Some nice factoids from The Hotline – while Mitt Romney is the only major Republican candidate on his first wife, none of the first or second tier Democrats have been divorced.

Haha, I wish.

Seriously though, the flap about Obama’s comment here in Ames about the lives of 3000 troops being “wasted” is ridiculous.  It’s absurd because he was not only right, he was too kind.  For the lives of our troops to be wasted, the war in Iraq would have to be a zero sum game – we would have to be no better off no than when we were when we pre-emptively initiated it.

We’re not.  We’re a lot worse off.  90% of Democrats and the vast majority of Americans recognize that.  I’m willing to acknowledge that is wasn’t the most couth statement that he could have made, but it’s not like he was wrong.  I really wish the media would cover this objectively – “was he right or wasn’t he” rather than the whole “did it offend people or didn’t it” narrative that they seem to be adopting.  Maybe offending people isn’t the worse thing someone can do while trying to lead a country out of a tragedy.

First Diary anywhere.  Forgive the disjointedness.

I went to the speech.  There were around 4-5k people there by my rough estimate (bottom tier of seats at Hilton full 2/3 of the way around, 400 or so on the floor, and top tier sparsely seated 2/3 of the way around.)  In respose to the question below as to whether it would be mostly students, I would say that it appeared to be about 1/2-2/3 students. 

Seemed to be his standard speech (see the reviews of his Springfield speech.)  His speech didn’t have obvious pauses for applause, so the audience never got roaring, just moderate rounds of applause.  He included calls for increased teacher pay, which seems out of place in a presidential race given that teacher pay is a state and local issue.  Smacked too much of telling people what they want to hear.

Was dissapointed by one introduction (I think it was Tom Miller) who stated Barack was the “only major candidate” to actively oppose the Iraq war from the beginning.  That whole “major candidate” political weaselling to shut out Kucinich and Vilsack seemed unnecessary.  Sure he’s trying to win, but a shout out to those who support his views would seem to be a magnanimous gesture.  And if those other candidates are really so minor,  why not get on their good sides for when their campaigns go under?

He must have read Snipehunter’s diary, as he did actively solicit caucus pledge cards from the audience.

I was dissapointed by his use of the term “homeland”.  The term still gives me the willies and there is no reason to continue to use it.  “Our nation” worked just fine for 200 years.  Let’s take back the framing of the debate and drop this Republican coined phrase.

I was also dissapointed by another phrase he used. He stated that America must be feared AND respected, or words to that effect.  Implying that we need more active diplomacy, which is of course a good thing.  But really, I see no reason for us to be feared at all.  That’s a meme that can die with “homeland.”

But all in all, he was clean and articulate and I’d have a beer with him.

We have a new round of Iowa staffer updates.

As Chris Woods reported yesterday, Chris Hayler of John Kerry and Evan Bayh fame has been picked up by the Hillary campaign as its Iowa Political Director.

This morning’s Hotline reports that Mark Daley has been picked up by Hillary as her Iowa Communications Director.  Daley is the executive director of One Iowa, and previously held posts as Communications Director for the Iowa Democratic Party and Leonard Boswell for Congress.

I am also hearing rumblings that Steve Chasse has been picked up by the Obama campaign.  He’s a great pick up.  Formerly with John Kerry in 2004 and more recently aligned with Governor Mark Warner’s bid, Chasse has solid labor ties.

After checking out the FEC reports on U.S. House candidates available on the Web, it’s fair to say that losing an election doesn’t just put you down in the dumps emotionally.  It also puts you in the poor house.  Unfortunately, it’s a bipartisan problem.  With that said, the worst offenders are Republicans.

Check out some of these losing candidates who broke the bank (as of Dec. 31, 2006):

1st District

Richard Dickinson (D)– Cash-on-Hand: $2,300; Debt: $45,909

William Dix (R)– CoH: $10,658; Debt: $125,000

Bill Gluba (D)– CoH: $348; Debt: $50,073

Brian Kennedy (R)– CoH: $1,729; Debt: $126,000

Mike Whalen (R)– CoH: $4,963; Debt: $448,950

3rd District

Jeff Lamberti (R)– CoH: $8,476; Debt: $150,000

4th District

Selden Spencer (D)– CoH: $2,248; Debt: $35,000

5th District

Jeffrey Ballenger (R)– CoH: $33; Debt: $350,000

Robert Chambers (D)– CoH: $25; Debt: $19,400

Roy Neilsen (I)– CoH: $1,036; Debt: $48,500

Joyce Schulte (D) – CoH: $137; Debt: $48,500

Of course, winning doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the black:

Steve King (R)– CoH: $29,332; Debt: $57,233

If you’re friends with any of these folks, expect to get a mailing or seven asking for a bailout.

The next installment of my “Meet the Legislature” series introduces everyone to Representative Andrew Wenthe.  Andrew is another member of our outstanding class of legislators under 30 years of age.

Andrew has been tapped by the Des Moines Register to blog about his experiences at the Capitol during the session.  You can find his blog here.

