The knives are coming out

Now that Howard Dean is almost universally acknowledged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the knives are starting to come out. This is to be expected so we should not get upset about it. Winning the nomination should not be a cake walk for anyone, even Howard Dean. Bush was allowed to assume the Presidency without serious examination and look at the mess that came from that failure! However, articles like today's Washington Post story "Dean Invites More Scrutiny By Switching Key Stances" are an example of something more troublesome in our political dialog. The article tries to make the case that, now that Dean is out in front, he is adjusting his positions as part of a political maneuver to increase his appeal. It talks specifically about his positions on campaign financing, social security eligibility and the Cuban embargo. In all of these cases the article suggests (with liberal quoting from political opponents) that Dean is demonstrating a typical political cravenness by shifting his opinions to match certain key demographics or to take advantage of new realities. Let's take each of these in turn. First, when Dean pledged to abide by campaign finance limits he had no idea that he might be able to bust those limits through small donations alone. His point at the time was that the finance limits were important to prevent a small number of people from being able to outright buy the election. The federal system is designed to encourage a larger number of participants in the political process. Does it therefore make sense to abide by those limits when your campaign is living on nothing but the participation of a large number of individuals? That is what Dean would have to do if he were to abide by those limits. He would have to turn back the donations of small contributors. Does that make sense? Especially in light of George Bush's plan not to abide by those limits and spend nearly $200 million during the primary season? Second, Dean has broached the idea of raising SS eligibility to 70. But, Dean only broached the idea, he did not endorse it (and he did so several years ago). A pragmatic thinker like Dean does not rule out proposals just because they might offend certain interest groups. He might eventually decide against them, but that does not mean he shouldn't be allowed to even consider them. Extraordinary problems sometimes require thinking out side the box. Should we discourage our leaders from doing so in tough times? Dean has since said that he no longer supports the idea because he believes SS can be saved by other means. He did err when he denied suggesting that he would raise the age to 70 and he appropriately apologized right afterward when the error was pointed out to him. I consider this a plus for him: he's not so arrogant that he can't admit when he makes a mistake. All leaders make mistakes. Do we want them to always act like they are perfect? That's the way George W. Bush governs. Do we want more of the same? Third, Dean, like many others (including myself), has supported the idea of increasing economic ties to Cuba on the theory that it can help undermine the totalitarian communist system that currently controls that island. But he has rightly pointed out that, as long as Castro cracks down on dissidents as he has recently done, such talk cannot be put forward lest it be interpreted as a reward for that kind of behavior. So Dean has not come out against raising the embargo. He has just said that now is not the time to do so. This is the sign of a leader who listens to reality rather than some ideological blueprint. When it comes down to it the essence of the criticism in the Post article is that Dean is not doctrinaire. In other words, he considers the facts on the ground as well as ideology when deciding what should be done. Since facts change over the course of time the choice of what to do must also change. Part of the reason we are in such a mess right now is that we are lead by people who refuse to admit that their ideas for how to get things done don't match the reality of the world around them. Good leaders must be open to changing their stance and, just as importantly, they must be allowed to consider alternatives that are contrary to previously stated positions. And that really is what this is all about. Do we want candidates who are devoted more to putting out an image of consistency than actually working to make things better? If so then why should we be surprised that our leaders turn out to be either ideologues or mealy-mouthed politicians who will do anything they can to avoid admitting that they were wrong? This is the different between pragmatic and ideological leadership. The later tries to force reality to fit its preconceived notions while the former tries to work within the bounds of reality to make things better. The later is an arrogant presumption that the ideologue has figured it all out while the former is a humble acknowledgement that reality doesn't always match our fondest wishes. This article is essentially arguing that it is better that our political leaders be rigid ideologues (or at least make it appear that they are) rather than pragmatic realists. Is that what we really want? I say no!

