And starring Hillary Clinton as Tracy Flick

Separated at birth?

McCain-Giuliani 2008

A nation's nightmare for four more years.

After their public lovemaking yesterday in advance of the Maverick-Mittens "liberal-liberal" smack-off, I remain convinced that the Neanderthals and neoconservatives in the Republic Party will overcome the Talibaptists and the millions of Mormon dollars and nominate the best candidate they have left.

They will do so in spite of the alarmed nativists who want a border wall constructed, and who keep screaming that McCain isn't actually a Republican -- a pretty hilarious bit of hysteria, truth to tell. And they will goose-step to the polls in November and pull the handle (or spin the wheel and push the button, as the case may be) for whomever is at the top of their ticket, like they always do. Caterwauling about the lack of a 'conservative' candidate aside.

Rudy on the ticket strengthens McLame in so many ways that it just makes too much sense, their personal fondness notwithstanding.

The Republics are set, they just don't know it yet.

*heaviest of sighs*

Edwards leaving the race. Hope Elizabeth is okay.

From Dallasdoc's diary "John the Baptist", published in the wake of the Iowa caucuses:

It's been clear for over a year that the Democratic primaries would come down to Hillary vs. not-Hillary. Many of us hoped for Al Gore to come into the race and fill in the blank, but he didn't do so. It appears tonight that Barack Obama is The Alternative.

But John Edwards represents something big, something important, something the Democratic party needs to get back in touch with in order to build a durable ruling coalition: economic populism. The ongoing destruction of the American middle class by corporatism disguised as Reaganomics has progressed to the point that political reaction is inevitable. The institutionalized corruption in Washington which has replaced democracy with plutocracy has severely wounded our economy and gutted our Constitutional form of government. Fighting back against these realities is the political work of our time. John Edwards is the messenger of the Gospel of Economic Populism.

Franklin Roosevelt redefined our party and gave it a raison d'etre. His political philosophy was lost in the Cold War consensus, and was one of the casualties of the Vietnam War. The middle class his New Deal built began to fall apart when the ethics of economic democracy Roosevelt preached was forgotten. The economic royalists (as Roosevelt called them) seized their opportunity with a shiny line of bullshit and a soap salesman named Ronald Reagan. They slowly, methodically dismantled Roosevelt's achievements, as far as they could, and persuaded Americans that greed was good.

Roosevelt had a different vision, one we must recapture and honor again. From his Second Inaugural Address:

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.

More than Iraq, more than torture, more even than the Constitution, this is the vision the Democratic Party must embrace and offer the country. The middle class is dying and must be revived. Its would-be murderers, the wealthy and big corporations, must be penalized and controlled. That is the vision John Edwards offers the Democratic party. His emphasis on poverty, his fingering of corporate influence as our true enemy, his recognition that recapturing the party will require a long tough fight -- these are lessons the Democrats must truly take to heart.

Barack Obama appears to be the anti-establishment alternative Democrats will be offered. He has a different message to offer, meeting the nation's hunger for change with a different recipe. He has adopted some of the notes in this Rooseveltian symphony, but the feel of his campaign is different. Perhaps he is charting a new winning course, perhaps he is on a detour. I hope Obama realizes that if he takes the mantle of the Democratic party that its soul was defined by Franklin Roosevelt, that Roosevelt's task will be his, and that Roosevelt's enemies will also be his.

John Edwards may not be the party's nominee this year or any year. But John Edwards' message is the one Democrats will need to embrace to build a new New Deal. He may not be the Messiah we need, but he is showing the way.

Judi's Rudy Patootie, whipped and kicked in the booty

Farewell, bald prince.

"To that Angle"

*Dateline Austin/Houston:

After two years as the voice of the Texas Democratic Party, spokeswoman Amber Moon is moving to Houston, where she will head up communications for the Democratic Party in Harris County — her hometown.

Replacement: Hector Nieto, Moon’s deputy.

