Yesterday I was honored to be on a call with America's leading mayors and the US Conference of Mayors to talk about a huge problem affecting cities from coast to coast: the foreclosure crisis.

I've been talking about how a family is losing their home every 13 seconds for awhile now and the recent failure by Congress to enact bankruptcy reform to protect homeowners because of industry pressure was a real blow to stopping that clock.  

But the failure in Washington isn't going to stand in the way of ACORN's push to address the crisis at the heart of the economic meltdown and teaming up with some of the leading mayors in the United States is a major way we're moving forward to help families stay in their homes.

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As my diary from earlier today emphatically demonstrated, the radioactive issue of Barack Obama's spiritual mentor and adviser of 17+ years not only won't die, it is rapidly metastasizing and spreading throughout national and international culture and continues to increase the margin of defeat Obama would suffer should he be irresponsibly named the Democratic nominee for President.

The latest evidence of Obama's electoral corrosion courtesy of Wright comes from African-American Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. Nutter puts the lie to the "Oh, it's ok, it's a black church 'thang'" being bloviated by embarrassing hires such as CNN's  moronic Roland Martin:

I think there's no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time," said Philadelphia's newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News' David Muir.

...Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama's church, Nutter said, "Absolutely."

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4549699

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[Addendum to Chris' outstanding My Creepy Letter on my Doormat post from Saturday]

Well, I was feeling kinda left out of all this until I received not one, but TWO creepy letters in my mailbox this afternoon ..  check it out..

Nothing I can add that Chris hasn't nailed on the head already.  But it is remarkable to watch the way certain parties play games with the "street money".   It's especially amusing to watch Knox, a guy basically trying to buy his way into the mayor's office, playing footsie with one of the more corrupt members of city council who also happens to represent one of the city's poorest disctricts.. where $100 on election day is much more than just donut money ..

I can't pull the lever for Michael Nutter fast enough.

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In the weeks after the 2004 election, I spent a great deal of time arguing that the main demographic shift in Democratic and Republican coalitions over the last forty years was a drift toward more ideological coalitions. This shift had greatly favored Republicans, since they gained more self-identified conservatives than they lost self-identified liberals. My conclusion at the time was that we needed a long-term program to increase the percentages of Americans and American voters who self-identified as liberals in order to lay the strongest possible foundation for a future Democratic majority. The more liberals and progressives in America, the better Democrats would do.

However, over the past two years, I have slowly moved away from that position. While I certainly think that it is important to grow liberalism and progressivism, what I failed to take into account back in late 2004 was why people self-identified as liberal, moderate or conservative, and what they might mean when they did so. Ideological self-identification means very different things to different people, and much of the time it doesn't mean anything ideological at all. In fact, over the past two years, I have numerous studies showing that most people, like 90%, don't even really have a clear idea of what being conservative, liberal or "moderate" even means. And I don't mean that in the sense that that most people have different definitions of ideologies than me. I mean it in the sense that they don't have thoroughgoing, well-defined ideologies at all. For example, how can about 50% of self-identified conservatives believe that the federal government should raise taxes in order to provide free health insurance to all American citizens? The answer, I think, is that people mean different things when they call themselves "conservative."

More in the extended entry, including the bit where I finally have a point.

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There are a lot of elections to watch in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Basically, everything outside of the state legislature, the governorship, and federal elections is on the ballot. Personally, I think that there are too many elections taking place on Tuesday, and that the "row offices" and judicial elections should take place in the first year of the four-year cycle (2005, 2009, 2013, etc) instead of the third year (2003, 2007, 2011, etc.)

I wanted to spend much more time blogging about many of these individual campaigns, but the sheer number of worthy campaigns to focus on, combined with my national focus as a blogger, made it too difficult to reach more than a handful. Still, in the extended entry, I have listed my endorsements for most of the campaigns that will be decided tomorrow in both Philadelphia (mayor, city council at-large, city council district races, "row offices", local judges, and ballot questions) and statewide in Pennsylvania (supreme court and superior court). I briefly discuss, and make endorsements, on one ballot question, and nineteen different campaigns. If a campaign is not listed, it is either because I have no preference, or I simply feel that I do not have enough information to make an informed endorsement.

This is the biggest non-presidential election the city has faced in sixteen years, and we could see some huge changes for the better. Of course, we could also see the status quo upheld, or even a regression, as well. No matter what happens, it is the first large-scale electoral test of the progressive movement in Philadelphia, and what happens here will have widespread, national implications. This is potentially a major turning point for the city, and for the success of local progressive activism. My endorsements, along with brief explanations of each, can be found in the extended entry.

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