How Dean Could Lose

As a flipside to my previous post about ways Dean could win, I think it behooves Dean supporters to think about the ways he could lose. As things currently stand, I think the nomination is Dean's to lose. By that I mean that, barring some mistake on Dean's part, there just isn't that much that the other contenders could do that would keep Dean from getting the nomination (and no, I don't consider Clark to be the threat that others make him out to be). And, since I am a Dean supporter, I am bullish on his chances to beat Bush. But Dean could still make a mistake or two that could cost him the nomination. I think it behooves Dean supporters, as well as the Dean campaign itself, to consider these possibilities: 1) Dean could make a major gaffe or two that would confirm in some people's minds the impression that he isn't ready for prime time. This is always a danger with any candidate, but especially with an untested challenger on the national level. However, Dean has shown a remarkable ability, so far, to whether criticism and overcome it (witness the fact that so many criticized his Meet The Press performance, yet he almost immediately followed that with a record breaking online fund drive). So, I'm pretty confident that Dean can avoid this pitfall. 2) Dean could slack off, let his momentum up to this point carry him through the rest of the primary season. This has killed viable candidates in the past. Dukakis had a huge lead over Bush Sr. in 88 that he frittered away by effectively dropping out of sight for nearly a month. A successful campaign simply cannot rest on its laurels. The arrogance of being the presumed front-runner almost did in Gore in the early season last time around. Kerry may have suffered from this as well and is now paying the price. Dean cannot allow himself to fall into the same trap. 3) Related to the arrogance note, Dean could nationalize the campaign to soon. Despite his promising poll numbers and increased attention, Dean has to remember that there are still 4 months until the primaries. A lot could happen during that time and he simply can't start acting like he already has NH sewn up. 20 point leads can be lost (and no doubt that is what Kerry is counting on). If Dean were to start acting like he has already won New Hampshire then the residents of that state could come to resent him by the time they go to the polls and make him suffer for it. If Dean were to lose NH, or even just barely eke out a win, it would tarnish his new reputation as a wunderkind. The last is, I think, the greatest danger facing the Dean campaign right now. I loved the Sleepless Summer Tour. I love that they are running ads in 6 states already. But I worry that the campaign might be moving to quickly to nationalize this campaign when they should make sure that they don't let Iowa and New Hampshire slide back into the loss column. As such, I think they should re-double their efforts in these states. Dean should spend at least half his time between now and January canvassing both Iowa and New Hampshire. He should not allow his national exposure to eat substantially into the time he spends in those states. It is absolutely vital that he not give the impression that he is taking them for granted. Iowa and New Hampshire are ripe for Dean right now. But that could still change if Dean allows it. He must not.

The things we do to the people we like

Latest Krugman:

Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers — single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up.

There are times when I question my support for Dean. Not because I don't think he can win or because I don't think he can do the job. It's just that I like the guy to much to wish on him the kind of mess he is going to be inheriting.

That answers that question

Sen. Clinton Dismisses 2004 Speculation

``I am absolutely ruling it out,'' Clinton said during a visit to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, N.Y. She had insisted in recent months that she will not consider entering the race for president this year even if that is what some Democrats want.

Okay, can we finally move on from speculating about Hillary joining the race and start talking about the race as it actually is?

Google News Democratic Poll for 8/29/2003

		This Week (8/29)			Last Week (8/22)
1	Howard Dean	4250	19.4%	+1.1	1	3830	18.3%
2	John Kerry	4190	19.1%	+2.4	2	3500	16.7%
3	Dick Gephardt	2640	12.0%	+1.2	6	2270	10.8%
4	John Edwards	2430	11.1%	-1.0	4	2530	12.1%
5	Joe Lieberman	2300	10.5%	-0.8	5	2360	11.3%
6	Bob Graham	2130	9.7%	-4.3	3	2930	14.0%
7	Dennis Kucinich	1570	7.2%	+0.2	7	1460	7.0%
8	Al Sharpton	1270	5.8%	+0.3	8	1140	5.4%
9	Carol Moseley Braun	763	3.5%	+0.2	9	695	3.3%
10	Wesley Clark	405	1.8%	+0.7	10	233	1.1%

Dean retains his #1 spot, but Kerry has closed the gap considerably. This may be due, ironically, to increased coverage of Dean's surge. For example, there were a large number of stories in the last few days about Dean's surge over Kerry in the New Hampshire poll. That story, which is favorable to Dean, also impacted Kerry's media share numbers. All of which is a useful reminder that these numbers do not predict popularity or who is going to win. 

Gephardt also had a pretty good week, indicating that the upper-tier of Dean/Kerry/Gephardt might be pulling away from the 2nd tier.

Speaking of which, Sen. Graham plunged dramatically, perhaps reflecting a more realistic assessment of his media worthiness as a Presidential candidate. Sorry Bob.