I couldn’t believe this story I saw in the newspaper on Saturday. I guess that Swift and Co. thinks they are the victims of the immigration raids that took place last December.

  President and CEO Sam Rovit told the Greeley Tribune in Friday’s editions that the government rejected the company’s offer to help investigate alleged identity theft.

  “They were looking for a marquee to show the administration it was tough on immigration,” he said.

I am sorry Mr. Rovitt, if the administration was looking for a marquee to show that it was tough on immigration your company would have been fined for employing over 1,200 illegal workers. So far Swift and Co. has gotten off the hook and are able to go back to hiring the cheapest labor possible. Our illegal employer problem will continue unless the companies that hire illegal workers are fined.

I don’t think it gets any more clearer than this from Iowa’s former Governor Tom Vilsack:

“It’s time for Congress to step up, and cut off funding for the status quo. I think it is time for us to end this war. I think it is very clear from the intelligence reports and from the American public … that this is a civil war and our kids are in the middle of it.

It is time for Congress to step up. They have constitutional and a moral responsibility to cut the funding and say to the President in very clear terms: we are listening to the American people …”

He makes it clear that Congress needs to send a message to President Bush, echoing the thoughts and opinions of the American people, and end this war.  And he says it in a persuasive way.

Sen. John Edwards says that silence is betrayal when it comes to Iraq and he is absolutely right.  Today he said a non-binding resolution against the President’s plan was essentially worthless.  Sens. Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold agreed.  I think that judging from Gov. Vilsack’s statements, he is in the same boat.

Kevin Thurman, Vilsack’s Deputy Internet Director for his campaign, posted just a few minutes ago over on Daily Kos highlighting Vilsack’s interview with Norah O’Donnell where he made the comments above.  As Kevin wrote:

“We can’t wait for things to happen two years from now when we win in 2008. It’s time to match our values with action. Time to match our hope with vision.”

Some candidates are taking the time to seriously lead on Iraq as an issue in this race.  Others are just backpedaling from earlier comments or simply treading water.  Vilsack and Edwards have taken strong and clear positions.  Dodd could even be categorized in the same boat.

Vilsack also has taken the lead in rejecting the idea of capping the amount of troops in Iraq, simply based on the logic of his position.  It clearly doesn’t make sense to support ending the war in Iraq and opposing escalation, while at the same time saying, “Well, if you’re going to keep up the war anyway, you can only X amount of soldiers.”  Instead, he’s advocating a position of actually fighting to end the war and bring troops home.

Vilsack’s right, and Democrats should unite behind the same message and in similar form: “It is time for us to end this war!”

MyDD has a post and a long thread about College Democrats. Both Chase from Iowa Progress and myself have posted comments there about Grinnell, which is I think a real exception for college dem chapters. I was curious what Chris and Drew and everyone else thought about College Democrats and how to get Democrats at various colleges around the state. Drew and I (though mostly Drew) wrote the state party’s college field plan for the last cycle and I thought it might be worthwhile to talk about different strengths and weakness for College Dems on a chapter by chapter, statewide and nationwide basis. I also included a poll for the sake of doing one on the most effective College Dems chapter in the state.

So Hillary Clinton might not be able to sing all that well, but at least she isn’t talking during the  national anthem.

P.S.  She is still, sadly, a better singer than I am.

Today is the last day for discounted registration for this year’s Yearly Kos convention, being held in Chicago, IL, from August 2-5.  I just paid for my registration, since I’m a student and qualify for the ‘guidelines’ of being a student.  Now I just have to find the money to make sure to pay for my hotel room for my stay there.  I also gave a $25 donation to the convention as a whole.

The schedule of events and speakers haven’t been announced yet, but last year’s conference was amazing.  I was sad I was unable to make it all of the way to Vegas, but I’m sure lots of you know just how the college life is essentially a nice money crunch.

If you can, please sign up and attend.  I’m sure there will be several (if not all of) the Democratic presidential candidates, as well as other Democratic leaders from across the nation.  Best of all, we’ll be able to network with like-minded people offline and in person.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

This isn’t quite a “Meet your legislature” quality post, but here’s what I’m hearing about some legislative Republicans:

David Deyoe:  Dumb.

Polly Granzow:  Drunk.

Pat Grassley:  Likes to hit on 17-year-old pages.  Also dumb.

The Washingtonian has an interesting article written by Kim Eisler about his old friend Jack Abramoff, with a lot of interesting inside information and quotes from the convicted felon:

Of Iowa senator Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance committee, who had been critical of Abramoff, Jack said: “You can say you have a good source that Grassley not only carried my water on the Bear Council issue [a fight over tribal recognition in Grassley’s state] and received a ton of contributions in return, but he also did one of the biggest asks from Abramoff ever, taking Tyco out of the tax bill. . . . They would have been hit with a $4-billion tax bill.”

Last year, the Sioux City Journal reported that Senator “Aw Shucks” and the rest of the Republican delegation were tied in well with Abramoff:

According to Federal Elections Commission documents, Grassley received a $1,000 campaign contribution from Abramoff in March 2003.

