Saw this on the I-Renew list–looks interesting.

Tour a renewable powered- energy efficient home in Iowa City!

Electrical Engineer Don Laughlin built his dream energy efficient
home, using used thermal solar panels and his engineering know-how to
cut costs. Don will lead a tour of the home after a short presentation
by Rich Dana from Union of Concerned Scientists on global warming's
effect in Iowa.

When: This coming Saturday, November 17, 2007, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM

Where: 827 Church St. (Corner of Church and Governor)

Cost: $5 I-Renew Member, $8 Non-Member

For more information and/or a registration form, contact I-Renew by
calling (319) 643-3160 or by emailing irenew@irenew. org. We hope to
see you there!

UPDATE: Corrected to note that the endorsement comes from Caucus4Priorities, the political arm of the 501 (c)3 Iowans for Sensible Priorities.

Okamichan13 has a diary up on this at Daily Kos: 

 http://www.dailykos….

Greg Sargent reported at TPM that Iowans for Sensible Priorities will endorse John Edwards on November 9:

http://tpmelectionce…

The Edwards Evening News Roundup team at Daily Kos pointed me to this link from ABC News:

http://abcnews.go.co…

The decision to endorse Edwards over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama came down to “courage versus caution,” according to the group's executive director.

 

“There's a rhetoric gap with Obama,” executive director Peggy Huppert told ABC News. “He told me personally: 'Trust me. Ideologically, I'm with you.' But people have told him to be afraid of being pushed too far to the left. He doesn't bring up [cuts in Pentagon spending] on his own. He doesn't incorporate it into his speeches. He skirts around it. He talks around the edges. He never gets to the heart of it in strong, bold language.”

Chase Martyn says Bill Richardson worked hard to get this endorsement, while Hillary Clinton didn't even bother to return the group's questionnaire:

http://cmondisplay.c…

I should note that Peggy Huppert told Sargent that all of the candidates did return the questionnaire. It would surprise me if Hillary did not even bother to seek the endorsement of this group. They are everywhere on the campaign trail and at other events where progressives gather.

UPDATE: From the ABC piece, it is clear that Hillary did return the group's questionnaire. However, according to Huppert:

Although Clinton filled out the group's detailed policy questionnaire, she was not among the final two candidates under consideration for the endorsement.

 

“She didn't answer any questions 'yes' or 'no,'” said Huppert. “She has a refusal to commit to anything.”

Iowans for Sensible Priorities is the group with that nifty pie chart graphic you see on car magnets and yard signs all over the place in Iowa. Here's a link to a photo I took of their spinning wheel on Labor Day:

http://www.flickr.co…

And here's a link to a photo of the car they drive all over the state:  

http://www.flickr.co…

I need to learn how to upload photos on this site!

Anyway, this is a good catch by the Edwards campaign. 

I saw in the Register that STAR-PAC, a group created to oppose the arms race, has endorsed Bill Richardson for president:

http://www.desmoines…

STAR PAC, an acronym for Stop the Arms Race Political Action Committee, said Wednesday that its central committee voted to support Richardson for many reasons, particularly the Democrat's promise to pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq within six months to one year.

“His message is the same wherever he speaks – to a military audience in Georgetown, a New Hampshire town meeting, in a rural Iowa community or at STAR PAC's candidate forum with the governor in August,” said Harold Wells, Iowa's STAR PAC chair.

This is a great get for Richardson. It has to be considered a blow to Barack Obama, who is campaigning as the guy who was right about Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake for him to let other candidates get to his left on defunding the war and bringing our troops home quickly.

The Register notes that only Richardson, Edwards, Obama and Kucinich returned STAR-PAC's questionnaire. I'm not surprised that none of the Republican candidates gave this group the time of day, but I am surprised that Hillary blew them off. 

I'm late to be posting about this, but on Monday some 35,000 supporters of Ron Paul raised over $4.3 million for his campaign, shattering single-day online fundraising records. 

Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD, wrote an interesting commentary on this incredible achievement of Paul's supporters. The fundraising drive wasn't even orchestrated by the campaign.

Matt Stoller's take on the Ron Paul revolution is here at Open Left.

Is Ron Paul's campaign doing much in Iowa? I see some yard signs and hear some ads on the classic rock radio station in Des Moines, but that's about it. MyDD linked to some tv ads Paul is running in NH–they are pretty amateurish:

http://www.mydd.com/…

I realize that as a candidate, he is better suited to the political culture in New Hampshire than Iowa, with more religious conservatives. Still, with the money he has in the bank, he could make a very strong ad buy in Iowa. Admittedly, it's late to be putting together a field operation here.

What do you think? Is there any potential for Paul to finish in the top three in Iowa? 

Note: Many of you probably received this mailing, but in case you didn't, or are not from Iowa, I'm cross-posting this entry I wrote for the MyDD audience.

Last week I wrote about John Edwards' recent direct mail piece to Iowa caucus-goers. This past Friday, I received a second mailer from the Edwards campaign, a shorter piece focused on Iraq.
Here is a link to the mailer (pdf file) (thanks to NC Dem Amy for the link).

For those who do not want to download the pdf file, I'm reproducing the text after the jump.

UPDATE: In today's mail I received the latest piece from the Edwards campaign. This one was about health care, and I will reproduce the text when I have time. 

Never mind the rumors about Sam Brownback endorsing Rudy Giuliani for president; the Kansas senator decided to back John McCain after all. Cyclone Conservatives has a good write-up here, or you can read the Des Moines Register's coverage here. I liked Mike Huckabee's comment in the Register:

Huckabee, campaigning Wednesday in Cedar Falls, said he would have liked Brownback's endorsement, but “we're getting a lot of Brownback's supporters. If I had a choice between him and his supporters, I'll take his supporters.”

Don at Cyclone Conservatives says he knows former Brownback supporters who have switched to Huckabee or Fred Thompson. The person I know who interned at the Brownback campaign plans to volunteer for McCain. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. 

Meanwhile, Bob Vander Plaats, who's chairing the Huckabee operation in Iowa, says they are not worried about missing out on the endorsements of Brownback or evangelical Pat Robertson, who recently backed Rudy Giuliani.

So, what happened in your city or town today?

In my corner of the world one of the winning candidates for city council spent $38 on his re-election bid. He saved yard signs from the last campaign:

http://www.desmoines…

The Windsor Heights race was a poor man’s competition of who could spend the least amount. Peterson won at $38. “I saved all my stuff from last time and reused it.” Next was Markley at $65, who forewent the yard signs and stuck to fliers and door knocking. Carlson came in third at $330, and Butz – coincidentally – came out the winner, barely squeezing by the campaign disclosure threshold of $750. She filed papers Monday. They were not on the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board Web site Tuesday.

The other incumbent running decided not to do yard signs. Looks like that was a mistake–the two candidates with the most yard signs won by a pretty healthy margin. 

As I've written a couple of posts below, I don't expect Rudy Giuliani to be the GOP nominee. However, I've noticed lately that several Democrats in the race have been going out of their way to take on Rudy.

Joe Biden scored at last week's debate with his joke that every sentence uttered by Rudy has a noun, a verb and 9/11, and his comment that Rudy is the most unqualified person to run for president since George W. Bush. His campaign has been milking these moments in fund-raising e-mails featuring highlights from the debate and outrageous comments made by Rudy. For instance:

As I wrote earlier, we expected another attack from Giuliani's campaign on Friday and they didn't disappoint. On a morning radio show, Rudy Giuliani made the unbelievable claim that Joe Biden has no foreign policy experience.

 

 

Make a contribution to help Joe keep Rudy on the run.

 

Host: You would say Senator Biden doesn't have foreign policy experience?

 

Giuliani: Has he ever been in the State Department? Has he ever been an executive? It's one thing…it's one thing to speak about what you want or even pass laws about it. It's another thing to actually do it. Foreign policy experience to me means being an ambassador, being in the state department. Being a law endorsement official. Dealing with foreign countries.

By now, we've come to expect this kind of blatant nonsense from Giuliani. But even we couldn't believe that just a few hours later, when asked about his comments, he would just outright deny saying it.

 

Giuliani: I didn't, I didn't mention foreign policy. I said Joe Biden fit into the category of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. And they were all questioned about this at the debate, and he wasn't. Here's, here's here's the situation. They have–in a very strange way–they have never run a city, never run a state, never run a business. They've never run anything.

 

The radio station put out a press release of his first statement. There were video cameras present when he made the second statement. Yet that didn't keep him from just outright denying what he said. CNN captured the flip-flop on “The Situation Room” — you can watch the video here.

Barack Obama has also been mixing it up with Rudy, after Giuliani called Obama's strategy toward Iran naive and irresponsible. Over at Daily Kos, Adam B wrote a diary on the hard-hitting response from a spokesman for the Obama campaign:

http://www.dailykos….

While Rudy Giuliani may embrace Hillary Clinton's policy of not talking and saber rattling towards Iran, Barack Obama knows that policy is not working.  It's time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, not lectures from a Mayor who skipped out on the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches, and who was naive and irresponsible enough to recommend someone with ties to convicted felons for Secretary of Homeland Security.

Kudos to the Obama campaign for calling attention to Rudy's failure to attend meetings of the Iraq Study Group. That issue alone should be enough to sink Giuliani's campaign.

Finally, I can't resist posting this statement Edwards campaign manager David Bonior made a few months back. It calls attention to Rudy's grotesque use of 9/11 imagery to promote himself, even though his administration could have done a lot more to prepare New York City's first responders for a possible attack:

http://www.johnedwar…

John Edwards for President National Campaign Manager Congressman David Bonior released the following statement in response to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's comments that he was at ground zero in New York City “as often, if not more” than rescue workers. 

 

“Evidently, Rudy Giuliani has taken a break from reality. It is outrageous for Giuliani to suggest, in any way, shape or form, that he did more at ground zero or spent more time there than the brave first responders who worked tirelessly around the clock for many months during the rescue and recovery operation. It seems that Giuliani is determined to take every opportunity to exploit the memory of 9/11 for political gain, rather than honor the incredible sacrifices of our first responders. Enough is enough.

 

“Mayor Giuliani should start answering the serious questions of why firefighters and other first responders didn't have proper equipment and support. The 9/11 Commission and National Institute of Standards & Technology reports have documented the failures of the broken radio communications system, a splintered chain of command and an unprepared Office of Emergency Management under his watch as mayor. These are the questions he needs to answer.”

Is anyone seriously going to tell me that Rudy will be the Republican presidential nominee? This guy has way too much baggage.

Speaking in Oskaloosa today, Hillary Clinton wanted to make sure Iowans knew that she is “tough enough” to handle whatever people throw at her in the presidential campaign:

http://www.desmoines…

“With 60 days left until the caucus, things are going to get a little hotter, because obviously the campaign is going to get heated up and speeded up,” Clinton said.

“I remember very well what Harry Truman once said . . . ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ Well, I feel real comfortable in the kitchen, so the heat is going to get hotter and hotter.”

Meanwhile, Clinton's surrogates and supporters keep whining about the “politics of pile-on.” This is from a fundraising e-mail the campaign sent out shortly after last Tuesday's debate:

If you saw the debate Tuesday night, or if you've seen the  news coverage since, then you know that this campaign has entered a  new phase.

On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against  one. Candidates who had pledged the politics of hope practiced the  politics of pile on instead. Her opponents tried a whole host of  attacks on Hillary.

She is one strong woman. She came  through it well. But Hillary's going to need your help.

Her  opponents, trying to boost their falling poll numbers, started  attacking Hillary weeks ago on the stump. Now they're doing it in  the debates. And soon they'll begin a barrage of negative TV ads and  mailings in the early primary and caucus states.

But Hillary  knows that voters want real change — not more negative attacks. And  with just 60 days left before the Iowa caucuses, now is the time to  show her that you are right there with her.

Of course, the Clinton campaign, which has repeatedly promoted Hillary as tough enough to withstand the Republican attack machine, has been planning all alone to whine and complain as soon as opponents challenged her on the issues:

http://news.yahoo.co…

Clinton's advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal matters, said there is a clear and long-planned strategy to fend off attacks by accusing her male rivals of gathering against her.

The idea is to change the subject while making Clinton a sympathetic figure, especially among female voters who often feel outnumbered and bullied on the job.

As one adviser put it, Clinton is not the first presidential candidate to play the “woe-is-me card” but she's the first major female presidential candidate to do it.

The victim is a familiar role for Clinton.

Over at Salon, Tim Grieve has already called bullshit on the Clinton campaign's spin, noting that her campaign continually feeds negative material about other candidates to reporters, all the while pretending to be disappointed that the others are supposedly rejecting “the politics of hope.”

http://www.salon.com…

I also recommend Sirius's diary, “Note to Clinton: The Issues Are Fair Game”:

http://www.mydd.com/…

Kate Michelman, former head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, had a great take on this as well:

http://www.openleft….

When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Senator Clinton embraces her political elevation into the “boys club.” She is quick to assure listeners she is plenty tough enough, that she's battled tested, ready to play be the same rules as the boys.

But when she's challenged, when legitimate questions are asked, questions she should be prepared to answer and discuss, she is just as quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules. She then calls questioning, 'attacking;' she calls debate among her peers, 'piling on.'

It's a political strategy, no doubt focus grouped and poll tested: make it look unseemly that this group of men would question her and hold her accountable for her record.

It's trying to have it both ways; walk the fence, something Senator Clinton's good at. At one minute the strong woman ready to lead, the next, she's the woman under attack, disingenuously playing the victim card as a means of trying to avoid giving honest, direct answers to legitimate questions.

As a woman who's been in the public eye and experienced scrutiny, as a woman who knows how hard it can be for women to earn their seat at the leadership table, how hard women have to work just to get the same opportunities, this distresses me.

It is not presidential.

Any serious candidate for president should have to answer tough questions and defend their record.

If Hillary Clinton is tough enough to withstand the Republican attack machine, she should stop sending out her minions to whine about “piling on” and start giving direct answers to direct questions. 

Republican caucus-goers and primary voters know very little about Rudy Giuliani's record as mayor, other than what they say on tv on 9/11.

However, that fact will change in the coming months, and what people learn about Rudy is unlikely to impress them. Click this link if you dare to learn more about Rudy's longtime connections with Bernie Kerik:

http://www.nytimes.c…

It's a long article, but here is one excerpt:

In December 2004, President Bush nominated Mr. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner, to head the federal Department of Homeland Security. Seven days later, Mr. Kerik withdrew as a nominee.

