THAT’s the Ticket!

August 25th, 2008

Allrighty then! So … whether you wanted Obama/Biden or not, TWO serious and self-reflecting Constitutional lawyers in 2008, both progressive, assertive and both family-oriented enough to keep the jackals away, ain’t a bad deal. Just imagine if what they’ve both had to say about the Bush coup for the last couple of years had actually been acted upon; that’s what the Ticket is all about.

The young one has a dream … the older one has the chops and the willingness to do what it takes to make it real. We have an Establishment race; that’s the bottom line — but we have a very progressive tilt in these candidates, a populist message and a chance to begin restoration of the nation. Until we come back to Square Zero in this country, level the playing field, EVERYTHING is an uphill slog.

Some say no bounce — some say big bounce; some say “sell out” — some say it was a pragmatic choice. I say — energizer bunny.

The Leftcentric’s ain’t all that pleased … but … the truth is that anything short of a revolution won’t MAKE them happy. And that may come eventually, anyway.

I think Lefty’s everywhere should take an in-breath — and grab the wind beneath their wings; it’s billowing. Race is still the silent-but-deadly issue in this race and Biden has the same touch Hillary had with the old, white, and poor in depressed area’s. Let’s also remember that the Neptune energies are at play and Stupid seems to be everywhere we look; this is no cake-walk, ahead of us.

Fire in the belly, dearhearts! Get some and spread it around!! Politics grow tiresome in this season; I swear the Dem’s have a love/hate relationship with themselves. If they’d save some of that self-inflicted ire for the Republicans, we might get somewhere.

The Pub’s have won these last years because they know how to suck up their own personal disappointments; let’s win … and bitch later, ok?? Both of these guys are candid, sometimes to a fault — and both are interested in the wellbeing of the average American. We wanted change? Lord a’Mighty! After the last eight years, that’s a tsunami sweeping in! Get a grip, Leftys! Now that we’ve got somebody on the Ticket that can kick some ass … he’s not the right ass-kicker?? Get real!!

Joe has liabilities, and most of them are his mouth. On the other hand, he knew he was the pick on Thursday and managed to keep his trap shut; it wasn’t until the press got wind that the Secret Service had converged on Biden’s home-front that CNN went “we’re almost positive,” around midnight, Friday night. The alert Obama promised [to several million folks] began to deliver about 3:30 in the morning [and I'm taking this as the actual announcement time -- not the mid-day void-of-course moment on the steps in Illinois. I got my notice at 3:54 a.m.]

And even before the official announcement, the Pub’s had put out a Biden-bash ad … you’ll find that, and their less-than-gracious statement on Obama’s pick, last [and just before the three encouraging bonus pieces, one on the nation's turn toward progressivism this season, one on the demographics and the last by Frank Rich.]

Joe’s other liability is a 35 year record as senator; there are votes to attack, while Obama is being attacked for not enough of them. This year, we’re running 3 senators, another history-defying feat. Records are one of the reasons senators don’t fare well, historically. But we’re breaking records every day, now.

Joe stumbled on the bankruptcy bill [as did 75+ other senators, including Obama] — but he has a 95% rating on middle class issues [see his ratings this decade, here.] He’s a Hillary peer, with a great record on women’s issues and he’s right up there on environmental issues [reads below.]

Obama’s a Leo and Joe’s a Scorpio, stellium in fact; a number of their planets fall into the close patterns that I think of as Karmic. They not only compliment, but push one another. Obama is going to have to wean Joe off of lobbying money, and Joe is going to have to sharpen Obama up on not giving away too much.

Two people always create what I call a Third Entity — the combined tendency of their collaboration. So far, I like what I see; an obviously exhausted Obama was much more energized than usual on Friday when he introduced Joe — there’s some fire in the belly, now … and the Dog and Pony Show starts this evening to sweep it higher.

Michelle will address the Convention tonight, she stumps Bar’s personal story better than anyone … and this is the chance for the nation to take a look. There will be other speakers, including moderate Dem Claire McCaskill, my Senator; she will schmooze for the Blue Dogs who will be watching. I thought I saw Carter in that line-up, too. There is a Kennedy tribute — and Ted is in Denver for a likely appearance, depending on how he feels; the fire’s never left that belly, so I’d expect to see him unless there’s an emergency. Get out yer hanky.

Note: As with last week, I’m still digging out of my own circumstances; literally. I’m trying to put together a huge yard sale for the three-day holiday, a “Jude fundraiser.” Time’s short and I’m manic, so you won’t hear much from me this week — but you will have politics in your face of the kind that we’ve waited four long years for [is that all? feels like a millenia!]

DO get together for Obama’s speech, Thursday — or go to BarackObama.com to find a local meet-up; lots of folks are gathering at restaurants and bars, homes and halls, to be together and “feel it.”

Fire in the belly, dearhearts — keep the positive thought and put Light on the possibilities, and on the Convention itself!

Remember: baby step, baby step, baby step = leap!

Below — meet Joe.

