Posts Tagged ‘Howard Dean’
Jetlag Links
* Before you stop admitting Ph.D. students, please, read Marc Bousquet. The typically annoying discussion about this can be found at MetaFilter.
* Nonissue watch: The new Siena Poll finds that New Yorkers (everyone in the state) oppose the mosque by a 63-27 margin; they defend the constitutional right to build it by a 64-28 margin. Very sad to see Howard Dean of all people joining the wrong side of history on this:
I believe that the people who are trying to build the mosque are trying to do something that’s good, but there’s no point in starting off and trying to do something that’s good if it’s going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks.
I want my country back! But not, you know, if it’s going to be a whole big thing.
* At least someone has finally identified the real terrorists: people with COEXIST bumper stickers on their cars.
* Mission accomplished: The last combat troops left Iraq today. But don’t get too excited; 50,000 noncombat troops remain.
* Deconstructing the Twinkie. At left: FD&C Yellow #5.
* In the future, all teenagers are deaf.
* Change we can believe in: the Obama administration is quietly making it easier to visit Cuba.
* And not exactly the direction we were hoping things would go: Call centre workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company.
Tea Partiers, Jersey, Cheney, Scalia, Guns, 2010, RNC
* Tea Party supporters in New Jersey try to recall Robert Menendez despite the fact that no recall procedure exists for federal legislators under the Constitution. New Jersey Democratic Chairman John Wisniewski is angry about it:
“The attempt to recall Senator Menendez is an affront to the voters of New Jersey and has no standing in law. One day these folks are trying to disprove human evolution, the next day they are challenging the constitutionality of the Constitution. These are radical people who chose Menendez off of a list of Democrats because of the sound of his last name.”
Via Daily Kos.
* Inside the RNC’s secret fundraising strategy memo.
The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”
Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.” Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”
And yet it’s the Left that’s supposed to be condescending and arrogant. Conor Friedersdorf is pretty unhappy about all this.
* Former DNC Chair Howard Dean says the pundits are misreading 2010: the mood is anti-incumbent, not anti-Democrat.
* Firedoglake gets nostalgic for the Cheney doctrine, which says we should invade other countries at the slightest probability of danger but apparently doesn’t apply to protecting the only planet we will ever have.
* And The Wall Street Journal, of all places: So Where’s Your Originalism Now, Justice Scalia?
Justice Scalia insisted that the right to keep and bear arms is right there in the text, which of course is true. But so too is the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which, unlike the Court’s due process jurisprudence, has a historical meaning that helps define and limit the rights it was meant to protect.
At the McDonald argument, it seemed obvious that five or more justices will vote to apply the Second Amendment to the states. . . . But it was also obvious that most were deeply afraid of following a text whose original meaning might lead them where they do not want to go.
Via MyDD. More on the Chicago gun case at SCOTUSblog.
Thursday Night Links
* Details of the “tripartisan” (ugh) climate change bill from Kerry, Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham have been released. More at Climate Progress and Grist.
* Myth vs. Reality on the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
* A study released today suggests sea level could rise three times faster than IPCC estimates.
* How do you define recovery? Krugman says 300,000 jobs a month.
* Perhaps contrary to expectations, Howard Dean has embraced the latest health care compromise.
* And io9 considers the real crises: Are We Falling Behind China In Weather-Control Technology?
Saturday Night
Saturday night’s all right for blogging.
* How we kill geniuses. Via MetaFilter.
* Eleanor Clift loses one of her uncountably many demerits in agitating for Howard Dean to HHS.
* The unsustainability of sustainable energy.
* It looks like Michael Steele was the perfect person to head up the Republican party—a week on the job and he’s already embroiled in a corruption scandal.
* Yes we can. Yes we did, now leave us alone.
* The University of Ottawa’s Denis Rancourt has been suspended from teaching and is facing possible dismissal for promising all students an A+ on the first day of class. I think it was the + that did it—if he’d just promised them As it would have been business as usual… (via Pharyngula)
* Science fiction as religion. Via io9.
All Is Quiet on New Year’s Day
All is quiet on New Year’s Day.
* As the Bush administration blessedly draws to a close, it’s important to remember the casualties of the War of Terror, people like Alberto Gonzales. (via)
* More people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers. More importantly:
The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently.
That’s good, good news.
* Howard Dean, Vermonter of the Year. Maybe next year, Ben and Jerry.
* Batman casting rumors you can believe in: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin.
* It’s the future, and Microsoft still sucks.
* Top 10 space stories of 2008. A different 10.
* Top 10 cryptozoology stories of 2008.
* James Howard Kunstler’s predictions for 2009. Prediction: Pain. Via MetaFilter.
* Thank god for philosophy grad students, the only graduate demographic upon Lit students can look down.