“With so many competitive races on the ballot, it’s a particularly exciting time to return to Harris County, and I look forward to a repeat of last cycle’s Dallas County success in my own home town,” Moon said in an e-mail.

The Texas Democratic Trust has taken full credit for 2006 success in Dallas, obscuring the role of Royce WEST and the Dallas County Democratic Party itself.

To that ANGLE (pun intended) ...

Attorneys MATHIESSEN and BIRNBERG have added the approach of (a) quietly disparaging some of those elected in Dallas as “unqualified”, (b) staging and recruiting would-be or former GOP judges from big law firms, (c) protecting CRADDICK Democrats, (d) privileging judicial over executive candidates on the countywide ticket, and (e) projecting the “bipartisan diversity” government at City Hall out into the county.

The communication/campaign strategy will be to avoid controversy other than GOP scandals and to rely on racially segmented marketing to exploit demographic projections of likely-voter behavior to sweep Harris County offices up and down the ballot. This is new only in that the countywide slate is full and the campaign consultants may not disparage straight-ticket voting by Democrats, as they typically have done previously.

This could work -- if and only if (a) the Presidential and Senate races are actually inspiring, (b) the GOP continues to spiral into division and demoralization, and (c) scandal or conspicuous dysfunction in the “Democrat-controlled” City Hall does not allow the GOP to run effectively against “the government” they control but Democrats do not actually oppose and indeed are constantly apologizing for or collaborating with.

We could win only to find the GOP using problems with the security of GOP voting technology to get new elections ordered by the GOP-controlled courts.

In any case, the unilateral bi-partisanship -- item (c) above -- is the only thing the local Democratic Party might change now. But under Matt ANGLE’s influence, it will not.

*the musings of irregular contributor Open Source Dem.

Cut-and-run Janek

He pulled the chain because he knew he couldn't win re-election in a new, Democratic Texas in 2010:

Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, announced today that he was resigning his Senate seat, effective June 2, to spend more time with his family.

The resignation date, he acknowledged, is different from the March 10 timetable he gave Senate colleagues in a conference phone call on Monday. He said he prolonged his departure to give more potential candidates time to consider a race to succeed him and to give voters in District 17 more time to consider their options.

A March 10 resignation would have allowed Gov. Rick Perry to schedule a special election on May 10 to fill out the remainder of Janek's term, which expires in January 2011. A June 2 resignation means the governor could either set the special election on the same day as the November general election, which is the next uniform election date, or declare an emergency and set a special election sometime after June 2.

There's plenty of time for aspiring politicos to line up their ducks. Such as ...

Former Harris County Republican Chairman Gary Polland, state Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, and state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, have said they will consider a Senate race.

Polland and Howard -- along with extremist Dennis Bonnen of Angleton -- would be steps backward for the residents of SD-17. Hochberg would be a tremendous addition to the Texas Senate.

Kuffner has the numbers that show another seat (two actually; Janek's and Hochberg's House one) ripe to flip, particularly if it makes it onto the ballot in a presidential election year.

Ten reasons to vote for John Edwards

By voting for Edwards, you...

1. Reward and advance progressivism.
We can argue about candidates' voting records and try to gauge their instincts, but there's no question that Edwards has run the most progressive campaign. The proof is plentiful. He's embraced unions, the blogosphere, and the progressive movement as a whole. The stated and demonstrated rationale is to fight economic injustice; rhetorically and substantively, he's run the most populist presidential campaign in years. On every major issue--taxes, climate change, health care, foreign policy, trade, you name it--he's embraced policies more progressive than his rivals. He alone rejects nuclear power and the Global War on Terror frame. He alone opposes expanding the NAFTA model to South America. He alone has called on the Democratic Party to do what he's done his entire career: say no to K-Street cash. The better a progressive campaign does, the stronger progressivism becomes. To vote for Edwards is to increase the chance that progressivism becomes dominant in the party and the country.