Jude

Biden-Rudy Smackdown
YouTube

Praise for Biden on Pakistan
YouTube

Joe Biden Rips GOP on Iraq
Vodpod

My Choices vs. Obama’s
Toby Barlow, HuffPo
August 23, 2008

If I was running and people said I was weak, I would pick the Incredible Hulk. If they said I was stupid, I would pick Stephen Hawking. If they said I was boring, I would, of course, choose Snoop Dogg.

Together, we would offer a whole package, a team people could count on to bust heads, crunch numbers, or smoke bodaciously phat doobies while rapping about the ladies.

But if anyone wants to second guess Obama’s choice, all they have to do is look at that thing called history. The last two democratic Vice Presidential nominees were chosen for awfully weak reasons. Edwards was chosen to help deliver the South, which he completely failed to do. Lieberman was chosen, as we now know, because at the time Al Gore was just acting incredibly stupid.

On the other hand, the successful Republican veeps have been chosen because they filled out one specific glaring weakness in the resume of the prospective candidate. Cheney was chosen for his foreign policy expertise (and probably because he scared George W. into hiring him.) Bush’s father was chosen by Ronald Reagan for - that’s right — his foreign policy expertise.

Biden’s a much tougher candidate than either Cheney or Bush I. After countless years spent sweating it out on campaign trails and fighting off rabid GOP attack dogs on the Hill, he’s going to come out swinging hard in this race. He’s going to be a formidable opponent.

Some of the press, and the AP especially, are already scolding Obama for picking a seasoned pro. They say it only underscores Obama’s weakness on foreign policy. They also say by choosing a politican with a long and accomplished resume, he is betraying his principles of being an agent of change.

That’s ridiculous. He picked a pro to fill a hole in the lineup, which is what any great manager would do. Coincidentally, Obama also chose someone who is tough, smart, and at times pretty entertaining. Maybe not as entertaining as Snoop Dogg, but still.

It’s a solid move. One that should reassure us about Obama’s ability to make tough, smart decisions. It shows he is able to learn from history. It shows he is not too proud to have someone by his side who, on some issues, is more experienced than he is. It shows that he is worthy of our support. ++

What Biden Brings With Him
E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post
Monday, August 25, 2008

DENVER — The 40-something politician pledged to wage a campaign rooted in his generation’s “moment of obligation and opportunity.”

He sought the presidency at a time when “discontent over the failure of our political system is rampant throughout our citizenry” and said that “it is in this gathering of discontent that my candidacy intends to find its voice.” He promised to “rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.”

But the 44-year-old Joe Biden who announced his candidacy for president with those words on June 9, 1987, would not reach the political mountaintop. Instead, it has fallen to a 65-year-old Biden to help a 47-year-old Barack Obama succeed in running the very campaign of generational change and idealistic promise that the Delaware senator outlined but could never carry through.

In selecting Biden, Obama has signaled clearly what this week’s Democratic National Convention will be about: He intends to move aggressively to ease the problems that have worried so many Democrats in recent weeks — problems, it turns out, that Obama is worried about, too.

One of them concerns the limits of Obama’s appeal to the white working class. Biden’s unveiling was one long ode to line workers, cops and firefighters, to hard work and struggling families, to shuttered steel mills and lost manufacturing jobs.

Obama has chosen as his running mate someone who said many years ago: “We wonder why it is that blue-collar workers, who come from a heritage that is the Democratic Party, began to leave it. It’s because we really don’t respect them.” This week, respect will be theirs and attention will be paid.

Democrats worry that Obama has been insufficiently aggressive in going after John McCain and insufficiently attentive to the imperative of linking McCain to George W. Bush.

In private as well as in public, Biden is genuinely angry about the effect of Bush’s policies, and he demonstrated in his debut performance how eager he is to go on the attack against both the president and McCain.

There is nothing dainty in Biden’s approach to politics. “He’s a happy warrior, he loves the whole thing, but he’ll punch you out,” a Democrat who has known him for decades said Saturday. There will be nothing dainty in how McCain and Bush are dealt with during this week’s convention.

Another theme of the week, or so Obama’s lieutenants fervently hope, will be reconciliation with the millions in the party who rallied to Hillary Clinton. The Biden choice may have salutary effects on this front that have gone largely unnoticed.

After Biden ended his own presidential candidacy in January, he declined to endorse either Obama or Clinton. Instead, as the two rivals battled on without him, Biden was regularly on the phone with both of them, he told me earlier this year, offering views and advice and sometimes just comfort. Each candidate knew he was talking to the other. Each trusted him.

Biden is thus a Clinton-friendly choice, even if not all her supporters will see it that way. One of the largest gaps between Obama and Clinton is her perception that he has not worked as hard as she has to master foreign policy. In Biden, Obama has an interlocutor whom Clinton respects.

Biden will also broaden the range of advice Obama is receiving. “Nobody has as many ties in the foreign policy establishment as Joe does,” says one of his friends. These ties will now be Obama’s.

By selecting someone more for his qualifications than his ability to deliver a contested state, Obama pushed back hard against the McCain campaign’s efforts to paint him as someone who puts “party, politics and self-interest” above national security. The Biden choice is about governing, not just about winning an election.