The remainder of the 2nd and 3rd tiers remained mostly unchanged.

Wesley Clark remains the darling of the political insiders but a virtual non-entity in the news. His numbers have improved, but he still has only half the coverage that Braun has. While I said above that this poll does not necessarily reflect predictive value for winning, I think Clark supporters might want to be a little more realistic about just how quickly their man can move into the top tier. Before I put him in the poll I sort of assumed that, if he announced, he would quickly move near the top. Now I am not so sure.

It will take more than a splashy announcement to win the eyes of the news reading public (hint to Sen. Kerry). It will take a steady drumbeat of media coverage for Clark to really have a chance of winning this thing and to get that will require an extensive media plan for the Clark rollout. One of the secrets to Dean's success has been that he (Joe Trippi actually) has kept the Dean story fresh and interesting. Clark may make an initial splash. But if he does nothing more than step out and say, "I'm a general, vote for me!" he's going to fizzle out very quickly.

(Methodology: All numbers are taken from the hit counts when searching on the Google News Service for news stories containing each candidate's name. Click on each name to rerun the search. You will get different results as the numbers are constantly changing. I make absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning.)

Switch to Dean

Some enterprising individuals have stolen the Switched campaign from Apple and are using it to promoted Dean. Check it out.

Crunch Time

There's been a lot of chatter in the blogs about recent rumors that Hillary may jump in after all. Here's what I have to say about this: rumors of Hillary running have surfaced regularly over the past year or so at about 3-4 week intervals. Quite often they can be traced to right-wing sources who push the rumors either as a means of goading their followers into donating more money to "Stop Hitlary!" or because they really want to run against Hillary and will jump on any suggestion that she will. These rumors eventually die out as Hillary, once again, re-iterates that she is NOT running this time. I see nothing in this latest rumor to distinguish it from anything that has been said before. I think what is happening is that the Democratic establishment is coming to terms with the Dean question. The MO is behind Dean and they know that none of the currently declared candidates is likely to stop it. So they have to decide: will they call off the attacks on Dean (which means muzzling Al From) or will they make an all-out push to find the anti-Dean and throw all their weight behind him or her. Wesley Clark is the most likely nominee for the latter role, Hillary being a distant second. Clark because he looks so great on paper. Hillary because she has instant name recognition. I think the delays in Clark's decision to run reflect the heat of the battles currently going on behind the scenes. There are some who are absolutely convinced that Dean will be a disaster. There are others who are absolutely convinced that an establishment candidate horning in now to beat back the Dean juggernaught will absolutely rip the Democratic party apart at the very time when it most needs to be united. I think you can guess where I come down on that spectrum. It's crunch time folks. The next 30 days could be the most critical to the future of the Democratic chances in 2004. Here's hoping they don't do anything stupid.

How Dean Can Win

I highly recommend this post by Jusiper, the first of a promised four part series "How Dean Can Win: A Response to Naysayers". If the other three parts are as good as this one then this promises to be a barnstormer of a series. Jusiper apparently is breaking down his(?) series according to four points that Ruy Teixeira iterated as examples of why Dean would likely lose. The first of these is on the matter of social issues, gay rights in particular. Jusiper re-iterates and expands on a point I have made before: the idea that ANY Democratic nominee can avoid a battle on this issue is naive at best. John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, they will ALL have to answer for the general support for improved homosexual rights in the Democratic party. They will all be smeared as being in favor of the most radical of radical gay rights agendas. The fact that they aren't is irrelevant because the GOP has gotten very good at painting their opposition as being the opposite of what they actually are (Gore was a boy scout, but by the time they got through with him many in America thought he was a congenital liar). To deal with this issue in 2004 we need a candidate who will not avoid it but will, instead, turn the issue into one that is a positive for the Democratic party. Namely, we need a candidate who can persuade the electorate that, despite their personal misgivings about homosexuality, it is still a good idea to allow homosexuals to have certain rights that heterosexuals take for granted (e.g. hospital visitation rights, right to make medical decisions for loved ones, right to share in financial benefits as well as burdens, etc.) Here is Jusiper's take on it:

The impact that civil unions will have on the election depends on the Democratic nominee's ability to frame them as an issue of equal rights rather than social decay. At a campaign appearance in Iowa, Dean demonstrated how he's going to do it. A woman concerned about the issue brought it up with him after his speech. Dean told her about an 80-year old veteran he had met who had fought in World War II: the man had thanked Dean for the civil unions bill, and said he was gay. If America could deny someone like that the same rights as other people, Dean said, then it wasn't the kind of country he thought it was. If anyone can frame gay rights the right way, it's him.

