Brody Mullins has a WSJ update on union clout in his “Labor Makes Big Comeback In ’08 Races.”
MyDD‘s Jonathan Singer reports on the DCCC’s list of “red to blue” congressional candidates. See also Stuart Rothenberg’s quarterly House Outlook.
Ruy Teixeira has a Century Foundation/Center for American Progress report on “What the Public Really Wants…On Retirement Security.”
Those who want to get up to speed on GOP vote scams should read Steven Rosenfeld’s Alternet article “How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative.” Rosenfeld interviews Allen Raymond, who was reportedly convicted of illegally jamming phone lines to NH Democratic Party offices on election day, 2002.
Even the Washington Times is predicting a Dem pick-up of 3 to 6 U.S. Senate seats.
TPM has Shannon McCaffrey’s AP report “Black voters generations apart“.
Lakoff’s Rockridge Nation takes a perceptive look at “Renewable Energy and the Art of Arguments.”
Pollster.com‘s Margie Omero reports on newly-available cross tabs regarding “The Gender Gap Vanishing Act.”

Over at The Plank, Eve Fairbanks exposes herself to several hours of noise pollution from Rush Limbaugh, and reports on the impressive ferocity of his assault on Mike Huckabee and (especially) John McCain. Since McCain remains (in most reckonings) the closest thing to a front-runner in the Republican presidential contest, and could solidify that status in South Carolina on Saturday, the rampant hostility of the still-reigning conservative gasbag could be a bit of a problem for party unity.
But we’ve been here before, at the same juncture in the nominating process, in the same state.
For those of you who don’t remember it, I have to tell you: the full-scale panic that gripped the conservative ideological-and-corporate establishment of the GOP in 2000 after McCain’s trouncing of George W. Bush in NH is hard to over-estimate. Yes, local operatives in SC were responsible for much of the sleazy tactics against McCain in the Palmetto State that helped saved Bush’s bacon, but they were carrying water for the vast coalitiion of Christian Righters, K Street types, and DC careerists who had placed all their chips on the Texan, and who feared McCain in no small part because he owed them nothing.
Yes, I know, I know, since then McCain has mended fences with the conservative establishment by loyally stumping for Bush in 2000 and 2004, kissing up to Christian Right leaders, going apocalyptic about “Islamofascism,” and championing the Iraq escalation. But in the same period of time, he also flirted with a party-switch, voted against Bush’s tax cuts, and cosponsored another twenty-or-so bills with Democrats, including the immigration proposal that looked to have knocked him out of the race just a few months ago. He’s also never renounced the campaign-finance law that ideologues hate with an irrational passion, and opposed torture, which a startling number of conservatives perceive as the worst heresy of all.
So it’s not surprising that Rush and others aren’t being convinced by McCain’s general election poll numbers (he’s currently the only GOPer nationally competitive against Clinton or Obama) to roll over. But they have a real problem. In 2000, it was a simple matter of helping the lavishly financed and well-positioned Bush to croak him in a state or two. Now, for many conventional conservatives (largely, like Rush, more-or-less supporting Romney or what’s left of Fred Thompson), beating McCain is a complex three-cushion-shot game of denying him the nomination without elevating someone they dislike as much or more. After all, if McCain loses SC, Mike Huckabee’s going to win it. If McCain loses momentum, Rudy Giuliani gets his final chance. And if McCain wins the nomination anyway, you’ve got a GOP nominee who will remember all the abuse he’s gotten on his right flank for the last eight years, and a legion of McCain-haters tempted to take a dive and hope for better times in 2012.
To put it another way: if McCain (or for that matter, Huckabee) is the nominee, what are you going to rant about every day if you’r’e Rush Limbaugh? Senate races?
So no wonder Limbaugh is hyperventilating. As in 2000 at this point, it’s cookies-on-the-line time, but this time the odds look really bad for the conservative establishment’s Noise Machine.

