Cool Things To Look Out For

Two things:

First, if you're worried that tomorrow's vote is going to be boring because Hillary's going to win by an estimated 153 to negative 53 (see what I did there? i still made them add up to 100), there's reason to get excited. Democratic House candidates have have been unlikely winners in a couple special elections recently (Last month: Dennis Hastert's seat; last week: a Mississippi seat that had been held by Republicans since 1975).
There's another open seat in Mississippi (Republican Roger Wicker left to take Trent Lott's seat in the Senate last year) and the special election runoff is tomorrow. In this district that voted 62% for Bush in 2004, Democrat Travis Childers got 49.4% of the vote in the first ballot round, oh so close to getting the majority he needed. If Childers wins tomorrow, the GOP will really start to panic.

Second, Barack Obama said today that he would be willing to debate John McCain in town-hall events during the summer.

Obama, an Illinois senator, was responding to a question citing reports that McCain's advisers have suggested the two should campaign together this summer, debating at town hall meetings without a moderator.

While I realize that this probably means the McCain advisers think McCain will win these debates, I still think this idea is really awesome. Maybe it's just my West Wing idealism, but the voters deserve actual debates on actual issues, and this would be a great way to do it.

Poor Mike Gravel :(

The week started out well for my man Gravel, with an almost-but-not-quite endorsement from an Internet celebrity. And he even learned the Soulja Boy dance, so now he can impress all the girls at his next college party!

But then he went on Fox News only to have Neil Cavuto tell him bluntly to his face that he's not going to be President:

But there's still reason to rejoice! Cavuto said Gravel's a lock for the Libertarian Party endorsement!

Not so fast. Enter former Congressman Bob Barr, who apparently has the GOP scared that his positions make him the Second Coming of Ron Paul (I can't believe I just wrote that phrase) and that Barr will win the 8% of Republicans who have been voting for Paul over McCain even after McCain has secured the nomination (and 16% in PA).

The Libertarian Party picks their nominee by May 26th, and right now Gravel's in good position: 11th out of 11 on the Party's website, behind Barr, "Future/Unannounced Candidate," and "None of the Above."

in limbo

it's taken a while, but hillary supporters at harvard are starting to come out of the woodwork. it seems that the threat of an obama nomination--or, perhaps more accurately, the threat of a non-hillary nomination--has induced some students to assure me of their support. people whom i had never thought to support hillary (it's quite a thing for me not to know who supports hillary and who doesn't, really) have taken me aside, their voices grave, asking me for my thoughts. and my thoughts--at once optimistic and resigned--are of no comfort.

my point: i'm beginning to see the signs of disenchantment that the punditocracy blathers about endlessly. still, i'll work tirelessly to make sure we have a democratic president for the next four years. obama--though hardly my first choice--is a great man, a great american, and a great candidate. he is promising. and if he isn't particularly inspirational to me, the fact that so many of my peers are inspired by his candidacy is, in itself, pretty inspirational. i've come a long way in my resignation that he's the presumptive democratic nominee. but at this point, to fight the more bitter feelings of millions of clinton supporters, he might have to buck maureen dowd and ask hillary to be his vp.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Reading Period Time Travel Edition

I officially give up on all pretense of regularly posting "Sunday Nights" on actual Sunday nights. I trust nobody will be altogether brokenhearted.

Today, tonight, or whatever the hell time it is, we're going back to school. First, to high school, before anybody's Gmail started sprouting little blinking orange chat boxes in the corner - in fact, before anybody had Gmail. All the way back to AOL Instant Messenger. And you might feel like you're too sophisticated now to even admit that you had AIM and a screen name with the number '16' in it somewhere, but don't worry - DavidAxelrod and Howard Wolfson still do! Apparently they "exchanged pleasantries" online last Wednesday, on the day that may or may not go down as the final excruciating morning after of this interminable primary season. Though the "pleasantries" are presumably not on the public record, happily, a couple of bloggers have offered their own interpretations. First, a commenter on Ben Smith's blog at Politico takes this guess:

TheRodster42: lol ur toast
WolfieSweater69: stfu, we won IN
TheRodster42: lol NC pwned u
WolfieSweater69: rev wright said wut?
TheRodster42: lol typ white person...

