E.J. Dionne writes in his Washington Post column today that the landslike victory last weekend of the Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd’s leadership provides important lessons for Democrats in the U.S.:

Rudd’s balancing act provides a model for center-left parties that also points to the tensions they confront once in power. Rudd won as a self-described “economic conservative” who would tightly manage the nation’s budget. But he also won thanks to an activated trade union movement fighting for its life in seeking to overthrow Howard’s workplace rules….
Rudd relied on youth, moderation and the voters’ exhaustion with the ideological categories of the past. But he also needed the passion of activists determined to end a long conservative era. Sound familiar?

It’s a truisim that on the presidential campaign trail, policy pragmatism takes a permanent back seat to candidate positioning and differentiation. And that’s been particularly true of John Edwards, who’s made a big deal out of his “fighting progressive” credentials and his contempt for the kind of legislative compromises–especially those that reach across party boundaries–that he describes as endemic to a “corrupt” Washington establishment
That’s why a sudden moment of silence from Edwards on climate change legislation in the last couple of weeks has been especially significant.
In a column in this week’s issue of Time, Eric Pooley explains:

You can tell when the politicians are getting serious about an issue: they stop taking cheap shots at one another and suddenly become pragmatic. Amazingly, that’s happening right now on global warming. Just as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of “abrupt and irreversible” damage if we don’t take immediate action, a serious piece of climate legislation is beginning to pick up speed in the U.S. Senate.

Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner are sponsoring a bill to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels over the next 43 years. They’re calling the legislation America’s Climate Security Act, and it is expected to make it to the Senate floor soon.
Environmentalists have been split on this legislation, a somewhat watered-down version of cap-and-trade proposals that Lieberman earlier sponsored with John McCain. Some activists think it doesn’t cap emissions at a low enough level, while others are upset that the bill gives away too many pollution “allowances” instead of auctioning them. Until quite recently, Edwards was firmly in the negative camp, calling the bill “corporate welfare” and publicly challenging other candidates, most notably Hillary Clinton, to oppose it.
Before Thanksgiving, at an environmental forum, Edwards had the perfect opportunity to ratchet up the pressure on this issue and use it to reinforce his general attack on HRC as a “corporate Democrat” and an equivocator. But as Pooley notes:

Edwards decided not to take that swing. He didn’t attack Clinton or the bill. Why not? Because the politics of climate change are moving so fast and in such a pragmatic direction that he didn’t want to get caught out. His campaign had been hearing from key environmental groups, says an Edwards adviser, “and the consensus was that they don’t want to trash this bill. They want to strengthen it, not kill it.”

Edwards is running for his life at this point. He has to take down Hillary Clinton if he has any chance of winning the presidency. Here’s an issue that fits those themes perfectly, and he let it pass him by.
Tactically, that might seem like a mistake. But on a higher level, it is significant. Throughout this Democratic nominating process, John Edwards has been the candidate driving the public policy debate. No one was talking about poverty until Edwards made it a campaign issue. He was the first candidate to release a detailed plan to provide universal health care. He’s made bold calls for climate change legislation in this campaign before.
This move, though, represents a different kind of leadership. The possibility of a Democratic presidency is still more than a year away, and action on climate change is urgent. It’s to Edwards’ credit that he understand this is one issue on which the perfect should not become the enemy of the good.

Just to piggy-back on Ed’s post yesterday, here’s a tidbit from the Libertarian Party Platform section on “Property Rights,” subsection on “Solutions”:

All publicly owned infrastructures including dams and parks shall be returned to private ownership and all taxing authority for such public improvements shall sunset. Property related services shall be supplied by private markets and paid for by user fees, and regulation of property shall be limited to that which secures the rights of individuals.

Now there’s a lovely idea. Let’s turn our National, State and City Parks over to any greedhead with a chainsaw.
The Libertarian Party web pages say little of substance about improving environmental protection, or addressing global warming and related concerns. And if you want to see a Libertarian get all tongue-tied, just ask him/her to explain how they would reduce pollution. In fact, Libertarian leaders still frequently deny that global warming is a problem. When pressed, they say pollution issues can be settled in the courts, which is highly dubious, especially considering they want to repeal environmental regulations.
The main reason Libertarian policies have any relevance to Democratic strategy is that Ron Paul, a former (’88) Libertarian Party presidential nominee, has gotten substantial contributions from individuals seeking a peace candidate in the GOP presidential field. I’d wager a lot of those contributions come from people who are unaware of the Libertarian Party’s (and Paul’s) blanket opposition to environmental regulations, or Paul’s disturbing support from white supremacist groups, discussed in several articles on this page.
Paul is not going to get nominated, but who knows, his fund-raising success may yet nudge one of the GOP’s more likely nominees toward a less hawkish position regarding Iraq. Either way, after the GOP nomination is decided, Dems may have a clear chance to win over some of Paul’s pro-peace supporters, a relatively small constituency, but one which could make a difference in a close general election. It might help to have a better understanding of who they are.

