In about 8 minutes, the Des Moines Register’s Democratic Debate will start.  I’ll be doing what I can to live blog it–after the debate is over, I’ll move most of it to below the feed.

And if you’re interested, the Dodd Campaign will again be doing their talk clock:

Let’s go below the fold to read the re-cap…

Today at 11 AM Central Time, any and all comments to the Federal Election Commission on their pending decision regarding presidential primary matching funds on contributions received through ActBlue are due.

Multiple organizations are vocally opposing this ban, as it effectively disregards ActBlue’s nature as a grassroots fundraising system and largely violates the meaning of matching funds through public funding.  As the netroots’ own Adam Bonin wrote in his letter to the FEC on behalf of DailyKos and BlogPAC:

Obviously, while ActBlue is a “political committee” in the strictest sense of the term, in reality it does not act as such.  ActBlue is a conduit for individual contributor preferences, to track and aggregate small-dollar contributors.  It asserts no control over the recipients of its funds; the site’s only criteria is that the recipient be a Democrat. It fulfills FECA’s anticorruption goals by reporting contributors’ names, addresses, employers, and occupations to campaign, which in turn provide that information to the Commission as is legally required.

This is a clear a case as any of reformers accomplishing via technology what law alone cannot do: leveling the playing field between moneyed interests and small-dollar contributors by allowing anyone to become a “bundler”, and to allow such contributors to have visual, real-time confirmation of their impact upon the process.  In the same way that the public financing system itself is designed to encourage and magnify the impact of small-dollar contributions, ActBlue facilitates those contributions occurring in the first place.

If you’re at all interested in supporting the Edwards campaign’s position–which isn’t a tacit endorsement, but an affirmation of your belief in grassroots fundraising–please make sure to submit your comments.  You can see more by reading desmoinesdem’s earlier post here.

You can do that in a variety of ways:

– Visit JohnEdwards.com and send a comment through our simple form.

– Write an E-mail to Mary Dove, the FEC Commission Secretary at mdove@fec.gov

– Fax your comments to the Secretary at (202) 208-3333 and to FEC’s Office of General Counsel at (202) 219-3923

– Sign the letter from Public Campaign

Sorry tonight’s post is late and the past couple of days have been missing.  Remember way back when, when you had to write research papers and prepare for finals?  Welcome to my life at this point.

Anyway, tomorrow is the final Democratic debate of the season as the Des Moines Register hosts the debate in IPTV studios in Johnston.  Today’s Republican debate was criticized as being pretty tame and uninteresting, so I’m wondering if the Democratic affair will be just the same?

And what will the Republicans think about the questions posed by Carolyn Washburn after it was revealed that she violated Register policies and participated in the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary here in Iowa?

The blogosphere has been ablaze this week after Register columnist David Yepsen’s piece about trying to preserve the sanctity of the Iowa Caucuses by essentially banning out-of-state students attending school in Iowa from coming back to Iowa to caucus.

First of all, I think desmoinesdem is right with her post here calling for Yepsen to apologize to Obama.  As Obama’s been the most vocal of the Democrats calling for students to come back and caucus, he’s been the brunt of Yepsen’s attacks.  Instead, the Obama campaign has been busy fighting with the good progressive ally Paul Krugman instead of David Yepsen who often will smack down truly progressive ideas without indulging them fully or honestly.  So, while the Obama campaign may desperately want the Register’s endorsement, challenging his assertions and his problematic claims against students may do even more to boost your campaign than the endorsement.  But that’s another story entirely.

But secondly, I felt it was my place to respond as a college student (admittedly from Iowa) with many, many friends from outside of Iowa who plan on staying in the state to caucus.  These students spend at least nine months of the year here in the state and have the choice to register to vote here as Iowans.  When you spend 3/4 of your year in a state where you pay income tax on any jobs you might have and pay the local sales tax it seems quite clear to me that you ought to have a say in the elections the state holds, no matter who the candidates are.  The Iowa Democratic Party agrees.  From a statement released this afternoon by IDP Chair Scott Brennan:

“In running the First in the Nation Caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party follows the Iowa Code in determining the eligibility of potential caucus goers. According to the Iowa Code, all college students who are at least 18 years old are eligible to vote and, therefore, eligible to caucus.

