If you are a regular reader of political blogs, you are probably aware of the burgeoning kerfuffle over certain remarks about the Catholic Church expressed in the past by two bloggers recently hired by the John Edwards presidential campaign. The story has been percolating for a while, but blew up yesterday when National Review’s Kathyrn Jean Lopez served up some choice quotes from one of the staffers, Amanda Marcotte (formerly of the Pandagon blog), suggesting that women’s rights might be safer if the Virgin Mary had been able to get hold of Plan B contraceptives.As of this writing, it’s not clear whether reports that the Edwards campaign was about to fire the duo are accurate or not. It is clear the campaign is a bit between a rock and a hard place, the rock being fear of association with anti-Catholic opinions, and the hard place being the progressive blogosphere’s increasingly angry demands that Edwards stand up to right-wing intimidation or forfeit his previously strong Left Netroots support.Complicating the story is the fact that the notorious right-wing political operative Bill Donahue of the conservative factional Catholic League (best known for his demands that the Church excommunicate pro-choice politicians like John Kerry) has massively piled onto the dispute, running around the MSM today expressing outrage at the bloggers’ offensive opinions. Thus, any Edwards effort to discipline or dismiss the bloggers is inevitably being interpreted as a cave-in to the Right-Wing Noise Machine on the order of Kerry’s alleged refusal to counter the Swift Boat Veterans’ smear of 2004.The person being most obviously victimized in the furor is the second Edwards staffer in question, Melissa McEwan (a.k.a. Shakespeare’s Sister), who apparently did nothing more than use some profanity in rejecting anti-abortionist efforts to control women’s reproductive systems. Big deal; I feel the same way myself on occasion, and I’m so Anglo-Catholic that I tend to catch a cold when the Pope sneezes.The underlying question, nicely framed by Ezra Klein at TAPPED, is whether we are henceforth going to be treated to endless oppo-research examinations of the published utterances of campaign staffers on topics other than, well, campaign staffing. Ezra thinks this would set a terrible precedent, and I tend to agree, though it’s hardly a novelty; way back in 1972, George McGovern got flack for a pro-Palestinian manifesto that a campaign staffer, Rick Stearns, had signed years earlier as a college student (leading Hunter Thompson to facetiously refer to Stearns as “that devious Arab bastard” in his famous book on the campaign).Since Edwards’ bloggers were not exactly hired to be back-room operators, perhaps the press release on their hiring should have included a disclaimer that read: “All our previously expressed opinions have now been subsumed in the transcendent cause of electing John Edwards president, to which we henceforth slavishly submit.” That might have headed off a world of trouble.The deeper question, when it comes to Marcotte’s more provocative quotes, is whether Catholics specifically, or Christians generally, ought to take offense at this sort of blasphemous nonsense, and play the victim. The simple reality is that the central mystery of Christianity, the Incarnation, is inevitably, to unbelievers, a standing invitation to sophomoric jibes about the Virgin Birth and the whole idea of God Made Human. That’s hardly news, and hardly grounds for believers to get self-righteously huffy, particularly if some of their co-religionists insist on politicizing their faith as hacks like Donohue perpetually do.The whole dispute reminds me of the forgotten incident in 1971, when Patricia Buckley Bozell (yes, that Buckley’s sister, and that Bozell’s wife) assaulted feminist icon Ti-Grace Atkinson at a Catholic University podium after Atkinson made some smarmy remarks about the Virgin Mary “getting knocked up.”Soon after, this letter appeared in Time Magazine:

As a Roman Catholic, as a supporter of the free expression of ideas, and as a believer in the virginity of Mary, I offer Ti-Grace Atkinson my apologies for the outlandish behavior of Patricia Buckley Bozell [March 22]. Never before has the Virgin Mary required the use of arms—or hands—to defend her. Mrs. Bozell was rather presumptuous to think that Mary now needed her intercession.

That’s as true today as it was more than thirty-five years ago.

