All this presidential stuff is okay, I guess.  But really people, even as a hard-core politics geek there is no way in heck I’m going to maintain interest and enthusiasm for 330-odd days until the caucuses, let alone the more than 20 months until the general.  We need something else to focus on as well or we will all go starkers, our friends and family will shun us.

Lately, my gaze has drifted lower towards local governance, especially local governement finance and economic development issues.  When we talk about economic development and growth in Iowa (as in most states now) the word, TIF enters the conversation pretty quickly.  More on TIFs and their uses and overuses on the flip.

Caucus math is hard.  So I made a spreadsheet to deal with it.  This is based on the 2004 rules, and can’t deal with every situation.  At some point I will probably make a web form to do it.

Interesting thing about caucus math:

There are situations where it will be in your group’s interest to send people to someone else.  If you can make a minor candidate viable in your precinct, there is about a good chance that your making them viable will rob your opponent of a delegate instead of you.

I realize this is not exactly Democratic, but it is exactly the kind of crap that I love.  🙂

(Sorry about the delay in blogging – I lost power last night in the middle of a big post.  I called 911 a bunch of times like Governor Culver said, but for some reason they kept saying that I was blocking the lines for actual emergencies.)

A few days ago BH reader desmoinesdem had a great post on MyDD explaining the caucus system to people who don’t understand it.  The numbers from Iowa Progress are off by a little bit though – the central committee this year decided on a total of 2500 for the state convention, rather than 3000.  I’ve posted the projected county-by-county numbers in the extended text.  Note that these are actually state convention delegates, and on caucus night it is actually county convention delegates that are being elected.  That means that each delegate actually elected in a precinct is worth the total number of delegates elected in the county divided by the number of delegates alloted at the state level to the county for the state convention.  If that makes any sense.  🙂

Who knows?  These are hits we recently received on sitemeter:

After a pretty reasonable blog post on Vilsack’s exit from the race, Yepsen’s column today on the same subject is back to his classic form.

Geraldine points out some problems with it over at Iowa Progress, and I’ve got a little more:

Why didn’t he take off? The answer may be that in 2008, voters are not be looking for the skills in domestic policy a governor brings to a presidential campaign. It’s the first election since 9/11 in which the country must select a new president, and Americans seem to be be looking for a president with experience in national security or on a broader world stage – not a state capitol.

So Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has a lot of national security experience?  Other than standing on some rubble on 9/11, the guy has no more (and probably much less) experience than any Governor.  And Yepsen can dismiss Mitt Romney, but most Republicans consider him to be a serious contender.

While Bill Richardson is not in the top tier of Presidential candidates (yet), it’s not like the combined fourteen years total of the three frontrunners shows some dominant foreign policy experience.  Joe Biden and Wesley Clark aren’t getting any traction, and they (along with Richardson) are indisputably the most knowledgeable about foreign affairs.

Beyond that, when have partisans ever favored nominating Governors?  Since 1960, partisan nominations have been won by five Senators (Kennedy, Goldwater, McGovern, Dole, Kerry) and five Governors (Carter, Reagan, Dukakis, Clinton, Bush).  We’ve also seen six elected Presidents renominated, six Vice Presidents nominated, and both unelected Presidents nominated.  Of those VPs and unelected Presidents, five were Senators and none were Governors.

So basically Yepsen is talking out of his ass.  And with an ass that big, you gotta think that ain’t easy.

Last Wednesday, Hillary Clinton kicked off an effort to get one million dollars through smallish online donations.  The first solicitation email came from Bill Clinton on the 21st, followed by James Carville on the 22nd, Madeleine Albright on the 26th, and Bill Clinton again today.  Despite all this, as of this post she is still $100k short.  Now I wouldn’t be surprised if all of a sudden they mysteriously came up with the margin tonight, but I suspect that if Obama tried the same thing he would easily surpass one million.  That is if his basically run-of-the-mill campaign is even willing to take the risk.

(The text of all four emails are on the flip.)

UPDATE:  Their last update was at 11pm EST, and they were still more than 40k short.  I think they made one big mistake that would have definitely meant the difference between hitting their goal and not – they should have had real time updates for the fundraising total.  There is something so much more compelling about clicking refresh and watching something grow; people who donated early might be encouraged to contribute again, and people who have just been refreshing might want to get involved at the very end.  That’s a rookie mistake, Clinton campaign.

UPDATE 2:  Here are some screen captures of the fundraising progress throughout the last couple of days.  It’s a 0.6 meg image, FYI.

Clinton Campaign Response:  I heard from a couple of people from the Clinton campaign, who said that the deadline they had set for themselves was noon Wednesday, and that they reached $1,000,000 earlier than the 11:47 EST time they had marked on their website (11:47 merely being the specific time of their last update).  I got the first solicitation email at 11:21 EST, which is the benchmark I used for this post (although I’m sure they had been sending out emails for a while).  I’m not going to try to dispute their claim, but it would not have been an issue at all if they had updated the total in real time.

I’ve been bitching for a while that all the studies about voting trends for race and gender treat the two purely as disadvantages.  It’s been subtle – a question like “Would you vote for a woman for President?” doesn’t seem inherently biased.  But it is.  When you only measure those who respond negatively to something, you’re treating it as a handicap rather than trying to determine whether it could be a benefit.

Anyway, the Washington Post’s most recent poll actually ran with my suggestion of asking these questions in a “more or less likely” form, and got some unsurprising (to me) results:

By contrast, 13 percent of voters said the would be less likely to support a woman and 6 percent said they would be less likely to support a black — numbers about equally offset by the percentages of people who said they would be more likely to support candidates with those attributes.

