One of the oddest and most interesting post-election kerfuffles has been the well-reported encounter between George W. Bush and Senator-elect from Virginia Jim Webb last week. In case you missed it, Bush asked Webb how his son, currently serving in Iraq, was doing, and Webb promptly responded, echoing a major theme of his campaign, that he’d like to get him and his comrades home soon. Bush bristled and said, “That’s not what I asked you,” and apparently Webb bristeled in response.According to the New York Times column linked to above, presidential scholar Stephen Hess thought Webb had violated protocol by answering Bush’s question honestly. A phalanx of lefty bloggers not only defended Webb, but suggested anything other than plenary disrespect for Bush would have violated their own sense of protocol.For what it’s worth, here’s where I come down on the general subject of civility towards political enemies. I do think us political compatants tend to forget that Americans generally agree on a whole lot of things that are violently controversial in many parts of the world: democratic elections, a regulated capitalist economy, a system of protections of basic liberties, and an international regime that aims at liberal democracy, just to name a few. You can argue, as I have myself, that Republicans don’t fully respect these communal values, but that’s not the same as suggesting they aren’t communal values to begin with.That’s why, despite my own deep antipathy for Bush and his party, I don’t like attacks on them that rely on analogies to the Nazis, the fascists, or other enemies of the American system, or suggest that every single administration policy, and everyone who agrees with it, are inherently corrupt or evil.But in the case of the Webb encounter, Bush raised a particular subject, and Webb responded appropriately. Residual respect for the underlying American Consensus does not require specific respect for particular policies of the Ruling Party. When those policies enganger your own son, no father can be faulted for telling the simple truth, even, or perhaps especially, in the presence of the Commander in Chief.

The events of the last few days have cast a much-needed spotlight on what may really be going on within the administration on Iraq, aside from the usual “victory” talk from the president.As many people have noted, the long-awaited Baker-Hamilton commission report took a cautious position, but one that in many respects reflected the Democratic consensus of the last year or so that some sort of phased withdrawal needs to begin right away.But a more interesting revelation came from the leaked NSC Hadley memo. And over at The American Prospect Online, Laura Rozen has a fascinating and somewhat alarming report about the actual intra-administration debate that memo reflected.Two of the options under consideration, according to Rozen, are familiar: the “status quo plus” approach of redeploying troops from within Iraq to Baghdad to stabilize that area; and the “hunker down” approach of confining U.S. troops to bases, intensifying training operations, and gradually reducing our presence.But the third option, which some commentators are calling “the 80% solution” (reflecting the percentage of the Iraqi population that is either Shi’a or Kurdish), is to “tilt to the Shi’a” and essentially abandon the Sunni minority to a bloody fate.Here’s how Rozen describes that option:

The “unleash the Shia” option would have the United States back a Shiite coalition that would include SCIRI leader Hakim and his Badr Brigades as the core of an Iraqi Army under the direct control of Prime Minister Maliki. Even as the United States sided with the Shia, Hadley’s memo makes clear that the United States would at the same time press Maliki to distance himself from Sadr and his Mahdi army.

The idea, apparently, is to make U.S. support for letting the Shi’a settle scores with the Sunnis contingent on marginalizing Moqtada al-Sadr, presumably because he is so violently anti-American.Maybe tilting to the “winning side” makes sense, if stabilization of Iraq, at any cost, is the best we can hope for. And Lord knows removing Sadr’s paws from the levers of power would be a good thing, assuming he could truly be marginalized.But let’s not have any illusions about the alternative military-power base suggested by this option: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Corps militia. For one thing, the Badr Corps appears to have deployed its own “death squads” separate from Sadr’s in the indiscriminate reprisals against Sunnis sparked by insurgent atrocities against Shi’a. But more importantly, SCIRI (which was actually created in Iran as an anti-Saddam exile group) is widely assumed to be honeycombed with Iranian intelligence operatives, and has done little or nothing to reduce the perception that it is Tehran’s closest ally in Iraq.Maybe this is the best we can do to create the impression that we are reaching out to “responsible” Shi’a Islamists. Still, deliberately empowering a pro-Iranian armed faction in the context of “unleashing” the Shi’a against the Sunnis would represent a remarkable devolution from all the talk of peace and national unity–much less making Iraq a role model for the Middle East–that the administration has repeated so very many times.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