2. Pull the race to the left.
There may not be a blogger, pundit, or publication that hasn't recognized the influence of Edwards. Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Dean Baker, Robert Bosorage, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Jonathan Tasini, Jonathan Singer, Matt Ygelsias, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Rolling Stone (among many others: they all point out the obvious: that Edwards has tugged the race to the left. And should he remain a factor in the race he'll continue to do so. To cite just on concrete example, the McCain-Lieberman global warming bill (better known as the great corporate giveaway of 2008) may come to the Senate floor during the race. With Edwards having announced his early opposition to it, Obama (who originally sponsored the bill) and Clinton will have little choice but to vote against it. Recently Edwards used his platform to make the homelessness of vets a topic of national discussion and this week he'll travel to New Orleans to give a speech about poverty. Remember New Orleans? Neither Obama nor Clinton have been talking about it much. I have a feeling they will be soon, though.

3. Preserve the possibility of (an unlikely) victory.
There are several elaborate scenarios by which Edwards could capture the nomination. Some involve the implosion of one or both of the other candidates. Others involve buyers' remorse combined with JRE's resiliency and the respect it engenders. Others involve a surprise victory in Oklahoma next week. Others involve potential Edwards strength in the March 4th states of Texas and Ohio. Others involve the prospect of a McCain nomination and a renewed focus on electability. Others involve a deadlocked convention at which Clinton or Obama agrees to back Edwards in return for the VP slot. Make no mistake, an Edwards victory is highly unlikely, but if you don't believe in long shots, why bother being a progressive?

4. Make Edwards kingmaker (or platform editor).
The more delegates he wins, the more power Edwards will have to shape the race and the party's identity. He could perhaps swing his support to the candidate more willing to embrace progressive policies or rewrite the party's platform to include stronger anti-poverty and pro-labor measures. Who knows? Maybe he'd even force the party to commit to refusing K-Street cash. One can dream.

5. Reject the self-fulfilling nominating system driven by polls, pundits, and money.
There's something disturbing, Orwellian and tautological, about the notion that Edwards can't win because pundits say he can't win. A relative few have voted. Until someone wins anyone can win. Do you want to uphold such an regressive system that effectively lets the media and the establishment choose our choices? Do you want to be another brick in the wall or part of the bulldozer the knocks the wall down? Over at Daily Kos, Bruce McF has been doing a great job making the philosophical and political case for supporting Edwards. Our current system of picking out leaders is self-fulfilling, but so is populism. Listen to Bruce:

Populist movements don't build themselves, they grow from a process of people learning how to support a series of populist campaigns in a populist way, rather than as passive consumers of candidates produced and marketed to win the greatest market share in the electoral marketplace.

It doesn't matter what the "horse race" outcome of the campaign is, if we fight the campaign. Fighting it, we learn how to fight. Learning how to fight political battles, we become citizens again. Becoming citizens again, we reclaim the Republic that lies dormant beneath the bread and circuses of modern American society.

6. Sign on to a movement.
His message isn't going away, nor is his core of support. His support may evolve into an organization -- a more powerful version of PDA, which grew out of the Kucinich campaign. In any case, his online and real world supporters will continue to organize and agitate, to fight both corporate Republican and Democrats.

7. Increase the likelihood of a brokered convention, which would be good for Democrats.
Don't believe the lie that it's essential for the party to settle on a nominee early. Drama creates interest creates viewers created voters. If the convention were an actual event rather than a choreographed variety show, ratings would go through the roof. That can only be good for the party.

8. Piss off the establishment.
Pundits and the party power structure want Edwards to go away, not least because he's John Edwards. You have a great chance to piss them off; what else really do you need to know?

9. Do something good for your soul.
If you take to his message of economic justice and enlightened populism, maybe you should say so with a vote. Maybe if you're inclined to support him you should vote for him precisely because you're inclined to do so. Maybe there's something healthy and soul-enriching about voting for the candidate you like the most. Maybe it's better -- cleaner -- to vote affirmatively rather than strategically.

