Over a month ago I did a long, complicated post on prospects for some sort of Democratic comeback in the South, and probably lost a lot of readers halfway through with a “three-wave” theory and a tangent on the need for two-way biracial coalitions (an ensuing exchange with Armando of DailyKos got even further down into the weeds).So thanks to Ruy Teixeira of Donkey Rising for doing a post yesterday that zeroed in on the biggest sign for Southern Democratic hope on the toughest landscape, the presidential level: a set of statistics I cited but buried in too much prose.

In 1996, Clinton split the southern vote, 46-46, with Bob Dole. One of the keys to his strong performance was this: he actually carried southern white moderates by 46-44.In 2004, however, Kerry got beaten by 15 points in the south (57-42). So where have all the southern white moderates gone?In a sense, nowhere. The ideological profile of the southern electorate has barely changed since 1996: it was 17 percent liberal/44 percent moderate/39 conserative then; it is 17 percent liberal/43 percent moderate/40 percent conservative now. And among whites, the ideological profile was 15 percent liberal/43 percent moderate/43 percent conservative in 1996; it is 14 percent liberal/41 percent moderate/45 percent conservative now.Not much change. But what has changed is a big swing from Clinton’s 46-44 support among southern white moderates in ’96 to Kerry’s 58-41 deficit among the same voting group, whose size and electoral weight remains as potent as ever, in 2004.There’s your target. Move southern white moderates back toward parity and the Democrats are back in the (southern) ballgame.

The odds of making serious gains among Southern white moderates–and also of cutting modestly into the massive GOP margins among conservatives–are even better in non-presidential-year state races, like those coming up in 2006. Already, two strong potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates in the Deep South are focused on winning by swaying suburban moderate voters. Alabama Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley could benefit from a cultural-issues split between backers of incumbent Governor Bob Riley and his likely primary opponent, Ten-Commandments-toting former Judge Roy Moore. And Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox cites her ability to win key Atlanta suburban counties in 2002 as a major credential in her bid to topple incumbent Gov. Sonny Perdue.Just goes to show: sometimes the regional stereotypes can be misleading. Given all the talk in national Dem circles about the need to appeal to NASCAR-obsessed, pickup-truck driving rural Bubbas, it would be especially rich to see two women take over state houses by winning suburban moderates.

The word a couple of weeks ago was that DC GOPers were less than thrilled at CA Gov. Arnold Schwarzennegar’s redistricting reform ballot initiative, on grounds that the current system nationally is helping keep Republicans in charge, and they’d just as soon leave things as they are.Well, the odds of letting sleeping dogs lie on this subject just went way down, as Republican legislators in my poor home state of Georgia started a re-redistricting of Congressional Districts aimed at zapping a couple of Democratic incumbents. Their model, of course, is the Great Texas Power Grab of 2003, the re-redistricting engineered by Tom DeLay which ultimately produced a net gain of five House seats for the GOP, reversing what would have otherwise been a loss of seats in 2004 (Republicans in Colorado tried the same stunt, but were overruled by the courts citing a state constitutional provision limiting redistricting to once a decade). But in a way, the Georgia gambit is worse. In Texas, the fig-leaf justifications for the Power Grab were that (a) the Dem majority in the House delegation did not reflect recent partisan results in statewide elections, and (b) the map they were throwing out was drawn by judges, not legislators. In Georgia, (a) the current 7-6 GOP advantage in House districts is a pretty fair reflection of recent election results, and (b) the map they are throwing out was duly drawn by the legislature, signed by the Governor, pre-cleared by the Bush Justice Department, and upheld by the courts. In other words, the Georgia Republicans are undertaking this outrage, well, because they can. The new GOPer map is apparently aimed at snuffing two white Democratic House members, Jim Marshall, who represents a central-west central GA district, and John Barrow, who just beat a Republican incumbent to represent the Athens-Augusta-Savannah district. They aren’t going after the state’s four African-American House Members (John Lewis, Cynthia McKinney, David Scott, and Sanford Bishop) because that would raise an unmistakable Voting Right Act issue. But in any event, the GA Power Grab may wind up biting the national GOP in the butt. News of the latest Power Grab led (according to the subscription-only Roll Call newspaper) House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to put in a few phone calls to Democrats in the three states where their party has taken over total control of the executive and legislative branches since the regular redistricting cycle prior to 2002: Illinois, New Mexico, and Louisiana. Illinois is a potentially ripe target for a retaliatory re-redistricting, since GOPers hold nine seats, and because the new chairman of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel, is from that state. Moreover, one of the Illinois Republicans who could find himself in sudden trouble is a guy named Dennis Hastert. Personally, I hate all this re-redistricting crap, and the whole system of partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymandering that has reduced the People’s House of Congress to a vast rotten borough where politicians choose voters rather than the other way around. But if Republicans continue to game the system, they can’t complain if Democrats retaliate where they can, and maybe the whole spectacle can build support for a truly national drive for comprehensive redistricting reform. Maybe those Georgia Republican jokers will smell the coffee and call off the dogs before their own party’s House speaker finds himself hunted as well.

