I wasn't going to do much with this column other than tuck it away for future reference.  That's not because I didn't agree with what its author, the irrepressable Katha Pollitt, wrote--I actually agree with just about all of this, and certainly agree with her major premise: that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has made it easier for women and all non-white guy candidates to run for office--but because diaries that cast Clinton in anything but the most unflattering of lights are usually exercises in futility around many places on the left side of the blogosphere.  This is especially true of DailyKos.  

But this column, I believe, offers something different.  For while Pollitt does not dwell on Clinton's own particular nastiness--she also never excuses it--and while she does take serious issue with much of the sexist vitriol that has been hurled the Senator's way, Pollitt's major point is not that anyone should feel particularly sorry for Clinton, and it's not that Clinton lost the nomination because of a gender-loathing press, but that, in the end, Hillary Clinton has, through her dogged and relentless campaign for the presidency, paved the way for the next serious run by a woman for the office.

 

Senator Clinton,

We all listened in rather shocked amazement and then stunned bewilderment to your speech this evening.  We heard you as you touted the accomplishments of your campaign, and wondered if you were summing up, ticking off the milestones and the victories, or, as it became increasingly clear, repeating not only the words, but more importantly, the context of what had become your standard stump speech.  But then it became clear, as you acknowledged Sen. Obama and his supporters only for the "extraordinary race that they have run," and thanked him, as though you were viewing him through the rear-view mirror of your campaign bus as it travels onto the general election, for all he--and we--accomplished.

Never once did you even acknowledge just what it was that he accomplished; and that's rather odd, because it is the same thing you were striving for: a sufficient number of delegates to win our party's nomination: 2117.  

And so, what was at first amazing--that you could not even be gracious enough to utter the word delegate--became an issue of jaw-dropping, confounding disgrace, when you said, "This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight."

You need not decide anything; we have already decided.  

A few weeks ago, after the Cook Political Report bumped the congressional race in my home district (MI-09) up to "Lean Republican" from "Likely Republican," David Wasserman (the House editor at Cook) told the Detroit News that the race "appears to be one of Democrats' better opportunities to knock off a veteran incumbent."

Taking a look at the numbers on the race, Mr. Wasserman's assessment appears to be right on.

Overall, among the challengers on the DCCC's Red to Blue list:

• Peters is 3rd in money raised online (via ActBlue)
• Peters is 5th overall in total money raised in the first quarter of 2008
• Peters' district (MI-09) is the 4th most Democratic, according to both the Bush vs. Kerry '04 results and the Cook Political Report PVI score.

Among the challengers who started from zero this cycle--eliminating those candidates who already had a fundraising apparatus and campaign left over from 2006--Peters is in an even better position.

For DCCC-backed challengers who are running for the first time:

• Peters is 1st overall in money raised online (via ActBlue) in the nation
• Peters is 3rd in 2008 Q1 fundraising in the nation

Yes?  Well, I've got one we can work on that is ripe for flipping, and in doing so we can remove one of the absolute worst Republican legislators currently in office, and elect a solid progressive.  The race is the 9th District of Michigan, where Democrat Gary Peters is challenging the GOP's 8-term do-nothing, Joe Knollenberg.

The 9th District (Race tracker wiki), is located entirely in Oakland County, just northwest of Detroit.  It has traditionally been a Republican leaning area, but over the course of the last decade, it has moved conistently Democratic, to the point now, that Democrats are coming into the majority.  In the 2008 cycle, we will likely pick up several more mayors seats and take the majority of county commission seats.  On the national level, we are seen as just slightly Republican (Cook lists the 9th as R +0), and so, with a good candidate and enough money, this is a seat that can be flipped.  

It is beyond argument that the primary goal of the Democratic Party and, by extention, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is to see to it that the principles of the Democratic Party are advanced and that Democratic candidates are elected to office.  The DNC's stated purpose, aside from planning and operating the quadrennial nation presidential nominating convention is to "work[ ] with national, state, and local party organizations, elected officials, candidates, and constituencies to respond to the needs and views of the Democratic electorate and the nation."  Throughout the last several months, since the unfolding of events that have resulted in the embarassment and disenfranchisement of the Michigan and Florida electorates, the Party and the DNC has heard from the state parties, elected officials, national officials and the two remaining presidential candidatates.  Now you've heard from the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP), which, we assume, has a similar mission.

