My brief posts earlier on the Netroots Nations gathering in Austin this weekend probably caught the mood (particularly the organizers’ efforts to downplay conflicts with Barack Obama) pretty well, but didn’t do justice to the variety of the workshops and panels.
A few highlights:
On Friday afternoon, I attended a panel called “How the Media Learned to Bend Over Backwards to Please the Right.” It featured historian Rick Perlstein, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and blogger Duncan Black (a.k.a. Atrios), moderated by “Digby” Parton. Perlstein focused on the roots of the MSM fear of looking too “liberal,” citing passages from his new book Nixonland on how political reporters in 1972 would only write about Watergate if they could match the story with trumped-up and petty allegations of McGovern campaign rules violations.
Krugman talked about the very human tendency of political journalists–more thin-skinned than you’d think–to respond to heavy criticism of their “liberal bias,” even if it doesn’t actually exist.
And Black discussed the skewed and self-reinforcing perceptions that sensible Iraq War critics were marginal or even radical.
Refreshingly absent from this discussion were suggestions that the MSM’s drift to the right was attributable to some corporate conspiracy, or to the seductive insularity of Georgetown Cocktail Parties. What came across is that the conservative movement’s relentless efforts over decades to convince journalists that they had to counter-balance their own “liberal” biases paid off handsomely in self-conscious “on the other hand” reporting that sacrificed facts and reasons to a spurious “balance.”
Later on Friday, I also attended a very substantive workshop on “Iraq in Strategic Context” featuring Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent, Ilan Goldenberg and A.J. Rossmiller of the National Security Network, and Matt Yglesias of The Atlantic. This was a wide-ranging discussion of the surge, Iraq’s future, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and the overall U.S. strategy in the Middle East. The most haunting comment, IMO, was Ilan Goldenberg’s answer to a question about Iraq’s likely trajectory. The best-case scenario, he said, was “Lebanon.” The worst-case scenario was “Sudan.”
On Saturday, most attention was focused on the Nancy Pelosi forum with surprise guest Al Gore. But afterwards, I attended what was billed as a first-of-its-kind public presentation on the Obama’s campaign’s field organization philosophy, past, present and future. It featured deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, New Media director (and former Blue State Digital founder) Joe Rospars, former South Carolina and now Ohio field director Jeremy Byrd, and former Georgia field director and now chief of the Obama Organizing Fellows program Joy Cushman.
The two major thrusts of the presentation were that (1) the Obama field effort is thoroughly based on the candidate’s own community organizing experience (both Byrd and Cushman were professional community organizers before joining the campaign), focused on finding and developing authentic community leaders, not just volunteers for cavassing and phone-banking; and (2) its objectives go beyond the campaign towards creating a 50-state infrastructure for progressive political mobilization in the long haul.
Having watched and listened to this presentation, I have to say this: if, as Obama-skeptics charge, his campaign is “selling Kool-Aid” about its revolutionary methods and goals, its sales staff have clearly drunk the Kool-Aid themselves. They were very convincing. I was particularly impressed by Cushman, who’s in charge of the “fellows” program that’s enlisting the campaign’s most effective primary-season community organizers for the general election and beyond. As she explained, she cut her teeth as an organizer for a right-wing religious group up in rural Maine some years ago (before evolving into progressive, but still faith-based and very local causes), and like Byrd, was attracted to the Obama campaign because of its organizing philosophy as much as for the candidate’s positions or ideology.
The one newsy thing the Obama folk disclosed is that they are building towards a voter registration drive for the week after the convention that will surpass anything of this nature that we’ve seen before.
If, down the road, the Obama campaign abruptly abandons its field program in all but a few very close battleground states, as campaigns before theirs have usually done, and as they could be forced to do in a tight race, then maybe the sort of talk I heard on Saturday can be discounted as a mid-summer-afternoon’s dream. But for the present, I’m sold on their determination to “leave something behind” in communities all over the country, if, for no other reason, to give an Obama administration a base of enduring support.

If the subject weren’t so serious, it would be pretty funny. Reports this weekend that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had more or less endorsed Barack Obama’s redeployment plan for U.S. combat troops in his country produced all sorts of hysteria in the White House, which is now trying to claim Maliki and Bush are in synch on what’s being called a “time horizon” for withdrawal. Under God knows what kind of pressure from Washington, Maliki’s staff is also trying to suggest that his remarks in an interview with Der Spiegel were mistranslated or misinterpreted. But as The New York Times reports today, Maliki’s redemployment of his own words isn’t going too well:

Diplomats from the United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki’s advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications. After that, the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine’s rendering of the interview.
The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.
“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”
But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.
The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”
He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

Kinda hard to walk that one back.

There’s been a lot of interesting articles about team Obama’s voter registration campaign, nation-wide and state by state. But Rhodes Cook’s article “A New Electorate in the Making?” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball deserves a big plug as one of the most interesting, and certainly the post on the topic of recent voter registration trends that has the classiest graphics. (See also Ed’s post on Cook’s article) Michael Duffy of Time Magazine calls Cook’s piece an “an invaluable study that is the best glimpse yet of who is likely to be voting this fall..” Among Cook’s more interesting revelations:

…the number of registered Democrats in party registration states has grown by nearly 700,000 since President George W. Bush was reelected in November 2004, while the total of registered Republicans has declined by almost 1 million.

And that just reflects the 29 states that register by poltiical party. Duffy says of Cook’s data:

A hodgepodge change of 1.7 million registrations in about half the states may not sound significant in a nation that could see 110 million people vote in November, but it is, in fact, something that looks potentially seismic…in some battleground states for which new registrations by party are available, there is a comparable shift underway. Iowa, the most important swing state in the upper Midwest, has seen Democratic registration grow by about 68,000 since 2004 while Republican registration has dropped by nearly 27,000. (Bush won the state by about 10,000 votes in 2004.) In New Hampshire, which Kerry won in 2004 by about 9,000 votes, Democratic registration is up by 35,000 while new Republican voters number less than 2000. In Nevada, which Bush won by 21,000, Democrats have enrolled 16,000 new voters. Republicans have lost more than 43,000. Does it mean Obama will win these states? No. Does it make it easier to capture them? Certainly.

And Duffy says Obama’s campaign “hopes to triple or quadruple” the Dem registration edge by the election — a highly ambitious goal to be sure (Most registration deadlines are in October). But even if they merely double their edge, it seems a safe bet that ’08 will go down as a wave election.

Those who expected a good, cathartic, intraparty brawl here at Netroots Nation during a session featuring Markos Moulitsas and Harold Ford went away disappointed. It was all very civil. Ford said a lot of very positive things about the value of the netroots, and argued that the party needed to “suspend” internal conflicts at least until Barack Obama is elected president. Markos said of widespread anger about Obama’s FISA vote that “we’ll get over it,” and also said FISA showed the netroots wasn’t strong enough to beat a small group of telecomm lobbyists. Ford mentioned Al From’s name and didn’t get booed. Markos cut off a couple of questioners who tried to make Ford get down in the weeds of FISA details.
Best I can tell, Markos’ equanimity about what some have called Obama’s “betrayal” on FISA is shared more broadly at this assemblage than I would have guessed. And Ford’s decision to appear here and pay his respects to the netroots role in the party seemed to do him, and maybe even the DLC, some good.
All in all, I’m not seeing many signs of party disunity. But I am reminded of an anecdote from the 1924 Democratic Convention (no, I wasn’t there) wherein someone said to Will Rogers that the convention seemed pretty quiet. “Be patient,” said Rogers. “That will change. Those are Democrats down there.” He was certainly right. It took that convention 103 ballots to nominate a candidate.
Good thing we’ve already got a nominee this year (presumptively, as they say).

I’m in Austin today attending the annual Netroots Nation gathering (formerly known as YearlyKos), along with roughly two thousand bloggers, activists, wonks, politicians and reporters. This is the third of these events; the first, in Las Vegas, was a bit of a netroots “family reunion;” the second, in Chicago, featured a presidential candidates’ forum. The Austin conference doesn’t quite have the obvious central focus of the first two, particularly given Barack Obama’s absence (he’s beginning his big overseas trip tomorrow). But as usual, there will be a vast number of panels and workshops on about every topic you can imagine.
My own focus here will be party unity. A lot of the buzz here is over the recent FISA vote, which most if not all netroots activists are regarding as a development somewhere on the scale that runs from “major disappointment” to “calamity.” Aside from the issues directly involved in FISA, the controversy (and especially Barack Obama’s FISA vote), has revived a lot of old conflicts in the Democratic Party, not to mention the more recent conflicts that occasionally surfaced during the long presidential nominating contest.
A lot of talk about the nature and future of the party will be percolating around Austin throughout this event. But one obvious lightning rod will be the forum today featuring DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas and DLC chairman Harold Ford, Jr. This is a sequel to Markos’ appearance at the DLC annual meeting in Chicago last month (on a panel I happened to moderate). And while the ostensible topic of the Markos-Ford discussion (being referred to by some attendees, anticipating a Markos demolition of Ford, as the “Texas Smackdown”), party infrastructure, is one on which the two men can probably find a lot of common ground, there will be questions from the audience, and no telling where it will go from there.

Not going to Denver, but wishing there was some way you could be more involved in the Democratic convention? The DNC is holding 1,300 Party Platform meetings in all 50 states between July 18 to 27th (nitty-gritty here). A broad range of programs, including “town hall-style meetings, radio call-ins, and web chats” have already been scheduled. The Obama campaign has a ‘plug-in-your-zipcode‘ tool identifying local meetings. As National Platform Director Michael Yaki says, “The renewal of America begins with listening to the hopes, fears, and dreams of the American people..”
As Senator Obama prepares for his trip abroad, Elizabeth Bumiller of The New York Times has a report on his large, ok huge, team of foreign policy advisors, organized into issue areas and briefing him via email on a daily basis.
Chris Bowers’ latest Open Left forecast sees a 5-6 seat pick-up for Dems in the Senate. Perceptive reader comments on individual races follow his post.
Hotline‘s Matthew Gottlieb says the latest St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll data indicates that Missouri “has become a solid Obama state,” which is good news, considering the Republicans never win the white house without it. As a result Gottlieb sees Obama’s Electoral College lead upgraded to 292-234 (270 wins).
Lest we wallow in unbridled optimism, former Dukakis campaign director Susan Estrich writes in her Real Clear Politics post that her candidate was 20 points ahead of Bush I in mid-July ’88, and still lost. Despite abundant Democratic advantages this cycle, Estrich argues that Dems must now put aside internecine bickering: “it’s time to stop whining and start working. Otherwise, it will be hello President McCain.”
E.J. Dionne, Jr. reviews Al Gore’s buzz-generating speech on energy independence at Constitution Hall, which may begin the “compelling narrative” on the topic Democracy Corps says Dems need.
Michael Sean Winters has an interesting TNR article advising Obama how to win Catholic voters, who are 23 percent of the electorate and even more influential in swing states, like PA, NV, NH and WI. Winters, author of “Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats,” says “Catholics are ripe for Obama to pick if he can master the distinctive ways they view economic issues. Unlike the gloom-and-doom preaching of Calvin’s heirs, Catholicism has a more positive take on the possibilities of human culture and politics that would fit Obama’s politics of hope nicely.”
Here’s a simple, but very effective video ad that could be broadly-used by Democratic candidates for the white house and Congress — and making a point that merits repetition.

Most political observers are generally aware that Democrats have been benefitting from a surge in party registration this year. But Rhodes Cook has offered a clear statistical look at the Democratic registration advantage, going back to the 2004 election.
Keep in mind that only 29 states (plus DC) register voters by party. So Cook’s national numbers–a total increase in Dem registration of about 700,000, and a decline in GOP registration by about a million–just show part of the picture.
But far more significant are the trends in some of the battleground states. Combining D and R numbers, the net shift towards Democratic as opposed to Republican registrations since November of 2004 has been 124,000 in Oregon, 94,000 in Iowa, 60,000 in both Colorado and Nevada, 33,000 in New Hampshire, and 30,000 in Arizona. But it’s the trend in Pennsylvania–a battleground in both the presidential and House races–that jumps off the page: Democratic registration is up 266,000 since ’04, while Republican registration is down 220,000. That’s a net shift of 486,000; Democrats now enjoy a plurality in registrations of more than a million in PA.
A number of big battleground states (notably OH, MI, VA, MN and WI) don’t register voters by party. But you’d have to guess the underlying partisan dynamics don’t differ massively from those in the party registration states. And that’s a major reason for Democratic optimism this year.

My review of Rick Perlstein’s remarkable history of the period between LBJ’s 1964 landslide and Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, Nixonland, is finally available on the Washington Monthly site.
A chunk of my review debates the proposition that the politics of middle-class resentment of liberal “elites” and minorities epitomized by Nixon may be running out of gas; hence the title assigned by the editors: “The End of Resentment.” Given the ongoing conservative effort to demonize Barack Obama as an out-of-touch lefty elitist, and his wife as a black militant, I wish the title had included a question mark. But still, for anyone who remembers the Nixon Era at its peak, the contemporary drive to batten on cultural resentments has the feel of a nostalgic Broadway revival rather than a new and vibrant production. One small but significant bit of evidence of the changing mood which I only mentioned in passing in the review is that the recent abuses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have been generally condemned, while the far more shocking My Lai massacre of the Vietnam Era made one of its chief perpetrators, Lt. William Calley, a popular hero feted at mass “Rallies for Calley,” particularly in my home state of Georgia.
We’ll learn soon enough the extent to which we are still living in Nixonland. But in the meantime, if you haven’t read Perlstein’s book, you really should. Its length will be daunting to some, but it’s more than worth the effort.

The June fundraising figures for the Obama campaign finally came out yesterday, showing a $52 million haul for the month, and rebutting rumors that the Obama Money Machine had ground to a virtual halt.
John McCain’s campaign raised $22 million in June, about the same amount received by Obama in May. Last week the Wall Street Journal predicted that Obama’s June totals would be around $30 million, an estimate that was only off by about 70%. More generally, and vaguely, there was considerable behind-the-scenes speculation in political circles that Obama’s alleged “move to the middle” might be discouraging his small-donor base. That doesn’t appear to have been the case in June.
Just as importantly, as of June Obama was still tapping donors who hadn’t “maxed out” in terms of the $2,300 contributions limit for the pre-general-election period. As Jim Kuhnhenn of HuffPo explains, only $2 million of Obama’s $52 million for June was “general election” money. Overall, Obama has raised about $340 million, with $12 million being designated for the general election. He can roll over any unused “primary” money to the general election if he wishes, but the key thing to remember is that his campaign hasn’t even begun to go back to its one-and-a-half-million primary donors for general election contributions.
Meanwhile, the DNC had its first good fundraising month in a long while, raising $22 million (as compared to less than $5 million in May). In terms of cash-on-hand, combining personal and party funds, Obama and McCain are roughly even right now. McCain, of course, will receive $84 million in public financing after the convention, but Obama does seem to be back on track towards his goal of raising about $300 million for the general election.

Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos has a riff, “Poll Finds Massive ‘Whining’ in Florida, Ohio,” discussing the new NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll (toplines here) in relation to Phil Gramm’s “whiner”-driven “mental recession.” Blades does a nice job of presenting the data, which shows majorities of respondents in both states worried about real-world economic problems.
The poll is interesting in that it gets respondents to break down the sources of their economic discontent into categories such as “Problems paying for gas” (55%); “Problems getting a good-paying job/raise in pay” (39%); “Problem buying/selling home/home losing value” (36%); “Problems paying for health care and insurance” (32%); “Problems paying for college/education cost” (26%); and “Losing a job” (26%) and other problems. Respondents also saw a connection between the Iraq mess and their economic problems:

…according to the poll, the top two things people in Florida say would help the most are stopping American jobs from going overseas and pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

As Dee Moskona, a 47-year-old attorney and mother in Miami, quoted in Blades’ report puts it, “Iraq is draining everything.”
If Democratic registration meets high expectations, swing state voters will elect leaders who will address their very real economic concerns and bring home our troops — and our money.