10. Come Up with Your Own Reason (I ran out of time but didn't want to change the title)

Disrespectful non-handshakes aside ...

... the best line of the SOTU (I nearly type STFU every single time) goes to my man John:

"Even he and his people admit it's gonna take months for this stimulus to actually kick in," said Edwards before a buoyant crowd of over 400 people (in Nashville, TN). "The truth of the matter is, it is so important that between now and January of 2009 that we stand up to this president, that we stand up for what's right, that we don't let him continue to make it so hard for the middle class."

Earlier in Chattanooga, Edwards said, "I think a lot of us know what the state of the union is."

"And the president will walk into the Congress, to the United States House of Representatives, and he'll give a speech about his stimulus plan to try to stimulate the economy.

"And you know what'll happen is he'll go in there and the Congress - who kinda quit listening to him a while back - but they'll all stand up, cheer, clap. You know, the truth is that Washington is out of touch with what's happening here in the real world."

Let's help him reach this modest goal today.

A victory today on FISA

Great work by everyone today ... with the possible exception of the waffling, prevaricating Louisiana Democrat, Mary Landrieu. smintheus has the synopsis:

Well this afternoon we won a second improbable victory against the FISA bill that rewards telecoms for joining George Bush in breaking the law. The Republicans didn't come close to invoking cloture against Sen. Chris Dodd's filibuster. In fact, they couldn't muster even 50 votes. Cloture attracted only 48 votes (to 45 against).

Republicans then blocked a Democratic attempt to move ahead to a vote to add another thirty days to the temporary FISA extension, which is set to expire next week. Democrats wanted to allow the Senate some time to debate the complicated issues surrounding FISA legislation. Republicans, by contrast, did not think it right that a deliberative body should devote any more time to actual deliberation. Instead, they said, they feared that Bush would veto any such extension. It's is as good an excuse as they've ever come up with for doing nothing.

So tomorrow at 2:00 PM EST the Senate will resume debate on the Intelligence Committee's version of the FISA bill -- the one that provides for retroactive immunity for telecoms. And presumably Dodd's filibuster will resume as well.

Tomorrow Democrats in the House may attempt to pass their own version of a thirty-day extension and then pass it on to the Senate. If so, McConnell may be forced to permit a vote on a similar bill.

There are plenty of plaudits to go around today: To Chris Dodd for organizing an effective and critical push back against the Bush administration's further aggrandizement of its nearly monarchical powers; to nearly all Democrats in the Senate for standing foursquare with Dodd (apart from three four who voted with Republicans: Senators Pryor, Ben Nelson (NE), and Landrieu, and Lincoln); to Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama for returning to Washington for the vote; to Sen. Lieberman for staying out of DC while he campaigns for a Republican presidential candidate.

And to voters who made their voices heard in the Capitol. A lot of people were skeptical in December, when activists began organizing this effort to support the Dodd filibuster, that it was possible to budge a cynical Senate back in the direction of upholding the rule of law. Two victories later, those doubts should be at an end.

How many will wear them?

For seven long years, Preztledent Bush's lickspittles in Congress helped push forward his failed conservative agenda. This week Americans United for Change began delivering "I’m a Bush Republican" buttons to all of the Republicans in the House and Senate, in advance of Bush’s final State of the Union Address today, with this message: "Your votes helped build his legacy; you should show your support for him by proudly declaring that you’re a Bush Republican."



Tonight, as cameras scan the House Chamber during the State of the Union Address, we’ll see how many Republicans -- those who have voted for Bush’s policies on Iraq, the economy, energy and health care -- are willing to put their lapels where there votes have been and wear a button with this simple message: "I’m a Bush Republican."

Will Senator $7.5 Million Corndogs wear it? How about Kay Bailey? Will John Cumbersome? What about Goofy Louie Gohmert or Kevin "DWI/flak jacket in church" Brady?

Taking a drink for each button you spot in the crowd is not the official SOTU drinking game. THIS is.

FISA. Today.