While gay rights will hurt the Democratic nominee in certain constituencies, he does not need to win over the most extreme opposition in order to win the country. He simply needs to persuade that 20% in the middle of the spectrum that their sense of fair play should override their squeamishness about homosexuality. And a candidate who isn't afraid to confront this issue head one will win kudos for bravery, something that Democrats have not gotten for a while. "Democratic bravery" has become something of an oxymoron in political dialog and, as long as that impression remains, no Democratic candidate will win.

graffitigate

The New York Times has more on the (faux) controversy over the graffiti backdrop at the NY Dean rally:

As he watched Howard Dean's rally in Bryant Park on Tuesday night, Councilman James Oddo, a Staten Island Republican, grew increasingly angry about what was behind Dr. Dean: a backdrop purposefully covered with graffiti. "Offensive," "narrow-minded" and "anachronistic" were some of the words that Mr. Oddo used in a letter sent to the Dean presidential campaign yesterday.

So I guess Councilman Oddo must not have found much to disagree with in Dean's comments since it was the graffiti backdrop that got him most upset? I'll leave it to the artist who painted the backdrop to respond:

And Keo, also known as Blake Lethem, 36, rejected being tagged as a vandal. "The vandals were an ancient tribe that used to run through countries, plundering and pillaging," he said. "I don't do that. That's what the Republicans are doing. I try to beautify my surroundings. I may fall short of that goal, but at least I'm trying."

The GOP is desperate

If this is the best they can throw at Dean:

Dean, Republicans Spar Over 'Graffiti' Howard Dean has gotten himself into a paint brawl. The Democratic presidential hopeful is drawing heat from City Hall after appearing in front of a graffiti-covered backdrop during a rally at Bryant Park on Tuesday. "It's unfortunate that Mr. Dean would promote and romanticize a form of vandalism, especially considering this city's success in eliminating this urban blight," said Bloomberg's press secretary Ed Skyler.

Amazing. All the problems in the world, all the possibilities with which they could go after Dean, and they attack him for commissioning a piece of graffitti art?

Bush's fundraising troubles

This is rich:

President Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign — expected to dwarf Democratic hopefuls by raising $200 million or more for the primaries, with no GOP rival — is appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won't have enough cash to defend himself against Democratic attacks. "Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him," campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote in the fund-raising e-mail sent Wednesday night. "If you need more convincing the president needs your help, consider what the Democrats are saying. The race is just starting, but their rhetoric is already red-hot."

But why shouldn't the GOP think they can get away with a blatant lie like this? After all, during the 2000 debates Bush blurted out that Gore was spending more money than him, an obvious falsehood, but did the establishment media call him on it? No! They chose instead to go after Gore because he used the incorrect verb tense when talking about a Florida student having to stand in her classroom. The thinking in the press is basically that Bush is a stumble-bum when it comes to speaking so they shouldn't get to hot under the caller if he makeasininene comments like "He's outspending me!" The result is that these comments are allowed to pass into the American sub-conscious and people begin to believe it. After all, if it wasn't true the press would call him on it? Right? Right?

More on Dean's draft deferment.

Slate has a new series of articles on the candidates, this time examining "the story that supposedly shows each candidate at his worst". Today they are talk about Dean. In particular, they talk about the suggestion that Dean skipped out on serving in Vietnam because of a back problem but then went on to ski "80 days" in Aspen and work the summer pouring concrete. Slate basically knocks this story down by quoting Dean in full from his MTP appearance:

Defense: Dean told Russert, "I was given an examination. I had a previous back problem, which is evidently congenital, which prevented me from doing any sustained running, a problem that I've had since then, since that time, which requires that when I get out of the car I often have some pains up and down my leg and back and so forth. But I have been able to exercise [and have] a vigorous athletic life except for some things. One of those is long-distance running, which is how the problem came to my attention in the first place. I noticed the pain when I was in high school running track. Â… After the physical, I received a 1-Y deferment, [which] means you can only be called in times of national emergency. I didn't have anything to do with choosing any draft deferment. Â… The United States government said this is your classification. I'm not responsible for that.