A cascade of questions followed about his judgment as a public official, not least that he had inappropriately lobbied city officials on behalf of Interstate Industrial, a construction firm suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani defended Mr. Kerik, a friend and business partner, whom he had recommended to the Bush administration. But he also tried to shield himself from accusations that he had ignored Mr. Kerik’s failings.

“I was not informed of it,” Mr. Giuliani said then, when asked if he had been warned about Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Interstate before appointing him to the police post in 2000.

Mr. Giuliani amended that statement last year in testimony to a state grand jury. He acknowledged that the city investigations commissioner, Edward J. Kuriansky, had told him that he had been briefed at least once. The former mayor said, though, that neither he nor any of his aides could recall being briefed about Mr. Kerik’s involvement with the company.

But a review of Mr. Kuriansky’s diaries, and investigators’ notes from a 2004 interview with him, now indicate that such a session indeed took place. What is more, Mr. Kuriansky also recalled briefing one of Mr. Giuliani’s closest aides, Dennison Young Jr., about Mr. Kerik’s entanglements with the company just days before the police appointment, according to the diaries he compiled at the time and his later recollection to the investigators.

The additional evidence raises questions not only about the precision of Mr. Giuliani’s recollection, but also about how a man who proclaims his ability to pick leaders came to overlook a jumble of disturbing information about Mr. Kerik, even as he pushed him for two crucial government positions.

[…]

In Mr. Kerik’s case, by the time Mr. Giuliani recommended him for the federal job, his administration knew that Mr. Kerik had acted on behalf of Interstate Industrial. It also knew that he had drawn criticism for a range of other incidents, from sending detectives to search for his lover’s cellphone to using officers to research his autobiography.

Mr. Kerik, who declined to speak about his troubles, now faces possible indictment on a range of federal felony charges, including perhaps tax evasion and bribery, stemming in part from his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment paid for by Interstate. In June 2006, he pleaded guilty in the Bronx to state misdemeanor charges relating to the same renovations.

At some point this has to become an issue in the GOP primaries.

The Edwards campaign went up on the air in Iowa yesterday with this ad: 

My favorite portion: “It is time for our party, the Democratic Party, to show a little backbone, to have a little guts, to stand up for working men and women. If we are not their voice, they will never have a voice.”

I couldn't agree more.

Also this week, Edwards sent out a 12-page mailer to Iowa Democrats. If you live in Iowa, you may have received it already. If not, you can find the jpegs here:

http://www.politico….

If you don't care about the photos and just want to read the text, I wrote that up here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

The mailer lays out Edwards' biography, but also talks more specifically about issues than the tv ad does. I assume that in the next four to six weeks, Edwards will release tv ads that talk briefly about his stands on the key issues. 

A few posts down I mentioned the rumors that Sam Brownback will endorse Rudy Giuliani, which I think would be foolish.

Yesterday I saw someone we know who worked in the Brownback HQ over the summer. She said that most of his Iowa staff have moved over to John McCain's office. 

Is activity picking up in the McCain campaign in Iowa? It would be interesting to see if he makes a late play for a second or third-place finish here.

originally posted at Daily Kos

Reading articles about John Edwards, I have noticed the perception that his domestic policy ideas are mainly good for poor people, while other candidates are focusing more on middle-class issues.

David Mizner wrote an excellent diary last Tuesday: “What Edwards is About.” (If you missed it, click here or here–it sparked a lively discussion.) David points out that Edwards has done the most by far to call attention to growing social and economic inequality in the United States. I encourage everyone to check out his plans to reduce poverty in this country and globally.

While I agree that Edwards is the candidate who would accomplish the most for the least fortunate, I want to call your attention to his proposals that would benefit middle-class Americans. 

More after the jump. 

I taped the debate and haven't watched yet.

What do you think? Consensus at MyDD seems to be that it wasn't Hillary's best night by a longshot.

As you can read in sirius's diary on the right (the Edwards Evening News), John Edwards has now campaigned in all 99 counties in Iowa. Last cycle Howard Dean did that during the spring, summer and fall, but Edwards didn't get to his 99th county until December 2003.

In general, Democratic presidential candidates have spent far more time in Iowa this year than Republicans, as the Register pointed out several days ago in this interesting piece:

http://www.desmoines…

Some highlights from the piece:

John Edwards and Barack Obama each has more staff in Iowa than all of the Republican caucus campaigns combined, with Hillary Clinton close behind.

Even the Democratic field's lesser-known candidates have built caucus organizations several times the size of some of the best-known Republicans' operations, according to a review of several criteria by The Des Moines Register.

Since that article came out, I heard that Hillary plans to double her paid staff in Iowa, so that she will have more than 200 paid staff. The Register reported that Hillary has 117 paid staff in Iowa, Obama has 145 paid staff here, and Edwards has 130. 

As for days spent in Iowa, surprisingly Joe Biden has the most, followed by Obama and Edwards, with Dodd, Clinton and Richardson not far behind. 

We've long known that Sam Brownback was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but his possible endorsement of Rudy Giuliani would be one of the dumbest things I can imagine him doing.

Haven't seen anything on this yet at Cyclone Conservatives or The Real Sporer blog, but the gang at TPM has been all over the story:

Brownback said a few days ago that he has become “much more comfortable” with Rudy after getting assurances from Giuliani that he would appoint only “strict constructionist” judges:

http://tpmelectionce…

Brownback's former political director in Iowa says Sam may endorse Rudy as the candidate with the best chance to beat Hillary:

http://tpmelectionce…

The Family Research Council is very upset and says conservatives will desert the GOP if Rudy is the nominee:

http://tpmelectionce…

Endorsing Giuliani would be a really dumb move by Brownback. He campaigned as the guy with consistently pro-life views, and had support from many social conservatives, especially Catholics. To turn around and back Rudy is a slap in the face to them.

Presumably Brownback is angling for a position in Rudy's cabinet, or even the VP slot, by toying with an early endorsement. But let's get real. Are GOP primary voters going to nominate Rudy after seeing the ads his rivals will run against him? I know Fox News is in the tank for Rudy (he and Roger Ailes go way back), but they won't be able to save him from the ads showing Rudy calling himself the “liberal” mayor of New York, ads showing Rudy in drag, ads showing Rudy talk about being pro-choice and supporting state funding for abortion.

Not to mention the fact that Bernard Kerik is about to go on trial on federal charges–this is the guy Rudy pushed Bush to appoint as Homeland Security secretary. Great judgment there!

And who will be the first of Rudy's opponents to run this ad? When Rudy was appointed to the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton commission), he never bothered to show up for a single meeting. He was too busy giving $100,000 speeches to cash in on his 9/11 celebrity.

Romney, McCain and Thompson are not just going to hand this nomination to Rudy. They will fight him for it. 

And even if Rudy could get the nomination, I think he is far from the GOP's best candidate against Hillary. As I have written, Mike Huckabee is the one we need to be worried about–especially if Hillary is our nominee.

There are two obvious plays for Brownback. The safest one is not to endorse at all. The risky one would be to endorse Huckabee. He's a longshot who lacks money and faces the wrath of the Club for Growth. But at least endorsing him would show some principle and would upset social conservatives less than endorsing Rudy.

We'll see what Brownback is made of. 

Chase Martyn has the story:

http://www.iowaindep…

The leadership of the Iowa Democratic Party will recommend scheduling the caucuses for January 3, the same night as the Republican caucuses.

On the one hand, this reduces the potential for mischief as Republicans will not be able to switch parties en masse in order to influence the outcome on our side.

On the other hand, logistically this will be a nightmare. It will be hard to do last-minute voter contacts, and parking will be in short supply at sites likely to be used by both parties on caucus night (such as schools). How many people want to walk several blocks on a cold, dark night to caucus?

Turnout is likely to be lower as the holiday season burns people out and makes GOTV difficult. 

Chase writes:

• No colleges or universities will have ended their winter breaks by this date.  Conventional wisdom is that this will make Sen. Barack Obama's campaign to organize students difficult, but the payoffs of a good student organization will be larger if students are spread out across multiple cities rather than concentrated in a few big precincts.
• This is only three days into the New Year.  Some Iowans will be out of town for the week, and many others will be just returning to town.
• This date is less than two weeks after Christmas.  The final two weeks of the caucus season are often filled with wall-to-wall television ads, some of which are negative.  How Iowans will react to attack ads on Christmas is unknown.  Candidates also typically leave a few days around the holidays to stop bothering caucus-goers with phone calls and public appearances, but that may not be possible with this schedule.
• Moving up the caucus date may benefit Sen. John Edwards, who will not have to stretch his money in Iowa for an additional two weeks.

I could make a case for any of the major contenders benefiting from this date. Hillary could benefit if more men than women stay home to watch the college football championship game on January 3.

I read today that Obama's people believe they will benefit from the fact that Iowa is a “net exporter” of college students. Many native Iowans who attend schools in other states will still be home with their parents on January 3 and will be able to help Obama reach the viability threshold in a larger number of precincts. That is an interesting theory.

I would think that Edwards would benefit from a date that would weed out all but the most politically engaged Iowans. If you are a general-election voter who normally skips primaries, I really think you're not going to caucus for the first time in your life on January 3. People just want to stay in after the holiday season.

Also, if Edwards wins Iowa, he will have a few more days of media attention and time to parlay that into gains in New Hampshire. 

The big question in my mind is this: given that phone-banking and door-knocking during the holiday season is likely to irritate people, will this early date neutralize the organizational advantages that the major campaigns have? All of those field offices and the army of volunteers will pretty much have their hands tied during the last ten days of December, with no time to contact many people after New Year's.

Will the candidates with stronger organizations benefit more from the GOTV they were able to do in November and early December? Or will they have less opportunity to use their organizations to turn out the leaners they need?

What do you think? 

Barack Obama's campaign opened two more field offices, in Perry and Fairfield:

http://blogs.dmregis…

Here's a list of the cities and towns containing field offices for Obama:

Fairfield, Perry, Maquoketa, Knoxville, Independence, Oelwein, Decorah, Charles City, Carroll, Spencer, Clinton, Marshalltown, Fort Madison, Waverly, Algona, Elkader, Indianola, Newton, Waterloo, Ames, Sioux City, Cedar Falls, Ottumwa, Davenport, Burlington, Fort Dodge, Iowa City, Mason City, Council Bluffs, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Muscatine, Des Moines.

Wow.

I am a little surprised that Fairfield didn't have an office before now. I would have thought that was fertile territory for Obama. Then again, Jefferson County will only assign 15 out of the 2,500 state delegates.

Like I've been saying, Obama will have a huge army of foot soldiers in this state. This is anybody's game. 

David Yepsen's latest column in the Thursday Des Moines Register contains this passage:

http://desmoinesregi…

For example, it's amazing to hear women complain about this or that with Clinton. She's too liberal, not liberal enough, should have left Bill or should or shouldn't wear pantsuits. The sniping, snarky comments about her from other women remind me of listening to my daughter and her friends back in middle school say catty things about one another. Don't forget it was a woman reporter for the Washington Post who treated us to a discussion of Clinton's cleavage.

Apparently men are allowed to have unfavorable opinions about candidates, but if women say something critical of Hillary, it's “sniping” and “snarky.”

There's a big difference between women complaining that Hillary is “too liberal” or “not liberal enough” and women talking about her cleavage or pantsuits.

I think Hillary would be a weak general-election candidate and not as good a president as several others in our field might be. I do not believe that she shares my domestic-policy priorities, I think she would be weak on environmental issues, I think she would be too slow to withdraw troops from Iraq, and I think she is too close to the corporate interests that try to frustrate progressive change in a number of areas.

Does that make me “catty” like his daughter in junior high school?

Does Yepsen really think that men don't make “sniping” remarks about candidates they do not support?

Some women on the Register editorial board might want to teach Yepsen the difference between substantive and superficial criticism of Hillary. Because the way his column reads, it sounds like women who don't shut up and get behind Hillary are just immature. 

Good news for opponents of the proposed Interstate Power & Light (Alliant) coal-fired power plant in Marshalltown: 

http://www.state.ia….

Office of Consumer Advocate
  John R. Perkins, Consumer Advocate

 

Consumer Advocate Opposes Interstate Power & Light Co. Proposed Coal Plant

 

Consumer Advocate urges company to evaluate more cost-effective and environmentally sound supply resources.

 

The Iowa Consumer Advocate has filed testimony with the Iowa Utilities Board, recommending that the IUB reject Interstate Power and Light’s application for authority to site a 630-megawatt coal-fired generating unit (SGS Unit 4) adjacent to Interstate’s existing Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown, Iowa. Interstate is a subsidiary of Alliant Energy of Madison, Wisconsin.

 

“When the risks to consumers and the public associated with building a new coal-fired power plant are properly taken into account, the advantages are clearly demonstrated of Interstate Power meeting its supply needs through lower-cost and environmentally-friendly energy efficiency and renewable energy generation resources,” said Consumer Advocate John R. Perkins.

 

The Office of Consumer Advocate filed the testimony with the IUB late Monday. The OCA represents gas, electric and telephone utility consumers generally and the public generally in all proceedings before the Iowa Utilities Board.

 

Expert testimony submitted by the Consumer Advocate interpreting current scientific analysis and consensus argues that the proposed coal plant would inject enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for 50 years or more, contributing to a worsening of the dangerous buildup of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere and to accelerated global climate change for centuries to come.

 

According to the testimony, emissions from the proposed plant would be equivalent to the CO2 emissions from about 740,000 additional cars – an additional 40% of current emissions today from all of the cars registered in the state in 2005.

 

Human-induced climate change presents a grave and increasing threat to the environment and to human societies around the world, according to the testimony. The primary source of increasing atmospheric CO2 is the combustion of fossil fuels by industrialized societies. Unless squarely addressed by effective public policy, the increasing buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases will likely cause dramatic environmental and economic harm to societies around the world, including communities in Iowa. Policymakers within and beyond Iowa are evaluating policies to achieve electricity production by less carbon-intensive or zero-carbon means, the testimony said.

 

“The proposed coal plant stands in stark contrast to this goal,” Perkins said. “Undertaking construction of a coal plant in these circumstances presents an enormous risk for IPL’s customers and the environment – a risk that is unnecessary. Moreover, our recommendations would allow for the potential development of cleaner energy sources which may occur over the next decade and eliminate the need for a baseload coal plant in the future.”

 

Perkins said that in the course of the OCA’s detailed analysis of Interstate’s electric resource planning model, OCA’s experts determined that IPL failed to properly model the costs of CO2 regulation and other energy resource potentials. Adjusting for these errors, the OCA experts concluded, IPL can defer the need for the base load coal plant beyond the planned 2013 in-service date of SGS-Unit 4. Energy efficiency and wind generation would be a more cost-effective means of meeting Interstate’s energy needs, and with little to no adverse environmental impact, Perkins said.