Dean the Baptist
I think it’s safe to say the “Dean the Baptist” meme has taken root. Here’s Ari Berman in The Nation:
Indiana is a good example. When Dan Parker became chair of the state party in November 2004, his first order was to slash his staff in half after Democrats lost the governor’s mansion. Indiana, like so many states, had been written off by the national party–the last Democratic presidential contender to carry it was Lyndon Johnson. But Dean gave Parker the money to hire three field organizers and a full-time communications director, the first the state had ever had. (When Dean came in, thirty states had no such important position.) In 2006 that staff worked on three competitive Congressional races long before the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) arrived. The party picked up all three seats that year and elected a record number of Democratic mayors in 2007. By the time the Democratic primary rolled around this past May, Hoosier Dems had been revitalized, and Obama–to the surprise of many–invested heavily in the state, visiting forty-nine times. On November 4 Obama won Indiana–a state John Kerry lost by twenty points–by 26,000 votes. “We’re a poster child for the fifty-state strategy,” Parker says.
If Indiana was ignored by the national party, then a place like Alaska–5,000 miles from Washington–didn’t exist. Dean was roundly mocked, including in a New York Times Magazine profile, for visiting and investing in the Last Frontier. “The idea that you’re going to put money in a place like Alaska seemed insane,” Dean says, “because you could take the same amount of money and maybe win a House seat in California with it. That was the thinking here. The problem is, that’s a totally short-term strategy.” The DNC’s investment increased the size of the Alaska party staff from one to four. More important, “it made Alaskans proud to be Democrats again,” says state chair Patti Higgins. When opportunity struck, as Dean predicted, Democrats were ready. “It doesn’t look so dumb now that Ted Stevens got indicted [in July] and today we have a Democratic senator from Alaska,” Dean says. “But without a voter list and a party that knows what it’s doing and is well trained and staffers that are up there for four years, we don’t win that seat, plain and simple.” Not only did former Anchorage mayor Mark Begich knock off Stevens; Democrats ran their strongest challenge yet to Alaska’s lone Congressman, Don Young, who’s held the seat for thirty-five years, and polls showed Obama leading in the state before John McCain tapped Sarah Palin as his running mate. Now the party is focused on ousting Palin from the governor’s mansion in 2010. When I spoke to Higgins, she was heading to a press conference to denounce Palin, who was campaigning in Georgia that day, as “AWOL from Alaska.”
More from Matt Yglesias. That fifty dollars I gave Dean for America? I don’t regret it.
DNC
Howard Dean is stepping down as chairman of the DNC in triumph. Steve Benen says perennial gerrycanavan.blogspot.com favorite Claire McCaskill likely to take up the job. Sam Stein:
Regardless of who takes over, the next chair will inherit an organization far different from the one that existed four years ago. Under Dean’s tenure, the DNC implemented the hotly-debated 50-state-strategy, a program designed to rebuild the party into a continental force, one in which Democrats drained the resources of Republicans while simultaneously building up younger talent. Obama’s incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and others were critical, believing that the policy wasted valuable resources on impossible races and needlessly forfeited otherwise winnable seats during the 2006 congressional elections. Successes in 2008, however, have largely quieted those critiques.
Indeed, four years later, it seems, Dean’s vision is poised to become party orthodoxy. Dean told a Democratic operative that he is hoping to extract promises from all potential replacement candidates to preserve the 50-state-strategy. Other insiders, meanwhile, say that the next DNC chair, regardless of who it is, will build upon the model because of its tangible success.
Gerry Canavan 
Strikes and Gutters, Ups and Downs
with 6 comments
Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you. It was obviously a tough night for Democrats but on some level it was always going to be—with unemployment at 9.6% and millions of people underwater on their mortgages the Democrats were doomed to lose and lose big. On this the stimulus really was the original sin—if it had been bigger and better-targeted the economic situation could have been better, but it wasn’t and here we are. Unlike 2000 and 2004 I think this election stings, but it doesn’t hurt; a big loss like this has been baked in the cake for a while.
Remember that as the pundits play bad political commentary bingo all month.
As I mentioned last night, overs beat the unders, which means my more optimistic predictions were 2/3 wrong: Republicans overshot the House predictions and Sestak and Giannoulias both lost their close races in PA and IL. But I was right that young people can’t be trusted to vote even when marijuana legalization is on the ballot. Cynicism wins again! I’ll remember that for next time.
I was on Twitter for most of the night last night and most of my observations about last night have already been made there. A few highlights from the night:
Anything I missed?
Written by gerrycanavan
November 3, 2010 at 11:48 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 2000, 2004, 2010, academia, art, bad commentary bingo, Barack Obama, Big Lebowski, California, climate change, Colorado, cynicism, Democrats, don't ask don't tell, ecology, gay rights, Harry Reid, How the University Works, Howard Dean, marijuana, Nevada, North Carolina, politics, progressives, puppies, Russ Feingold, Sarah Palin, Sharia law, stimulus package, Tea Party, the House, the Senate, the truth is out there, the young people, Tim Kaine, Tom Tancredo, Twitter, UFOs, UNC, Wisconsin