The blogosphere is abuzz today with commentary on the Swift Boat Veterans-style smear campaign underway against AARP for its temerity in opposing Bush’s SocSec privatization plan (Jeez, what did you expect, GOPers? Anything else would be like Jerry Falwell suddenly embracing an “alternative lifestyle.”).I followed Josh Marshall’s link to the truly bizarre and disgusting ad placed by the perpetrators of this smear, USANext, on The American Spectator site, and then took a quick gander at Smear Central itself. It’s not surprising that USANext is setting itself up as a Wingnut alternative to AARP, but still, I was a bit startled to see this pitch from none other than Art Linkletter:

Do you want more taxes taken out of your earnings? Do you want more unelected bureaucrats taking over more details of your life and your family’s life? Do you want federal regulators making your health choices, instead of you, your family, and your doctor? Do you want government regulators to control the investment and retirement decisions of your family, instead of you?If you answered “Yes,” then AARP is your group. They continuously work to create high taxes, big, invasive, bloated government, herds of regulators, and dependency of citizens on unelected bureaucrats.But if you answered “No,” USA Next is for you! Do you want lower taxes, more control over your life, health, and finances, with less government, and more constitutional restraints on judges and unelected bureaucrats? Then USA Next works and fights for you!

Now personally, I hope that if I make it to Linkletter’s age (92) I’ll be more focused on Getting Right with God than on Getting to the Right of Jimmy Dean Sausage. And I have a hard time believing he’s really sitting around all day worrying about the growing threat posed by “unelected bureaucrats.”But in any event, it’s clear that USANext’s goal is to drive down AARP’s membership dues, in one of those classic “defund the (sic!) Left” manuevers that Rove and Norquist are so fond of. The ploy also owes a lot to the old Communist fundraising tactic of creating a vast network of ideologically-approved civic and political organizations and forcing party members and fellow travelers to pony up for the cause.I do wonder, though, if these guys are really willing to go toe-to-toe with AARP in the full range of membership services by, for example, negotiating discounted rates with hotel chains. I just don’t know how many seniors out there are so devoted to the cause of screwing up their grandchildren’s retirement security that they are willing to pay full rates at Day’s Inn.

Speaking of Republicans and polls, I guess it’s time to comment on the early raft of opinion surveys about the identity of George W. Bush’s successor as GOP presidential nominee in 2008.As the latest Gallup Poll illustrates, every poll of Republican voters and leaners shows Rudy Guiliani and John McCain stomping the field (Gallup has Rudy at 33% and McCain at 30%, with Jeb Bush being the only other name that attracts double-digit support at 12%).Let me be among the first to say: it ain’t going to happen. The Republican Party is not going to nominate a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Rudy, and it’s not going to nominate a Scourge of the Conservative Movement like McCain, a man who has so consistently defied the Norquistian gospel that tax cuts trump every other national priority. If either of these gents runs for president and gains steam, the Right will unite behind someone else, either a safe ideological bet like Frist or Allen or Brownback (I don’t think Santorum is going to be in the Senate after 2006), or someone a bit less conventional like Hagel or Pawlenty or even Condi Rice, if she’s willing to take all sorts of oaths on cultural issues and taxes. Why? Because candidates like Guiliani and McCain would unravel the whole coalition of the cultural Right and the Mammon-worshippers on which today’s GOP has been so painstakingly constructed. And that coalition certainly has enough power to take down anyone it chooses in a Republican nominating contest.There’s another poll out there (reported via Jerome at Mydd) that’s a bit closer to the underlying reality of where the GOP will go in 2008: a “straw poll” taken at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee conference, which asked respondents who they thought would become the eventual nominee (NOT which candidate they personally favored). In this one Guiliani is basically tied with Rice in the high teens, and McCain’s down there tied with Frist and Allen at 11%.And that’s nearly four years out, before the Right has had the chance to mull over its options and road-test a new champion.Sure, GOPers are more than happy to let Guiliani and McCain get a lot of early attention, using them to give the party a more moderate image. But when the deal goes down, these guys will be discarded like an old Lincoln Day speech, and we’ll find out for real where the Right wants to take its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Republican Party.