  “Energy efficiency and renewable energy resources actually deliver greater and more evenly distributed economic benefits to the State of Iowa than the proposed coal plant,” Perkins said. “Removing IPL’s modeling constraints that limited Interstate’s wind generation capacity to 9.1 % of its projected retail energy needs in 2022, and allowing the model to increase wind generation to 25 percent of IPL’s retail energy needs, would result in 1,657 MW of wind in 2022, or 1,039 megawatts more than IPL assumes in its base resource plan. Similar environmentally sound results will accrue from increased investment in energy efficiency.”

According to someone posting on the Iowa Renewable Energy Association e-mail loop, “(The OCA is part of the Iowa Attorney General's Office.  The OCA is a party to all cases before the Iowa Utilities Board, representing the public interest).”

I'll be honest, I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet. But you can see the highlights here:

http://www.joebiden….

Skimming the plan, it appears that Biden would not make health insurance mandatory, so this is not quite a universal health care plan (as Edwards and Clinton have proposed).

Under Biden's plan, all children would be covered, and steps would be taken to improve adults' access to health insurance, including a Federal Employee Health Benefit Buy-In and a Medicare Buy-In for adults age 55 to 64.

This seems most similar to Obama's health care proposal, which also would put us on the road toward covering all children and more adults. 

I like that the consensus Democratic position has moved much further toward universal health care reform than we were a few years ago. 

Also, all of the Democratic candidates are supporting common-sense policies like letting Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices. 

What do you think? 

Howard Fineman has a story up saying AFSCME will endorse Hillary Clinton next week:

http://www.msnbc.msn…

I’m told by labor sources that the endorsement will come next Thursday after a series of AFSCME committee meetings. The union, whose members by definition are no strangers to politics, has 30,000 members in the crucial caucus state of Iowa, plus 90,000 in Michigan and 110,000 in Florida – two other “early” states in the nomination process. 

And so the Clinton Family Machine grinds on.  The president of AFSCME, Gerald McEntee, goes back a long way with the Clintons, to the early stages of the 1992 presidential campaign. McEntee took a flier on a then-obscure governor of Arkansas. The AFSCME endorsement provided Bill Clinton with an important early foothold in a labor movement that had doubts about him. Not surprisingly, McEntee became a White House favorite.

Fineman claims that Bill personally lobbied McEntee and had a lot to do with this endorsement.

Clearly any Democrat would love to get the AFSCME endorsement, and I'd be lying if I said I think it's irrelevant. Yet the largest union in Iowa's recent track record (Dean, Blouin) doesn't suggest that its foot soldiers can deliver the goods.

On Labor Day two women who are very involved in AFSCME in Iowa told me that there was strong support for Edwards and Obama as well as for Hillary within the union's ranks.

It will be interesting to see how much AFSCME is able to add to Hillary's ground game here.

Anyone out there know more about the inner workings of AFSCME in Iowa? How helpful do you think this endorsement will be?

Over at his blog, Iowa True Blue, Gordon Fischer (who has endorsed Obama) raises an important point:

http://www.iowatrueb…  

I think the Clinton campaign's answer is easy to predict, based on comments I see frequently from Clinton supporters at MyDD and Daily Kos.

Iowa is “lily-white” and “not representative” of the whole country. Also, Iowans are sexist (never having sent a woman to Congress).

Of course, Iowa Democrats, who will be attending the Democratic caucuses, are not sexist. We have nominated two women for governor and many other women to statewide positions or Congressional seats.

And while Iowa is largely white, it is socio-economically a fairly “average” state, and in that sense more representative than New Hampshire. 

But that won't stop the Clinton campaign spin if she does falter in the caucuses.

Anyone else want to take a stab at answering Gordon's question?

A few posts down you'll see the news that Selden Spencer abandoned his challenge to Tom Latham in Iowa's 4th Congressional district.

I was wondering what would happen to Spencer's unspent campaign funds, and I got my answer in the mail.

The campaign sent a letter to contributors, including this passage:

You who have financially supported this effort can help now by instructing the exploratory campaign committee on how to close our treasury. There are two options:

1. Tear off and return the form below by October 31, 2007, and we will return a prorated portion of the unspent campaign funds. Please note that unless postmarked by October 31, your request cannot be honored.

2. Do not return the form by October 31, 2007, in which case we will donate the remaining portion of your contribution, along with those of other supporters, to county committees in the 4th District and to the Iowa Democratic Party.

I'm not sending back the form. Let the state and county committees find a good use for the remainder of my contribution to Spencer.

Anyone know who might step up to run against Latham next year? 

Note: this post originally appeared at MyDD, where I write a front-page post in support of John Edwards every Tuesday. Parts of it are aimed at readers who are less familar with Iowa politics than the typical Bleeding Heartland reader.

Although the ten SEIU state chapter endorsements of John Edwards have understandably dominated the recent blogosphere chatter about Edwards, I want to call attention to a different aspect of his campaign. Edwards is on a two-day swing through western and central Iowa, where he is highlighting his policy agenda for small towns and rural areas. When Edwards wins the Iowa caucuses, I believe small-town and rural voters will play as important a role as union members.

Yesterday the Edwards campaign in Iowa announced the formation of a Statewide Rural Advisory Committee. From the campaign website:

The committee consists of a wide group of leaders including first responders, business leaders, elected officials and agricultural leaders. The committee will work with the campaign's 99 Rural County Chairs to advise Edwards on the issues facing rural Iowans and spread his detailed plans to strengthen rural towns and communities across America. Edwards was raised in a small rural town and has made rural revitalization a cornerstone of his campaign. In August, the campaign announced more than 1,000 rural supporters showing Edwards' broad support throughout rural Iowa.

The biggest name on this committee is Denise O'Brien, who endorsed Edwards over the summer and will help him tremendously with progressives as well as rural voters. Denise, an organic farmer and the founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, was the Democratic nominee for secretary of agriculture last year. She shocked Iowa politicos by winning the Democratic primary by a large margin, despite the fact that her opponent, Dusky Terry (a great guy by the way), had the strong backing of Tom Vilsack and virtually the whole Democratic establishment in Iowa.

Denise narrowly lost the general election for secretary of agriculture, but she has many passionate supporters in the Iowa environmentalist community. Environmentalists were a significant factor in John Kerry's caucus victory in Iowa.

But I digress. This post is about rural voters. Most of the people on the Edwards Statewide Rural Advisory Committee may be little-known outside their home counties, but when it comes to turning out caucus-goers, a respected figure from someone's home town is probably even more valuable than a statewide celebrity.

In addition to having a strong team working to turn out rural and small-town voters, Edwards has put forward a solid policy agenda for rural America. You can download his plans on the issues page of his campaign website. Edwards has a deep knowledge of the the issues affecting small-town America, and his current swing through Iowa is focusing on a different aspect of his rural recovery plan at each venue.

His first event yesterday was in Dunlap, Iowa, where he focused on agricultural issues including country-of-origin labeling. He discussed protecting family farms at his next event in Harlan. Later in the day, he held a town hall meeting at a high school in the small town of Exira, where he focused on his plan to strengthen rural schools. (As you probably know, Edwards was educated in rural public schools.)

Edwards' final two events on Tuesday were in Greenfield and Waukee (suburb of Des Moines), where he talked about economic development plans for rural areas, with a focus on main street development and incentives for small business creation. That issue is particularly close to my heart, as both of my grandfathers ran small businesses and I despise so-called economic development plans that are basically just corporate welfare.

Why should you care whether Edwards appeals to rural voters? I mean, besides the fact that his policy ideas are really good?

Well, if you are an Edwards supporter you will be pleased to know that caucus-goers in rural counties punch above their weight when the state delegates are tallied.

But even if Edwards is not your favorite candidate in the primary, you should be aware that a strong showing among rural voters will put many more states into play for our Democratic nominee. ManfromMiddletown made a strong case for this analysis in his diary on electability.

I also refer you to this report from the Center for Rural Strategies:

The rural vote is critical in presidential and congressional elections because large Republican majorities among rural voters have helped overcome Democratic advantages in urban areas. With the rural advantage eroding for the GOP, both parties may look more carefully at the rural vote in the coming elections.

“The rural vote determines presidential elections,” said Dee Davis, president of the nonpartisan Center for Rural Strategies, which sponsors the poll. “Democrats don't win unless they make rural competitive, and Republicans don't win without a large rural victory. So you'd think that would mean the candidates would have a spirited debate on the things that matter to rural Americans, but we haven't heard it yet.”

In the 2004 and especially the 2006 elections, Democrats began to make up ground against the GOP with rural voters. That was a big change from the 1990s, when rural voters swung significantly against the Democratic Party. I believe that John Edwards would be by far the best candidate in our field to continue this trend, which would hurt the GOP badly.

But maybe you don't care about rural voters and are buoyed by opinion polls showing that any of our top Democratic contenders could win a presidential election.

I urge you to consider this: the presidential election is more than 50 statewide elections. It also coincides with 435 House races and thousands of races for the state legislature.

As we know, gerrymandering has helped the GOP control more U.S. House seats than they deserve in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Too many Democrats in those states are packed into House districts that send Democrats to Congress with super-majorities. Consequently, many of the House seats we are trying to pick up contain significant numbers of rural and small-town voters.

What that means is that even if any of our candidates could win Ohio (or Pennsylvania, or Michigan, or Florida) in a presidential election, we have a better chance of winning more House seats if our candidate at the top of the ticket is appealing to the rural electorate. Holding down the GOP margin with these voters will bring big gains down-ticket.

The same goes for state legislative districts. If we want to improve our position in state legislatures going into the 2010 census and redistricting process, it will help to have a presidential candidate in 2008 and a president in 2010 who does not alienate rural voters.

All these factors reinforce my belief that John Edwards would be the best general-election candidate in our very strong Democratic field.

I read over at MyDD that the Iowa chapter of the SEIU is going to endorse John Edwards this Monday afternoon. The diarist also said the California SEIU will endorse Edwards, although that seems less clear from the link:

http://www.mydd.com/…

I don't know how many members SEIU has in Iowa. Clearly it's not the major player that AFSCME is. Still, the endorsement will be welcomed, especially if the NH and CA chapters follow through.

In the comments below the MyDD diary, people are debating whether the California chapter of SEIU would be able to send people to help the Edwards campaign in Iowa, even in the absence of a national SEIU endorsement.

In other news, Tracy Joan of the Edwards campaign put this link up at MyDD's Breaking Blue, in response to the claim that Edwards “lives” in Iowa:

http://www.swamppoli…

If you click through, you will learn that surprisingly, Obama has spent almost as many days campaigning in Iowa this year as Edwards, and Clinton is not far behind.

For those of you who can attend lunchtime events in central Iowa:

Join Us for an Unprecedented Bipartisan Summit in Pursuit of a New Way Forward

On Friday, October 12th, Republican presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden will hold an unprecedented joint campaign event to discuss their bipartisan plan for Iraq. The event is hosted by the Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations.

WHEN: Friday, October 12
12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

WHAT: Biden, Brownback to Outline Iraq Plan

WHERE: Wakonda Country Club
1400 Park Avenue
Des Moines, IA 50315

Details:
This event is open to the public (lunch provided for $25.00). For more information and reservations, contact the Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations at 515-282-8192.

I understand what Biden is trying to do here–as he has said in many debates, he has a plan for Iraq, and he has experience getting Republicans in Congress to support his agenda.

But this really annoys me. Aside from the fact that I think any partition plan is doomed to fail, Biden is throwing Senate Republicans a life raft. Now they can credibly say that they have voted for a solution to the Iraq problem.

The reality is that Republicans in Congress are still carrying water for the Bush administration on Iraq and everything else, and we need to call them on that. Biden is allowing them to make a show of voting to change course in Iraq, when we all know that this plan is going nowhere.

“We” being everyone who wants to derail the Hillary inevitability train.

Clinton supporters are crowing about the latest Des Moines Register poll showing her leading likely Democratic voters in Iowa with 29 percent to 23 percent for Edwards, 22 percent for Obama, 8 percent for Richardson and 5 percent for Biden.

Here is the link for the poll:

http://www.desmoines…

Hillary has to be happy not just about her overall lead, but also her lead among voters over 65 and her big lead among women.

It's not good news for the other candidates, but it would be a mistake to say Hillary is going to cruise in Iowa. I think she is going to lose delegates when people go to their second choices on caucus night.

Edwards has dropped since May, but he hasn't been up on the air, while all of the other major candidates have blanketed the airwaves for two months or more. Despite that, he still leads among men and middle-aged Iowa voters. He is building a strong organization to identify and turn out supporters. I totally disagree with those who say he has no room to grow his support in Iowa.

Obama is holding steady. If he were my first choice, I'd be worried about the fact that he trails badly among older voters and does best among groups that are relatively unlikely to caucus (under 45 or independent). Clearly Obama needs to turn out record numbers of independents and first-time caucus-goers if he is going to win Iowa. He will have plenty of boots on the ground, though, so it is too early to count him out. 

Richardson was at 8 percent in this poll, which is not a statistically significant change from the 10 percent he had in May. Clearly, though, he is stuck around the 10 percent mark in IA and NH and is not continuing to gain momentum. He needs to do something to change the dynamic of the race if he wants to break into the top tier in Iowa. He may be tempted to play it safe and try for a cabinet appointment in the event that Hillary wins, though.

All of the candidates need to try to reduce or eliminate Hillary's leads with women and older voters. Individual supporters and precinct captains need to make those voter contacts in their neighborhoods and make the case for alternatives to Hillary. 

What do the rest of you think about the poll? 

Barack Obama's new tv ad features Retired Air Force General Merrill McPeak. It's a good ad. I couldn't figure out how to embed the video, but here is a link to it:

http://link.brightco…

I do have to wonder, though, how many undecideds are going to swing to Obama after watching this ad. It's not news to anyone that Obama opposed the war in Iraq before it began. If someone already knew this and isn't supporting Obama now, why would hearing McPeak talk about Obama's superior judgment make a difference?

I think Obama needs to make the case for why he is the best candidate to get us out of Iraq, and that's going to be hard for him to do, since his voting record on Iraq in the Senate is the same as Clinton's, and Richardson, Dodd and Biden are all running as more experienced candidates who have the “right” plan for ending the war.

I hate to link to The New Republic, but Michael Crowley does make an interesting point about the ad's use of a black and white photo of Obama in front of the White House–presumably designed to make him look presidential:

http://www.tnr.com/b…

This ad is a work of genius:

The Log Cabin Republicans support Rudy Giuliani, but they wisely say nothing of that in this ad.