Jane Hamsher at firedoglake breaks the good news that both Senators Clinton and Obama will be on the floor this afternoon to vote against McConnell's cloture vote on the Intelligence Committee's pro-telco amnesty FISA bill.

This is good news for keeping the fight going, and good news for us. Citizen action, our pressure, is making a difference. The massive push back from the left has actually succeeded in throwing a monkey wrench into the works. That's not yet an out and out win, but it's movement in the right direction. Defeating this cloture vote is more movement. Forcing either a short-term extension of the PAA or letting the bill lapse altogether buys more time, and more opportunity, as Glenn Greenwald explains.

Even just a two-week or one-month extension will allow more time to marshall the opposition to telecom immunity and a new FISA bill and to do what's possible to encourage the House to stand firm behind their bill -- in exactly the way that the Dodd delay in December prevented quick and easy resolution. The longer this drags on without resolution, the more possible it is to push the opposition to a tipping point, and sometimes unexpected developments or even some luck (such as McConnell's overplaying his hand on Thursday) can prevent it all from happening.

As the events of the last two months demonstrate, if citizen opposition is channeled the right way, it can make a genuine difference in affecting the course of events in Washington. Defeating telecom immunity will keep alive the lawsuits that will almost certainly reveal to some extent what the Government did in illegally spying on Americans over the last six years or, at the very least, produce a judicial adjudication as to its illegality. And, in turn, the effects from that could be extremely significant. Because victories are so rare, it's easy to get lulled into believing that none of these campaigns are ever effective and that citizens can never affect any of it, which is precisely why it's so important to remind ourselves periodically of how untrue that proposition is.

So keep pushing, all the way to until 3:30 this afternoon (CST).

The Senators we need to convince are those who voted with the Republicans to table the Leahy substitute amendment, the version of the bill that contained all of those protections and did NOT allow telco amnesty. One of them, Rockefeller, has already said he'll vote no on cloture. Call the rest of the Senators and tell them to stand with their majority on today's cloture vote and vote no.

• Bayh (202) 224-5623
• Carper (202) 224-2441
• Inouye (202) 224-3934
• Johnson (202) 224-5842
• Landrieu (202)224-5824
• McCaskill (202) 224-6154
• Mikulski (202) 224-4654
• Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274
• Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551
• Pryor (202) 224-2353
• Salazar (202) 224-5852

In addition, call or e-mail your own Senators. Both CREDO and EFF have great tools to make it easy.

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly blog round-up, compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex, with thanks to Charles from Off The Kuff for assistance.

Off the Kuff looks at the woes of the Harris County GOP and what it may mean in November.

North Texas will have one less class II commercial injection well pumping toxic soup underground, reported by TXsharon on Bluedaze.

TXDOT has dug itself into quite a hole by using your money to lobby for the Trans-Texas Corridor, and to pay for an advertising campaign to sell the wildly unpopular toll road to the citizens of Texas. McBlogger has the details and a great video.

Hal at Half Empty got his TI-83 out and ran the numbers on the presidential primaries. Conclusion? Texas has a chance to crown a king (or queen).

WhosPlayin? looks at the case of a teen brought up on charges for "huffing" hand sanitizer and is frustrated at the lack of discretion caused by "zero-tolerance" policies.

The action plan for Monday's FISA-with-telecom-immunity legislation is contained in PDid's post at Brains and Eggs. Don't strain your dialing finger, and don't forget to call Senators Corndog and Hutch. It's a waste of time, yes, but they still need to hear from us.

NYTexan at BlueBloggin explains who Voters, Pledged Delegates and Super Delegates are and how they influence the Democratic party nomination at the convention.

Are you a MOTO? If not, you will be after reading State Sen. Kirk Watson's guest blog this week at Capitol Annex.

North Texas Liberal reveals which celebrity is destroying the planet... and no, it's not Britney Spears.

Could we be looking at the first upward trend in labor membership since 1983? The Texas Blue thinks we just might be.