     

The Michigan Wildlife Conservancy (formerly, the Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation) was founded in 1982 by the Jackson, Michigan, businessman Russell Bengel and several others who had the vision and understanding that for wildlife to be preserved, it is necessary to preserve vital habitat.  But, as with many of our formerly wild places, preservation bowed to the pressure of commerce.  As such, the MWC was formed to help restore at least some of what has been lost to that pressure.  Since its founding in 1982, the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has helped restore more than 6,700 acres of wetalands, 2,400 acres of prarie habitat, installed more than 1,000 stream improvement structures, and have demonstrated the existence of a wild breeding population of cougar throught most the state.

I have been a member of the MWC since 1983, a past president, and currently serve on the executive committee of the Board of Directors.    

This diary is to demonstrate what can be done when public and private interests, rather than opposing each other, work together towards a common goal.  

You know, I've had just about enough of all this party in-fighting.  I'm sick to death of Obama's preacher and Clinton's Ferraro.  I don't like Tony McPeak calling Bill Clinton a McCarthyite, and I've had just about enough of James Carville's charge that Bill Richardson is some modern-day Judas Iscariot. Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson are wholly loathesome for their open declarations that Obama can't beat John McCain, and for David Axelrod to so much as intimate that Hillary Clinton's vote on Iraq somehow lead to the death of Benazir Bhutto is enough to make me vomit.

So, after all this time as a Democrat (since my first vote in 1976) and all my time on this site (October 2003), I've decided that neither of these campagins deserve my vote.  

I'm voting for John McCain.  And don't try to talk me out of it.

This is all that needs to be said about Jeremiah Wright from this point onward:

                                                                                                                               

The timing of this could not be more perfect.  On the day after the night before, when John McCain sewed up the Republican nomination, and afer allowing sufficent time for him to collect the official kiss on the cheek from his new benefactor--and former adversary--George Bush, another unlikely tag-team act has formed to promote the candidacy of the one candidate that truly unites half the Democratic Party with that portion of the GOP that voted Hillary Clinton "Most Likely to Lose to John McCain."

In a joint statement signed by Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, and Florida governor, Charlie Crist, the two parties have been petitioned to seat their respective states' delegations to the national conventions.

In full, the governors have written:

Like so many of you, I came to this site in 2003 (or later) after a long run of supporting and campaigning for Howard Dean--indeed, my first donation to Dean went not to his presidential campaign, but to the predecessor exploratory PAC, the Fund for a Healthy America.  Those of you who were around here back then and into and through the waning days of the campaign in early 2004 remember Daily Kos as the largest Dean-friendly blog on the Internets (outside of the ground-breaking Blog for America) where many of us were first introduced to idea of online activism on behalf of a presidential candidate.

Well, how far we have come.  This site jumped from a few thousand to closing in on a couple hundred thousand users, and in turn Markos went from "just a guy with a website" and part-time Dean internet consultant to a regular commentator on the state of Democratic and progressive politics.  

 

By now I'm sure you've all read of the despicable actions of some overzealous staffer, who apparently replaced Edwards campaign lit with that promoting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton at the stoop of a still anonymous Iowa resident.  According to one eye witness, a Ms. sarahlane,  in an account that she says, "You will not believe,":

My mother and I were stomping through the Iowa snow going door to door. If someone was not at home we would leave some John Edwards literature for them. We arrived at one house where the Iowan was not home and we left some literature at her door. We crossed the street and began walking to our next house. A car pulled up at the house where we had just left the literature. I had a feeling that it was another canvasser from another campaign. I told my mom we should walk further down the street and pretend to be busy flipping through papers. I told my mom, who was wearing sunglasses to keep an eye on him.

Well that's not the half of it.  Uhhh, better meet me at the extended diary box . . .

In the the did so/did not of whether former Michigan governor George Romney ever marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Politico has now reported that on account of an alleged eye-witness statement, King and Romney were seen marching hand-in-hand in the streets of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in the summer of 1963.  The problem is that it never happened--at least not as the alleged eye-witness, Shirley Bashore, claims.  The Politico reports:

Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.

