Political Animal Kevin Drum joins Kos in giving the thumbs up to the ‘Super Tuesday’ (February 5th) monster primary, although Drum stipulates:

I’m pretty much on board with this. I’d rather see the candidates spend a year running a truly national campaign — the kind they’ll need to run in the general election — instead of spending 90% of their time in two small states where they engage in nostalgic but obsolete coffee klatsch campaigning. Like it or not, that just isn’t the way the world works anymore.
However, if a single massive primary day is the way we decide to do things in the future, I hope that by 2012 we can agree to move the whole process forward and hold it in, say, April or May. The first week of February is just too early to commit to a candidate who won’t be elected until November.

A smidge less gung-ho than Kos, who says:

There’s some level of nostalgia over the notion of a long, drawn out primary process in which Iowa and New Hampshire kick things off. This is supposed to help the Jimmy Carter-type underdogs “build momentum” and give voters a chance to “deliberate” over their decisions.
In reality, of course, we had a system in which two non-representative states (IA and NH) decided our nominee last time, and they were gunning for the same “right” this time around.
The rest of the states aren’t morons. They saw what was happening, and so many have moved up to the front of the pack that now we have essentially a national primary on Feb. 5. Is that a bad thing? I’d argue it’s a fantastic thing.

New Donkey Ed Kilgore sees things differently in his recent post, entitled “Nomination Abomination”:

This, folks, is simply crazy. February 5 is nine months before the general election, and roughly six months before the nominating conventions. The heavily front-loaded 2004 schedule was rationalized by some Democrats as necessary to give the nominee time to take on an incumbent; there’s no such excuse for the far more front-loaded 2008 calendar. It virtually guarantees that three factors—money, name ID, and success in the earliest states, especially Iowa—will determine the outcome. And it may well snuff any serious chance for the lower-tier candidates in both parties, who must now somehow simultaneously combine relentless campaigning in Iowa with the massive fundraising necessary to compete in the incredibly expensive February 5 landscape.
Most importantly, the emerging calendar will provide zero opportunity for second thoughts after the early rush has anointed nominees. It could be a very long spring, summer and autumn if a nominee commits some major blunder, or some disabling skeleton jumps out of a closet.

All three of the above make good points. However, their arguments assume that one candidate will emerge on top on Feb. 5th, which may not be the case. Perhaps we can agree that it’s a good thing, assuming two big “ifs” — if one candidate comes out on top, and if that candidate is the best competitor to carry the party standard. It looks like a done deal for ’08, and the outcome will no doubt determine the future of the whole monster primary concept. It’s certainly one of the most important Democratic strategy choices, and readers are encouraged to read all three posts and some of the more than 250 comments on the articles submitted thus far.

Zack Exley’s Alternet article “What Lessons Can Progressives Learn from Evangelicals?” (also posted at In These Times) provides an interesting update on the growth of the progressive evangelicals and insights about how they may influence evangelical Christians as a whole. Exley notes, for example:

…this movement is still barely aware of its own existence, and has not chosen a label for itself. George Barna, who studies trends among Christians for clients such as the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and Focus on the Family, calls it simply “The Revolution” and its adherents “Revolutionaries.”
“The media are oblivious to it,” Barna wrote in his 2006 book Revolution: Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary. “Scholars are clueless about it. The government caught a glimpse of it in the 2004 presidential election but has mostly misinterpreted its nature and motivations.” According to his research, there are more than 20 million Revolutionaries in America, differentiated from mainstream evangelicals by a greater likelihood of serving their community and the poor and oppressed within it…

Credible statistics are scarce. Generally evangelical progressives agree more with Democrats about most economic and social justice issues, but a sizeable portion may prefer the GOP’s positions on abortion and gay rights. And there is also a struggle going on for the soul of the evangelical movement between “prosperity Gospel” advocates and “Social Gospel” adherents. The article suggests that the trendline may be in the Dems’ favor.
But the real benefit of evangelical progressives to Dems may be less how they vote as a sub-group and more about how they influence the much larger constituency of evangelical Christians. If, for example, they generate more discussion about the economics of Jesus among mainstream evangelicals, it could lead to substantial party-switching among evangelicals favoring Dems. In any event, there is more of interest in Exley’s article and the comments that follow it, and it is recommended to Dems interested in building support among religious communities.

One of the Dems’ biggest challenges in struggling against the most incompetent and corrupt Administration in U.S. history is that there is so much scandal, mess and outrage du jour that it’s hard to get any coverage for their pro-active solutions to America’s most critical problems. What should be the Dems’ strongest card, a unified front supporting policies for energy independence gets hardly any buzz at all.
As a key to addressing huge problems, like middle east entanglement, rising gas prices, air pollution, out -of-control military spending and global warming, energy independence is a highly popular goal, according to the most recent polls. A poll released last year by Foreign Affairs magazine found nearly 90 percent of respondents agreed that “the lack of energy independence jeopardizes national security.” The poll indicated that 48 percent say “the United States deserves a “D” or “F” for its efforts on energy dependence.”
Most of the Democratic presidential candidates have similar positions on this issue, nicely encapsulated in non-candidate (thus far) Wesley Clark’s web page as one of the three most important issues:

We must put a policy in place to lead us to energy independence and away from the volatile and conflict-ridden regions where, today, the “geostrategic risk premium” is adding billions of dollars to the costs imposed on the American people. Our reliance on oil also impacts global climate change. As I have stated before, global warming has serious national security risks: stretching our military resources to deal with catastrophes (like Katrina) and increasing the potential for conflicts due to the displacement of people, competition for scarce resources, and adverse effects on agriculture

Because most Dems are in general agreement about measures to promote energy independence, there is an enormous opportunity for the candidates to get behind a unified statement that will define Dems as the Party of hope, in stark contrast to the GOP’s lack of a credible policy for energy independence.
Senate Democrats are supporting a modest “Clean Energy Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) Initiative” a package to reduce U.S. petroleum consumption by 6 million barrels a day in 2020—or 40 percent of America’s projected imports (See here for more about the plan). Not a bad start, but voters might be more receptive to a speedier timetable, perhaps a more dramatic “Manhattan project” style crash-program.
It shouldn’t be all that hard for Dem candidates to unite around a common agenda that includes tougher CAFE standards, more investment in mass rail transit, increased tax credits for hybrid cars, alternative energy development — an energy independence package that benefits Dem candidates and strengthens the party’s image.

A writer with the handle ‘its simple IF you ignore the complexity’ has a thought-provoking post over at the Daily Kos, addressing one of the lessons of MLK’s example for conducting political discourse. ‘It’s simple..’ explains it this way in one part of the essay:

I don’t think anyone could seriously make the argument that Dr. King was a sellout…Nay, he stood strong – continuously willing to speak out and when necessary suffer for his beliefs. Expecting not exceptions, but real change in the laws and attitudes he challenged, realizing that neither would come lightly.
Yet, significantly Dr. King managed to do something that we too often overlook. He disagreed – strongly. He challenged injustice – but he did not divide.
He drew lines not to exclude others but to demand change. Recognizing change would not come instantly, he still refused to fall into the trap of hating and demeaning his adversaries.

This should not be considered a call to kumbaya for political writers. Their job is to illuminate truth, and tough analysis of personal character is fair game, provided it’s honest and well-measured.
But the way MLK derived credibilty from criticising policies, while refusing to demonize his adversaries is something campaign workers and candidates should ponder. They have a lot to lose by falling into the trap of ad hominem attacks. Name-calling and personal insults, for example, diminish the dignity of the perp more than the target. Voters want their leaders to be articulate enough to sharply criticize policies, and yet be above what Rev. Jesse Jackson called the “rat-a-tat-tat” of snarky political discourse.
There is a lovely moment in an occasionaly re-televised clip of MLK on the Mike Douglas Show back in the sixties. Douglas is interviewing MLK, and another guest chimes in, questioning one of King’s positions. King calmly, respectfully and eloquently answers the question without the barest hint of hostility. The lovely moment comes at the end of the clip as King sits there with luminous dignity, Douglas and his other guest, not only persuaded, but clearly awestruck by King’s spirit.
We can’t expect our politicians to measure up to MLK, but they have a lot to gain by emulating his way of winning hearts and minds.

Journalists and everyone interested in the political power of the internet have a must-read to clip over at the L.A. Times, Terry McDermott’s “Blogs Can Top the Presses.” McDermott’s article is part tribute to Josh Marshall’s cutting-edge political reporting and part meditation on the ways bloggers are transforming political journalism.
From McDermott’s profile of Marshall’s shop:

It’s 20 or so blocks up town to the heart of the media establishment, the Midtown towers that house the big newspaper, magazine and book publishers. And yet it was here in a neighborhood of bodegas and floral wholesalers that, over the last two months, one of the biggest news stories in the country — the Bush administration’s firing of a group of U.S. attorneys — was pieced together by the reporters of the blog Talking Points Memo.
The bloggers used the usual tools of good journalists everywhere — determination, insight, ingenuity — plus a powerful new force that was not available to reporters until blogging came along: the ability to communicate almost instantaneously with readers via the Internet and to deputize those readers as editorial researchers, in effect multiplying the reporting power by an order of magnitude.
In December, Josh Marshall, who owns and runs TPM , posted a short item linking to a news report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about the firing of the U.S. attorney for that state. Marshall later followed up, adding that several U.S. attorneys were apparently being replaced and asked his 100,000 or so daily readers to write in if they knew anything about U.S. attorneys being fired in their areas.
For the two months that followed, Talking Points Memo and one of its sister sites, TPM Muckraker, accumulated evidence from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings. The cause was taken up among Democrats in Congress. One senior Justice Department official has resigned, and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is now in the media crosshairs.
This isn’t the first time Marshall and Talking Points have led coverage on national issues. In 2002, the site was the first to devote more than just passing mention to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s claim that the country would have been better off had the segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Sen. Strom Thurmond succeeded. The subsequent furor cost Lott his leadership position.
Similarly, the TPM sites were leaders in chronicling the various scandals associated with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

And the punch line:

All of this from an enterprise whose annual budget probably wouldn’t cover the janitorial costs incurred by a metropolitan daily newspaper.

Kind of ironic that such an eloquent tribute to the power of a political blogger would appear in a newspaper, but there it is. Regretfully, nominees for Pulitzer Prizes for reporting excellence, which will be awarded in a month, must be newspaper employees under current rules. In a more just contest, Marshall and TPM would be a slam dunk for their influential reportage. It’s way past time for the Pulitzer Board to create a new category that reflects 21st century journalism.
There are more quotable insights about political blogging and related issues in McDermott’s excellent piece, but we’ve already excerpted a lot, so read the whole thing.

Those looking for an article to put the purge of federal prosecutors scandal in historical perspective are directed to Paul Rogat Loeb’s post at TomPaine.com. In three well-documented nut graphs, Loeb lays it out thusly:

…the administration and its allies have a long history of using the specter of election fraud to justify reprehensible actions. In 2000, Jeb Bush claimed to be fighting potential fraud when he purged over 55,000 voters from the Florida rolls for felony convictions that under law should have had their voting rights restored—or that never had them revoked to begin with. Some simply had names similar to that of a convicted felon. Staffers of ChoicePoint, the Republican-tied data-collection firm that handled this effort, acknowledged that they disproportionately targeted low-income Democrats, particularly African Americans. A follow-up by BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast found that 90 percent of those scrubbed were legitimate voters, enough by far to have made Al Gore the winner. And the Supreme Court that handed Bush the presidency was led by William Rehnquist, who got his start harassing black and Hispanic voters in South Phoenix as part of a Republican effort called Operation Eagle Eye.
Election fraud was also the watchword in 2004. Ohio Secretary of State (and Bush campaign chair) Ken Blackwell claimed he was just protecting the legitimacy of the vote when he knocked 300,000 voters off the rolls in key Democratic cities like Cleveland, far exceeding Bush’s margin of victory. Blackwell also tried to reject new Democratic registrations because an arcane law said they were supposed to be on 80-pound paper stock (presumably more secure), then had to back off when his own official forms failed the same criterion. And he went to court to ensure that provisional ballots would be considered only if cast in the right precinct, defeating their key purpose, even as he sowed voter confusion by pulling machines and closing down polling stations in longstanding Democratic neighborhoods.
But maybe voting integrity really is the issue in the current wave of firings. In the same 2004 election, Karl Rove aide Timothy Griffin, just named the new U.S. Attorney for eastern Arkansas, originated a strategy to send 70,000 letters challenging the addresses of black and Hispanic voters in places like Florida’s Jacksonville Naval Air Station, a local homeless shelter and the historically black Edward Waters College. As Palast writes in another BBC report, Republicans sent the letters out with do-not-forward instructions. When they came back undeliverable, as when soldiers were deployed overseas, Florida then struck the voters from the rolls so even absentee ballots no longer counted…

Loeb has more to say about why the Administration’s supposed ‘concern’ about voter fraud is awash in hypocricy. His article scratches the surface of the GOP’s long and sorry history of voter suppression through “ballot security” scams, felon disenfranchisement and other initiatives to thwart pro-Democratic voters, particularly African Americans — and shows why it takes a lot of nerve for Republicans to even mention the subject of voter fraud.

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall reports that GOP suppression of Democratic votes may be a leading motive behind the white house/Gonzales purge of federal prosecutors:

The story emerging is that at least some of these US Attorneys were fired because they weren’t aggressive enough in investigating Democratic ‘voter fraud’. Like I said last night, I’ve been reporting on this stuff for years. And this is a horse that shouldn’t even be let out of the gate. It’s become standard operating procedure for Republican operatives to whip up charges of ‘voter fraud’. And some of them even believe it. But the claims are almost universally bogus. And the real intent in most cases is to stymie get out the vote efforts or shut down voter registration drives — mainly, though not exclusively, in minority voting precincts.

Marshall provides a gateway link to his extensive reportage on the topic here.
Perhaps the Republicans were hoping that trumped up voter fraud charges against Dems would strengthen the case for the voter identification bills being hyped by the GOP in the states. As Christopher Drew reported in Feb 21 New York Times on the findings of a recent study by the federal Election Assistance Administration:

States that imposed identification requirements on voters reduced turnout at the polls in the 2004 presidential election by about 3 percent, and by two to three times as much for minorities…

In the unlikely event that the Republicans want to open up an honest dialogue about voter fraud and suppression, Dems will have more than enough to talk about given the GOP’s long, embarrassing history. For a pretty good introduction to voter fraud issues, click here. Note also that a Yahoo search of “GOP voter suppression” and “Republican Voter Suppression” each brings up more than 1,000 hits, compared to 78 for “Democratic voter suppression.”