democratic ticket.  It was the start of the coalition of Northern ethnics (Catholics and Jews), northern Blacks and union members along with southern white protestants that held solid at the presidential level until the elections from 1968-1980 and on the Congressional level in to the 1990's.  This time around, we should expect a surge of new black voters.  Black voters have been reliably Democratic for decades, but participation levels are much lower than with white voters.  With the Obama candidacy, that may change.  

The Latino population is becoming a huge percentage of the vote nationally and especially in several western states.  Latinos have regularly voted over 60% Democratic, but with them becoming a much larger share of the vote, keeping that percentage or growing it—as seems likely, at least this year—could contribute to building a long-lasting coalition.

Finally, young voters of all races and ethnicities have moved solidly toward the Democrats since 2002.  It's widely accepted that if a voter votes for one party three straight elections, chances are they will maintain their loyalty to that party for many years to come, maybe for the remainder of their lives.  Issues and world views certainly have contributed to this move toward the Democrats.  Young people are much more tolerant on issues like sexual orientation and race than their parents and definitely more than the averages you see with the elderly, which pulls them toward the Democrats.  

One should note, however, that the Democrats currently dominate the Republicans in their ability to effectively solicit online contributions, appeal to blogs, use social networking sites like Facebook, text messaging and handheld devices and other forms of new technology that connects people and conveys message.  Barack Obama wears a blackberry, while John McCain admits to knowing almost nothing about computers and the internet.  In this regard, there is a strong corollary with FDR's embrace of and Hoover's disdain for the new media of 1932: radio.  

The similarity we all want with the 1932 election is the election of a tremendous leader like FDR and a Congress that passes transforming legislation like the creation of Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act and the regulatory and social welfare programs that we associate with the New Deal.  It will take some years before we know if the analogy was in that regard apt.  But for the possibility of creating a lasting connection between a majority of the electorate and the Democratic party, the evidence suggests that this year could be much like 1932.  

We're in trouble:

Obama was at the Tiergarten in Berlin, amid a sea of people.  McCain was at "Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant" in German Village, an enclave of Columbus, Ohio.

McCain addressed about a half dozen Ohio small business owners in the historic village.
"I'd love to give a speech in Germany," McCain said. "But I'd much prefer to do it as President."

[...]

This event was hastily organized after the candidate's planned visit to a Louisiana [oil rig] was cancelled due to the threat of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast.

Someone emailed me this news from another source, and at first we couldn't tell if it was satire.  Obama, of course, gave a speech this afternoon to huge crowd in Berlin.  He has just come from the Middle East, where he garnered glowing press.   Seeing the McCain campaign try to counter Obama's Berlin event with a stop in German Village where McCain ate some sausage is so pathetic it probably causes most political observers who aren't fervent Republicans to laugh, and like us, think, "nah, this has to be a joke.  They're not that bad...are they?"

It wasn't a joke.  And it's got me worried.

You probably know the concept of peaking too soon.  I'm afraid the McCain campaign may be bottoming out too soon.  I've been following politics since the mid-80's, and I can't think of any campaign that has been as bad as McCain's.  

The campaign thought it was a good idea to send McCain out to an oil rig during a hurricane.  That didn't work, because, you know, there was a hurricane.  By even suggesting that it was a good idea, and then having to pull back from their plans, they looked like nitwits.  (And that doesn't even address the problems caused by the oil spill that's shut down the Mississippi River south of New Orleans.  

Their Plan B?  They sent him to an ethnic diner that will reinforce the contrast between the tired McCain, who met with a few small businessmen, and the charismatic Obama, who got a reception from Berliners like that given to John F. Kennedy.  

Obama went to Berlin and got hundreds of thousands of people and fawning press coverage.  McCain went to Ohio and got a bratwurst and probably a case of heartburn.    

So why am I worried?  Because I can't believe Republicans will allow McCain to continue running his campaign this poorly.  [And the RNC hasn't been any better, as SusanG pointed out yesterday.]  The rest of the party doesn't necessarily need him to run a campaign that can put him in a position to win, but they have to do whatever they can to prevent him from losing solidly and losing in a landslide.  A solid loss hurts them for a while.  It could take them a decade or longer to recover from a landslide loss.

McCain isn't a particularly good candidate.  He's undisciplined, many people think he's too old to be president, he's too closely associated with George W. Bush, and his party is now loathed by much of America.  He's generally seen as likable, but more and more his weaknesses as a candidate are becoming visible.

But as bad a candidate as McCain may be, his campaign is making him worse.  They wasted the time between him locking up their nomination and Obama securing ours.  Obama raised as much money in one day last month as McCain raised in all of June.  McCain spent far more than Obama in June, but he didn't gain any ground.

The McCain campaign recently went through shake-up that was supposed to tighten their operations.  While they have gotten slightly more aggressive in attacking Obama, their messaging and choice of locations and visuals have been laughably bad and don't appear to be getting any better.

I love seeing McCain's campaign get outclassed by Obama's in almost every facet.  I have thought all along that whoever won our nomination would win the presidency, and that there's a good chance that by historical standards it won't even be close.  But I don't like to see the McCain campaign hit what by similar historical standards may be rock bottom, and do it so far out from the election that McCain might have time to bring in people who could improve his operation and make the election closer than we would all like.  

In one country, which Newsweek polled in June, the electorate is split R26/D38/I36. In the other country, which Newsweek polled a few weeks later, that country's electorate is split R32/D32/I36.

In one country, polled in June, 84% of the electorate is white.  In the other country, polled a few weeks later, 88% of the electorate is white.

In one country, polled in June, 19% of the registered voters are under 40, 39% are between 40 and 59, and 42% are 60 or older.  In the other country, polled a few weeks later, only 17% of the registered voters are under 40, 38% are between 40 and 59, and 45% are 60 or older.

In the younger, slightly more racially diverse and much more Democratic country, Barack Obama was supposedly leading by 15 points.  In the country that is somewhat older, is somewhat whiter, and is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, Barack Obama is supposedly leading McCain by only 3 points.

According to Newsweek, comparing these results shows "what a difference a few weeks can make."  A more valid conclusion is that it shows what a difference polling two very different countries can make.  

Why does this silliness happen?  DemFromCT gave us the answer a few weeks ago.

What makes a political era?  In trying to understand any particular political era, it's necessary to understand the previous era, its duration, its characteristics, what brought it in to being, what stresses led to its demise.  In trying to figure out our politics since the late sixties, and definitely since the early eighties, few books have been as helpful to me as a collection of essays published in 1989 by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order: 1930-1980.  In their introductory essay, Fraser and Gerstle laid out the premise underlying their investigation of a political order:

Our notion of "political order" draws its conceptual inspiration from the notion of "electoral system" and "party system" developed by political scientists and the "new political historians" in recent years.  These scholar have depicted American political history since 1800 in terms of relatively long periods of electoral stability punctuated by brief but intense political upheavals and electoral realignments.  In each of the five periods of electoral stability (1800-1820's, 1820's-1850's, 1850's-1890's, 1890's-1930's, 1930's-1970's), the major parties had a fixed relationship to an electoral coalition; the size of the parties' respective coalitions, in turn, determined the relationship that prevailed between the two parties—in particular, whether one dominated or whether the two struggled on a relatively equal footing...

This approach diminishes the importance of particular political actors—presidents, senators, and others—as well as of the normal two-, four-, and six-year electoral cycles.  It elevates, by contrast, importance of economic events and social trends.  Fundamental changes in political life—those which produce a change in party systems—are seen as issuing from crises in the nation's economy, social structure, and political structure...

[...]

In probing why such fundamental historical events are required to change party systems, the new political historians have generally offered "ethnocultural" explanations.  American voters, at least from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, they have argued, viewed political parties as the protectors of their most treasured beliefs and vital interests: their religions, their ethnic traditions, their families and their neighborhoods.  Voters thus developed profound emotional loyalties to parties; these loyalties, in turn, influenced individual electoral behavior far more than rational reflections on a party's platform or short-term, instrumental calculations of the likely return on casting a ballot for one party or another.  Such loyalties were not easily forsaken.  Only major economic and social crises triggered broad shifts in loyalty from one party to another.

The New Deal voting coalition was anchored by Southern white protestants and Northern Catholics and Jews.  Membership in labor unions, then as now, made one far more likely to vote Democratic.  Unlike now, however, where the percentage of workers represented by a union is barely over 10%, by the mid-1950's union members were almost 35% of the workforce.  Within a short time Black voters, previously loyal to the party of Lincoln, shifted allegiance to the Democrats (although they were disenfranchised in the Jim Crow South).  

After the economic and social devastation of the Great Depression—which lasted throughout the thirties, and didn't fully lift until the country mobilized for war starting in about 1940—Roosevelt, Truman and the New Dealers in Congress used tax policy to largely ameliorate the worst in wealth and income disparities.  Increased unionization led to wage pattern bargaining, where union contracts raised wages for all workers in that particular sector.  In his book The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman calls the 20 year period of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, when the ultra-wealthy became the merely wealthy and the middle class expanded to include the majority of Americans—even if it included few minorities—the Great Compression.  