There is something more to add to this defense: the physical that Dean took that identified the problem and resulted in his 1-Y classification(*) was an induction physical. That means it was the physical he took on the day he showed up to be inducted into the army. In other words, he didn't avoid the draft. He showed up to fulfill his obligation and it was the army that turned him away. It is important to bone up on the facts on this point because you know damn well that the right-wing will try to smear Dean as some kind of shirker because he "skied for 80 days" in Aspen while our boys were dying in Vietnam. You can respond to this smear with the above facts, but you should also throw it back in the accusers face by asking why they aren't concerned about Bush's failure to complete his national guard duty. (* A 1-Y classification is not as strong as a 4-F. When you get a 1-Y it means the army doesn't consider you fit for duty at this time but that they might still call you back at a later time if the need for additional bodies becomes so pressing that they would risk taking someone with certain health problems.)

Ha Ha!

Ho Ho: Hot or Not?

Ineptitude Redefined

Michael Tomasky says the Republican's are worse than liars. They are "total incompetents"!

Republicans, at least since the 1980 election, have gotten lots of mileage out of billing themselves as the party of competence. They knew how to deal with the Russkies. They understood a budget. They knew how to crack down on the crooks and hoodlums. They understood the bottom line, and they knew what was right for America. The Democrats, meanwhile, were supposedly more interested in their dainty little social-engineering schemes than in success. Lots of people bought all of this, and of course there was a little bit of truth to it -- then. But the labels stuck hard. Democrats still have to take dramatic steps to prove their competence while Republicans are presumed -- by the mainstream media, anyway -- to possess it until they demonstrate otherwise.

I think James Carville has been making a variation of this argument for years and I think Dean, in his most recent campaign stump speeches, has really started to push it as well. Republican's really are bad managers. Why would anyone trust them to be in charge of anything?

When voters recognize that one party knows how to get things done and the other party does not, they tend to gravitate toward the former even if they don't particularly agree with everything it stands for. Lots of people have voted Republican in the last few elections, and certainly in 2000, because even though they weren't nearly as right wing as the zealots now in power, they felt that the Republicans would do a better job of looking after their money and leaving the world a safer place for their kids. Voters surely can see that the Grand Incompetence Party is doing neither of those things. The Democrats just need to drill it into them.

Confidence in your own ability is a big selling point in any endeavor. People admire people who seem to know what they are doing and Republicans, of late, have gotten very good at faking competence. The problem the Democrats have had is that they have repeatedly acted hesitant in the face of Dubya's onslaught and that has made them unpopular with the electorate. The same electorate who, in poll after poll, consistently side with Democrats on the issues. This is, I think, the secret of Dean's success more than anything else: he recognizes that you have to act like you believe in what you stand for if people are going to vote for you. Up on howarddean.tv right now they have a clip of a Hardball segment where Frank Lunz interviewed a focus group after watching some Dean videos. Dean really wowed this group. What's more, several of them said that they liked Dean even though they didn't necessarily agree with him on certain issues. This is the kind of thing candidates want to hear from the electorate. It means that they can get votes from people without having to pander to their particular interests. As I have said before, winning the muddled middle is not a matter of figuring out what they want as it is telling them what they want in such a way that they come to believe it. The Republicans learned this a long time ago and have used it successfully. But, as Tomasky points out, they are incompetent administrators and may have started to believe their own myths about themselves. The time is ripe for the GOP to fall apart.

Clark's chances

I was reading some pieces on Clark today and it struck me that Clark is the darling of a lot of political insiders, but few of them seem to be asking whether he really will be able to win over the voters at such a late date (and yes, at least this year, Sept. 2003 is a late date). The voters, particularly those in Iowa and New Hampshire, might be adverse to talking heads telling them who they should vote for. If Clark enters and a lot of pundits start gushing over him I have to wonder if this might produce a backlash that would ultimately destroy Clark's chances. (Take all this with a grain of salt since I am a big time Dean supporter.) I've said before that Clark would make a great President. But he has yet to prove himself as a campaigner and that is the skill that will be most important when it comes to beating Bush. Resumes don't matter as much as the cogniscenti might like them to matter (otherwise there would be no President Dubya). Dean has already demonstrated that he is very good on the campaign trail. Can Clark? Or is he just the last best hope of the Democrats who don't want Dean to get the nomination?