They created the illusion of a positive ad (without scary music or unflattering still photos), while using clips of Romney that will absolutely annihilate him among the Republican base. Not only does it highlight his past support for Roe v Wade and keeping abortion safe and legal, in mentions his opposition to the NRA and even includes a clip of Romney saying, “I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”

Like I said, a work of genius. 

Paul Waldman has a rant in the American Prospect, complaining about Iowa's influence on the nominating process. Here is the link:

http://www.prospect….

And here is the key excerpt:

No small group of Americans deserves this power, but if any does, it sure isn't the citizens of Iowa. 

As you read this, some of the most important and powerful people in America are crawling through the Hawkeye State on their knees, pretending to know more than they do about corn, pretending that the deep fried Twinkie they had back at the state fair was just dee-licious, pretending that ethanol is the key to our energy future, and pretending that every precinct captain and PTA chair they meet is the very heart and soul of our nation, whose opinions the candidate is just dying to hear. And the good people of Iowa? They couldn't give a rat's ass.

If this is a typical election, somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of voting-eligible Iowans will bother to show up to a caucus. Yes, you read that right. Those vaunted Iowa voters are so concerned about the issues, so involved in the political process, so serious about their solemn deliberative responsibilities as guardians of the first-in-the-nation contest, that nine out of ten can't manage to haul their butts down to the junior high on caucus night. One might protest that caucusing is hard — it requires hours of time and a complicated sequence of standing in corners, raising hands, and trading votes (here is an explanation of the ridiculousness). But so what? If ten presidential candidates personally came to your house to beg for your vote, wouldn't you set aside an evening when decision time finally came?

But only one in ten Iowans can be bothered. Not only that, despite all the attention, Iowans know barely more about the candidates than citizens of other states, and don't discuss politics any more than anyone else (unless something has changed since this research was conducted in 2000). Yet around 200,000 of them, possessed of no greater wisdom or insight than the rest of us, will determine who presides over this nation of 300 million for the next four years. The problem isn't that Iowans aren't like the rest of the country (95 percent white, for one). The problem is that despite the extraordinary privilege of having the next president grovel before them, they're just as indifferent and apathetic as any other group of Americans.

I am no fan of the caucus system, but I think Waldman is unduly harsh on Iowans. First, Iowa is fairly representative of the U.S. politically, as a state divided roughly evenly that usually goes for the winner of the presidential election.

Second, turnout for the caucuses may be low in Iowa, but I bet that it would be lower for caucuses in any other state that lacks the tradition we have in Iowa. In some ways it's remarkable that so many people do haul themselves out of their homes for more than an hour on a cold winter weeknight.

But the main thing I will say for Iowans is that they give all the candidates a fair hearing. They do not let a few thousand maxed-out donors decide who is worth their attention.

The truth is that the “money primary” has far more malign influence over national media coverage of presidential elections than Iowa does. The Iowa results will influence media coverage for a week or two, but the money primary determines who gets covered nationally for a year or more.

If the national media had had their way, dark horses never would be able to break through to challenge front-runners. But Iowans were willing to listen to Howard Dean, and he started making a move in the polls here in 2003 before his fundraising got the national media's attention. Iowans were willing to give Kerry and Edwards a chance after the national media had written them off.

This year, Iowans are giving their serious consideration to Biden, Dodd and Richardson as well as the front-runners. Even bloggers who follow politics extremely closely are often quick to dismiss longshot candidates as jokes. I appreciate that Iowans who do plan to caucus will often take the time to learn about and listen to all of the candidates in our field.

So Waldman is incorrect to say that Iowans “don't give a rat's ass” about this process. If anything, Iowa caucus-goers take the process more seriously than the average cynical reporter who covers politics for a living. 

I put up the latest installment of this series at Daily Kos and MyDD. The diaries are geared toward people who are unfamiliar with the caucus system, but I would be interested in comments from Bleeding Heartland readers as well.

If you have read earlier installments of this series, you know that I am no fan of the caucus system. Too many people are excluded from participating because of the requirement that citizens show up in person at exactly 6:30 pm on a cold winter night, staying for an hour or more. People must express their preferences in public, creating an opportunity for intimidation by overbearing neighbors or family members. Determining the winner by state delegates can distort the results and put candidates with pockets of deep support at a disadvantage.

This post is about caucus math and how voters' second choices can affect the way raw voter numbers are translated into delegate counts.

If you make it to the end of this long diary, I hope to have convinced you that 1) caucus math can lead to strange outcomes, and 2) neither you nor I can be sure which candidate will benefit most from the way the math works.

More after the jump. 

Via Atrios, I learned that Newt Gingrich will not run for president, having learned that he would have to give up his day job to do so. Link is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn…

Key excerpt:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not run for president in 2008 after determining he could not legally explore a bid and remain as head of his tax-exempt political organization, a spokesman said Saturday.

“Newt is not running,” spokesman Rick Tyler said. “It is legally impermissible for him to continue on as chairman of American Solutions (for Winning the Future) and to explore a campaign for president.”

[…]

Just last week, Gingrich said he had given himself a deadline of Oct. 21 to raise $30 million in pledges for a possible White House bid, acknowledging the task was difficult but not impossible.

He abruptly dropped the idea Saturday, apparently unwilling to give up the chairmanship of American Solutions, the political arm of a Gingrich’s lucrative empire as an author, pundit and consultant.

American Solutions, a tax-exempt committee he started last October, has paid for Gingrich’s travel and has a pollster and fundraiser on staff.

Gingrich makes hundreds of speeches each year, many paid. He will not say how much he charges, and neither will the Washington Speakers Bureau, which books him. But some clients have said they paid $40,000 for a speech.

Amazing that people will pay $40,000 to hear Newt speak.

Still, too bad he won't be running for president. He would be my dream GOP opponent. Even Hillary could beat him. 

[corrected headline after learning from Adam B that Edwards is likely to receive about $10 million in matching funds]

I couldn't disagree more with Simon's post below. 

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic gives the pros and cons of Edwards' decision to accept matching funds:

http://marcambinder….

The bottom line from my perspective is that Edwards will now have about as much cash on hand going into the home stretch as Hillary and Obama.

And since he has hardly spent anything on paid media in Iowa so far, he will continue to have flexibility in how he spends during the remainder of the campaign. This would be a bigger problem for him if he had already spent millions on tv ads in Iowa, as have several of his rivals.

On Edwards keeping his powder dry in Iowa, see Chris Bowers at Open Left:

http://www.openleft….

Key part of that post:

  Marc Ambinder has some key stats on how much paid media Democratic candidates have currently purchased in Iowa:

 

1. Obama: $2.8M
2. Richardson: $1.7M
3. Clinton: $1.2M
4. Dodd: $739K
5. Biden: $313K
6. Edwrds: $23K

I'll be watching later, after the kids are in bed.

Post your comments on who did well, who missed opportunities, or whatever you like.

My pre-debate prediction is that Richardson and Biden will go at it over who has the right plan to get us out of Iraq.

I will be curious to see if anyone goes after Hillary for voting for the Kyl/Lieberman “sense of the Senate” amendment on Iran today. Biden and Dodd voted against, and Obama was absent but said he would have voted against.

I liked this statement from Dodd:

http://chrisdodd.com…

“I cannot support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran. To do so could give this President a green light to act recklessly and endanger US national security. We learned in the run up to the Iraq war that seemingly nonbinding language passed by this Senate can have profound consequences. We need the president to use robust diplomacy to address concerns with Iran, not the language in this amendment that the president can point to if he decides to draw this country into another disastrous war of choice.”

He added:

“We shouldn’t repeat our mistakes and enable this President again.”

For the past several Tuesdays, I have been posting diaries in support of John Edwards on the front page of MyDD.

This week I wrote a diary about Edwards' performance at the AARP forum in Davenport last Thursday. I thought it was a strong debate for all who participated, but I wanted to call attention to some particularly strong moments for Edwards.

The diary is long, so I put it after the jump. I welcome your feedback.

Tomorrow night there's another MSNBC debate. I don't have high hopes for the quality of the discussion, given the format and moderation of the previous debates hosted by that network. 

David Shuster, filling in for Tucker Carlson, humiliated Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on MSNBC today. She knew all the GOP talking points against Moveon.org, but she didn't know the name of the last soldier from her own district to be killed in Iraq:

Kagro X at Daily Kos picks up the story from Crooks and Liars:

http://www.crooksand…

http://www.dailykos….

Here's part of the transcript: 

Shuster: “Let’s talk about the public trust. You represent, of course, a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last solider from your district who was killed in Iraq?”

Blackburn:”The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq uh – from my district I – I do not know his name -”

Shuster: “Ok, his name was Jeremy Bohannon, he was killed August the 9th, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?”

Blackburn: “I – I, you know, I – I do not know why I did not know the name…” [Snip]

Shuster: “But you weren’t appreciative enough to know the name of this young man, he was 18 years old who was killed, and yet you can say chapter and verse about what’s going on with the New York Times and Move On.org.” [Snip]

Shuster: “But don’t you understand, the problems that a lot of people would have, that you’re so focused on an ad — when was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody? I mean, here we have a war that took the life of an 18 year old kid, Jeremy Bohannon from your district, and you didn’t even know his name.”

Plenty more commentary in the thread below this diary:

http://www.dailykos….

Just got this on the I-Renew e-mail list:

September 20, 2007       
Contacts:          

Carrie La Seur, Plains Justice (Cedar Rapids), 319-560-4729, claseur@plainsjusti ce.org

 

Nathaniel Baer, Iowa Environmental Council (Des Moines), 515-244-1194, Baer@iaenvironment. org

Maureen McCue, Physicians for Social Responsibility (Iowa City), 319-828-4789

 

Sally Wilson, Community Energy Solutions (Marshalltown) , 641-751-2852, saynotocoal@ yahoo.com 

Des Moines – Today a coalition of five public interest organizations filed a Petition to Intervene in the application by Interstate Power and Light Company (Alliant Energy) to the Iowa Utilities Board to construct a 660 megawatt pulverized coal plant in Marshalltown.  The coalition will present expert witness testimony on the public health and global warming impacts, the increase in electrical rates, and the displacement of renewable energy that will result from this old-fashioned coal plant. 

 

The public interest coalition that intervened today includes Community Energy Solutions, Iowa Environmental Council, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Renewable Energy Association and Iowa Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.  Coalition members represent Marshalltown residents as well as tens of thousands of Iowans.  Coal-fired power plants contribute 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.  Iowa gets up to 85% of its electricity from coal, while the national average is 50%.  

 

Coal combustion emissions contribute to respiratory and cardiac ailments because of increases in particulate matter, or soot, a pollutant regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.  As epidemiologists expand studies of the smallest particulate matter, its harmful health impacts become increasingly apparent.  Coal plants emit heavy metals into the atmosphere, including mercury, which settles into surface waters and bioaccumulates in fish, which can in turn cause neurological damage if eaten.  Illinois has mercury advisories on 100% of its surface waters, but Iowa does not track mercury contamination.  Finally, Iowa allows use of coal ash for fill in unlined quarries without groundwater monitoring, a practice that has led to groundwater contamination in dozens of sites around the U.S. 

 

The intervenors are represented by Attorneys Carrie La Seur and Jana Linderman of Plains Justice, a public interest environmental law firm based in Cedar Rapids.  Says La Seur, “Utility regulators across the country are denying permits for new coal plants, and investors are pulling out.  This is a very risky time to propose a coal plant.”  Dr. Maureen McCue of Physicians for Social Responsibility emphasizes: “The harmful health impacts of coal plants are undisputed, and it's simply immoral to construct a giant new source of greenhouse gases.” 

 

Local Marshalltown residents express concerns about impacts on local health care services, and particularly the health impacts on vulnerable elderly residents of the Iowa Veterans Home.  Sally Wilson, Associate Professor of Biology at Marshalltown Community College, worries that Marshalltown has been chosen for the plant because the community is perceived as lacking the resources to fight a large corporation.  “We deserve clean air and water as much as any other town in Iowa,” says Wilson.  “It is critical that we protect our environment for the health of our community.  It makes no sense to build a coal plant when much better alternatives are now available.”

 

 The IUB has scheduled the administrative hearing in this docket to begin January 14, 2008, in the auditorium of the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think there is a vacancy on the Iowa Utilities Board right now. Let's hope that whoever gets that job before January 2008 is not favorably disposed to coal.

Incidentally, the Iowa Farmers Union represents family farmers, unlike the Farm Bureau which represents corporate ag interests. 

I didn't have a chance to watch the forum.

What did you think?

Iowa Independent's liveblog is here:

http://www.iowaindep…

You can also find links to video from the forum at that site.

Noneed4thneed thought it was a great night for Biden and Edwards:

http://commoniowan.b…

Reaction from MyDD readers is here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

I still think it was insane for Obama to skip this one, given that up to two-thirds of caucus-goers may be over 50.

UPDATE: I finally got around to watching the debate. I thought all five candidates did well. As an Edwards supporter, I was very happy with his performance and his ability to make connections: for instance, between strong unions and pensions, between the solvency of Social Security and the need to stop taxing wealth at a much lower rate than work is taxed.

But I imagine that supporters of the other candidates also found much to like in their performances.

The format was also much better than the previous debates (it helped having only five people on stage). Judy Woodruff did a good job of asking direct questions and following up when warranted. 

More like this debate, please! 

Note: I am cross-posting to Bleeding Heartland my latest installment in MyDD's partisan candidate diary series.

I was planning to write this post about my impressions from Tom Harkin's steak fry on Sunday. However, my camera wasn't working for some reason, and there have already been other good diaries covering that event.

So my thoughts turned to words from a different time and place.

Last Thursday I attended my temple's services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. As is my habit when the service starts to drag, I began leafing through the front section of the High Holidays prayer book, which contains quotations, legends and meditations on themes relevant to this time of year. You Jewish readers out there may also enjoy reflecting on those parts of the prayer book if you spend long hours at Yom Kippur services. [note: are there any other Jewish readers of Bleeding Heartland?]

One of the snippets that caught my attention contained a quotation attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th century rabbi who founded the Hasidic Jewish movement. I don't have a link, but I jotted down the relevant portion:

The first time an event occurs in nature it is a miracle; later it comes to seem natural and is taken for granted.

