As I mentioned on Tuesday, Leonard Boswell convened a town-hall meeting by telephone on Tuesday, but I was not able to participate.

The Des Moines Register reported that Boswell took questions for about an hour during the call. The only specific question the Register mentioned related to Boswell’s vote for the 2005 bankruptcy bill, which most Democrats in Congress opposed:

“I am a survivor of the farm crisis, and saw folks that bankrupted when they really had the ability to pay back,” said Boswell, who owns a cattle farm in southern Iowa. “It seems to me like when we sign our name on the line and promise to pay, that we have a responsibility if we have the ability to pay.”

At the same time, more help and counseling are needed to assist consumers from falling too deeply into debt, Boswell said. He said he worked very hard to not fall into bankruptcy when he faced financial problems with his own farm operation.

The bankruptcy bill vote is one of many Ed Fallon has criticized in his primary challenge of Boswell.

I hope to be able to listen in on one of Boswell’s telephone town-hall meetings, assuming he has more.

Fallon held live town-hall meetings yesterday in Tama, Amana and Des Moines. If anyone attended one, please post a comment or a diary to let us know how it went. Fallon has more town-hall meetings scheduled for next Wednesday, and I’ve put the details after the jump.

While we’re on the subject, I want to address something I’ve heard from a handful of Democrats I know about this primary. A few people have told me that they won’t defend Boswell’s voting record, and they would like to support a primary challenger, just not Ed Fallon. Maybe they don’t like that Fallon supported Ralph Nader in 2000, or maybe they have some other issue with something Fallon did years ago in the state legislature.

Let’s be clear: the choice for Iowa’s third district is Boswell or Fallon, not Boswell or some fantasy liberal who has never made a mistake.

Democrats willing to run against well-funded, entrenched incumbents do not grow on trees. If you want to see a more progressive Democrat representing Iowa’s third district, you should be supporting Fallon now. If he loses the primary, you can be sure that no one will ever challenge Boswell in a primary again.

Whenever Boswell retires, which could be many years from now, there will be a crowded Democratic primary for this seat, and there is no guarantee a progressive will win.

If you like Boswell and on balance think he deserves to be re-elected, that’s understandable. But if you would rather support a different kind of Democrat for this seat, get behind Fallon now. Don’t hide behind the excuse that you’d rather support some other primary challenger some other year.

MyDD user lipris linked to this post from the Albany Project blog, which includes a list of the 24 Democratic-held U.S. House seats being targeted this year by the NRCC.

None of the three House seats held by Iowa Democrats are on the list. Neither Bruce Braley (IA-01) nor Leonard Boswell (IA-03) has a Republican challenger yet. Braley is officially launching his re-election campaign today. Boswell is facing a primary challenge from Ed Fallon.

I think that Dave Loebsack (IA-02) has a Republican challenger, but I can’t find the link to an article about that. I would be shocked if he has any trouble holding his seat. He will have the army of Obama volunteers helping him if the challenge turns out to be serious.

It looks like a very good year for Iowa Democrats. The caucuses in January prompted nearly 60,000 people to register as Democrats, while only about 7,600 Iowans became Republicans to participate in the GOP caucuses. According to Secretary of State Mike Mauro,

as of March 1, there were 701,285 registered Democrats in Iowa. There were 615,576 Iowans registered as Republicans and 761,201 not affiliated with a party.

Meanwhile, at MyDD Jonathan Singer discusses the GOP’s voter registration problem on the national level.

We don’t watch much tv, so I wasn’t aware of the ads that have apparently been running against Governor Culver since last summer. The Des Moines Register reports that the Iowa Future Fund has not disclosed its donors. A former GOP state director, David Kochel, is the only person who has acknowledged involvement with the fund’s ad campaign. The Register notes:

Iowa Future Fund has been running ads sporadically in Iowa since August, all criticizing Culver. The latest round accuses him of vastly increasing spending and criticizes him for signing a bill offering Microsoft tax incentives to locate a center in Iowa.

The group is registered with the Internal Revenue Service under chapter 501(c)(4), which allows it to advocate for or against legislation, but does not require it to disclose its contributors.

The Iowa Democratic Party recently asked the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board to determine whether the Iowa Future Fund’s ads are violating state law. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Scott Brennan said at a press conference that the ad’s claims are not true, but the Register notes that “Iowa’s campaign law does not require ads be true.”

Brennan also said the fund broke the law by not filing disclosure reports, but it doesn’t sound like Democrats are going to be able to prove that these commercials trigger the disclosure requirements:

Charlie Smithson, Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board executive director, the ad must expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate in order for the board to have jurisdiction.

If anyone out there knows more about who is funding these ads, please drop me a line or post a comment.

Just got this e-mail from Environment Iowa. There’s a big vote coming up Thursday in the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee:

Did you know that we here in Iowa spend less state money per capita on the environment than almost any other state in the nation?

We think that’s outrageous, and a bi-partisan committee of legislators, working closely with environmental groups as well as the Farm Bureau, has recommended that Iowa spend an additional $150 million a year to improve water and soil quality, enhance parks and trails, and protect wildlife habitat.

Tomorrow afternoon, Thursday March 6, the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee will vote on a bill that is the first step toward dedicating those funds. Join us in urging these committees to vote ‘yes’ on our environment.

To send an e-mail to the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee, click here:

http://environmentiowa.org/act…

Action is critical now — this legislation must pass both houses in the next two months, or else the process will be delayed for two years.

This bill would put a question on the ballot asking Iowans create a fund specifically for Iowa’s water and soil quality, parks and wildlife. These funds would be protected for environmental purposes only and future legislatures won’t be able to raid them for other purposes as they have in the past.

The new resources would be invested in:

 * Protecting water quality from both urban and agricultural sources of pollution;

 * Keeping the best soil on earth where it belongs – on the earth,not in our streams and lakes where it smothers fish and other aquatic life;

 * Restoring parks, biking and hiking trails at the state, county and local level;

 * Protecting habitat for a diverse array of species such as trout, bobwhite, pheasant, and bobcat.  

So please take a moment to tell members of the Senate committee how important it is to invest in our water, land and wildlife. Follow this link to take action today:

http://environmentiowa.org/act…

For what it’s worth, I would call the members of this committee rather than e-mailing them. There’s no guarantee that anyone on their staff will open e-mail in time for this vote.

It is quite possible that Barack Obama could win the Democratic nomination based on his lead in pledged delegates, even though more voters in primaries and caucuses supported Hillary Clinton.

Texas is the latest state where Obama may win more delegates despite losing the popular vote (Nevada was another example.)

Also, Obama has gotten lots of extra delegates by running up the score in caucus states with comparatively low turnout compared to populous states such as Ohio, where Clinton won the popular vote by a wide margin.

Gordon Fischer writes at his blog, Iowa True Blue:

Matthews grills McAuliffe:  The Founder of the Democratic Party [Thomas Jefferson] said that a victory by a single vote is as sacred as a unanimous vote.  Do you agree?  McAuliffe couldn’t and wouldn’t answer.   Why?  Because he supports the Clintons and their entire strategy is based, indeed must be based, on ignoring the elected, pledged delegates.

My question to Obama supporters is this: do you see any problem with nominating the candidate who won fewer votes in all of the caucuses and primaries?

Gordon ignores the possibility that the pledged delegate leader could be the candidate who has won fewer votes from real, live citizens.

By the way, if we were only counting Democratic voters, Hillary would be even further ahead of Obama. A strong case can be made that Democrats should select our nominee, rather than Republicans and Democrats-for-a-day.

Former state Representative George Eichhorn, who served three terms in the Iowa House before losing his seat in the 2006 election, announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate this year.

Up to now, Tom Harkin’s only declared opponent was Cedar Rapids businessman Steve Rathje, who had less than $60 in campaign cash at the end of 2007. Harkin started the year with close to $3.5 million cash on hand.

As I wrote here yesterday, Senator Tom Harkin has introduced The Complete Streets Act of 2008, which would

work to promote the design of streets that are safe for all of those using the street- including motorists, bus riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians, including people with disabilities.  Between 1993 and 2003, nearly 52,000 pedestrians and more than 7,400 bicyclists were killed in road accidents; studies show that the designing streets with pedestrians in mind may reduce pedestrian risk by as much as 28 percent.

More information about this issue can be found at the Complete the Streets website.

In related news, I read in the Smart Growth America newsletter that four pilot programs aimed at promoting bicycling and walking for short trips were found to significantly reduce vehicle-miles traveled, and therefore carbon-dioxide emissions, in the communities:

“This report just goes to show that, for many travelers, the automobile is not always the mode of choice, and that safe and convenient options will lead them to use their bicycles or their feet to get around,” says Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman. Adds Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, “This program, and its legacy, will change the face of transportation in communities across the country. Its contribution, and that of walking and bicycling, to the nation’s fight against global warming will be notable.”

Reducing vehicle-miles traveled is an essential part of any comprehensive strategy to combat global warming. Otherwise gains from more efficient vehicles or better fuel sources could be wiped out as Americans continue to drive more miles per capita.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 would cover a projected shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund by taking money away from public transportation projects. Is there any policy this president doesn’t get wrong? We already devote way too little funding to public transit compared to road-building.

We are going to have a real problem getting to 270 electoral votes this November. Obama is still heavily favored to win the nomination, unless some bombshell scandal emerges during the next couple of months.

However, the rout in Ohio yesterday suggests that McCain would be heavily favored in that state against Obama. There are key elements of the Democratic base that are not sold on Obama.

Remind me again how he gets to 270 electoral votes without Florida (where he has virtually no chance against McCain) or Ohio. Kerry states plus Iowa and Missouri would not be enough, would it? I think he would also need Colorado, New Mexico or Virginia.

More worrying, Obama’s weakness in Ohio suggests to me that he may struggle to carry Pennsylvania in the general as well.

Within the last hour I got a robocall from Leonard Boswell informing me about some kind of telephone town-hall meeting tonight.

Was anyone able to listen in on this call? I am curious.

I am pretty sure that the robocall directed me to Boswell’s Congressional website (boswell.house.gov) for more information–not to the campaign website (www.boswellforcongress.com).

Then, about 20 minutes ago I got my first phone call from a field organizer for Boswell. I was frank with him, saying I’ve supported Leonard in the past and like him, but he’s voted against my interests too many times. I’m going for Fallon in the primary and will support the winner of the primary in the general. The field organizer was polite and thanked me for being direct.

Boswell is taking this primary challenge seriously, and that’s good for residents of the third district. Obviously, I hope Fallon wins the primary, but even if he doesn’t, I think the challenge will nudge Boswell toward better serving his constituents.

UPDATE: A franked mailer from Boswell arrived in the mail on Wednesday afternoon. It certainly looks like a campaign piece–I will transcribe it later. The small print makes clear that it was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense.

Desperate for an election-year campaign issue, House Minority Leader Chris Rants tried and failed today to pass a resolution that would have made a gay marriage ban eligible for debate this session. No committee in the Democratic-controlled chamber is willing to pass the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

By a 50-46 party-line vote, the House rejected Rants’ resolution, which would have allowed the chamber to debate the ban even after the bill failed to get through the “funnel.”

Iowa Independent has more on the story here.

I am pleasantly surprised that none of the House Democrats defected on this procedural vote. They must all be feeling confident about their re-election prospects. Maybe that’s because nine House Republicans are retiring this year, while only two Democratic-held House seats will be open.

Regarding Rants’ efforts to keep the gay marriage debate alive, I think Des Moines Register reader Jay Radcliffe said it best in this letter to the editor from late January:

Thank goodness for Christopher Rants. As I drive down the highway smelling the stench from the hog lots, watching the filthy water roll under the bridge, worrying if my kids will fall behind as their schools fall apart, wondering if my elderly mother is receiving quality care and planning how to survive if I lose my job in this recession, Rants is leading the charge against gay marriage. Talk about a profile in courage.

Keep up the great work, Christopher!

Tom Harkin is touring the state this Friday through Monday to officially launch his re-election campaign. He has events scheduled in Davenport, Dubuque, Iowa City, Burlington, Ames, Sioux City, Storm Lake, Des Moines, and Council Bluffs.

For details, click here:

http://www.tomharkin.com/events

I was pleased to learn yesterday that Harkin has introduced a “complete streets” bill in the Senate. Here is more information from a press release issued by the Thunderhead Alliance:

HARKIN INTRODUCES BILL TO MAKE ROADS SAFE FOR EVERYONE

To reduce accidents, legislation will create ‘Complete Streets’ to keep motorists, transit vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians safe

Washington, D.C. – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today introduced The Complete Streets Act of 2008, which would work to promote the design of streets that are safe for all of those using the street- including motorists, bus riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians, including people with disabilities.  Between 1993 and 2003, nearly 52,000 pedestrians and more than 7,400 bicyclists were killed in road accidents; studies show that the designing streets with pedestrians in mind may reduce pedestrian risk by as much as 28 percent.  Harkin was joined in this effort by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE).

“Making our streets bike and pedestrian friendly is a win-win for us all,” said Harkin.  “It not only promotes healthier lifestyles, it lowers the amount of traffic congestion that many people deal with every day.”

A recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute found that providing more travel options, including public transportation, bicycling and walking facilities, is an important element in reducing traffic congestion.  The study reported that congestion was responsible for an annual $78.2 billion loss in fuel during traffic jams in 2005, an increase from $57.6 billion in 2000.

Also, as recently as 30 years ago, up to 70 percent of children were walking or riding bikes to school.  Currently, the number has dropped to only 10 percent.  Parents report that traffic safety is the main reason they do not permit their children to walk or bike to school.  This legislation will make our environment more inviting for physical activity, especially for kids.

Harkin’s proposal has been endorsed by: AARP, America Bikes, America Walks, American Council of the Blind, American Planning Association, American Public Transportation Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, League of America Bicyclists, National Center for Bicycling and Walking, Safe Routes to School National Partnership, Smart Growth America, Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Thunderhead Alliance, and Rails to Trails Conservancy.

Great leadership by Harkin on an important transportation issue that is rarely covered by the media. If you see him on his announcement tour, please thank him for sponsoring this legislation. “Complete streets” improve the quality of life and are good for the environment and public health.

