Sometimes, as a blogger, you find ideas for several small posts, instead of one or two large posts. This is one of those times. So, here comes several hours worth of blogging in one post, designed as an alternative to First Read. Let me know if you like these posts, as opposed to my usual, longer fare, and maybe I'll try to put them together more often.
UAW Region 4 Delegates Throw Support to Obama's Campaign for PresidentDUBUQUE - Delegates of United Auto Workers Region 4, which includes 30,000 members and retirees in Iowa, voted today to support Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The group announced its overwhelming support at the close of a weeklong conference where seven of the major Democratic presidential candidates addressed the group earlier this week.
A big score for Obama, but keep in mind that Gephardt wont this endorsement in 2004.
Plants for Hillary: The Edwards campaign has produced a satirical attack website, Plants for Hillary. If nothing else, it is a sign that Edwards plans to stay on the attack against Clinton. Personally, I think that this planting story might even be more damaging to Clinton than attacks on her hawkishness. I've grown convinced that most voters don't choose candidates based on issues, but instead on identity connections and personality traits. Even if it is an isolated incident, and even if other campaigns do it (a charge about which I remain skeptical), this is a new attack on Clinton's character that neatly slots itself into an old narrative about her (cold and robotic). This could be the equivalent of when Dean yelled at a Republican heckler back in January 2004. Unlike attacks on Clinton's electability and bizarre masculine outrage over her "playing the gender card," both of which I think are whining, bullshit, loser attacks that are proven to backfire, the two pronged issue / character attack on Clinton's hawkish-ness / robotic-ness might just work. (Incidentally, I also don't buy the insider / outsider thing against her, since every Democrat running is a federally elected official using DC consultants and pretty much the same group of wonkish policy professionals.)
"We'll either do it the easy way or the hard way. It's up to the Republicans," Reid said at a press conference today, according to Roll Call. "We will have a Sunday vote scheduled ... If they want to give us consent to have a vote earlier, we'll do that. But if they don't, we're not only going to be here, we're going to be here working."
These are the tactics Reid and all Congressional Dems need to employ if they expect Republicans to face serious political blowback for engaging in record-breaking filibusters. If Republicans want to filibuster, fine. However, despite objections from "Oh, No!" Democrats, when they do so Democrats need to make them actually filibuster.
All but the top four districts are currently held by Republicans, showing that Democrats still have a wide array of pickup opportunities in the House, too. The line breaks are designed to crudely group the seats into four categories: likely Dem, lean Dem, lean Republican, and likely Republican. It isn't all as simple as Partisan Voting Index rankings, of course, but they do serve as a useful overview of the situation.
Brad Miller Takes Center Stage: Representative Brad Miller (D, NC-13), who I worked for in 2006 during his re-election campaign against the despicable Vernon Robinson, finds himself at the center of two major fights right now. First, he is on the committee that will review Barney Frank's bad predatory lending bill, that Irv Ackelsberg and Dan U-A provided updates on here at Open Left. Second, his subprime mortgage bill is slowly moving forward, and the DCCC plans to make it a centerpiece of their 2008 campaign. Here is Rep. Miller speaking about the bill today:
What committee seats would you want? Working for Representative Miller last year gave me a new perspective on how Congress works. Specifically, it gave me more insight on the committee system that is so important to the day to day operation of Congress. It made me wonder, even though I never intend to be in Congress, if I were in Congress, what House committees would I want have a seat on? It is a tough choice, but I would probably go for Education and Labor as my main committee, and Space and Aeronautics as my subcommittee. If I was allowed one more, which I don't think members get to do, it would be hard to choose between House Administration and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. It will never happen, and truthfully I don't even want it to happen, but it is fun to think about, none the less. What committees would you choose?
This is an open thread on these and other subjects.
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