Keeping things in perspective

I think it is important to keep in perspective just what Dean might be accomplishing this season. For that you have to get into the details of federal matching funds and the limits involved. Here's the deal on the matching funds (warning: I'm not a lawyer, just a blogger). If a candidate accepts matching funds (the first $250 of each individuals donations are matched, up to a total amount that is calculated based on tax receipts) then they must also accept the limits that say they won't spend more then X amount of dollars during the campaign season. In this case, for the primary season, X is about $45 million dollars. Now, in a normal year, few Democrats could ever dream of raising so much money that, even with the matching funds, they would actually hit that limit. However, Dean might just do it. In other words, if he can raise, without matching funds, more than $45 million dollars, then he would be beyond stupid not to forego the matching funds and thus be able to use all of the $45+ million in the upcoming campaign season (until he gets the nomination, after that the cycle starts all over again for the general). The mere fact that Dean's campaign has raised the possibility that they might be able to do this has got to have stunned all the other candidates, including Bush/Rove. The last Democrat to be able to do this was Clinton in the 95-96 cycle, and that was when he was a sitting President! Clinton also got involved in a lot of fundraising scandals because of the amount of money he raised. Dean has been able to raise all this money almost completely from small time donors. Not much chance of a major scandal there. Yet he could actually top Clinton's fundraising totals from 8 years ago! Pretty amazing for a guy who virtually no one had heard of six months ago.

Diversity for Dean

There has been some talk of late that Dean is not attracting a very ethnically diverse following. That may have been true early on in the campaign, but anyone who watched the C-SPAN coverage of the New York rally, especially Dean's walk through the crowd afterward, can see that this latest meme is as true to reality as all the others ("he's unelectable", "he's peaking to soon", "he's a leftist, anti-war peacnik", "his leftist, anti-war peacenik base will leave him when they learn he is a centrist", etc., etc., etc.) As evidence of this I offer the following picture from last nights rally: True, it is just one picture (others can be found here), but I am starting to see more and more faces of different colors showing up at Dean events. Joe Trippi commented in an online chat today at the Washington Post specifically on this topic, bringing special attention to the fact that, until recently, the campaign simply hasn't had the money to focus efforts on minority outreach:

Milwaukee, Wis.: I am troubled by the lack of social diversity among the audience in the city rallies. I saw few minorities at our reception here in Milwaukee and the Times article today said that absence was the same in the other cities. Are you aware of the problem and is their some way to highlight Afro-American support by getting an endorsement or have a minority prominent in Dean's campaign? Joe Trippi: Two things. One, when you start with seven people and $150,000 in the bank you have to keep a very small focus. You can't do too many things in that situation. We determined that we had to focus on four things - Iowa, New Hampshire, the Internet and fundraising. For the first six months of this year, that is all we had the resources to do. With the June 30th quarter surge, we have now been able to hire outreach coordinators in the African-American, Hispanic and Asian-America communities as well as others. For example, Andy Pringle who was until recently Carol Mosley Braun's campaign manager for president, has joined our campaign. He is our deputy campaign manager and is taking on the responsibility of outreach in these communities. Congressman Major Owens endorsed us last night in New York, a key African American congressman. Many other supporters are joining. We expect you will be able to see significant progress in the next 60 days. Another indicator that we are on the right track: at one of our rallies in Austin, Tex. several weeks ago we emailed the 481 people we knew supported us in Austin. When we got to the rally there were 3200 people there. That was because the initial email group went out and leafleted the Latino community of Austin as well as others. Of the 3200 people who showed up, nearly half were Latino and nearly two-thirds didn't own a computer. We are seeing more and more that the grassroots movement is reaching beyond the Internet. I would also say that if we are now ahead nationally, as the Zogby polls suggest, than we are probably fairing as well or better than the other major candidates in the race at this stage. It is something we continue to work on but we are making lots of progress.