I heard that the nurse-in organized by the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women was a big success yesterday, with about 20 families represented. A friend who was there e-mailed to say:

Rachel Scott with the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women sort of organized us yesterday and wanted us to know that there’s a meeting of the subcommittee on this particular bill – HF2292 – tomorrow morning [Wednesday] at 9:15.  Here’s what she had to say:

“What I need for tomorrow is to have 3 or 4 women to come, especially those who can speak to breastfeeding/ pumping at work or who worked somewhere where a reasonable accommodation was made that they could describe.   Another great thing would be if anyone knows of a small business owner who would come and speak to how easy this is.”

It really is easy to accommodate a woman who needs to express milk, or nurse a child, occasionally during the work day. If you know anyone who can attend this hearing on Wednesday morning, please spread the word.

Rachel Scott can be reached at rachel.scott AT iowa.gov

Meanwhile, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement had their rally and meeting with the governor scheduled for today. If anyone was there, please put up a diary to let us know how it went.

Wednesday is Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa’s lobby day. Here are the details:

Lobby Day is from 9:30 to 4 on Wednesday March 5.

Those unable to attend the entire event can meet us at the capitol between 12:15 and 3pm (you can find us on the second floor in pink and black “Prevention First” t-shirts).

The day will begin at 9:30 in the Botanical Center with a training on citizen lobbying and a briefing on PPGI’s legislative agenda.  Participants will be given a “Prevention First” t-shirt to wear to the capitol and we will break into groups based on legislative district.  We’ll have lunch and take a bus to the capitol where we will be lobbying for the following legislation:

   1.  Healthy Families Initiative: Creates Iowa’s first state fund for contraception for low-income women ( Iowa is currently 48th in the nation in contraceptive accessibility.  Over half of our counties have no family planning center)

   2. HPV Insurance Coverage:  Requires all insurance companies cover the HPV vaccine

One of our most persuasive arguments in the legislature is that voters support these initiatives.  We want to create a strong presence at the capitol and need as many supporters there as possible.  Group lobbying provides a great first-time experience in citizen lobbying.  The day will conclude with a brief reception in the Botanical Center from 3 to 4pm.

Please RSVP to Susan Alexander at salexander AT ppgi.org or (515) 235-0441 or register online at http://www.ppaction.org/ppiowa…  

What's going to happen tomorrow?

I think Obama will win Vermont and Texas (popular vote and delegate count), while Clinton will win Ohio and Rhode Island. I don't think Clinton will gain serious ground on Obama.

If she doesn't win the popular vote in Ohio and Texas, I do think Clinton should drop out. If she wins the popular vote in those states, I think it's reasonable for her to continue on to Pennsylvania, even though it would be very hard for her to overtake Obama in the delegate count.

The House Environmental Protection Committee on Monday approved a bill that would extend the 5-cent deposit to bottled water, tea, juice and sports drinks.

It’s a step in the right direction, although it would be better to increase the deposit so that redemption centers could receive more than 1 cent for each can and bottle they handle.

Governor Culver’s original bottle bill proposal would have doubled the deposit to 10 cents, giving an extra penny to the redemption centers. However, Culver’s bill also would have returned only 8 cents of the deposit to consumers. The other 2 cents would have gone to fund some environmental programs.

I’m all for increasing environmental funding, but the key to widespread political support for the can and bottle deposit is that it is not a tax–consumers get all of the money back. Converting the deposit into a tax that is not fully refundable would erode public support for this very important recycling program.

I hope the legislature will extend the deposit to a broader range of bottled drinks this year, but in 2009 I hope someone will step up with a bigger bottle bill reform initiative.

For an overview of other bills that hang in the balance this week, read this Des Moines Register piece. Any bill not approved by a legislative committee by this Thursday will be dead for this year’s legislative session.

I didn’t see this in the news, but just got an e-mail from the Iowa Planned Parenthood Action Network:

Thank You Governor Culver!

Dear [desmoinesdem],

Governor Culver recently announced that he will be “turning back” Federal funds that are restricted for “abstinence only” sexual and reproductive health education.

This action is a rejection of “abstinence only” in favor of comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education which includes abstinence.

Comprehensive sex education also includes birth control, sexually transmitted infections and other good sexual health practices that “abstinence only” neglects.  

Governor Culver’s rejection of the funds comes from the fact that “abstinence only” programs DO NOT WORK because they leave out information about what to do once you are sexually active.

Help us congratulate Governor Culver on his bold and strong leadership on returning Federal “abstinence only” funds!

Good for him. Taking the money would have been the politically easy route. Instead, he showed leadership on this issue.

If you want to sign up for Planned Parenthood action alerts, go here:

http://www.ppaction.org/ppiowa…

If you supported John Edwards, you probably are familiar with the Edwards Evening News Roundup at Daily Kos. The team who brought you those updates have created a new EENR Progressive blog, a forum for activists to talk about various issues and strategies for building the progressive movement.

Pioneer111 put up this diary about the new blog at MyDD. Key passage:

EENR is a community blog, and we hope you will be part of that community.  We’ve tried to set standards for discussion that reflect our desire for open communication, the search for truth, and that wonderful lesson we all learned in kindergarten, “Play Nice and Share Your Toys.”  There are lots of toys, too.  There’s a wonderful video wall, lots of diaries already there waiting for your comments, links to a mirror of the JRE campaign website, and much more.  We’ll have Open Threads, and special guest bloggers.  And we’re always open to suggestions!

EENR has a really unique feature.  We have 12 subject sections located on the left hand side.  This gives us twelve front pages and if you write a diary with one of the sections in your tags or use the drop down menu in creating it you can be a front pager in any section except the Home Page.   😉 Please join in creating the community discussions in all progressive areas. It also means that candidate diaries do NOT dominate the discussion.  Progressive issues do.  We hope that more contribute to that point of view.

There are diaries on a wide variety of topics at the EENR blog. I encourage progressives to join the conversation–even if you didn’t support Edwards for president.

Barack Obama apparently wants conservative Republicans to serve in his cabinet, possibly in some of the most important jobs:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…

Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.

Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary. Some regard the outspoken Republican as a possible vice-presidential nominee although that might be regarded as a “stretch”.

I would hope that even the most fanatical Obama supporter could acknowledge what a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea it would be for Obama to choose a conservative Republican as VP. Hagel and Lugar have voted to confirm every judge George W. Bush has appointed. Having someone like that a heartbeat away from the presidency is just an invitation to some conservative nutjob to take a shot at Obama.

Furthermore, Obama has been a long-term smoker and could easily get lung cancer or some other kind of cancer. No Republican should be his VP.

I also have real problems with the idea of Hagel or Lugar in an important cabinet job like secretary of state or defense. Basically that reinforces the false right-wing stereotype that Democrats cannot be trusted to handle security and foreign policy issues.

We have plenty of highly capable Democrats who would do a great job as secretary of state or defense.

If Obama needs to prove he’s bipartisan, he should pick some moderate Republican for a low-profile cabinet post. No hacks who’ve voted with Bush 90-plus percent of the time in the Senate, and no Republicans for the top-level cabinet positions.

Chris Bowers has more on this:

http://www.openleft.com/showDi…

I particularly agree with this part:

Obama sends out regular signals that he will govern in a very centrist fashion. Running Harry and Louise ads and appointing Bush Dog Jim Cooper as a spokesperson on health care make that obvious enough. His praise of Reagan and bragging that he is more bipartisan than the DLC also make that clear. He has no problem letting you know that he’s “not one of those people who cynically believes Bush went in only for the oil,” that he isn’t a “anti-military, 70s love-in.” He scolds unknown progressives for thinking that “every mention of God is automatically threatening a theocracy,” and reminded everyone that Social Security faces a crisis. Now, he is sending out signals that will be appoint Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar to incredibly powerful posts such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

Here is the thing: what counter-indications had Obama given that he will govern as a progressive? I honestly can’t think of any[….]

Outside of telecom policy, his policy platforms are pretty much center-left wonkish boilerplate, and his rhetoric is straight down the middle. In short, I just don’t see Obama as a transformative progressive at all.

If I am missing something, I don’t know where to look for it. Chuck Hagel as Sec Def is just the latest indication that Obama is more about placating High Broderism, Tim Russert and the Washington Post editorial board than he is about transformative progressive change. I’ll work hard to help elect him, but I also don’t intend to delude myself about what to expect when he becomes President.  

Tom Harkin and Leonard Boswell are good people and good Democrats, so it’s disappointing to read in the Sunday Des Moines Register that they are unwilling to take a stand against building new coal-fired power plans in Marshalltown and Waterloo.

It could hardly be more clear that building new coal-fired plants is bad for the environment, bad for the public’s health, and a net loss for Iowa’s economy (since we would be importing all the coal used in the plants).

Ed Fallon categorically opposes building new coal-fired power plants in Iowa. In the article I linked above, Boswell said he hadn’t studied the issue closely, because the proposed plants are located outside Iowa’s third Congressional district. Fallon has the right response:

Fallon said even though the plants would be outside Boswell’s district, some central Iowa towns would be downwind from the Marshalltown facility.

“It clearly affects our district, and because of concerns about greenhouse gas, it concerns our whole planet,” said Fallon, a former state representative who opposes construction of any new coal-fired plants.

Jennifer Oredson of Des Moines, the Greenpeace member who asked about the plants, said she had mixed feelings about the answers from Harkin and Boswell. She said her group opposes the plants, but she appreciated that both men are pushing for more conservation and alternative sources of energy.

She particularly noted Boswell’s support of the Safe Climate Act, which aims to limit greenhouse gases. But she said her group would not endorse a candidate in the primary.

By the way, Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) signed onto the Safe Climate Act months earlier than Boswell. Boswell only took that position in December, when rumors of Fallon’s likely primary challenge were circulating.

In related news, Boswell was on Iowa Public Television this weekend saying he is more qualified than Fallon to represent the district. He also brought up Fallon’s support for Ralph Nader in 2000, which seems to be Boswell’s strongest card to play.

But Boswell’s comments on policy during that television program suggest that he is feeling the heat from Fallon’s criticism:

On other issues, Boswell said:

– Congress should consider repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which “hasn’t worked well.” Fallon opposes NAFTA and other free-trade agreements. Boswell supported a recent trade agreement with Peru.

– The country should look for ways to burn coal in efficient, environmentally friendly ways perhaps even “cleaning” Iowa’s high-sulfur coal. Fallon wants a moratorium on new coal plants, which are a chief source of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Fallon has said Boswell supports greater use of coal and backed $14 billion in tax breaks and incentives for oil and gas companies.

– He supported tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars after voting against an earlier measure. “We recently raised the fuel-efficiency standard. If you don’t want to put people out of work, and not cause a new problem, you have to look at it carefully.”

– He supports removing troops from Iraq, but opposed a bill that would have led to immediate withdrawal, something that he believed would have cost too many lives. Boswell said he originally supported the war based on the administration’s statement that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, later disputed. Fallon has said he opposed the war all along.

I saw Fallon yesterday at the Natural Living Expo in Des Moines, and it looked like a lot of people were signing up to volunteer.

Also this weekend, the Des Moines Register reported that Fallon has raised about $130,000 for his campaign and has 16 paid staffers.

I’m going to try to flag political events for the week ahead every weekend. Please send me tips or put up a diary if you know of something interesting about to happen soon.

This Thursday is the “funnel” day, the date that will determine which bills have a chance of advancing this year and which are dead for the session. As a result, a bunch of groups are holding lobby days at the capitol this week.

On Monday, please consider helping the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women build support for a bill that would make it easier for working women to keep breastfeeding. Click the link for details about the “nurse in” at the capitol or how to contact your legislators.

On Tuesday, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement are holding their rally and lobby day. Details can be found in this diary that was posted a few days ago.

Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa is holding its lobby day on Wednesday to push for its “Prevention First” agenda. Click the link to read a post at Blog for Iowa with more details about this event.

On Friday, Windsor Heights Mayor Jerry Sullivan, Democratic candidate for Iowa House district 59, is having a campaign kick-off event at the Ankeny Regional Airport from 5 pm to 8 pm. Weather permitting, short rides on helicopters and small planes will be available at that event. For more information, check out the Sullivan for State Representative website.

I am proud to say that I wrote a check for Sullivan’s campaign a couple of weeks ago.

I encourage everyone to support our candidates for state and local office this year. Your donations go further in those races than they do in a multi-zillion-dollar presidential campaign.

Speaking of which, I recently learned that James Van Bruggen is running against Dwayne Alons in House District 4. Van Bruggen’s campaign website is here.

You may remember Alons for his idiotic comment that global warming is not a problem in light of modern refrigeration and air conditioning, or his baffling observation that global warming may help us by making us stronger and taller, like the ancient Mayans. House District 4 leans strongly Republican, but I am very glad someone has stepped up to challenge Alons.

As one of the few Iowa bloggers who is not enthusiastic about Barack Obama, I’ve noticed some odd behavior among some of his supporters. I have questions for those of you who back Obama after the jump.

I’ve been thinking about these questions for some time, but felt compelled to write them down after reading this piece by Daily Kos superstar diarist kid oakland, as well as the comments below it.  

Hillary Clinton started running this ad, which suggests that Obama is not up to the job of handling international crises:

I don’t think this is a great ad. I understand the experience argument, and I do think Hillary is more experienced, but it hasn’t worked against Obama up to now, and I don’t see why this ad changes the game.

Obama hit back with this ad, which positions Obama as the candidate with superior judgment, because he opposed the Iraq War from the start:

I am not impressed with this ad either. I am tired of hearing Obama coast on a speech he gave five years ago. First of all, he took that speech off his website in 2003, when the war seemed to be going well. Second, his Senate voting record on all things connected to Iraq is EXACTLY THE SAME AS HILLARY CLINTON’S.

As a U.S. Senator, Obama has not shown superior judgment on Iraq compared to Clinton. He has stood on the sidelines while other senators tried to defund the war. I am not buying his claim to superior judgment on matters of foreign policy.

Probably Obama will get the better of this skirmish, because as usual, the media uncritically pass along his claim to superior judgment. I have never seen a single tv analyst point out that since getting elected to the Senate, Obama has done nothing more to end the war than Clinton has.

UPDATE: Jeralyn at Talk Left put up this excerpt from an interview Obama gave the New Yorker in November 2006:

http://www.newyorker.com/archi…

Where do you find yourself having the biggest differences with Hillary Clinton, politically?