But I personally prefer Ana Marie Cox's rendering:

KewlSweater (9:26:06 PM): yt?
AxStache (9:26:55 PM): y
KewlSweater (9:27:01 PM): we got the white ppl! suck on it!
AxStache (9:27:12 PM): sorry am 2 busy sucking on our 14 PT WIN! PWND!!!!!
KewlSweater (9:27:40 PM): :(
KewlSweater (9:27:45 PM): u don't have to be so mean about it.
KewlSweater (9:28:01 PM): dude rlly, this like, totally blows….
AxStache (9:28:04 PM): i know bro. srsly, i feel for you…
KewlSweater (9:28:07 PM): it’s really curious how much this blows…
AxStache (9:28:14 PM): i know man, but it doesn’t blow as much as Penn!
KewlSweater (9:28:16 PM): LOLOLOL
AxStache (9:28:17 PM): LOL!!!!!
KewlSweater (9:28:19 PM): SRSLY!!! LOLOLOL J ;-)
AxStache (9:28:21 PM): ROFL ROFL….i think i laughed so hard i made my mustache crooked!
KewlSweater (9:28:22 PM): LOLOLOL
AxStache (9:28:23 PM): heehee
KewlSweater (9:28:25 PM): i miss you
AxStache (9:28:29 PM): i miss you too
Phil4Hill (9:28:30 PM): hey guys what’s up?
KewlSweater (9:28:35 PM): um….hey

God help us all, we probably sounded like that once too.

And while we're in the earlyish stages of our adolescent swaggering, let's revisit what I assume to be a confrontation that everyone but me had with their parents: the inevitable fight at the first appearance of text messaging charges on the cell phone bill. (I didn't have a cell phone until I moved out for college. I had suspicions that my parents harbored secret Luddite tendencies when it took us until approximately 1999 to purchase an answering machine, but the cell phone thing more or less sealed the deal.) At any rate, apparently kids these days without a texting plan are subjecting their obliging parents to large bills, which the parents grouse about - understandably, since the idea of paying fifteen cents for every 'lol' a child transmits, in lieu of actual snickering, to his best friend sitting ten feet away would raise my hackles, too. A presumably disgruntled parent named Nigel Bannister (very British, which, in fact, he is), who also happens to be a space scientist, was presumably so disgruntled that he calculated the relative cost per byte of transmitting information via text message versus the cost of transmitting information from the Hubble Telescope. The result: at five pence per message (which, I will have you know, is far cheaper than my non-plan), texting is at least four times more expensive than sending data from the Hubble. To earth. Which, you know, is a long way away.

But enough of that heady stuff - let's back up a little further to your first pimple and, hopefully, your last NSync CD. (Remember: yours, not mine.) Back up to a time when this headline would have been unimaginably hilarious: "Great Tits Cope Well With Warming." Sadly, it's actually about - well, I'll let you figure that out, because I want you to click the link and share in my disappointment. I'll just say: screw you, BBC News.

Finally, to elementary school, that idyllic time of coloring hours and playground games, with this super-cheesy entry in MoveOn's contest to produce an ad for Barack Obama. (You can see the other winners here.)

Now, isn't that just cute enough to turn your stomach? I'll leave you here, just like those kids - happy, holding hands, and with absolutely nothing interesting to do, now that some brat has killed your game of Red Rover.

PSYCH! (There's another throwback.) A late update from the adult world, probably more adult than we'd like to be at this point in our lives: Today, the House Republicans circulated a memo claiming:

Through our “Change You Deserve” message and through our “American Families Agenda,” House Republicans will continue our efforts to speak directly to an American public looking for leaders who will offer real solutions for the challenges they confront every day.

Which is problematic in itself, since the idea of an "American Families Agenda" sounds a lot like the much more boring version of the homosexual agenda (think Mom Jeans). But there's an even more fitting link: apparently "Change You Deserve" is already the slogan of an antidepressant. How very, very telling.

Obama and progressivism

Paul Rosenberg of OpenLeft has written a must-read about historical strains of progressivism (his pet topic) and how they correlate to Obama's politics and the current state of the party. Just read it all.

(...I'll also add that the dynamic between working-class progressivism and middle-class progressivism, which Rosenberg touches on here and has been examined extensively by educationinaction, is very real, and probably the main reason that left-populist Democrats like me are so perplexed by and suspicious of Obama.)

Sunday Screening

Well, as we look ahead to an Obama vs. McCain general election, we should start sketching out lines of argument we can use against the gentleman from Arizona. We can talk about his right-wing politics, his abysmal record, his wild-eyed militarism; but I have to say right now I'm not comfortable with attacks on McCain's age. We have too much dignity, and respect for our elders, to resort to... to...

OH HELL IT'S JUST TOO EASY.

Although I have to give Senator McCain credit here -- Matlock was a quality show. You got Andy Griffith, you got a courtroom, what's not to like?

(If you paid close attention there you might have noticed Fred Thompson seated in the audience. Intertextuality much?)