Also, at least part of the anti-female vote is coming from people who specifically identify the question with Hillary Clinton, which means the raw number could be even less.  The fact is that, for a qualified candidate, gender and race are no impediments to winning the Presidency.

Geraldine over at Iowa Progress has been breaking down the likely competitive House and Senate races for 2008.  It’s all subject to change depending on retirements of course, but they are pretty in depth looks at some key races:

House Pickup Opportunities

Senate Pickup Opportunities

Senate Vulnerable Democrats

As Fergie would say, “Check it out!”

Also from the Register:

The Republican colleagues update Rants on what “They” are doing – without ever saying the word Democrat – and make a crack about how “Speaker Leader Governor Gronstal” seems to be driving the agenda this year.

The whole article is pretty good – nothing wrong with a little schadenfreude now and then.

From the Register.  My prediction:  The next bust will be at the Iowa “Speed”way.

I am trying to put together an interview series of the Presidential candidates for the blog.  What questions would you like to see me ask?  You can leave general questions or candidate-specific ones in the comments.

Because our Democratic party doesn’t co-sponsor debates with Fox News.

State Senate Appropriations chair Bob Dvorsky is looking for money to replace the nearly new (but undesirable) touchscreen voting machines in Iowa. Good for him.

With Secretary Mauro’s committment to getting a good paper voting system, Dvorsky’s action can solve the problem. Just get Mauro the money, and he’ll take care of business. He wisely bought a paper based system for Polk County. Now he will get it done for all of Iowa.

Tell your state senator to back Dvorsky’s bid for money to replace touchscreens.

cross posted at iowavoters.org

In the interest of disclosure, I’ve posted my profile on Bleeding Heartland…and I’ve disclosed who I work for.  I work in the office of Rep. Kevin McCarthy – Majority Leader in the Iowa House.  Why do I disclose?  Because it’s ethical and because I’m honest.

Generally, I limit my posting to forwarding on press releases and information about what is going on in the Iowa House.  I’m not here to propagandize or hide who I am.  You won’t find me waging battles in the comments or posting anonymously on Krusty Konservative.  With full disclosure I give you the ability to critically evaluate the information I provide and understand who my boss is.

It seems that some bloggers on the right & left have failed to live up to what I see as an ethical obligation.  There’s a post at the NY Times Caucus blog all about it.

I am a big fan of young people.  Juice has some profiles of the 30 and under legislators in the house.  They missed my favorite, Ray Zirkelbach (D, 28 years old), because he is in Iraq through the legislative session.

Here are the links:

Mick Bailey (26)

Elesha Gayman (28)

Andrew Wenthe (29)

Tyler Olson (30)

And the Republicans:

Matt Windschitl (23)

Pat Grassley (23)

Steve Lukan (28)

Geraldine over at Iowa Progress has several posts up about Vilsack’s decision, with predictions about staff movement and a look at the money.  One thing Vilsack did mention at his press conference was that they were going to have to look at paying off debt, so I’m guessing they might be quite a ways in the hole right now.

I was on my way to Des Moines when I heard.  I am at his press conference now.  It’s in a 30 by 20 conference room with 7 video cameras and about 25 people here.

I’ve only seen one or two staffers around.  If I were them I would already be at the bar.

Matt Paul is here, along with one other person who looks familiar.  Lots of the camera people are joking around, which is making me sad.  Say what you will about bloggers, but I guarantee the room would be morose right now if it was filled with just them.

His entire field staff just came in.  I know five of them.  This is even more sad.  🙁

He just came in, and is thanking people.  “It is money and only money that is the reason we are leaving [the race] today.”

He mentions iraq as the first issue and his support for ending the war.  Energy, education.  His speech is really good.  He is tearing up a little.  I am too.  Thanks harkin, mauro, gronstal, kibbie, state senate.

1st question – will you endorse?  not thinking about it.

2nd question – yepsen – what changes to campaign finance is needed?  we need a debate about it, because it shouldn’t be a money primary.

Part of why he is dropping out now is to let his staff land on their feet.

No regrets about what he’s done.  Orphan running for president – “That’s what this country is about.”

Tom Beaumont goes back for the last question to harrass him about endorsements again.  I don’t know if I could do news, you have to be such an asshole.

The New Hampshire Union-Leader has word that Culver and Lynch will meet to discuss the very real threat that NH SOS Bill Gardner will move their primary up in front of Nevada (and almost certainly in front of Iowa in the process, since their law says they have to be a week ahead and Nevada is only three days from us).  I’ll save my post on why I hope they do for another day, but it looks like Culver is trying to defuse the situation.

Bill Gardner is an institution in New Hampshire – he pretty much has to be given that he is elected  by the state legislature, which up til recently has been fairly Republican.  His legacy will be the protection of the New Hampshire primary, and he has his hand on the trigger here.  I don’t know what Culver’s meeting with Lynch is going to accomplish given that we already sold New Hampshire up the river during the DNC debate on the primary schedule.  Maybe a new rules delegation and a new commitment to helping our free-living friends will soothe some of the hurt, but it is not going to solve the fundamental problem that we have here.

This article is by John Distaso by the way, who one of my friends in New Hampshire described as “like Yepsen, but good.”  That’s not really relevant, but I haven’t Yepsen bashed in a while.  He must be too busy eating trail mix to piss me off these days.

I changed the poll, since I’m sure most of our active membership has already voted on the last one.  Here are the results:

Marc Hansen has a great column on the whole ridiculousness of questioning Obama’s blackness.  All the commenters seem to see through the nonsense too, which makes me feel good about Iowa being first in the nation.