You know, I think very highly of Hillary. The more I get to know her, the more I admire her. I think she’s the most disciplined-one of the most disciplined people-I’ve ever met. She’s one of the toughest. She’s got an extraordinary intelligence. And she is, she’s somebody who’s in this stuff for the right reasons. She’s passionate about moving the country forward on issues like health care and children. So it’s not clear to me what differences we’ve had since I’ve been in the Senate. I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test.

Obama basically came right out and said that if he’d been in the Senate, he would have done the same thing as Hillary on the AUMF vote.

Thanks again to Betsy of BlueNC for the roundup.-desmoinesdem

This week finds many of us burning the candles at both ends.  We see campaigns gearing up in North Carolina as the time for filing to run for public office comes to a close at noon today.  Campaigns are looking to hire “internet outreach coordinators” for the first time and BlueNC has been announced as a venue for an open forum discussion between our two Democratic gubernatorial candidates.  Imagine seeing that in the newspaper and realizing we didn’t have a date set for the event!  We will also host a debate or forum between at least three of the four candidates for Lt. Gov. in NC.  Just yesterday we received confirmation from a candidate for senate that she will live-blog at BlueNC.  Check out the other state blogs on the list and on the Open Left and MyDD state blogrolls.  

The rest of the roundup is after the jump.

RF asked me yesterday why I don’t plan to donate to Barack Obama’s campaign this year. One of these days I am going to write a fuller explanation of why Obama is not “change I can believe in,” but today Chris Bowers has an outstanding piece at Open Left that articulates some of my concerns.

Bowers prefers Obama to Hillary Clinton, but he hits the nail on the head here:

Rather, what does bother me is the notion is that someone who regularly reinforces conservative stereotypes about liberals when talking to the media is somehow the great champion, defender, and savior of liberalism. Don’t tell me that someone who thinks the DLC’s champion is too partisan is the next Russ Feingold or Paul Wellstone. Obama’s failure to challenge conservative falsehoods, like the notion that Hillary Clinton is some sort of ultra-partisan whose boots are stained with the intestines of her Republican enemies, is a clear indication that he will not fundamentally challenge prevailing conventional, ideological wisdom in other areas. Will he be a hundred times better than Bush? Absolutely. Will be ninety times better than McCain? Oh yeah. Is better than Hillary Clinton? I don’t know, but I’m willing to take that chance at this point. What I just can’t swallow is hearing, on a reasonably frequent basis, Obama reinforce conservative talking points, falsehoods and stereotypes in one ear, and that Obama is a progressive savior in the other ear. The fact is that he is willing to pander to some conservative media if it will win their endorsements, and to reinforce some conservative stereotypes if it will win him independent voters. While that may be playing to win, it is not playing to transform the discursive and ideological landscape of American politics. In my experience, it is actually pretty much the same old politics.  

Click the link and read his whole piece, really.

Big Tent Democrat, another reluctant Obama supporter who blogs at Talk Left, read Bowers’ piece and was struck by this Obama quote:

“I’m not a person who believes any one party has a monopoly on wisdom,” Obama said.

Big Tent Democrat added, “Indeed. Who needs a Democratic Congress? Not Obama apparently.”

A friend forwarded to me an action alert from the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women about House File 2292, which

would require employers to make reasonable efforts to provide a private place, other than a toilet stall, for nursing mothers to express breast milk or to breastfeed a child on their regular breaks.

Employers benefit when their employees are able to continue breastfeeding, as this website makes clear:

Benefits to the Employer

   * Reduced staff turnover and loss of skilled workers after the birth of a child

   * Reduced sick time/personal leave for breastfeeding women because their infants are more resistant to illness

   * Lower health care costs associated with healthier, breastfed infants

   * Higher job productivity, employee satisfaction and morale

   * Added recruitment incentive for women

   * Enhanced reputation as a company concerned for the welfare of its employees and their families

An absence of just one day costs the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power average $360 (for a $15 per hour employee). And it takes one and one-half days to have someone else do that employee’s work.

“It works to everyone’s advantage to show people that we really care about them and their babies,” says Tory Arriaga, a nurse at PanEnergy Corp, Houston. “The Company wins because we’ve got an employee who is very happy and who is probably gong to have less sick time and a healthier baby at home.”

“This newfound corporate interest arises from studies showing breast-fed babies have fewer minor illnesses. Sick babies pile up medical bills and frequently keep their mothers and fathers out of work. Providing new mothers with a private room, breast pumps, refrigerators and an extra break or two a day becomes a money-saving proposition.”

Benefits to the Employee

   * Facilitates the mother’s postpartum recovery

   * Reduces the incidence and severity of allergies and of ear and respiratory infections in infants, which translates into less time off and sick leave taken

   * Provides the most complete, easily digested, convenient and economical source of nourishment for infants

   * Creates a special closeness between mother and infant

   * Enhances the mother’s self-esteem and confidence

   * May lessen the risk of breast cancer

   * See Benefits of Breastfeeding article for an inclusive list

“Providing the opportunity and the resources for new mothers to be able to continue breastfeeding after they return to work enhances employee morale and productivity”.

The state has a clear interest in promoting breastfeeding even after women return to the workplace.

Breastfeeding has many health benefits for babies and mothers. (Click that link for a huge list of articles and resources on this subject.)

Continuing the breastfeeding relationship promotes a strong and healthy attachment between mothers and babies.

There are even environmental benefits of breastfeeding longer.

The Iowa Commission on the Status of Women notes:

There are two ways you can help. But don’t delay! HF2292 must be voted out of Committee by March 6th in order to remain viable!

Come to a “Nurse In” at 4:00 pm on Monday, March 3 at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines! Bring nursing infants and toddlers to the 2nd floor Capitol Rotunda. Older children are also welcome! (Be prepared to sit on the floor.) Please let your legislator know you are coming and would like to visit with her/him about HF2292.

Email or call your legislators and ask them to support HF2292. This is a cost-free measure to protect the health and well-being of our youngest Iowans. With Iowa’s mothers working at such a high rate, the least we can do for them is to guarantee their right to a reasonable accommodation to express breastmilk at work.

Look up your legislators’ email address at www.legis.state.ia.us or call them at 515-281-3221. You can look up the names of your legislators and the text of HF2292 at the same address.

The full text of the release from the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women is after the jump.

Take a minute and a half out of your life to watch this video:

The Obama supporters on the blogs are way too complacent about how tough it will be to beat McCain, by the way. This is one of the lines we will need to push to get the job done.

UPDATE: For more details, go to the Natural Living Expo site.

One thing I’ve been working on in my non-blog life is helping to plan the third annual Natural Living Expo, which will be held this Saturday, March 1, at the State Fairgrounds in the new Animal Learning Center building.  

If you’re in central Iowa this Saturday, please consider dropping in between 10 am and 3 pm. The event is free to the public, and there is plenty of free parking.  

Ed Fallon will be stopping by the Expo (you can find details in his public schedule, a couple of posts down this page).  

A bunch of environmental groups will have tables there as well, including the Iowa Environmental Council, Local Foods Connection, 1000 Friends of Iowa, Whiterock Conservancy, and I-Renew.

I’ve put a press release about the expo after the jump, and you can find more information about the vendors and speakers at:  www.naturallivingexpo.org  

Steve Gilliard passed away last June (decades too soon), but those of us who were addicted to his blog had been missing his writing for months already. One day in February 2007, Steve went to the doctor to get a prescription for a cold he couldn’t shake. He was admitted to the hospital right away for treatment of an infection of unknown origin, and he never was able to get back on his computer.

I’d already been planning to write this diary before I had my own run-in with a scary infection last week. I don’t write many personal reflections, but I feel compelled to share how much I still miss Steve’s blogging.

Ed Fallon turns 50 this Saturday, and his campaign has set an ambitious goal of collecting $50 from at least 1,000 donors to mark the occasion.

Everyone who gives $50 to the campaign will receive Fallon’s mother’s recipe for “killer apple pie.” You can contribute here:

http://www.actblue.com/page/50…

The campaign also has a number of public events scheduled for Saturday to mark Fallon’s birthday. I’m putting the details after the jump.  

Thanks to Betsy for the roundup, which came while I was in the hospital. -desmoinesdem

Rick Renzi’s under indictment, Sue Myrick gets caught with her fingers in the cookie jar – possibly legally, Patrick McHenry has questions surrounding just about everything he does, John Shadegg can’t make up his mind. How many more Republicans will get caught up in legal or ethical controversies prior to November?

One way to stay on top of this is to follow along with the state blogs. We’re discussing our congress critters and their shenanigans long before it hits the national scene. Stop by. Check us out. You too can be the first to know.

The roundup for last week is after the jump.

I received an e-mail alert from The Interfaith Alliance Iowa Action Fund today.

Apparently the House Labor Committee is considering a very bad bill in an effort to look “tough” on immigration.

The full text of the action alert is after the jump. It summarizes the main features of the bill and provides talking points you can use with legislators, along with the relevant contact e-mails and phone numbers.

My opinion is that a phone call from a constituent is harder to ignore than an e-mail message.

UPDATE: This article about the bill ran on the front page of the Des Moines Register on Tuesday:

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…

I saw on the I-Renew e-mail list that the Iowa Environmental Council has put out an action alert urging citizens to contact senators in support of SF 2083. It’s an important bill that would improve energy efficiency in this state.

The full text of the action alert, along with suggested wording for your communication with legislators, is after the jump. Of course it’s better to put things in your own words if you can.

cross-posted at Daily Kos and MyDD

I am a healthy woman in my late 30s who rarely sees a doctor outside of regularly scheduled checkups. I have had two uncomplicated pregnancies followed by easy, midwife-assisted births.

Most years we pay far more in premiums for our family’s health insurance than our medical care would cost if we paid for everything out of pocket.

Not this year. Yesterday I returned home after spending seven days and six nights in the hospital. It might have been a lot worse if I were uninsured.

Apologies for the sudden break from blogging. On February 15 I came down with an ear infection that got out of control and put me in the hospital with cellulitis in my leg from last Tuesday until this afternoon. I have about 50 diaries in my head and will start writing them again tomorrow.

Thanks again to Betsy of BlueNC for this week’s roundup. -desmoinesdem

Texas
   Phillip Martin of Burnt Orange Report lays out the strategy of how Barack Obama can win Texas.  

Oregon
   First recorded version of Ginsberg’s HOWL was in Berkley, right? Nope–a new discovery puts it at Portland’s Reed College, 52 years ago this Valentine’s Day.  

Michigan
   Clinton, Obama campaigning for – but not IN – Michigan

Iowa
   desmoinesdem discusses the preferences of Iowa’s superdelegates and notes that Democracy for America has endorsed Ed Fallon, who is challenging incumbent Leonard Boswell in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.

New York
   The Daily Gotham diagnoses a rebellion among national Democrats and wonders what that means for the State of New York.

Texas
   As the focus on the Democratic Presidential Primary shifts to Texas, Fort Worth Is Fired Up and Ready to Go!

Arizona
   Incumbent Republican John Shadegg is out of the picture in AZ CD3 and Bob Lord has received increased support from local and national Democrats.  

California
   Arnold Schwarzenegger talks a big game about putting all options on the table, but won’t be forthright about the need to raise revenue.

New Mexico
   New Mexico’s filing deadline came and went this week, and now we know who is running for the three open House and one open Senate seats.  Fun times.

Delaware
   Republican State Rep. Nancy Wagner uses earmarks to give her husband a job.  Rev. Chris Bullock announces his candidacy for Delaware’s sole congressional seat.  State Sen. Harris McDowell delays Delaware’s move to wind power with meaningless hearings.  

Virginia
    RK Conference Call with Gov. Kaine.  

South Dakota
    What Was That You Were Saying, Gov. Rounds?

Utah
   Is Utah the worlds nuclear landfill?

West Virginia
   W.Va. state Sen. Hunter says “I introduced Senate Bill 588 because I fervently believe that God did not intend for us to destroy the mountains, the streams, the forests and His people in order to mine coal.”  Jay the Telcom Operator: Sen Rockefeller’s unwavering support of telco immunity earns him a new nickname “One Ringy-Dingy Rocky” (with a must-see photoplay by OneCitizen).

Minnesota
   SurveyUSA indicates a dead heat between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken.

Alabama
   Mooncat brings us a heartbreaker on Valentines Day.  Read about payday lenders preying on the elderly and disabled.

Colorado
   At Squarestate, David Sirota is reporting a Colorado Superdelegate plans to ignore the will of Colorado voters.

North Carolina
   At BlueNC, Jerimee reports that Congressman Brad Miller has taken a leadership role in passing the contempt resolution.

Connecticut
   Shays embarrasses Connecticut…..again.

Wisconsin
   At Uppity Wisconsin, xoff says Wisconsin doesn’t need another presidential debate.

Georgia
   At Tondee’s Tavern we find tha Rep. David Scott flipped to Obama and Rep. John Lewis is looking that way.

Idaho
   At 43rd State Blues Idahogie takes on the Super Delegate petitions floating around with a convincing argument.

Illinois
   At Prairie State Blue, Michael in Chicago writes about raising Democratic visibility.

Indiana
   Must see video at Blue Indiana.  An Indiana State Rep., John Elrod (R) is caught on tape doing campaign work during a legislative session.  

Maryland
   Donna Edwards wins! And Eric looks at the implications of that victory.

Senator Tom Harkin wants the Democratic Party to scrap the idea of superdelegates in the future, the Des Moines Register reported on Friday:

“I am convinced this idea of superdelegates has to be done away with,” he said Thursday. “It gives these superdelegates too much power to decide things at the end and it should not be that way.”[…]

Harkin said Obama and Clinton already have approached him and asked for his support. He said that for now he is remaining neutral.

But he said he is concerned that the superdelegate party rules instituted in the 1980s are not helpful for Democrats. Some pressure is being exerted on superdelegates.

Harkin went on to say that Michigan and Florida should hold new elections this spring if they want their delegates to be seated at the Democratic National Convention. I share Harkin’s sentiments on the superdelegates, but scheduling new elections in these states is not practical. There’s no money to hold new primaries, and caucuses in such large states would not be feasible. Too many voters would be unable to participate.

I favor some kind of compromise that would allow Michigan and Florida’s delegates to be seated, such as cutting the number of delegates from those states in half (like the GOP did) and giving Obama the uncommitted delegates from Michigan.

Big Tent Democrat had a different idea for a Michigan/Florida compromise which, in his view, “enfranchises those voters who voted previously AND ensures that Obama gets a fair shot at winning those two states.”