People are listening

Ezra talks this morning about the real impact blogs have on the political scene in light of their low readership numbers when compared to daily newspapers (his post was inspired by similar discussions between Max Sawicky and Demosthenes). I think it is a mistake to try and compare the readership of blogs to the readership of general newspapers and news magazines. I have no numbers to back me up on this, but I think that the readership of blogs tends to be much more politically connected then the readership of general news sources. Thus, it is probably better to compare our readership to the small print run political journals then to the major dailies and weeklies. Even if we only have a few hundred regular readers(*) if just five of them have significant political pull (such as a Joe Trippi) then the impact of what we say can be quite substantial. Take heart guys. People, the right people, are starting to listen. (* I would guess I have about 200 who check me out on a regular basis, small time compared to Ezra and a mere dustspeck compared to Atrios and Kos)

Tom Tomorrow is not endorsing Dean, but he is apparently encouraged by what he sees in the Dean campaign:

I've been saying for years that the Democrats need to grow a backbone--when it starts to happen, I think it's something that deserves encouragement.

This is significant because Tom has been a major league critic of the Democratic party from the left (I believe he supported Nader in 2000 but I could be wrong on that point). I read in this that Tom would find a Dean candidacy acceptable and thus would not try to undermine it like some did with the Gore campaign in 2000.

Getting it right is not always the best thing

A few months back I made a post in which I calculated the point at which post "Mission Accomplished" U.S. combat deaths would exceed pre "Mission Accomplished" U.S. combat deaths. Based on the then current rate of deaths I put the approximate crossover date sometime around mid-August. I hate it when I'm right.

Losing Toby Keith

You know Bush is in trouble when a gung-ho type like Toby Keith starts expressing doubts about Iraq:

As he sang the lyrics to his celebrated patriotic hit Sunday at Staples Center, red, white and blue confetti rained down on the curled brim of Toby Keith's cowboy hat and rocket-red pyrotechnics shot up past a video screen showing the Statue of Liberty. This was the Toby the crowd wanted and expected, the roadhouse patriot. But a few hours earlier, in a hushed dressing room, it was a different Keith — one who talked about the increasingly onerous challenge of playing the uncomplicated man in complicated times. Away from the firepower of the stage, this fighting man from Oklahoma said that he has decided to call a cease-fire in his ugly feud with the Dixie Chicks ("We had fun with it, but I'm just done with it"), that he still has lingering questions about the necessity of the war in Iraq ("Honestly, I'm still doing the math on that") and that he wonders whether the hit song, "(Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue) The Angry American," has typecast him ("People think I bang the war drum, and that's not me"). "Look, my stance is I pick and choose my wars. This war here [in Iraq], the math hasn't worked out for me on it. But I'm smart enough to know there's people smarter than me. [National security advisor] Condoleezza Rice, [Secretary of State] Colin Powell, George Bush — this is their job, and I have to trust in them. I support the commander in chief and the troops." Keith took a long pause to consider his words, and then added: "I was for Afghanistan, 100%. We got struck and the Taliban needed to be exterminated, but this war here, in Iraq, I didn't necessarily have it all worked out. It didn't work out for me. I know a tyrant is gone and all of that, but whether it was our duty to go do that, well, I haven't figured that out."

I wonder if Toby has been spending some time talking to his friend Willie Nelson? (tip of the hat to Hoffmania for finding this item)

Dean has no chance in the south?

Click here for an MP3 file of an interview Gov. Dean gave this weekend on Clear Channel's flagship station. The interview is significant for several reasons, not the least that the host of the show, a self-professed right-wing Republican, can barely restrain himself from gushing over Howard Dean. The host (sorry, forgot his name and I don't have time right now to play the file again) actually appears to be criticizing his fellow right-wing talkers (Limbaugh in particular) for mischaracterizing Dean's politics. I think it is only the most idealistic dream who would think that Dean can win Texas. But if Dean can get this kind of response from a self-professed right-wing southern talk show host then I think his chances in the South are much better than some would have thought.

Sitting Bull on the run

This Just In (courtesy Jerry Bowles of Best of the Blogs).

15,000 in Seattle?

Oh sure, the Dean campaign is peaking to early. (Warning: Quicktime VR image) I went to the Dean rally in Portland this afternoon and Howard said we had broken the record for Dean rallies (about 5,000). Well, our place in the limelight didn't last very long as it appears that Seattle brought in about 15,000. Has ANY Presidential candidate EVER drawn this kind of support this early in a campaign before? I wonder if Karl Rove is starting to rethink his "woohoo Go Dean!" chant yet?