This convention hopes to serve another goal, a paradoxical one, perhaps: to cast Obama as a figure who can fix a broken political system by reaching beyond and transcending party.

Biden will recognize this theme, too. In that presidential announcement speech 21 years ago, he charged that the nation’s political debate had “become a great pantomime, where the standard of judgment is no longer real results, but the flickering image of seriousness, skillfully crafted to squeeze into a 30-second spot . . . . Have a problem? We have an answer — but rarely a solution.”

This week’s convention is Obama’s, not Biden’s. But by setting the agenda for the work that needs to be done here, Biden may yet achieve a goal he set for himself back in 1987. His hope, he said, was “to bend history just a little bit.” ++

Joe Biden: Profile
Delaware senator’s leadership of the foreign relations committee expected to benefit Democrats
Elana Schor, Katie Cooksey, Guardian UK
Saturday August 23 2008

Joseph Biden, the 65-year-old Delaware senator has, by all accounts, a superlative resumé.

Biden’s leadership of the foreign relations committee is expected to benefit Democrats during a presidential race that could be decided as much by Iran, Iraq and Russia as by the US.

His son is scheduled for a deployment to Iraq this year, and he has a palpable affection for Barack Obama.

Biden, first elected at the age of 30, is a demonstrably skilled debater.

Washington has produced few sparkling wits, but he is one of them.

During a Democratic presidential debate in February, the famously talkative Pennsylvania native was asked whether he had the self-discipline to lead the free world.

Most expected one of his long-winded answers, but he shocked the crowd into laughter by answering: “Yes.”

And he offered one of the most succinct putdowns of the campaign when he said of Rudy Giuliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence - a noun, a verb and 9/11.”

Biden’s drawbacks, however, go beyond his verbosity. His presidential candidacy in 1988 derailed after he admitted to plagiarising a speech by the then British Labour party leader, Neil Kinnock.

His long history in Washington also risks undermining Obama’s message of “change”.

Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race in Iowa in January, is of Irish Catholic heritage but is in favour of abortion rights, a key issue in US elections.

He originally voted to authorise the war in Iraq, but has since become a persistent critic of the Bush administration’s policies there.

Born into a working class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 20 1942, Biden is not a household name but was arguably the most well-known of those being considered for the vice presidency by Obama.

He was the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee during two of the most contentious supreme court nomination battles of the past 50 years.

He led the opposition to the nominations of Robert H Bork, who was defeated, and Clarence Thomas, who was later confirmed.

Biden married Neilia Hunter in 1966, and the couple had three children. His wife and 13-month-old daughter. Naomi. died in a car accident in December 1972, shortly after he was first elected to the Senate.

His two sons, Joseph R Biden III and Robert Hunter, were seriously injured, but Biden was persuaded not to resign to look after them and was sworn into office from their bedside. Both made full recoveries.

In 1977, he married Jill Tracy Jacobs, with whom he has a daughter, Ashley.

Biden is currently serving his sixth term as a member of the Democratic Party. He has served for the sixth-longest period among current senators, and is Delaware’s longest-serving senator. ++

Halperin on Biden: The Pros and the Cons
MARK HALPERIN, TIME Mag
Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008

Throughout Barack Obama’s search for a running mate, Joe Biden has always been hiding in plain sight, a man who appears supremely qualified to be vice president of the United States.

Biden has been on the national stage so long that he was able to mount two credible runs for the presidency himself an amazing 20 years apart, in 1988 and 2008. He has served as chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, traveling the globe to meet world leaders and to be directly involved in almost every major international and domestic debate of the last two generations. He has excelled as both a speaker and a debater. His Irish-Catholic heritage makes him a demographic dream in appealing to swing voters. He is both a Washington insider and a hero to working-class Americans and labor union leaders, in part because of his rhetoric, but also because of his own middle class upbringing. He has mastered the art of the network Sunday show television appearance as well as the classic vice-presidential skill of savagely attacking his political opponents with both a smile and the use of casual, kitchen-table idioms.

Balanced against all of those unmatched qualifications is one quality that has afflicted Biden for as long as anyone can remember: a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things. Over the next few days (and, likely, weeks) some of Biden’s ungreatest hits of gab will be recycled by the media and Republicans aiming to take the luster off Obama’s choice of running mate. The central mystery for those who have watched Biden over the years is this: how could someone so smart, experienced, and articulate be his own worst enemy by saying just the wrong thing at just the wrong moment?

Beyond the verbal gaffes during both of his presidential campaigns, Biden stunned his supporters, and delighted his opponents, during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of John Robert and Sam Alito, President Bush’s conservative nominees for the high court. In preparing for the public sessions, Biden’s advisers warned him repeatedly not to let his verbose ways dominate the proceedings. Be crisp and clear and concise, they told him over and over during practice sessions. And yet when the lights and cameras were on, Biden was at his very worst - long-winded, self-involved, and off message.

