The more we know about 2004, the more we know how wrong the conventional wisdom was and has been:  No, Bush didn't win.  No, this wasn't a victory of right-wing so-called "values voters".  And no, marriage initiatives did not make a difference in the vote.

Kerry pollster Mark Mellman has found that [2004] anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives didn't boost voter turnout for either party. Moreover, political scientists at MIT found that Bush's share of the 2004 vote increased in most battleground states, but not the three that had gay marriage bans on the ballot. Stephen Ansolabehere, one of the study's authors, concludes that the gay marriage referenda may have given Kerry a bump. "That suggests there might even be some sort of backlash against this kind of politics," he notes.

Of course, we already knew that civil rights battles should not wait for the mythical time when no elections are on the horizon, and that pro-equality plaintiffs can't be expected to back out of their years-long case because the timing is inconvenient.   We already knew that Karl Rove, not people fighting for their civil rights, "pushed the issue" in 2004.  Now we know that it didn't even work.  This should put an end to any more "those darn impatient gays!" nonsense about 2004.

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I decided to re-watch obama's speech from 2004.  Pretty impressive.  I found it funny because it's the same message he gives today but finished off his statements with "and this is what kerry believes in".  The more i think about this campaign vs the kerry campaign, the more i think that this one has a message and a goal, and kerry's was all about Bush.  last time the republican's said Democrats have no plan for this country.  That is definitely not the case this time. Finally, the democrats laid out why our policies will help this country. That is something we need to do more of.  Curious to see how much the roles reverse.  I'm sure next week will be all about Obama.  In fact, i think mccain's convention will exactly mirror kerry's campaign. Bashing the other while talking about mccain's service.  I think that could be a good sign.

I also wanted to express my hopes that the progressive blogosphere goes to the twin cities and covers the republican's as hard as they are right now (without the hearts in their eyes). I also think we need to make sure that Obama and Biden are not the only surrogates fighting for democrats. Everytime i turn on the TV i see a republican repeating their talking points. We need to get all of our Democratic leaders on TV every single day laying out our message, not just of change but of policies.

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The GOP and it's leading spokespersons (well, Rush Limbaugh, but if it's all you got...) are all ready to make a huge fuss over the stage at Denver's Invesco Field.

Apparently there are columns in the backdrop.  Oh my.

What kind of hubris it would be to use columns in the background of a US electorial speech?  How assuming, how arrogant, gosh, how un-American can you get?!?

Here's a sneak preview:

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Many of us felt that we couldn't possibly lose to Bush--he was just so obviously bad for our country. At that moment, many of us felt like this could be it. This could be the election when we beat the Right, ended the Bush nightmare, and put a (decently) progressive candidate in the White House. We were wrong.

As we've seen Obama's lead in the polls vanish over the past few weeks (the latest Zogby poll shows McCain with a 1 point lead), it's a fitting reminder: this year's fight will be at least as hard as '04. Get started here.

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McCain was a shallow callow young to middle aged man, who dumped the "stand by me" first wife after she got older and heavy and handicapped, and hooked up with the hot blond young chicky with the big bucks and the daddy with connections.  Facing ultimate retirement on a military disabilty pension, McCain found the young blonde with all that beer money pretty irresistible.  McCain leapt from a being PTS-suffering heavy-drinking disabled veteran to a U.S. Senator (using his bio, her looks, and her daddy's money).

In Congress, McCain uniformly adherred to the Arizona paleo con line and got involved with dirty S & L money (during the last Bush-induced lending and property collapse).  After avoiding indictment for corruption, McCain covered his trail by espousing "campaign finance reform" and developing a reputation for independent rhetoric (always combined with party line votes).

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