Even as Rudy Giuiliani continues to lead in many GOP presidential polls, there’s a raging debate as to whether he could actually be nominated.Just today, Glenn Greenwald did a long, adamant post arguing that social conservatives care more about waging religio-ideological wars than about Rudy’s deficiencies on abortion or gay rights. Meanwhile, TPMCafe’s Election Central reports that one of the Christian Right’s big poohbahs, Tony Perkins, went on Pat Robertson’s network and dismissed Giuliani as an acceptable presidential candidate because of his views on abortion and gay rights, which place him “far outside the mainstream of conservative thought.”Somebody’s obviously right and somebody’s obviously wrong here. I’ve been in the “Rudy Can Fail” camp all along, and though Greenwald’s a persuasive guy, I think he’s a bit too pre-persuaded that social conservatives don”t really believe what they say or say what they believe.

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article comparing and contrasting Democratic presidential candidates’ positions, as reflected in their DNC Winter Meeting speeches, about exactly how rapidly (assuming they endorse any sort of withdrawal “timetable”) they want to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. And over at DKos, Trapper John provided a handy-dandy list with the number of months before withdrawal for each candidate’s plan, followed up by a poll of Kossacks on their preference.This is all nice and neat, but there’s one problem that I tried to draw attention to last week: it’s not at all clear which troops would be withdrawn under some of the various proposals. Barack Obama’s plan sets a “goal” for withdrawal of “combat brigades” by the end of March, 2008, but also says: “A residual U.S. presence may remain in Iraq for force protection, training of Iraqi security forces, and pursuit of international terrorists.” And even the Kerry-Feingold resolution of last summer, generally thought of as the gold standard of “fixed withdrawal deadline” proposals, exempted from its entire withdrawal timetable “the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces, conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations, and protecting United States facilities and personnel.”Words like “residual” and “minimal” suggest we’re not talking about a lot of troops, but who really knows? And who will make that determination if not the Bush administration? I raise this point not to annoy people with details, but because the growing obsession of many antiwar folks–and for that matter, of their critics– with calendar dates may miss the more fundamental question that needs to be raised about Iraq: which missions would we be turning over to the Iraqis, and which missions would be continued, and for how long? Isn’t that at least as important as how many months a given proposal would provide for withdrawal of an ill-defined number of troops?

