Sara Robinson has a three-parter at Tom Paine.com, “Learning from the Cultural Conservatives,” which should be of interest to Dems concerned with longer-range political strategy.
Part I, subtitled “Messing With Their Minds,” examines the animating vision that powered the conservative political takeover of the 1980’s. Part II, “Talking Up The Worldview,” takes a thoughtful look at “the specific communications strategies conservatives adopted to increase the appeal of their ideas, and embed them deeply in American mass culture.” In Part III, “Taking It To The Street,” Robinson discusses how the ideological right sank roots in local institutions to hardwire their messaging and how we might go about creating new progressive traditions to promote a more favorable worldview. Robinson’s series is more focused on strengthening progressive movements than building the Democratic Party. But she does provide some interesting ideas for Dems interested in Party-building.

Project Vote has a post that ought to command concern and attention from a broad spectrum of Democrats, “Low-Income Americans Denied Voter Registration Opportunities, New Report Shows.” The post summarizes the findings of an important new study “Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act, 1995-2007” conducted by Project Vote and Demos, indicates that for the 12 years after this hard-won law was enacted “Voter registrations from public agencies that provide services to low-income Americans have declined dramatically.”
In examining state-by-state data, the post notes,

…In states across the nation—Virginia, Florida, Texas, Nevada and many others—public assistance agencies are neglecting to offer voter registration to all clients and applicants, as required by the law. Because of noncompliance with the NVRA, the rights of thousands of low-income citizens are violated daily…Registrations from public assistance agencies have declined 79 percent between 1995, when the Act was first implemented in, and 2006; in other words, registrations declined from 2.6 million to just 540,000 by the 2005-2006 reporting period. Field investigations and analysis of available data strongly suggest that low registration rates are a result of states’ noncompliance with the law.

It comes as no shock that, according to the report, “Department of Justice has failed in recent years to actively enforce the public assistance provisions of the NVRA.” The harm done to Democratic candidates is considerable. In 2006, for example, 13 million voting-age citizens from households earning less than $25,000 were not registered.
More surprising is the decline in some states that had Democratic governors or secretaries of state during the period of the study. Can’t blame the GOP for that; It’s on us.

Although Senator Clinton won very close to half of the votes In Florida’s Democratic primary, there were some signs of hope for Senator Obama, according to HuffPo Editor Nico Pitney’s article “Florida Results Show Late Momentum for Obama.” Says Pitney:

The election was mostly meaningless — Florida’s delegates have been stripped and none of the Democratic candidates campaigned there — but Clinton’s “beauty contest” victory rally was covered by all the cable news networks, and she’s sure to receive more positive press heading into the all-important February 5 super-primary.
Yet a closer look at the exit surveys shows some notably positive trends for Clinton’s chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama.
Despite losing the state overall by 17 points, Obama actually won more support than Clinton from voters who made up their minds in the last three days (46 percent to 38 percent), in the last week (39-31) and in the last month (47-40).
Clinton did defeat Obama among Floridians who decided on a candidate on the day of the primary. But overwhelmingly, Clinton’s support came from those who made up their minds over a month ago (63 percent to 27 percent), and from early voters who used absentee ballots (50-31). Floridians began receiving absentee ballots in late December.
According to the exit polls, those early deciders and early voters made up fully 59 percent of Florida’s Democratic electorate.
The results seem to indicate that Obama picked up significant momentum in Florida following his victories in Iowa and South Carolina, as well as his high-profile endorsements (49 percent of Florida voters said Ted Kennedy’s support was important to their decision)…Clinton’s margin of victory among Election Day deciders was the narrowest of all: 34 percent to 30 percent..

Naturally, the Clinton camp sees all of this as tortured analysis. But, with Edwards reportedly ready to quit, and Clinton’s double digit margin in FL notwithstanding, this ball game isn’t over.

We lead with a quartet of posts with special relevance to SC today: First, for those who have been wondering about the SC poll numbers, Mark Blumenthal has “South Carolina: Why So Much Variation?” in his Pollster.com post
Adele M. Stan’s “Can Black Women Save the Liberal Coalition?” mulls over the new leverage African American women have in the primaries in The American Prospect. See also Amy Alexander’s post in The Nation, “Black Women Talk Barack” and Elizabeth G. Hines’s Alternet piece “What Black Women’s Votes Mean for the Presidential Race.”
The Clinton campaign is doing a lot of things right, chief among them is the way they have worked the Hispanic vote. The Politico’s Gebe Martinez “Clinton’s Hispanic Edge” may be the best article yet written about the Latino vote at this juncture in the ’08 campaign.
Time magazine’s Rani Molla probes the factors driving “The Democrats Turnout Triumph” in the primaries, and wonders if the pattern will hold in the general election.
Lest we forget, GOP front-runner John McCain has a messy track record, and The Daily Kos‘s Smintheus has the skinny in his article “McCain still lying after all these years.”