Surely, as the Obama campaign unveils Biden to the world, they are little concerned about his ability to surmount the primary hurdle that any potential vice president must get over, that Biden is ready to be president from day one by virture of experience, temperament, and judgment. But the campaign will just as certainly be coaching him on his initial speeches and media appearances. Once again, Joe Biden will be told to keep it short and limit the use of the pronoun “I.”

Those who know Biden well, who have watched him and worked with him over the years in the Senate and on the campaign trail, know two things with absolute certainty. One, it will be exceedingly difficult for Biden to carry out those instructions. And, two, if he is able to do as he is told regarding his renegade mouth, he will be a smash hit as Obama’s running mate.++

Wait ‘Til America Gets to Know Jill Biden
Steve Clemens, HuffPo [crosspost at The Washington Note]
August 22, 2008

[open link for picture]

I had the opportunity a few years ago to enjoy a rolling set of events with Senator Joe Biden, Wes Clark and other national notables.

My partner was with me and normally hates these kinds of things. But he bonded with Jill Biden. They are both educators — Jill in Delaware and my partner in Maryland.

It was such a pleasure getting to know folks without the pressure of deadlines and press frenzies and the need to maintain a certain “posture.” Joe Biden was awesome. . .and his wife Jill was even more impressive, for reasons I’ll share more down the road.

But we all had some pics together — and the next time I saw Joe Biden, he walked up to me at the Capitol Hilton and stuffed some photos of us together in my pocket. “These are from Jill to Andrew,” he said. Biden and I agree a lot on policy issues, but we also disagree here and there.

But on the personal front — he had me hooked.

WAIT, strike that. She had me hooked.

I can’t wait until America gets to know Jill Biden. As down to earth and serious about education as they come. She’s a working mom like many others around the country.

Joe Biden is going to be Obama’s vice presidential running mate. ++

Biden: his time
Barack Obama selects Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate
David Roberts, GristMill
23 Aug 2008

Barack Obama’s running mate will be Joe Biden.

Here’s a fact sheet on Biden’s environmental record.

Grist interviewed Biden in August 2007, when he was running for president. He said this about dealing with climate change:

To deal with global warming, you have to change the attitude of the world, particularly China and India, the two largest developing nations. But in order to do that, to have any credibility, you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard, requiring better fuel economy for automobiles. I would cap emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and set a national RPS of 20 percent. I would announce an executive order that the federal government would not purchase one single automobile for its fleet that gets less than 40 miles to the gallon. And I would not build a single solitary federal project without it being a green project. That would have the effect of getting states to do the same thing, and that would create a pot of somewhere between a third and a half a trillion dollars that would be a lure to every major business in America to go green.

Biden had this to say about “clean coal”:

I don’t think there’s much of a role for clean coal in energy independence, but I do think there’s a significant role for clean coal in the bigger picture of climate change. Clean-coal technology is not the route to go in the United States, because we have other, cleaner alternatives. But I would invest a considerable amount of money in research and development of clean-coal and carbon-sequestration technologies for export. China is building one new coal-fired plant per week. That’s not going to change unless there’s a fundamental change in technology, because they have about 300 years of dirty coal, and they’re going to use it.

Would you impose a moratorium on the development of old-style coal power plants in the U.S.?

I believe that all new coal-fired power plants should be built with carbon capture and sequestration capacity.

He had this to say about ethanol:

Ethanol is a good start. Because of the amount of [resources] that go into producing corn-based ethanol, it has only marginally less impact on the consumption of fossil fuels. But it has two real advantages: it begins to give us the margin of flexibility we need to deal with being held hostage to any one of the seven unstable countries that supply 35 percent of our oil — Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, etc. No. 2, it’s a transitional means by which you’re going to be pouring billions of dollars into the fields of the Midwest, rather than the sands of Saudi Arabia or the pockets of Chavez.

Biden has a lifetime score of 83 from the League of Conservation Voters (Obama’s is 86). ++

Reminder to PUMAs: Biden is Architect of VAWA
Jim McKay, HuffPo
August 23, 2008

As Sen. Barack Obama prepares to announce Sen. Joe Biden as his choice for Vice President, pundits are examining Biden’s record and lauding his foreign policy experience in particular. Certainly, his experience and resume’ is complete and his foreign policy credentials are significant.

However, Sen. Biden’s most significant legislative accomplishment was probably the passage in 1994 of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Sen. Biden was the original sponsor and architect of this landmark legislation, which has saved countless lives since its adoption.

VAWA is the most comprehensive federal legislation addressing domestic violence that has been adopted in the history of our nation. In addition to establishing stiffer penalties for gender-related violence, VAWA established the National Domestic Violence Hotline, provided grants to law enforcement and prosecuting agencies, and provides essential funding to Domestic Violence Shelters across the nation.

Sen. Biden’s commitment to this issue has remained steadfast even as he expanded his Congressional responsibilities as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He authored the reauthorization of VAWA in 2000, and included a comprehensive plan to end domestic violence in his platform while running for President during this past year. Sen. Biden even took to the pages of the Huffington Post last October to express his support and leadership on this important issue.