The quote reminded me of something I had recently read in The Atlantic Monthly. That magazine is 150 years old, and to celebrate that milestone editors have been publishing decades-old excerpts on a particular theme in each issue. In the October 2007 issue, the magazine reprints portions of articles about philanthropy, including a piece written by Alice Hamilton for the May 1930 issue:

I must … join with those who stand for state pensions for the aged poor rather than support given through private charity …
[…]

In thinking of old-age pensions we must take into consideration a great new class of needy people. These are not men who have lived all their lives on the edge of poverty; they are self-respecting artisans, skilled workers, men who have made good wages and held their heads high. At a moment when such a man still possesses all his old skill of eye and hand, and the gains of long experience, he finds himself no longer wanted, of less use in our American social system than his little feather-brained daughter with a year’s training in a business school …

It will be harder and harder for him to find any sort of job, even if he dyes his hair and makes pitiful efforts to hide the senility of fifty years … Personally, I am very loath to accept the verdict that a dependence on the benevolence of the uppermost class toward the lowest class is the only possible American way of solving the problem of the poor, or even that it makes for a healthy state and contentment at the bottom of society …

The American workman may earn high wages … but even if he does, he must live all his working life under the shadow of three Damoclean swords: sickness, loss of his job, and old age, and against these our country, the richest in the world, gives him no protection.

Think about that. In 1930 it was not a given that the elderly should receive any kind of state pension. Our country, “the richest in the world,” offered no protection for those who had worked hard their whole adult lives.

Probably there were plenty of naysayers who thought that efforts to adopt a state pension were a pipe dream which would never get through Congress.

Not long after that, Social Security became a reality, and now there are few programs that seem like a more “natural” obligation of our government than that one.

I am no expert on the history of the labor movement, but the activists who were advocating the right to collective bargaining in the late 19th century must have sometimes felt like it would be a miracle for them to ever succeed. It took decades before the right to join a union seemed “natural” even in the manufacturing sector, and we still haven't done enough to strengthen organized labor.

During this presidential campaign, John Edwards has set out very ambitious policy proposals, like his universal health care plan and his plan to end poverty in 30 years. Some journalists and even some progressives have dismissed these proposals as pandering or a waste of time, since Congress would (supposedly) never adopt them.

I think it is important for the Democratic Party's standard-bearer to set the bar high. Let's not become resigned to the idea that it would take a miracle to get a universal health care plan through Congress. Let's accept that our country, “the richest in the world,” has an obligation to provide universal access to health care, and let's debate the best way to get that done.

Let's talk about who has the best combination of ideas to end poverty or bring the United States closer to true energy independence.

Let's work to make the progressive achievements of the next presidency seem as natural decades from now as Social Security seems to us today.

By putting these goals front and center, John Edwards is not only running a strong campaign, he is inspiring his competitors to be better candidates as well. I hope that all Americans will benefit, no matter who ends up winning the Democratic primaries.

Final note: it's a few days late, but for all you Jewish MyDD readers, here is the Rosh Hashanah message released by John Edwards:

“Rosh Hashanah is an occasion for contemplating the past year and considering our future path.  What have we done to make the world a better place?  What can we do to improve ourselves as individuals?  Elizabeth and I will be asking these questions as we wish all those who observe the high holiday a Happy New Year and pray for a year of peace, prosperity and good health for our brothers and sisters.”

The Los Angeles Times released a new Iowa poll on Tuesday:

Clinton 28

Edwards 23

Obama 19

Richardson 10 

The results have been discussed at MyDD and Open Left:

http://www.mydd.com/…

http://www.openleft….

Jonathan Singer made the key observation at MyDD:

I do just want to add that the “likely” voter screen for the LA Times and Bloomberg is a bit loose. Doing some back of the napkin math, the likely voter model used here would include more than 870,000 Democratic caucus participants — which is a bit more than the 122,000 or so that participated in the last Democratic caucus. While there may be more excitement this time around than there was in 2004, there isn't that much more excitement. So what does that mean? A lot of the folks the Times and Bloomberg are deeming “likely” voters or caucus goers are in fact unlikely to participate come January. Most in fact. As such, while these numbers might be good gauges of the general sentiments of these states, I'm not certain how good of gauges they are of the sentiments of those who are actually going to play a large role in selecting the next Democratic nominee.

The problem with almost every Iowa poll I've seen lately is that the universe of likely voters sampled suggests a ridiculous number of caucus-goers.

If turnout exceeds 150,000 at the Iowa caucuses on the Democratic side, I'll be surprised. If it exceeds 200,000, I'll be shocked.

My sense is that a lot of Hillary supporters and leaners have never caucused before and won't caucus this year either–especially if we have to go the week after New Year's. 

I have been invited to write one front-page post each week at MyDD in support of John Edwards. It appears on Tuesdays as part of their “candidate blogger” series (two Clinton supporters post on Mondays, two Edwards supporters on Tuesdays, two Obama supporters on Wednesdays, and a Dodd, Biden and Richardson supporter on Thursdays).

I keep forgetting to cross-post these at Bleeding Heartland. I've put today's installment after the jump. It's about how Edwards is keeping New Orleans on our national media's radar screen, and why that is important.

Just got this from the Public Campaign Action Fund. If you haven't supported them in the past, please consider doing so. Public Campaign and its action fund do a lot of great work.

Dear [desmoinesdem],

 

Thanks to your fast action, Insight Communications, the cable company that last week refused to air our new ad about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has relented: they will air the ad this week.

We beat McConnell and his donors when we forced Insight Communications to back down. Now we need to take this opportunity to claim the right to run this ad on the air. We’re $14,500 short of our goal – if 145 people gave an average gift of $100 we’ll make it. If you can give more, great. Every dollar you contribute affirms the freedom of speech we fought for last week. Please make a donation to help us reach our goal today.

Help us keep this ad on the air. Consider making a donation today!

Insight, whose executives have donated thousands of dollars to McConnell and whose head lobbyist and CEO are both McConnell allies, tried to keep our ad, which talks about McConnell's ties to big money special interests, off the air.  We know censorship — and blatant political favor-trading  — when we see it and we immediately launched our petition effort to get Insight to air the ad.  On Friday evening we got the news: Insight backed down.

Now we need to make sure Kentuckians see this ad. Help us keep it on the air by making a donation today!

While we celebrate this victory for our ad, and for the light it will shed on McConnell's habit of acting on behalf of his campaign patrons instead of his constituents, we also celebrate a larger victory for our freedom of speech.

We have already seen our elections dominated by those with the most money who can buy the biggest megaphone, and as a result we have seen the priorities of our elected officials skew towards the narrow interests of the few and the wealthy.  But when you, and your fellow activists, signed the petition Friday and called for an end to Insight's censorious tactics to further control debate you took an important step in changing those priorities.

The ad will run in Kentucky through the week, as often as our funds will allow.  Thank you for all you've done.

David Donnelly
National Campaigns Director

P.P.S. The ad, and Insight's reaction got quite a bit of news coverage, read up here for more, and check out these YouTube clips of television coverage.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had a bumper sticker contest and just selected a winner from about 10,000 entries.

To see what slogan won, and order a free bumper sticker, go here:

http://www.dscc.org/…

Thanks to the Senate 2008 guru for alerting me to this in his excellent weekly roundup, which you can find here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

Or just check the Senate 2008 guru blog here:

http://senate2008gur…

Atrios runs an occasional series of “Simple answers to simple questions” at his blog Eschaton.

Opening the opinion section of the Des Moines Register on Sunday, I found a piece by Richard Doak under the headline Still resisting deadlines, does Bush even want to end war?

No.

David Donnelly of the Public Campaign Action Fund sent out this very disturbing e-mail today:

Dear [desmoinesdem],

Cable giant Insight Communications pulled our new ad on Mitch McConnell at the 11th hour last night.  Insight's executives have donated $17,000 to McConnell. Now they are helping him even more by engaging in political censorship to keep this ad, which criticizes McConnell for his special interest politics, off the air.

Sign this petition to tell Insight Communications that you won't stand for political censorship.

All the other broadcast networks, including NBC, ABC, and CBS and another cable system are running the ad after reviewing its content for accuracy. Why won't Insight air it? 

And what role did Insight lobbyist Keith Hall or Insight CEO Mike Willner, both McConnell donors and allies and big players in the national cable industry, play in making this decision to censor the ad?

We need answers to these questions and we need your help to hold cable giant Insight accountable for political censorship, which is a blatant move to help out their favorite big money politician, Mitch McConnell. Their decision to pull the ad at the last minute, and give us no notice or opportunity to respond to their concerns, is highly irregular and reeks of a potent witch's brew of big money donors, lobbyists with connections, unaccountable big media, and a powerful Senator.

Insight Communications is censoring political speech — sign this petition and tell them to take their big money muzzles off our airwaves.

High-powered lobbyists and moneyed special interests already dominate campaigns and political debate in this country — when they try and censor ads that draw attention to this disparity they must be held to account. If big money politicians and big media win, we all lose. Only in the narrowest sense is this is a fight about whether our ad runs. At its core, it's a fight about freedom of speech.

Sign the petition today and get this ad back on the air.

Thanks for your work,
David Donnelly
National Campaigns Director

P.S. Now more than ever we need to keep this ad running in Kentucky.  Please donate today to keep it on the air.

Here is David's diary at Daily Kos on the same subject:

http://www.dailykos….

If you haven't joined Public Campaign yet, you should:

http://www.publicamp…

I forgot to set the VCR. From the looks of this thread at MyDD, I didn't miss much:

http://www.mydd.com/…

interesting tidbit here from Todd Beeton, who was watching the post-debate tv coverage:

The participants in Frank Luntz's post-debate focus group of 29 Republicans were unanimous in their disappointment in the candidates. A solid majority was pleasantly surprised by McCain and was most disappointed in Rudy Giuliani. They also called Romney a waffler.

While bloggers were busy overreacting to Bill Richardson's jokes, the governor stated some obvious and important truths about our transportation policy during a campaign stop in Creston on Tuesday.

He makes a lot of good points in the write-up in today's Des Moines Register, so I encourage you to click through and read the whole thing:

The United States’ transportation system is “fixated on highways” and should include more emphasis on energy-efficient modes of travel with planning to ensure preservation of open spaces, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said here today.

Richardson told about 80 people at Creston’s historic railroad depot that he’s been struck by the massive traffic jams and congestion he’s encountered while visiting as many as three states per day while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

The problem, he said, has been caused by poor planning by policy makers who have suffered from an inability to look forward to provide alternatives to driving automobiles.

“What I am seeing right now is all across the country … individuals in cities asking for a more active federal role in not just funding bills to create new highways, but also light rail transportation, commuter rail, and open spaces,” said Richardson, whose campaign talk was periodically interrupted by the rumble of freight trains and a Chicago-bound Amtrak passenger train that rolled past the restored depot.

It's long past time for us to shift some of our transportation dollars away from new road construction.

For more information about transit-oriented development, click here or  click here.

For great analysis of high-speed rail's potential in the U.S. and other aspects of transportation policy, check out some of the diaries posted by BruceMcF at Daily Kos.

A while back I put up a post about the different attitude toward disagreement on political blogs and non-political blogs. I noted that

One surprising lesson I've learned is that people take offense much more easily on parenting blogs than at places like Daily Kos and MyDD.

Well, in the past few days I have gotten myself banned at a blog for the first time ever. It was Jess's Christian parenting/simple living blog Making Home, where I had been commenting for a few months. Jess is one of those bloggers who moderates comments not to screen out spam but to screen out views she considers “personal attacks” or intended to lead her readers astray.

I had tangled with the blogger before, resulting in her censoring my comments, but the last straw for her was the thread below this post, in which she made all kinds of ridiculous assertions about evil society vs. perfect Christian womanhood. She did post my first comment, under which she commented that in the south they have a saying: if you throw a rock over a fence, it's the hit dog that hollers.

Meaning that if I objected to her absurd stereotypes about women who don't share her values, my disagreement is proof that she must be right and must have struck a nerve.

I tried to respond to her (and to her husband, who fancies himself a real Biblical scholar) several more times, but never made it through her editorial screen again.

Elsewhere on the thread, I noticed that Jess, her husband and several of her readers tag-teamed to attack “Christine,” who had previously identified herself on the blog as a terminally ill theology student who had felt Jesus Christ's healing power in her own life. Christine's version of Christian faith was insufficiently judgmental and narrow-minded for Jess. I felt bad for her, but when I tried to post a comment supporting her, of course Jess did not let it through.

I don't post this in any effort to drum up a blogswarm, because there's no point–Jess would never let any of those comments through either. 

But I did find it amusing that after years of participating in all kinds of arguments at Daily Kos and MyDD, handing out and receiving fewer than a dozen troll ratings during all of that time, I managed to get banned from one of these non-political blogs in a matter of months. It's amazing how thin-skinned some of these people are.

Freeganism.

Do you know what it is? The definition and link to the blog where I learned about it are after the jump. 

Have you learned any new words lately?

I only have time for a quick-hit–head over to Open Left for Chris Bowers' analysis of the state of the race, including new polls from ARG and Time magazine:

http://www.openleft….

Chris has an easy-to-read chart. ARG, which has shown Clinton ahead in Iowa all year, has Clinton 28, Obama 23, Edwards 20, Richardson 13.

Time has Edwards 29, Clinton 24, Obama 22, Richardson 11. 

ARG seems to be polling a broader sample of Iowans, and I think they are polling too many people who have no chance in hell of showing up on caucus night.

That said, anyone would have to agree that it is very tight in Iowa now. If the polls stay like this up until January, no one will have any idea who is going to win. Too much depends on how candidates' support is spread around the state and who leads among second choices.

I put this up recently at MyDD and Daily Kos, but for some reason forgot to cross-post here.

I am writing one front-page post at MyDD every Tuesday in support of John Edwards as part of their “unofficial candidate blogger” series (two Clinton supporters post on Mondays, two Edwards supporters post on Tuesdays, two Obama supporters post on Wednesdays, and a Biden, Dodd and Richardson supporter each post on Thursdays).

This was my first piece in that series.  It's a bit of personal narrative about how I came to be supporting Edwards, and it includes links to a lot of other good diaries about the candidate and his policies.

It's long, so I put it after the jump. I welcome your feedback, and I encourage you to put up diaries telling us why you are supporting your favorite in the race, if you have already decided. 

Back in June, I urged Barack Obama to fire the scheduler who put him at a west-coast fundraiser instead of at the Iowa Democratic Party's Hall of Fame dinner in Cedar Rapids. It seemed crazy to me for Obama to pass up a chance to address 1,000 Democratic activists in Iowa, especially since he wasn't hurting in the fundraising department. 

I've long questioned the wisdom of David Axelrod's strategy to make the Obama campaign about Obama's inspiring personal story and his quest for consensus and post-partisanship.

Now I read in the Des Moines Register on Friday that Barack Obama will skip the September 20 American Association for Retired Persons forum in Davenport.