My response to Tom Schaller at Salon about Democrats and the South got a decent buzz; I especially appreciate the shout-outs from the impeccably fair Chris Bowers at MyDD, and my ol’ buddy Armando at TalkLeft.Their takes and some of those in their comment threads illustrate an interesting anomaly about this debate on writing off, or even demonizing, the South. You’ve got a small contingent that thinks Democrats should significantly modify their platform to win in the South. And you’ve got a somewhat larger contingent that would just love it if Democrats not only wrote off the region, but shared their strong antipathy towards all sorts of aspects of southern culture, from fried foods to militarism to SUV-mania.But Bowers, Armando, plenty of their commentors, and yours truly, present a cross-ideological United Front in favor of the basics of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. We think the progressive message, presented with sensitivity to regional variations, can create a long-term Democratic majority, and that anything less will likely squander that opportunity. As Chris Bowers in particular notes, positioning Democrats as the anti-southern party won’t work any better than the Republican positioning as the anti-northeastern party ultimately did, as exhibited by the 2006 election results.The estimable Rick Perlstein posted an article on the New Republic site yesterday that escalated the Schaller hypothesis into an attack on the white South as hopelessly racist, and on anyone who doubts that argument as hopelessly myopic, if not dishonest.I’ll have more to say about the Perlstein article here or there.

The news that Moqtada al-Sadr’s politicians–including five Cabinet members and 30 members of parliament–have “suspended” involvement in Iraq’s government was a very timely if unwelcome reminder that the man once derided by U.S. officials as a “pipsqueak cleric” is a big dog indeed these days.The “suspension”–falling short of an actual withdrawal from the government, which would cause it to fall–was transparently a reminder to Iraqi prime minister Maliki that he’s on a very short leash in Amman, where he’s to meet with George Bush tomorrow.In case you’ve missed it, Sadr’s virulently anti-American Shi’a militia, the Mahdi Army, is generally held responsible for the vast wave of indiscriminate killings of Sunnis that has helped mobilize Sunni support for the insurgency while plunging Iraq into civil war. Used to be the experts thought Sadr was a paper tiger who was being quietly restrained by moderate Shi’a cleric Ayotollah Sistani. Not any more.Here’s a chilling summary of Sadr’s current status in Iraq posted today by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius:

Sadr has been the biggest winner in the power vacuum of Iraq. A senior U.S. intelligence analyst told me this week that Sadr’s forces are eight times larger than they were in August, 2004. If provincial elections were held today, the intelligence official said, Sadr’s party would win in every Shiite province of Iraq but one. And Sadr for sure has been the most powerful political muscle behind Maliki’s fragile coalition.

So that’s what, and whom, we are dealing with in any effort to somehow create a viable government of national unity in Iraq.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

You just have to wonder how much more fouled up the Bush administration’s Iraq policies can possibly get. The Prez was supposed to meet with Iraqi prime minister Maliki and King Abdullah in Jordan today, on the wings of a leaked National Security Council memo basically saying Maliki doesn’t know his butt from page eight. Then came the news that five Iraqi Cabinet members and 30 parliamentarians aligned with Moqtada al-Sadr–whose support is necessary to Maliki’s continuation in office–were “suspending” participation in the government indefinitely, to protest the summit. And now we learn today’s Bush-Maliki-Abdullah meeting was canceled, as a “social event” that wasn’t important (Bush and Maliki will still meet tomorrow). Add in the massive anti-Bush demonstrations on tap for Amman, and you’ve got a public relations disaster of serious magnitude, instead of the confidence-building event the whole show was supposed to represent.A long, long time ago, a Georgia colleague of mine, at the nadir of Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iranian hostage crisis, said: “Well, Jimmy’s just become the first president to show he could screw up a one-car funeral.” That probably wasn’t fair to Carter, but it’s increasingly becoming an apt characterization of George W. Bush when it comes to Iraq. I don’t know if the Baker-Hamilton commission will indeed give Bush a way to back out of virtually everything he’s said and done since the invasion of Iraq, but something’s got to give, and very soon.

Today Salon is featuring a piece I wrote (at their invitation) responding to Tom Schaller’s post-election restatement of his hypothesis that Democrats should not only write off the South, but even campaign against the region in order to solidify a non-Southern majority. I’m not arguing for any particular focus on the South, but do think it’s a mistake to write off whole regions, and a potentially disastrous mistake to attack a Southern culture that pervades so much of our latter-day national culture. Check it out.

Since this blog first went up in August of 2004, it has been sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, where I have been Vice President for Policy and/or Policy Director for a good while.I’ve now gone part-time with the DLC and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute and am no longer acting as a spokesman for the DLC. And in an act of real generosity, the DLC is letting me take NewDonkey.com completely independent.I want to emphasize that my new status does not represent some sort of rift with the DLC. After nearly twelve years there, it was just time to do some other stuff as well, while enabling myself to work at home for the most part. Moreover, regular readers of NewDonkey probably won’t notice much of a change in content. Nobody at the DLC tried to censor NewDonkey, though I did occasionally censor myself (e.g., on Iraq) so as to avoid “disarray at the DLC” blog entries among the organization’s many detractors. Now that I’m no longer officially or unofficially speaking for anyone but myself, I’ll say exactly what I think. And that may well continue to include occasional ripostes to those who have lurid and completely inaccurate views of what the DLC is all about.This change in NewDonkey, I guess I should add, has absolutely nothing to do with the recent decision by my former colleague The Bull Moose, to shut down his own, DLC-sponsored blog. He decided to do that because he’s going to be a full-time spokesman for Joe Lieberman. I don’t have that handicap at present, but will shut down NewDonkey if any conflicts of interest develop in my non-DLC work (I am, for example, doing some contractual speechwriting work for a potential Democratic ’08er, and will strictly avoid blogging about the Democratic presidential nominating contest so long as that arrangement exists). In any event, I hope old readers stick with the New NewDonkey. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

I won’t do any more posts about college football for a while, but I do have to report I was able to attend the Georgia-Georgia Tech game in Athens yesterday. As you may have heard, Georgia won a thriller, 15-12, over the nationally ranked Jackets (out of respect, I won’t call them Dirt Daubers today), their sixth straight win in the intrastate series. Tech goes on to play in the ACC championship game against (surprise) Wake Forest, while Georgia has salvaged a disappointing season with back-to-back wins over Auburn and Tech, and will probably go to the best of the non-BCS bowls, the Chick-Fil-A (formerly the Peach Bowl).Georgia true Freshman Matthew Stafford showed why he will probably, if he stays healthy, be an all-American QB before he leaves Athens. But perhaps the two biggest stars were on defense: the routinely brilliant LB Tony Taylor, who alertly plucked a Reggie Ball fumble from a pile-up and ran it in for Georgia’s first TD, and defensive back Paul Oliver, who held superstar Tech receiver Calvin Johnson to two receptions for 13 yards, and made an interception to ice the game.It was truly a fun late afternoon and evening in the Classic City, and left me looking forward to next season like a child counting the days until Xmas.NOTE: In my next post, I’ll explain some significant changes in this blog and my own professional life. It’s not as dramatic as The Moose’s sudden blog shutdown and his departure for Liebermanland, and certainly won’t get any attention beyond regular readers, so I’ll make it snappy and return to previously scheduled blogging.

Boy, talk about a strange but appropriate development: it’s increasingly clear that voting machine errors probably robbed Democratic candidate Christine Jennings of a victory in Katherine Harris’ old Florida House seat. You can read about it in the link, but the basic facts are that the electoral results showed a very large (18,000 vote) “undercount” (i.e., disparity in total votes cast) of House votes in a single county. Moreover, the ballots where voters seem to have skipped the House race in unaccountable numbers were those where every statewide Democratic candidate won by a margin that exceeded the district-wide margin for Jennings’ opponent, Vern Buchanan.This didn’t keep the Florida Secretary of State’s office from certifying the Buchanan win, replicating Harris’ famous quick certification in the 2000 presidential elections. There are a number of ways this result can be overturned: a state audit of voting machine performance; two separate lawsuits, and a direct challenge to the U.S. House. But the problem is that absent any way to exactly recover the uncounted ballots, the only remedy is a new election, which would likely produce a much smaller turnout than occurred on November 7. There’s no evidence of fraud at this point, but this electoral miscarriage of justice reinforces the already powerful case for requiring some sort of paper trail for electronic votes. I guess the good news is that Katherine Harris herself lost by so huge a margin in her fiasco of a Senate race that no manner of errors or quick certifications could have possibly saved her.

Well, it’s now out in the open, after an announcement by Joe Liebeman’s office: my colleague The Moose, a.k.a. Marshall Wittmann, is shutting down his blog and leaving the DLC to become Communications Director for the Independent-Democrat from CT.I was travelling last week when The Moose suddenly did a post saying he was going into “hibernation.” I guessed pretty quickly where he was headed next, but couldn’t say anything until Lieberman made it public.It’s obviously the perfect gig for Marshall, and he’s the perfect spokesman for Lieberman. When he first came to the DLC in 2004, he had just changed his registration from R to Independent, endorsed John Kerry for president, and burned a lot of bridges to the Right–bridges he had already undermined in his work for John McCain in 2000. And although he wrote some of the most withering critiques of Bush, Rove, DeLay, the K Street Strategy, and the whole culture of the GOP appearing in the English language, he could not bring himself to join Our Team in the polarized politics of 2005-06, and was increasingly uncomfortable working in an unambiguous Democratic environment, even at the very tolerant DLC.The Moose became a passionate advocate for Lieberman’s primary and general-election campaigns in no small part because he sincerely believes both parties are in danger of abandoning the political center, and quite frankly because he is happiest free of either party’s yoke. This is obviously where Joe Lieberman is today. After voting for Harry Reid as Majority Leader, Joe will likely view himself as a completely free agent, much like The Moose.For regular readers of this blog, it’s been no secret that I disagree with Marshall on many issues, including Iraq, how Democrats should deal with polarization, the nature and significance of the progressive blogosphere, and the general political landscape.. I cannot count the number of times we’ve disagreed in internal DLC discussions, or around the office water cooler.But as I indicated a while back in a post defending The Moose against his blogospheric detractors, he has been a boon companion and good friend through thick and thin, not to mention one of the smartest and funniest people I’ve ever met, which counts a lot with me. And I still think his exceptionally well-informed attacks on the whole rotten culture of the latter-day GOP contributed far more to the Democratic Cause than he took away in his occasional ripostes against what he called the “nutroots,” especially among the media types who came to him so often to diagnose the conservative meltdown. It’s about as much as any Democrat could expect from a guy who, after all, was a self-proclaimed independent.I sincerely wish The Moose well in his new gig, and hope that his transition from a Democratic organization to an Independent-Democratic Senator will not slake his thirst for attacking the continuing ideological extremism of a GOP that’s half-convinced it lost on November 7 by being insufficiently right-wing.So let me say Hasta La Vista to the Moose. I don’t know if we will meet down the road as allies or friendly adversaries–hell, we both may be in assisted living before long–but I do know the blogosphere will suffer from the absence of his antlered presence.