Any student who attends an Iowa college or university may participate in the Iowa caucuses provided they are 18 by November 4, 2008, and are a registered Democrat in the precinct in which they wish to caucus.

The Iowa Democratic Party encourages all eligible caucus goers to attend their precinct caucuses on January 3rd to strengthen the Democratic Party and declare their presidential preference.”

It is really just that simple.  And like others before me have said, David Yepsen is just being elitist in this column and implying tactics that are shady when in fact they’re completely legitimate and legal.

What is even worse is that some presidential campaigns are still agreeing with the rhetoric calling for all out-of-staters to stay away from the caucuses.  While Clinton’s campaign has been back-tracking, they still can’t offer a full answer on whether students from outside Iowa should caucus.  Chris Dodd’s campaign is the one that started the pledge, and both Biden and Richardson have tacitly or overtly signed on and offered rhetoric in support of the policy.  This is absurd to me, and I hope that the campaigns are questioned about this in tomorrow’s Register Democratic debate.  But I doubt it will come up.

And, just to rub it in David Yepsen’s face, here is the Drake student newspaper’s article on how students can sign-up to stay overnight in the Olmsted Center–Drake’s student union–and caucus on January 3rd.

College students in Iowa, stand up and have your voices heard!

A draft opinion out of the Federal Election Commission suggests that money contributed to Democratic candidates through the ActBlue clearinghouse may not be eligible for public matching funds, because ActBlue is registered as a PAC.

However, ActBlue does not function like an ordinary PAC–it’s just a convenient way for individual donors to direct online contributions to different candidates.

This issue came up because John Edwards’ presidential campaign has opted into the public financing system for the primaries. He has raised more than $4 million on ActBlue. Some of that would not be matchable anyway (because only the first $250 from each donor can receive public matching funds), but a significant amount should be eligible for the matching funds.

For background on this issue, read this post by Kos.

Adam Bonin, an attorney who covers regulatory issues at Daily Kos, is sending this letter to the FEC on behalf of Kos and BlogPAC.

Neither Kos nor Adam B supports Edwards, but as Adam notes,

This isn’t about supporting the Edwards campaign — I’ve made my feelings clear on that subject.  It’s about protecting ActBlue and the public financing system, and pushing for a legal regime which respects technological innovation.  Please join us in this fight — you only have until noon on Thursday to submit comments.

I encourage you to read Adam’s whole post–it’s quite informative.

The Edwards campaign is making it easy for citizens to submit comments to the FEC on this issue. Check out this diary by Tracy Joan, who works for the campaign.

The non-profit group Public Campaign is urging people to contact the FEC as well. After the jump, I’ve posted the full text of an e-mail I received this morning from Public Campaign. Or, you can click here and go to the Public Campaign website, where you can add your name to the letter they are sending to the FEC.

Did anyone watch? Did anything interesting happen?

Let us know what you thought.

cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

A while back I wrote a diary on how tax reforms proposed by John Edwards would help the middle class. I am returning to the topic of Edwards and the middle class because I still occasionally see bloggers claim that his campaign is mainly focused on issues affecting poor people.

As it happens, a direct-mail piece that arrived in Iowa Democrats’ mailboxes late last week focuses on “The Edwards Economic Plan to Strengthen the Middle-Class.” I’ve reproduced the text of this mailer after the jump and added some thoughts.

In his column for the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, David Yepsen repeated assertions he made on his blog not long ago, implying that the Obama campaign is somehow not playing fair because they are encouraging students at Iowa colleges to return to campus for the January 3 caucuses.

As I’ve written before, the right of students at Iowa colleges to caucus is well-established.

Mike Connery goes into more detail about why Yepsen is wrong here. He notes that several rival campaigns have jumped at the chance to imply Obama is cheating in Iowa. I am proud that the Edwards campaign is NOT among those.

The Iowa caucuses should never have been scheduled so early, while colleges are on winter break. I encourage all of the campaigns to identify their student supporters. Why shouldn’t students come back to their campuses for caucus night?

I’m disappointed that the Register would seem to endorse the idea that it is illegitimate for students enrolled at Iowa colleges to caucus.