In my career advocating on behalf of children and in support of policies that prevent child abuse and other forms of family violence, it is extremely rare to find a legislator who is willing to make such issues a priority. Sen. Biden is the rare exception who does more than offer rhetorical comments about the value of families and our children; he has actually taken action and gotten results.

As reports circulate that supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton may be disruptive during the upcoming convention due to their frustration that Sen. Clinton was not chosen to be on the ticket, I hope that the PUMAs will pause and consider the consequences of their actions. Sen. Biden brings a wealth of experience and a sincere commitment and track record of leadership on issues affecting women. That record should be appreciated — not criticized in a knee-jerk reaction due to the frustration of Sen. Clinton’s loss.

Here’s the choice: (a) support Barack Obama and his VP Joe Biden who authored the Violence Against Women Act; or (b) support John McCain, whose former press secretary during the NH primary was arrested for violating the Violence Against Women Act.

To me, the answer is pretty clear. ++

Biden: Obama Acts Like a President, Chooses a President
Brent Budowsky, Smirking Chimp
August 23, 2008

In his first truly presidential decision, Barack Obama acted like a president and chose a presidential-caliber candidate for vice president. I recently wrote that this choice would speak volumes about the kind of president he would be, that if he choose one of the heavyweight contenders, such as Sam Nunn or Joe Biden, over the less-qualified candidates it would be an enormously positive sign. Obama came through, big time. Joe Biden’s arc began when his first wife and one of his children were sadly killed in a tragic auto accident before he was sworn into the Senate; today his son is headed to Iraq in uniform: Biden is a military dad.

Here is a big thought about Barack Obama: He usually takes a while, but then gets the big decisions right. The pundits will soon label Biden “the good Cheney,” but the truth is far different. Obama has a world vision; now he has a proven statesman to make it happen. The world will soon see what those of us who have seen Biden up close have seen: Joe is a regular guy. He not only commutes by Amtrak back home, almost every night, instead of living in Washington, but he knows the conductors on a first-name basis, and many are his pals. Little things often tell us big things.

Joe Biden is a family man, a real guy, a Catholic who will have enormous appeal in the Rust Belt and heartland of America. Joe Biden has an international reputation as a serious, thoughtful and substantial man with deep knowledge of the world, boasts of long relationships with many world leaders, and would be described in the JFK tradition of “idealists without illusions.”

No knock on Evan Bayh or Tim Kaine, but their choice would have been very troubling to me and I could not have written these words about them. This was the first and only presidential decision Barack Obama would make from the moment he announced his candidacy until the moment voters choose in November.

In his first presidential decision, Barack Obama acted like a president. Barack Obama chose a vice president of presidential stature, substance, experience and depth. The voters will like Joe Biden, trust Joe Biden, and think even more highly of Barack Obama for making a decision worthy of a president. ++

McCain on Biden: Should have, didn’t
David Weinberger, HuffPo
August 23, 2008

If McCain hadn’t become Karl Rove’s sockpuppet, this is what he might have said in response to the selection of Joe Biden as OBama’s running mate:

I congratulate my friend and colleague Joe Biden on his being selected as a vice presidential candidate. Joe and I have disagreed frequently over the years, and we disagree now on many of the important issues facing this country. But I’ve also worked with him, count him as a friend, and respect him as a capable man who loves the country he’s served for so many years.

That said, I remain convinced that the solutions Joe and his running
mate are proposing are dangerous, and dangerously out of step with the
American people. We’re going to keep on making that case up and down this great land, offering our own practical, down-to-earth solutions that will make a real difference in the lives of hard-working Americans.

McCain’s actual response, in full, from his Web site:

ARLINGTON, VA — Today, McCain spokesman Ben Porritt issued the
following statement on Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate:

“There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden. Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing — that Barack Obama is not ready to be President.”

Classy. ++

Joe Biden on Barack Obama
YouTube

bonus

As Democrats Gather, Liberal Positions Gaining in Popularity
Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers via Common Dreams
Saturday, August 23, 2008

DENVER - As they meet for their national convention Monday through Thursday, Democrats are poised to shift their party’s course - and the country’s.They’re turning to the left - deeply against the war in Iraq, ready to use tax policy to take from the rich and give to the poor and middle class, and growing hungry, after years of centrist politics, for big-government solutions, such as a health-care overhaul, to steer the nation through a time of sweeping economic change.

They are, in short, more liberal than at any time in a generation and eager to end the Reagan era, which dominated not just the other party, but also their own, for nearly three decades.

“Every generation . . . there are changes in people’s relationship with government,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. This, he said, is such a time.

The shift of the party also reflects a change in much of the population - evidenced in the policy positions advocated by rank-and-file voters as well as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

“Government SHOULD do more, especially when you’re spending tens of billions of dollars in Iraq protecting the interests of millionaires,” said Rebecca Washington, a Democrat and an accountant from Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

“We’ve got to revoke the tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Vicki Balzer, a Democrat and retired teacher from the Cleveland suburb of Berea. “We definitely need to do something more for the economically disadvantaged. . . . We’ve allowed big corporations to take millions for corporate leaders while workers get nothing.”