The US didn't follow the path of almost every industrialized nation and create a social democratic welfare state.  But after the Kennedy assassination and the huge 1964 Democratic landslide, the Johnson administration pushed through the Great Society initiatives, including Medicare, to go with New Deal and post-WWII measures like Social Security, the G.I. Bill and FHA loans to further expand and extend the partial welfare state.  

Johnson also, of course, finally brought the government to grant full franchise and citizenship to Black Americans by passing the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts.  These ended the Jim Crow system in the South.  But providing paths for African Americans to join the mainstream of American society, according to Fraser and Gerstle, contributed to the stresses that led to the end of the New Deal order:  

The state's rhetorical commitment to distributing civil rights and economic abundance to all its citizens inevitably pushed race to the very center of national politics; the nation's growing military obligations diminished the economic resources necessary to solve or at least mitigate the brewing racial crisis; and the importance attached (by purveyors of mass culture and ideologues of a modernist domestiticity) to achieving a full and expressive personal life predictably resulted in an insatiable hunger for "authenticity" and autonomy in all social spheres...The New Deal order's unabashedly modernist character intensified these tensions and was bound, sooner or later, to provoke the moral outrage of traditionalists.  A second source of tension resulted from the failure of the Democratic party and organized labor, in the 1930's and 1940's, to transform, through wage legislation and unionization, the South's social structure.  Such failures...meant than an extraordinary kind of judicial fiat—itself, though cloaked in constitutional language, a kind of violence—would be necessary to integrate southerners (and especially blacks) into the New Deal order.

As suggested in the previous paragraph, the era of the New Deal was a period of great change in American family relationships.  From the extended families of agrarian America that prevailed until roughly the end of WWI, through the ascendancy of the nuclear family as the American norm, to the burgeoning of feminism and the increased integration of women in to the workforce, and therefore the end of the stay-at-home mom as the American norm, many mores and beliefs about family and gender profoundly changed.  As with any profound social change, it created political tensions and divides.  Much of the conflict in American politics from the late 1960's nearly up to the present has been over social and cultural issues, most rooted in the changes wrought by feminism and racial integration.  

Johnson predicted that signing the Civil Rights Act would mean that the Democrats would lose the South for a generation.  In presidential politics, he was correct, and below the Presidential level, what had been the "solid south" became the geographic base of the Republican party.  In the North, where the frontiers of racial integration and accommodation were populated by African-Americans and mostly ethnic Catholics in the urban areas and inner-ring suburbs, issues like school busing and the riots of the late sixties were used deftly by Republicans to pry apart the New Deal coalition and create "Reagan Democrats."  Crime and welfare, associated as they were with African-Americans in the minds of many of these voters, became proxies for race.  

On cultural issues, probably nothing cut through the New Deal coalition more traumatically than abortion.  But it wasn't just abortion, or more fringe issues like prayer in schools.  The Democratic Party itself became tarred with the charge of elitism, which was, since Wallace, associated with pointed-headed intellectuals, judges and bureaucrats telling people—especially men—what they could and couldn't do.  Many of the cultural issues became proxy battles over feminism, and liberals and the Democratic party became associated with traits generally thought to be effete, or to take the root word further, feminine.  

Reagan came along and put a sunny sheen over the anger of the right.  The working class, since the oil shocks of the 1970's and the destruction of core industries like mining, textiles, heavy manufacturing and basic steel, had been pummeled economically.  But the damage had been mitigated by the relatively untouched New Deal social welfare system, just recently expanded by Johnson.  Reagan fought Carter through a close election, and by convincing enough voters that he wasn't crazy, surged to a ten point win.  

Once in office, Reagan commenced a counter-revolution against the New Deal, but the visible attacks tended to be mostly in the context of welfare and the like, which for most voters elicited notions of race rather than hostility toward regulation of the economy or government intervention to mitigate the harshness of unfettered and unregulated markets.  Attacks on regulation and the welfare state that weren't seen as disproportionately benefiting African-Americans largely went underground.  Through the Reagan era, even up through George W. Bush's campaign in 2004, the Republicans stuck mostly to social and cultural issues, or to taxes.  Taxes were another proxy for race, as many swing voters felt their taxes were too high, and felt their tax dollars were being squandered on welfare payments to people who refused to work or on supposedly exorbitant foreign aid to people overseas.  But publicly the Republicans largely avoided frontal assaults on the New Deal.  

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the opening up of China, fears of war faded from the consciousness of voters.  This lessened red-baiting, but it also removed the last inhibition preventing what in the 90's became known as the politics of personal destruction.  Led by Newt Gingrich, the notion that politics stops at the ocean's shore ended, and everything, including previous off-limits aspects of a politician's personal life, was grounds for attack.  

By 2000, most Americans were deeply disillusioned with this petty and nasty politics, but times were generally good.  After the huge Republican win in 1994, Republican lost seats in Congress the next three elections.  Other than a two-year period during the Eisenhower administration—an administration at peace with the New Deal—Democrats had held the presidency or at least one chamber of Congress for seventy years.  The ineptness, hostility toward sound governance and corruption of the GOP had not been fully exposed to the American public; only the Gingrich-led government shutdown of 1995 hinted to casual observers the true intentions of the new mainstream of the radicalized  Republican party.  Much of Johnson's Great Society had been gutted, but the main legislative pillars of the New Deal, such as social security, after the scares 1981-1983 and 1995, had been left mostly intact.  And as often happens when things are good, frivolities like how many times one of the candidates sighed during the debate became a big issue.  

Al Gore, his sighs and his supposed exaggerations were savaged in the media.  Nevertheless, he won the popular vote, almost certainly won the electoral vote, and was kept out of the White House only by the intervention of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.   And Democrats won several upsets in the Senate, leading to a tie broken only by the vote of VP Dick Cheney.  

As I've previously argued (here, here and here), I believe we are on the verge of a transforming election.  But just as one can argue whether the end of a political era ended in 1968 or was interrupted until 1980 because of Watergate, one could argue that the end of the Reagan era began in 2000 but was interrupted the next year by the terrorist attacks on 9-11.  Ruy Texeira and John Judis were already refining their argument for The Emerging Democratic Majority, showing that demographic changes and long-term voting patterns presaged an end to the Reagan era.  But 9-11 and the environment of fear exploited by the Republicans prevented GOP losses in 2002.  Even then, however, the GOP Congressional gains in 2002 and 2004 (after Texas redistricting) were consistent with the changes in apportionment, with more districts drawn to be pro-Republican accounting for the GOP gains.  

Then in 2005 George Bush and the GOP were exposed.  Bush tried to mount an overt assault on Social Security, precipitating the decline in his standing that continues today.  The disastrous response to Katrina shamed most Americans.  And the war in Iraq finally was seen as another disaster made by Bush and the GOP.  Democrats went on in 2006 to big wins, and all indications are that we could be on the verge of more big wins this November.  

Now many Americans, including many who grew up in families lifted in to the middle class by the New Deal, feel intense economic pain.  By historical standards unemployment is not particularly high.  But other than a few years in the late 1990's, earnings adjusted for inflation have fallen steadily since 1973.  Some of that loss in earnings and wealth was made up for with low and easy credit and skyrocketing home values, and home owners spent against their increased equity.  But now, as people's home values plummet, foreclosures mount, credit is unavailable, and wages continue to decline, there's nothing to soften the economic blows to working families, even including many which in the past would have been considered comfortably in the upper middle class.  

As the wage and wealth hits accumulate, Americans' economic health is being attacked from other directions.  Secure pensions are no longer a given, and 401K accounts have been devastated by the recent crash in the stock market.  Health care costs continue to rise faster than inflation, and the number of uninsured Americans continues to grow.  And the costs of going to college or having children are too great to bear for many younger Americans.  

The long period of doing nothing to address Americans' addiction to gas guzzlers, combined with instability (and most likely price manipulation) in the petroleum markets, has created yet another economic stress on Americans.  As in the 1930's, when everything in politics was dominated by the effort to subdue the depression, in coming years, almost all the major policy problems faced by America—our foreign policy, the price and availability of food in the US and the food demands in developing countries, our declining manufacturing base, our balance of payments to foreign nations, wage and income inequality, environmental and climate changes, construction, the "financialization" of the American economy—will be connected to energy and climate change.  

Finally, there's a sense with many Americans that there's something seriously wrong in America.  All the polls show it.  The young have been voting Democratic for the last three elections, and young voters appear ready to vote in much higher numbers this November than in any election since the vote was extended to 18 year olds in 1972, maybe in higher numbers than ever seen.  Black voters, driven by the candidacy of Barack Obama, appear ready to vote in record numbers.  Latinos continue to grow as a percentage of the vote, and continue to become more solidly Democratic.  But the greatest movement may be among working class and middle class voters no longer motivated to vote on issues of race, social change or cultural issues, but instead motivated by the inequities of wealth that have reopened during the Reagan era.  

