2008 Matters

I've been trying not to write about 2008 so much, because as much as we'd like George Bush to just go away he is still President for two more years, and while he'll be hard-pressed to get an agenda passed, he can still, you know, start illegal wars and stuff. Somebody has to keep their eyes on the guy in charge. Nevertheless, the early start to the race is fast becoming impossible to ignore, so here's a quick roundup:

• This Fox News "Democrat Party debate" story is interesting. It appears that nobody in the Democratic Party of Nevada really knew about it beforehand; it was an inside job between the party chair and (allegedly) Harry Reid. So. Fox News schedules a debate for Democrats. They handled it pretty horribly last time. They're clearly a propaganda outfit and not a news organization. So. The vast left-wing conspiracy is outraged. John Edwards sez he's not coming. The NV Dems try to stop the bleeding by allowing a token Air America host to participate on the debate panel, but Mark Green, Air America's new President, pretty much shut that down. This is going to get much worse for the NDP before it gets better unless they just pull the plug. It's a shame, too, because we need Nevada as part of a Western strategy in 2008, so anything that hurts the party like this is damaging. I would also say that, while there's no reason to give Fox News any credibility, people don't only have one channel on their television, and they did secure broadcast on major Fox affiliates in the state.

• I did think this was pretty good, and Obama's people had nothing to do with it.



If Barack would only embrace the open-source nature of new politics, he could cruise to victory. Really. He'd be able to raise as much as he wanted online, and he'd have the enthusiastic support of creative people like this.

• Chuck Hagel's close to announcing. He may talk a good game on the war, but he's as reliable a conservative as they come. Still, it'll be fun to see the right bash the hell out of him (and maybe build his popularity besides).

• Newt Gingrich is having a religious conversion. He's positioning himself just right for the nomination, it seems to me. There's a huge vaccuum with the lack of a credible conservative candidate, and some people still consider him an intellectual. He's actually the meanest, most divisive, most corrupt guy the Republicans have, but he taught a class somewhere, so that makes him brilliant. And he's the kind of guy who says things like New Orleans residents suffered from a failure of citizenship for not knowing how to get out of a hurricane. Nobody blames the victim like Newt. The conservatives will lap it up. He wouldn't surprise me at all as the nominee.

• Moving to the Senate in 2008, you know that the Republican chair of the campaign committee, Jon Ensign, isn't particularly enthused about his chances when he lists five Republican-held states as "trouble spots". Those states, by the way, are: Colorado (open seat), Maine (Collins), New Hampshire (Sununu), Oregon (Smith) and Minnesota (Coleman). He forgot New Mexico, given Pete Domenici's recent troubles. And North Carolina, where Elizabeth Dole is vulnerable, given the right candidate. On the Democratic side, pretty much everyone's safe except Tim Johnson (and South Dakota Republicans can't figure out how to run against a sick man given their penchant for slash-and-burn politics) and Mary Landrieu (who looked fairly safe in the most recent poll).