The Edwards campaign announced today that they have opened 10 new field offices in Iowa in recent weeks. I have updated my diary on Where the Iowa field offices are accordingly.

As of today, 42 Iowa counties have at least one field office for a Democratic presidential candidate. The current tally of Iowa field offices is:

Barack Obama 37 (includes two in Des Moines)

Hillary Clinton 34 (includes two in Dubuque and two in Cedar Rapids)

John Edwards 25

Bill Richardson 16

Chris Dodd 13

Joe Biden 9 (with possibly two more to be added)

Click the link if you want more detailed information.

Google Trends is a neat little tool created by Google to chart how popular a search term has been over a given length of time–in the standard search, it's a few years' time. The tool then links spikes in search volume to news stories that came out about the time of the spike in public interest in the term. It also tells the top three cities where people are looking for this term. I ran the full names of the top democratic candidates through this tool and I'll share the results with you in no particular order.

Check it out for yourself:  http://www.google.com/trends

“Hillary Clinton”:
Peaked: Jan 21, 2007
Story: Entered 2008 race
Trending: flat for most of 2007, up since August
Top Three Cities: Washington DC; New York, NY; Boston, MA

“Barack Obama”:
Peaked: July 27, 2004
Story: 2004 Convention Speech
Trending: flat for most of 2007, up sharply this last week
Top Three Cities: Chicago, IL; Washington DC; Austin, TX 

“John Edwards”: 
Peaked:  July 6,2004
Story: Picked as Kerry's running mate
Trending:  Flat
Top Three Cities: Raleigh, NC; Washington DC; Boston, MA

“Bill Richardson”: 
Peaked: Jan 21, 2007
Story: Entered 2008 race
Trending: Flat
Top Three Cities: Santa Fe, NM; Albuquerque, NM; Washington DC

“Joe Biden”:
Peaked: Jan 31, 2007
Story: Entered Race/made controversial comments
Trending: up sharply since August
Top Three Cities: Washington DC; Reston, VA; Philadelphia, PA

“Chris Dodd”:
Peaked: sometime in October 2007
Story: Unknown
Trending: up for the year, down since October's inexplicable peak
Top Three Cities: Meriden, CT; Hartford, CT; Des Moines, IA

For the record, can anyone explain why Dodd would have seen a spike in searches for his name around late October? 

Tonight’s gonna be an open thread, simply because I’m exhausted from a weekend of paper writing.

What’s on your mind?  What will the big political stories in Iowa and elsewhere be this week?

The Des Moines Register ran an interesting piece today about the network of conservative Christian home-schoolers who are going to volunteer countless hours for Huckabee in the coming weeks: Home-schoolers propel Huckabee

I have secular progressive friends who are home-schoolers, but they seem divided among several candidates, and I don’t think they are contributing significantly to any Democratic campaign the way conservatives are to Huckabee.

I spend a little time on non-political blogs related to mothering/parenting (not posting as “desmoinesdem”). I noticed support for Huckabee on a few of those blogs back in the spring and summer. For instance, see this Christian home-schooler’s blog Making Home. It’s full of Bible interpretation and marriage tips for Christian wives and mothers, with a constant link to a pro-Huckabee site on the right side of the screen.

By the way, you may recall that Making Home is the blog where I was banned from commenting after only a few months. I had to laugh–I’ve hardly ever been troll-rated in several years at Daily Kos and MyDD.

Tonight’s topic: What the hell is Fred Thompson thinking?

I just don’t get this.  Thompson is a former member of the United States Senate and he honestly thinks that the National Intelligence Estimate is something to be “suspicious” of?  Sure, so it may have said something different two years ago than it does today.  But I’m pretty sure with our long-term presence in Iraq that even Thompson can admit our intelligence gathering options have to have gotten a bit better in that area, particularly in terms of getting first-hand information.

Then again, maybe I’m just naive.

At 4:00PM on Saturday, I got a call from a “polling firm”. It began innocously emough by asking which Dem I planned to caucus for, and I said Dodd, but then the real purpose became clear. They asked me if any of the following information would change my opinion about these three “Democrat” candidates:

Clinton – she's a flip-flopper, who used to opposed ethanol, but now she supports it.