Getting back to the issue of superdelegates, Todd Beeton put up a good post yesterday on the campaigns MoveOn.org and Democracy for America have launched against the idea of superdelegates. He points out that none of the Obama supporters who are now outraged about the superdelegates are arguing, for instance, that Ted Kennedy should switch his vote to Hillary Clinton just because she won the Massachusetts primary.

Beeton also linked to this video of an Obama supporter from Ohio, David Wilhelm. He argues that superdelegates should not back Clinton if Obama leads in pledged delegates, but he won’t promise to switch to Clinton if she ends up winning Ohio and the overall pledged delegate battle.

I got an e-mail today from Democracy for America, confirming that they are backing Ed Fallon in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district. Excerpt:

Last Tuesday, our Primaries Matter campaign delivered results and helped lead Donna Edwards to a resounding 24-point victory over Bush-Democrat Al Wynn in MD-04.

Ed Fallon is the next DFA-List endorsement and he’s taking on Bush-Democrat, Rep. Leonard Boswell in IA-03.

Contribute $20.08 right now and support a Democrat with the backbone to stand up for progressive values.

http://www.actblue.com/page/su…

Ed Fallon is a true progressive and he has a record of beating out-of-touch Democrats in Iowa. In 1992, he beat 10-year incumbent Gary Sherzan with 63% of the vote and became a State Representative. When the conservative party establishment tried to primary Ed out of the state legislature, Ed won again with 68% of the vote.

Now, with your help, Ed will beat Bush-Democrat Leonard Boswell. Here’s a breakdown of some of the important differences between them.

The chart didn’t come through well when I copied and pasted. Here’s what it showed in Fallon’s column:

The War in Iraq: opposed Bush’s war from the start and believes we need a more diplomatic approach to foreign policy, not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East

Campaign Funding: has never accepted money from lobbyists

Spying on Americans: opposes Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of innocent Americans

The Climate Crisis: supports a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and has lead the fight against government handouts to big business in Iowa

No Child Left Behind: is against this unfunded, ineffective Bush-mandate, and will work to get it repealed

On those same issues, here’s what Democracy for America listed in the Boswell column:

-voted for the Iraq War and has continued to support additional funding with no timetable to bring the troops home

-accepts donations from lobbyists

-voted for increased warrantless surveillance on the American people

-voted to provide $14 billion in tax breaks and incentives for oil and gas companies and supports greater use of coal

-voted for [No Child Left Behind] and did not fund it or attempt to repeal it

I don’t know how many members Democracy for America has, but it will be interesting to see how much money this appeal raises for Fallon’s campaign. Donna Edwards’ convincing victory may make people more willing to invest in another primary challenger.

By the way, John Deeth has a piece up at Iowa Independent about the role Boswell and 20 other “Blue dog” Democrats played in yesterday’s House debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Deeth’s piece linked to a post by Matt Browner Hamlin, who confirmed that all 21 House Democrats who cooperated with the Republicans on FISA have received contributions from the telecom industry. Boswell has received $5,000 in campaign contributions from AT&T.

UPDATE: I checked the page at ActBlue that Democracy for America set up for donations to Fallon. As of 2:25 pm, this appeal has raised $10,417 for Fallon from 305 donors. That’s impressive. I’m sure the total will increase substantially this evening, which is when many people have their internet time.

SECOND UPDATE: As of 10:30 pm, this appeal has raised $20,024 for Fallon from 582 donors. That’s an average of just under $35 per donor. Looks like a lot of those people will be willing and able to donate again before this race is over.

Thomas Beaumont wrote this article in the Sunday Des Moines Register on Iowa’s superdelegates. The whole article is worth reading, and it includes this useful sidebar:

Iowa is expected to have 12 superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. They include all four Democratic members of Congress, Iowa’s governor and its six members of the Democratic National Committee. The 12th superdelegate will be chosen at the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention in June.

Below are the names of those superdelegates, their titles and whom they have endorsed for the 2008 presidential nomination.

SUPPORTING HILLARY CLINTON

LEONARD BOSWELL, U.S. House member from Des Moines.

MIKE GRONSTAL, Iowa Senate majority leader from Council Bluffs and member of the DNC as chairman of Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

SANDY OPSTVEDT, Iowa labor union leader and at-large DNC member from Story City.

SARAH SWISHER, Iowa City nurse, labor union leader and member of the DNC as state Democratic Party vice chairwoman. Endorsed Edwards, but has backed Clinton since Edwards left the race.

SUPPORTING BARACK OBAMA

CHET CULVER, Iowa governor, endorsed Obama on Thursday.

MIKE FITZGERALD, Iowa treasurer and member of the DNC as member of National Association of State Democratic Treasurers’ executive committee.

DAVID LOEBSACK, U.S. House member from Mount Vernon.

UNCOMMITTED

SCOTT BRENNAN, Des Moines lawyer and member of the DNC as Iowa Democratic Party chairman.

BRUCE BRALEY, U.S. House member from Waterloo. Endorsed John Edwards in December, but is uncommitted since Edwards’ departure from the race.

TOM HARKIN, U.S. senator

RICHARD MACHACEK, Winthrop farmer and at-large DNC member. Was a longtime Edwards supporter, but now is uncommitted.

It was news to me that Swisher had committed to Clinton, although I’m not surprised, since Clinton has a better health care plan than Obama. I wonder if the other former Edwards supporters will be influenced by a possible Edwards endorsement, or if they will wait and see.

If you want to know what other states’ superdelegates are doing, keep an eye on the “Superdelegate transparency project”, which Chris Bowers announced yesterday at OpenLeft:

We are compiling the district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates, and then tracking these results against how superdelegates are currently pledged (or have publicly endorsed a candidate), and how they eventually vote. The aim of this project is to open up the Democratic nomination process, and to gauge what effect the superdelegates have on the nomination.

Bowers has a secondary goal, which is to persuade superdelegates to back the candidate who wins the pledged delegates and the overall popular vote:

Until a single leader in the popular vote and pledged delegate count emerges at the end of the primary and caucus season, superdelegates should not make a firm commitment to vote for any candidate at the convention other than the popular choice of their constituents. Endorsements can be made, but in order to uphold the principles of democracy within the Democratic Party, there should be no firm commitments from any given superdelegate to vote for anyone at the convention other than the candidate chosen by the constituents of that superdelegate.

[…]my democratic standard for super delegates is that if one candidate wins pledged delegates and popular votes according to all counts, then all super delegates should vote for that candidate. However, since we won’t know if a candidate achieves that standard until the end of the primary / caucus season, and since it is possible no candidate will ever achieve that standard, then in the interim all super delegates should pledge to vote their districts.

Will Iowa’s superdelegates go with the winner of all pledged delegates and the overall popular vote, even if that candidate is not their first choice? The Des Moines Register article includes the following quotes:

“If it’s as close as it stands today, I would still be casting my vote for Hillary,” said Sandy Opstvedt, a labor union leader and superdelegate from Story City.

Sounds like Opstvedt is leaving the door open to switching to Obama, if he becomes the clear leader in pledged delegates.

Governor Chet Culver, who endorsed Obama last week, cited Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses as a factor in his decision:

“I do think it matters too that Iowans have spoken loudly and clearly,” Culver said in a Des Moines Register interview Friday. “And because of that, in part, I felt compelled to also stand with him.”

“I’d love it if every superdelegate supported Barack Obama,” Culver also said, adding that he had begun making calls to the others.

Does that mean that Culver would not switch, even if Clinton finished the primaries with more popular votes and more pledged delegates than Obama?

Meanwhile, Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal

declined to comment on whether he would consider changing his support if Obama gathered more delegates than Clinton as the result of the upcoming nominating contests.

Gronstal said he can justify supporting Clinton in part because she got the most support, 43 percent, in Pottawattamie County on caucus night.

“Representing my constituents, I can make the case that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Gronstal said.

Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) seems more committed to sticking with Clinton unless she gives her superdelegate supporters the green light to switch to Obama. Speaking to the Register, Boswell

said the superdelegate system was not intended to reflect voter sentiment.

“It’s always important to respond to the voters, but I don’t think it was designed that way,” Boswell said.

He said he planned to support Clinton at the national convention, and would only consider a change after consulting her.

Expect Boswell to take a lot of heat for this position if Obama racks up a big lead in the pledged delegates later this spring. The Des Moines Register published this letter to the editor on Wednesday, written by a constituent in Des Moines:

Leonard Boswell’s pledge to cast his superdelegate vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton at the National Democratic Convention troubles me. Barack Obama won Boswell’s 3rd District by a large enough margin to win one more delegate than Clinton, who came in third in that district.

Yet Boswell’s vote, which he has only because he is our representative, will negate that margin of victory, rendering the votes of tens of thousands of us meaningless. That’s just not right. Maybe all of us whose votes Boswell will negate should return the favor by supporting his opponent, Ed Fallon, in the upcoming Democratic primary.

For the record, I agree with Bowers. Superdelegates should not be willing to hand the nomination to one candidate if the other candidate leads both the pledged delegate count and the overall popular vote. That would be disastrous for our party.

As you may recall, Iowa Senator Matt McCoy of Des Moines was acquitted in December on federal charges of attempted extortion. The case against McCoy was weak and raised questions about whether partisan politics influenced his indictment.

One detail that emerged from the trial was that in December 2005, Des Moines businessman John Ruan III (a Republican) wrote a $2,500 check to McCoy with the words “Mike Blouen” in the memo line. A few days later, McCoy contributed $2,500 to the gubernatorial campaign of fellow Democrat Mike Blouin.

That disclosure led to an ethics investigation, which has now been settled, according to the Des Moines Register:

A prominent Des Moines businessman and an Iowa state senator have each agreed to pay $1,250 to settle allegations that one used the other to pass an illegal campaign contribution to a former candidate for governor.

John Ruan III and state Sen. Matt McCoy will pay the fines as part of a deal to end a state ethics investigation into a series of checks between the men and the failed candidate, Democrat Mike Blouin.

The settlement, approved by the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board late Monday, includes assertions that neither Ruan nor McCoy “intended to violate or willfully violated” campaign law with a December 2005 check from McCoy to Blouin.

Charles Smithson of the ethics board called the settlement “a fair resolution of the matter for all involved” and said Blouin would not have to return the disputed $2,500 contribution because “there was no evidence that he knew anything about the underlying situation.”

Paging Ed Fallon: Leonard Boswell may be making a big mistake, according to mcjoan’s diary on the fight over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. She says that “House Republicans will try to derail the effort to pass a 21 day extension of the existing surveillance law and force a vote on the Senate bill.”

She cites this piece in CQpolitics:

As the House turned to a 21-day extension of a temporary law governing electronic surveillance, Republicans prepared a motion to force a vote on the long-term version passed Tuesday by the Senate.

House Republicans engineered a series of procedural votes Wednesday in a bid to derail the Democrats’ proposed extension, which President Bush said he would veto. They argued that the House should simply take up and send to the White House a surveillance overhaul bill that the Senate passed by 68-29.

Because 21 conservative Blue Dog Democrats have endorsed the Senate-passed bill, Republicans might be able to win approval of the Senate bill through a motion to recommit the extension with instructions to amend it with the text of the Senate bill.

Yes, Boswell is in that group of 21 House Democrats. Not only that, the same 21 Democrats wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi on January 28, supporting retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies and other measures in the FISA bill that cleared the Senate.

mcjoan asked Daily Kos readers to contact the 21 Democrats. Here is the information for Boswell:

Phone: (202) 225-3806, Fax: (202) 225-5608

If you contact Boswell’s office, tell him to vote with House Democrats in support of the House version of the FISA bill, which is called the RESTORE Act.

Normally, I am not overly optimistic about calls to members of Congress making a difference, but Boswell is heading into a tough primary.

He can do the right thing for our civil liberties, which is also the smart move politically, or he can go with his fellow Blue Dogs giving cover to the Republican Party.

UPDATE: Paul Kiel has more on what happened in the House today. Boswell and the others don’t look like profiles in courage:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…

I wasn’t a big fan of the Obama “Yes We Can” video, but then, I wasn’t exactly the target demographic. (I didn’t recognize anyone in it other than Kareem.)

This parody about the McCain campaign is priceless, though. You have to watch it.

Barack Obama was expected to win today’s primaries in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia, but he won them by even larger margins than expected. He now leads Clinton in the pledged delegate count, and may even be leading if you include Michigan and Florida.

I agree with DrinksGreenTea that it would be disastrous to have superdelegates decide our nominee at the convention. I also would hate to see our nominee determined by the decision over whether Michigan and Florida delegates are seated. I would like to see a clear winner emerge from the primaries.

That means either Hillary needs to win all of the March 4 primaries convincingly, and win Pennsylvania in April, or Obama needs to take at least one of the following: Texas, Ohio, or Pennsylvania.

If Obama wins a big state, there will be almost no way for Clinton to overtake him, and I don’t think superdelegates will go against the candidate who leads in pledged delegates.

Hillary is paying the price for having no plan for the contests after February 5. Clearly they were counting on putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.

The netroots got very involved in two primaries so far this year. Mark Pera was challenging “Bush dog” Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional district. He ran a spirited campaign but lost by double-digits in the February 5 primary.

Donna Edwards came within a few percentage points of beating Al Wynn, one of the worst corporate Democrats in Congress, in Maryland’s 4th district primary two years ago.

This year she was backed not just by bloggers, but also by the SEIU, EMILY’s list, and Democracy for America. She even got the Washington Post’s endorsement.

The final returns aren’t in yet, but the media have already called the MD-04 primary for Edwards. It just goes to show that sometimes, a challenger can beat an entrenched incumbent.

Will the netroots and Democracy for America get behind Ed Fallon now? I hope so, although I must add that Leonard Boswell (disappointing as he can be) is nowhere near as disloyal to progressive causes as Wynn.

John Edwards met with Hillary Clinton late last week, and he was scheduled to meet with Barack Obama today, but the meeting was postponed.

If I were advising Edwards, I honestly don't know what I would tell him. I see the logic of not endorsing, endorsing Obama, or endorsing Clinton.

If he's going to endorse, I would think it would have to come before the big primaries on March 4.

What do you think he will do? Take the poll and explain your choice in the comments, if you like.

One of the many reasons I supported John Edwards was that I thought he would expand the map for Democrats in the general election. I thought he would hold all of the Kerry states, adding Iowa and Ohio with ease, and would make things competitive in several other places too (like Missouri).