According to NYT Reporter Steven Greenhouse, author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,

the top 1 percent of households, averaging $1.1 million in annual income, received nearly 22 percent of all reported income in 2005, up from 9 percent in 1980. That income shift helped create the greatest level of inequality since the Roaring Twenties.

Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary, found that were it not for this increased inequality the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be doing considerably better. If the distribution of income today were the same as in 1979, Summers said, assuming the same level of economic growth since then, income of the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be about $670 billion more a year--or about $8,000 per family. For many households in the bottom half, this would mean a welcome 20 to 30 percent increase in income, perhaps the boost needed to avoid foreclosure.

[...]

One can see the economic divide widen in another way. The average income for the top 1 percent of households was ten times that for the middle fifth in 1979. By 2005, those in the top 1 percent earned 21 times as much as those in the middle. Income for the top 1 percent of households averaged 70 times that of households in the bottom fifth, the greatest gap on record, up from 23 times as much in 1979.

At the pinnacle of the inequality pyramid are the nation's CEOs. American corporations may be tightfisted about raises for most workers, but they paid their chief executives $10.5 million on average in 2005, including salary, bonuses and stock options. That was quadruple their pay a dozen years earlier. This means the typical CEO earns 369 times as much as the average worker, up from 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976.

We have reached the point where we have unsustainable energy policy, and unsustainable foreign and military policy, an unsustainable fiscal policy, and, as many Americans now feel personally, economic inequities that aren't sustainable if we wish to maintain the broad middle class created by the New Deal order.  We've reached the end of the Reagan era, and are on the cusp of something new, hopefully better, and characterized by a bold, vigorous, creative Democratic party with which people bond as they did with the Democratic party of the New Deal era.  

Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932
By Donald A. Ritchie
University Press of Kansas
Lawrence, KS, 2007

In late 2007 I wrote a series of three essays (here, here and here) examining the parallels between the early indicators in this election cycle and the Democratic landslide of 1932.  In those previous essays I examined long-term demographic and voting trends, the number of seats being defended by the Republicans and the overwhelming financial, operational, strategic and polling advantages of the Democrats, and the tremendous unpopularity of George W. Bush and the Republican party.  

In the months since, the underlying weaknesses of the Republicans have grown more apparent.  The National Republican Congressional Committee has remained broke and is mired in an embezzlement scandal that could leave it unable to borrow money to protect their dozens of endangered incumbents or to defend Republican-held open seats.  The NRCC's Senate counterparts aren't in much better shape, with several Republican-held seats like those in Virginia, New Hampshire and New Mexico appearing to be already settled contests, and with probably ten or more remaining Republican seats potentially vulnerable, all while the DSCC has a roughly 2-1 cash advantage.  

Last November and December few would have predicted that it would not be until June that the Democratic nomination was finally settled.  After polling roughly even with Republican nominee John McCain, since Hillary Clinton conceded the nomination Barack Obama has surged to solid leads in many of the previously contested battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and has polled exceedingly well in many other states that haven't been competitive for Democrats since 1996, or in some cases 1976 or even 1964.  

History doesn't repeat itself.  While there is great value in many of the writings of advocates of a cyclical view of history, such as Giambattista Vico, Arnold Toynbee and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr (whose works include the Pulitizer-prize winning The Crisis of the Old Order 1919-1933: The Age of Roosevelt), few historians accept the notion that history repeats itself.  But Mark Twain was on to something when he quipped that "history doesn't repeat itself...but it rhymes."  

Donald A. Ritchie's Electing FDR: The New Deal Election of 1932 would be a worthy read even were it not for the compelling parallels one finds in it from the perspective of this particular campaign season.  Ritchie, an associate historian at the U.S. Senate Historical Office, has a deft touch for the compelling anecdote and story, and keeps the narrative moving nicely.  He introduces the main and secondary characters with enough detail and context that we can understand their actions and motivations, but with enough brevity and economy that the details don't slow down the reader.  

Ritchie knows the social, economic and intellectual history of the era, and does an excellent job of giving the broader cultural and social background in which the campaign took place.  And his descriptions of the hard working, conscientious but humorless Herbert Hoover and the ebullient FDR, once seen as a featherweight but whose struggle with polio at age 39 led him to develop tremendous fortitude and empathy with those in danger of being beaten down in their own struggles, enliven the book.  Ritchie's portraits of Hoover and Roosevelt make it seem obvious that a cabbie in Detroit could convey this impression to a reporter:

I tell you, lady, the day Roosevelt is elected will be a national holiday—like Armistice Day, you know.  I figure that if we get rid of Old Gloom and put in a feller that can laugh and act human, the Depression will be half over.

The cabbie was right.  The economic toll of the Depression continued through FDR's first two terms, and didn't really lift until the country was mobilized for the struggle against fascism.  But half the battle against the depression was against fear and despair, and the country began righting itself the moment FDR, in his first inaugural address, told Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  

But what about those parallels between 1932 and 2008?  Yes, the country and the world face tremendous challenges, probably the most dire since the Second World War.  Things are not as bad as when FDR ran.  But the years before the stock market crash of 1929 have many similarities to our recent past.  The Republicans were in full control of the government, and anti-regulatory, pro-business policies prevailed. While unemployment was low, there was a yawning gap in wealth and income between the rich and poor.  Rural communities were distressed.  The economy was undergoing a major transformation.  Organized labor was weakened and under assault.  Though economic problems were increasing, it was cultural issues, most of all prohibition, that dominated elections.

Hoover came in to office with a reputation very different from that of George W. Bush.  Hoover was possibly America's most admired and respected administrator.  He was a self-made man who had excelled in the first class at Stanford University, became a mining executive, traveled the world and made a fortune.  During World War I he was dispatched by Woodrow Wilson to oversee food relief programs in Europe, and he performed brilliantly.  In 1920 he was even sought out as a possible Democratic nominee for President.  

That year former assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt ran on the losing Democratic ticket.  He and Hoover had become friends in Washington DC during the war, and they admired each other.  But Hoover joined the Republicans, and spent the 1920's as the Secretary of Commerce.  He largely avoided political rancor, but built up political chits, and in 1928 won the Republican presidential nomination and defeated New York's Catholic Governor Al Smith for the Presidency.

Roosevelt spent much of the 1920's rehabilitating himself from polio, which he contracted in 1921.  By 1928, however, he was recruited, somewhat reluctantly, to run for Governor of New York, in part to bolster the ticket in New York for Smith's presidential campaign.  Smith lost his home state, but Roosevelt eked out a narrow win.    

By 1932, the good times and emphasis in campaigns on divisive social issues were gone.  Unemployment, 3.2% when Hoover took office, was at 23.6%.  We have severe problems in our banking and financial sectors today, but nothing like what faced the country in 1932.  On the very day the Democratic convention started in Chicago, 25 of that city's banks were forced to close.  

In 1930, as the Depression gained strength, the Democrats crushed the Republicans in the mid-term elections.  Back then Congress didn't convene until a year after the elections.  During the interim between the elections in November of 1930 and the seating of Congress in early 1932, 13 members of Congress died, and Democrats won almost every one of the special elections, including some in previously solidly Republican districts.  In total, by the time Congress was seated, Democrats had netted a 54 seat gain in the House, shifting the chamber from solidly Republican to a Democratic advantage of 3 seats.  

In the Senate, Democrats picked up 8 seats.  It was barely less than they needed to gain control, but thinking that a solidly Democratic congress that couldn't accomplish anything in the face of Presidential obstruction would hurt the Democrats more than his party, Hoover urged the Senate Republicans to let the Democrats organize the chamber.  

That Congress, in large part because of Presidential vetos, accomplished very little.  Unlike today, there were progressive Republicans like George Norris of Nebraska and William Borah of Idaho.  Nevertheless, like today, an obstructionist President prevented a narrow Democratic majority from many accomplishments.

Roosevelt, easily reelected in 1930 on the strength of his bold policies as governor as much as the overall Democratic wave, became the favorite for the nomination.  However, the other candidates, including his one-time ally Al Smith, had enough support to prevent Roosevelt from securing the nomination.  Roosevelt assembled a team of newcomers, while the campaigns of his rivals were stacked with politicos who had been involved in previous presidential campaigns.  At a time when primaries meant very, very little—fewer than 5% or so of the delegates were awarded on the basis of primary results—Roosevelt nonetheless dispatched one of his chief aids to travel the country and build on the support of Democratic leaders with whom Roosevelt had continued correspondence ever since his 1920 VP candidacy, and he contested every primary.  Despite losing most of the biggest or mostly heavily Democratic states, such as Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Roosevelt performed quite well, especially in states not traditionally thought to be bastions of Democratic support or likely Democratic wins in a general election.

Roosevelt's team went to the Chicago convention with the most support, but far from the total needed for the nomination.  In 1924 the convention required over a hundred ballots before reaching agreement.  FDR's team expected to be able to hold and maybe grow their lead through four.  If all of the candidates arrayed against him could have thrown their collective support behind one of their group, that man would have won the nomination.  But with the assistance of Joseph Kennedy—father of John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy—Roosevelt's team was able to negotiate a deal with the Speaker of the House, Texan John Nance Garner, for the support his delegates who controlled the delegations from Texas and California.  