Abramoff also gave $5,000 to the Hawkeye PAC, which Grassley uses to raise money for other House and Senate candidates.

The Meskwaki, Choctaw and Saginaw Chippewa tribes gave $13,000. Another $3,500 came from co-workers at Abramoff’s lobbying firm.

Recipients of Hawkeye PAC funds included Reps. Nussle, Tom Latham and Steve King, who got $10,000 each in 2004.

Des Moines lawyer Stan Thompson, who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, for a second time in 2004, received $15,000 from the PAC.

Latham gave the $1000 he received directly from Abramoff to charity (whatever that means), but Grassley stubbornly refused.

Do you think the Iowa press will follow up on this story? I don’t either. But it would be nice if some embarrassment in the press and the prospect of riding out the rest of his career in the minority would encourage Grassley to hang it up in 2010. I would love to see him hop on his lawn movers and head west, back home, into the sunset.

With a new General Assembly comes new legislators and I thought I’d take the opportunity to post once a week about some of our new incoming leaders.  In particular, I thought I’d focus on the new “youth movement” that the Iowa House Speaker Pro Tempore Polly Bukta talked about during the opening of the 2007 session:

Today, we celebrate a new youth movement in the House with a record number of eight members who are 30 and under. Think of the energy and fresh ideas these folks are bringing to our assembly!

Today we truly celebrate the fact that the People’s House looks more and more like the PEOPLE we represent.

Today, the Hotline blog ponders rematches for House races in 2008, particularly GOP incumbents who got the boot that want to get back in.

It’s probably an appropriate time to start ponder 2008 House races in Iowa.  Since IA-01 and IA-02 are pretty solid, I’ll put my “races to watch” on IA-03 and IA-04.

As far as I can tell – Bleeding Heartland is off to a great start.  A big thank you goes out to Drew & Chris and anyone else who contributed to getting this off the ground.

Many of the ‘national’ community blogs (i.e. Daily Kos, MyDD…etc) have thriving “meta” discussions and collections of link resources.

In the interest of facilitating informed blogging about the Iowa Legislature I thought I would post some helpful links to resources available for bloggers…

I went to the Hillary Clinton rally at East High School in Des Moines today. By the time I got there an hour and a half early it was already filling up. The media section was massive, taking up an entire wall and a half of the gymnasium. I would estimate about 30-40 news cameras showed up.

The approach to the event was a bit different than what I had expected. Hillary’s current slogan is “Let the Conversation Begin,” which is more or less what she ended up doing with the audience for an hour and a half. Leonard Boswell helped give the introduction and Hillary took the stage in the center of the gym, with audience surrounding her 360 degrees.

I was pleased to see that she didn’t really stump too much. Basically she gave a ten-minute introduction and then opened the session up to Q & A. Because her answers were fairly long, there were only about eight or so questions, but there was a pretty wide variety of issues. A decent number were on education issues. She got a veterans-issue question and a question on foster care. Basically she came out in support of more consistent rules on foster-family care from state-to-state.

Hillary also got hit up by a high school student on global warming, which she managed to spin into an ethanol endorsement.

Noticeably absent was any questioning on Iraq. I would have thought that one of the most visible issues of the decade would have had at least one solid question, but it didn’t happen.

I’ve been pretty lukewarm towards Hillary for a while, but she did seem rather personable and decent at this rally. That helped my perception of her. I still don’t think I am 100% behind her on most things, and as it stands now I won’t likely caucus for her, but this rally did help my perception of her a great deal.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s biggest challenge in Iowa may be the Iraq War and her reputation as a hawk. She tries to dodge the single most important issue in the 2008 race; she knows it is her Achilles heel. When asked at the IDP Central Committee meeting this morning, she almost apologized for her 2002 vote authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq. Almost. She said she takes “responsibility” for the vote and said she would not have voted that way had she’d known what she does now. But she added that there are no “do-overs” in life, and we need to discuss what to do now.

It was just dumb luck that I got to have a personal, 5-minute conversation with Hillary. I just happened to be by the coffee machine as she was exiting the building, and I struck up a conversation over her hawkish reputation as she shook my hand. To tell you the truth, I was surprised at how personable she is in conversation, unhurried and very at ease (I think JoDee Winterhof is not yet confident enough with Hillary to pull her away from worthless conversations with party activists like me).

During the early stages of the caucuses we see a lot of names of various “nice catch” staffers, but unless you are even more of an IDP molester than me you probably don’t know what they look like.  So imagine my surprise when Tom Vilsack put his January staff meeting online!  My connection at the hotel here is too slow for me to actually watch it, but I was able to see that Jesse Harris apparently lost his razor.  Let’s see if this sucker works:

I found it on Myspace – it apparently still isn’t on the Vilsack website.  I dig the semi-exclusive content, especially from my top 8 buddy Vilsack.  I also definitely dig giving the staff some face time.  I hope other campaigns follow suit!

UPDATE:  It’s now on his website, too.  I guess there aren’t any perks to being top eightsies.  🙁