Nationally, 40 percent of Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections called themselves liberal, the highest since the American National Election Studies program started asking in 1972.

At the same time, the number of Democrats who support a government safety net for the poor - such as guaranteeing food and shelter for the needy and spending to help them even if it means more debt - jumped by 14 percentage points from 1994 to 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

Support for that safety net also rose by 15 points among independents and 9 points among Republicans.

That’s a remarkable change since the mid-’90s, the decade when centrist Bill Clinton dominated the Democratic Party, signed a welfare overhaul into law that forced recipients to work, expanded free trade against the wishes of organized labor and famously declared the era of big government to be over.

“During the era when Bill Clinton was president, there was a clear re-centering of the party,” said Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Today, she added, “there is a growing understanding that government can play a positive role in investing in our country.”

What changed? Several things:

* The Iraq war lasted longer, cost more lives and money, and proved deeply unpopular. A few years ago, Obama was a rare voice in the party opposing the war; today he’s one of a chorus.

* Anxiety about a slowing economy resurrected fears about American jobs and paychecks in the global economy. Promises to change trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement punctuated the Democratic primaries.

Also, Obama promises a dramatically different tax policy, one that would raise taxes on the wealthy, cut taxes for the middle class and offer new “refundable” tax credits to the working poor that would wipe out tax liabilities and deliver anything left over in the form of checks.

He also wants to tax oil companies and use the money to give checks to the poor to pay for high fuel costs, or anything else.

* Many Americans recoiled at the weak federal government response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

* Republican George W. Bush turned into one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. Just as American revulsion at Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 helped usher in the Reagan era, rejection of the Bush era could help swing the pendulum the other way.

At the same time, the party has new power centers in liberal groups such as Moveon.org and blogs such as dailykos.com, where antiwar fever and anti-Bush anger are magnified.

They helped propel Howard Dean to an early lead for the 2004 Democratic nomination, lost, then regrouped to help defeat pro-war Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut in a 2006 primary, though he went on to win re-election as an independent.

“Enormous dissatisfaction with the Republican Party has brought out the base more,” said Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

Ever more vocal and influential heading into this year’s election, that base fed the sense that the party should “return to its core values,” Richardson said. “The rise of the Internet and bloggers have made the party more progressive.”

Schumer also thinks that it’s all part of a historic cycle in American politics - or at least he hopes it is.

He said Americans encouraged and grew accustomed to an activist federal government during the Great Depression of the 1930s, one that Democrat Franklin Roosevelt delivered and Democrat Lyndon Johnson accelerated in the 1960s.

They grew disenchanted with that big government by the 1970s, a government seen as corrupt in the Nixon days, unable to stop oil crises or runaway inflation, and unable to rescue Americans whom Iran had taken hostage.

“By 1980, the average person said, ‘I don’t need government anymore. I’m fine on my own,’ ” Schumer said.

That sentiment drove U.S. politics for years, helping Republicans win five out of seven presidential elections and giving the Democrats two victories only when they nominated a Southern centrist in Clinton.

This year, however, Democrats rejected Hillary Clinton, who, while arguably more liberal than her husband, was to the right of Obama on big issues such as tax policy and had a history of being more hawkish on national security.

Perhaps it’s because Obama was simply a more appealing candidate. But it also might be because times are changing.

Now, Schumer said, Americans feel shaken by big forces such as globalization, terrorism and a sputtering economy. “The whole world changes, and people feel a little bit at sea, and they need help,” Schumer said.

Whether the country will turn to a resurgent-liberal Democratic Party to navigate that less-certain world won’t be known until November. But for Democrats watching their national convention, it’s clear they want something very different. ++

Democrats Begin Convention With Most Advantages Since Watergate
Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Heidi Przybyla, Bloomberg
8/25/08

Four years ago, Colorado — a state whose name is derived from the Spanish word for red — was true to that label on the political map. Republicans held the governor’s mansion, both U.S. Senate seats, five of seven congressional seats and both houses of the legislature. President George W. Bush carried the state by 5 points.

This year, Democrats see opportunity instead of defeat. They are banking on their presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, carrying Colorado. The party expects to pick up a Senate seat and possibly two in the House, including one in reliably Republican Larimer County, where voters haven’t sent a Democrat to Congress since 1970.

“There’s a tectonic shift in the state’s politics,” said Matt Ferrauto of the Colorado Democratic Party. State polls suggest strong showings for Democratic candidates running for offices ranging from magistrate to president; this pattern has emerged in almost two-dozen states as Democrats see the best national conditions for their party since the 1970s.

Seventeen hundred miles away, in the onetime Republican stronghold of Loudoun County, Virginia, Obama has 60 full-time volunteers and 700 part-timers helping out at a Leesburg storefront. The Republican candidate, John McCain, has yet to open an office in the county. In Virginia, which hasn’t backed a Democrat for president in 44 years, Obama has four times more offices than McCain, and state polls show them in a dead heat.