John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson will be there. But Obama will miss the chance to address more than 2,000 Iowa seniors, as well as the national public television audience who will watch the event.

Last week the Obama campaign announced plans to skip many of the remaining forums held by interest groups, and his national campaign manager explained the decision to the Register:

The number of events threatened to take Obama off his own game plan, his national campaign manager David Plouffe said.

“Otherwise, our schedule would be dictated by dozens and dozens of forums and debates, and we think the most important part of this process is individual interaction with voters,” Plouffe said. “We benefit greatly when we're out there meeting with voters at our own events.”

A lot of pundits and bloggers applauded Obama's decision, saying there are too many debates and forums. I see their point, but on the other hand, interest group forums raise questions that might not come up often on the campaign trail. I like the idea of the candidates being forced to address these issues.

Plus, I think it's risky to turn down an invitation when your rivals will all be there. 

But even if I agreed with Obama's general strategy to attend fewer of these forums, the last one I'd skip is the AARP forum in Iowa.

Think about it: Obama does well with the under-30 crowd, but many (most?) Iowa precincts have a very small proportion of voters under 30. The majority of caucus-goers are likely to be over 50. The Register notes:

That group also has carried disproportionate clout in recent caucuses, according to Iowa Democratic Party statistics.

In 2004, 64 percent of the people who participated in the Democratic presidential caucuses were 50 or older. In 2000, the figure was 63 percent.

If Obama is going to do well in Iowa, he'll have to improve his numbers with the over-50 set.

Iowa State University political science professor Dianne Bystrom said she would have thought Obama would have made an exception for the AARP forum.

“He may not think that's his political base,” said Bystrom, whose expertise includes debate strategy. “But it's the older voters that go to the caucuses, and I think he's really passing up an opportunity to speak to those voters.”

Obama has a great Iowa staff led by John Norris, who managed John Kerry's campaign here in 2003 and 2004 Paul Tewes. But his national campaign handlers need to have their heads examined.

You may wonder why I care, since I am supporting Edwards for president. But I don't want Obama to do poorly in Iowa. I want him to finish ahead of Clinton.

To do that, he'll need to do better with older voters.  I hope he'll turn up in Davenport on September 20 after all.

The rabble-rousers over at Open Left (Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, and Mike Lux) have launched a campaign against “Bush dogs”, defined as Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have in 2007 both capitulated on the Iraq funding bill and voted to allow Alberto Gonzales warrantless wiretapping powers.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that IA-03's own Leonard Boswell makes this list. Like many in the group, he is in the “Blue Dog” faction in the House. (Other “Bush dogs” are in the “New Democrats” group in the House, but Boswell does not belong to that club.) 

Boswell's disappointing vote on these issues is only the latest in a long string of disappointments for me, from voting for all of Bush's horrible energy bills to supporting permanent repeal of the estate tax to voting for the “torture” bill in the fall of 2006.

Does Boswell really represent such a conservative district that he “has” to vote with Republicans on these issues? No, he does not. His district actually has a partisan index of D+1.4, whereas many of the Bush dogs are in districts that lean Republican, or deep-South districts where rank and file Democrats tend to be more conservative. 

Chris Bowers specifically criticized Boswell in this post, in which he made the case that Boswell is NOT “voting his district” when he casts his lot with the Bush White House.

Paul Rosenberg provides some interesting data on the “Bush dogs” and how vulnerable they might be to a strong challenge: click here for more. 

Some in the blogosphere have criticized this effort to target in possibly hit Bush dogs with primary challengers, saying it could endanger our majority in the House and is bad form to “meddle” in other states' politics. Chris Bowers responded to the criticism here, and Mike Lux weighed in on the dispute, and his desire to promote progressive voting in Congress without harming Democrats in truly vulnerable positions, here.

What do you think? I support letting Boswell know when we are upset about his voting, but I don't see a primary challenge as having much chance here. Anyway, Iowa is going to lose a district after the 2010 census, and Boswell will likely retire at that point.

Primary challenges against other “Bush dogs” may be well worth the effort, on the other hand. Even if we don't beat these people in the primary, we can push them to vote better, as Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher (both California Democrats) have been doing since netroots progressives targeted them for primary challenges. 

Joe Biden's campaign has posted the candidate's new tv ad in Iowa, along with Biden's answers from this morning's debate, over at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos….

Click over and watch the ad, “Cathedral,” if you haven't seen it yet. I think it will get people talking and looking up that website.

Biden is positioning himself as the candidate with the solution to the Iraq problem. I don't happen to favor his partition proposal, but I think it's good that he is putting the plan out there. Let's debate who has the best plan for getting us out of Iraq quickly and safely.

I taped the debate and will watch later.

If you were watching this morning, what did you think?

Matt Browner-Hamlin has posted the Dodd campaign's debate clock in the diaries section. As usual, Obama gets way more time than anyone else. This has been true in every debate. What's with these moderators?

UPDATE: Nate Willems' take is here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

Iowa Independent has several commentaries on the debate (click the link on the blogroll to the right).

Over at Century of the Common Iowan, Noneed4thneed put up a video clip of David Brooks talking about how Republicans privately can't stand Bush, think he's incompetent, blame him for destroying the party and so on.

I don't doubt that this is true. They were happy to puff up Bush and smear his detractors when his approval ratings were high, but now that he's been below 40 percent for almost two years, he is a little embarrassing. Even the White House has given up on salvaging Bush's presidency (at least that's how I interpret Karl Rove's departure to work on other GOP projects).

So far Republican presidential candidates have mainly criticized the Bush administration on immigration policy. I was expecting some second-tier candidate other than Ron Paul to start calling for bringing our troops home from Iraq (using a soft-racist line like, “We've done all we can for those people”), but that hasn't materialized.

Newt Gingrich, who isn't running yet and probably won't run unless Fred Thompson tanks, is the only Republican besides Paul who has really harsh words for the Bush administration.

Mike Huckabee was on The Colbert Report tonight, and when Stephen asked him his signature question (“George W. Bush: great president, or the greatest president?”), Huckabee said Bush will rank right up there with McKinley and Harding, adding that Bush's presidency “will be a historic moment in time.”

Subtle, and only delivered to Colbert's liberal audience for now.

Is this the start of a new Huckabee strategy to depict Bush as one of our country's more inept presidents, presiding over rampant corruption and inequality?

If so, could this possibly be a winning strategy on the GOP side? Or would it put Huckabee out of the running for VP as well as the top of the ticket?

Or am I reading too much into all of this?

Take the poll and comment, if you like. 

I've long agreed with Kos that Mike Huckabee is the guy in the Republican field I'd least like to see us face in the general. Probably thanks to his experience as a pastor, he connects well with people both in person and on television. He doesn't have the baggage of the Republicans in Congress (voting in lockstep with Bush on Iraq and everything else). He has that inspiring personal story about overcoming obesity, a non-partisan issue that is salient for millions of Americans. He has executive experience. Particularly against Hillary, I think Huckabee spells trouble for us.

That said, I am not sure whether Huckabee's surprisingly strong showing in the Iowa GOP straw poll is good or bad for Democrats.

As you probably know, Huckabee finished second with 2,587 votes, or about 18 percent of the total cast in Ames. I think most of us would agree with Don at Cyclone Conservatives, who called Huckabee the big winner of the day.

His campaign spent about $150,000 on the event, including about 1,850 tickets they purchased for supporters. The group Americans for Fair Taxation claimed credit for Huckabee's strong showing; they spent about as much as the Huckabee campaign on the straw poll and bused about 1,500 people to the event (including about 500 who could vote).

Asked by Iowa Independent what helped Huckabee in Ames, his campaign manager Chip Saltsman said, “We talked a lot about the fair tax.”

In the comments section below that Iowa Independent story, Polk County Republican Party chairman Ted Sporer agreed:

Huckabee's committment to the Fair Tax is one of the reasons he is surging in our primaries because it is a specific tangible policy that addresses a specific policy itch in the Republican shoe, a dislike of hte convoluted tax code.

This is a mainstream R issue and Huckabee has found a simple and attractive way to address the issue and to stand for something tangible. 

Words matter.

Huckabee only edged out Sam Brownback (who, like Mitt Romney opposes the fair tax proposal) by about 400 votes. Take away those Iowans bused in by Americans for Fair Taxation and you'd have a very different story coming out of Ames.

What interests me most about Huckabee's showing is that he did it despite attack ads that the Club for Growth has been running against him on Iowa television stations. Presumably, they were trying to take him out of the running before the straw poll, and they clearly failed miserably.

Political insiders and junkies have known for a long time that the Club for Growth hates Huckabee, but their very public spanking of him (comparing his record as a tax-raising governor to Bill Clinton) seems to have prompted Huckabee to ratchet up his rhetoric against the business wing of the GOP.

Check out this clip from Hardball last week (hat tip to noneed4thneed).

I've watched it several times, and I still can't believe that a Republican went on tv accusing others of letting the GOP become “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the corporations” that have let workers make money for their companies and then end up in the poorhouse. 

Huckabee says it's unacceptable for CEOs to make 500 times the salary of their workers and get huge bonuses while they drive their companies into bankruptcy. He talks about coming from a working class family and how he remembers his dad struggling.

I mean, does he sound like he's channeling John Edwards, or what? No wonder the Club for Growth hates this guy.

Now, I repeat that I would not want to face Huckabee in the general. He would excite the GOP religious base and not come across as too objectionable to independents. He is a social conservative, but he comes across as less scary than, say, Brownback.

But when I think about Huckabee making the top tier, getting more mainstream media coverage while portraying the GOP as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and big business, I smile.

Having a Republican reinforce this stereotype will reach many voters who would tune out a Democrat making similar allegations.

You know how the liberal blogosphere goes nuts whenever a prominent Democrat lends support to a right-wing frame about Democrats? Like, when someone like Barack Obama says that all too often Democrats have seemed hostile to mentioning religion in public?

Well, think how mad the other Republicans will be if Huckabee keeps carrying the “GOP in bed with big business” frame to the mass public. What has he got to lose? The Club for Growth is attacking him anyway. There are a decent number of working class or struggling middle class Republicans who will probably like his populist message. 

I've always felt that part of the Republicans' success is that they don't campaign against each other by repeating negative stereotypes about the party. You don't hear them saying, “I'm not like all those other Republicans who just carry water for big business and screw the little guy.”

Huckabee just may be about to prove me wrong.

And if the Club for Growth and other candidates do crush his candidacy, it will only demonstrate the fact that business interests really do get their way with today's GOP.

The big risk for Democrats, of course, is that if Huckabee catches fire and manages to win the nomination, we'll have a much harder time making an “economic fairness” case against him.  

What do the rest of you think? 

Take a minute to click over to Iowa Independent, where T.M. Lindsey has live-blogged the Ron Paul rally in Cedar Rapids. It's a good read.

I've been saying for months that Ron Paul is not going to get major traction among GOP primary voters. It's not that Republicans aren't sick of the war–they are. But the diehard Republicans who think “we've done all we can for those people,” and it's time to bring the troops home, will never admit Bush made a mistake in taking us into Iraq. And that is why Paul will never be able to reach them.

Also, I think true libertarians are scarce in the GOP these days. But maybe I am wrong. He certainly seems to have a buzz surrounding his campaign, and he is the most coherent of the bunch in the televised debates.

Lest any of you think this is proof that Paul is a “liberal” or would be more at home in the Democratic Party, I refer you to this good set of diaries by “phenry” over at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos….“>Ron Paul, In His Own Words.

http://www.dailykos….“>Ron Paul: The Radical Right's Man in Washington.

http://www.dailykos….“>Ron Paul: Dude is Wack.

http://www.dailykos….“>Ron Paul Hates You.

So what do you all think about Ron Paul and his potential in Iowa?

Just heard about this from the Richardson campaign:

Governor Bill Richardson will announce his, new national healthcare plan in a speech at the Iowa Professional Firefighters-Local 15 Hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa tomorrow [Tuesday] at 1:30 PM.

WHEN: 1:30 PM (Central Time)
WHAT: Speech on Universal Healthcare Plan
WHERE: Iowa Professional Firefighters-Local 15, 1827 South 8th St, Council Bluffs, IA

I look forward to hearing more details about Richardson's health care plan and how he would pay for it, in light of his support for a balanced budget constitutional amendment and his promises not to raise taxes. 

Words cannot describe my anger as I read this front-page article from Sunday's Des Moines Register, about a family who are suing the Waukee school district over excessive time-outs the staff forced on their daughter, who has autism.

Waukee is the fastest-growing city in Iowa. I knew that the school district had some growing pains, but I had no idea its leadership was so poor as to allow this kind of conduct, let alone defend it.

Join me after the jump if you have the stomach to read about sickening treatment of special-needs kids in a public school.

Who had the bright idea of scheduling a televised debate at 8 am on a Sunday?

I didn't even remember to set the VCR. Maybe they'll broadcast it again tonight.

Anyone watch the GOP crowd today? What did you think? 

The liberal blogosphere has been disappointed that the U.S. Senate (including 16 Democrats) capitulated to President Bush on warrantless wiretapping this week.

However, we had some great news out of the U.S. House on Saturday. The chamber passed an energy bill that would take away $16 billion in tax breaks for oil and put more resources toward renewable energy.

Even better, I heard from Rich Dana (former president of I-Renew) on the I-Renew e-mail list that the House approved an amendment calling for a 15 percent Renewable Electricity Standard. That would require the U.S. to have 15 percent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020.

The vote on the RES amendment was 220-190.

Rich has the details on that crucial vote:

Democratic
Ayes188
Noes38
NV9
Republican
Ayes32
Noes152
  NV19

TOTALS
Ayes220
Noes190
No Vote28

Iowa – Loebsack, Braley, Boswell Aye  King, Latham No

Fortunately, the Democrats in the Iowa delegation all voted yes. (I was worried about Boswell and sent an e-mail to his office on Thursday about this issue.)

But it's worth noting that 38 Democrats voted against the RES, which would not have passed without the 32 Republicans who voted for it.

We've got a Democratic majority in the House, but clearly we've still got a lot of work to do if we want a reliable progressive majority. 

The next big battle will be in the conference committee that will reconcile the House and Senate versions of the energy bill. But it looks like we've got a decent chance at keeping the RES provision in there, since it was included in the Senate version. 

PS: At Daily Kos yesterday, user apsmith posted a helpful analysis and comparison of the energy plans proposed by Edwards, Obama, Clinton and Richardson.

Click the link and read through the chart–it will be worth your time, and you'll see why Daily Kos readers who took the poll attached to this diary vastly preferred the Edwards and Richardson plans to the Obama and Clinton plans.