The odds are reasonably high that the Mike Huckabee presidential adventure is going to effectively come to an end in South Carolina this weekend, thanks to residual McCain strength in the state and an unlikely but much-reported mini-surge by The Big Dead–er, Fred–Machine.
But if the Huckster’s headed for the exit, he’s going out with flair. In Michigan, and more recently on Fox, the Arkansan has been talking about the need to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it conform with “God’s standards.” This has unsurprisingly led to a revival of commentary referring to Huckabee as a “Dominionist” or “Theocrat.”
As a connoisseur of Christian Right theory and practice, I have to say that while Huckabee may privately be a “dominionist” (and Sarah Posner is undoubtedly right that he’s been appealing to dominionists in the clergy and laity alike), his public pronouncements fall short of that particular uber-heresy.
“Dominionism” (or more formally, Christian Reconstructionism) generally refers to the belief that Holy Scripture should entirely displace secular sources as the legal foundation for society. Its adherents tend to think of the Bible–and specifically, the Mosaic Law–as a sort of Christian Sharia, that provides all necessary and sufficient guidance for the ordering of national and community life.
All Huck’s confessed to, so far as I am aware, is that when the Constitution is directly in conflict with major elements of “God’s standards”–specifically on the subjects of abortion and gay marriage–it should be amended to be brought into conformity. And as he points out, constitutional amendments on both subjects are part of the last Republican Party Platform. He has not, on the other hand, smitten Rudy Giuliani with the classic Dominionist argument that adulterers should be put to death, or suggested that Muslims should be converted to the True Faith on the edge of U.S. bayonets.
I’ve argued with fellow progressives about this for some time, but it bears repeating: if you happen to believe, on religious or other grounds, that legalized abortion is a vast Holocaust (a term Huckabee has used) extinguishing millions of human lives, then it’s not that surprising that you might consider a constitutional amendment to ban it appropriate. And if you also believe that heterosexual marriage is the fundamental pattern of life demanded by God and respected by all civilized societies, a constitutional amendment enshrining that belief isn’t a big reach, either.
Obviously (for anyone who’s read my stuff in the past) I very strongly disagree with Huckabee, on both religious and civic grounds, with respect to these beliefs, but it’s important to understand them instead of conflating them with a totalitarian theocratic ideology that would rewrite the entire constitution (as satirically suggested yesterday by Daily Kos’ Meteor Blades) to smite the infidels.
Ol’ Huck’s platform is nutty, all right, and I’m not one of those Democrats who’s inclined to give him a lot of props for his empty “populist” posturing, either. I’d love to see him get the nomination, because I think it would lead to a Democratic victory of–if you’ll excuse the expression–Biblical proportions. But let’s save the Dominionist tag for the Rough Beast who may someday begin slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

There’s a new article in The Politico by Jim VandeHei and John Harris that sums up the psychological effects of lethargy and low enthusiasm levels among Republicans this year (so far): “GOP funk slows turnout, money.”

Ambitious Republican politicians at the state and local levels are not deciding that this is the year to make a bid for higher office.
Republican contributors are not opening their wallets and writing campaign checks.
Most striking of all, Republican voters are not heading to the polls to vote in the GOP primaries in anything like participation rates of early years.
Most of these trends have been noted and amply commented upon in isolation. It is in combination, however, that their effects tend to reinforce each other and reach maximum toxicity. A disgruntled base is the root cause of weak fundraising, which contributes to poor candidate recruitment, which in turn leads to GOP activists staying on the sofa rather than heading to the polls.

