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.

Vilsack’s name has been rattling around the blogs for the last twenty hours or so, hitting Atrios, MyDD, and Matthew Yglesias (twice).  It’s not for anything he’s gonna like though – it’s about comments he made about social security.  Apparently Tommy V. supports price indexing, which is wonk code for significantly cutting the rate of growth of social security.  This has the potential for all kinds of wacky side effects, but basically it screws over working men and women so that we can maintain various tax cuts for the super rich.

Not a very good or very Democratic idea, but it’s also a quick line at a forum and it might not represent the totality of his position.  I called his office to get the scoop about it, but he’s on a plane right now.  Apparently there are plenty of other people inquiring as well, so we should get a clarification soon.

UPDATE:  Vilsack has a blog post up about his views.  It basically says what I expected – that he was just throwing out possibilities and hasn’t come up with a specific plan on social security.  It doesn’t say what I think bloggy people want to hear, though – that he opposes cutting the growth rate of benefits.

Strategic Vision has a new poll out for this month, with no changes at all outside the margin of error.  Edwards is still the frontrunner, and Clinton, Obama, and Vilsack are still all tied for 2nd-4th.  Biden is still the 5th choice, with Richardson making a little bit of headway into 6th.  The most interesting thing by far in the poll is that Republican likely caucus-goers, by a 48-37 margin, support a withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq in the next 6 months.  That eleven points isn’t quite as good as the fifty-five point margin for Democrats, but it still means that basically the entire country is opposed to Bush on this thing.

It sounds like Camp Hillary has slipped into attack mode, projecting her own inabilities to offer up an apology for her vote to authorize war in Iraq.

Wherever she goes, she’s perpetually dogged by voters, calling for her to admit she made a mistake, take responsibility for her actions, and offer up an apology to the American people. In Nevada today, all her other rivals called upon her to do so, but Hillary has drawn a political line in the sand saying she won’t apologize.

So Hillary wants Obama to apologize for comments made by one of his supporters, yet she’s not willing to apologize for relinquishing her senatorial powers to declare war. Her vote surrendered her constitutional responsibility to maintain Congress’s role for declaring war, sacrificing the checks-and-balances protections in the process. As a voter in Iowa, I’m more concerned about seeing Hillary disavow her role in helping lay the groundwork for the Iraq War and all of her subsequent comments regarding this action than I am about Obama disavowing a supporter’s remarks. If Obama had to apologize for every personal attack on Hillary coming from somebody who happens to support his candidacy, he’d have no time left to campaign on what’s actually important.

P.S. I’m not sorry for any of the aforementioned comments.

T.M. Lindsey

Political Fallout

So this is a first for me – I am trying to blog from my phone.  I am at the Obama rally in Des Moines.  Leonard Boswell is here, doing his molest the presidentials thing we have all come to know and have some sort of feelings about.  Obama has picked up a few more staff since I last had heard – another Iowa City coordinated field organizer and one from CR.  It’s nice to see some more Iowa blood on a campaign that has up to this point been better suited for running the South Dakota caucus.

I am having a lot of trouble updating this post from my phone, so updates might be few and far between.  They’ve started removing seats from the back of the venue, but they still have a pretty good crowd.  Nowhere near Ames levels though!

The godawful annoying folk singer is now singing a song called, as best I can tell, “How Long Do I Have to Wait?”  We’re about 7 minutes past when they were supposed to start, and I’m wondering how long I’ll have to wait for him to stop playing.

Obama enters to “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim…  Or at least that’s what we all thought.  Turns out that there is a big miscue and he’s not going to be out for 2 more minutes.  Luckily it’s a long song.  (One of my friends wonders if it is for a smoke break.)

He’s out now – was late because he was “calling his daughters.”  Yeah, more like dropping them off at the pool.

I would say pretty close to 1500 people are here right now,  give or take a couple hundred.

The first guy to get up for an Iraq applause line was wearing an Urlacher jersey.

“Rule number one:  Only I am allowed to make speeches.”

First question is from an Iraq vet – who is actually pissed off about alimony!  I doubt he is really a vet at all.  What is up with these people?  At least he didn’t bring a balloon full of purple powder.

Second question – Obama makes a joke about him being from Chicago one second before the guy says his mom died of cancer.  Question is what will he do about cancer.

Tom Vilsack employing a new campaign strategy against Iowa frontrunner John Edwards:

(Photo by John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES)

From a Rudy Giuliani email to me:

Dear Drew,

My hero Ronald Reagan once said, ââ,¬Å”The future belongs to the free.ââ,¬ï¿½

I’m guessing this is from after the Alzheimer’s had set in pretty bad.