So, faithful readers, if you did your homework about the extraordinary perils of polling Iowa, you’re ready to digest today’s big public opinion news, a new poll of Iowa and New Hampshire by CBS and the New York Times.
There’s another bit of threshold info necessary here: this is the first CBS/NYT poll of these two states, so given the methodological variations between polling outfits, it’s not very useful in terms of establishing trend lines with any precision. Thus, the finding that the Big Three Dems are essentially tied in Iowa, while some polls have shown a big HRC lead, or a relatively poor third-place Edwards position, isn’t particularly illuminating, other than by reinforcing what pretty much everyone actually believes. Similarly, the poll shows John Edwards at 9% in NH, while other polls have shown him in the low-to-mid teens. This won’t much matter until we see another poll from the same source.
But even in a “first poll” like this, some big trends may have real value. They are all basically on the GOP side. Mike Huckabee’s 21% standing in Iowa represents a large enough shift to reflect something happening on the ground, particularly since the poll’s internals show that his support levels are “harder” than those of front-runner Mitt Romney. And Fred Thompson’s dismal sixth-place position in NH, well below Ron Paul, along with his single-digit showing in Iowa, isn’t a good sign for the Big Fred Machine.
Poll internals from IA on the Democratic side are pretty interesting, since many published polls don’t go into the deeper dynamics of candidate preference that particularly matter in that state’s Caucuses. For example, the poll tests secondary preferences among voters supporting the lower-tier candidates (who presumably will struggle to meet the 15% threshold for winning delegates in any particular precinct), and both Edwards (30%) and Obama (27%) are winning more than double the percentage of such voters as compared to HRC (14%). Another set of interesting internals have to do with Caucus composition. Obama and Edwards are basically mirror images, with Obama’s strength among the categories of voters (e.g., younger voters and self-identified independents) likely to matter the most if overall turnout is high, and Edwards doing especially well (though not much better than HRC) with the likeliest participants in a lower-turnout scenario: seniors, self-identified Democrats, and prior Caucus-attenders.
None of these IA Dem findings directly challenge the CW, though HRC’s apparent second-choice weakness could pose a challenge to her Caucus-night tactics, where candidate-driven or spontaneous alliances with “nonviable” candidates are always a big deal in a large field. But such speculation depends on the accuracy of the poll in the first place, and to come full circle, we won’t really know whether this or other IA polls are on mark until the results are in.

David Brooks’ New York Times column about presidential candidate Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, MS in 1980 has been widely discredited as just another GOP whitewash. There is one more post, however that merits a read, Joseph Crespino’s article at the History News Network. Crespino, an Emory History proff and author of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution, has a few more points to make on the subject, including a report that Reagan was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan newspaper and rejected it only after a Carter Administration cabinet official publicized it. Other academics respond to Crespino’s article in the comments.

CNN has a useful story buried on its web page about presidential candidate expeditures on television ads. It’s pretty much a matter of Mitt Romney and then everyone else. Romney has spent over 8 .million smackers on TV so far; the next leading TV spender on the GOP side is John McCain, at a paltry $300,000.
Among Democrats, Obama leads in TV expenditures with $3.9 milliion, trailed by both Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson (who “went up” very early) at $2.2 million.
But three candidates are about to go airborne in a big way: Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards and Ron Paul. Get ready for saturation ads, Iowa and New Hampshire.

You have to wonder if the closing weeks leading up to the Democratic primary season is the best time to promote a new book about George McGovern’s campaign. Nonetheless, Alternet is running an excerpt from Bruce Miroff’s new book The Liberals’ Moment, pondering the legacy of McGovern’s 1972 — there’s no other word for it — debacle. Yet the McGovern campaign was an important training school for Dems who were more successful in the future, and Miroff has much to say about the future of the Democratic Party. There’s a lot for Dems across the Party spectrum to argue with here, and that’s just in this excerpt.

Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics methodically goes through the aspects of the Iowa Caucus system that show the unreliability of polling in advance of the event, particularly with respect to the tight three-way Democratic race.
It’s probably a good thing to read and think about before the next batch of Iowa polls, particularly since one’s coming out tonight that apparently shows the Big Three Dems in Iowa within three points of each other.

There’s been an interesting kerfuffle over the last day in the Democratic presidential contest, after the New York Times The Caucus blog reported that John Edwards had in an interview twice refused “at this time” to answer a question about supporting Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination.
The story got picked up in various places in the blogosphere. Kevin Drum called Edwards’ behavior “very mysterious.” Jason Zengerle at The Plank begs to differ: “As the Democratic candidate who’s been most unsparing in his criticism of Clinton, Edwards would look like a total hypocrite if, in the midst of offering his whithering Clinton critiques, he pledged his future support to her.”
I’m with Kevin on the basic issues here. “Will you support the Democratic nominee if you lose?” is an incredibly standard question for presidential candidates, sort of on the order of “Why do you want to be president?” It’s been asked of Republican candidates in debates this year, in terms of a hypothetical Giulani nomination (disguised as “a pro-choice nominee”). Probably no one has asked Democrats before because nobody thought there was any question about it, given the similarity of most of their policy views and their common hostiilty towards Republicans.
But Jason is correct that the vectors of Edwards’ criticism of HRC have been heading in a direction that would make his support for her as the nominee questionable. That’s what I was worried about back in August when I drew attention to the first Edwards speech that implicitly said a Clinton nomination would continue the corrupt Washington politics of the Bush administration. The Bush Lite/Corporate Stooge line of attack from Edwards has only gotten more intense since then.
In any event, in a press availability today, Edwards “clarified” his no-comment by saying: “I fully expect to support the Democratic nominee, and I fully expect to be the Democratic nominee.”
One wag (named franklyO) commenting on this news at TPMElectionCentral said: “For the logically minded, this could be interpreted as saying nothing more than that Edwards will support himself as Democratic nominee.”
For some of us old-timers, the Edwards formulation was evocative of the highly calculated mantra repeated endlessly by Ted Kennedy in 1980, before he decided to challenge Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination: “I expect President Carter to be renominated, and I intend to support him.”
Any way you look at it, Edwards has guaranteed he’s going to get asked this question again until he specifically says he’ll support the nominee no matter who it is, much as Obama has already done–and perhaps until he gets into the habit of saying that much as he dislikes HRC, she’s far preferable to anyone the opposition can nominate.

The emerging CW on the Republican presidential race over the last few weeks has been that it was developing into a two-candidate contest between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, with McCain stuck in neutral, Thompson fading, and only Mike Huckabee providing any suspense (aside from the financial pyrotechics of Ron Paul).
With today’ surprising endorsement by the National Right To Life Committee, Fred Thompson appears to have become the Undead. The nod was a particular blow to Mitt Romney and to Mike Huckabee.
But via Todd Beeton, we learn that Romney got some good news yesterday as well: an endorsement by the California Republican Assembly, an important conservative factional group in the Golden State. From all accounts, he won the endorsement pretty much the way he won last August’s Iowa State Republican Straw Poll: with elbow grease and big sacks of cash (many “delegates” to the CRA conference were recruited by the Romney campaign and had no prior association with the group).
Since California was supposed to be Rudy Giuliani’s stomping grounds, this could be a relatively large deal.
In general, this week’s events reinforce the impression that the GOP presidential field remains very unsettled, with no one exactly making a move to lock things down.
And today’s news also makes me wonder if Robert Novak is losing his touch as an analyst of conservative Republican infighting. Just last week he did a column suggesting that Fred Thompson had profoundly, perhaps irreversibly, alienated right-to-lifers in an appearance on Meet the Press. Not so much, it appears. And about three weeks ago, he did another column documenting the deep satisfaction of California conservatives with Rudy Giuliani, his positions on abortion and gay rights notwithstanding. Wrong again, Batman.
I’ll certainly look for second-source verification next time I read a breathless proclamation from the Prince of Darkness about the course of the GOP nominating contest.

Word is Governor Sonny Perdue is going to lead a group of legislators and ministers in prayers for rain on the Georgia State Capitol steps tomorrow, as the Great Drought moves closer each day to shutting down water taps in Georgia and Alabama.
Church-state separation advocates are criticizing Sonny for leading prayers on state property. Maybe instead he just should have asked radio stations in Georgia to simultaneously broadcast the great indie rock classic by Georgia’s own Guadalcanal Diary, Pray for Rain, which was occasionally played during weather reports amidst an earlier drought in the 1980s:
Don’t call for love
Don’t ask for gold
our daily bread
or no more pain
pray for rain
Perdue could also pray for serious study of the impact of climate change on weather patterns, or for a reconsideration of metro Atlanta’s endless development sprawl. But I’m guessing he thinks the Almighty is a Republican.

As a Veterans Day meditation, I thought it might be a good idea to take a fresh look at one of the most contentious subjects in intra-party discussions: How Democrats can clearly differentiate themselves from Republicans on national security issues without falling into the “weak on defense” stereotypes conservatives have spent many years and billions of dollars promoting.
To make a very long story short, there have been at least five basic strategic takes on this subject among Democrats in recent years:
1) Ignore national security as “enemy territory” and focus on maximizing Democratic advantages on domestic issues (the default position of Democratic congressional campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s).
2) Agree with Republican positions on national security to “take them off the table” and then seek to make elections turn on domestic issues where Democrats have an advantage (the Dick Gephardt strategy for congressional Dems in 2002 and for his own presidential campaign in 2004; also common among Democrats running for office in conservative areas).
3) Vociferously oppose Republican positions on national security (and particularly the use of military force) in order to convey “strength,” on the theory that “weakness” is the real message of conservative “weak on defense” attacks (a common assumption among bloggers and activists arguing that a single-minded focus on ending the Iraq War is a sufficient national security message).
(4) Oppose Republican positions on national security while focusing on Democratic respect for, and material support for, “the troops” and veterans, on the theory that a lack of solidarity with the armed services is the real message of conservative “undermining our troops” attacks (a common theme in the Kerry 2004 campaign and in post-2004 Democratic messaging).
(5) Find ways to compete with Republicans on national security without supporting their policies and positions (e.g., the 2002-2004 Clark/Graham “right idea, wrong target” criticisms of the Iraq invasion as distracting and undermining the legitimate fight against terrorists).
There are obviously variations on and combinations of all five strategies, and one could add two relatively marginal approaches: the “anti-imperialist” position that explicitly denies the value of a strong national security posture, and the occasional suggestion that Democrats should “move to the right” of Republicans by supporting military actions more fervently than the opposition.
This entire subject was brought to the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest over the weekend by Barack Obama’s well-received Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech, which, inter alia, criticized Democrats (implicitly, Hillary Clinton) for failing to maintain partisan differentiation on national security:

I am running for president because I am sick and tired of Democrats thinking that the only way to look tough on national security by talking and acting and voting like George Bush Republicans. When I am this party’s nominee, my opponent will not be able to say I voted for the war in Iraq or gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran or that I support Bush/Cheney policies of not talking to people we don’t like.

This rap is obviously a direct appeal to those Democrats who believe HRC is guilty of strategy #2, and also to those who favor strategy #3. But Obama also makes a gesture towards strategy #5 by going on to say:

I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century – nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease.

The hard thing about strategy #5 is that it’s complicated, requiring an overall vision of U.S. foreign policy and defense strategy that is difficult to sharply and simply convey while maintaining partisan differentiation. The tendency to simply substitute “diplomacy” for “use of force” in dealing with every conceivable security challenge arguably plays into Republican taunts that Democrats are allergic to the use of force, period.
But there is one national security topic on which Democrats have a built-in advantage wherein they could not only conveys “toughness” and seriousness on national security, but also rebut years of Republican attacks: military readiness. As Steve Benen points out today at TalkingPointsMemo, the “Clinton hollowed out the military” myth was not only a staple of Bush’s 2000 campaign, and a subtext of attacks on Kerry’s defense record in 2004, but is still being monotonously repeated by 2008 Republican candidates:

Bush has stretched the military to the breaking point, and Republican presidential candidates want to emphasize rebuilding the Armed Forces as part of their platforms. But to acknowledge the incredible strains on the current military is to implicitly hold the president to account for his irresponsible policies.
What to do? Blame Clinton, of course.

For Democrats, talking about rebuilding the U.S. military in acknowledgement of an era of asymmetric warfare, and the limits on military power we’ve painfully learned in Iraq, is a good way simultaneously to draw attention to Bush’s assault on military readiness (a source of considerable ongoing grief within the military itself), to deride the national security “thinking” behind the Iraq War and the drive to war with Iran, and to identify with “the troops.” That doesn’t necessarily mean support for an increased defense spending or even an expanded active military. But it does clearly indicate that a Democratic commander-in-chief will pursue a defense strategy markedly different from the GOP contenders, who are still trying to win unwinnable wars (and perhaps start others) based on the “world’s sole superpower” illusion of the immediate post-Cold War period.
The political futility, and unprincipled nature, of Democratic strategies #1 and #2 on national security are pretty apparent by now. Strategy #4 is a good defensive measure, but often sounds evasive, and on occasion runs the risk of treating troops as victims rather than as heroes. Perhaps strategy #3 will work politically, but it’s hard to imagine a Democratic candidate getting through an entire general election campaign saying little or nothing about national security other than the desire to reverse every single decision made by George W. Bush. So strategy #5 might well be essential, as well as prinicipled (giving voters a clear idea of what a Democratic commander-in-chief would do, not just undo), and military readiness might be a good place to start a message of “differentiation with strength.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Cynthia Tucker shows why she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in her Sunday op-ed, “Democrats must lead way on immigration.” Any Dems thinking about going all wobbly on the issue should first give Tucker’s eloquent essay a read. Tucker gives the GOP a richly-deserved blistering for their nativist position on immigration and adds:

…here’s some counterintuitive advice for the Democratic ranks: Don’t hedge. Lead. Do the right thing. Come out clearly and forcefully for putting illegal immigrants already in the country on a path to citizenship. This is no time to trim or triangulate. Show some spine. America is ready for reasoned leadership on this issue.
…So let the GOP be the party of fear and division. Democrats ought to stand for something else. The modern Democratic Party also made its choice in the 1960s, choosing hope over fear, tolerance over division and the beloved community over bigotry.
…This is no time for Democrats to turn their backs on that heritage. America is too generous and compassionate to expel millions of productive and otherwise law-abiding people. The nation has taken advantage of their labor for decades, and it would be inhumane (and outrageously expensive) to round them up and send them back.

Tucker suggests a reasonable alternative:

But Americans also want to be assured that this is the last time a broad legalization option is offered to illegal immigrants. Democrats ought to make it clear that they’ll enforce the borders and crack down on employers who hire illegally, a cheaper and more effective strategy for addressing the problem than building fences. After a few CEOs have done the perp walk for illegal hiring, they’ll stop offering jobs to those without proper documents. And when word gets across the border that U.S. companies have stopped hiring, those laborers will stop coming. They come for jobs, after all, not jihad.
This is a win-win platform. Not only is it wise and honorable, calling on the highest ideals of a nation of immigrants, it can also produce victories at the ballot box. Last week, Virginia Democrats made gains in state and local elections even though the state has been embroiled in fiery debate over illegal immigration. As an analysis by the Washington Post concluded, voting trends didn’t benefit “those who campaigned the loudest for tough sanctions against illegal immigrants.”
Let Republicans take the low road. It doesn’t end in a place the rest of the country wants to go.

This debate is just getting started, and Tucker’s challenge merits consideration.