I think Clinton or Obama could beat McCain or lose to him. Clinton’s winning scenario is obvious: turn out record numbers of women and Latinos, rack up a big lead among seniors, thereby holding most if not all of the Kerry states and adding Florida and/or Ohio.

Plenty of things could go wrong with Clinton’s scenario, but it is hard to argue that she would not turn out record numbers of women and Latinos.

Obama’s winning electoral vote scenario is less certain for me. Although nationwide polls show him doing slightly better against McCain than Clinton, he runs behind Clinton against McCain in several key states:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

And that’s before the right-wing hate machine has even opened fire against Obama. With Clinton, we pretty much know where her floor is, but with Obama, who knows?

That’s why Charlie Cook recently argued that Clinton would probably win between 48 percent and 52 percent of the general election vote, whereas Obama could get 55 percent or more, but could also conceivably get below 45 percent in the general.

Yesterday I asked Obama supporters at MyDD to give me their scenarios for 270 electoral votes against McCain. MyDD user JDF came up with this:

http://www.mydd.com/comments/2…

Here is how I see Obama getting to 270. This is a broad strokes view and I put it together relatively quickly so I am sure it is not perfect, but at least shows (from my POV) that it is not a stretch for Obama to get well past 270.

States he WINS

Wash: 11

Oregon: 7

Cali: 55

New York: 31

DC: 3

Maryland: 10

New Jersey: 15

Mass: 12

RI: 4

CT: 7

NH: 4

VT: 3

ME: 3

Michigan: 17

Illinois: 21

Minnesota: 10

That would give him 213 Electoral Votes.

There are 20 in Ohio, 21 in Pennsylvania, 27 in Florida, 13 in Virginia, 11 in Missouri, 11 in Indiana,  5 in Nevada, 5 in New Mexico, 10 in Wisconsin,  7 in Iowa

Puts 130 other Electoral Votes in play that I think fall anywhere from a strong edge for Obama to a moderate edge to McCain at this point.

Also, and this is a stretch, but I would argue that he can compete in states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. Which puts another 32 electoral votes within reach but highly unlikely.

All in all I would give the GE edge to Obama. Also, I don’t think you give people in the south enough credit to be able to look past Obama’s skin color or Obama’s ability to transcend it. The people who “would never vote for a black guy” would never vote for a democrat either.

I think this is plausible (except for the part about SC, GA and LA), and I would throw in Iowa’s 7 votes for Obama against McCain. Also, Maine would probably deliver all 4 of its electoral votes to Obama (they don’t have winner-take-all there). Still, that only brings Obama to 221 electoral votes.

Florida is a write-off, given McCain’s strength among military and Latinos, and Obama’s relative weakness among Latinos and seniors.

Pennsylvania and Ohio could be real problems for Obama against McCain, in my opinion, especially when the media start covering Obama’s voting record on gun control in the Illinois legislature.

What do you think?

UPDATE: This diary by Clinton supporter silver spring is quite interesting:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

The MSM is constantly feeding us the theme that Obama would somehow be more “electable” in the general election because he overwhelmingly attracts independent voters, and if Hillary is the nominee, then McCain will get the bulk of the independents.  

There are two things wrong with the above proposition – 1) Even though Obama is attracting more independents, Hillary is not doing bad either; for one thing,  she is attracting more independents than McCain ….  but more importantly – 2) Independents are only one subset of traditional swing voters, the other subsets being Hispanics, white Catholics, white women and suburban voters.  Among the last four subsets above, Hillary is comfortably beating Obama (as well as McCain).

The diary has a lot of good analysis, including this bit, which refers to November 2004 exit poll data:

From the above 2004 numbers it’s interesting to note that Kerry actually beat Bush among independents (as well as Hispanics).  However, Bush comfortably beat Kerry among Catholics, white women and suburban voters.  Thus, it can be logically argued that Catholics, white women, suburban voters and Hispanics are as important as independent voters (if not more so) in order to guarantee Democratic success in November.

Catholics, white women and suburban voters are going to be crucial in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A week or so ago I got another fundraising e-mail from Senator Harkin’s campaign.

Don’t take this the wrong way, because I strongly support and admire Harkin, but the $35 I spent on my ticket to the steak fry in September was the last money he’ll see from me for a while.

When you start the election year with $3.4 million in the bank, and your only declared opponent has $58.07 in the bank, I think my political donations will be more helpful to other Democrats.

As I’ve written before, candidates I plan to support this year include Ed Fallon, Windsor Heights Mayor Jerry Sullivan, who’s running for Iowa House district 59, and Heather Ryan, who is trying to unseat the Republican in Kentucky’s first Congressional district.

[Betsy at BlueNC helms the update again this week…]

This week we bring you double the pleasure in our 50 State Blog Roundup. Real life threw me a curve ball last week and I wasn't able to follow through with the roundup. My apologies. You will find last week's roundup tagging along at the end. Without further delay, here's what's going on locally at our state community blogs:

Minnesota
   Tim Walz — first-term congressman and Democratic National Convention superdelegate — endorsed Barack Obama's presidential bid this week.

Iowa
   desmoinesdem discusses the dispute between Iowa's governor and secretary of state (both Democrats) over the best fix for paperless voting machines.

Louisiana
   The Primaries are coming to Louisiana… and Daily Kingfish is torn between the two candidates remaining. Although Daily Kingfish is undecided, Ryan is sick of the all spin being put on the Louisiana internets about how Hillary hasn't released a plan to deal with the Gulf Region. Locally, Governor PBJ's Ethics Plan has some serious holes, and is facing criticism from the Ethics Board themselves!

{much more under the fold!}

Big wins for Obama today in the Nebraska and Washington caucuses. Early returns in Louisiana also show him winning, not surprisingly.

I will be interested to see if there was more than a negligible vote for Edwards in Louisiana, since he began and ended his campaign there and has done a lot to bring the Katrina aftermath to the media’s attention.

On the Republican side, Huckabee embarrassed McCain (and Senator Sam Brownback, who backed McCain) in Kansas today. Huck seems to have a shot at winning in Washington and Louisiana too. That would be just fine by me. Anything that keeps the “Republicans divided, base can’t stand McCain” as the journalistic narrative has to be good for Democrats.

Governor Chet Culver has agreed to back Secretary of State Mike Mauro’s plan “to use state money to help counties switch to one uniform system with paper ballots,” the Des Moines Register reported on Saturday:

Culver said he has put together a “working group” that includes Mauro, lawmakers and Culver’s staff. They will try to figure out how to get counties equipped with optical scan machines that count paper ballots – as he has long advocated for, he said.

Good for him. As I’ve written before, spending money on equipment that would print receipts for touchscreen voting machines would just throw good money after bad. Better to ensure that every Iowan votes with a paper ballot, which can be recounted if necessary.

Also on Friday, Culver endorsed incumbent Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary for Iowa’s third Congressional district:

He called Boswell a “dear friend” whose military background is valuable on national security issues, although he said he respects Fallon and supports the idea of competitive political races.

Meanwhile, the Register tries to make news by noting that Culver has refused to rule out running for president someday.

Come on, reporters. He’s barely a year into his first term, and with any luck we’re about to elect a Democrat who will serve as president until 2012 or 2016. Let Culver get a term or two under his belt before you start asking him whether he’ll run for president.

Iowa Environmental Council Executive Director Marian Riggs Gelb: Iowa has a responsibility to help fix the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone.”

I encourage you to click the link and read the whole op-ed in Saturday’s Des Moines Register.

Voters will make their choice this weekend in Maine, Louisiana, Washington state, Nebraska and the Virgin Islands.

Jerome Armstrong put up the predictions from an Obama campaign memo at MyDD. I’m sure those are lowball predictions, though.

I don’t have a clue about the percentages, but I think Obama will win all these contests handily. Clinton’s best hope is probably Maine, where the demographics are more favorable to her and her base is less likely to be stuck at work (and unable to caucus) on a weekend.

What do you think?

Bleeding Heartland user Jim Clausen brought this article to my attention: Karl Rove will speak at the U of I’s Memorial Union Main Lounge at 7:30 pm on February 17.

Frank Durham, professor of journalism in the U of I School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will interview Rove. A question-and-answer session will follow the on-stage interview.

[…]

The U of I will pay Rove $40,000, which includes his speaking fee and some expenses, such as air fare, from the F. Wendell Miller Fund, the U of I reported. The University Lecture Committee will pay Rove’s on-the-ground expenses.

Media are allowed to get video, audio and photographs during the first five minutes of Rove’s talk. After that, no recording devices are allowed. Similar restrictions were requested by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno when they spoke at the U of I, officials said.

If you attend, please take good notes and put up a diary afterwards to “document the atrocities,” as Atrios would say.

Didn’t see this one coming. IowaCubs has the story on MyDD:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

Some people who are very close to the Culver family were involved with the Clinton campaign in Iowa, and of course Mari Culver endorsed Edwards in December.

Apparently Governor Culver will appear with Obama at a rally in Nebraska tonight.  

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has raised more than $7.6 million since the Super Tuesday primaries, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign claims to have raised more than $4 million in the past two days.

It’s incredible to see these candidates’ supporters coming out in droves to contribute, and it should bode well for our nominee going into the general election.

At the same time, I urge anyone who has donated to a presidential campaign to set some money aside for worthy candidates seeking other offices.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am supporting Ed Fallon in the Democratic primary for Iowa’s third Congressional district. The incumbent, Leonard Boswell, has a huge money advantage, but as noneed4thneed recently pointed out in this thread, Fallon raised more money from individuals in January than Boswell raised from individuals in the whole fourth quarter of 2007.

If you are so inclined, you can donate to Fallon’s campaign through ActBlue.

Or, if you prefer not to get involved in this primary, I encourage you to seek out and support one of the many fine Democrats challenging incumbent Republicans this year.

For instance, in this diary RDemocrat makes the case for Heather Ryan, a candidate for Congress in KY-01 facing “one of the worst Congressmen in the land, Exxon Ed Whitfield.”

There are many state and local races worth donating to this year as well. In fact, a donation of a few hundred dollars to a statehouse candidate is more likely to make a difference than a donation to a presidential campaign that’s already raised more than $100 million.

I will be writing a check this week to the campaign of Jerry Sullivan, who is running in Iowa House district 59. It’s an open seat that leans slightly Republican, but Sullivan is a great guy with outstanding qualifications and experience in public service as well as the business community. I think he’s got an excellent shot to win my district for the Democrats.

Consider this an open thread to tell us which campaigns you plan to support this year.

cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

I don’t have a dog in this primary anymore. My candidate, John Edwards, is out of the race. I would vote for and do GOTV for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the general. I see major drawbacks to both of them as candidates and potential presidents, but I also think either of them have a realistic chance to beat John McCain and run a good administration.

This diary contains some friendly advice for supporters of both candidates going forward.

Join me after the jump for more.

Results will be trickling in all evening, though it may be tomorrow before we know how many delegates each candidate won.

For those who say the popular vote and the state-by-state results are meaningless because “it’s all about delegates,” I disagree. Clinton and Obama may finish within 50 delegates of each other, but psychologically, and in terms of media coverage, it will make a big difference who won the popular vote in California.

Also, it will make a big difference in the media coverage if one candidate wins at least two-thirds of the states voting today, as opposed to each candidate winning about half of the 22 states.

UPDATE: Wow, an exciting night with both candidates able to claim victory.

Obama will win 13 or 14 of the 22 states, which is impressive. True, many of them have low numbers of  Democrats participating (AK, ID, ND), but it does impress me that Democrats in the deep-red states seem to want Obama at the top of the ticket. Obama won by a surprisingly large margin in DE and won narrowly in CT and MO. He won IL by a much larger margin than Clinton won NY.

He can credibly claim that he can compete in all parts of the country.

On the other hand, Hillary looks set to crush Obama in California, despite all of the endorsements and glowing media coverage for Obama there lately. Hillary also beat Obama convincingly in MA, where the governor and both senators were for Obama, and in NJ, where some pollsters had Obama leading toward the end. She won in red states like TN and OK, not to mention AR.

It will be a while before we figure out the delegate count. If it’s a tie or close to that, Obama will be very happy, because the states set to vote for the rest of this month heavily favor him. He could have a delegate lead going into March 4, when TX and OH vote.

But given how early the networks called California and Arizona, Clinton seems to have held on to her big edge among Latinos. That doesn’t bode well for Obama’s prospects of winning TX.

I am pleased with the outcome. I didn’t want the nomination to be wrapped up tonight. We benefit from more time with our candidates in the limelight.

I hope the media will now start asking Obama more tough questions, because I’d be a lot more comfortable with him as the nominee if he gets plenty of media scrutiny in the next month or two.

More debates will help our candidates sharpen their messages as well.

All in all, a good night to be a Democrat.  

I haven’t had time to look into the details, but the Des Moines Register ran this article on a bill which would deal with water quality. House Study Bill 615 has co-sponsors from both parties and calls for the following things, according to the Register:

Experts would study 11 regional watersheds per year and identify each area’s most pressing needs. Watersheds that present the greatest health risks would be prioritized, and the worst areas would get any available money from the state Department of Natural Resources. A Water Resources Coordinating Council would be established within the governor’s office to coordinate regulatory efforts, help Iowans organize local watershed projects and help them get money more easily for water quality projects. A marketing campaign would alert Iowans about the need to take personal responsibility for the water in their area.

Here’s a link to the text of House Study Bill 615, for those of you who want to read the whole thing.

This probably won’t be popular with many blog readers, but I am 100 percent behind Representative Swati Dandekar’s proposal to ban the use of cell phones while driving. Like she says, it’s a public safety issue. If you need to make a call, pull over, park and make your call.

I can’t remember where I’ve seen it, but research has shown that drivers are more distracted when talking on the phone than they are by talking to another person sitting in the car with them.

Consider signing up to help the DNR figure out how many frogs and toads remain in Iowa’s wetlands.

This went out on the Sierra Club’s e-mail loop:

Hi Folks!

Just thought I’d let you know about an opportunity that might interest some of you or your group’s membership.  The Iowa Frog and Toad Call Survey has been in place since 1991 with hundreds of dedicated volunteers going out during the spring and summer to listen at some of their nearby wetlands.   If you are interested in joining this group of volunteers the Wildlife Diversity Program will be hosting 3 workshops this March to train folks to start and run a survey of their own. The workshops will run from 12:30 to 4:30 and will cover Iowa frog and toad id, how to locate and monitor wetlands, what data to collect, and finally how to submit the data to the DNR.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in one of these workshops please feel free to pass this on.