The Democrats came out of the convention only moderately excited by Roosevelt.  Some delegates, supporters mostly of Al Smith, declared that Roosevelt would not be able to win Catholic voters in November.  But the delegates were unified in support for repealing prohibition.  

Shortly after gaining the nomination, Roosevelt disappointed many of his most liberal supporters by renouncing his support for the League of Nations.  In the wake of World War I, the country was strongly isolationist.  While Roosevelt personally supported the League, Roosevelt announced he would not seek US entry in to the league, declaring there was "a difference between ideals and the methods of obtaining them."  

Throughout the campaign Roosevelt provided few specifics on policy.  He was widely criticized by intellectuals, writers and party elites for the vagueness of his proposals and the lack of bold pronouncements in his campaign.  He did, however, have his "brain trust" of professors, mostly from Columbia, who were key in drafting his speeches in which he advocated for government intervention in the economy and a more vigorous effort to move the country forward than that advocated by Hoover.  But Roosevelt kept many of his more conservative financial backers molified by advocating a balanced budget, and he eschewed many specifics.  As he told his brain trusters, he was running a campaign and not an adult education program, and that in office he could educate the public and harness their support for his initiative, but as a candidate he "had to accept people's prejudices and turn them to good use."  

Operationally FDR's campaign was far more bold and inventive than Hoover's.  FDR had a deep, resonant voice and an orator's gift.  Hoover was uncomfortable with speaking on the radio, and avoided that new technology, while FDR and his campaign embraced it.  FDR took every opportunity available to speak on the radio, while Hoover conceded that new medium to the Democrat.  And with Wall Street comparatively broke and the activist base split over prohibition between the pro-repeal "wets" and the pro-prohibition "dry's," the Republican party was short on money and enthusiasm.  

Along with the special election wins in the congressional races, the September results in Maine presaged the huge win.  Back then Maine voted for other offices in September, with only the presidency contested in November.  Despite being one of the most Republican states in the union, that September Democrats stomped the Republicans, winning the Governorship and two of the state's three Congressional seats.  

Polio decimated Roosevelt's legs, but the crushing work and failures of his presidency aged Hoover tremendously.  Despite a whisper campaign about FDR's disability—plenty of rumors circulated that he had been infected with syphilis—most who saw him viewed him as the epitome of vigor in comparison with the pallid and defeated Hoover.  Roosevelt developed a powerful upper body from pulling and hoisting himself around, and on campaign stops, his auto or train car was fitted with a bar on which he would rise and stead himself, enabling him to stand.  He had a powerful voice, was relatively young at only 50, and he was campaigning on the belief that what the country needed most was change.  The contrast was stark.  Hoover was old and represented the past.  Roosevelt was the future.  

On election day, Roosevelt won every state but Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  He garnered 57% of the vote--less than future landslide wins by Roosevelt in 1936, Johnson in 1964, Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984--and Democrats netted another 99 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate.

Obviously there are many differences between Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama.  I will not burden Obama with comparisons with one of our three greatest presidents, and the greatest Democrat to ever hold the office.  It's also important to recognize the difference between the horrific conditions of 1932 versus the bad but not as obviously dire circumstances facing us today.  But just as there are striking parallels between the underlying electoral conditions and demographic trends that I examined in my previous essays, the contrasts between our current candidates and the conduct of their campaigns have many parallels with those of 1932.  

Will Barack Obama lead Democrats to the overwhelming win that FDR led in 1932?  While the portents are good, it's still too early to tell.  Besides, we need to not only predict our history, we need to work smart and work hard to create the history we desire.  But one cannot read Ritchie's book in 2008 and not hear words and patterns that, while not the exact as what we hear today, certainly rhyme.  

My mom is Irish.  Growing up with my mom and grandparents I had some of the more standard stereotypical Irish experiences.  We had potatoes at every meal. My grandfather drank like a fiend for years, but when my mom was a teenager, he quit cold turkey.  After that, he limited most of his addictive behavior to betting on the ponies.  (And isn't that a stereotypical Irish thing to do?)  And of course there were the raucous fights arguments um, "loud discussions" about politics and whatever else people would argue about over the dinner table.  

Not much of that is extraordinary.  But something the Irish do that is, if not extraordinary, at least a lot of weird "fun," is honor the dead not just by tears and crying--because, well, the Irish don't do that kind of emotion very well--but by having a damn good party.  My dad grew up in an almost entirely Sicilian neighborhood, and I got to know a lot of Lebanese friends, and the people from the Mediterranean know how to do weddings.  Well, my mom's people know how to do wakes.

As explained today by ct, the guy who makes this place hum along, the original server that once powered this site has died.  As people might say of someone who had fought a tough battle against cancer, the server is now in a better place.  And I hear she looks pretty good...you know, considering.

One of the things that's common at wakes is for people to tell some of their favorite stories about the deceased.  I thought it might be a good thing to do with the server.  I have a lot of fond memories of things that happened here when that server was running the entire site, or then part of it, and more recently when it was powering comment searches.  I'll share some of my favorites, and I hope you share some of your favorite memories.

Even before we ran on Scoop, that server was powering the site.  Here's one of my more fond memories of something I read on that site:

Friday | September 19, 2003

New guest posters

Quick announcements: The two new dKos guest posters are message board regulars Meteor Blades and DHinMI. They will take over most blogging duties on weekends, and will be invaluable help when I'm on the road and in the immediate aftermath of our new baby (coming Nov. 10-ish).

The next day I wrote my first post.

September 2003 was also a milestone month for the site:

Wednesday | October 01, 2003

One million unique visits in September

Wow. Daily Kos had over one million unique visits in September. And each visitor averaged 1.5 page views.
Posted October 01, 2003 09:24 AM | Comments (64)

Now we get about a million hits every weekday.

Back then photos were a big strain on the site, so they weren't stored for more than a couple weeks, making posts like this photo montage by GOTV, which was hilarious, seem a bit confusing.  Trust me, those photos of Bush at the UN, with all the other world leaders, with GOTV's captions were brilliant.

Some of the comments, however, still show the photos.  And one of the best ever, by Addison, proved the existence of electoral fraud in the 2004 election.

There are still some great, great diaries that you can read in full that I think are among the best things written on DKos.  For instance, kossack PBJ Diddy explained his path to becoming a Democrat involved years of living on the streets in NYC.  (I still wish he had gotten it published somewhere, like the New Yorker.  Yeah, it's really that good.)

Not everything worth remembering that was once stored on that server was serious or touching. For instance, one of the great unintentionally ironic classics of Daily Kos, My experience at Kos. by jeremymc, was such an epic, wonderfully bad GBCW diary that it sat atop the recommended diary list for about a day, and attracted over 700 comments.  

And in more recent years, that server worked as the search engine for comments.  Just the other day, while someone was complaining that a satire wasn't funny, I searched for a this example of a scathing, searing, devastating satire that wasn't really "funny" but was nonetheless brilliant, calipygian's Jonah Goldberg Presents: The White Man's Shoah.  

How 'bout you?  Any particular comments or diaries that you fondly remember?  Please share.  And remember, don't drink too much at this wake.  

What Bob Johnson said.

Losing on the FISA thing sucks.  Of course.  But let's be clear here, while on principle it's been the right thing to do to fight it, the battle was lost months ago when Harry Reid made it clear it was a priority for him to pass the bill with the telecom immunity.  

Should I have paid more attention to the bill?  Should I have cared more?  Sure.  But there were a few reasons I didn't focus on it more than many of you did here at DKos.  As Bob put it in his diary:

Here's what is making me crap my pants these days:

• A soaring unemployment rate
• A crashing stock market
• The looming failures of a number of huge banks
• Soaring oil prices
• Our looming environmental disaster
• A horribly broken (and broke) government, destroyed from the inside by the Bush-Cheney cabal
• The mess in Iraq
• Afghanistan going backwards - quickly
• A Republican nominee who is likely more incompetent, corrupt and dangerous than the current criminals occupying the Executive Branch

I'll add a few more off the top of my head without even trying: the mess of health care in this country, obscene levels of income and wealth inequality, a broken military, young people priced out of going to college, moving out on their own or having kids, a horribly conservative judiciary and several fundamental rights hanging on only by the health of the octogenarians on the Supreme Court, our horrible standing in world opinion, the intersection of our energy and food problems, a plummeting housing market, our devastated manufacturing base, the assault on the federal civil service and on the very idea of government competence, the war on science, the selling off of public goods and the looting of the public treasury on behalf of Bush cronies...there are probably a dozen other major crises we face and for which John McCain is completely unsuited to address, and would probably make worse.  

These things--not FISA--are what sometimes keep me awake at night.

When I talk with family and friends who are generally well-informed citizens but not the kind of people who read Daily Kos, they never mention FISA.  They talk about the homes in foreclosure on their block, or how they can't afford health care, or how much they want us out of Iraq.  Now, there are plenty of other things that are important that most people don't mention.  Just because, for instance, few people talk about nuclear proliferation doesn't mean it's not important.  Prior to September 11th, 2001 there were few citizens without specialized knowledge who had even heard of Osama Bin Laden.  And had anyone realized how bad things had gotten at FEMA before the Fall of 2005?  