It occurs to me that some of you young'uns out there might not be familiar with the work of Andy Griffith. If anything you know him from The Andy Griffith Show, classic 1960s TV-Americana, best remembered today for giving us the catchiest theme song ever. But Andy Griffith had a long and fulfilling acting career; the highlight is undoubtedly Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, 1957, a brilliant and gut-wrenching drama/satire. The Network of its day, this is a criminally underrated film that you owe it to yourself to see:

That clip doesn't quite bring it across, but it's a really discomfiting look at entertainment, business and politics. Go get a copy.

I'll close there. Hope reading period isn't too stressful for those of you who, unlike me, aren't Gov concentrators and therefore have work to do (suckers). Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll see you around; this is an open thread.

Republicans Vote Against Motherhood (Apple Pie Next on Agenda)

This is just too good. The Republicans, led by the Congressman I have the privilege of voting against every two years, Todd Tiahrt, voted against mothers. Not only that, they also voted for it before they voted against it:

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard.

Things are getting desperate down there in the Republican caucus, it seems, because people are losing it. And if voting against Mother's Day to stall for time wasn't enough, this is perhaps even more pathetic:

...after one of the motions to adjourn, 61 members lined up to change their votes, one by one. Forty-six went from aye to no, while 15 changed from no to aye. The maneuver ate up 28 minutes in all -- and caused an eruption by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who accused the minority of a "filibuster by vote changing." 

Right now this sort of thing is an annoyance, sure, but in the long run it's a recipe for self-destruction. Todd Tiahrt faces a credible opponent in the 2008 election (one who I'll probably volunteer for this summer), and I don't think that this vote is going to help him any--not just the vote in itself, but the whole debacle gives Democrats an incredibly useful way to frame Republican obstructionism. 

And the White House chef gives out juice boxes at snack time

El Presidente is heading down to Texas today in preparation for Jenna's wedding this Saturday. His spokesman says:

"He's looking forward to it," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters aboard the plane as it flew from rainy Washington to sunny Texas. "He's excited like any proud father is to see one of his daughters get married."

"I think he's also going to make sure he gets a good night's sleep tonight so he can stay up late the rest of the weekend and enjoy all the activities."

Which is especially important because the President has been pooped all week from running around with his little military friends trying to make Iraq collapse onto itself! The American people will definitely have to talk to the White House Press Secretary Chief Babysitter and make sure little Georgie is getting a good nap every day from now on.

You can't vote in your closet

Barack Obama and homosexuality being two of my favorite political causes, you can probably guess that I was pleased to see this story pop up on my blog feed, announcing that Melissa Etheridge will be one of the co-chairs of the Obama campaign's national voter registration drive. The Times article goes on to list a few of the other co-chairs and attribute it to identity politics:

Also on the list: the R&B star Usher; the rocker Dave Matthews; Kerry Washington, an actress known recently from the “Fantastic Four” movies; Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts; and Representative Linda T. Sanchez of California.

The co-chairmen were obviously selected to appeal to the various groups the Democrats are trying to bring on board — young people, blacks, Hispanics.

But wait. Melissa Etheridge is in whatever the RSS feed equivalent of a lede is for this post, and you don't mention the gays? Come on. We know the Democrats more or less take us for granted, and we know that you can't pick out a queer from a voter list the same way you might be able to predict someone's ethnicity or age, but let's be queer - oops, I mean, clear - about something. MELISSA ETHERIDGE IS GAY. She is exactly as gay as Usher is black, which is exactly as much as Dave Matthews is supposed to appeal to young people, at least according to the New York Times. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to chalk this up to overt bias (or even some vague gay-related discomfort), but in case anyone missed that about Melissa, you should know that she's one of us.

Which gives me a great excuse to reprise the most awkward gay moment of the 2008 campaign.

Melissa Etheridge: Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?
Bill Richardson: It's a choice. It's... it's...
Melissa Etheridge: I don't know if you understand the question. Do you think I - a homosexual is born that way, or do you think that around seventh grade, we go, 'Ooh, I wanna be gay?'
Bill Richardson: You know, I'm not a scientist.

WORST ANSWER EVER. Maybe the beard will restore his wisdom.