Thanks for your time.  You can contact me at stephanie.shepherd AT dnr.iowa.gov if you would like additional info.

Registration forms are available at: http://www.iowadnr.com/wildlif…

Thank you!

Stephanie

Pre-registration is required along with a $5.00 fee. The workshop schedule is as follows:

NORTHWEST IOWA

March 1, 2008  Ruthven, IA

LOCATION: Lost Island Lake Nature Center, Palo Alto CCB, 3259 355th Ave., Ruthven, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm  

EASTERN IOWA

March 15, 2008  Center Junction, IA  Jones County

LOCATION: Jones County Conservation Board Nature Center, Central Park, 12515 Central Park Road, Center Junction, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm

CENTRAL IOWA

March 29, 2008  Maxwell, IA  Polk County  

LOCATION: Chichaqua Bottoms LongHouse, 8700 NE 126 Ave., Maxwell, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm

It is strange for me to feel so detached the day before an election. I don’t have a dog in this fight anymore. I see advantages and disadvantages to both Clinton and Obama as candidates and as presidents. I could live with either and would be enthusiastic about neither.

Super Tuesday, which looked a couple of weeks ago like it would be a blowout for Clinton, is up for grabs now with Obama surging in some key states. Put your predictions in this thread.

1. How many of the 22 states will Clinton win, how many will Obama win, and how many will be split decisions (with one candidate winning the popular vote and the other winning a majority of the delegates)?

2. Who will have the bigger winning margin: Obama in Illinois, or Clinton in New York?

3. Who will win each of the following states tomorrow?

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Kansas

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Missouri

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Tennessee

Utah

Check out MyDD and Open Left for recent polling data in these states, but keep in mind that there haven’t been any polls in some of them.

UPDATE: Obama supporter poblano has his predictions here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

It’s based on delegates, not popular vote, so he thinks several states will be a tie.

I forgot to add Americans abroad and American Samoa to the list of entities voting today. I predict Obama will win both of those groups.

I think Clinton will win these 11 states today: AZ, AR, CA, DE, MA, NJ, NM, NY, ND, OK, TN

Although Obama has all the momentum in CA, I pick Clinton to hang on (barely) there. I was persuaded by silver spring’s diary that most of the polls understate the percentage of women voters:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

I think Obama will win these 11 states today: AL, AK, CO, CT, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, MO, UT

I think that Obama’s winning margin in IL will be bigger than Clinton’s winning margin in NY.

As we all knew would be the case, Leonard Boswell is going to have plenty of money for this campaign. According to Federal Election Commission records, Boswell has more than $730,000 in the bank:

he raised about $131,000 during the last quarter of 2007, with $101,000 coming from political action committees.

Through 2007, he has raised about $730,000, of which $540,000 came from PACs, or close to 74 percent of his contributions.

I’m surprised that such a large proportion of the money came from PACs. I’m sure there will be much more where that came from in Q1 and Q2 of this year.

The Fallon for Congress website is still under construction, but you can donate to his campaign through ActBlue if you are so inclined.

Uh oh. The Des Moines Register is warning that “a new law that requires all Iowa youngsters to be tested for lead by the time they enter kindergarten could swamp state and local taxpayers in ways lawmakers did not foresee.”

House File 158 was passed last year as part of a campaign against lead poisoning, which health officials describe as one of the most preventable causes of learning disabilities and brain damage in young children. Statewide, more than 10,000 Iowans under age 6 had toxic levels of lead in their blood between 2002 and 2006. Thousands more likely went unnoticed, officials say, because they weren’t tested.

The new law is scheduled to take effect this fall.

“I like to describe these kids as canaries in the coal mine,” said Rick Kozin of the Polk County Health Department. “We let the kids get sick, and then we identify the problem homes.

“With this law, we’re going to find more canaries than we’ve ever found before.”

But health and housing experts say the ripple effect of the law could devastate public and private pocketbooks. Potential fallout includes:

A statewide shortage of inspectors qualified to check houses where lead-poisoned children live or play.

Huge bills, measured in tens of thousands of dollars, to clean or remove lead.

Unprecedented demand for temporary housing when lead-related work forces families from their homes.

“This could be overwhelming,” Polk County Supervisor Angela Connolly said.

While spending tens of thousands of dollars to deal with lead in a building may seem like a lot of money, consider this: children affected by lead poisoning are more likely to need costly special-education programs in school. That’s not a one-time cost, that’s every year they are in school.

Also, lead exposure has been linked to criminal activity. Research suggests that removing lead from paint and gasoline in the 1970s is one reason that violent crime rates in the U.S. dropped dramatically in the 1990s.

Building more prisons to house more criminals is extremely costly in human terms as well as monetarily.

If we remove lead paint hazards from homes, we will reduce exposure for all future children living in those homes, which will save us money in our education budgets and will possibly reduce crime far into the future.

Let’s not be penny-wise and pound-foolish in dealing with this problem.

The Sunday edition of the Des Moines Register has a front-page story on the disagreement between Governor Chet Culver and Secretary of State Mike Mauro over Iowa’s voting machines. Key passage:

Meanwhile, each man is trying to drum up support for his own proposal for ensuring a paper trail for every voting machine in Iowa.

Mauro wants to spend $9.7 million to give every voter an actual paper ballot that could be recounted later.

Culver wants to spend only $2 million to equip touch-screen voting machines, which have electronic ballots, with a special printer that shows voters their choices on a continuous roll of paper.

In Mauro’s cheering section are watchdog groups, and some key lawmakers and county election officials of both political stripes.

Sean Flaherty of Iowans for Voting Integrity, a Fairfield-based citizens group, gave Culver’s plan a thumbs down.

“Paper printouts are better than no paper trail, but spending money on paper-trail printers is chasing good money after bad,” said Flaherty, of North Liberty. “No one respects these printers, and it is likely that Congress will ban them in the near future.”

Culver blasted the more expensive plan last week.

“Money does not grow on trees around here,” he said in an interview. “The idea that we could come up with $9 million right now is a pipe dream. It’s irresponsible to suggest otherwise.”

Mauro has said he would pay for his plan for optical scan machines and ballot-marking devices with $3.7 million already earmarked, and by paying the voting equipment vendor the remaining $6 million on installment over the next three years.

As I’ve written before, I agree with Mauro on this issue. I lack confidence in the technology that would attach paper receipts to touchscreen machines, and such a fix would probably be throwing good money after bad, since the federal government may outlaw touchscreen machines in the next few years.

You can find more background on the issue, as well as persuasive arguments in favor of paper ballots, at the Iowa Voters site, which is dedicated to “open and transparent elections.”

Speaking of federal legislation, if you check out Blog for Iowa, Susannah Goodman of Common Cause and Jerry Depew of Iowa Voters have information on an important bill proposed by Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey (H.R. 5036, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008).

While no voting system is error-free, the recent recount of the New Hampshire primary results showed that the error rate for optical-scanner precincts was very low.

At some point we need to bite the bullet and spend the money necessary to get optical scanners in all the Iowa counties. In the event of another very close election, we need to have real paper ballots to recount.

I would also support hand recounts of a few precincts (randomly chosen) afer every state election. Apparently a bill to that effect is under consideration in the New Hampshire legislature. I don’t know if anyone has proposed a similar bill in Iowa before.

I haven’t seen any news reports about it yet, but the Iowa Environmental Council put out a release yesterday praising this action by Attorney General Tom Miller:

Today advocates for clean energy solutions applauded Attorney General Tom Miller for a step that could help Iowans reduce emissions from their cars, which endanger public health and contribute to global warming.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office today joined California’s lawsuit against the EPA, for its legal action which denied states’ rights to adopt vehicle emissions standards to regulate global warming emissions.

Nathaniel Baer, energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council, expects that states will prevail in court.

“If the federal government refuses to lead on climate change, states need the appropriate tools to step up to the challenge,” said Baer. “Better standards for car emissions will help reduce global warming emissions and save Iowans money at the pump.”

UPDATE: Dien Judge has more on this story at Iowa Independent:

http://www.iowaindependent.com…

Chuck Grassley provoked the wrath of New Yorkers with these comments about why Rudy Giuliani failed to do well in Iowa:

“Lifestyle,” Grassley replied. “Things you do in Las Vegas stay in Las Vegas. Things you do in New York don’t stay in New York. I think a New York personality … hasn’t gone over in some places.”[…]

Continued Grassley: “It seemed to me like when he was campaigning in Iowa, he did not have the one-on-one relationship. He didn’t take time to have the one-on-one relationship with people, even with the few events he was at. He tended to be in and out.

Some New York columnists and public figures have been piling on Grassley, calling him a “hick,” a “moron” and worse, leading the Register to publish a follow-up on this story today.

I think Grassley’s only half-right, by the way. Giuliani failed in Iowa because he didn’t do the slightest bit of outreach, even to many moderates who were inclined to support him.

I know of prominent Iowa Republicans who had considered endorsing Giuliani publicly, but ended up on the sidelines because he just wasn’t making the effort. I also remember overhearing a man in a restaurant telling his friends, “I thought I was gonna be for Rudy, but I am just loving Romney now.”

You can’t win if you don’t play, and Rudy wasn’t playing.

I think he could have finished a strong third or perhaps even second if he’d run a better campaign in Iowa.

On the other hand, he spent more time campaigning in New Hampshire and failed to move in the polls there. Maybe people really did like Rudy less the more they saw of him.

For me, the only disappointing thing about the Giuliani campaign’s slow-motion implosion is that Steve Gilliard wasn’t around to write about it.

I read on the front page of Wednesday’s Des Moines Register that this week, Representative Leonard Boswell introduced legislation directing the U.S. Postal Service to create a unique zip code for my suburb of Windsor Heights.

As we’ve discussed here at Bleeding Heartland, a recent survey of Windsor Heights residents showed that 99 percent are satisfied with the quality of life in Windsor Heights, and 89 percent described the city services and quality of life as “above average.”

Apparently the most frequent complaint city officials hear from residents is the lack of a unique zip code. Windsor Heights has three different zip codes; two mostly cover neighborhoods in Des Moines, and one mostly covers parts of Urbandale.

According to the Register on Wednesday,

Confusion between the ZIP codes and city boundaries has caused mail to be undelivered or returned to senders, has caused difficulty in tracking sex offenders, and has created problems for businesses.

Despite pleas from Windsor Heights city officials, U.S. postal officials have remained adamant that the suburb will not get its own ZIP code. Postal officials say the town has too few residents and doesn’t have a stand-alone post office. The city receives its mail from three post offices in Des Moines and Urbandale.

The article goes on to note that more than 100 Iowa cities and towns with smaller populations than Windsor Heights have unique zip codes, but that’s not the point of this post.

I personally know Windsor Heights residents who asked Boswell’s office years ago to help us get a zip code.

He just introduced a bill on the subject this week.

It’s too early to know whether Boswell’s proposed legislation has any chance of passing, or even getting out of the House Government Oversight and Reform subcommittee.

“We hope it will go forward, and the congressman will work hard with his colleagues in the House to get it moving,” Boswell spokeswoman McAvoy said.

Looks to me like this is another reason to thank Ed Fallon for challenging Boswell in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.  

I am not watching and may not even bother with the rerun later.

If you watched, what did you think?

As Simon Stevenson noted here last week, the Iowa Republican Party’s fundraising lags well behind what Iowa Democrats have raised for the upcoming elections.

Now the Des Moines Register reports that Tom Harkin has $3.4 million in the bank going into his re-election campaign. Prominent Republicans are taking a pass on this race, and Harkin’s only declared opponent

is Steve Rathje, a Cedar Rapids businessman. Rathje as of Sept. 30 had raised about $49,000 for his campaign and had $259 cash on hand.

Finally, Harkin gets to take it easy. He had to fight hard against Greg Ganske in 2002, although he ended up winning by a comfortable margin.

Meanwhile, Ray Hoffman stepped down as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party halfway through his term and has been replaced by Stewart Iverson, who used to be the top Republican in the Iowa Senate but was blamed by some for the erosion of the GOP’s majority in that body.

Hoffman has said he is stepping down to focus more time on his growing restaurant business in Sioux City, but I suspect that the GOP’s woeful election prospects weighed on his mind as well.

As the Des Moines Register reported on Sunday, Iowa Republicans are taking a pass on the big races this year. So far Congressman Leonard Boswell (IA-03) does not even have a declared Republican opponent. This passage from that article was revealing:

Iowa Republicans’ apparent hesitation to mount strong challenges in these two races [against Harkin and Boswell] represents what top GOP activists and strategists say is a low point for the party that might not begin to rebound until after legislative and congressional districts are redrawn in 2012.

“We’ll be lucky with anything we get this year,” said Steve Roberts, a Republican National Committee member from Des Moines. “I don’t think there are a lot of people with high expectations this year. It’s a long road back for us this time.”

Danny Carroll, a former state legislator from Grinnell, considered running against Boswell, but told the Register,

Boswell has won against credible GOP candidates in more competitive political environments and 2008 does not look good.

“I’ve watched the pendulum swing for us,” said Carroll, who went from second in command of the Iowa House majority to one of his party’s highest-ranking casualties in 2006. “I think it’s a time of re-evaluation and reorganizing. I think we’re all just trying to figure it out for ourselves.”

Carroll’s decision was based in part on his belief that the district’s most Democrat-leaning counties, where Republican candidates have done well without winning in recent elections, had become less competitive.

Now, some people in the Democratic establishment are going to warn us that we better not support Ed Fallon in the primary against Boswell, because if we do, we might lose the seat.

But let’s be realistic. Boswell has no Republican opponent. If he wins a tough primary, it’s not going to matter.

If Fallon wins the primary, will some Republican come out of the woodwork to challenge him? If so, that candidate will be starting to build a fundraising and outreach effort six months after Fallon started working the district hard:

Craig Robinson, political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, said a Fallon victory might convince an established candidate to enter the race. He also cautioned against such a strategy, which would keep a Republican from getting organized until after the June 3 primary.

“If the Democrats are going to have a contested primary, my advice is to get out there now and start raising money and building a campaign organization,” said Robinson.