`Overwhelmingly Tilted’

“Watergate is the last time things were so overwhelmingly tilted against the Republicans,” said David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Democrats kick off their nominating convention in Denver today expecting strong gains up and down the ballot, even in many historically Republican counties and states. Their optimism is fueled by widespread discontent with the Bush administration, anxiety over the economy, rising Democratic registration, unprecedented turnout in primaries and record fundraising by Obama.

The political energy is on the Democrats’ side. In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll published Aug. 19, 55 percent of party voters said they are “very enthusiastic” about their presidential candidate, compared with 29 percent of Republicans.

Registration Gains

Even if Obama, 47, and McCain, 71, remain locked in a tight race, the Democrats expect to sweep many down-ballot offices. That confidence is justified, said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In the first six months of 2008, the number of Americans who identified themselves as Democrats was 14 percentage points higher than the number who said they were Republicans, she said.

Since the last presidential election, Democrats and independents have gained in most of the 28 states — along with the District of Columbia — where voters register by party, as Republican rolls have dropped, state data show.

In one of the most dramatic examples, in Pennsylvania, more than 380,000 voters changed their registration or registered for the first time as Democrats, while Republicans lost almost 64,000 registered voters, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Nevada has also seen a shift. Since the start of this year, Democratic registrations grew by 57,000, while Republican numbers increased only by 6,900, according to the secretary of state.

Turnout Surge

Moreover, Democratic turnout was dramatically higher in this year’s primaries. In 2000, the last time both parties had a competitive race in New Hampshire, almost 80,000 more voters participated in the Republican primary than in Democratic race.

This year, that margin was almost reversed. In Georgia, voters in the 2000 Republican primary outnumbered Democratic participants by a 3-to-1 margin. This year, the Democratic contest drew almost 150,000 more people than the Republican one.

In Iowa, where Democrats and Republicans campaigned fiercely in their parties’ nominating contest, caucus attendance almost doubled among Democrats, while Republican turnout rose much less.

Obama’s aggressive field operations have contributed as well. In solidly Republican Alaska, he has four offices, including one in Anchorage that on a recent weekday had 15 volunteers tapping on laptops and making calls. McCain has no offices in the state and doesn’t plan to open any, campaign officials said.

Obama in Virginia

Obama has 28 offices across Virginia, compared with McCain’s six offices in urban centers.

“If you build it, they will come,” Obama’s Virginia state director Mitch Stewart said, describing the campaign’s strategy for attracting undecided voters.

In Loudoun County, which is about 30 miles northwest of Washington, Obama aides estimated they had recruited 75 percent of the precinct captains they need.

In 2004, Bush won the county decisively, 56 percent to 44 percent for the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, who didn’t open a local office.

While for now McCain remains likely to carry the county, his margin of victory may be smaller.

Turn to Democrats

Mark Herring, a Democratic Virginia state senator, said voters are turning away from Republicans because “they’ve seen that problems haven’t gotten fixed when elected officials are focused on social issues or ideology.”

Nationally, the Democrats have another important asset: The party has broken a four-decade Republican advantage in fundraising.

Obama had raised $390 million through July, more than double McCain’s $152 million. The Democratic House and Senate fundraising committees have also outperformed their Republican counterparts, making up for the lagging group in the party — the Democratic National Committee.

Obama and the three major Democratic fundraising committees held an edge of $722 million to $510 million for McCain and the three Republican counterparts through July.

The trend toward Democrats is particularly strong among young voters and Hispanics. In 2004, voters under 30 comprised 17 percent of the electorate. This year, with unprecedented mobilization by Obama, that is expected to grow.

Hispanics are 9 percent of eligible voters and the fastest-growing demographic group.

Young Voters

According to a recent study by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, young voters who came of age during the Bush administration are giving Democrats a wide advantage, just as the previous generation that came of age under Ronald Reagan helped fuel the Republican congressional surge of the 1990s.

Fifty-eight percent of voters under 30 are Democrats or lean Democratic, while only 33 percent associate with Republicans, Pew found. The Democrats’ advantage among young people has more than doubled since 2004, to 25 points from 11 points.

Hispanic voters have also moved further toward Democrats in the past two years, as Republicans have made immigration and border protection a central issue. Sixty-five percent of Hispanic voters identify with or lean toward the Democrats, compared with 26 percent who identify with or lean Republican.

No similarly significant demographic group has moved toward the Republicans in recent years.

The trends among younger and Hispanic voters encourage Democrats about their prospects in the Rocky Mountain West, where the party’s convention is being held this week.

In Colorado, Democrat Betsy Markey, 52, is challenging three-term Republican Marilyn Musgrave, 59, in the congressional district that includes Larimer County, which hasn’t elected a Democrat in 38 years.

Markey raised 40 percent more money last quarter than the Republican incumbent, drawing new supporters such as Steve Levinger, a lifelong Republican.

Levinger, 45, a hotel owner in Fort Collins, said he is disgusted by “the mess” his onetime party has “gotten this country into.”