The latest evidence that the Ron Paul Revolution has achieved pop-culture Cool Status is in the puffy Washington Post Outlook Section piece today by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch that discovers libertarianism for readers who have somehow missed the whole phenomenon over the last few decades.
To be sure, the authors of this piece know their subject; they are both editors for the libertarian mag Reason. But they are pitching their faith in a skewed way aimed at seducing people who should know better.
For one thing, Gillespie and Welch gets some simple facts wrong: they call the hyper-clericalist Guy Fawkes an “anarchist,” and they falsely claim that the libertarian strain of conservatism was once “dominant” in the GOP. More importantly, they almost exclusively identify libertarians with their most fashionable, progressive beliefs–opposition to the Iraq War and to civil liberties violations, and support for decriminalization of drugs–and not with their virulently reactionary opposition to every conceivable positive function of government.
If I sound a bit cranky on this subject, it’s because I think libertarianism is the least Cool, and most pedantic and tiresome political ideology on the map. Maybe you had to go through (as I did as an adolescent) the Ayn Rand Virus to understand the extent to which Ron Paul’s obsession with bringing back the Gold Standard is typical of the libertarian mindset. These are people who consider even the mildest forms of progressive taxation as “looting,” and even the most basic regulation of corporations as steps on the road to communism and fascism.
The most ridiculous part of the Gillespie/Welch effort to make libertarianism Cool is their breathless citation of celebrity support for Ron Paul and his Cause (Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Matt Stone, Tucker Carlson, and even Barry Manilow are cited as self-described libertarians, and Drew Carey is also dragooned into the category). Well, what do you expect? Is it a surprise that some wealthy and hedonistic celebrities might favor an ideology that simultaneously lets them oppose wars, take drugs and avoid taxation?
Gillespie and Welch also note Markos Moulitsas’ effort to claim libertarianism as part of a latter-day Democratic ideology. With all due respect to Markos, it’s tough to imagine any real coalition involving people like him, who think it’s heretical to consider any changes in the Social Security system, and want Democrats to stand for universal health care, and people like Ron Paul, who would happily abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and every other safety net program.
The simple reality is that libertarianism is neither new nor hip, nor progressive. No less an authority than Rand Herself described Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland, the late-nineteenth-century bete noir of the populists, as the beau ideal of libertarian governance. And the one contemporary libertarian who actually gained real power was Rand’s ever-faithful disciple Alan Greenspan, hardly a progressive figure.
I understand why some Democrats want to fete Ron Paul for his opposition to the war and his support for civil liberties. But get real, folks: an America run by the likes of Ron Paul might be peaceful and non-authoritarian, but from the perspective of every other progressive value, it would be Hooverism on steroids (though libertarians might well object to the analogy on grounds that Hoover was far too altruistic!).
The Ron Paul Counter-Revolution would be a better monniker for the Texan’s campaign.

Down in Australia, the Labor Party has won a decisive victory over the Liberal/National Coalition that previously ruled the country, and Kevin Rudd will replace John Howard as Prime Minister. Having spent some time hanging out with Australian (and New Zealand) Labor folk last year, I strongly believe that they deserve their electoral good fortune, and will provide a clear breath of fresh air for their country.
Howard has been one of the longest-reigning conservative leaders in the world. He will not be missed.

Michael Kinsley has one of the better msm op-eds of the ’08 campaign this far, “Who Needs Experience?,” arguing that Senator Clinton goofed big time in trying to play the ‘experience’ card with a relatively-weak hand. Not that Senator Clinton doesn’t have good experience on her vita. But, saying “We can’t afford on-the-job training for our next president” was probably asking for trouble. As Kinsley explains in his WaPo/LaTimes column:

With her “on-the-job training” jab, Clinton was clearly referring to work experience. But there is also life experience. Being first lady is sort of half job and half life but good experience in either case.
She has to be careful about making a lot of this. Many people resent her using her position as first lady to take what they see as a shortcut to elective office. More profoundly, some people see her as having used her marriage as a shortcut to feminism. And the specter of dynasty hangs unattractively over her presidential ambitions. In an odd way, the deep unpopularity of George W. Bush has hurt Hillary Clinton, as people think: “Enough with relatives already.”

Kinsley may be on to something here. NH and IA voters sometimes take pride in being contrarians, and such bluster can be made to look really bad in attack ads. Obama has already responded to Senator Clinton’s remark with a pretty good zinger — “My understanding is that she wasn’t Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. I don’t know exactly what experience she’s claiming.”
In addition, Edwards and the other Democratic candidates have equally/more impressive life and professional experience as Clinton. This is especially true for the second-tier candidates, Richardson, Dodd, Biden and Kucinich. Clinton would be wiser not to invite comparison of experience with any of the Democratic field. Her strong cards are an ability to talk about the issues with clarity and her portfolio of generally solid policies. To get back on game, she needs to work a little harder to convince voters that she is about the future, not the past. Otherwise, it’s the Clinton years were OK, but ‘been there, done that.’

In just a few hours polls will be opening in Australia for its general election. For some time now, Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party has been favored to ouster John Howard’s long-reigning conservative Coalition party. But on the eve of the elections, at least one poll shows the race too close to call.
One thing’s for sure: turnout will be at levels Americans can barely imagine; Australia’s compulsory voting system assures that.
We’ll have more on the Aussie elections when the results become clear.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for a lot of things that have nothing to do with politics, and thus have no place here. But on the political front, I am thankful that the Great Nominating Contest Calendar Dance of 2007 appears to have ended, with Michigan’s primary being set for January 15, and New Hampshire’s for January 8. The specter of NH and then IA moving up into December has finally been banished.
That means people like me don’t have to completely recalibrate many months of speculation about the dynamics of the nominating process. And more importantly, it means a lot of poorly paid campaign staffers and unpaid volunteers will get to have some sort of holiday season.

Tired of generational analysis of politics? You know, the assumption that this or that pol represents the world-view and/or aspirations of the age cohort into which he or she was born. If so, you’ll love this comment from Dana Goldstein at TAPPED:

Sure, the experience of living through Vietnam and the student protest movement indelibly shaped politicians like Clinton and Mitt Romney. But every generation has its liberals and its conservatives, its hopeful optimists and its hard-nosed power brokers, its intellectuals and its businesspeople. Furthermore, a “generation” is almost impossible to define in any self-contained way.

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Makes abundant good sense, eh? It’s sort of like the reason I’ve always had a hard time taking astrology seriously (apologies if I offend any astrology fans here). I mean, really, I’m supposed to believe I have more in common with a Bangladeshi hemp farmer who happens to be a Virgo than with, say, my Sagittarian father? To a lesser but still significant extent, I have the same objection to generational typecasting.
Moreover, Dana’s right: generational definitions are a little squishy. She notes that Barack Obama, the purported avatar of post-baby-boom politics, is himself a baby boomer, having been born in 1961. When the term “baby boom generation” first came into use, in the 1960s, it was applied to people born immediately after World War II, from 1946 to 1952. At some point it was extended to 1960. Now, apparently, the line between baby boomers and Gen Xers is 1964.
So maybe we need to start defining Barack Obama as a “baby boomer with X rising.” Or better yet, find another way to describe him altogether.

The GOP version of the Washington Post/ABC poll of Iowa is now out, and the storyline is all about Mike Huckabee.
Mike’s now within the margin of error of Romney in this poll (28%-24%). The other candidates are pretty much where they were back in July. More importantly, Huckabee’s base of support seems a lot firmer than Romney’s, as Gary Langer’s analysis for ABC points out:

[A]mong likely caucus-goers who are “very enthusiastic” about their choice, Huckabee leads Romney by 37-25 percent. Among those who say they’ve definitely made up their minds, 34 percent support Huckabee, 24 percent Romney. That makes for a better turnout profile for Huckabee.

This may matter a lot, because this and previous polls consistently show less enthusiasm among Republicans than Democrats in Iowa, which (along with strong indications that independents are likely to participate on the Democratic side) could mean a relatively low turnout.
One factor that doesn’t matter for the GOP is second-choice preferences. Unlike the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, the presidential segment of the Republican Caucuses is a straight straw poll, without all the thresholds and preference reassignments that make the Dem Caucuses so unpredictable. That’s too bad for Huckabee, since every other candidate would love to see him derail Romney in IA. You do have to wonder if they will avoid attacking Huckabee in Iowa between now and January 3, against the wishes of the conservative opinion-leaders who can’t stand him and are beginning to worry that an IA win could catapult him into serious contention down the road.