My only criticism is that apsmith didn't include Dodd in his analysis. Dodd's got a good energy policy as well. 

UPDATE: Lee Honeycutt posted this helpful information on the I-Renew e-mail list:

Anyone wanting to read the RES bill can find it online at:

http://thomas. loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/ z?c110:H. R.3221:

You can also download a PDF version of the 786-page bill:

http://frwebgate. access.gpo. gov/cgi-bin/ getdoc.cgi? dbname=110_ cong_bills& docid=f:h3221ih. txt.pdf

Someone I know who spends a lot of time on blogs professionally told me that political blogs make up only about 5 percent of the blogosphere.  I had no idea–until recently I never read any non-political blogs.

In the past few months I've started reading more blogs related to mothering, natural parenting and green or simple living. Most of these blogs are non-political, although some have the occasional pro-Republican post. Many of them have a Christian orientation as well.

I've learned a lot from reading these blogs. One surprising lesson I've learned is that people take offense much more easily on parenting blogs than at places like Daily Kos and MyDD. I have seen bloggers get quite offended by “total strangers” posting “rude” comments on their blogs that really didn't seem so rude to me.

They should see what some of the Clintonistas say about me at MyDD!

Some of the non-political bloggers I read take a much more active role in restricting the comments on their blogs.

When political bloggers do this (like iPol), it's to prevent spam from being posted, not a way to screen out opposing views. Cyclone Conservatives and The Real Sporer don't censor my comments.

I've had some of my comments screened out by non-political bloggers for reasons I don't understand. I make an effort to be respectful in my disagreement and truly don't think my censored comments were offensive. Half the time I was just trying to make things interesting on a thread containing 30-plus comments along the lines of “Excellent post! Thanks so much for putting that in perspective!” 

Anyway, does anyone else out there read non-political blogs on sports or hobbies or whatever? If so, have you noticed less of a tolerance for spirited disagreement?

I attended the Polk County Democrats' women's event tonight, featuring Michelle Obama. Unfortunately, I had to leave before she finished speaking so that my toddler would not disrupt the proceedings.

But wow, she did a great job. I don't have a transcript or notes. The gist of her speech was first, to talk about the tough balancing act women have, and put this in the context of problems we need to solve in this country. Then, she talked about how these issues affecting women motivated her and Barack Obama to pursue a political career instead of taking an easier path (like teaching).

She said she knew what we were all thinking–why should we support Obama when there is a talented woman candidate in the race? (Well, I wasn't thinking that, but there were plenty of Hillary supporters in the crowd.) She hit repeatedly on the “change” theme; I can't remember the exact words, but the main point was that we need to totally change the direction in Washington, not just replace this administration.

I think this is good rhetoric for Obama to use against Hillary; electing her would bring just superficial change–we need to turn the page.

I noticed that Edwards has started to hit on this theme as well. Today he condemned the merger of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and the Wall Street Journal. He also challenged Democratic presidential candidates not to take money from News Corp execs and to refund any contribution they've already received from them. 

Obviously, this refers to Hillary, the Democrat Rupert Murdoch's minions desperately want us to nominate. She's taken in more than $20,000 from News Corp execs.

Links are here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

http://www.johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070802-media-consolidation

The sad truth is that even if Hillary were electable, another Clinton administration would give too much influence to the Washington and corporate insiders who have too much influence today.

Democratic voters are hungry for change, and Hillary will not deliver the bold change we need. We'll be hearing much more on this theme from Obama and Edwards in the coming months.

Not only is it good political rhetoric, it has the advantage of being true. 

To my knowledge, this is the first Iowa caucus poll by Washington Post/ABC. They found:

Obama 27 percent

Clinton 26

Edwards 26

Richardson 11

Biden 2

Kucinich 2

Dodd 1

The link is here:

http://www.washingto…

Not surprisingly, Obama does best among younger voters, but most caucus-goers are likely to be older:

Obama's hope for winning in Iowa appears to depend heavily on his ability to turn younger voters out on caucus night. Iowa's caucus process demands far more of voters than do presidential primaries. Participants must spend several hours at a caucus, and there are no secret ballots. All voting is done in public.

Among Iowa voters younger than 45, Obama has the advantage — 39 percent, compared with 24 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for Edwards. Among those age 45 and older, Clinton and Edwards were tied at 28 percent, with Obama trailing at 18 percent. Four years ago, these older-than-45 voters made up two-thirds of all caucus participants.

In this poll, 31 percent of likely caucus-goers said the upcoming caucuses will be their first. Half of those younger than 45 said this would be their first time out. Converting interest into commitment among younger voters is one big challenge facing Obama's team.

If Obama can mobilize tens of thousands of new voters to come out and caucus, more power to him. I'd love to see that. My hunch is that many precincts just don't have a lot of Democrats under age 45, though.

Recent Iowa polls have been all over the map, which confirms that it's tough to poll the caucuses. My advice to everyone is ignore the polls and work your heart out to GOTV for your favorite candidate.

Over at Iowa Independent Dien Judge reports that “We haven't seen the end of the Clinton-Obama diplomacy feud.”

The chairman of the Democratic Party in Monroe County (southeast Iowa) got a phone call from PSA Interviewing, which conducted a message-testing poll for Clinton in Iowa earlier this year.

Most of the poll questions were about Hillary, and they concerned both policy matters and electability. The survey specifically asked about the CNN/You Tube debate question about whether the president should meet with foreign dictators, and under what conditions.

There's been a lot of debate in the blogosphere over who was helped by this dispute. If Clinton tries to keep this story alive in her speeches and/or campaign ads, it's a safe bet that her internal Iowa polling showed it was a winner for her. If she doesn't bring it up much in the future, we can assume that the polling showed most Iowans agreed with Obama.

ARG, which has shown Clinton leading in Iowa all year, released a new poll today with similar findings. Details and a spirited discussion of this poll can be found over at MyDD. Here are the key findings:

Clinton 30 (down from 32 in last ARG poll)

Edwards 21 (down from 29 in last ARG poll)

Obama 15 (up from 13 in last ARG poll)

Richardson 13 (up from 5 in last ARG poll)

These numbers just don't ring true to me. I don't believe Clinton leads Edwards in Iowa, and certainly not by that kind of a margin. All year ARG has had Clinton around 30 percent in Iowa, and I can't remember any other pollster finding her with support that high.

ARG's new numbers for Republicans in Iowa are also at odds with recent polling by other firms. ARG finds:

Giuliani 22

Romney 21

McCain 17

Undecided 15

Fred Thompson 13

Gingrich 4

all others 2 percent or less 

What do other people think about this poll?

I guess when other firms release their results we'll find out which is the outlier: ARG or the latest KCCI Iowa poll conducted by Research 2000.

I was thinking that it would be helpful to have a box somewhere listing all of the Iowa politicians who have endorsed presidential candidates this year. I know Chris Woods has been keeping track of those, but I don't have a comprehensive list. Even if I did, I am not able to redesign the page.

What do people think? Is this a feature you'd like to see at Bleeding Heartland? Might be useful as a reference.

Speaking of which, has Patty Judge endorsed Edwards? Someone told me yesterday that she has, but I don't remember reading about it, and I couldn't find a link on the Des Moines Register website. 

Judging from the low number of undecideds, they pushed leaners too hard, but for what it's worth, here is the latest KCCI Iowa poll conducted by Research 2000, conducted July 23-July 25:

Edwards 27

Clinton 22

Obama 16

Richardson 11

Biden 3

Kucinich 2

Dodd 2

Gravel 1 

Undecided 16

It's good news for Edwards that there was no “Bubba bump” for Hillary–on the contrary, she was down 6 points compared to the last Research 2000 Iowa poll in May. Not good news for Obama at all. But the movement is not far outside the 4 percent margin of error for this poll. I still believe that around half of Iowa Democrats are undecided.

On the Republican side:

Romney 25 

F. Thompson 14

Giuliani 13

McCain 10

Gingrich 6

Huckabee 2

T. Thompson 2

Tancredo 2

Brownback 2

Hunter 1

Paul 1

Undecided 22 

How depressed would you be if you were Tommy Thompson, Huckabee, Brownback or Tancredo? Clearly the GOP base is unhappy with the crop of frontrunners, yet these second-tier conservative candidates can't get any kind of traction, despite spending lots of time in Iowa.

I don't know what is going to happen on the GOP side. It looks like everyone is unelectable to me, but someone is going to emerge from the primaries. Please, let it be Gingrich! 

Over at MyDD, Todd Beeton put up a thread linking to a Newsweek story about the brand messaging of major presidential candidates, based on their bumper stickers.

Click the link to the Newsweek story and scroll down to see a designer's expert analysis. He liked Hillary's branding, thought Obama's design looked good, and considered Edwards' use of a green trail off a star “crazy and daring.”

I had to go look at my own bumper sticker; not being a visual person, I hadn't even noticed there was any green on the Edwards sticker.

On the Republican side, he thought McCain had the worst logo and didn't like the militaristic star. Rudy's logo looks like “a brick wall,” and Mitt Romney's sticker looks like it belongs to “someone who's not going to win.” 

I also encourage you to read the comments below Beeton's post, because several MyDD readers had interesting things to say. For instance, Hillary's bumper sticker is apparently too tall to fit on old-fashioned chrome bumpers–only would work on newer vehicles. 

Several commenters also agreed with me that while McCain's logo may not be great, Romney's is by far the worst. McCain at least has good branding if he wants to appeal to the veterans' vote, which is important in GOP primaries.

What do you think about these and other bumper stickers? Have you seen many lately? Driving around town, I've just seen a few Edwards and Obama stickers, plus one Hillary sticker and one for Ron Paul.

I wasn't able to watch because of the kids–will try to catch it later.

Who did well, who missed opportunities, who stole the show?

UPDATE: If you missed the debate, check out the great liveblog  over at Iowa Independent.

I haven't found all of the candidate-submitted videos in one place. I liked the Edwards “hair” video–the music and the visuals make it quite memorable.

My dad was a Rockefeller Republican. He was disappointed by the turn the party took in the 1980s and 1990s, and though he died before George W. Bush was selected president, I've always felt that he would have definitively made the break from the GOP during this decade.

At the same time, I've felt that the number of disenchanted Rockefeller Republicans (liberal on social issues and supportive of things like progressive taxation and the estate tax) is not big enough to cost the GOP much in the electoral arena.

Tonight I ran into a former colleague of my father's, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. It was an eye-opening conversation to me; the circle of Republicans who are disgusted by their party's standard-bearers is broader than I had realized.

More after the jump. 

It's ridiculously early for yard signs–I don't think any of the Democrats are handing them out yet. So I was surprised to see a “Ron Paul–Hope for America” yard sign today in a fairly Democratic neighborhood on the west side of Des Moines.

If you know Des Moines, the house is just off Polk Blvd, close to the Waveland Cafe. I don't know the precinct number, but if memory serves, this was an area where Kucinich was viable in 2004.

Anyone else seen any yard signs up yet?

I can't go this year, but if you were thinking about it, make up your mind today. The registration site is here:

http://www.yearlykos…

I'm tied up this morning and can't go to either event, but Hillary Clinton will give a speech on Iraq at 10 am Tuesday at the Temple for Performing Arts in downtown Des Moines.

At the same time, Obama will hold a town hall meeting on the economy at DMACC's urban campus.

Link:

http://www.siouxcity…

Who can build a bigger crowd on such short notice? Hillary's campaign announced the event on Saturday, Obama's campaign announced on Monday.

If you attend either of these events, post a comment below to tell us what you thought.

On July 5 Dick Gephardt officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. I assume that he will be campaigning for her in Iowa, since he won the caucuses in 1988 and had a fair amount of support here even in his disappointing fourth-place finish last cycle.

My question to Bleeding Heartland readers is, how much does this help Hillary? Gephardt was not viable in my precinct in either 1988 or 2004, and I don't know a lot of people who backed him. I know that he had a lot of support from organized labor. Will they care that he is endorsing Hillary?

Speaking as someone who worked her butt off for Kerry before the last Iowa caucuses, if Kerry came out and endorsed one of the other presidential candidates, I wouldn't even consider rethinking my choice. Kerry's preference among the current Democratic field is totally irrelevant to me.

Will Gephardt's backing carry more weight with the people who supported him?

I wrote a diary for Daily Kos and MyDD about Joe Biden being someone to watch in Iowa. I think it's a mistake for bloggers to be writing him off as a joke.

I put the whole diary after the jump. Be warned: it's long, and some of it is written for an audience that may not understand how the caucuses work.

Bottom line is that none of the front-runners should be taking anything for granted in Iowa. A lot of voters will thoroughly consider all the options before making up their minds.

I'm interested in your comments, either here or at one of the other sites:

http://www.dailykos….

http://www.mydd.com/…

UPDATE: I get mass e-mails from most of the campaigns, including Biden's. In my most surreal blogging-related experience ever, this evening the latest e-mail from his campaign links to my DKos diary!

I can't wait until the special election set for July 10 is over. I am tired of the glossy mailers, the phone-calls and the radio ads run by the extremely well-funded “Yes to Destiny” campaign.

The direct mail pieces have done more harm than good, with the first one conveniently touting the property tax cut without mentioning the 17 percent increase in the sales tax (from 6 percent to 7 percent).

Then they sent out a piece misquoting some elderly woman in Urbandale who rents and therefore wouldn't even see any benefits from the property tax cut.

I've gotten an e-mail from the Des Moines Art Center containing an absentee ballot request form–the mailing urged me to vote yes on the tax hike.

Today in the car I heard a radio ad for the Blank Park Zoo talking about all the great ways they'll be able to expand the zoo if people vote Yes to Destiny. No mention of the fact that they will be turning half of a county park (currently free and available to the public) into zoo exhibits people will have to pay to see. We've been very regular zoo visitors over the past couple of years, thanks to our toddler/preschooler, but this summer I've been going a lot less because that proposed land grab makes me really angry.

I still think voters are going to soundly reject the Destiny proposal, but the backers are doing GOTV–who knows, maybe they will identify enough supporters and get them to the polls. 

I got a phone call purporting to be a survey, asking me how I would vote on the upcoming special election (without specifying what the election was about). I said I was voting against, and the guy thanked me for my time and ended the call. When I asked who paid for the call, he said Destiny. Presumably, if I had indicated that I was planning to vote for the proposal, I would have been given information about where and when to vote. 

So I inadvertently started a flamewar on Daily Kos and MyDD today by posting a diary about the Clinton campaign being missing in action from July 4 parades in the Des Moines suburbs. The Clintonistas were outraged that (to their mind) my headline implied that the Clinton campaign did not take part in any parades, when we all know that Bill and Hillary marched in the Clear Lake parade.