There’s a bit of interesting confusion breaking out in the progressive blogosphere about how to react to persistent reports (freshly denied, of course, by the White House) that the administration is planning military operations against Iran on grounds of its meddling in Iraq.Armando at Talk Left did an impassioned post accusing Matt Yglesias and James Fallows of arguing for a shift of progressive attention from Iraq to Iran. His main arguments are (1) Iran war talk is “bait” from the Bushies aimed at dissipating congressional efforts to end the war in Iraq; and (2) because Bush and Cheney have no legal authority to start a war with Iran, taking military action based on Iran’s role in Iraq is how they are going to get there. I get dragooned into the argument as someone who doesn’t “get” this latter point, based on a post that expressed incredulity at an Iraqi rationale for an attack on Iran.McJoan at DailyKos picks up on Armando’s post, and clarifies his argument, especially on Point II, suggesting that the only way Bush gets to wage war on Iran is by citing the Iraq War Resolution.What’s confusing to me about both posts is a pretty simple point: is the Iran war talk really a “red herring?” Or is the administration really lusting for immediate war with Iran?In terms of the “red herring” claim, you have to remember that most of the reports of administration war planning against Iran have been relatively under-the-radar, and have been talked about far more by administration critics than by official or unofficial Bush supporters. I see no particular evidence that congressional Dems are folding their tents on Iraq. And with all due respect to the blogosphere, I don’t think the Bushies think they can avoid getting repudiated on Iraq just because some bloggers are arguing about the relative importance of Iran.If the White House really wanted to throw sand in the eyes of Iraq War critics, including a sizable majority of the American people, they’d be doing some very high-profile Iran scaremongering, not focused on Tehran’s role in Iraq, but on the nuclear program, which has indeed gotten significant public and MSM attention.That brings me to the second prong of the Armando-McJoan argument: the Bushies have to make Iraq the pretext for an attack on Iran because they’d otherwise have to get a fresh war resolution from Congress, which ain’t happening. So they are stuck with a transparently stupid and specious rationale for a new war, which would be explicitly described as an expansion of an existing, and overwhelmingly unpopular war. If, that is, they really want to attack Iran, and aren’t just creating a “red herring.”You can see how this argument gets to be a bit circular. The administration either wants war with Iran, or it doesn’t, and if it does, it needs a plausible rationale a hell of a lot more than it needs congressional authority (remember its continuing claims of all sorts of inherent presidential national security powers?). And there’s an obvious scenario where that could happen: the U.S. strongly encourages the Israelis to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and then intervenes to help our ally as a matter of emergency military action, subject only to after-the-fact congressional endorsement under the War Powers Act, if the need for any authority was admitted.As for the initial question of how progressive bloggers should think about these tangled questions, I don’t quite see how worrying about a new war keeps anyone from stopping the old one, unless you’re really into an extreme version of the Noise Machine theory and think any dissent or distraction from the Message of the Day somehow adds strength to Bush’s rapidly collapsing support on Iraq.So let a few bloggers try to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Although I’m not as convinced as a lot of progressive bloggers that Bush is about to launch a military campaign against Iran, there’s certainly enough smoke out there to legitimately worry about fire.There are actually two separate reasons to worry.On the one hand, you’ve got renewed saber-rattling in Israel about the intolerability of a nuclear Iran. Israeli fears about Iran were nicely summarized last week in a New Republic piece by Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael Oren. I’m not about to tell Israelis what they should think or do about defending their own country, but still, the apparent conviction of 66% of Israelis that Ahmadinejad would happily sacrifice half his population (a realistic assessment, given Israel’s own massive nuclear arsenal) in order to hit Israel with a nuclear strike is, well, a bit counter-intuitive. Missing from this scary calculus is the virtual certainty that Ahmadinejad would be strangled in his bed if he made a single move in the direction of wiping out his own people.I’m not one to dismiss Ahmadinejad’s anti-semitic ravings as just some sort of “populist” claptrap, but we might as well remember that the very model of anti-semitic madmen, Adolph Hitler (who unlike the Iranian really did enjoy total personal power over his state) refrained from using chemical weapons during World War II out of fear of Allied retaliation.Even if Israelis are in fact losing faith in the power of their nuclear deterrent, you do have to wonder if some of the war talk is in fact aimed at psychological deterrence. A quick Google search produced reliable-sounding articles from 2005 and 2006 (here and here) reporting that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was imminent. Perhaps Israelis are trying to convince Iranians that if they are unwilling to halt their nuclear program, they’d better find a leader who doesn’t threaten the destruction of Israel every other day.If indeed Israel is on the edge of attacking Iran, you could understand why the Bush administration might be looking at what it would do in that contingency. But that’s the really weird thing: reports are now coming out that Bush and Cheney are considering a military confrontation with Iran that has nothing to do with its nuclear program.Check out this report yesterday from U.S. News:

The US News Political Bulletin has learned Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly concerned that President Bush will order air strikes against targets in Iran in the next few months or even weeks. They cite as evidence the tough warnings from senior Administration officials, including the Commander in Chief, that Iranian help for insurgents in Iraq is leading to the deaths of US troops and Iraqi civilians. Democratic insiders tell the Political Bulletin that they suspect Bush will order the bombing of Iranian supply routes, camps, training facilities, and other sites that Administration officials say contribute to American losses in Iraq. Under this scenario, Bush would not invade Iran with ground forces or zero in on Iranian nuclear facilities.

If true, this is a much crazier idea than anything being contemplated in Israel. Whatever Iran is up to in Iraq, the reality is that its primary agents in Iraq are SCIRI and its Badr Corps militia, which the Bush administration has called the great hope for marginalizing the Mahdi Army and building a “unity” government. And for that matter, the Maliki government is unmistakably pro-Iran as well. It’s hard to overestimate the extent to which a shooting war with Iran could destroy what little influence the U.S. still has in Iraq, unless we’re going to make the Sunni insurgency our new base of support. To risk all that, and not even make Iran’s nuclear facilities the target, makes absolutely no sense.Moreover, and this is the factor that neither Israeli nor American anti-Iranian saber-rattlers seem to want to talk about, any military confrontation with Iran would almost certaintly unite the Iranian people behind their government. While hardly a perfect democracy, Iran does have elections; that’s how Ahmadinejad gained power in the first place. His party recently got waxed in local elections, a fact that seems to elude those who view Iran as a theocracy where elections are entirely rigged. The simplest and least dangerous path to a less dangerous Iran is to encourage its people to get rid of Ahmadinejad. An attack on Iran would likely take this option off the table, perhaps forever.There’s already growing paranoia among progressive bloggers that “cowardly” DC Democrats would go along with the above-described plan for military strikes against Iran over its role in Iraq. I guess I would qualify as a “liberal hawk”‘ by the standards of many such bloggers, and when it comes to this crazy plan, let me say: not me, buddy. It would be a strategic disaster, and Democrats along with sane Republicans ought to fight it tooth and nail.