Obama – voted present seven times on reproductive rights bills in the Illinois State Senate.

Edwards – he's a liberal trial lawyer who wants to bring troops home from Iraq.

I replied that no, their opinions didn't bother me at all. So, has anyone else gotten these calls? I live in Johnson county, and I wonder if they're going statewide.

Obama supporter “worldtrippers” put up this fun diary at Daily Kos yesterday comparing the top three candidates’ caucus-training videos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Click the link to read the diary and view all three videos, which are embedded there.

What do you think? Do you agree with worldtrippers’ analysis?

Today’s topic: What will be the headline story on January 4th?

Imagine it is 8 AM on Friday, January 4th.  Last night were the Iowa precinct caucuses.  What is the headline going to be on the Des Moines Register’s front page?  What will the morning shows and cable networks be talking about?  Will the news coverage have a focus on the Democratic results or the Republican results?

These are all important questions going into the caucuses.  For the Democrats, our presumed front-runners all could easily win the Iowa Caucuses.  That means they all could meet expectations.  And in the news business, your story isn’t newsworthy unless you’re doing worse or better than expectations–or you’ve turned them on their head.

On the Republican side, the story and expectations for the past few months have been that Mitt Romney is going to win the Iowa Caucuses for the Republicans.  Now that Mike Huckabee has surged into the lead, we’ve seen the change in tales coming out of Iowa.

But as Marc Ambinder speculates here this could be a gift or blessing in disguise to Mitt Romney.  If Huckabee’s surge is soft or just heightened by favorable coverage up until this week, a potential tanking and resurgence on caucus day for Mitt Romney entirely changes the story in Iowa (again) and makes Republicans the dominant story out of Iowa.

What does that do to Democrats?  I’m not sure.  I’ve only really paid particular to attention to one caucus and the momentum coming out of it for Kerry pushed him to strong victory in New Hampshire.  And Bush had no opponent, so I can’t gauge the Republicans.

So here’s my question: What will the story be on January 4, 2008?  Will it be an expectations met story?  Or will it be a topsy-turvy story of surprising results from Democrats or Republicans?

It is still a tight race on the Democratic side between Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, while on the Republican side Mike Huckabee has surged past Mitt Romney to take a commanding lead in Iowa according to the latest Newsweek Iowa Caucus polling released this afternoon.

Here are the Democratic results among likely caucus-goers, with all Democrats polled in parentheses (Republicans are below the fold):

Barack Obama 35% (29%)

Hillary Clinton 29% (30%)

John Edwards 18% (21%)

Bill Richardson 9% (11%)

Joe Biden 4% (2%)

Dennis Kucinich * (1%)

Chris Dodd * (*)

Other candidate 0% (0%)

Undecided 5% (6%)

Only 395 were identified as likely caucus-goers, meaning that the margin of error among those likely caucus-goers is +/-6%.  If you take the MOE for all 673 polled, it is still +/-5%.  Clearly, Obama comes across as the front-runner from the looks of the polls, with Edwards still hanging out.  I’d say that the polling doesn’t accurately reflect Edwards’ stance all that much and we all know that his 2004 infrastructure is still largely in place giving him quite the advantage in that arena.

A couple of things to take from the results.  First of all, it looks like contrary to popular belief Barack Obama may be doing better with those who are already more likely to attend their precinct caucus.  Thus, expanding the universe of potential caucus-goers for Obama might actually be more detrimental.  Same goes for Joe Biden.  However, when you include all of those Democrats polled Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson all gain.  To me that means: a) Obama has more committed supporters ready to say they’re going to caucus, or b) Obama’s support in the so-called “expansion universe” of potential caucus-goers isn’t as strong as the conventional wisdom says.  These are both assumptions on my part and there is always room for other interpretation, but that’s what I’m seeing here.