Now here’s another depressing little item for your Presidents’ Day reading. As Steve Clemons reported last week, the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College of Maryland did a poll asking Americans how they’d vote in a hypothetical matchup of George Washington, and George W. Bush. While the Father of Our Country managed to crush W. by 20 points among all respondents, Bush won a 62-28 landslide among self-identified Republicans.Lord have mercy. I can understand how today’s Republicans have a healthy appreciation for Bush’s (or more accurately, Karl Rove’s) political skills. And I can even understand how a lot of people who aren’t that crazy about Bush decided to vote for him last year because they didn’t want a change of leadership or didn’t like (or didn’t understand) John Kerry. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, how could anybody prefer Bush to George Washington? To be sure, the poll indicated that many Americans don’t know much about George Washington beyond the cherry tree and wooden teeth myths, and it’s abundantly clear that many Americans don’t know much about Bush’s actual record. But still, it’s a sign that the Busholatry of today’s Republicans has gotten really out of hand. Depending on what happens during Bush’s second term, he is almost certain to go down in history as a president comparable to William McKinley at best (the symbol and vehicle for a political realignment he did little or nothing to cause) or Warren G. Harding at worst (the amiable front-man for a feeding frenzy of corruption and national irresponsibility). He clearly doesn’t belong in any comparison with George Washington, and millions of Republicans must be drunk on their own koolaid to think otherwise.

This morning brings the sad news that Hunter S. Thompson, the sage of Gonzo Journalism, has died at 67, of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.I never had the chance to meet Thompson, and haven’t paid much attention to his writings since the early 1980s, but at his peak, he was without peer as a improvisational writer on subjects ranging from politics to drugs to pro football, to–well, to nearly every subject touching on his tortured vision of the American Dream. Any blogger who hasn’t read Thompson is arguably missing the originator of the medium’s distinctive style, long before the internet. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, his brilliant account of the 1972 presidential campaign, reads a lot more like a long series of blog posts than any kind of print journalism report. And all his earlier books, from Hell’s Angels through The Curse of Lono, are worth reading and re-reading.Thompson’s career also represents a cautionary tale about the cost of celebrity–a celebrity he seemed to endure rather than pursue. At one point Thompson was planning another Fear and Loathing book about the 1976 presidential campaign, but abandoned it, because, as he told an interviewer: “It’s hard to cover a campaign as an Outlaw Journalist when you’re getting more attention than the candidates…. I can thank friend Trudeau for that.” He was referring, of course, to the Uncle Duke character in Doonesbury, based not-so-loosely on Thompson, which destroyed any sort of casual privacy for its model once and for all. And that’s also probably why Thompson’s later writings seemed often to read like self-parody.But his genius is without question, and in the welter of drugs and gunplay and sexual assault charges that appear to have marked his declining years, I can only hope he never lost his touching, almost naive faith in the possibilities of America “as a monument to the human race’s best instincts”–a faith that fueled his rage at the “greedheads” who betrayed those possibilities.So: here’s to Doctor Gonzo’s memory, and I guess the only proper way of commemorating his passing is to hunker down somewhere, light up a King Marlboro, shrewdly rip the pop tops off a six-pack of beer, and read his remarkable prose.

George W. Bush’s upcoming summit with his soul-buddy Vladimir Putin is a serious test of just about every strategic claim of the Bush administration.During the late campaign, both Bush and his running-mate Dick Cheney suddenly showed interest in the “loose nukes” issue, suggesting that terrorist access to nuclear materials was the biggest single threat to our national security. Yet there is no real evidence that Bush has ever made this a major issue in his discussions with Putin, despite the former Soviet Union’s unequalled status as the leaky valve in the world’s system of preventing sale of nuclear materials to anybody with the cash to buy them.Similarly, Russia’s headlong plunge towards quasi-fascism is a rather conspicuous challenge to Bush’s claim that America is spreading freedom and democracy into every corner of the globe. Will Bush make either of these issues–one of immediate, urgent importance to our national security, the other of long-term importance–a really big, visible deal in his discussions with Putin? Or will he settle for the usual symbolic gestures that signify no real commitments from Moscow? We’ll soon see if the Cowboy President who’s allegedly afraid of no one is willing to stand up to this challenge, or will again show he’s a virtual gunslinger who’s afraid to take risks that don’t excite the viewers of Fox News.