The latest New York Times ‘Bloggingheads’ video features TDS co-editor Ruy Teixeira and The Atlantic.com conservative blogger Ross Douthat discussing Democratic strategy regarding the “blowback on universal health care.”
Also at NYT, Kevin Sack takes an in-depth look at John Edwards’s health care proposal and probes his flexibility on on the issue. The Times also has a convenient gateway link to articles about all the presidential candidates’ health care plans. Yet another way to check out the candidates’ recent statements and positions on health care (and other issues) is through WaPo‘s nifty “issues tracker” tool, which flags relevant articles. Meanwhile, the just-released Pew Research Center report on issue priorities indicates health care reform is increasingly a leading concern of Independents.

Democratic candidates are all in South Carolina on MLK Day prepping for the CNN debate. HRC will start the day in the front ranks of the King Day March and Rally in Columbia and will join Edwards and Obama at the CNN debate in Myrtle Beach. Her husband Bill Clinton will address the MLK Commemorative Service at Dr. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Interestingly, Huckabee will also attend). Edwards will hold a campaign rally in Columbia before the debate and afterwards will take part in a town hall meeting in Conway. Obama apparently doesn’t have major scheduled events, other than tonight’s debate, according to the New York Times candidate schedule tracker.

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.”

The Boston Globe‘s Susan Milligan reports on the growing influence of a key group in today’s election — New Hampshire’s young Democrats.
Bob Benenson has a post at CQ Politics highlighting key demographic differences between Iowa and New Hampshire, in terms of what it might mean to the candidates.
L.A. Times reporters Maeve Reston and Doyle McManus address the battle for win the hearts and minds of NH Independents.
Katharine Q. Seelye has a New York Times story on the ad war in NH, with quantitative comparisons of different campaigns and discussing the power of ‘word of mouth’ vs. TV ads.
Justin Wolfers has a Wall St. Journal piece on the “prediction markets” and NH. with a few thoughts on the Granite State’s disproportionate power as a state that provides 1 percent of the delegates to national conventions, but a huge, arguably pivotal, measure of influence.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s WaPo op-ed “A Candidacy’s Prose and Cons” provides a perceptive commentary comparing the messaging skills of Obama and Clinton.
Ariel Sabar has a Christian Science Monitor article about the remarkable transformation of NH into a gorgeous shade of blue, led by “the leftward drift of Independents,” no less.

Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal muses soberly, and at length on what the Iowa polls do and do not show.
The Wall St. Journal is getting a little nervous about the ‘populist’ tone of some of the candidates in Iowa.
WSJ’s Amy Chozick reports on the Dems’ surge in rural IA.
In addition to the DMR poll, Open Left‘s Chris Bowers sees increasing signs pointing toward an IA win for Obama
WaPo‘s Dan Balz says the Dems’ contest in IA is a battle over tone, as well as issues and direction.
John Zogby believes that there is a good chance of a three-way tie in the Dem caucuses.
The Politico‘s Roger Simon argues that media buzz may doom 3rd, or even 2nd place candidates.
ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper debunks the myth that IA Dems don’t vote for women.
Larry J. Sabato has a bit of a raspberry for the whole Iowa thing.

The final Des Moines Register Poll Democratic results are great news for Barack Obama. The LV percentage results: Obama 32; Clinton 25; Edwards 24; Richardson 6; Biden 4; Dodd 2; Kucinich 1; Gravel less than 1. Part of the good news is that the final DMR poll before the Iowa caucuses has a perfect track record in ranking the order that candidates finished in the caucuses for both 2004 and 2000. In addition, Obama’s margin was double the m.o.e (3.5%) for the poll.
The cautionary note for Obama is that the percentage of first-time Iowa caucus-goers and self-identified Independents is much higher in the ’07 DMR sample. Historically, first-time caucus-goers have not shown up at the caucuses in impressive percentages. As Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal puts it “this Register sample predicts a very different set of caucus participants than in years past” (As always, Blumenthal’s analysis is required reading for poll junkies.) The only thing to add is that there is a bit more of a lag between the final DMR poll and the caucuses this year than in ’04, when the poll was released the day before the caucus.