Mike Gravel, Obama Girl, and Soulja Boy

That is all.

operation chaos

when did a win become a loss? for the life of me, i can't understand why the media thinks that hillary should quit. because she lost one of two states she was expected to lose? because she only won indiana by two points? because she lost a southern state expected to heavily favor obama?

let's get real, folks. hillary clinton won a state that neighbors illinois and receives media from chicago, one in which she was heavily outspent, and one the obama campaign predicted to win by seven points. she won by two points, about sixteen thousand votes. granted, it isn't a huge margin. but she didn't win new hampshire by a huge margin, either. because she lost iowa by eight points, does it follow that she should have dropped out after winning new hampshire by three? obama handily outspent her in texas, and she won texas by four. should she have dropped out then?

granted, i've grumbled about the media's propensity to prematurely end her candidacy before. this isn't anything new. nevertheless, the fact that tim russert has the gall to de-legitimize her candidacy before full results from indiana came in says everything we need to know about the media. remember, media executives who determine front-page headlines and nightly news lead-ins also maintained--in the case of the AP--that britney spears died. and these are the people who gauge paris hilton as a representative of our generation, the people who covered her journey to prison for an entire news cycle.

and so these same people have pronounced her "toast," declaring that the race "is over," that she can't continue. (the new york post even has an online poll that blatantly ignores her candidacy.) well, here's my official response to our beloved "independent" media: fuck you. they've no right to determine an election's result until every vote is counted. they don't nominate our party's standard-bearers; voters do. until the punditocracy learns to curb its impulses to decide an election, our democracy is in danger. 

Lo, how the mighty have fallen into consulting jobs

Apparently Hizzoner is now doing some consulting for a thirty-six-year-old ex-kickboxer boxing champion running to be mayor of Kiev. Apparently his primary role is to offer ideas about how Kiev can reduce the level of corruption in its municipal government.

This is pretty funny to me. No offense intended to Kiev, (kick)boxers, or 36-year-olds - what's more funny is relying for your advice about corruption on a guy with a fairly spotty ethics record himself. Elise has documented this quite well already, so I won't repeat that here. Suffice it to say that of all the American ex-mayors (and even ex-presidential candidates) who you could conceivably ask to give you advice about corruption, Giuliani should probably not be at the top of the list.

Or maybe he'll advise that the mayor of Kiev respond to corruption charges by saying, "My picture is on thousands of buses!"

Update: Corrected for details of the would-be mayor's current (not former!) boxing career. Thanks, David!

"Over"

Everybody -- and by "everybody" I mean "Tim Russert and his friends" -- says yesterday's NC and IN results basically end the campaign, whether Hillary knows it or not. That's the big narrative of the day, and Obama supporters are predictably jubilant. But the best commentary comes, as usual, from Chris Bowers:

I am finding myself resistant to the way this nomination campaign appears to be ending, mainly because there is no logic to it. All of the arguments that could be used by the punditry to declare the nomination campaign over could have been used really at any point since Wisconsin. For some reason, those arguments appear to be sticking tonight, whereas they weren't earlier. According to the logic that ends the campaign tonight, there was no reason to torture us for the past two months, except to damage Democrats for the sake of damaging Democrats. I guess I should have learned by now that that is reason enough.

The Clinton campaign will probably slog on in some form, as Ben Smith indicates. After all, she is going to win West Virginia, and maybe Michigan really won't have a single delegate for Obama. Or something else absurd that won't happen. However, the truth is that the Clinton campaign has been kept alive by inaccurate and arbitrary media rules that now seem to have arbitrarily shifted against her. Survival in that environment will prove extremely difficult indeed. Live by the arbitrary media narrative, become irrelevant by it. The nomination campaign seems to have outlived its usefulness to the national media.

Absolutely right. This whole thing is just a joke.

Election Day Voter Registration in MA: an open letter

I'm writing this blog post today to tell you about an issue that is near and dear to my heart: voter engagement/election day registration.  It isn't really a partisan issue (although you folks aren't really ones to worry about this) but it would make a huge difference in participation levels here in MA.  Minnesota has it and when I met the Secretary of State who started it there this past summer, he convinced me of the value it provides.  There's no evidence of voter fraud with it, only increased chances to promote an active democracy.  Just think about it.  College students across MA could register day of election to cast ballots, without needing to think ahead and ask for an absentee ballot. 

For the Harvard specific benefits, think about the benefits this could bring on a local level too.  Imagine having city councilors beholden to the student vote who wanted to help make sure Felipes was open past 2am.  Think about progressive student votes coming in in more conservative towns across MA like Olin College in Needham or the ladies of Wellesley.

I want you sign this petition to help move it forward, the bill promoting this is at a critical point in the approval process.  The governor has already said he would sign it, and so all it needs is to pass the legislature.  Sign here.

Harry Reid has all the energy of a sloth covered in molasses

Here is the most boring interview in the history of ever:

Notice how Senator Reid doesn't say a word for the first minute and eight seconds.

If I didn't know any better, I would think that this is the reason why nothing has gotten done in the Senate since the Democrats took the majority.

I really hope we get a nominee soon so we can stop having this nonsense as the face of our party. It's impossible to get excited about that.