With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

"They were hand in hand," recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. "They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s."

The Politico article continues:

These candidate and anti-candidate diaries are getting to be toxic cesspools--just about all of them--and I'd have to think that none of them are doing your respective candidates any good whatsoever. The name calling and the backbiting at Democrats is bad enough, but nonetheless expected in a primary season.  For many, I'd imagine, the first reflex is to find the scroll bar.  Perhaps that's why some try to skirt the scroll bar by resorting to the photobucket image of headline-sized type--red, of course--imploring those fucking fucks who that fucker does not agree with to, rather expectedly, fuck off.  My, how the level of what passes for political discourse on this site has been elevated.

The point of this diary, though, centers on the fact that for too many here, it seems, the slings and arrows of political campaigning are so virulent so as to cause grown adults to loose all sense of proportion and to melt into fetid pools of sludge every time a cross word is directed toward our beloved candidates by one of his or her rivals. Well, enough of that.  It's time to toughen up a little.  Yes, it's time we all lost our political virginity and look like we've been through this before.  

This is not a call-out diary.  I do not submit it to inflame or start some sort of range war on the issue of the diaries of one person.  And for those of you whe believe that this diary is contrary to the site rules, I will remind you that the proscription of calling out, even if that is what you believe this to be, applies not to the content of the diary, but the diary title.  From the FAQ:

"Calling out" other site users by name in diary titles is prohibited. Diaries which "call out" another by name tend to needlessly inflame. If you feel compelled to address another user's comments or diaries in a diary of your own, please do so cautiously. Avoid ad hominems and stick with substantive, constructive criticism only.

As I believe it at least somewhat fair to say that the diary OPOL and the True Power of Daily Kos is in some measure aimed at me or what I write, I offer this explanation and statement of my position on this issue in like means (a diary) as this issue was today here raised.  

For those of you who consistently read Jonathan Schell, you will not be surprised by position he lays out in his most recent article in The Nation.  In his piece, one of the very few that The Nation sets behind a subscription wall, Schell essentially argues that the Democrats, if they are legitimately and sufficiently of a mind to affect the outcome in Iraq, should force an implacable president to a Constitutional confrontation over which branch of government will determine the war's future course. He argues that the half-measures proposed by the likes of Levin and Jack Reed (and, by extension, Feingold and Harry Reid) are constitutionally dubious, militarily illogical, and politically disastrous.

I believe Schell is correct, and that the time for finessing this war is over.

This just in:

From the New York Times:

The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

Essentially, we are now being told that so-called "communities of interest," of a terror suspect's network of people with whom contact is made, are also the subjects of telecommunications analysis by the FBI, though the project has allegedly been halted while the Bureau is currently under scrutiny for abuses of process as it relates to the national security letters.

Don't be so sure.

As is being repoted this evening on Politico, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are to announce tomorrow that they will be unveiling a plan to force a series of votes, starting in July, to bring an end to the Iraq War.

Reid has already publicly declared that Senate Democrats will offer four Iraq-related amendments to the upcoming 2008 Defense authorization bill, including a proposal by Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to set a firm timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring.

Pelosi is planning to announce that the House will also vote on a bill setting a new withdrawal timetable of April 1, 2008, although the details of the proposal were still up in the air at press time, according to Democratic sources. The House will consider this proposal as a freestanding bill, said the sources.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the top:  I most assuredly believe that George Bush, Richard Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales are categorically worthy of impeachment and removal from office for committing high crimes and misdemeanors while in the performance of the duties of their respective offices.  Still, clamoring for impeachment at this time and under the circumstances currently apparent is to me a potentially catastrophic folly, a waste of precious time and political capital, and the one thing that can, more than anything else, give the next presidential election to the Republicans.  (The frequency and repetition of the almost daily impeachment diaries is still annoying as hell and, to my mind, counter-productive, but that’s another diary that I’ll not now write.)  Rather, I’d like to focus on the simple to phrase but difficult to answer question of whether we should commence impeachment hearing against any or all of these political officials.