If you want to catch up on the red-hot controversy over the Frost family and the Right’s crazy and rapidly backfiring campaign to make them examples of the over-generosity of S-CHIP, you can review the whole story via a variety of ahead-of-the-curve posts by Ezra Klein, or read Jonathan Cohn’s summary at The New Republic. The facts are pretty unmistakable: S-CHIP exists to help struggling middle-class families like the Frosts, and every single talking point in the Right’s ignorant demonization of this family shows the dishonesty of conservative claims to care about people who don’t have access to affordable health coverage.

With former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee auditioning for Dark Horse On the Move status in the Republican presidential contest, you might want to check out a solid profile of the man by D.T. Max for The New Republic. He notes Huckabee’s strengths (solid evangelical conservative credentials, a congenial personality, a populist economic rap, and the obligatory Personal Story, in his case about a successful weight loss program, written up by the candidate himself in a bestselling self-help book), and weaknesses (the lack of any kind of foreign policy experience, and past conservative ire at his tax record in Arkansas).
Speaking of taxes, in case Huckabee does somehow emerge as a serious candidate, Democrats should pay especial attention to Huckabee’s signature support for a reactionary national sales tax proposal, one of those ideas that tend to excite conservatives and repel everyone else.

A few weeks ago the Survey USA polling firm released a big batch of state polls testing Hillary Clinton against the leading Republican presidential candidates. Now, via Kos, we learn that they are beginning to release new polls testing Obama and Edwards as well as HRC against the GOPers.
Today’s installment focuses on MO, OH, IA and NM. While the general impression is that Edwards runs slightly better than his rivals in most head-to-heads, the startling numbers are from OH, where for some reason Barack Obama runs well behind HRC and Edwards, and trails Giluliani, Thompson and even Romney (Edwards beats the Mittster by 20 points; HRC beats him by 10).
If their previous releases are any indication, SUSA will probably release similar polls from other states in the next few days.

The buzz in Iowa Democratic circles today is over Barack Obama’s decision, made about a month ago, to skip tonight’s AARP candidate forum in Davenport. TAPPED’s Garance Franke-Ruta, who’s been covering Iowa closely, refers to it as “Obama’s big mistake.”
The timing is interesting, since earlier this week Obama unveiled a tax reform plan that included, among other things, a provision eliminating federal income taxation entirely for seniors earning less than $50,000 annually. You’d think he’d want to talk about it in front of an especially receptive audience. Maybe he’ll get lucky and the questioners at the AARP forum will ask the other candidates about it.

Chris Bowers at OpenLeft has a very useful post up analyzing the various factors that might boost and limit post-IA/NH “bounces” in national polls for presidential candidates in 2008. Be sure to follow the link to Mark Blumenthal’s more general discussion at pollster.com of the relevance of primary polling.
It’s worth remembering as an additional note that advance polling in the one “unbounceable” state, Iowa, is notoriously difficult, since it’s hard to really establish an accurate “screen” for likely caucus-goers. Iowa’s complex caucus rules, which can produce results significantly out of line with statewide opinion, present another problem for pollsters.

Today one of the big prizes in the presidential candidate bid for labor support will be up for grabs, as the Service Employees International Union board is meeting to consider an endorsement. By all accounts, John Edwards is the front-runner, but given SEIU’s unhappy experience with an early 2004 endorsement of Howard Dean, there’s some sentiment for delaying any nod.
At SEIU’s candidate forum earlier this week, Barack Obama’s speech was generally rated as the best, with Edwards’ a close second. And Bill Richardson, whose own speech drew strong applause, had the worst moment when he said to the crowd, “Thank you, AFSCME,” an unfortunate reference to SEIU’s main union rival for public employee members.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

