With the retirement of my old boss Zell Miller, I thought perhaps his outrageous political behavior of the last couple of years would come to an end. I mean, what’s the point of insulting your party when nobody really cares any more? Ah, but it now appears the fires of Zell’s odd rage still burn: along with Sean Hannity, he will be the featured speaker at a fundraiser for none other than Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, and the past master of hypocritical political sleaze.There is, of course, a peculiar historical echo here: Ralph’s very first campaign, before he got religion, and before his notorious stint as deputy to Jack Abramoff in the College Republicans, was with Zell Miller’s unsuccessful 1980 race for the U.S. Senate. Miller lost the Democratic runoff to incumbent Herman Talmadge, who basically beat Miller by calling him too liberal for Georgia. Ironic, huh?Ralph was no more than a little pissant in that Miller campaign, so I doubt this is a matter of discharging some ancient debt. No, Zell’s determined to play out his rightward tangent to such an extreme that absolutely everyone will forget that he was ever a fine, progressive Democratic Governor. He rationalized his endorsement of Bush last year as a patriotic act of gratitude for W.’s national security leadership; that’s ostensibly why his role at the Republican Convention was focused on swift-boating John Kerry’s defense record. Last time I checked, Ralph Reed’s national security resume was pretty much limited to the campaign of calumny against war hero Max Cleland that he orchestrated in 2002. When I worked for Zell, I often walked by a statue of the great populist Tom Watson on the State Capitol grounds. As the historically minded among you may know, Watson capped his career with a long descent into bitter right-wing demagoguery. Zell Miller seems to be following the same trajectory, even in retirement.

Over at &c, the New Republic’s blog, Reihan Salam, who’s sitting in for Noam Scheiber, did a post today that I obviously can’t leave alone. Under the title, “Where Have You Gone, New Democrats?”, Salam cites one of those perennial Nation obituaries for the DLC (they’ve been publishing them for twenty years), and then mourns at our grave since it would be nice if somebody in the Democratic camp had a strategy for dealing with the plight of low-income workers that’s a little broader and a lot more effective than pushing for “living wage” ordinances or demonizing Wal-Mart.The timing of this lament was interesting, insofar as my colleague The Moose, in his DLC-sponsored blog, made a similar case against Wal-Mart-o-phobia yesterday morning. And less than a month ago, our think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute published a well-regarded tax reform proposal by Paul Weinstein that included a super-charged version of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the longstanding New Democrat alternative to exclusive reliance on minimum wages as a strategy for supporting low-income working families.Salam refers to the New Democrat argument for a “win-win” society where wage subsidies are part of a national strategy to make our economy more competitive as though it were a relic of the distant past. Actually, the same argument can be found in virtually every issue of Blueprint magazine over the last three years, and more importantly, in the policy speeches of nearly every major Democratic candidate for president in 2004 (not to mention Tony Blair, who long ago adopted the DLC slogan of “expanding the winners’ circle”). “What we need is a national commitment to those who ‘work hard and play by the rules,'” says Salam. That message was, in fact, the centerpiece of John Edwards’ entire presidential campaign, in no small part because he completely incorporated the New Democratic approach to this issue. And the Kerry campaign pretty much adopted this approach after Edwards went on the ticket. Sure, the candidates should have talked about it a lot more, but they sure weren’t out there promoting “living wage” ordinances or other purely employer-based strategies for helping the working poor.The bottom line is that we New Democrats are still around, and still promoting ideas that pursue progressive goals in ways that make sense in the real world of politics and policy.I suggest that Reihan spend less time on the Nation’s site, and more time at ours, and other New Dem sites, like NDN and Third Way, if he wants to feel less lonely.

As some of you may recall, the central premise of JFK, Jr.’s magazine George, that great curiosity of 1990s political journalism, was that cool young people could only become interested in the uncool topic of politics if the subject was addressed through the eyes and voices of popular culture celebrities. And there was, to be fair, a genuine earnestness to Kennedy’s endeavor which tempered the horror people like me experienced during every exposure to George‘s Let’s-Learn-Civics-From-Supermodels modus operandi.Mixing celebrities with political journalism is one thing. But now, the same idea has invaded the quintessentially uncool arena of the blogosphere, and I must ask: Is nothing sacred?I am speaking of Arianna Huffington’s mammoth new group blog posted on her new Drudge o’ the Left site, the Huffington Post.There’s no question at all that Arianna is the perfectly appropriate impresario for the advent of Celebrity Blogging, since she has never shown any notable comprehension that political opinion is about anything other than self-promotional shouting gussied up with generic Mediterranean glamor. And indeed, it’s not clear from what’s she said about the new blog that she realizes her responsibility for ushering in a rough and unnatural beast that may signal the Last Days. According to Howard Kurtz’s column in the WaPo today, it sounds like La Huffington thinks she’s performing a sort of public service for Famous People:

“The great thing about blogging is that your thoughts don’t have to have a beginning, middle and end,” says Huffington, arguing that famous people are usually too busy to craft an op-ed piece. “You can just put a thought out there in the cultural bloodstream.”

Gee, what a great compliment to all us bloggers: our medium fosters the kind of incoherent rambling that Hollywood types can toss off between drinks, between photo shoots, or between divorces. The New York Times Op-Ed page’s loss is our gain.

I couldn’t bear to stay on her site long enough to discover the full range of celebrity bloggers she’s enlisted. Kurtz mentions Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Geffen, Rob Reiner, Albert Brooks, Bill Maher, Larry David, David Mamet, Normal Lear, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin. They are, at least by reputation, a fairly cerebral bunch when it comes to their own craft. But anyone who’s familiar with the long, sad history of artists and intellectuals who embrace stupid and sometimes evil political causes of both the Right and the Left knows that the ability to write, direct or perform a witty screenplay is often associated with the most tedious and tendentious political views.

Huffington’s initial posts show she is not limiting her blog to Hollywood celebrities; non-Hollywood celebrities (e.g., Walter Cronkite, Arthur Schlesinger) have been invited to the dinner party as well. Moreover, she’s coralled a few legitimate political journalists like David Corn of The Nation, and Byron York of National Review, who’s presumably an acquaintance from the days before Arianna effortlessly shifted her allegiance from the orthodoxy of the Far Right to that of the Far Left.

But this diversity worries me even more. Will non-celebrities in the midst of all this glitter be seduced and drawn into the preening world of their new blogging friends? Can we expect David Sirota to do an ironic turn on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

On behalf of all us unglamorous bloggers toiling away in our basements each night, I think it’s time to draw a line in the sand, and embrace our non-celebrity as a Basic Value. We are not cool. Our idea of a chic cocktail party is a vicious argument about the bankruptcy bill at a cash bar in some shabby hotel conference room. We jet-set in the center seats of AirTran, and do not often fly over flyover country. We are the Punks of Punditry.

Yes, the blogosphere is open to all, even to celebrities, but I hope Arrianna’s venture is not as popular as I fear it will be. The pretty people of Hollywood already dominate so much of our culture; they should generally limit their political involvement to writing checks and waving from the wings at candidate rallies. If they are interested in blogging, let them create a Blogger’s Relief Fund or at least hire some ghost-bloggers to post for them.

Now that would be cool.

Well, having done earlier posts suggesting that Labour might actually lose, and that Labour might be headed for a landslide, I guess I’m not surprised to learn that the exit polls show something in between: a Labour majority, but reduced from 161 seats to 66. In terms of the popular vote, the exits have Labour at 37 percent, the Tories at 33 percent, and the Lib Dems at 21 percent. While the Labour and LibDem percentages are exactly what the final polls suggested, the Tories did about 6 points better. More importantly, a Tory strategy of focusing most of their resources on marginal seats seems to have paid off, since they seem to be winning a much bigger chunk of the lost Labour seats than the LibDems.But in a campaign full of surprises (despite much voter apathy), we’ll have to wait for the final numbers to see what really happened.

With the British elections just a few hours away now, the final polls indicate that Tony Blair and Labour are headed for a third term, as late deciders break towards Labour and the Liberal Democrats. A Populus poll for the Times of London has the Tories dropping to 27 percent, with Labour at 37 percent and the Lib Dems at 21 percent. In other words, the Tories are again showing that they are not an effective opposition party, even with marginally better leadership than they had in the last two elections.If the polls are accurate, Labour could come out of this election maintaining a better than 100 seat majority in the House of Commons, despite Blair’s personal unpopularity and much voter angst over Iraq. It’s been a while since any national election pretty much anywhere has given me much reason to smile, so I’m looking foward to tomorrow.

I’ve finally gotten around to reading a book that’s been much-discussed in the blogosphere: Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm, an account of the Goldwater campaign of 1964. I’m doing a review of the book for Blueprint magazine (in tandem with Craig Shirley’s recent history of the 1976 Reagan campaign), but wanted to offer a couple of observations that are largely outside the ambit of the review.First of all, Perlstein is a truly gifted writer and historian. I didn’t read the book when it first came out, exercising the kind of literary triage that old folks like me implicitly apply. I know a fair amount about the 1964 campaign, and the roots of the conservative movement; there are many avenues of political history that I’ve never trod at all. So I’m more likely to pick up a book about Martin Van Buren than about Barry Goldwater, and I initially assumed the enthusiasm for Perlstein’s book among Kid Bloggers represented an exposure to an episode of history as alien to them as the 1836 campaign is alien to me.But man, this guy can really write. To cite just one example, he takes an obscure moment of Republican political history, the Fifth Avenue Compact of 1960 in which Nelson Rockefeller imposed his will on GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon, and turns it into a stunning metaphor for every cultural cleavage in the GOP from Tom Dewey to Tom DeLay. I’d pay full list price for the book just to read that brief section.The second thing that surprised me about Before the Storm is that Perlstein does not make the argument that his book has often been used to advance: that the Goldwater campaign, and the conservative movement it brought to visible prominence, is some sort of template for the contemporary Left.Certainly Perlstein is a Man of the Left; he is a contributor to The Nation. Moreover, in the book’s Preface, he fully embraces the Nation-esque view that most recent political history, in the Democratic as well as the Republican Party, represents the triumph of the conservative movement. Obviously, the book was published in 2001, well before the Dean/Netroots insurgency that is now beginning to style itself after the conservative movement. But I’m sure Perlstein understands the seductive power of the Goldwater analogy for Deaniac activists who must struggle with the electoral rejection of their flawed-but-inspiring candidate, who, like Moses, has shown the way to a Promised Land he can never enter.Maybe Perlstein has written about this analogy somewhere, or may write about it in the future, but one of his book’s virtues is that he does not generally impose any revisionist view on the story he tells so well. You get the sense as he writes that he’s still absorbing the story himself, and expects the reader to do likewise. That’s the last of many reasons why I recommend Before the Storm to anybody interested in American politics or history.

Guest-blogging for Josh Marshall yesterday, Matt Yglesias gave me a shout-out for predicting several months ago that the administration’s proposal for limits on farm subsidy payments would get transmogrified by Congress into food stamp cuts. I wish this meant I was some kind of analytical wizard, but frankly, this development was all too predictable, not just because conservative Republicans love wealthy farmers more than po’ folks, but because the congressional budget process promotes precisely this kind of trade-off. If you are interested in this line of reasoning, and why progressives should embrace the kind of serious budget reforms that make it possible to establish national priorities beyond the cramped and parochial interests of congressional committee and subcommittee barons, check out my earlier post on the subject.Meanwhile, I am wondering more than ever if my other big prediction, that GOPers would eventually segue from Social Security privatization to a proposal for “tax reform” allowing high earners to shelter most of their investment income, will come true now that Bush’s SocSec campaign is way off in the high weeds.

There’s a blizzard of public opinion research making its way into publication that consistently makes one big point: growing majorities of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction (or, to use the train metaphor which a whole generation of pollsters has conspired to impose on us, America is on “the wrong track”). George W. Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to their pre-9/11 level, while his main priorities, especially Social Security privatization, are more unpopular every day. And the Republican Party and the Republican Congress are getting down there into the dangerous territory of being perceived as a menace to the country. But–Democrats are not yet benefitting from this wreckage. And it’s not too hard to understand why: for (largely) sound tactical reasons, they are focused on opposing the GOP agenda rather than projecting any positive agenda of their own. But that can’t go on forever. Negative perceptions of the Democratic Party on security, the role of government, and (to a lesser extent now that the GOP is lurching off the right-wing edge) culture have not gone away.How and on what set of issues should Democrats begin their crucial pivot to a positive alternative message and agenda? Regular readers probably know my answer to that one: we need a Reform message and agenda that (a) meshes with our negative critique of GOP misrule; (b) reminds voters who’s in charge in Washington; and (c) reassures voters we aren’t just itching to get back into power and substitute our form of special-interest pandering and fiscal indiscipline for theirs. As it happens, James Carville and Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps agree with this argument, and in their latest strategy memo, lay out the evidence for it. A Democratic agenda that includes budget reform, lobbying reform, ethics reform, and tax reform, they say, could begin to connect the dots for voters skeptical of both parties and help Democrats finally get some tangible benefits from Republican misery. Will Democrats listen? There’s no inherent reason they shouldn’t. Most elements of the Reform agenda laid out by Democracy Corps (and earlier, by the DLC) don’t create any ideological divisions in the party, and are fully consistent with what Democrats want to say on other issues ranging from the economy to national security. The main opposition to a Reform message and agenda, so far as I can tell, is from political pros who learned in early childhood that these are boring “process issues” that don’t change voting behavior. That’s why it’s so helpful to hear otherwise from guys like Carville and Greenberg, who would probably make the case for an agenda centered on the Divine Right of Kings if they thought it would help Democrats win the next election.There’s a large segment of the American public right now that’s waiting for an alternative to Bush and the GOP, and is there for the taking for Democrats if they can walk and chew gum at the same time by combining opposition to Republican misgovernment with some clear evidence they could do better.

Britain’s general election is just four days away, and polls are showing a tightening race wherein Labour has a very small lead among likely voters. For complicated reasons involving party vote concentrations, Labour could lose the popular vote and maintain control of the House of Commons and hence the government, albeit with a greatly reduced majority. But Tony Blair himself, fighting a combination of Labour complacency and a threat on the Left to punish him by casting protest votes for the Liberal Democrats, is raising the specter of a Tory upset victory like that of 1970.There’s not much doubt that British voters generally endorse the direction of New Labour’s stewardship of the country, and reject the Tory message, which increasingly revolves around a backlash against Asian (and largely Muslim) immigration. But incumbency fatigue and lingering hostility to Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq (aggravated by last-minute press reports that Blair failed to release a full report from his attorney general assessing the legality of the Iraq invasion) are giving Labour a great deal of stretch-drive heartburn.In other words, the Tories cannot win this election, but it’s possible Labour could lose–if not the govenment, then an effective majority. And that’s why the final days of the campaign will largely revolve around Labour efforts to boost turnout, savage the LibDems, and let voters know a decision to protest this or that aspect of Blair’s record could produce a government they don’t want.

I’m blogging today and for most of the next week from my favorite city, New Orleans. It’s a beautiful day here, the last day of JazzFest, which in terms of its impact on the city is sort of Mardi Gras Lite. For me, that means I will finally be able to get into my favorite restaurants without waiting for hours (last night at Praline Connection we were served our first bite of soul food as the clock struck midnight). It also means I’ll have time to catch up on last week’s political developments, including the Carl Hubbell screwball George W. Bush delivered on Social Security, and this week’s U.K. elections. Despite the general pre-modern ambiance of New Orleans, and its delightfully non-Washingtonian antipathy to workaholism, WiFi is becoming widely available, so I will not have to crouch in a cubicle at Kinko’s or rely on AOL dial-up to deliver pithy thoughts on a regular basis. I’m old enough to remember quite a few semi-vacations when I found myself dictating speech copy over a pay phone from late night scratchings on a yellow legal pad, much as New Orleans’ favorite fictional character, Ignatius Reilly, condensed his twisted observations on Big Chief writing tablets. So even here progress marches on–but praise God, not too much.