To put it another way, GOPers are beginning to look at 2008 as just a “bad year” for them, like 2006, and maybe even worse.
Another sign of the bad moon rising for Republicans is an editorial in the Washington Times–normally an organ of relentless partisan agitprop–offering a very downbeat assessment of the party’s prospects in Senate races this year, conceding major Democratic gains as virtually inescapable.
It’s a long way to November, obviously, and all sorts of things could change. But as the Politico article suggests, low expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I ended my last post on the Republican presidential contest by stipulating a lack of excitement among GOPers about their current options. That was before I spent some time roaming around the content-rich National Review site, an official Romney for President precinct (though some of its writers have dissented). If this is most enthusiasm these folk can muster in the wake of Mitt’s survival in MI, they’ve got a real problem.
The NR Editors briefly celebrate Romney’s win, before lecturing him about shortcomings in his economic message. NR’s online editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, allows as how the Romney staffers don’t quite sound like zombies any more.
John J. Pitney, Jr., pens an “electibility” article that begins by acknowledging Mitt’s terrible showing in general election trial heats, and then reviews the even more problematic general election credentials of the rest of the field.
And then there’s a Symposium that centers on the transcendent need for conservatives to beat McCain and Huckabee.
Compare that with what you’d read in virtually any progressive outlet, where there’s enthusiasm for favorites and broad acceptance of the other major candidates, and you begin to see why Democrats are in much better shape at present. There’s so much nose-holding among Republicans right now in expressing a candidate preference that they may be excused for failing to notice a smell of rot surrounding their party as a whole.

The latest strategy memo from Democracy Corps, based on a survey of voters in 65 “battleground” House districts (25 held by Democrats, 40 by Republicans), argues that Democrats should not fear the tax issue this year. Even though the survey was confined to a Republican-leaning segment of the electorate, DCorps found that (a) Republicans don’t have a built-in advantage on the tax issue, (b) voters are more concerned about tax fairness than about the overall level of taxes, (c) a Democratic tax reform proposal based on sunsetting tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminating corporate loopholes decisively trumps a Republican message of making all tax cuts permanent (even when the GOP message tries to exploit fears of Democratic over-spending), and (d) this is equally true in Republican- and Democratic-held districts.
The DCorps findings are significant in ways that go beyond the tax issue. To the extent that the broader Republican economic message depends heavily on faith in high-end tax cutting as a prescription for growth, Republican weakness on such tax policies could undermine their entire economic pitch.
Like Iraq, supply-side economics is becoming a subject where the demands of the conservative GOP base are in direct conflict with what the broader electorate wants. Those who fear that declining levels of interest in Iraq will help Republicans this fall should be comforted; the changing issue landscape is driving the GOP from one horn of their basic dilemma to the other.

Mitt Romney’s win in MI yesterday forestalled the possibility of an early McCain sweep to the GOP nomination. But like Hillary Clinton’s “stunning upset” win in NH, the actual voter dynamics were less dramatic than the perceived impact on the race.
As Jay Cost explains at RealClearPolitics after staring at MI and NH exit polls, Romney and McCain pretty much attracted the same kind of voters in the former state as in the latter. Romney won by marginally improving his performance across the board, and also because the composition of the electorate was a bit different (e.g., fewer independents). Given Romney’s native-state status, his spending advantage, and his very blunt promises to bail out MI’s economy with federal money, his win, while a “shocker” in terms of shaking up the race, wasn’t really very surprising.
The problem for Romney is that his MI formula is not replicable elsewhere. And the problem for the GOP is that this continues to look like a nomination contest no one can win–and everyone can lose.
This doesn’t mean the Republican nomination will be decided at the Convention; delegates will be awarded in big batches on February 5, and it’s entirely possible that the field will effectively be down to two or three candidates by then. But the palpable lack of excitement in the GOP over its options is more striking than ever.

In the tight Democratic presidential nominating contest, the first-ever Nevada Caucuses, which were pretty much ignored by political observers in the long run-up to IA and NH, have suddenly been invested with great significance. An Obama win there, we are told, will interrupt the Clinton “comeback,” virtually guarantee Obama a SC win, and make the whole race dead even going into the Feb. 5 mega-event. A Clinton win, by contrast, continues her “big mo.” And one poll showing a virtual three-way tie in Nevada has given new hope to the Edwards campaign that it can survive and then even thrive outside the Clinton-Obama crossfire.
The problem is: nobody really has a clear idea about participation in the Caucuses, since there’s no history to cite.
For a good impressionistic account of the confused situation on the ground in Nevada, I recommend a MyDD diary by desmoulins, an Edwards organizer from Las Vegas.