In any event, the Register’s article from Sunday makes clear that Iowa’s third Congressional district leans even more Democratic following the presidential caucuses:

For instance, more than 8,600 Polk County voters changed their registration to Democrat in January, the vast majority to participate in the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, according to a preliminary monthly report by the Polk County auditor. The changes represented an increase in Democratic membership of 8.7 percent compared to December 2007.

By contrast, roughly 3,100 Polk County voters changed their registration to Republican, an increase of 4.2 percent.

In Jasper County, 707 voters changed their registration to Democrat, an increase of 7.5 percent, compared to 284 who changed to Republican, an increase of 4.3 percent.

Some of those new Democrats may change their registration back to independent or Republican, but count on many to remain in the Democratic fold. Fallon already had a strong base in Polk County, where he got about 40 percent of the vote in the 2006 gubernatorial primary, and Polk County contributes at least 75 percent of the votes in the third Congressional district.

Democratic turnout for the general election is usually higher in presidential election years as well, which further improves our prospects of holding the district.

Republicans’ pessimism is great news for Iowa Democrats, and makes this an ideal year for us to build on our state legislative majorities while getting a stronger progressive to represent central Iowans in Congress.

The one good piece of news for Iowa Republicans is that Congressman Tom Latham (IA-04)

has been named the top Republican on a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Latham, of Ames, is the only member of the U.S. House from Iowa on the influential committee, which controls government spending.

Latham’s district was always going to be an uphill battle for Democrats, and this will make it that much tougher.

But overall, it doesn’t look like Iowa Republicans will have much to celebrate this November.

I don't have the stomach for it, but if you watched the four remaining Republican candidates debate this evening, let us know what you thought.

As I’ve written, the so-called “economic stimulus” bill is a charade that won’t really help the economy.

However, I give full credit to Chuck Grassley for working hard to get good provisions on renewable energy incentives and green jobs into the version that passed the Senate Finance Committee today. A Sierra Club press release notes:

The $5.5 billion package includes short-term extensions of key renewable energy tax incentives due to expire at the end of 2008–including the Production Tax Credit (PTC), Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar, clean energy bonds, and other measures designed to promote energy efficiency.

I’m putting the full text of the Sierra Club’s statement after the jump. It includes examples of how “green jobs” have improved local economies.

Grassley has disappointed environmentalists many times, but today he came through and significantly improved the bill that’s going to the Senate floor.

To our state’s shame, Iowa and other corn belt states are still the largest contributors to the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study.

The logical thing would be to impose more regulations on the use of fertilizers and other farming practices that contribute to the problem. But don’t hold your breath for any movement on those issues at the statehouse. After all, Iowa is an agricultural state and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave in any of four directions.  

Just last week I wrote a front-page post for MyDD called Ten arguments for sticking with John Edwards. I was getting ready to post the revised version on Daily Kos today or tomorrow, when I saw the news this morning that Edwards had decided to leave the race.

I was hoping Edwards would stay in to keep his message out there. I hope that he decided to quit for political reasons, or because he ran out of money, rather than because of a change in Elizabeth’s condition.

I feel lucky to have caucused for Edwards already. I have no idea how I would vote now. For most of the past year I strongly preferred Obama to Clinton, but in the past few months I’ve grown disenchanted with Obama’s campaign and skeptical about his ability to win. Maybe I would write in Edwards or Al Gore rather than vote for either of the candidates left in the race–I don’t know.

As for how this affects the race, I also have no idea. In some states, Clinton clearly benefits, while in others, Obama may benefit. My own siblings who supported Edwards are split, with my brothers breaking for Obama and my sister strongly leaning to Clinton.

Since most Bleeding Heartland readers seem to be Obama supporters, I recommend this diary by the wonderful JedReport called Some tips for Obama supporters, from an Edwards partisan.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the text and video of Edwards’ farewell address:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Sigh. McCain pulled this one out and is the clear front-runner, especially since Rudy Giuliani is going to endorse him. I was hoping Rudy wouldn’t finish in the top three in a single state.

On the bright side, Romney has more money, and conservative groups are starting to target McCain, with ads such as this one comparing McCain to Hillary Clinton:

http://link.brightcove.com/ser…

Results with 77 percent of precincts reporting:

McCain 615,203 (36%)

Romney 531,139 (31%)

Giuliani 252,925 (15%)

Huckabee 228,687 (14%)

Paul 55,070 (3%)

Thompson 20,231 (1%)

—

Clinton 753,543 (50%)

Obama 497,341 (33%)

Edwards 218,899 (14%)

You might want to head to Cedar Rapids for the Iowa Network for Community Agriculture’s 13th annual local foods conference on Friday and Saturday. Click the link for more details about the event.

Alternatively, if you like being out in the freezing cold, you could ride your bike from Perry to Rippey on Saturday. Click the link for info on events planned in both communities, or check out the websites for Bike Iowa and the Iowa Bicycle Coalition.

Put your guesses in this thread. Remember, you can't win if you don't play!

My best guess for the Democratic side:

Clinton 52
Obama 40
Edwards 8

For the Republicans:

McCain 37
Romney 32
Huckabee 15
Giuliani 12
Paul 4 

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) is holding its lobby day at the State Capitol on Tuesday, January 29.

The main issues on the agenda are local control over siting of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections bill, which would create a voluntary public-financing option for state elections.

Here is the agenda for the day:

10:30-11:15 – Rally and Legislators addressing crowd

11:15-12:30 – Lunch and individual lobbying

12:30-1 – Head over to Wallace Building

1-1:30 – Meeting w/ DNR Director Rich Leopold

1:30-2:30 – Other meetings/events

2:230-3 – Meeting w/ Gov. Culver’s Chief Policy Adviser, Jim Larew

“People Matter More, Money Matters Less”

If you attend this event, please put up a diary afterwards to let us know how it went.

I won't be tuning in, but if you watch the address, document the atrocities here (as Atrios would say).

Lucky break for Obama, as Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will give the Democrats' response, raising her national profile just after she announced that she will back Obama's presidential bid. 

UPDATE: Todd Beeton, the MyDD front-pager who supports Obama, didn’t think much of the response by Sebelius:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

I wasn’t watching, but I am surprised if she did not do well. When I saw her speak in person a couple of years ago, she was fabulous. Of course, she wasn’t reading a script of someone else’s talking points on that occasion.

As DrinksGreenTea wrote in the diaries, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy is the latest big name to get behind Barack Obama’s presidential bid.

Clearly a significant chunk of the Democratic establishment does not want to see the Clintons back in charge. Also, Obama now has the backing of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as well as both U.S. senators from the state.

Rumors continue to circulate about Al Gore endorsing Obama, but I’ve seen no confirmation of that.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton secured the backing of Florida Senator Bill Nelson shortly before that state’s primary. Her campaign is already calling on the DNC to seat Florida’s delegates despite the state’s flagrant violation of the rules.

Perhaps more significantly for Hillary, the American Nurses’ Association just endorsed her. That group represents the 2.9 million registered nurses across the country, and the endorsement will bolster Clinton’s argument that she has the superior health care plan.

My money is still on Clinton to win the nomination, but Obama’s convincing victory in South Carolina suggests that he is not out of the running either.

The latest research suggests that exposure to lead may diminish the functioning of the aging brain decades later.

The good news is that Americans’ exposure to lead has decreased markedly since lead was removed from paint and gasoline, beginning in the 1970s.

The bad news is that too many children who live in older buildings are still exposed to lead. We already know that lead poisoning can cause mental retardation. Now it appears that even children who appear to be unaffected could suffer adverse consequences from the exposure as they age.

Republicans, remember that next time you feel like mocking a Democratic proposal to test children for lead exposure.  

Tom Vilsack wrote an op-ed in the Des Moines Register on Sunday about global warming. For him, the answer is conserve energy, invest in biofuels and renewable energy, and develop better technology for coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

Everyone interested in a comprehensive solution to global warming should read the report Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change.

How we design our communities can dramatically increase or decrease our country’s carbon footprint. If we don’t consider these factors, sprawling development could wipe out any reduction in greenhouse gases we get from energy-efficiency and cleaner energy sources.

I highly recommend this report to Vilsack and other smart people who like to delve into policy details.

Great letter in the Des Moines Register on Sunday:

Thank goodness for Christopher Rants. As I drive down the highway smelling the stench from the hog lots, watching the filthy water roll under the bridge, worrying if my kids will fall behind as their schools fall apart, wondering if my elderly mother is receiving quality care and planning how to survive if I lose my job in this recession, Rants is leading the charge against gay marriage. Talk about a profile in courage.

Keep up the great work, Christopher!

David Yepsen has a pretty good column in Sunday’s Des Moines Register: Stimulus deal might do harm. A one-time tax rebate didn’t fix the economy when Gerald Ford was president, and it won’t fix the economy now.

Yepsen doesn’t mention some of the other things wrong with this package–namely, that the Republicans got the “business incentives” they were looking for, while Democrats “dropped calls for increases in food stamps and an extension of unemployment compensation”.

To his credit, John Edwards denounced this charade: “This is another example of Washington deserting working people and the middle class.”

I am not aware of any statement from Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama criticizing the bogus “stimulus package.”

The job creation plan Edwards announced last month would actually stimulate the economy.

Clinton and Obama have also released economic stimulus packages, and my impression is that Clinton’s is a little better than Obama’s. But neither of them seems willing to call out their fellow members of he Congressional club for agreeing to George Bush’s sham.

Although Edwards is not going to win the Democratic nomination, I want him to stay in the race as long as he is speaking truths that Obama and Clinton avoid.

I don’t think anyone predicted the magnitude of Obama’s win in South Carolina, with 55 percent of the vote to 27 percent for Clinton and 18 percent for Edwards. Not only did Obama nearly double Clinton’s percentage of the total vote, the youth turnout tripled, and two-thirds of young voters chose Obama.

The total turnout exceeded 500,000, and Obama alone got more votes than the total turnout in the 2004 Democratic primary in South Carolina.

An estimated 155,000 more black voters turned out yesterday than in the 2004 primary.

Also, someone pointed out in the comments at MyDD that Obama got more votes yesterday in South Carolina than John McCain and Mike Huckabee’s combined total in the GOP primary last weekend.

I am shocked that the total turnout in the Democratic primary exceeded the turnout in the GOP primary in a state as conservative as South Carolina.  

This week’s round-up once again brought to us by Betsy Muse of BlueNC.

On the eve of the South Carolina primary, those of us near the state are busy canvassing, calling and doing everything we can to stay on top of the local news. Earlier today I pulled up every online newspaper I could find listed for the state and found that the local news was doing a better job than the national media at portraying the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as a three person race.

John Edwards had plenty of press in the local news with at least one or two of the larger papers touting his rise in the polls and a couple of the smaller ones still reporting last week’s news. It was interesting to see that some papers showed only pictures of Clinton and Edwards and at least one paper showed only Barack Obama. Since online “front pages” change frequently, I obviously only had a snapshot of what was being shown at that particular time. However, if it was indicative of the mood of voters in South Carolina, might the national press and the pundits that bloviate therein be out of touch with what’s really going on in South Carolina? I guess we’ll find out on Saturday.

In the meantime, your bloggers at the 50 State Blog Network have been busy.

Your roundup for this week is after the jump.

Last weekend a friend and fellow Edwards precinct captain left a message for me saying he'd been polled on the Boswell-Fallon race. On Wednesday evening, as I was cooking dinner, I got the same call. About an hour after that, the Obama precinct captain in my neighborhood called to let me know that she wants to volunteer for Fallon. She had just gotten the same survey call, which jogged her memory that she'd been meaning to call me about volunteering.

It was a long survey. I took notes for about half the call, but I had to put down my pencil from time to time, because my kids were jumping and trying to climb all over me, and I was afraid one of them would grab the pencil and get hurt. After the call I jotted down notes on other questions I could remember. If you've gotten this call, please leave a comment with any questions I have forgotten.

I'm putting as much as I can remember about the poll after the jump. I figured that Boswell's campaign was paying for the survey, based on the type of questions asked, and the fact that there were more questions asked about Boswell than about Fallon.

Just to make sure, I called Ed Fallon, and he confirmed that his campaign did not commission this survey and does not have any poll in the field right now.

If you don't care to read the whole extended entry, here's the summary. The poll asks a lot of questions about how Boswell is doing and what the respondent thinks about Boswell on various issues. All of the votes Fallon has criticized are mentioned in the survey, and respondents are asked whether they agree with Boswell's or Fallon's position. At various points during the survey, respondents are asked if they would vote for Fallon or Boswell if the primary election were held today.

The poll tests both positive and negative messages about Boswell, asking if the respondent agrees or if the statement would affect their likelihood of voting for Boswell. Interestingly, the survey did not test negative messages about Fallon. I kept waiting for questions about whether it bothered me that Fallon supported Nader in 2000, or was too liberal to win a general election, or whatever, but they were not in this survey. This was not a persuasion call against Fallon.

As far as I can tell, the Boswell campaign is trying to figure out which of Fallon's criticisms have the potential to hurt the incumbent, and which can be safely ignored.  

Follow me after the jump for more details.

The Iowa Environmental Council and about 20 of its member organizations held a lobby day at the state capitol on Thursday.

I missed the press conference at which IEC executive director Marian Riggs Gelb announced the council’s legislative priorities, but I received a copy of her statement. I’ve put almost the full text (minus a few welcoming remarks and introductions of IEC staff and board members) after the jump.

I was way off on my Nevada predictions, but I didn't do too badly on the GOP results in South Carolina.

Please put your predictions for the Democratic South Carolina primary in the comments.

This week's polls have shown Edwards gaining, especially among whites. The big question mark is, will the Obama campaign be able to produce record black turnout, giving him a double-digit victory?

I'm guessing they will. My prediction: Obama 45, Clinton 33, Edwards 22. 

Wednesday’s Des Moines Register contained this article on the “TIME-21” plan that the Iowa Department of Transportation has submitted to the legislature.

TIME-21 is short for “Transportation Investment Moves the Economy in the 21st Century.”

The DOT’s plan for the next two decades would spend an additional $4 billion on road construction and repairs, while spending no additional funds on “public transit, passenger and freight railroads, commuter rail service, walking and biking trails, aviation, or other options.”

To the Register’s credit, they gave space to opposing views:

“It’s unfortunate that we are designating transportation funds to meet the needs of the past,” said Stephanie Weisenbach, program coordinator for 1000 Friends of Iowa, a citizens’ group that promotes sustainable development and responsible land use.