The second specific point about the poll was that they polled second choices as well, which Bleeding Heartland reader RF noted earlier this week in a comment.  These totals are going to add to more than 100%, but here are the net first/second choice support totals for the candidates, with likely caucus-goers as the first number and all Democrats polled in parentheses:

Barack Obama 55% (50%)

Hillary Clinton 50% (51)

John Edwards 45% (44%)

Bill Richardson 16% (17%)

Joe Biden 11% (8%)

Chris Dodd 2% (1%)

Dennis Kucinich * (1%)

Other candidate * (*)

Undecided 5% (6%)

Again, to me this confirms that the race in Iowa is still a strong three-way race between Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.  The gap in first/second choice support is only 10% among likely caucus-goers (and 7% among the rest of Democrats) while there is a 17% gap among likely’s in first choice and 9% among all Democrats.  Things are still tightly wound among Iowa Democrats.

You can see the full poll results here in PDF form courtesy of Newsweek.  Their story on the poll is here.

UPDATE from desmoinesdem: just wanted to note that the one celebrating the birthday is Robert P of BlueNC, who did this compilation.

Today’s 50-state blog roundup is brought to you by the letters B, N, and

C – BlueNC. Major, major hat-tip to

Betsy, who really did all the work. If you aren’t reading your state’s

blog, you should be, because “all politics is local” should be more than

a motto. This is an interesting week, the Presidential Primary is

heating up in the early states (see below), while Virginia holds a

special election next Tuesday. At the same time state legislatures seem

to be trying and sneak in some iffy legislation before the holiday

season. Enjoy!

p.s. It’s my birthday this weekend, I’ll keep celebrating until I turn 40.



Advertise on the 50 State Blog Network.

See the roundup below the fold…

cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

I decided to write this diary when I learned that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each have more than 30 field offices in Iowa.

After January 3, we will see whether campaigns with the most field offices did better in the counties where rivals had field organizers and volunteers working without the visibility of an office.

More information than you probably wanted to know is after the jump.

I have listed the counties in descending order, based on the number of state delegates they will assign on the Democratic side. I took the numbers from this post by Drew Miller, who calculated how many state delegates each Iowa county would contribute to the 2,500 total. [UPDATE: I corrected the delegate totals for a few counties after hearing from Drew Miller.]

I also give the 2004 caucus results for each county. Those numbers come from this table on the Des Moines Register’s website. The results reflect the percentage of county delegates assigned to the various presidential candidates (not the percentage of raw votes each one received in the county).  

Exactly four weeks from today over 150,000 Iowa Democrats will gather in areas across the state to voice their support for their chosen candidate in a field of eight Democrats, six of them seen as serious contenders and candidates.

Today’s topic will be polling.  It seems like there is going to be a new poll for almost every day until we get to January 3rd when one man or woman will finally emerge as a winner.  But a lot of questions remain.  Which polls do you trust?  Which polls do you toss aside like garbage?  Which polls more accurately predict Iowans voting habits than others?  Are the polling outlets partisan?

These are all good questions.  In addition to asking ordinary Iowa bloggers their thoughts about the polls, it is always good to check out the fine folks over at Pollster.com and read their analysis of all of the polls released in the lead up to the caucuses.  Specifically, if you’re interested in tracking the trends and compiled (or specific) poll results, their specific page on the Iowa Democratic Caucuses is quite worthwhile.

But if you ask me, the most reliable and accurate polling done in Iowa is usually done by Selzer and Co., the folks who do the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll.  You can find the poll’s homepage here on the Register’s site.  Past articles about the most recent polling highlight things like methodology and other information garnered from the polling.

One of the most intriguing results I’ve noticed from the last poll (and Yepsen noticed it too) is that about half of Democrats and over 60% of Republicans say they could still be persuaded to change their mind.  Coincidently enough, I’m probably one of those people.  I’ve got two candidates that I support but every day that I think I’ve picked one I feel like I might go back towards the other.  So I’m pretty sure that once I pick one candidate I could easily be persuaded to go back to another.

To me, that is emblematic of Iowans’ fickle-ness, which definitely isn’t a bad thing.  It means that many of us are still listening and haven’t isolated ourselves off for one particular candidate already.  While that makes the individual campaigns’ jobs harder it means that negative ads, events, and issues still matter.

And truly, if polling isn’t telling the accurate story (or so you think), get out there and work harder for the candidate or issue you’re caucusing for.  I know it is the holiday season but as Iowans we’re privileged to have this role of first-in-the-nation.  And by God let’s use it.