The New Republic’s latest issue includes a provocative package of essays on the future of liberalism as part of a 90-year anniversary of that magazine’s founding–an issue that notes the term was basically invented in its American context by TNR itself.It’s all worth reading. E.J. Dionne argues that liberals have erred in conceding religious language and religious constituencies to the GOP, part of the reason the robber barons of the Bush-Rove-DeLay ascendancy have gotten away with casting themselves as moral traditionalists. Martin Peretz offers a dyspeptic and occasionally annoying but fundamentally accurate take on the intellectual emptiness of today’s American Left (bloggers take note: definining yourself by savage partisanship doesn’t really mean “standing up for your principles” unless you articulate them). The always-interesting John Judis suggests that the shifting dynamics of the U.S. and global economies have placed liberals on a permanent defensive when it comes to economic policy.But for my money, the most instructive piece in the package is Jonathan Chait’s analysis of the asymmetrical war being waged by conservatives who have an ideological template for every policy they pursue, regardless of the context, the evidence, or the results; and liberals who are focused on real-life results as the end and are flexible as to the means for getting those results.Chait’s discourse strongly confirms the New Democrat argument that American Progressivism has always involved fixed, result-oriented ends and flexible, experimental means. By that definition, all the great icons of American Liberalism, from Wilson to FDR to JFK, LBJ, and MLK, anticipated less orthodox figures like Carter and Clinton in challenging the idea that every “liberal” program or policy had to be defended as a matter of principle. But Chait also challenges liberals of every variety to understand that their principled willingness to act as members of the “reality-based community” creates a tactical disadvantage in competing with conservatives whose policies are based on ideological certainties that are immune to actual experience or results.And that, I submit, is an important question in today’s debate within the Democratic Party about how to deal with the purely ideological politics of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Today there’s a strong sentiment, especially in the blogosphere, that we must closely emulate the conservative movement, and become as cynical, as fact-free, and as rigid as the opposition if we want to beat them. For a variety of reasons, including the superior appeal in the “reality-free community” of policies that offer free lunches domestically and a search-and-destroy missions internationally, I think that’s a losing proposition, and an unprincipled position, for Democrats. We need to raise our game and appeal to our best instincts, and the best instincts of the American people.

As my colleague The Moose reported earlier today, Ralph Reed gave Georgia Democrats something to get excited about by officially announcing his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor in 2006. This race, folks, will be more fun than a barrel of monkeys at a creationism conference.Why, you might ask, is the Lordly Ralph, the legendary architect of Christian Right politics and more recently the extremely successful Georgia GOP chairman and Bush-Cheney strategist, so interested in presiding over the Georgia State Senate? In an earlier post, I suggested that he may be the victim of the Raquel Welch Syndrome, the natural if often hopeless desire to become respected as a serious practitioner of one’s chosen art, whether it’s acting or governing. But I’ve since learned that Reed has harbored a burning ambition since childhood to serve as Chief Executive of the Empire State of the South, and views the LG job as a stepping stone to that Seat of Power, a necessity since one of his political makeover projects, Governor Sonny Perdue, is running for re-election in ’06.But first Ralph must overcome a primary challenge from another guy who’s been seeing a future Governor in the bathroom mirror since he became old enough to reach the sink, Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, the scion of a well-known political family who’s been elected statewide three times. The first published polls show Oxendine with a healthy lead over Reed. And he will not readily concede Christian Right support to Ralph: in his first race for Insurance Commissioner back in 1994, Oxendine’s big proposal was to exempt churches from paying some state tax on insurance policies, arguing that he didn’t want to “tax God” (you just can’t make this stuff up).But I suspect that Oxendine’s campaign against Reed will be, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, “like sending out a three-toed sloth to take turf from a wolverine.” With all due respect to the Insurance Commissioner, he’s not exactly a Big Strategic Thinker. In fact, he’d probably draw even odds in a game of State Capitals with Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, the guy who’s besmirching my surname in his campaign for governor this year.Should Reed dispatch Oxendine, the real fun will begin. Former state legislator Greg Hecht, who ran a respectable but losing campaign for Congress in 2002, has already announced for the Democratic nomination. But the buzz is that Hecht will likely face one of my favorite politicians, Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. Thurmond is a smart, charming, funny, and accomplished African-American with a proven track record of biracial appeal (he used to joke that he did particularly well in heavily-white counties bordering South Carolina where they thought he was Strom Thurmond’s grandson).If Reed is the GOPer in the race, the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, will have no trouble raising money in-state and nationally, and will need no more than fifteen minutes to compile an oppo-research file so toxic that they’ll have to handle it with tongs. Indeed, Oxendine aside, the biggest obstacle to a Reed candidacy may be the possibility that Ralph will have to take crucial time off the campaign trail to cool his heels in various courtrooms and congressional hearing-rooms preparing to explain his alleged role in the ever-widening Abramoff Indian Tribe Casino Shakedown scandal, a truly bizarre tale of corruption and hypocrisy that is likely to tranfix the whole hep political world at some point this year. I’m not the only one who’s looking forward to the moment when Reed has to testify before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee chaired by Sen. John McCain, the object of the famous 2000 South Carolina primary smear-and-whispering campaign by Bush operatives, reportedly under the direction of one Ralph Reed.If that’s not enough intrigue to keep you bookmarking that Atlanta Journal-Constitution web page (or checking out Reed’s exceptionally cheesy campaign site), there’s additional irony in Ralph’s aspiration to become Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. In between his better-known gigs with the Christian Coalition, the 2002 Georgia coordinated campaign, and the two Bush campaigns, Ralph tried his hand at being a down-home paid political consultant. In 1998, he was the key strategist for a Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor named Mitch Scandalakis, who ran a series of ads that (a) made an overt racial appeal, and (b) accused his opponent, Mark Taylor, of a completely fabricated cocaine addiction. Not only did Ralph’s candidate get righteously stomped like a Klansman at a Hip-Hop club; the backlash against his tactics took down most of the whole state Republican ticket.If that’s not enough irony for you, there’s this: when Ralph’s Republican buddies took over the state Senate in 2003, they stripped the Lieutenant Governor’s Office–occupied by the self-same smear target Mark Taylor–of most of its considerable powers. If Ralph somehow wins, he will have to go back to those same senators (assuming his party hangs onto control) and explain why he needs to lord it over them with powers denied to his predecessor.All in all, it’s going to be a wild ride.

