2008 Matters

We're inching toward a time when what happens in the Presidential race might actually matter, so maybe I'll start doing more of these roundups.

• We'll start on the Republican side, where Rudy Giuliani is learning that the worst place to be in the Republican nomination is the front-runner. Adding to the list of recent revelations is that he paid his wife $125,000 a year to "write" speeches for him, and this New Republic article which chronicles his monomania.

• I think it's significant that the other two front-runners on the GOP side are attacking each other in the expectation that Giuliani will collapse on his own. Today John McCain lashed out at Mitt Romney's criticisms of the immigration compromise:

Mitt Romney has been trying to make quite a bit of political hay out of the compromise immigration bill — he sees it as one of John McCain's key weaknesses as relates to the Republican base and a great way to differentiate himself as the One True Conservative in the race (at least until Fred Thompson jumps in).

Well, today, on a conference call with bloggers, Mr. McCain fired back at the former Massachusetts governor, who has (of course) held varying positions on immigration over the years.

"Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if it changes," Mr. McCain said of Mr. Romney's position on immigration this week. "Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard."

Ouch. As Romney heads into the front-runner position (he's way ahead in Iowa, according to the last poll), expect more of this. It's amusing that Republicans are giving Democrats all the attack lines they'll use in the general election. But I don't know that this line of attack will work. There are two kinds of flip-flops, the ones that are due to new information and the ones made for political expediency. But people with strongly held views will always believe that a poltician coming to their side is doing it due to new information. Matthew Yglesias has more.

• San Brownback deserves a pat on the back for personally divesting himself of tens of thousands of dollars in companies that do business with Sudan. Brownback's supporters do not deserve a pat on the back for believing that heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth moves around the sun, is an "atheist doctrine."

I support the Bible, and I don’t want my children learning about Heliocentrism in school. I think this doctrine encourages atheism, Darwinism, and anti-Americanism. I don’t want my tax dollars going to finance this kind of false science. It’s complete rot, and I hope that those of us who come to realize this can ultimately prevail against its propogation amongst OUR children with the money from OUR salaries.

At some point, you have to blame Brownback for engendering this kind of anti-intellectualism.

• Somewhere in the middle is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who may spend a billion dollars on his own third-party run, possibly with Chuck Hagel in tow as Vice President. Somehow this is being spun as trouble for Democrats. Ahem? When a Republican mayor and a Republican Senator run for President, they're not quite likely to take away votes from the Democrat.

• Turning to the Democrats, I thought this was a brilliant move by Barack Obama.

Officially, the event held in a large, muddy parking lot north of the city was called a statewide grassroots canvas. Unofficially, let's call it the first of many "Saul Alinsky" days. Alinsky is the legendary organizer and theorist who Barack Obama reportedly counts as an inspiration [...]

To "canvass," means to go house-to-house and collect something. Today, Obama's team is collecting signatures to to pressure Sens. Gregg and Sununu to end the war in Iraq. Unoffiically, the event serves another,more Alinskian purpose. There are so many Obama volunteers statewide that the campaign itself cannot accomodate all the solicited help. So today's event is a place-holder of sorts, a way for those thousands of volunteers to invest their time for Obama's greater cause. The canvass cements their link to Obama by appealing to another part of their political self-interest.

A side benefit: big early grassroots events impress reporters. I was impressed.

This is a GREAT way to get people involved tangibly 7 months before the election. It kickstarts your activist base to organize, and shows that you can run a successful canvas. There's no downside.

• Richardson announced for President today in Los Angeles. Late last week he unveiled his climate change and energy policy to good reviews. I actually had the opposite reaction to Richardson when I met him, I thought he wasn't impressive at all personally, but I caught him before an important speech, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. What I'm not willing to waive away is his continued adoption of right-wing frames on tax policy. Matt Stoller has more on the climate policies of all the candidates. It's great that all the Democratic candidates HAVE a climate and energy policy; it's a far cry from 2004. Edwards and Richardson and Dodd all have excellent policies.

I have more on Edwards and Hillary Clinton, but they're going to be separated into their own posts.