So, there is tremendous value in a small number of people paying close attention to the details, to things like telecom immunity in a FISA bill, for as the old saying suggests, that's where one finds the devil.  

But there's another hoary old saying, about missing the forest for the trees.  Does anyone believe that if Barack Obama was president, that this abomination of a bill would have been pushed on Congress?  One can be unhappy with his statements on FISA and skeptical about his commitment to block it.  However, it doesn't follow that one's possible reluctance to wage a battle against a bill for which the public isn't clamoring  but about which the GOP could easily demagogue, is the same as being likely to push such a provision on the Congress as president.  

I'm not happy about the FISA fold.  But I view this as the last new and horrible act of the Bush administration.  It's possible, of course, that Bush could bomb Iran, but it's probably not likely.  And with Congress ready to shift to campaign mode, with it likely that Congress will not pass new appropriations bills but instead pass continuations of this years budgets and wait for a president more willing to deal honestly and fairly with Congress, Bush may be done with real initiatives that are new ways to screw up the country.  

So, I'm focused on November.  That doesn't mean I don't care about FISA.  It just means I've decided that the fight is in front of us.  The challenge is to elect Barack Obama president, and to give him huge majorities in Congress.  You may think it's a cliche, but it's also the truth that the best guarantee against new and crappy laws like this FISA bill is more and better Democrats.  

Unlike many at DKos, I am not disillusioned with the current Congress.  I've been occasionally disappointed with them, but not disillusioned, because I always viewed winning Congress back in 2006 as not a way to really advance our agenda, but as a way to block Bush's.  Unfortunately, that didn't always turn out the way we wanted.  We never got withdrawal timetables for Iraq.  We weren't able to override Bush's veto on expanding health insurance for kids.  We had to struggle to pass a minimum wage increase, and we weren't able to block the FISA expansion with the telco immunity.  

But this Congress has stopped some of the bleeding.  Not all, absolutely not.  But it's a step, and like the the last six years of the Clinton administration, when it was pitted against a recalcitrant Republican Congress, this Democratic Congress could mostly just offer resistance to a recalcitrant radical Republican president.  

But that can change next year.  Because of the excesses of the Republicans, the disdain with which people hold Bush and the GOP and the blame they attribute to them for those problems listed by Bob Johnson and myself, we're on the verge of a potentially huge victory in November.  I want to make that victory as grand and transforming as possible.  

The Democratic landslides of the elections of 1932 through 1936 and the landslide win of LBJ in 1964, which swelled the Democratic congressional majorities, were the most transforming elections since Lincoln's victories in 1860 and 1864.  Lincoln brought the end of slavery and preserved the Union.  FDR modernized the federal government, creating the main pillars of the New Deal like Social Security, the advancement of labor rights, the creation of the vast middle class, and the ability of the government to control the excesses of the markets.  Later, with those majorities only slightly diminished, he led us in the victory over fascism.  Johnson finished the work of Lincoln through the voting rights and civil rights acts, and he moved us further along in economic and social justice through the creation of important initiatives like Medicare.  

Electing Barack Obama and giving him huge Congressional majorities will help reverse the damage caused by years of radical right misrule by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and George W. Bush.  It would give Democrats the mandate to do the things we need to do to turn around our country, and to save life on our planet.  

The battle to focus on isn't the one we lost yesterday.  The battle to focus on is the one we need to win in November.  Then, after November, we need to push the Congressional Democrats and President Obama to fulfill their promises, and to fulfill our promise.

I'm disappointed we lost FISA.  But I'm far more committed to doing what we need to do to have a huge win in November.  I think most Democrats share my view.  I hope most Kossacks will as well.

In a move that's no surprise, Barack Obama has decided to forgo accepting public matching funds for his Presidential campaign.  The McCain campaign has already begun attacking Obama for the decision.  But McCain himself, at least by implication, supports Obama's decision:

I think it's wonderful that Howard Dean was able to use the Internet, $50, $75, $100 contributions.  That's what we want it to be all about.  We want average citizens to contribute small amounts of money, and that's a commitment to a campaign.  So I'm for that.  I think it's a great thing.  I think the Internet is going to change American politics for the better.

Whether or not McCain understands the internet, he does think it's great that a candidate could largely fund his campaign with small donations, mostly taken over the internet, which is exactly what Obama is doing.  At least that's what McCain said in 2004, when he wasn't running for president.  Surely he wouldn't say something different today, right?  The so-called "Straight Talk Express" wouldn't contradict himself just because it's politically expedient, would he?  

Remember this, from a few months back?

Ahh, the home cooking of Sen. John McCain's wife, Cindy. You can almost smell her Ahi tuna with Napa cabbage slaw or her rosemary chicken with warm spinach salad as you peruse the recipes on her husband's campaign Web site.

Or you could have, until yesterday, when that part of the site was taken down after bloggers revealed that several of the "McCain Family Recipes" were, in fact, copied word for word from the Food Network.

Cindy McCain's tuna recipe was actually developed and submitted to the Food Network by cookbook author and former "Cooking Thin" host Kathleen Daelemans. The recipe for farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms was a "quick pasta classic" from the TV show "Everyday Italian." That old McCain standby -- rosemary chicken -- was a creation of TV chef Rachael Ray and was lifted, with a few changes, from the same Food Network site.

All three were listed on a McCain Web page titled "Cindy's Recipes."

Well, they're at it again.  But this time they're plagiarizing recipes from Hershey's website for Cindy McCain's [sic] Oatmeal-Butterscotch Cookies.  

We all know that the Republicans like pretend they're salt-of-the-earth types in contrast to us supposedly effete decadent liberals, even though they too enjoy many of the pleasures of life used to caricature liberals.  Last Winter I stood behind Karl Rove in a coffee shop in one of the most gay-friendly, liberal and cosmopolitan neighborhoods in America as he ordered a latte.  

When they're being sloppy plagiarizers, the McCain team tosses out recipes for fine meals like Ahi Tuna with Napa cabbage slaw.  It's not something you're likely to find at your local Denny's, Waffle House or Cracker Barrel, but rather at some hip restaurant in a happening downtown.  It probably sounded good to the campaign help who plagiarized it.  But it was off message.  

The McCain campaign plagiarizers are getting a bit more strategic with their plagiarizing, at least going for something more down-home: good old-fashioned butterscotch and oatmeal cookie that makes me think of my grandmother's baking and the butterscotch candies she gave me when I was a small child.  

Of course all of this is amusing, because with her bazillions of dollars and numerous homes (including this house profiled in Architectural Digest, it's hard to picture Cindy McCain standing over a mixing bowl reading off the Hershey's package as she stirs the cookie dough.  I suspect it's "the help" that prepares all those meals at the McCain house houses.  Cindy probably just says "I'd like an Ahi Tuna entree," and the help runs to the computer and finds a recipe.  It's easy; it's a Google!

But what about "the help" employed on John McCain's campaign?  Are they so arrogant that they think that after putting out one series of plagiarized recipes, that they wouldn't get caught when they tried it again?  Or is the McCain campaign so clueless that not only do they not learn from their past mistakes, the they don't even remember their past mistakes and thus keep repeating them?  

Are you itching to express sanctimonious outrage?  

Are you jealous that you haven't made the rec list complaining about horrible offenses like people wishing ill on the dead and reveling in the loss felt by their family, friends and fans?

Do you, unlike just about everyone else decrying how Daily Kos has become a horrible place, at least hope to cite an example or two?  You know, so it's not patently obviously that you're "outraged" about something that's maybe 1-2% of the comments being written on the subject?  

Well, please, use this diary as a stand-in for evidence.  The odds are that few people will click on your hyperlink, and really, it's about as solid a collection of evidence as you'll find in all the other expressions of "outrage" that are on the rec list.  But your diary will have the look of something based on, you know, evidence.  

While we're at it, feel free to use this diary as a stand in for actual evidence of just about anything else that you want to say is wrong with the world, but about which you're not going to bother to provide evidence.  

This diary has been a community service to those creating diary performance art demonstrating their superior morality to those unnamed, uncounted, uncited and probably non-existent masses at Daily Kos who are responsible for their sanctimonious outrage du jour.  

John McCain, we've learned, is computer illiterate, and not knowledgeable about the internet.  That may concern some people worried about a president who doesn't understand arguably the most fundamental technological development since the invention of the internal combustion engine.  

Fear not.  I was recently briefed by one of McCain's tech advisers, who demonstrated for me some newfangled gizmos a McCain administration would use to keep America the world's leader in technological innovation and application.

John McCain isn't adept at dealing with digitized information, but that doesn't mean he doesn't care about digits and computations.  For instance, to keep track of all the lobbyist money coming to his campaign from corporate special interests and tax dollars going out as favors to the same corporate special interests, his administration would use this nifty technology:

It's often said we live in an information age.  McCain has many technological answers to the problems of dealing with information.