“I wouldn’t vote for a Republican now if they were the last person on Earth,” he said. ++

Last Call for Change We Can Believe In
FRANK RICH, NYT
August 23, 2008

AS the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It’s time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death.

This isn’t because — OMG! — Obama’s narrow three- to four-percentage-point lead of recent weeks dropped to a statistically indistinguishable one- to three-point margin during his week of vacation. It’s because zero hour is here. As the presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.

“Change We Can Believe In” was brilliantly calculated for a Democratic familial brawl where every candidate was promising nearly identical change from George Bush. It branded Obama as the sole contender with the un-Beltway biography, credibility and political talent to link the promise of change to the nation’s onrushing generational turnover in all its cultural (and, yes, racial) manifestations.

McCain should be a far easier mark than Clinton if Obama retools his act.

What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he’s sexier news. But as George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama’s coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain’s most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he’s railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month.

What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there’s no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried.

But Obama is never going to be a John Edwards-style populist barnburner. (Edwards wasn’t persuasive either, by the way.) Nor will wonkish laundry lists of policy details work any better for him than they did for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton. Obama has those details to spare, in any case, while McCain, who didn’t even include an education policy on his Web site during primary season, is still winging it. As David Leonhardt observes in his New York Times Magazine cover article on “Obamanomics” today, Obama’s real problem is not a lack of detail but his inability to sell policy with “an effective story.”

That story is there to be told, but it has to be a story that is more about America and the future and less about Obama and his past. After all these months, most Americans, for better or worse, know who Obama is. So much so that he seems to have fought off the relentless right-wing onslaught to demonize him as an elitist alien. Asked in last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll if each candidate shares their values, registered voters gave Obama and McCain an identical 63 percent.

Asked if each candidate “cares about the needs and problems of people like yourself,” Obama beat McCain by 37 to 23 percent. Is the candidate “someone you can relate to”? Obama: 55 percent, McCain: 41. Even before McCain told Politico that he relies on the help to count up the houses he owns, he was the candidate seen as the out-of-step elitist.

So while Obama can continue to try to reassure resistant Clinton loyalists in Appalachia that he’s not a bogeyman from Madrassaland, he must also move on to the bigger picture for everyone else. He must rekindle the “fierce urgency of now” — but not, as he did in the primaries, merely to evoke uplifting echoes of the civil-rights struggle or the need for withdrawal from Iraq.

Most Americans, unlike the press, are not obsessed by race. (Those whites who are obsessed by race will not vote for Obama no matter what he or anyone else has to say about it.) And most Americans have turned their backs on the Iraq war, no matter how much McCain keeps bellowing about “victory.” The Bush White House is now poised to alight with the Iraqi government on a withdrawal timetable far closer to Obama’s 16 months than McCain’s vague promise of a 2013 endgame. As Gen. David Petraeus returns home, McCain increasingly resembles those mad Japanese soldiers who remained at war on remote Pacific islands years after Hiroshima.

Economic anxiety is the new terrorism. This is why the most relevant snapshot of voters’ concerns was not to be found at Saddleback Church but at the Olympics last Saturday. For all the political press’s hype, only some 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the Rev. Rick Warren’s show in Orange County, Calif. Roughly three-quarters of them were over 50 — in other words, the McCain base. By contrast, a diverse audience of 32 million Americans tuned in to Beijing that night to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal.

This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country. But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell. It is not a story of endless conflicts abroad but a potentially inspiring tale of serious economic, educational, energy and health-care mobilization at home. We don’t have the time or resources to go off on more quixotic military missions or to indulge in culture wars. (In China, they’re too busy exploiting scientific advances for competitive advantage to reopen settled debates about Darwin.) Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices.

Even as it points to America’s future, the Obama campaign also has the duty to fill in its opponent’s past. McCain’s attacks on Obama have worked: in last week’s Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, Obama’s favorable rating declined from 59 to 48 percent and his negative rating rose from 27 to 35. Yet McCain still has a lower positive rating (46 percent) and higher negative rating (38) than Obama. McCain is not nearly as popular among Americans, it turns out, as he is among his journalistic camp followers. Should voters actually get to know him, he has nowhere to go but down.

The argument against Obama’s “going negative” is that it undermines his message of “transcendent politics” and will make him look like an “angry black man.” But pacifistic politics is an oxymoron, and Obama is constitutionally incapable of coming off angrier than McCain. A few more fisticuffs from the former law professor (and many more from his running mate and other surrogates) can only help make him look less skinny (metaphorically if not literally). Obama should go after McCain’s supposedly biggest asset — experience — much as McCain went after Obama’s crowd-drawing celebrity.

It is, after all, not mere happenstance that so many conservative pundits — Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru — have, to McCain’s irritation, proposed that he “patriotically” declare in advance that he will selflessly serve only a single term. Whatever their lofty stated reasons for promoting this stunt, their underlying message is clear: They recognize in their heart of hearts that the shelf life of McCain’s experience has already reached its expiration date.

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

R.I.P., “Change We Can Believe In.” The fierce urgency of the 21st century demands Change Before It’s Too Late. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves