Early horse race presidential polls have an unimpressive track record in predicting the Democratic nominee. In fact, historical experience suggests there is money to be made betting against the current front-runners. As Associated Press reporter Will Lester explains:

…Edmund Muskie in 1972, George Wallace in 1976, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Gary Hart in 1988, Mario Cuomo in 1992 and Joe Lieberman in 2004 were early front-runners among Democrats. None won the nomination.

But, as poll analyst Mark Blumenthal notes in his Pollster.com article “Pew Center on Past Presidential Trial Heats”:

…two of the four that did not win (Cuomo in 1991 and Hart in 1987) “withdrew from the race for reasons other than lagging support in the polls.” So make of that history what you will.

And further, as Blumenthal quotes Pew Research Center’s Nilanthi Samaranayake and Scott Keeter:

the increased front-loading of the primaries and the growing importance of early fundraising means that the dynamics of the nominating process are apt to be somewhat different this election cycle, making comparisons with past elections less useful.

True ’nuff. And there are two exceptions to the trend, as Lester notes:

Democrats nominated a former vice president, Walter Mondale, in 1984, and a sitting vice president, Al Gore, in 2000. For those elections, the early polls were more predictable at picking the front-runner.

Of course, we’ve never had a presidential spouse in early front-runner position before, much less the spouse of a popular President who had eight years of comparative peace and prosperity and who is a popular U.S. Senator. So don’t go betting the ranch that Hillary will tank. But the point that early presidential trial heat polls have little predictive value for Dems is nonetheless worth keeping in mind.
Interestingly, the reverse is true for the GOP, says Lester:

Republicans have picked the early front-runner in seven of the past 10 elections, according to Gallup polling. In the other three elections, Republican incumbents cruised to re-election.

Lester offers a couple of possible explanations for this phenomenon. But could it be that Dems are just more open to change?
None of this is to say that early horse race polls have no value to Dems. They do help candidates identify areas of strength and weakness and who they need to challenge at various stages of the race. The thing to keep in mind is, the early polls help the candidates shape their message, persona and strategy, not those who want to predict the Democratic nominee.
For a peek at who the early “smart money”, i.e. the gambling community, is actually betting on at this stage, check out the surprising current betting odds at Intrade’s web pages.

It’s not hard to find lengthy discusssions about how which candidates voted and/or what they said about the decision to invade and occupy Iraq and how important it is — just throw a dart over your shoulder at your favorite bloglist. It’s just something Democrats have to go through at this early, winnowing stage of the ’08 campaign. The presidential primaries will help resolve the discussion, and in time all good Dems will unify behind the nominee. On the road to that glorious day, we suggest the following to put the discussion in perspective:
In his American Prospect article, “Their Vote Counts,” Michael Tomasky says “apology, schmapology,” those candidates who supported the war early on (Clinton and Edwards) should not get a free ride:

Readers, and voters, will decide for themselves who’s being more honest. For my part, I’ve decided: Neither is, and if only for the sake of remembering things accurately, we should look back at the infamous October 2002 vote in some detail and tell the plain truth about why most Senate Democrats voted to authorize war. It’s one of the most important and fateful votes Congress has cast in recent American history, and it’s very much worth remembering.

One of Tomasky’s American Prospect stablemates, Garance Franke-Ruta, agrees in her article “The Ethics of Apology”:

So, sure, America could use someone who’s able to admit mistakes, and, yes, apologies only count for so much. What America could really use, though, is someone who had the courage to stand up for truth-telling when it really mattered, as it did in 2002 — and who now uses his high-ranking political post to take action to end the war. Obama’s test — his trap — will be whether or not he can do more than introduce well-written and well-intentioned legislation which dies without a vote.

Yet another American Prospect writer, Ezra Klein, makes a more flexible assessment in his piece “Honest Stupidity”:

Had Democrats been thinking more clearly, they would have considered Bush’s record, his competence, his instincts, and just said no. The moment, however, was not one conducive to clear thought. And the question was never framed or explained quite like that. Rather, an array of foreign policy wisemen and self-styled Iraq experts fanned out to speak to those politicians they were closest with and convinced them to vote for the resolution as a way of voting for their personal wars.

And no doubt New Donkey Ed Kilgore speaks for legions with this take, from his “Kos, Vilsack, the War and the DLC”:

Look, I don’t personally mind antiwar Democrats pointing out again and again they were right and others, including the DLC, were wrong on the original decision to go into Iraq…If we are going to go back and examine everyone’s position at every stage of the nightmare in Iraq, it’s not unfair to point out that Howard Dean, during his presidential campaign, said repeatedly that America had a responsibility to stay in Iraq, perhaps for a long time, given our unfortunate decision to go to war.
All this endless recrimination over who said what when after the war started, and who moved as fast or faster than Murtha or Kos in the maximum antiwar direction, is IMHO a big waste of time, and far more divisive than anything emanating from the DLC, much less Tom Vilsack.

Do read the pro and con comments following these articles for more insight and join the fray. But know that first Tuesday in November ’08, nearly all of the candidates’ harshest progressive critics will cast their ballots for the Democratic nominee, regardless of their earlier positions — and that’s a good thing.

It’s all about the Clinton-Obama-Geffen dust-up in the blogs today. But over at TomPaine.com, David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, draws a bead on the more problematic conflict within the Democratic Party in his post “The Democrats’ Iraq Civil War”:

A civil war may be brewing in the Democratic Party over Iraq. There are Democrats who want to take immediate and concrete steps to end the war. They want to force withdrawal through legislation. And there are Democrats who essentially do not want to go first. They want to push President George W. Bush to clean up the mess he made so that he, not the Democrats, will bear responsibility for how the war ends (which could be nastily). Both sides were able to agree on a nonbinding resolution decrying Bush’s surge and declaring support for the troops. But now that such a resolution has passed in the House and died in the Senate, the issue is, what’s next?

Corn reviews the various intitiatives being proposed in the House and Senate and the positions of the Presidential candidates. It’s a dicey, high stakes game, with all parties fearful of being depicted as somehow less supportive of the troops. The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll, for example, indicates that 63 percent of respondents oppose sending more troops to Iraq, but 60 percent oppose cutting off funds for the additional troops President Bush wants to send to Iraq. In between these two simplistically-stated options, there are a wide range of alternatives that respondents haven’t yet been asked.
It may be too much to hope that Democrats will unite behind an Iraq withdrawall/redeployment strategy after the primaries designate the presidential nominee, as early as next February. But even if they do, it could be too late to do much good. If the “surge” fails to produce positive results by the end of summer this year — and there is no reason to think it will succeed, given Bush’s track record so far and the deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq — more voters will want to see funds cut off and troops coming home before the first primaries. How well the Dems respond in the Fall months of ’07 may well decide who wins the white house.

The web yields a hearty handful of articles relevant to Democratic political strategy for your hump-day reading. We’ll start with Kos, who has a brassy pair on today, with “How Democrats Can Utilize the Nine Principles of War” by a poster called The Angry Rakkasan and another by BentLiberal entitled “Dems Must Counter GOP Strategy of Bashing Bush.” Rakkasan may make antimilitarist Dems wince with his uncritical embrace of military terminology, but others may admire the economy of language. In any case Rakkasan offers some good insights, such as the following, under ‘principle 8: Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared.’:

See Jim Webb for this one. Do you think the Republicans were prepared for the news that a freshman Senator had just refused to shake the hand of the President? I don’t. And that’s why it made the news. By rebuffing the President less than a month after being elected, Senator Webb put both the President and the Republicans on notice—and he also solidified his base of support in the blogoshpere. The act served to galvanize Democrats.

Wondering if McCain, who just trashed Rumsfeld, is starting to run against the Bush Administration, BentLiberal’s Kos post offers this nugget of instructive advice:

We do a pretty good job of branding this as Bush’s war. But we can’t let the GOP use the same tactic to the extent that they extricate themselves from responsibility. They are going to try to shift blame on this war to Democrats after the next election. But before they can do that, they may try to couch it as Bush’s mistakes, but not the party’s. The truth is they’ve had the power to reshape it, to fix it, to stop it for 3 years now. And they haven’t. They are just as culpable as the administration….Our job is not to let the public forget it.

R. Neal’s “More prominent role for the South in presidential primaries?” at Facing South mulls over the heavy front-loading of southern presidential primaries, and offers the following numbers, which should make John Edwards smile:

The Democrats will have a total of 4370 delegates with 2186 needed to nominate, and Republicans will have 2517 delegates, with 1259 needed to nominate. If my arithmetic is right, Southern states with primaries in February plus South Carolina in January represent 44% of the delegates needed to nominate for Democrats, and 49% needed for Republicans.

Thomas Schaller points to what he believes may be the coming loss of Louisiana to the solid red state column in his Salon post, “Losing Louisiana to the GOP.” Schaller and others believe that Dems may lose the Gov and Senate races in ’08 and maybe one house of the state legislature, unless John Breaux runs for Governor. Schaller notes an interesting paradox in the south, which cries out for further explanation.

Louisiana is, at last, about to look a lot more like its Deep South neighbors politically. There has been something of an inverse relationship in recent presidential elections between the share of black voters and Republican performance. That is, the blacker the state, the bigger the Republican margins. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are all states with black populations close to or above a third, the highest percentage in the nation — and not a Democratic senator, governor or, since 1992, Democratic electoral vote among them.

Schaller is right about the above factoids. But will somebody — anybody — please explain why, if the south is so hopeless, Democrats currently hold majorities of both houses of the state legislatures in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and West Virginia (and one House in TN and KY), as well as the governorships of Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, two U.S. Senate seats in both Arkansas and West Virginia, and one each in Virginia, Florida and Louisiana.
Lastly, we encourage all Dems to check out Chris Bowers’ MyDD post “Primary Season Polling Wishlist,” which makes some excellent suggestions for pollsters conducting horse-race surveys: For example:

Stop pushing undecideds to make up their minds. I am looking in your direction, Gallup. To produce a poll that shows only 3% of the Democratic electorate as undecided at this point is obviously absurd to the point of shameful. Support for all candidates right now is extremely soft, and as such there should be no attempts whatsoever to force the people who respond to your poll to choose a candidate at this time. If you want to provide an accurate snapshot of current public opinion, you simply can’t push undecideds at this point.

And,

Include all candidates who are running. I am looking at you, Survey USA and Siena. Leaving announced candidates out of your questions is basically an in-kind contribution to the candidates you included in the poll. Why should some candidates, and not others, receive free polling information? This also distorts public opinion, in that voters will see all names on the ballot when they go to vote, and in that it artificially inflates the results for the candidates who are included in the polls. This is really bad stuff.

It’s good to see that progressive bloggers are bringing fresh and creative analysis to important stories missed by print and TV.

George Lakoff’s latest post, “Escalating Truth” at his Rockridge Institute webpage credits progressives with a significant victory in the linguistic battle for hearts and minds. Lakoff’s article, posted just before the non-binding resolution opposing the increase of U.S. troops in Iraq passed the House, focuses on the media usage of the terms “surge” vs. “escalation.” Says Lakoff:

Escalation is a more accurate description of Bush’s plan. But its use – and the diminished use of surge – did not happen without a disciplined and focused effort by progressives.

Lakoff notes a recent study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which found that “surge” was the preferred term used by the press over “escalation” by a margin of approximately 9 to 5. However, he explains that the horse race numbers are beside the real point:

The Project for Excellence in Journalism missed the significance. Though it announced “surge” as the “winner,” the real story was being ignored.”Escalation” had 10,112 uses! “Surge” had only 18,118 — relatively small considering that it was the official White House term, the one unquestioning journalists would feel safe using. The point is that “escalation” and its meaning got out there in the press — enough to have a major effect, to blunt and offer a counterforce to the meaning of “surge,” as well as to call attention to the real Bush policy. The Democratic leadership is still using “escalation,” as it should. The idea is out there more than enough, and that is what matters.

Lakoff argues that this was more than just a linguistic skirmish, as some have argued:

People all over the country noticed the “surge” framing immediately, and quickly — and accurately — reframed the President’s proposal as an “escalation.”..The Democratic leadership has been using the word, naming the policy accurately and thus challenging the lie implicit in “surge.” In previous years, before the Democrats became savvy about the importance of accurate framing, they might have just argued against the Bush “surge.”

And he believes it’s also a victory for ‘framing’ as a central element of political strategy:

Conservative ideas and frames must be confronted and contested. Progressives cannot succeed if they treat frames as nothing more than word games, if they fail to understand that the use of a term like surge reinforces the conservative worldview. We are not playing games with words. We are fighting over ideas, and the moral world views that underlie those ideas.

Democrats have clearly learned the lesson that refusing to allow the adversary to define the terms of debate is an essential element of political victory. Lakoff deserves primary credit for promoting this awareness, and, in this battle especially, the progressive blogosphere carried the message far and wide.

Democrats concerned about shoring up their U.S. Senate margin should read “Senate Races ’08: Down to the Wire Again?” at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Sabato crunches the numbers and covers the big picture, along with some specific Senate races, and concludes:

At least to judge by the early line-up, it will be a surprise if the Senate doesn’t remain highly competitive after November 2008, with neither party having anywhere near the sixty reliable votes needed to run this balky, idiosyncratic institution–the saucer that cools the hot brew in the House teacup.

Sabato opines that at this admittedly early stage, it appears that Dems are slightly more likely to hold the Senate, than lose control. But he warns:

The biggest imponderable is the presidential campaign. Senators like to think they are immune from the coattail effect. They are not. Certainly, coattail has a greater impact on open seat races, such as the ’04 Southern contests mentioned earlier, where the Bush reelection margin pushed Republicans over the finish line in states such as Florida and Louisiana. Yet a large margin for one party’s White House contender can add a few Senate seats all by itself. And then there are all the usual macro forces that are unpredictable but often determinative, including scandals that may arise, or the shape of each state’s economy (if it’s good, the incumbent claims credit, and if it’s bad, the challenger makes the incumbent take some blame). Fear of the unknown keeps both parties on their toes.
This early in the game, we hesitate even to categorize Senate races for 2008. Which senators will retire? Which senators will attract trouble or commit devastating gaffes before the campaign is finished? What will the quality of the challenger turn out to be in each race? How about the comparative financial war chests of the candidates and the national party senatorial committees? (With money, as in so many other aspects of life, size matters.)

A reasonable assessment, and one that underscores the importance of financial contributions to ’08 Senate and presidential candidates, as soon as possible for the latter, given the heavily front-loaded presidential primaries.

Kos has a thought-provoking post “Religion, Values and Politics,” offering a cogent argument that political candidates rarely gain much by talking about their religion. He nails it nicely in this nut graph:

Here’s the deal — Republicans have claimed god as their own and perverted religious texts to justify some of the most divisive and hateful policies and discourse in our politics today. And while Corporate Cons, Neocons, and Paleocons have tolerated the Theocons in order to tap into their activist network (none of those other conservative factions have significant boots to help them win elections), fact is it’s created an ugly party that is unelectable in entire regions of the country. No one likes to have their morality dictated by others. And that doesn’t just mean the Religious Right, but those on our side as well.

Kos believes Dems who think Harold Ford’s losing Senate campaign provides a model for emulation are sorely mistaken. He notes that Jim Webb and John Tester won in conservative states “without cheap pandering to the religious set.” He explains further:

They didn’t shoot commercials in churches, embrace hatred of gays, or demand school prayer (all of which Harold Ford did). They didn’t prattle on about “god” at every campaign stop. Yet somehow they were able to win.

Voters do want to know about candidates’ personal values, Kos explains. But candidates who equate values with parroting religious doctrines may be courting defeat. Kos’s article riffs on a discussion underway at Atrios, and both merit a thoughtful read. Nation-wide, there may, indeed be more voters who wish candidates would just shut up about their religion than those who want to hear about it. And just once, wouldn’t it be great to hear some leading politician say “Religion is a deeply personal matter, and I’m just not going to exploit it to jockey for votes.”

Today’s Wall St. Journal has an interesting article about the power of the blogosphere as a medium for political advertising. In the article, “Candidates Find A New Stump In the Blogosphere,” author Amy Schatz notes that internet political ads are increasing sharply

With 18 candidates vying for the most open race for the White House in 80 years and front-runners on both sides announcing plans to forgo public financing, the 2008 election promises to be a huge revenue opportunity, not just for TV broadcasters….All told, online spending by candidates, political parties and third-party special-interest “soft money” groups, like Moveon.org, could hit $80 million during the 2008 cycle compared with $29 million in 2004, according to an estimate by PQ Media LLC, a Connecticut research firm.

The boom in ads for political blogs is proving to be lucrative for high traffic political websites, although TV still rules in terms of ad revenues, explains Schatz:

Internet ad spending is small compared with spending on traditional radio, broadcast and cable advertising. The best-read blogs still charge comparably little for ads. A standard-size weekly ad purchased through Blogads costs $2,900 on the progressive site DailyKos for example, or $250 at Hotair.com, a conservative video blog site. By comparison, a 30-second broadcast television spot could set back a candidate anywhere from $90,000 to $110,000 a week in a market like Des Moines, according to Evan Tracey of the TNS Media Intelligence’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Campaigns know, however, that they are targeting a high number of opinion leaders and politically active net-surfers when they advertise on particular blogs.

The most popular political blogs reach a daily audience of just a few million readers, according to a study released last October by George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. But they are more likely than the general public to actively participate in the political process. The study found that about 75% of daily political-blog readers are male, about 40% are between 35 to 54 years old and 42% reported an annual income of $100,000 or more.

So far bloggers’ content has not been influenced by their advertisers, and Schatz cites examples of bloggers biting the hands that feed them. The article also discusses the internet ads of several presidential candidates, including John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

by Scott Winship
Longtime readers of TDS–by which I mean those of you who read it last fall–remember the, um, spirited debate we hosted over an essay by Third Way, “Missing the Middle“. Authors Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler argued that Democrats’ economic message to the middle class failed to resonate with voters because it was unduly pessimistic and focused on security rather than opportunity. Their critics responded that economic insecurity is prevalent–often with good reason. Secondarily, discussants asked, “Where’s the Beef?”, noting the absence of a coherent policy agenda that flowed from their analysis.
Today Third Way rolled out its initial effort to respond to these criticisms–“The New Rules Economy: A Policy Framework for the 21st Century“. The report begins by debunking “myths” of neopopulism and conservatism. It then takes the next step of presenting nine “new rules” of today’s economy, as well as proposals to address the gaps between our old-rules policy framework and the new rules. You could think of it as a “third path”, no, a “middle way”, or….what’s the phrase I’m looking for?…….
Hil-larious kidding aside, progressives will recognize that there is nothing mushily centrist about Third Way’s policy agenda, though because it rejects the neopopulist critique of the new economy it is not as expansive as many progressives would like. Still, there’s no denying the progressivity of an agenda that advocates wealth-promoting and inequality-reducing “worth at birth accounts”, making college more affordable, greater funding for continuing education, training for workers in industries vulnerable to foreign competition to prepare for better employment in high-growth industries, expanded portability of fringe benefits, expanded child care funding, and having the federal government take over responsibility for some of the health care costs that businesses currently bear (among other laundry-list items). To be sure, it’s a framework viewed from 10,000 feet, but Third Way has a permanent project dedicated to fleshing out the details of these and other ideas.
Seems like an agenda even neopopulists could embrace. Give it a look-see. How does it compare with other progressive policy agendas you’ve seen?

Dems will be cheered to read Eric Kleefield’s TPM Cafe synopsis of Stuart Rothernberg’s Roll Call article, pointing out that Dems have a good chance to win a fillibuster-proof 60 Senate seats by 2010. Kleefield cites Blumenthal’s argument that Dems only have to defend 27 seats over the next two cycles, while the GOP must defend 40 seats. In addition, in 2008, Blumenthal says the GOP has “tough seats to defend” in CO, NH and ME, along with possible Republican retirements in VA, NM, NE, MS and NC. Further, most Dem seats being defended are in blue states.
All well and good in the longer run. But on Sunday on The Chris Matthews Show, killjoy Joe Klein predicted that, in the shorter run, Senator Lieberman may switch to the GOP “pretty soon,” causing Dems to lose control of the Senate. Here’s hoping Sens. Schumer and Reid are working hard on persuading a GOP Senator to join the Dems.