Here's how he plans to stay in close contact with overseas governments and leaders:  

For domestic transfers of information, this is his solution:

McCain won't neglect infrastructure.  He plans on placing his "good friend" Ted Stevens in charge of developing a vast series of these:

McCain expects to put the US at the vanguard of biotech development with these:

McCain would commit America to cutting edge treatment for mental illness:

It's time to wean ourselves off of our over-reliance on gas-guzzling SUVs and large automobiles.  McCain's plan?  Mass transit:

McCain recognizes that our modes of freight transport need to revamping.  He has some wonderful ideas for harnessing previously underutilized sources of energy:

Are you tired of horrible service and delays when you fly?  McCain has an answer to our overburdened air transportation system:

Terrorism, of course, remains a threat; McCain will propose numerous technological responses.  There's this facial recognition technology:

One of the problems exposed by the 9-11 attacks was the inability of the FBI offices and divisions to effectively process and coordinate the analysis of information.  McCain will champion this new method of copying and preparing data for storage:

To see if suspected terrorists are concealing something dangerous, TSA under a McCain administration would have the best in new x-ray technology:

And in the event of an attack, McCain believes it's crucial that our first responders have state of the art equipment, such as this:

Finally, our greatest export is our culture.  As President, McCain would try to foster the continued growth of the creative class.  He would offer tax breaks to moguls like this guy who push the boundaries of cinema:

Spreading images of American life will help improve our image around the world:

And McCain himself will try to model healthy behavior by engaging in his beloved cycling:

John McCain for President: building a bridge to the nineteenth century.

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.

One year ago I was advising someone pondering an endorsement of Barack Obama.  I will not claim incredible prescience.  I did not predict that Obama would become the Democratic nominee for President.  But I did think he had the best chance of winning.  I thought there would be an anti-Clinton candidate.  I thought it would not be John Edwards.  I felt Edwards' populism would not play well in New Hampshire, where he finished fourth in 2004, and that his fundraising wouldn't give him the needed resources for a strong showing on Super Tuesday.  

By elimination if nothing else, I thought Barack Obama would become the alternative for voters looking for someone new.  Obama proved he could raise a lot of money.  I thought it was a "change election," and voters wanted something vastly different than their choices of recent elections, and that Obama offered the biggest break with the past that would be tolerated by the primary electorate.  I thought that Democrats would hope for something more than the half-loaf we came away with from the Clinton administration; instead of rear-guard actions delaying the advancing Republicans, Democrats want bold change.  And I thought that any campaign guided by Mark Penn, as was the case with Clinton's, was probably doomed to failure.  

In 1940, France had the world's largest army.  France, having been invaded twice in the previous seventy years by Germany, had also built the Maginot Line, a series of bunkers and obstructions designed to prevent a direct assault from Germany or Italy.  The Germans avoided the Maginot line by invading with overwhelming force through the Low Countries and in through unfortified Northern France.  The construction of the Maginot Line and the deployment of much of France's army in the wrong place to repel the German invasion is one of the most oft-cited examples of generals preparing to fight the last war.

Hillary Clinton did not become the Democratic nominee for many reasons.  Barack Obama was simply the better candidate.  Voters wanted change; people generally vote either their fears or their aspirations, for what someone might become and bring about rather than what they were, are or have done in the past.  Obama appealed to and personally exemplified the aspirations of voters, especially younger voters and African-Americans.  The Clinton campaign also committed many errors.  They ignoring caucuses, didn't plan for the races beyond Super Tuesday, and didn't offer a compelling message beyond "the Clinton years were good, and voting for Hillary Clinton will bring back what was good about the Clinton years."  Clinton had also alienated many activist Democrats with her vote for the Iraq War resolution, and exacerbated this problem by refusing to repent for her vote.  

But most debilitating and pervasive within the Clinton campaign was the malady that afflicts many military organizations.  Like the French in 1940, the Clinton campaign was built to wage the previous battle, in this case a 1990's-style Democratic primary campaign.  The Clinton campaign was not prepared for the changes in the Democratic electorate or electioneering.  Furthermore, too many of the "generals" leading the Clinton campaign, beginning with Bill and Hillary Clinton, were unable or temperamentally disinclined to complete the missions required of them in the modern campaign.  

Personnel

A few years ago, while I was working on a campaign, one of my twenty-something staffers asked me what it was like to do campaigns before cell phones.  It would have been an excellent question for Bill and Hillary Clinton.  The 1992 Clinton campaign was innovative and tactically more modern than the Bush campaign.  But watch The War Room, the documentary on the 1992 Clinton campaign, and you barely see a cell phone.  It was before the spread of the internet, email, web browsers, blogs, online commerce and political donations, and YouTube.  Despite all these changes, Bill Clinton, the NYT reported this morning, doesn’t use email or a blackberry.  It is hard to believe that people such as Bill Clinton who have had such a hard time adapting to technology and tactics that are ubiquitous on campaigns can provide the best strategic and tactical guidance.  And from all accounts, the biggest player in the Clinton campaign after the candidate herself was the former President.  

Clinton's presidency is responsible for some of the other problems of Hillary Clinton's campaign.  Bill Clinton insisted that Hillary bring on Mark Penn as pollster and senior strategist.  Bill Clinton gives Penn great credit for his 1996 reelection, and Penn used that validation to prevail in intra-campaign disputes.  Furthermore, where the Obama campaign used five polling firms, and none of the pollsters had preeminence in devising strategy, Penn had exclusive control over the polling, and used his own numbers to back up his arguments.  There was little empirical data coming in to the Clinton campaign that didn't first go through Mark Penn, and Penn had that authority because Bill Clinton was too tied to a campaign from twelve years ago.

Penn's role was part of a larger problem: too little new blood.  Most of the Clinton team had been in place for ages.  It's important to have people loyal to the candidate, who know the candidate and those around her.  But it appears that there were some orthodoxies that went unchallenged, while there were simultaneously raging battles between key Clinton aides that had been going for decades.  The Clinton campaign, by relying so heavily on long-time staffers to the exclusion of new people, inherited the infighting but wasn't infused with fresh blood, innovative ideas and new perspectives.  Even the decision to keep the campaign in suburban DC ensured that people tied to DC, often with conflicts from clients outside the Clinton campaign, didn't put their full attention to getting Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination.  

Understanding the Lay of the Land
The Clinton campaign doesn't seem to have recognized the huge change in Democratic party activism in recent years.  Especially as unleashed by the Dean campaign in 2003-2004, and carried on through the 2004 campaign on behalf of John Kerry, literally millions of new or reinvigorated activists lent time to campaigns.  The Obama and Edwards campaigns recognized this, and volunteer-driven activities were at the center of much of their voter outreach.  But as MissLaura explained earlier, the Clinton campaign didn't capitalize on the new activism.  

The Clinton campaign benefited greatly from independent expenditure operations by the likes of AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers and EMILY's List.  But they never harnessed the energy of volunteers like Obama and Edwards did.   Not only did the mass of volunteers save the Obama campaign resources, the energy of his campaign became part of his very message and image.  

Message
The Clinton folks also appear to have grossly misunderstood the Democratic electorate.  Most Democrats recognize the achievements of the Clinton presidency, and are grateful for his competence, tenacity and spirit.  The Clinton years were absolutely a time of sound and often wise Democratic governance.  But Democrats didn't want a return to an era that was also full of frustrations, irritation with the Clinton battles, and Republican initiatives dominating the day.  

Democrats and most independents were also sick of the war, and no longer wanted bellicosity or fear of looking like Michael Dukakis.  Hillary Clinton's efforts to look tough may have been necessary for the first serious woman candidate for President, but they were in conflict with a Democratic electorate that opposed the Iraq war from the state, and is now adamantly opposed to it's continuation.  Clinton and her campaign appeared to be still fighting the accusations that Bill Clinton was a draft dodger, something that most of the electorate left behind several years ago.

What worked for Bill Clinton in 1996—but even then only with a 49% win—wasn't enough for Hillary Clinton against the more charismatic and visionary Obama.  Competence harkening back to the golden era of 1997 wasn't enough.  

Fundraising
Clinton had a formidable fundraising network, and it's odd to critique the efforts of a campaign that shattered all previous primary fundraising records.  But Clinton was outspent by Obama by a large margin.  She had a huge inherent advantage due to Bill's networks and her aura of inevitability.  But the donors who were key to Bill in the 90's included many who raised then-permitted soft money donations that could go to the DNC.  Since McCain-Feingold, federal candidates cannot be involved in raising soft money, and 527's played a very small role in the Democratic primary.  

The Obama campaign adapted better to the new emphasis on creating networks of raisers who can collect many checks in the $500 to $2,300 range.  Obama, obviously, also far outraised Clinton on the internet.  His campaign very early put an emphasis on small-donor fundraising, and it was small donors—especially donors who gave less than $200—that powered his campaign in the later months of the campaign, as both campaigns had largely tapped out the available pool of Democratic primary donors capable and inclined to give the maximum $2,300 donation for the primary season.  