Less than 100 hours now to the NV caucus and turnout is still a massive question mark, that will determine the outcome. All year, I’ve felt this will be a low-turnout affair driven by activists combined by whatever campaign had the resources and organization to drag in casual, non-activist supporters. All year, I’d hoped that would be Edwards, with a combination of long-term organization, a strong message, momentum from Iowa, and the support of SEIU and Culinary. All year, I’d presumed that if Obama got those breaks instead, as he did in the end, he’d surge past and win handsomely. And all year, I’ve presumed that the Clinton support was very soft and would melt away when we entered the final 2 weeks, and people started to focus intensely on the race.
I still have no idea if any of that will prove to be prescient or, as is usually the case, I’m way, way off base. In short, its exciting as all get-out to be in a race that nobody has any clue how its going to go Saturday.

The diary also has a deep-in-the-weeds account of the last-minute teachers’ union lawsuit aimed at invalidating the at-large Caucus sites being set up on the Las Vegas Strip to make it easier for casino workers to participate (thought to be a large boon to Obama).
If you recall the accounts (here and elsewhere) of the confusion surrounding Caucus Night in Iowa, a place where Caucus procedures are a venerable science, you can imagine the chaos likely to ensue in Nevada on Saturday.

It appears that the grown-ups in both campaigns may prevail after all in the dust-up about the Clintons’ remarks concerning Martin Luther King, LBJ and Obama’s Iraq position, according to Jeff Zeleny’s New York Times article “Obama Tries to Stop the ‘Silliness’.” Zeleny quotes Obama:

I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this…We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way….I think that I may disagree with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We’re all Democrats…We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that regardless of race or gender that people should have equal opportunities.

Bravo. And then he shows how generosity of spirit can win hearts and minds:

They are good people, they are patriots. They are running because they think that they can move this country to a better place…I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think they care about the African-American community and that they care about all Americans and they want to see equal rights and justice in this country.

After giving Obama due credit for taking the high road, it seems fair to acknowledge that the Clinton’s remarks were stretched by the media to imply more than they intended. Might be wise for all Dem campaigns to eschew the circular firing squad approach going forward and save the more splenetic denunciations for the real adversaries. They would be the GOP guys chortling on the sidelines.
Perhaps we should cap the whole thing with an appropriate quote from the mature, prophetic voice of one who was born on this day 79 years ago, but who never saw his 40th birthday. “Our enemies will adequately deflate our accomplishments. We need not serve them as eager volunteers.”

No one has explained the lessons of NH and IA for the Edwards campaign better than Mike Lux in his Open Left Post “Anger and Progressive Populism.” I think it is a must-read for Edwards campaign strategists. The nut graph:

Edwards’ message was one of pure, undistilled anger at the big corporations who are dominating our country’s politics: he was angry at those corporations, and he was going to “fight them,” “beat them and beat them and beat them some more,” and “stand up to them.” That message certainly resonates with me, and probably does with most of the OpenLeft.com community. And there is no doubt that Democratic primary voters, and voters in general, are angry at the special interest elites. But it didn’t lift Edwards past 19% among first choices. I think the problem has been that the anger is the only thing that voters were hearing. The lesson of the Edwards failure to me is that anger alone is not enough: that we have to combine the righteous anger we feel with telling people about the new ideas we have. Edwards had produced a bunch of great policy papers earlier in the campaign, but his core message in debates and advertising felt like it was all about the anger. If we can give people a sense of how we are going to change things and solve problems, and combine it with our anger at injustice, then we can win elections.

It’s getting late in the game. But If Edwards can restore more balance between the attack and solutions parts of his messaging over the next three weeks, and either Clinton or Obama stumbles, he may do well enough to survive Tsunami Tuesday and become competitive on the home stretch.