Mark Schmitt, whom I hold in great esteem, has a long post up at TAPPED on the question of whether Hillary Clinton’s ace card in the 2008 presidential race is her hidden support among women, even those who don’t agree with her on major issues.Mark’s actually responding to a blogospheric exchange with one Linda Hershman, who published a Washington Post op-ed piece basically arguing that women are too apolitical, and too politically irrational, to get the job done for HRC. Mark effectively demolishes Hershman’s condescending and anectdotal take on female political engagment, but also, perhaps overcompensating, disputes the Mark Penn/James Carville hypothesis that women will go for HRC more than for any other candidate with similar policy views. Indeed, he suggests Penn and Carville are playing into the same gender stereotypes as Hershman.I just can’t agree with Mark here, and not because I think women are more inclined than anyone else to indulge, on the margins, in identity voting, but because I don’t think they, unlike everyone else, are entirely immune to it.My empirical evidence here is less about HRC’s polling numbers than about history.Anyone who’s looked at Catholic voting trends over the decades recognizes that Al Smith, and more spectacularly, John F. Kennedy, benefitted from massive and disproportiate support from Catholic voters who had no other apparent reason for voting for them. Jimmy Carter would not have been elected president in 1976 without huge southern identity support in states that went heavily Republican before and after his presidency. Bill Clinton won less overwhelming, but still crucial support in the South for the same reasons. And if you compare voting levels and margins in South Florida between 2000 and 2004, it’s pretty apparent that the Gore-Lieberman ticket got into overtime in no small part because of Lieberman’s ethnic appeal to Jews.I understand that HRC arouses intense opposition from some outspoken women who view her as a feminist archetype they reject, or inversely, in some cases, as too subordinate or forgiving towards her husband. But JFK was also controvesial among Catholics; many clergy deplored him as too secular. It didn’t much matter when it came to the ballot box.The bottom line is that you don’t have to get into invidious gender stereotypes to understand that yes, HRC, as the first really viable female candidate for president, is likely to get votes from women that aren’t just a function of policy agreements or political alignment. And since unlike JFK or Carter or Lieberman, she represents a category of Americans that is a majority, not a minority in the electorate, I wouldn’t personally be too quick to underestimate the impact of identity voting in her case.

You could almost hear the whirring of emails flying around on Capitol Hill and in the blogosphere after the news this morning that Carl Levin, Joe Biden, and most importantly Harry Reid had signed onto a revised version of John Warner’s non-binding resolution opposing the Bush escalation plan for Iraq. ” Sources” indicated that Reid would make the Warner resolution the centerpiece of the planned Senate debate on Iraq next week, in an effort to get a filibuster-proof 60-plus votes for a repudiation of Bush’s plan. And the same story provided a somewhat confused report that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had instructed staff to come up with an identical version of the Warner resolution, and/or that she was aiming at something quite different.Adding to the confusion were reports that the Warner resolution would foreswear any effort to cut off funding for troops in Iraq; since the language hasn’t been publicly released, it’s not clear at all what that means. (No effort to cut or condition troop funding at all? No effort to cut funding for new troops? No effort to deny supplemental funding for an escalated troop level later on? Who knows?).While the early stories on the Warner resolution emphasize the difficulty of getting sufficient Republicans on board, it’s equally clear that some more aggressively antiwar Democrats might throw sand into the works. And indeed, Sen. Chris Dodd, a presidential candidate, has already announced his opposition.Meanwhile, as of this writing, there’s a bit of an eerie silence on the latest maneuver in the progressive blogosphere. Scanning some of the big sites, I saw one post at DailyKos that rather tentatively worries that congressional Dems are caving. Everywhere else, folks seem to be holding their powder or waiting for details.I hope this means there’s at least some agreement that a maximum congressional repudiation of the Bush escalation plan, so long as it does not completely foreclose additional steps if Bush continues to stubbornly plug ahead with an approach almost nobody thinks can work, has some real political value. As I guess we all know, the Pentagon already has sufficient existing funds to do what Bush wants it to do. And as Matt Yglesias pointed out earlier today, the real opportunity to restrict or condition funding will occur a few months down the road, when Bush has to come back to Congress and request new money.But there is another, and perhaps more fundamental, question raised by the Warner resolution, and by a host of other proposals. According to the Post:

The Warner and Biden resolutions reach almost identical conclusions, in that they oppose the president’s deployment of 21,500 additional troops and call for existing troops to be reassigned to guard Iraq’s borders, combat terrorism and train Iraqi security forces. Both measures call for regional diplomacy to draw Iraq’s neighbors into a peace process.

Note the “reassignment” language. This basically means rejecting the idea of any continued combat role for U.S. troops, especially in places like Baghdad. That’s also what the Iraq Study Group called for. And it’s hard to avoid the implication that this “reassignment,” or “redeployment” if you prefer, would make immediate and substantial troop withdrawals not only possible but necessary, right?I draw attention to this rather simple point because so many commentators have made troop levels and withdrawal deadlines the key dividing issue on Iraq, especially among Democrats. Yet at least some of the “deadline” proposals, most notably Barack Obama’s latest plan, only talk about a deadline for withdrawing combat brigades, and explicitly provides for an apparently indefinite deployment of an undefined number of other troops. Since Obama’s (and for that matter, the Kerry-Feingold resolution that was supposed to be the toughest get-out-soon approach) plan explicitly talks about maintaining “counter-terrorism” operations within Iraq, I assume “non-combat troops” includes special ops units.This matters, of course, because if supporters of the Warner resolution are calling for a change of mission that means “withdraw combat troops,” then maybe the allegedly vast gulf among Democrats and even some Republicans on Iraq isn’t as vast as it seems.There are plenty of Democrats, in Congress, and on the blogs, and plenty of Americans, who literally think we should get every single U.S. soldier and marine out of Iraq almost immediately, including special ops forces and training personnel. But the real issues aren’t often resolved by the obsession with “deadlines.” The real choices aren’t necessarily “escalate,” “stay the course,” or “out now.” And even if you are in the “out now” camp, it’s not quite honest to say that proposals that would mean withdrawal of combat forces and elimination of any U.S. intention to “resolve” the civil war or control the country are just “status quo” approaches. And moreover, since public opinion is clearly demanding a change of course, it’s undeniable that the polls are not offering Americans anything like the full range of options on the table in Washington (How, for example, would you fit Obama’s proposal into the “more troops, same troops, or withdraw all troops?” questions typically posed?).Speaking of public opinion, a number of bloggers, in pressing congressional Dems to move forward quickly with a funding cutoff for the war, keep citing poll numbers indicating that 64% of Americans don’t think Congress has been sufficiently assertive in challenging Bush on the war. This is from a recent Newsweek poll, and the exact wording begins, “Since the Iraq war began….” Based on a question that clearly asks respondents to think back for nearly four years, I don’t think this finding can be credibly used to suggest that Americans have already decided the new Democratic Congress is being too timid.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

Over at MyDD today, Chris Bowers goes on an endearing tirade about netroots denial of Hillary Clinton’s current strength in the polls; apparently he’s hearing a lot of talk that HRC is in the same position as Joe Lieberman was at this stage in the last cycle, and he demolishes that talk pretty effectively.But by way of introduction, Chris says: “What I am about to write will invariably result in several people calling me a Hillary supporter and / or a wholly owned subsidiary of the DLC….”I’ve got your back on this one, Chris. I know enough about the DLC to warrant convincingly that you aren’t owned, rented, or even occasionally suborned by that organization.I don’t always agree with Chris Bowers (the subject of Democrats and religion being one topic of frequent disagreement), but do admire his stubborn, reality-based determination to follow actual evidence of political trends, even if they don’t conveniently fit into his own, or his colleagues’, preferred “memes.” I hope that I can occasionally make the same claim when my own colleagues look sideways at polls and see what they want to see.There is, in the end, this thing called Objective Reality, and if any of us diverge from it too far in order to grind factional or ideological axes, we do so at our peril.