Targeting
If Obama hadn't won Iowa, he probably wouldn't have become the nominee.  Iowa was the catalyst to his win in South Carolina, as African-American voters saw that Obama could get the support of white voters and had a chance to win.  Obama's Iowa win was both the partial product of Clinton's backward-looking campaign and the result of further problems based on looking back to the 90's.

The Clinton campaign suffered the larger problem of not preparing for caucuses, which along with the Potomac and Wisconsin primaries allowed Obama to open up the pledged delegate lead he never relinquished.  But the problems in Iowa weren't just about caucuses, it was that Bill had never seriously competed there in 1992.  That the 1992 campaign was 16 years ago should have made Clinton people realize they were essentially starting from scratch in many places.  But not having a built-in cadre of supporters—even though many of them would have been past their political prime, as was the case in many states, especially among their African-American supporters—evidently kept the Clinton campaign from diving in to Iowa until too late.

Once Obama won Iowa, one of the key assumptions of her campaign was shattered.  Typically, if one primary candidate gets a large share of the black vote in the primaries, that candidate has won the nomination.  It happened with Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.  The two times the Black vote was scattered were the years that sons of Massachusetts—Michael Dukakis and John Kerry—garnered the nomination.  Clinton expected to keep the black vote that had been so loyal to her husband.  Instead, it shifted to Obama in a huge way, first in the 80% range in South Carolina, and then typically over 90% in the later primaries.  

Clintons' campaign also appears to have expected to compete for a largely static electorate.  Her appeal was almost exclusively to the types of voters who had previously dominated Democratic primaries; reliable Democratic voters, mostly over the age of 35.  Obama, however, was able to grow the electorate, by getting a huge increase in younger voters, and in the states without closed primaries, by winning a large share of independent voters.  With many more independents voting in the Democratic primaries than in the Republican primaries, even before John McCain had secured the nomination, that provided a solid bloc of voters to Obama that Clinton never competed for, and may in many cases not even have expected to be voting.  

All these reasons for Clinton's loss are secondary to the primary reason Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination: Barack Obama was the superior candidate.  There were many other reasons, as my fellow contributing editors have spelled out in other essays today.  One of the overriding problems, however, was that in many areas, the Clinton campaign didn't plan and wage a campaign for 2008, but one that was state of the art for 1998.  

Yes, we can rally the party around Senator Obama, especially with the help of Hillary Clinton.

As brownsox just reported a little while ago, Hillary Clinton has emailed her supporters announcing that on Saturday she will "extend [her] congratulations to Senator Obama and [her] support for his candidacy."  

There were some low moments in this nominating battle, and some things said and done that many of us wish had never occurred.  But now, with Hillary Clinton signaling that she's prepared to unambiguously acknowledge that Barack Obama is the nominee, that she supports him, and that she wants her supporters to do the same, we should be able to start pulling together to do the work, in unity, that will lead to a huge win in November.  

Back in February, as Barack Obama racked up a series of big wins, I wrote a piece declaring the contest over, that Barack Obama had ensured that he would be the nominee.  There were  reports circulating that Mark Penn wanted her to run a scorched earth campaign, and as we've seen since then, the Clinton campaign heeded too much of Penn's advice.  In calling on the Clinton campaign to reject the scorched earth policy, I wrote this:

But the opportunity for Hillary Clinton to become a historic leader of the Senate is real.  As I've argued repeatedly, there are numerous and strong parallels between the election of 1932 and how this election is evolving.  This would provide Hillary Clinton an opportunity to take advantage of an opportunity to create parallels between 1933 and 2009.  After all, winning elections are great, but I doubt anyone is a Democrat because of our victories of 1932.  But generations of Americans have looked to the Democratic party to lead our country because of the legacy of the New Deal Congresses and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  1932 was the opportunity.  But 1933 and afterward is what established the greatness of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats.  

If he wins in November, Barack Obama will probably never be considered as great a president as Franklin Roosevelt.  For everyone's sake, let's hope he and the country don't face the challenges FDR and the country faced in 1933.  But Hillary Clinton has a chance to be as great a Senator as Lyndon Johnson or Robert Wagner.  Let's hope she ignores Mark Penn, runs a dignified and positive campaign for the next twelve days, and then becomes Barack Obama's greatest ally.

In an unfinished novel F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "there are no second acts in American lives."  Fitzgerald was a great novelist, but it's a dumb line.  Looking at Hillary Clinton's public life, we see she's already had more than one act.  After being her husband's First Lady in Arkansas and then in Washington, she's forged her own career in electoral politics, becoming a US Senator and finishing a close second in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Al Gore found a new path that led to the Nobel Peace Prize.  Richard Nixon reinvented himself about a half dozen times.  And the model that may be best for Clinton to follow is Ted Kennedy, who put behind him his 1980 primary loss to Jimmy Carter and devoted himself to a stellar career in the Senate, ranking him among the giants of the institution.  Let's hope Hillary Clinton finds the role that fits her best.  I think it's to become one of the leaders of the Senate.  Maybe she has something else in mind.  Whatever it is, she will probably be impressive and successful.  

But first, all of us—Obama supporters, Clinton supporters, Edwards supporters, people who were with another candidate and Democrats who didn't care all that much who got our nomination—need to applaud Hillary Clinton's move toward unifying the party.  As has been repeated here many times, Rahm Emanuel put it best:

The way the loser loses will determine whether the winner wins in November.

Today's message to her supporters is a promising sign that Hillary Clinton will help determine that Barack Obama will be the the winner in November.

Finally, a point about other blogs.  Some of us here have watched other political blogs and online communities known for being bastions of Clinton supporters.  Most of those blogs and communities will be fully on board with Obama, if they aren't already. At places like MyDD, the community, including most of the pro-Clinton folks, had already been pushing back against anti-Obama garbage for some time.  The folks at MyDD--many of whom also participate at Daily Kos--are Democrats, they know that Barack Obama needs their support, and he will have their support.  A few other bloggers are simply contrarian, and shouldn't be taken very seriously.

A few other blogs and websites that aren't obviously Republican have trafficked in extremist anti-Obama crap, and continue to do so.  Instead of expressing outrage about them, we should starve them of attention.    

Hillary Clinton appears prepared to give the signal that Democrats need to come together and do whatever they can to elect and support Barack Obama.  Some folks have no interest in joining with other Democrats, even at the urging of Hillary Clinton.  If they don't, even if they're on non-Republican blogs, they will demonstrate that they aren't really Democrats.  

For everyone else, however, it's important that we all realize that unity doesn't come about when only one side reaches out to the other.  Hillary Clinton has begun the process of bringing her supporters toward Barack Obama and his supporters.  For those of us who wanted Barack Obama to be our nominee, we must welcome the Clinton supporters, and do what we can to be modest winners, recognize that whatever differences we had in the nomination battle are tiny compared with our differences with the Republicans, and join together to build a stronger Democratic party and put our country on the path to a more progressive future.  

Magnanimity:

Hillary Clinton has told congressional colleagues she would be open to becoming Barack Obama's vice presidential nominee, saying she would consider it if it would help Democrats win the White House.

Clinton, a New York senator, made the comment on a conference call with other New York lawmakers Tuesday, according a participant on the call.

The senator's remarks came in response to a question from Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez who said she believed the best way for Obama to win over key voting blocs, including Hispanics, would be for him to choose Clinton as his running mate.

In related news, I am willing to play second base for the Detroit Tigers.  I mean, sure, last year second baseman Placido Polanco won both the Silver Slugger and the Gold Glove, but I'm here to serve if it would help the Tigers bring their team together.

A round-up of other breaking magnanimity stories:

• Documents have recently surfaced that suggest that Managing Editor SusanG has informed her Daily Kos colleagues that she would be willing to spend the night with George Clooney if--and only if--it would bring on world peace.
• Devilstower has indicated to international officials his willingness to travel the world inspecting sand quality of beaches and the deflection of hammocks from increased winds due to climate change.
• ct, taking a respite from running the tech side of Daily Kos, has expressed a willingness to subsist on a diet of excellent salami if it would facilitate the drive to achieve world peace. He has also signaled that he would bravely volunteer to drive a Bentley for social justice and move into a 20 room mansion to save baby seals.
• From seals to Penguins.  The word from Pittsburgh is that smintheus has told the coaches that's he's willing to spend tomorrow evening between the pipes for game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals if Penguin's goalie Marc-Andre Fleury is too tired from last night's triple overtime thriller.
• Confidants of Scout Finch  report that in recent conversations she has conveyed a willing to explore San Francisco and the Bay area in an effort to compare and contrast "San Francisco values" with "Midwestern values."
• Our Capitol Hill correspondents have picked up on discussions involving contributing writer Adam B.  If it would resolve the current gridlock, Adam B has agreed to accept a nomination to serve on the Federal Election Commission.
• Rumors are flying that Meteor Blades has told a number of reporters off the record (so typical of him) that he would be willing to serve as policy czar and have the very last word on all legislation in the fields of immigration, defense, health and human services, labor, environment, energy and commerce for the next eight years. Which approval he could phone in from Ubud, Bali, every other day.
• The French press is atwitter over rumors that brownsox is willing to travel to France as a member of the Diplomatic Corps, and attempt to ameliorate the well-documented strains in Franco-American relations by engaging in a "listening tour" of prominent French restaurants and vineyards.
• The British music magazine Mojo has published a claim that Trapper John will, if offered the opportunity, travel back in time to London, 1970, hang out with Jimi Hendrix for a few days, earn his trust, and bogart most of the bottles of wine on September 18.  Trapper John is further willing to serve as the road manager for Band of Gypsys on the 1970-71 Winter Tour.
• DarkSyde just wanted to add that he's open to riding along on the next Shuttle flight as a Mission Specialist, or in any capacity really. He's also warm to the idea of being paid to fly backseat in an F-15 Strike Eagle upside down over the cape on patrol with a Raptor while taking spectacular, official NASA shots of the next shuttle liftoff, you know, just in case they need a volunteer. --  DS

What are YOU open to doing...for, you know, a good cause, and for which you would be indispensable?