Today Senators Clinton, Boxer and Kerry, along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, held a press conference to unveil an ambitious and very comprehensive election reform proposal, which they want enacted in time for the 2006 mid-term balloting. Thank God they moved quickly on this idea, instead of letting the memories of a second straight presidential election nearly winding up in the courts fade.The proposal itself is pretty far-reaching, including (1) making Election Day a federal holiday, (2) creating uniform rules for handling of provisional ballots, (3) requiring early voting opportunities, along with no-questions-asked absentee balloting, (4) boosting training for poll workers, (5) criminalizing voter intimidation tactics, (6) restoring voting rights for former felons, (7) requiring paper receipts for electronic voting machines, and (8) providing the federal funds to make sure this reform isn’t as shoddily impemented as its predecessor, the Help America Vote Act.The only quibble I have about the specifics of the proposal is that the sponsors should make sure to provide some leeway from the more prescriptive features of the bill for states with an exemplary record of fair and voter-friendly election administration. I’m thinking of Oregon, whose excellent administration of an all-mail-ballot system has produced remarkable voter turnout levels with virtually no complaints. And I’m also thinking of my home state of Georgia, where Secretary of State Cathy Cox (who may well be the Democratic candidate for governor in ’06) has done the best possible job of implementing a statewide touch-screen system. Yeah, I know, Diebold Conspiracy theorists don’t like that, but as Sam Rosenfeld recently explained in The American Prospect, Georgians seem to love the new system, and there have been no allegations of fraud or other irregularities there.The Diebold reference leads me to another point about election reform: Democrats need to go to considerable lengths to establish that this issue is not just about Democratic complaints concerning the outcome of the last two presidential elections, and that supporting election reform does not mean endorsing the views of those who believe the whole system has been completely rigged. Why? Because unlike a lot of Democratic proposals these days, this is one that we actually need to get enacted into law, because it will materially improve our chances of winning elections. And given the broad popularity of most of the election reforms contained in the new proposal, there is actually a fair chance that some if not most Republicans can be coerced, shamed or otherwise stampeded into going along. We definitely need to give it a shot, and keeping the message of election reform on a higher, nonpartisan, “good government” plane is essential to that task. If it doesn’t work, then fine, we can go after the GOP hammer-and-tongs at that point.Beyond that, I hope Democrats who embrace election reform are willing to link this issue to a broader political reform agenda: redistricting reform, lobbying reform, corporate subsidy reform, budget reform, ethics reform, and a recommitment to campaign finance reform. The current system ain’t benefitting Democrats, and ain’t benefitting the country, so we should throw caution to the wind and make it definitively clear that there’s little about the current system we are not willing to take a serious look at and, if appropriate, change.So: I enthusiastically applaud the sponsors of the Count Every Vote Act as trailblazers in what we can only hope will be a whole new theme in Democratic politics from Washington to every state and city. And I hope those bloggers who like to call themselves “Reform Democrats” will get specific about what that means and weigh in with what JFK used to call “great vigor.”