“We know that thoughts about how to move people and goods are changing.”

She points to research by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showing transportation as the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 27 percent of total U.S. emissions.

She contends Iowa needs more flexibility in financing transportation alternatives because money from the state’s road use tax fund can be spent only on road projects.

Not increasing alternatives to cars and trucks “would be a fairly big mistake, just given the interest we are seeing in reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Kresowik, a conservation organizer for the Sierra Club in Iowa. He said Iowa is a big producer, per capita, of greenhouse gases because of its heavy reliance on coal, oil and fertilizer and because of long distances that motorists travel in a rural state.

By the way, Representative Geri Huser of Altoona, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, offered the most ludicrous straw man argument I’ve heard in a while:

Huser said she wants to explore alternatives to Iowans’ reliance on automobiles, but she has to be realistic.

“I have to tell you I have not had any legislator come up to me and say, ‘We would rather not fix roads that are a problem, and I want to focus all of our resources on trails and bus transportation,’ ” Huser said.

Representative Huser, no one is talking about focusing “all of our resources” on alternative transportation. We are talking about adjusting a plan that currently calls for spending $4 billion on roads and nothing on other kinds of transportation.

Bicyclists and bus riders also want roads to be fixed, obviously, but we don’t need to do that to the exclusion of any other transportation investments.

Here are a bunch of good links on the benefits of a balanced transportation policy.

If you care about this issue, write a letter to the editor or join one of the groups fighting for sanity in our transportation planning: 1000 Friends of Iowa, Sierra Club of Iowa, or the Iowa Bicycle Coalition.

UPDATE: DOT Director Nancy Richardson responds in Friday’s Register, but doesn’t get the point:

“We can’t have the road system solve the greenhouse-gas emission problem. It’s not emitting the gas, the dangerous fumes – the vehicles are. If we really want to make a difference, we need to focus on the vehicles that are driving on those roads.”

But in fact, if we don’t get a handle on our urban planning and transportation priorities, then we won’t be able to solve the greenhouse-gas emission problem:

In a comprehensive review of dozens of studies, published by the Urban Land Institute, the researchers conclude that urban development is both a key contributor to climate change and an essential factor in combating it.

They warn that if sprawling development continues to fuel growth in driving, the projected 59 percent increase in the total miles driven between 2005 and 2030 will overwhelm expected gains from vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels. Even if the most stringent fuel-efficiency proposals under consideration are enacted, notes co-author Steve Winkelman, “vehicle emissions still would be 40 percent above 1990 levels in 2030 – entirely off-track from reductions of 60-80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 required for climate protection.”

“Curbing emissions from cars depends on a three-legged stool: improved vehicle efficiency, cleaner fuels, and a reduction in driving,” said lead author Reid Ewing, Research Professor at the National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland. “The research shows that one of the best ways to reduce vehicle travel is to build places where people can accomplish more with less driving.”

In other words, a transportation policy agenda focused solely on road-building will fail to reduce miles driven, which needs to be a key element in our response to global warming.

I doubt I'll even bother to watch the repeat, but if you caught the Republicans debating, use this thread to “document the atrocities,” as Atrios would say.

Secretary of State Mike Mauro wants every precinct in Iowa to have an optical scanner that reads paper ballots. Legislators should listen to him, even though the plan would cost $9.7 million, according to the Des Moines Register.

A new state law says there has to be a paper trail, leading some to call for retrofitting touchscreen machines with windows that would let voters view a “receipt” to confirm their votes. This “verified paper audit trail” would cost about $2 million to put in place, but I’m with Representative Pam Jochum of Dubuque, who says it would be a “total waste of money” to retrofit touchscreen voting machines.

Also,

Mauro pointed out Wednesday that any such system could be obsolete in two years because of pending federal legislation that could change requirements for voting machines.

Iowa needs to find a way to fund Mauro’s proposal, so that we have secure voting procedures and paper ballots that can be recounted if necessary.

Although no voting system is perfect, the recent recount in New Hampshire showed lower error rates in precincts using optical scanners than in precincts that counted ballots by hand on election night.

Touchscreen voting is a disaster in the making, not only because of the potential for tampering but also because it leaves nothing to be recounted in case of a disputed election.

By the way, I had previously reported that New Hampshire would recount all the ballots from the recent primary, but in fact Dennis Kucinich only put in $27,000, enough to recount about 40 percent of the ballots. The recount has now ended, having revealed no significant changes in vote totals for the candidates. Click the link for more details.

The Iowa Environmental Council’s Lobby Day is Thursday, January 24, in the State Capitol Building rotunda, from 9 am to 3 pm.

If you’ve got time to drop by during those hours, I encourage you to do so. Advocates for many good environmental causes will be educating legislators and the media about their issues.

These organizations will be represented at the lobby day, and their staff or volunteers would be happy to meet citizens who want to get involved:

1000 Friends of Iowa

American Institute of Architects, Iowa Chapter

Center for Energy and Environmental Education (CEEE)

Center on Sustainable Communities

Environment Iowa

Environmental Advocates

Iowa River Greenbelt Resource Trust

Iowa Environmental Council

Iowa Farmers Union

Iowa Global Warming

Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation

Iowa Policy Project

Iowa Recycling Association

Iowa Renewable Energy Association (I-RENEW)

Iowa Rivers Revival

Iowa Whitewater Coalition

Izaak Walton League

Raccoon River Watershed Association

Trees Forever

I shook my head when I read this story in Tuesday’s Register about the fraternity that shut down its U of I chapter because several members were arrested for dealing marijuana:

Four Delta Upsilon members were charged in December with drug violations after police raided the fraternity house and found 650 grams of marijuana, cash, packing materials, scales and drug-deal ledgers, court records state.

Hey, college students: you may think pot should be legal, and I may think pot should be legal, but pot is not legal, and selling pot is definitely not legal. Keeping detailed ledgers of your transactions is not a good idea.

These students who were arrested should know that it could have been worse, however. The year after I graduated from college, two guys who lived in my dorm were arrested for selling drugs to a fellow student who had named them when he got caught with possession. They also had detailed business ledgers on their computers, which the police confiscated.

What they didn’t realize, and probably no one in my dorm realized, was that an elementary school was up the street a few blocks. Most people living in the dorm would never have a reason to walk in that direction, because the rest of campus was the other way. But the state where I went to college had one of those laws doubling prison terms for drug offenses committed within X feet of a school.

The guys were not selling to grade school kids. They were just making some extra cash selling to other college students. But they went away for a long, long time.

Well, well, well. The Newton Speedway didn’t miraculously solve that town’s problems, so now there is a drive to build a casino next to the racetrack in the name of economic development.

Iowa has too many casinos already–20 according to the Des Moines Register article linked above. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission should say no to this and all other applications for casino licenses in the future.

How will a casino in Newton help the community? More likely it will just drain the wallets of locals whose family incomes already took a hit after Maytag shut down. People love talking about the jobs created by casinos, but they don’t like talking about the social problems that come along with increased gambling.

The advocates of this proposal say the location, visible from I-80, would be visible to some 10 million people who drive on that stretch of road every year. But I suspect a casino in Newtwon would primarily pull gamblers away from existing casinos in central, eastern and southern Iowa.

In case you don’t normally read the Des Moines Register, Marc Hansen’s column on Ed Fallon in Tuesday’s edition was pretty good.

My only gripe relates to this passage:

Fallon hasn’t had many so-called “real jobs.” Like optometrist or truck driver, as opposed to “field canvasser” or “inner-city community organizer.”

I like Hansen, but this is a cheap shot. Why is engaging the public on political issues any less of a “real job” than driving a truck?

I’m sick of journalists denigrating political work and citizen empowerment.

I learned a lot from this diary by interguru: There Go the Fluorescent Bulb Savings.

Everyone, make it a New Year’s resolution to switch off your electronics when you’re not using them, or put them on a power strip that can be switched off overnight.

I'll be watching the rerun later. Judging from the comments at MyDD, this turned out to be quite the rumble.

What did you think?

UPDATE: noneed4thneed’s take is here:

http://commoniowan.blogspot.co…

The hand recount in New Hampshire is about a third of the way to completion, and if you want to know what’s been uncovered so far, I recommend this informative diary at Daily Kos or this informative diary at Blue Hampshire.

I applaud Dennis Kucinich for asking for this recount. If it helps restore confidence in the election machinery (in New Hampshire, at least), it will have been $60,000 very well spent.  

As some Clinton supporters at MyDD never tire of reminding me, Iowa and Mississippi are the only two states that have never elected a woman governor, senator or Congressional representative.

Over at Iowa Independent, Douglas Burns wrote a feature on Ann Selzer, pollster for the Des Moines Register. She commented:

“I’m rather stymied by Iowa’s failure to elect a woman,” Selzer said. She chalks it up to lack of strong candidates of that gender so far rather than any deep-seeded sexism among Iowa natives.

Democrats are clearly not to blame for this problem. We have nominated two women for governor and many women for Congress. We’ve also nominated women to many statewide offices, and some of those, like Bonnie Campbell and Patty Judge, have been elected.

I think one issue is that we’ve got a lot of long-serving incumbents here, and rarely have we had open seats. Sheila McGuire ran for an open Congressional seat in 1994, but that was in the most Republican district in Iowa. Every other woman I can think of who has run for Congress in Iowa has had to face off against an incumbent. As we know, more than 90 percent of incumbents are reelected to Congress.

Almost every ten years, Iowa loses a Congressional district, which means that even if an incumbent retires, there may not be an open seat available.

Roxanne Conlin ran for governor when the seat was open in 1982, but perhaps there was some backlash against the Equal Rights Amendment at that time. She also was not able to beat back the “Taxanne” message coming from the right-wing.

I believe that many women elected from other states benefit from belonging to a political dynasty. Some states have elected exactly one woman to Congress, and that woman happens to be the widow, daughter or grand-daughter of a long-serving incumbent. For instance, I think we can all agree that Stephanie Herseth would not have won an election in South Dakota without the Herseth family name. We haven’t had any women in that situation in Iowa.

About five years ago I attended a political science conference and heard Stephen Ansolabahere speak. He has published great work on Americans’ voting behavior.

I asked him about Iowa’s reluctance to elect women to high office. One point he made, which surprised me, is that of the 50 states, Iowa has the largest percentage of the population living in small towns and rural areas.

Nebraska, by contrast, is one of the most “urban” states, with a very large percentage of the population living in the Omaha or Lincoln metro areas and a much smaller percentage living in the smaller towns.

Perhaps the “political culture” of Iowa’s smaller towns creates a less friendly environment for women candidates. Most of the women in the Iowa legislature come from urban or suburban districts.

I think that the lack of opportunity for women to run for open seats is a bigger issue, though.

What do you think?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that women candidates may have an even tougher time defeating incumbents, but that isn’t the case just in Iowa. Someone, and I’m sorry I can’t remember who, studied 20 “serious Democratic challenges” to Republican-held seats in the U.S. House in 2006. A serious challenger was defined as someone who had raised at least $1 million by the end of June 2006. Of those 20 challengers, 13 were men and 7 were women.

On election day 2006, 12 of the 13 men on that list defeated the Republican incumbent, while 6 of the 7 women lost (the exception was Kirsten Gillibrand in New York).

In each case, you can construct a narrative for why the woman lost that has nothing to do with gender. However, looking at the totality of the outcomes in 2006, I think we can posit that the U.S. electorate is slightly more resistant to women challengers to Congressional incumbents.

SECOND UPDATE: I found this piece by Chris Bowers. He also wondered why Democratic women did so poorly in the 2006 elections. He noted that in the 30 Republican-held districts that were top targets for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY’s list, 21 of the Democratic candidates were men, and 9 were women. (Some of those were open seats, not challenges to incumbents.)

In those races, 20 of the 21 men won, while 8 of the 9 women lost. Again, it appears that American voters are more resistant to electing women to Congress, which could make the difference in a close race.

Just in time for the 2008 legislative session, the Iowa Environmental Council has created a new action alert center:

WHEN IOWA LAWMAKERS HEAR FROM THEIR CONSTITUENTS THEY LISTEN.  YOUR CALLS and EMAILS MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Now you can receive these alerts, go to a special webpage to update your personal information at any time (e.g. your email address) and you can browse the site to see the latest information on pending Iowa bills related to environmental issues. You’ll find tools for your use, too, like a state legislative directory that allows you to look up your elected officials, and much more!

Take a look now.

There is a current alert waiting for you to respond to regarding renewable energy legislation. And there is lots of other information available about your lawmakers and state departments. At any time, you can go to our homepage at http://www.iaenvironment.org and click on the ICALL icon on the blue side bar.

I encourage people to sign up for this service and let your friends know about it. You can’t count on the media to report on important environmental legislation being considered at the statehouse.

These action alerts make it easy for you to stay in touch with your representative or senator. The corporate groups seeking to block environmental regulations will have people on the phone to legislators, so we need to do our part.

Friday was the last day of public testimony before the Iowa Utilities Board on the proposed new coal-fired power plant in Marshalltown. The Sierra Club put out a release noting that while Iowa debates building more coal plants, other states in the region are overtaking us in wind power capacity.

Key excerpt:

“The difference is clearly policy,” said Mark Kresowik with the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign in Iowa.  “Illinois and Minnesota have passed policies that look to the future, such as Renewable Electric Standards, carbon dioxide reduction targets, and even a moratorium on new coal plants.  Iowa’s energy policy remains in the 20th century.”

Time for the Democratic-controlled legislature to do more on this front for Iowa. I’ve put the full text of the press release after the jump. It’s worth a read.

Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee was not able to take this one. Fred Thompson won just enough evangelical voes to give John McCain the victory.

Yet again, Rudy finished behind Ron Paul, as he has in every contest so far.

From TPM, with 93 percent of precincts reporting:

McCain 33

Huckabee 30

Thompson 16

Romney 15

Paul 4

Giuliani 2

Hunter 0

Hunter is dropping out of the race. Thompson will probably follow soon and endorse McCain.

UPDATE: Jonathan Singer observes at MyDD that SC Republicans seemed less enthusiastic about voting this time than they did eight years ago:

Another way of looking at it, this is kind of an underwhelming win for McCain. Well, perhaps even a really unimpressive win. In 2000, McCain received 237,888 votes in coming in second place to George W. Bush. This time? A mere 134,474 votes, or more than 100,000 votes short of what he received eight years ago.

Link: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…