As BarbinMD explained a little while ago, earlier today the Associated Press reported that "for all intents and purposes, the two senior [Clinton] officials said, the campaign is over":

On NBC's "Today Show," Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, "I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee."

[...]

Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.

OK.  Seems like progress, that the Clinton campaign is finally acknowledging what some of us have known since mid-February, that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president.  Now, one would imagine, is the time to set the nominating contest behind us,  move on to unifying the party and prepare for November.  

Well, maybe not:

Sen. Hillary Clinton's is "absolutely not" prepared to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, her campaign chairman said.

Terry McAuliffe rejected as "100 percent" incorrect an Associated Press report that Clinton is preparing to acknowledge that Obama has the delegates to win the nomination Tuesday night as the five-month Democratic primary process comes to a close.

Obama "doesn't have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on," McAuliffe told CNN.

Someone else with the Clinton campaign told CBS that Clinton "has no plans to concede the race tonight."  Harold Ickes told MSNBC Clinton would not drop out of the race.  

What we have here, folks, is a breakdown of message discipline within the Clinton campaign.

It's possible that the Clinton campaign is pushing back against the AP report because they wanted tonight to be a bit of a "surprise," or to have her concede the race without having it seem as if it's in reaction to media announcements that she's done.

It's also possible, however, that the Clinton campaign—most of all, Hillary and Bill Clinton—aren't 100% sure of their next move, and are hearing conflicting advice from different factions, and can't make up their mind, even though we're just hours away from the end of primary season voting.  

Whatever the case, this is far from the "well-oiled machine" that the press was lauding back in September of last year.  This is a breakdown in the campaign.  Regardless of any semantic creativity they spring on us tonight, everything we've seen in these last few days points to this being the end of Hillary Clinton's campaign for president.  

Clinton supporters are being called together.  Her staffers are being told to get new jobs.  Uncommitted Senators and members of Congress appear ready to endorse Obama.  Her national co-chair is implying the primary race is over.  And some time in the next few days, Barack Obama will secure enough pledged delegates and commitments from superdelegates to lock up the nomination.

But according to Ben Smith, not everyone in Hillaryland appears reconciled to the end of her candidacy:

A Clinton donor tells me that on a conference call today with major fundraisers this afternoon, Harold Ickes told them Clinton isn't planning to drop out. He pressed donors to stay unified, and reviewed tactical options, including challenging the Michigan delegation.

State finance committees are also circulating letters to deliver to Clinton tomorrow in New York, and I've obtained a draft of the Illinois finance committee's letter, being circulated by a Clinton fundraising aide, Rafi Jafri, which stresses a fight until the convention, and a resolution in "August, and no earlier."

Of course, a politico from Chicago who goes to work against the home-town candidate probably has a lot at stake in Hillary Clinton continuing her candidacy.  One has to guess that the moment Hillary Clinton is no longer a candidate for president is the moment that Rafi Jafri has a very difficult time getting work as a Democratic operative in Chicago.  

But the end of the Clinton campaign will be wrenching for far more people than some of the staffers who've put everything in to what they probably expected would be an easy win and are now realizing will be a loss.  Having set herself up as a "fighter" who doesn't give up, Hillary Clinton will have to explain how the best thing to do is to stop fighting against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination and begin fighting alongside Barack Obama to help him win the White House and deny John McCain the opportunity to complete George Bush's third term as President.  

It won't be easy, but let's hope that tonight, after the voting ends in South Dakota and Montana, Hillary Clinton starts the work of unifying the Democratic party.  Let's hope she starts to tell her supporters that the way they can support the ideals she espoused and the aspirations they wanted to see realized through her candidacy are best pursued by unifying around Barack Obama.  

And let's hope—and let's demand of ourselves and other Obama supporters—that we recognize that unifying the party won't happen only by Clinton supporters coming to us, but by us embracing the Clinton supporters.  We must all recognize that reconciliation and banding together isn't something demanded only of our primary opponents, but is something to be demanded by, and of, all Democrats.  

On Saturday, I attended the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee, and posted updates and analysis about the proceedings on Daily Kos.  It was one of those great moments where you get to compare your perceptions of an event with the characterizations you read, hear and watch in the traditional media.  While I won't say the reports read as if they were at a completely different event than the one I attended, I will say that most of them emphasized conflict and conveyed a level of raucousness greater than I witnessed.  

Using the Clinton and Obama partisans in that crowd as an indication of how deep the divides are within the Democratic party is moronic, because the partisans in attendance are among the most zealous you could find in either camp.  Even if they were valid measures of deep divides within the Democratic party, I didn't find their actions at the meeting all that extreme.  As is usual, most reporters just mindlessly lapsed in to the simplistic "Democrats divided" trope that they so love, because it doesn't require them to think or put much care in to their analysis.  

The issues were contentious, and the debate on the committee was often raw.  And yes, the crowd was engaged in what was going on, and I didn't like the clapping by partisans every time someone said something members of the crowd thought supported their side.  But the room, with the exception of only a couple dozen people at most, did not descend in to chaos.  Unlike what you may have inferred from the reports in much of the press, the RBC didn't turn in to a food fight.

I will admit, I may have a higher threshold than most for protest chaos.  I've been on picket lines with union strikers that turned very violent when we were attacked by paramilitary goons.  I've been at anti-war and community protests where we had to deal with loony left provocateurs who claimed to be Trotskyites or Sparticists but who were really just troublemakers who were trying to provoke a police reaction by throwing rocks at the cops, burning flags and the like.  

So maybe I just have a higher tolerance for a bit of anarchy at an event.  But walking through the line of several hundred or maybe a thousand Clinton supporters protesting down Connecticut Avenue before passing by the Marriott Wardman Park hotel and eventually down in to Rock Creek Park, I only saw a bunch of calm, well-behaved people.  The people walking around with signs didn't come across as particularly angry; I even suspected many of them were probably public employees who were members of AFSCME who were urged by their union reps to join the march.  I can't prove that, but that's what I thought of when I saw the crowd.  

The worst thing I encountered outside the hotel was overheard hyperbole.  

Inside the meeting, sure, there was booing.  The Obama people weren't perfect, but for the most part they seemed to have honored the wishes of Obama and his campaign team and acted in a restrained manner within the meeting.  And though many of the Clinton people booed at several points, that was about the worst behavior one could witness from probably 95% of the Clinton partisans in the room.

Now, yes, there were in fact some people who shouted out "Den-ver! Den-ver!" when the final votes were taken to seat Michigan's delegation at a ratio far different than that sought by Clinton.  But the disrupters probably didn't exceed two dozen people.  One of the loudest had sat next to me during the morning session—somehow she scammed some press credentials, though I don't think she was either press or a blogger—and frankly, she seemed a bit off.  She was the only person in the balcony with the press and bloggers who was cheering, clapping, booing and muttering throughout the session.  She seemed a bit crazed, to Hillary Clinton supporters what the worst of Free Republic loonies are to John McCain supporters.  

Toward the end, when Clinton supporter and committee member Alice Huffman was booed for supporting the Florida compromise, she admonished the Clinton supporters by telling them their conduct wasn't helping their candidate.  Most of the Clinton people seemed to recognize that Huffman was correct.  In the end, the disturbances came mostly from a couple guys heckling from the audience, and maybe a dozen or so women in the back of the room making a bunch of noise and chanting about taking the fight all the way to Denver.  

For much of the media, what happens with a couple dozen rabid partisans points to huge conflicts within the Democratic party.  How they extrapolate from those couple dozen to the entire Democratic coalition, who knows.  

About the time he became the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain was booed by the crowd at the convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee,  despite the organizers of the event imploring their crowd to not boo McCain.  He's seldom gotten over 75% in any primary since he's become the nominee; fully one quarter of the people who bother to cast a vote in an already decided race are casting protest votes.  But what doe we get from much of the traditional media?  More talk about how it's the Democrats who are divided.  

By the way, one other observation from Saturday's meeting: I spent much of the afternoon sitting behind a reporter or producer from one of the networks who all afternoon looked at this website.  Too bad more of her colleagues weren't doing the same.  

(DH adds meat to the piece I linked below -- kos)

Tom Edsall is reporting t