You can find the DKos version of the flamewar here here or the MyDD version here (the angry Clinton mob was a little less active at MyDD).

My point was that there was no Clinton campaign presence at the Windsor Heights parade I attended, and according to others I talked to, Clinton's campaign didn't have a vehicle in the Urbandale or West Des Moines parades either.

That surprised me, because Obama, Edwards and Richardson were well represented with campaign workers and/or volunteers. (The organizer of the Windsor Heights parade told me later that Biden's campaign was also in the parade, but I didn't notice them.) 

The Edwards people were able to get quite a few supporter cards signed during these parades. We were watching for people who waved or cheered as the Edwards truck rolled by, and three or four people ran up to those spectators and asked them if they would sign up as Edwards supporters. I didn't catch the number for the WDM parade, but I think they got about 65 cards signed during the Urbandale parade and another 15 to 20 in Windsor Heights.

The team also handed out a lot of Edwards stickers in WDM and Urbandale, but had run out early in the Windsor Heights parade.

Obama and Richardson people were handing out tons of stickers in Windsor Heights. My husband, who was with the kids on the side, was pretty sure he saw an Obama staffer with a clipboard as well, who was probably getting supporter cards signed. He wasn't sure whether anyone with the Richardson group was handing out cards. But yesterday evening at the big Windsor Heights celebration in Colby Park, I saw lots of people still sporting their Obama and Richardson stickers.

The point of my diary was that this was a missed opportunity for the Clinton campaign. Thousands of people watch these parades. I've got to believe there were Clinton supporters and leaners who would have signed up if there had been staffers out there spotting them and asking them. I know staff was probably preoccupied with the Clintons' Iowa tour, but the fact that Obama was in Iowa didn't prevent his campaign from having a strong presence in all of the parades.

A woman I know well in my neighborhood is a Clinton leaner (she says she needs more info about the other candidates before making up her mind). She's a general election voter who rarely votes in primaries. Despite many contacts from me last cycle, she and her husband did not attend our precinct caucus. So she is unlikely to turn up on a list of Ds to target in my precinct. I saw her along the parade route with her kids. If there had been a Clinton presence, I bet she would have taken a sticker or possibly signed up. They could have then targeted her closer to caucus time for GOTV efforts. But how will they find her now?

With Teresa Vilmain running the show and the Vilsacks on board, and plenty of money, I am surprised that the Clinton campaign didn't make sure they had a strong presence in all of the Des Moines-area parades.

What do you think, and which campaigns did you see in your towns? 

Incidentally, the only Republican campaign in the Windsor Heights parade was Brownback's; they were also in Urbandale and West Des Moines. I assume that some of the other Republican candidates were in those larger suburban parades. 

I'm off to march in the Windsor Heights parade with the Edwards group. I don't think I'll be doing any blogging today, but noneedthneed is going to be very busy, so click over to Century of the Common Iowan (link is on the blogroll at the right) for his write-ups.

While you're at it, check out the other Iowa liberal blogs, including John Deeth and Iowa Independent, which have published lots of campaign coverage lately.

I must say, though, that I find it distracting to read those liveblog posts that go backward in time as you're reading from the top down.

Got an e-mail from Tom Harkin announcing that his wife Ruth is endorsing Hillary. Here's an excerpt:

She feels that women who are lucky enough to serve in public office had, and continue to have, a responsibility to opening doors and paving a new way for those seeking other leadership roles. And as Ruth looked closely at who is best suited to do the job of President and to inspire a new generation of leaders, Hillary topped the list.

Thanks a lot, Ruth. If Hillary loses the general to a Republican who puts two or three more Alitos on the Supreme Court, I hope you'll apologize to all women.

Of the many things that bother me about the Hillary Clinton candidacy, one of the biggest is this idea that women are supposed to back her as a pathbreaker (with the corollary that people who don't back her are sexist or can't handle strong women). Hillary would be a weak general election candidate, and I don't even think she would be the best president out of the current field.

The e-mail also mentions that Tom Harkin has no plans to endorse any of the presidential candidates. Smart move, senator. 

Remember how the Republicans always told us Clinton's impeachment wasn't about the sex, it was about the lying? That is, the false affadavit Clinton signed in connection with a civil case.

Scooter Libby committed perjury (lied to a grand jury) and made false statements in connection with a criminal case. Not just any criminal case, an investigation into the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name. Despite his all-star legal team, Libby was convicted on four out of five counts of perjury and making false statements.

Well, Bush made a big show of saying he would fire anyone involved in leaking covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media. But when push came to shove, he didn't do it, and he made sure that convicted felon Scooter Libby didn't see a day in prison for lying to the FBI and to a grand jury.

Today, after a court ruled against Libby's efforts to delay his prison sentence until after he had exhausted his appeals, Bush commuted Libby's sentence to probation and a $250,000 fine. That fine is meaningless–Bush pioneers have been raising millions of dollars for Libby.

TPM Cafe has been keeping track of reaction to the commutation by politicians of both parties. 

I found this nugget at Talking Points Memo particularly interesting. This comes from the Department of Justice manual on commutations, with emphasis added by Josh Marshall:

Section 1-2.113 Standards for Considering Commutation Petitions 

A commutation of sentence reduces the period of incarceration; it does not imply forgiveness of the underlying offense, but simply remits a portion of the punishment. It has no effect upon the underlying conviction and does not necessarily reflect upon the fairness of the sentence originally imposed. Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence. Nor are commutation requests generally accepted from persons who are presently challenging their convictions or sentences through appeal or other court proceeding.

Even Bush's commutation didn't follow legal procedures.

But hey, it's ok if you're a Republican. 

Got a card in the mail today announcing that Tom Vilsack is joining the Des Moines office of Dorsey & Whitney LLP. According to the law firm's website, the firm has 18 offices, approximately 650 lawyers, and approximately 850 other support staff.

The card lists 16 other attorneys in the firm's Des Moines office and says Vilsack “will be maintaining a general practice including but not limited to commercial law and litigation and advising clients in the fields of energy conservation, renewable energy and agribusiness development.”

Judging from the envelope, this was a mass mailing. I don't know why I got one–could have been sent to all registered Ds in central Iowa, or just people who have contributed to the Iowa Democratic Party. 

I agree 100 percent with a column by David Yepsen. It's about how the “Destiny” tax proposal will lose and deserves to lose.

Here's the link to his piece in the Des Moines Register today. It's hard to know what to excerpt, because he makes a lot of good points. Here's one Chris Woods and I haven't discussed previously on this site:

The supporters' big hope now is that all the groups that will get additional money will vote for it, while those opponents will forget there's an election on July 10. That's what the supporters were trying to do when they scheduled this for a summertime special election – manipulate the outcome.

Which raises another issue for state lawmakers to consider. Why should governments and interest groups be allowed to schedule elections in an effort to affect the results? Got a tax increase or bond issue to get approved? Then schedule the election when people might not be paying attention – like mid-July – so a small handful of voters can push it through.

It amounts to governments playing games with their people. No wonder folks get cynical. Legislators should put a stop to it by adopting an idea Secretary of State Mike Mauro and Gov. Chet Culver have suggested: Governments should be required to hold bond elections and special ballot elections on just a handful of pre-determined dates. For example, once every six months, the state could specify a date on which all bond referendums, ballot initiatives or elections to fill vacancies must be held.

Also in the Sunday Register, you'll find a write-up of this opinion poll, which found that people in the three counties that will be voting oppose the Destiny proposal 2 to 1.

The question is, will these people turn out to vote? The groups that will benefit from the spending are working to get supporters to vote–as a member of the Des Moines Art Center, I got an e-mail recently containing an absentee ballot request form as an attachment.

I think the “Destiny” proposal will go down in flames. It probably wouldn't have passed even if the promoters hadn't sent out misleading direct-mail pieces supporting it (the first one didn't mention the sales-tax hike, and another one included a quote from an elderly woman who later said she never made the comment attributed to her in the mailer). But those mistakes certainly hurt their cause too.

without hitting a presidential candidate during the next week in Iowa.

Noneed4thneed's got a comprehensive list of who'll be where over at Century of the Common Iowan. Click through for info on impending visits by Biden, Dodd, Obama, Clinton, Romney, Huckabee and Tancredo.

Got an e-mail from the Biden campaign:

July 3rd: Enjoy a day at the State Capitol. Stop by the Yankee Doodle Pops and then come see Senator Biden's 2:30pm press conference on the steps. Several major State Legislators will be endorsing Biden and you can join in the festivities.

July 4th: March with Senator Biden in the Urbandale Parade. Line up is at 9:30am on 70th St between Palm Dr. and Roseland Dr. The parade starts at 10am. Wave to the crowds and share the excitement of Independence Day as you and Senator Biden< make your way through Urbandale. July 4th: Come to Senator Biden's backyard Barbecue hosted at the home of Nate and Meg Boulton. Guests are welcome at 1:30pm. This is a great chance to experience the Senator and Presidential Candidate one on one, ask questions, and enjoy a beautiful day. For details or to RSVP please contact Raena, Raena@JoeBiden.com or 515-440-2008.

Anyone know who's planning to endorse Biden?

Anyone keeping track of the statehouse endorsements so far? The only one I know of for sure is Staci Appel, who's on the Hillary bandwagon. 

I've been somewhat critical of the Culver administration when it comes to environmental issues, but I'm proud of Chet Culver upon reading this release that came to me on the Sierra Club e-mail list:

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
Governor Chet Culver « Lt. Governor Patty Judge
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2007

Contact: Brad Anderson
 (515) 281-0173

 

GOVERNOR CULVER APPOINTS NEW EPC BOARD MEMBER

 

PAUL JOHNSON NAMED TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION COMMISSION

(Des Moines)  Today, Governor Chet Culver appointed Paul Johnson of Decorah to the Environmental Protection Commission.  The EPC is a panel of nine citizens who provide policy oversight of Iowa's environmental protection efforts. EPC members are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by vote of the Senate for four year terms.

“Paul is a family farmer who will bring valuable experience to this important Board,” said Governor Culver.  As Governor, I am committed to improving water quality and protecting the land, lakes, rivers and streams we all love.  I am confident Paul will make a valuable contribution to the EPC’s efforts to protect Iowa’s environment.”

PAUL JOHNSON – Paul Johnson holds a BS (1966) and MS (1969) in Forestry from the University of Michigan and an honorary doctorate from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. His international experience spans Peace Corps service in Ghana, West Africa (1962-4), forestry teaching in Ghana (1967-68), doctoral research in tropical forest ecology in Costa Rica (1969, 1970, 1971), co-directorship of the Luther College Nottingham Year (1980-81) in Nottingham, England and numerous educational and research visits to countries such as Sweden and the former Soviet Union.

Since 1974, Paul and his family have owned and operated Oneota Slopes Farm near Decorah, Iowa. Their farm has included dairy, corn, soybeans, hay, beef cattle, sheep and Christmas trees.
 
Paul's distinguished public service career includes three terms in the Iowa State Legislature (1984-1990) during which he co-authored the 1987 Groundwater Protection Act, the 1989 Resource Enhancement and Protection Act (REAP) and the 1990 Iowa Energy Act. In addition, Paul served as Chief of the Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) at the United States Department of Agriculture from 1993-1997 and as Director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources from 1999-2000.
Additional service includes two terms on the National Research Council's Board on Agriculture (1988-1993) and participation on numerous foundation boards including the Aldo Leopold Foundation. He has been the recipient of many awards over his years of public service, among them the prestigious Hugh Hammond Bennett Conservation Award from the Soil and Water Conservation Society of America.

Earlier this year Culver appointed four new commissioners to the EPC: Dale Cochran, Ralph Klemme, Charlotte Hubbell and Susan Heathcote. I heard later that one of men would be unable to serve because it turned out that he was not currently farming (at least one, possibly two of the four commissioner positions is reserved for a farmer). I don't know if that was Cochran or Klemme.

In any case, Paul Johnson is an outstanding environmentalist and a good Democrat too (he ran against Latham in the 4th District a few years back). 

As usual, I'm taping the debate to watch later, after the kids are in bed.

If you watched, let us know what you thought. Who won? Who missed a great opportunity? Who had the best line? 

As I talk to voters in my precinct who caucused in 2004, I am finding that very few of them have watched the first two debates. I think people will tune in more in the fall. 

There have been some claims that Hillary Clinton is “push-polling” against her main rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Her campaign appears to have commissioned some detailed message testing in both states. That is different from a sleazy push-poll (such as what Bush did to McCain in South Carolina in 2000, having people call up voters asking if it would change their opinion if they knew that McCain had an illegitimate black child).

Nevertheless, this kind of survey rubs some voters the wrong way. This Daily Kos diarist described it as “push-ish” polling.

I don't have a problem with message testing–I was a respondent on a lengthy message-testing survey commissioned by Chet Culver before last year's gubernatorial primary. I do think it's sleazy for Democrats to attack each other using right-wing talking points, but I don't blame campaigns for wanting to know which messages are going to be effective for and against them.

That said, I would really like to know which candidates are doing these surveys, and what kinds of messages they are testing. If you get a call like this, please try to remember the questions (taking notes if needed), and put up a diary afterwards. Or, if you prefer, you could share your info with me by e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com). I will not reveal your identity.

Seriously, Newsday breaks a story that he couldn't make time to attend the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group meetings, because he was too busy giving $100,000 speeches.

Then his Iowa campaign chairman, Jim Nussle, takes a job in the sinking ship that is the Bush White House.

Then his South Carolina campaign chairman gets indicted on federal cocaine charges.

Talk about a bad week! Stick a fork in him–he's done. 

UPDATE: Mike Glover of the AP covers Rudy's answers to some tough questions. Apparently he expects us to believe that he quit the Baker-Hamilton commission because it “didn't seem that I would really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution.” 

I'll be away from my computer for several days, so there may be light posting until Tuesday, unless noneed4thneed and Mark Langgin have some extra time on their hands.

Meanwhile, consider this an open thread for discussing what you've been hearing from your caucus-going friends and neighbors (Democrats or Republicans). 

Here's the schedule I got by e-mail:

Sorry for the short notice–this just arrived today in my in-box. Go here at 4 pm CDT today (Wednesday) to participate:

    http://ChrisDodd.com…
  

UPDATE: I got a robocall telling me that Senator Dodd will be speaking at the Des Moines Public Library downtown on Tuesday, June 26, at noon. The main topic will be his national service plan, although I imagine he'll take questions on other topics too.

Didn't see any other public events listed on the Dodd campaign website, but if you're interested, check again in a few days. I assume he'll hold more than one event on this Iowa trip.