DNC Finally On The Offense

They had to wait until the decision was handed down, but now that a three-judge panel has ruled that Al Franken won the election, and now that the conservative movement is fracturing, they can cleanly come out and tell Norm Coleman to go home.

Gov. KAINE: Norm Coleman lost on Election Day, he lost the recount, now he's lost a stinging rejection in court. My sense is the only reason anybody is prolonging this is they're trying to delay putting somebody in the Senate who will be willing to vote with President Obama to accomplish what is right for this nation. It is time to stop disenfranchising Minnesotans, put a second Senator in for that state, and set this behind us.

And the DNC is putting its money where its mouth is by running radio ads in Minnesota, saying that Franken is "entitled to receive the certificate of election."

It's well beyond time to put this pressure on, although the ask shouldn't have been to call Norm Coleman but to call Gov. Pawlenty and tell him to sign that certificate immediately.

A Word On The "Circular Firing Squad"

Tell you what, Chris Van Hollen. I and my "liberal groups" will lay off of fellow Democrats the moment that political leaders who call themselves Democrats stop doing things to deserve my wrath, such as the head of the DNC banning funding for stem cell research in Virginia, for example.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has signed a bill into law banning the use of some state funds for embryonic stem cell research [...]

It contains language inserted by the General Assembly that would prevent a state fund from providing dollars to organizations or businesses that undertake "research in Virginia on human cells or tissue derived from induced abortions or from stem cells obtained from human embryos."

Kaine's support for the legislation is not surprising: He is a staunch Catholic who has long opposed using taxpayer money for embryonic stem cell research. But the platform of the Democratic Party, now headed by Kaine at Obama's behest, describes embryonic stem cell research as "research that could save lives."

See, I care more about principle than any party designation, and when Tim Kaine screws up, I'm likely to tell him he screwed up. Van Hollen's problem is determining who started "the circular firing squad": the politician who operates in a fashion dramatically opposed to Democratic core beliefs, or the "liberal groups" who respond? Obviously, Van Hollen is a politician himself, so we know where he lies on that axis.

“What I’ve been warning people very clearly is, beware of forming a circular firing squad,” Van Hollen said. “We believe people should be focusing their efforts on expanding the Democratic majority, and that should be their singular focus."

No, it shouldn't, the focus should be on improving the lives of the American people.

Overhauling The Primary System

Considering that the Democratic primaries in 2012 won't be much more than a formality, I wondered whether or not there would be a strong urge inside the DNC to just move on and make no meaningful changes to the primary system, despite the epic car wreck of 2008. The other strain of thought is that, because 2012 will have no winners and losers, it's easier than ever to change the system because stakeholders will have less of an impetus to game it. Looks like the reformers won out:

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina will lead the Democratic Change Commission, which is scheduled to report its findings no later than Jan. 1, 2010. The commission, which is largely comprised of Democrats who supported Mr. Obama (and a few who backed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in last year's contentious primary season), will review and streamline the 2008 calendar.

"This commission will focus on reform that improves the presidential nominating process," Mr. Kaine said in a statement, "to put voters first and ensure that as many people as possible can participate."

Comprised of 37 members, the commission has this mission:

The Democratic Change Commission will address three issues: 1) changing the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held 2) reducing the number of superdelegates and 3) improving the caucus system.

Let's break down these issues separately. Kaine is setting a marker that no caucus or primary can be held before February 1 of the calendar year, which I think makes sense. Sadly, he's still holding to this front-loaded structure, where a first wave goes between February 1 and March 1. I'd rather see a rotating regional primary rather than a system which encourages practically every state beyond the first tier to go on March 1. Not to mention the fact that the DNC couldn't get Michigan and Florida to hold to these dictates last year.

On delegates, the wording is a little vague, but the resolution provides for "a significant reduction of the number of unpledged party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates in order to enlarge the role and influence of primary and caucus voters in the presidential nominating process." That's a solid principle, and ultimately I'd like to see the superdelegates phased out, or at least not phased in until a second ballot so that the voters rule first. Delegate allocation formulas will get a makeover as well, and good, because one Congressional district shouldn't be favored over another based on whether or not they have even-numbered or odd-numbered delegates.

Finally, on caucuses, there is talk about maximizing "the opportunity for full participation by Democratic voters," and I agree. Maine has an absentee-ballot system for caucuses, and that should be the model. I know many people believe that caucuses are inherently marginalizing and should be abandoned, but they hold value as party-building events, and that decision should be up to the inidividual state parties.

Anyway, I'm glad we're talking about this very early, to allow for the range of debate prior to the next contested primary election.

The Vestigial Organ

OK, let's get to the multiple events of yesterday. First of all, Tim Kaine will be named the DNC Chair, which appears to be the consolation prize for him not being made Vice President. Kaine's most memorable public appearance was an awful rebuttal to the State of the Union Address, but since then he has gotten marginally better, and was not terrible on the stump and in the media for Barack Obama. Typically the President handpicks the DNC chair, and the body is a different animal when the party is in power. Without the White House, the DNC was an activist body the last two cycles. Terry McAuliffe had no electoral success, but raised a crapload of money. Howard Dean implemented the 50-state strategy, got the party's technical chops up to the level of the Republicans, and successfully navigated two campaign cycles. With the White House, it becomes more of an organ of the President.

Kaine did oversee some very good party-building in Virginia, which has 2 more Democratic Senators, 3 more House members and the majority of the State Senate since he became Governor. And Virginia went blue in November for the first time since 1964. Jonathan Singer likes the choice.

Beyond that, in recent years the DNC Chairmanship has been split into two posts while the Democrats have controlled the White House, with a dignitary serving as General Chairman and a strategist running the day-to-day operations of the committee. Under Bill Clinton, this strategy predominated, with Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Colorado Governor Roy Romer and then-former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell serving as General Chairmen -- the spokesmen of the party -- while others were left to handle the details. Indeed, this appears to be the thinking of Obama in tapping Kaine, also choosing the director of his battleground state strategy, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, to run the committee's operations.

So I see the Kaine pick as a fine one and have few quarrels with it.

The key to me is whether he keeps the 50-state strategy in place. Coming from a state that benefited from those efforts, I hope he will see the value in it.

I Promise Not To Make Tim Kaine Puns for 4-8 Years

There looks to me further fuel to the speculation about Tim Kaine. He cancelled a fundraiser in Maryland tomorrow due to a "scheduling problem." And he was in Washington today at a time that Obama, his staff, and his veep selection team were all in the same place.

So, you know, take it or leave it. I personally think that it's a bad choice if you're a progressive, though I'm not as Chicken Little about it as Matt Stoller, who makes a pretty dishonest incomplete (see UPDATE below) argument in rebutting Matt Yglesias, particularly by ignoring most of his argument (that VPs have extremely little impact on the governing philosophy of a President. You could argue that Cheney did, but Bush was pretty much there already).

(UPDATE: I want to be clear that I say "dishonest", which should have been "incomplete," in terms of the argument made and not the author, who is not a dishonest person. I don't typically take personally things said about me on the Internets and I have the same perspective when I write, but I apologize to the author if that didn't transfer.)

However, because Obama has been somewhat inscrutable in what his priorities as a chief executive would be, this decision offers a window into his thought process. And that window, if it's Kaine, opens to a guy who has been a sellout on coal, signed a bill that Mark Warner vetoed repealing the estate tax and then instituted a sales tax increase that would disproportionately affect the poor, and failed to rein in the poisonous partisan atmosphere in Virginia. On the other hand, he's anti-death penalty, was a community organizer and at least campaigned as a pragmatic progressive, though he's lost his way on that according to the locals.

So, if it's him, I'm disappointed, although I didn't really expect my perfect progressive choice to be recognized. FWIW Kaine dismissed the speculation today, but that's to be expected. We'll wait and see.

Obama Should Be Up 10,000 Points By Now

I've literally never heard this kind of persistent meme that a Presidential candidate who is consistently winning according to polls isn't winning by ENOUGH. It's like Obama has the burden of being a better candidate and so his expectations are so much higher. If it were up to the media, McCain would get inaugurated if he kept it within 6 points on Election Day. There's still a partisan divide in this country that suggests nobody on the left or right will go below 40%. So chastising Obama for keeping McCain to 41 or 42 is really silly.

Of course, this could be a by-product of Adam Nagourney's lingering pissiness at being disrespected by a Democrat actually disputing his false claims. Whatever the reason, it's a dishonest meme. Which of course, may explain why it's so pervasive.

In other news, while I try really hard to disengage myself from the Veepstakes, I hear now that Tim Kaine is being seriously considered for the second banana slot. The yelping seemed to be coming from Kaine's people, but the fact that practically everyone on the Obama A-Team converged on Washington today, clearly there's something up. I confess to not knowing a hell of a lot about Kaine outside of his pathetic State of the Union rebuttal in 2006, so I went to the local Virginia blogs to read up on how they considered his governorship to be going. The answer was not good - especially considering this site was NAMED for him.

Three years into the Kaine Administration, Virginia Progressives stand aghast at what it has become. From his repeal of the estate tax to his abandoned plan for universal Pre-K, to his opposition to embryonic stem cells, from his failed transportation plans to cozy relationship to Dominion Power and his reprehensible support of the Wise Coal Plant, the Kaine administration has fulfilled our every early fear and never failed to disappoint progressive Virginia [...]

Mark Warner is the very model of what will become known as Fiscal Progressivism, the pragmatic, cross-partisan application of intelligent, responsible management. Jim Webb, in addition to being the Democrats' most powerful voice on military and veterans' affairs, is the senate's greatest champion of economic fairness: the Democratic assertion that a nation must value the health of its economy not at the apex, but at the base. And Barack Obama is rapidly rising as the personification of an organized, bottom-up progressivism that engages regular citizens to participate in the solutions to the greatest challenges facing the world. From climate change to economic collapse, from war to healthcare to genocide, Obama leads not by authoritarianism, but by an egalitarian, progressive inclusion that unleashes the best talents of all Americans in a common cause for the Common Good.

In light of these shining examples, where is Tim Kaine? In what way has Tim Kaine embodied progressive ideals? In what way has Tim Kaine lead or stood up for the critical issues of the day? Where has Tim Kaine emerged victorious and thus strengthened the Progressive movement, the Democratic party, and the Commonwealth? Long on plans and short on accomplishments, Kaine has consistently proven that he will not stand up for principle and will not listen to reason. When Kaine eviscerates progressive taxation, champions a massive new coal plant, or works against the commonsense underground solution to the Rail to Dulles project, he isn't just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, he's lingering by the window to set fire to the drapes.

What an endorsement! If you can believe it, Not Larry Sabato is worse.

I don't know if this has to do with Kaine's religious background (the religion-industrial complex strikes again) or what, but count me out of that. Given the options being most discussed on the short list, I'd be OK with Kathleen Sebelius and Chris Dodd, but I'm almost stunned at the slimness of the pickings.