On the day after the midterm elections, a lot of Republicans undoubtedly consoled themselves with visions of a 2008 comeback. After all, the electorate’s thorough repudiation of George W. Bush eliminated any political obligation for 2008 candidates to run on the Bush legacy. A Democratic Congress would probably start sharing in the opprobrium of Wrong Track voters. And most important, early trial heats showed at least two 2008 Republican candidates, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, running ahead of all potential Democratic rivals.Eleven weeks later, GOPers are beginning to take a long, realistic look at their 2008 field, and they aren’t happy about it any more. A galvanizing example (via The Plank’s Michael Crowley) is a recent post by RedState’s Erick Erickson, an influential conservative blogger, entitled “They All Suck.” A sample:

Every one of the thus far announced Republican candidates for President sucks. From the lecherous adulterer to the egomaniacal nut job to the flip-flopping opportunist with the perfect hair to the guy who hates brown people to the guy we’ve never heard of to the guy who has a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while being consumed by a blue whale being struck by lightening.They all suck. (Well, okay, Brownback doesn’t suck at all, but I perceive no viability for his candidacy.)

Over at The Politico, Jonathan Martin has a more conventional account of conservative unhappiness with the 2008 batch, but it adds up to the same story.To sum it up, from my own reading of the field:John McCain looked like a hold-your-nose-cause-he-can-at-least-win choice for GOPers until his own poll numbers started sliding, thanks to his choice of Iraq esalation as his bonding device with conservatives. And conservative disgruntlement with McCain is not just a matter of his past apostasy on campaign finance reform, taxes, and cultural issues. Right now he is in the uncomfortable position of being the primary Republican cosponsor, with Ted Kennedy, of immigration legislation roundly loathed by rank-and-file conservatives, and also, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, of legislation creating a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, another highly visible non-starter with the Right. For all his money, his success in recruiting big-time campaign operatives, and his continuing love affair with the media, McCain is increasingly in danger of falling between two stools in his attempted Shift to the Right.If McCain’s problems are quite visible, Rudy Giuliani’s are just beneath the surface, but larger. Less than a year before the Iowa Caucuses, Rudy has yet to deliver the Big Speech everyone says he must do to become acceptable to social conservatives, somehow changing his long-standing positions on abortion and gay rights. The later it comes, the less credible it will be. And worse yet, Giuliani’s many years of negotiating the straits of New York politics, and of a, well, rather complicated personal life, offer a gold mine for opposition researchers. I wonder exactly when grimly serious conservative activists are going to find themselves staring at images of “America’s Mayor” in drag in 1997, calling himself (a la Victor/Victoria) a “Republican pretending to be a Democrat pretending to be a Republican.” If he survives that, he deserves the nomination, but don’t hold your breath.Meanwhile, the audition for the “true conservative alternative” to McCain and Giuliani ain’t going so well.After a good start with conservative opinion-leaders, Mitt Romney’s checkered ideological past, and his sometimes vapid current message, aren’t wearing very well. And on top of everything else, he has the burden of detoxifying his religion, which decades of those soft- focus LDS television ads apparently failed to do.I know a few smart Republicans who think the Newtster will catch fire. But aside from his marital baggage (which rivals Giuliani’s) and his late-1990s record as a national pariah and punching bag for Bill Clinton, Gingrich is stubbornly refusing to commit to a candidacy until September, at which point his rivals will have all but taken up residency in Iowa.Brownback? Aside from being to the right of Jimmy Dean Sausage on abortion and gay rights, the Kansan has recently taken positions on immigration and Iraq that will repel many conservatives (I also wonder about the Da Vinci Code factor, since Brownback is an Opus Dei convert to Catholicism). Hagel? He’s McCain without the hawkishness or the media buzz. Tancredo? Hunter? Gilmore? Give me a break.Tommy Thompson might have been an intriguing possibility in the past, but his recent gig heading up what conservatives consider an out-of-control-welfare-state at HHS doesn’t bode that well for his long-shot candidacy. Mike Huckabee has been many insiders’ favorite dark horse for a while, but he’s off to a slow start, and must also deal with a tax increase on his watch as governor of Arkansas.The crowning irony, as Martin’s Politico piece explains, is that the candidate conservatives really pine for in 2008 is named Bush–not W., of course, but Jeb:

In separate interviews, two prominent Republican strategists in Washington used almost identical language to lament that the incumbent president’s brother will spend 2008 on the sidelines.”If his last name was ‘Smith’ instead of ‘Bush,’ Jeb would be the front-runner,” said one. “If he were ‘Jeb Smith’ instead of ‘Jeb Bush’ he’d probably be at the top of the pack right now,” said the other.

Cry me a river, folks. After all, W. made it into the finals in 2000 in no small part because of poll ratings inflated by rosy memories of Bush 41, whom many respondents actually confused with his son. There’s some rough justice in the fact that Jebbie’s now being disqualified by his last name, which has become a millstone. Live by the dynasty, die by the dynasty, eh?Meanwhile, GOPers slouch towards 2008, grumbling the whole way.

It’s hardly surprising that analysis of Barack Obama’s sudden viability as a presidential candidate dwells on race. He is, after all, a black man whose main source of popularity at present seems to be with white voters. Like Colin Powell, moreover, he is often described as a black man almost perfectly engineered to appeal to white voters, at potential risk to the “authenticity” deemed essential to attact the African-American voters who are so important in the Democratic presidential nominating process, at leasts when it pivots beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.Peter Beinert has an article up on the New Republic site examining the Powell parallel in detail, suggesting that Obama represents an implicit repudiation of other, more “authentic” African-American politicians, which could create a backlash among black voters generally. And last week Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post examined African-American ambivalence towards Obama, as reflected in his little-known congressional primary loss to Bobby Rush in 2000.There’s also the simple data point that national polls currently show Hillary Clinton trouncing Obama among black Democrats, which makes his overall robust poll numbers that much more remarkable.But while fascinating, these race-based takes on Obama don’t come to grips with the genesis of his startling appearance on the national political scene in August of 2004, when few Americans knew much about his personal story, or had experienced his “charisma” or marveled at his political skills. Ever since his famous Democratic Convention speech, Obama has been articulating what might be called the Great Alternative Democratic Message, and it clearly has some clout.What is that message? It could be described as “The New American Patriotism,” or “The Politics of Higher Common Purpose,” or “Towards One America,” or even “Meeting the Big Challenges.” But whatever the precise rhetoric, its core is to suggest that Democrats can and will lift politics and government out of the slough of polarization, culture wars, smears and sheer pettiness characterized by the Bush-Rove era, transcending party and ideology to unite the country around an agenda that really matters.This was the meta-message Stan Greenberg urged Democrats to embrace in 2004 in his pre-election book, The Two Americas. It was the original theme of John Kerry’s campaign, until Bob Shrum convinced him to shift in the autumn of 2003 to a message focused on the candidate’s biography (with fateful, perhaps fatal, consequences a year later). It was then picked up (or perhaps, according to insiders, accepted as a gift from former Kerry advisor Chris Lehane) by Wes Clark, whose campaign never really got its act together. And it was echoed in some respects by John Edwards, though his “one America” aspiration drew much less attention than his neo-populist “two Americas” indictment of the status quo.But this alternative message never got a full test until Barack Obama, at the time still a state senator, made it the core of his “Red, White and Blue America” speech in Boston. And it’s still Obama’s distinctive message.That’s one important reason for the half-submerged skepticism about Obama in some precincts of the progressive blogosphere, where all his talk about unity and civility sometimes sounds uncomfortably like the much-despised “bipartisanship” of party centrists. But it still strikes a chord in the electorate, I suspect.Obama must, of course, soon begin to fill out a more detailed message and agenda that explains exactly what Democrats should do to transcend the counter-polarization of the 2006 campaign and expand the party base, without repudiating principles or sacrificing unity. His success or failure in doing that may in the end have a greater impact on his candidacy than his alleged role in some great national psychodrama about race and identity.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey