Week before last, Matt Compton posted a review here of Matt Bai’s influential book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle To Remake Democratic Politics.
For those who enjoyed Matt’s review, or have read the book, or have simply heard the buzz about it, I recommend you go over to TPMCafe, where there’s an extensive discussion of it, including Bai himself, Mark Schmitt, Joan McCarter (a.k.a. McJoan), Garance Franke-Ruta, Nathan Newman, The Reapers (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger) and yours truly.
To my surprise, much of the discussion (largely driven by the ever-thoughtful Mark Schmitt) has been not about the internal “argument” among Democrats on the direction of the party, but about the external “argument” Democrats need to present concerning the big challenges facing the country. It’s perhaps the most extensive discussion of a book I’ve seen at TPMCafe, and it’s still expanding. Check it out.

For those of you interested in where the Christian Right winds up in the 2008 presidential campaign, there’s an article by Jonathan Martin up at The Politico that provides an excellent overview.
While Martin frames his piece as a discussion of Fred Thompson’s lost opportunity to become the consensus candidate of the Christian Right (mainly because of his unwillingness to support a constitutional nationwide ban on gay marriages), the sense you get is that this community of would-be kingmakers is in real disarray, united in their opposition to Rudy Giuliani but unable to agree on an alternative. The case for Thompson’s candidacy made by big-time Christian Right activist Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention is revealingly defensive, and, well, about as enthusiastic as Big Fred himself.
There’s not much doubt that a viable Mike Huckabee campaign would be the answer to these folks’ prayers. But it’s not clear they are willing or able to do anything tangible to make that a reality. We’ll know more about the Arkansan’s prospects next week, when the third-quarter fundraising numbers start leaking out. If Huckabee continues to struggle in the money department, then he probably won’t have a prayer of answering the Christian Right altar call.

As Congress continues to debate a sure-to-be-vetoed reauthorization and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), you have to admire, in a sick sort of way, the audacity of the rhetoric emerging from the White House and its conservative allies on this issue. It was best expressed in this morning’s Robert Novak column, entitled “Socialized Medicine’s Front Door.”
In this column, the Prince of Darkness chops and channels a variety of Republican speeches warning that the S-CHIP expansion represents a “government takeover of health care” (the hardy perennial sound-bite at the center of the successful effort to derail the Clinton health care plan back in 1994), and of course, “socialized medicine” (a term used less successfully a generation earlier by conservative opponents of the original Medicare legislation).
You’d think terms like “socialized medicine” might be reserved for systems in which most health care providers work for the public sector. And “government takeover,” as applied to health insurance, not the health care system itself, is a phrase that might reasonably be applied to a single-payer system that abolishes or radically limits private insurance plans
But in reality, S-CHIP, in the expanded as well as in the existing version, typically purchases private health plans for those it covers. And far from being some Washington leviathan, S-CHIP is run by the states, who make a wide variety of decisions about coverage, and also help finance the program.
When you really think about what Novak and other conservatives actually mean when they talk about “socialized medicine” or a “government takeover of health care,” the terms could and would be applied to any public-sector-financed effort to expand health care coverage, including the one Mitt Romney signed into legislation in Massachusetts. That’s why we should all get used to the anti-socialism campaign unfolding in Washington this week, because we’re going to hear it over and over again on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. And it deserves derision and contempt every time it pops up.

It may seem early to be thinking about the Democratic presidential nominee’s running mate, but, hey that decision is less than a year away. Somebody has to get the ball rolling, so just for fun, here goes one blogger’s early shortlist:

Bill Richardson – Assuming he doesn’t pull a NH upset, he has to rank high on everybody’s veepster short list. Obviously, he brings serious Latino creds. And he just might ice the SW for Dems. He also has an appealing ‘regular guy’ quality that comes across in interviews. And he matches nicely with any of the other Democratic aspirants. Hard to see a downside.
Chris Dodd – Senator Dodd has decades of experience, and if there were more equitable media coverage, he would likely be one of the front-runners. Presidential nominees always say the primary criterion for their V.P. choice is someone who is “ready to be President at a moment’s notice.” Nobody in the current field fits that qualification better than Dodd.
Howard Dean – Smart, passionate and straight-talking, Dean would bring impressive grass roots creds to the ticket. Plus he can articulate the case for voting straight Democratic ticket down the line better than anyone, and we need that big-time. The “Scream” media fallout that ended his white house run in ’04 now seems more about trifling MSM coverage than his emotional stability.
Russ Feingold – Would energize left-progressives like no other nominee and bring home a swing state in the bargain. Would fit best with a more centrist presidential nominee.
Three rookies – Claire McCaskill, Sherrod Brown and James Webb. Each reps a swing state, and the “fresh face” thing might draw some extra interest. All three won close elections, but with broad-based support and could rumble with the best anywhere. McCaskill is an energetic champion of working families, Brown is one of the fiercest debaters in the Senate and Webb exemplifies the strong but more thoughtful foreign policy yearned for by many Americans.
Caroline Kennedy – Stop scoffing and try to remember her speech at the 2000 Democratic convention. Talk about poise, class and symbolic power. Yes, I also doubt she would accept it. But she is highly patriotic and, if called to serve by the right uncle, who knows?

My short list is based on the assumption that none of the ‘Big Three’ would accept the V.P. nomination. Can’t see Clinton or Edwards accepting it, or being offered it for that matter. And my hunch is that Obama might prefer thriving as a top Senator for a few years to cutting ribbons and attending funerals. Just thinking here. If you have any better suggestions, fire away.

Inadequate disclosure of methodology, as Pollster.com has reminded us, is one common problem with political polls. But another is in how poll results are reported.
CNN provides a good example today, in a story headlined: “Giuliani Has Caught Up With Romney in New Hampshire,” based on a new CNN/WMUR poll of the Granite State conducted by the University of New Hampshire. The underlying data is that Mitt Romney’s nine-point lead over Giuliani in UNH’s July poll is now down to just one point.
So Rudy’s surging in NH, right? Well, not exactly. In July the numbers were Romney 34, Giuliani 20, Thompson 13 and McCain 12. Now they are Romney 25, Giuliani 24, McCain 18 and Thompson 13. So Rudy’s “surged” by four points, in a poll whose margin of error is 5.5%. The real news in the poll is a decline in Mitt’s support, and the most dramatic gainer was McCain, not Rudy.
From a pure horse-race perspective, the CNN story is accurate. But it’s also misleading unless you look at the actual numbers and particularly the margin of error. Still, I’m sure Rudy’s campaign is happy to take the gimme.

In her new and very useful American Prospect weekly feature The FundamentaList, Sarah Posner scores an interview with Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page (a South Carolinian), who talks about growing evangelical conservative support for Mike Huckabee. She also reports that Huckabee’s just won the presidential straw poll at a gathering of the Palmetto Family Council, a state-based satellite of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family empire.
The locus of these developments is significant because South Cackalacki is crucial to the long-shot scenario for a Huckabee nomination. His hopes would depend on a very strong showing in Iowa (a second place finish to Mitt Romney would do the trick nicely), a decent finish in NH (where his radical views on the federal tax system might strike a chord), and then a real breakthrough in SC, a state perfectly designed for his candidate profile. SC is also crucial, of course, to fellow-southerner Fred Thompson, and one big question is whether Fred’s standing will be heavily damaged in earlier contests.
On the other hand, the Michigan and Florida side-shows, which will apparently go forward as significant contests among Republicans if not Democrats, are a real problem for a candidate like Huckabee, who probably won’t have the money to compete in either. And that’s why it’s crucial for him that the calendar shift to move NH ahead of MI, and SC ahead of FL. If the stars all align for the Arkansan, strong and visible support from SC conservative evangelicals could be a matter of political life or death for him.

Bill Berkowitz has a post up at Media Transparency that should be of interest to Democrats seeking insights about winning Catholic votes. Noting that Dems reversed a trend of a quarter-century duration in winning over Catholic voters 55-45 percent in 2006, according to NEP data, Berkowitz reveals some of the inside history behind the “Catholic voter migration” (including the scandal involving the GOP’s point man for Catholic support) and he discusses current strategies being deployed by both parties to secure Catholic support.

SurveyUSA subscriber Marcos Moulitsas has shared with us the latest SUSA general election poll testing the Big Three Democrats (Clinton, Obama and Edwards) against the Big Three Republicans (Giuliani, Thompson and Romney), this time for Virginia.
I’ve been anticipating this poll in part because I was curious about the depth of the pro-Democratic trend in Virginia, and in part because the numbers might test my theory that John Edwards’ strong showing in national general election polls is not, contrary to the CW, due to any special appeal in the South.
The “purplish” color of Virginia–a state no Democratic presidential candidate has carried since Lyndon Johnson in 1964–was certainly reinforced by this poll. Of the nine matchups, only one (Obama versus Thompson) showed a Republican ahead (47-45).
As for Edwards, his numbers are difficult to distinguish from HRC’s. In nearly every matchup, she gets a higher percentage of the vote, while his margins over the GOP are better. If Edwards is benefitting from any “southern comfort,” or Clinton is suffering from a regional disability, it’s hard to tell here.

For serious political junkies, nothing’s more frustrating than reading about some striking poll results, and then discovering that the reliability of the poll is in question because the polling firm (or the campaign or media enterprise sponsoring the survey) won’t tell you much of anything about its methodology.
To deal with this persistent problem, Pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal’s indispensible site, has started a “Disclosure Project” aimed at eliciting the kinds of information necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff, or at least to compare divergent results:

Starting today we will begin to formally request answers to a limited but fundamental set of methodological questions for every public poll asking about the primary election released in, for now, a limited set of states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or for the nation as a whole. We are starting today with requests emailed to the Iowa pollsters and will work our way through the other early states and national polls over the next few weeks, expanding to other states as our time and resources allow.

The questions focus on “screening” for likely participation in primaries or caucuses; sample size and composition; and polling techniques. And as Blumenthal pointedly mentions, pollsters are actually required by the code of ethics of their profession to make such information available on request.
This project isn’t just of concern to us junkies. Like it or not, polls affect media coverage, donations, volunteer activity, campaign strategies, and sometimes, even election results. (I can remember a gubernatorial election in my home state of Georgia many years ago when a candidate kept releasing “internal poll” results showing a late surge towards a runoff position, creating considerable media coverage and momentum. It was generally believed by political insiders that the campaign was literally just making the numbers up.)
The least we can expect is that pollsters and their paymasters let the rest of us in on their methods if they expect us to take the results seriously.

At the start of school last year, a black freshman at Jena High School in Louisiana asked his principal if he could sit beneath a tree, which was reserved by tradition for white students only. The administrator told the student he could sit where he pleased, and the freshman and his friends ate their lunch in the shade. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree, and ever since, the small town in LaSalle Parish has been ripped apart.
Things came to a head when six black teenagers were arrested and charged with assault and then attempted murder after a fight with a white student. Last week in Jena, more than 10,000 people, some of whom drove throughout the night, showed up to protest the arrests.
You’ve probably heard about Jena by now. But when the story first broke, there was little or no mention of it in the major precincts of the progressive blogosphere (including, just to be clear about it, this one). At Facing South (the blog for the Institute for Southern Studies), Chris Kromm did a post last Thursday, the day of the Jena march, that notes the lack of comment. His quick survey looked like this:

* DailyKos features a handful of posts about injustice in Iraq today — but not a single entry on its main page, or even its user-generated “diaries,” about this important case.
* TalkingPointsMemo, a favorite of the DC wonk set, is similarly incensed about foreign policy, but apparently not about racial justice in the South — nothing there either.
* Long-time progressive blogger Atrios doesn’t have a lot of posts up, but found time to touch on Paul Krugman, Iraq and the state of the Euro — but not this major issue.
* Surely TalkLeft — which has positioned itself as the leading progressive blog about criminal justice issues — would have something? Think again — not a single mention, not even in the quick news briefs!
* What about another progressive favorite, FireDogLake? A rant about Republicans being “little bitches,” but nothing on the Jena 6.
When the Jena 6 does make an appearance on progressive blogs today, it’s little more than a passing nod. Huffington Post has a blog post buried below the fold; ThinkProgress gives it a two-sentence news brief.

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