Linda Hirshman (yes, the self-same Linda Hirshman who recently roiled progressive circles with her critique of “choice feminism”) has a new piece up on the New Republic’s website arguing that Democrats—a party she says is living without an organizing principle—need to re-embrace both the word and the underlying philosophy of liberalism.
I think most Democrats sense the void of which Hirshman writes, despite recent electoral success. If you don’t know what I mean, try asking a newly minted candidate what it means to be a Democrat and see if you don’t get a list of programs (or even ideas!) instead of a governing philosophy. What people may not realize it the detriment that brings to day-to-day Democratic governance.
“Rather than embrace this bedrock commitment, however, Democrats shy away from it. The best example of this failure is their talk about the cost of health care,” Hirshman writes. “Most sensible analysts agree that, even with efficiencies of scale, any of the Democrats’ health care plans is going to cost more than it saves. So the dreaded government is going to have to use its taxing power.”
It’s not just health care. Democrats frequently have a great, liberal idea…that costs money. But instead of balancing it with other priorities and then telling people how much this new thing they want is going to cost, we bend to the conservative governing philosophy. We try to conceal the cost, do it on the cheap, or make it look like a painless trade-off.
But it never is painless. Programs implemented this way—even the really popular ones—end up costing more than we said and not working as well. Every Communications 101 class learns about “managing expectations”; not dealing forthrightly with the costs of our ideas and moral and philosophical reasons for them sets expectations at a place that will always leave the American people disappointed.
Recent conversations about our national infrastructure are a great opportunity to talk openly in the language of collective action to solve a national problem. Our aging bridges and roads represent an asset that should be benefit us all and a problem we need to deal with together. (Anti-tax crusaders should be referred immediately to examples of what happens to economic growth when these problems are ignored.) Call it a liberalism moment.
But remember, if we are going to reclaim the “brand,” that liberalism has many edges, some of them no more perfectly consistent with “left” than with “centrist” perspectives. The ambiguous legacy of liberalism is one reason, along with its demonization by the Right, that contemporary “progressives” aren’t always comfortable with it.

Anyone paying much attention to comparative politics has probably noticed that organized bloggers and their readership–i.e., the core of the “netroots”–has played a much more prominent role in U.S. politics, especially on the left side of the spectrum, than in other highly “wired” countries. There are numerous possible explanations for this example of “American exceptionalism,” including the relative weakness of institutional parties in the U.S., which creates a more decentralized political environment.
One explanation may be derived from differences in the legal regimens affecting the blogosphere. While there have been plenty of political efforts to marginalize bloggers in the U.S. (most recently by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who tried unsuccessfully to make the YearlyKos event radioactive), the one truly significant action restricting blogospheric expression has been the U.S. military’s decision to block service members’ social networking sites and blogs due to security and bandwidth concerns
This relative freedom from regulation may be the exception rather than the rule.
Allison Hayward, a Professor of Law at George Mason University, has posted an unpublished manuscript of her research on government regulation of political blogs. Hayward compares the regulatory regimes of the United States and Germany for clues as to how the legal foundations of political speech may affect the development of internet advocacy. She sees this cross-national study as essential to understanding the present and future of the internet as a political tool because of enormous growth in foreign web traffic ( almost 70% of all content is now written in a language other than English), as well as the international nature of the web as a medium that transcends geographic and political boundaries.

Read more…

Aside from relative merits of Wikipedia as a source of information, the recent development of Wikipedia Scanner—a program that tracks the IP of addresses of computers where edits to the site originate—raises new questions about information management for campaigns and elected officials in a cycle awash in information.
The ability to easily identify who is making changes to Wikipedia has made all kinds of news—with little interesting analysis. On Capitol Hill, Congressional Quarterly says the thousands of edits made on House computers mean staffers have “too much time on their hands.” For Tennessee Congressman David Davis’ press secretary, editing his boss’ profile on Wikipedia led to a House Ethics Committee inquiry, punishment in the form of classes in “appropriate conduct”, and one really embarrassing AP story.
So, does this mean staffers should leave Wikipedia alone? No. They can’t—if only because the site is too well-known and widely-used to let errors and unfair comments stand.

Read more…

This ABC video breaks the little press secretary heart in me. Not only is President Bush on yet another vacation. Not only is the traveling press corps sitting around Crawford, TX doing nothing. Now ABC has tried to turn the press—and their tedious adventures in Crawford—into a story.
ABC: What do you do between stories?
BLOOMBERG REPORTER: I write poetry. You know, short form… and haiku.
Democrats generally don’t like attacking the press; I think we have a stronger than average belief in the institution and its possibilities. But this kind of nonsense shakes the confidence, no?
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that in spite of the revolutions in broadband technology and 24-hour cable, Americans aren’t noticeably better informed about current affairs.
Democrats could do well to be both stronger advocates for a better press corps and to train our grassroots advocates to take full advantage of the avenues out there for influencing the mainstream media. Democracy for America’s Night School provides an excellent tool kit for reaching the media. It’s clear that even ABC is badly in need of material.