As John McCain might say, make it a hundred!

Usually, the health care debate comes down to the decision over rather to focus on controlling costs or extending coverage to everyone. But the junior senator from Arizona is truly a pioneer, he seems to want to keep costs high and make sure no one has access. Impressive.

Headed to Florida from DC for the last 17 days!

That'll teach me to try and use tables.  Fixed.

Joe is a genuine community leader in S. Florida, a respected expert in Washington, and an ally of the netroots, who really gets us, as demonstrated in this post.  I hope we can all support him with our time, money and ideas.  

Wrong question.  What the netrooters are trying to find out is "Who's movement?  I hope we'll find out in Pittsburgh.  

Nice catch!  I'm reminded of a great question our president once asked: "Is our children learning?"  When it comes to me and numbers, the answer is sadly, "no, I are not."

Fair enough on the GOP talking points.  I'll have you know that my tongue was lodged deep in my cheek for most of that.  But the underlying points stands - it was a very weak field.  On specifics:

Kerry wasn't a great Senator.  I'm sorry, but he wasn't.  BCCI and Iran-Contra were high points, but they don't make him an all-star.

Dean I know you can't criticize Dean on anything ever and he was good on health care in Vermont (I used to live nearby) but Bill Clinton has said lots of nice things about lots of people, it's called being a good politician.  I bet if you asked him about healthcare today he might rank his wife a little above Gov. Dean.

Gephardt represents all that is bad about old labor, a group that has been taking body blows for 30+ years.  How about Andy Stern for Sec. of Labor if the SEUI wouldn't mind loaning him out.

Graham right about the war and couldn't even communicate it as well as Dean who didn't make it out of the primaries.

Clark was a terrible candidate.  I wish there was a better way to put it.  The lateness counts because he should have used that time to figure out how to run.

Edwards I apologize for the ambulance chaser bit, unfair of me.  Still he was a trial lawyer for a long time and a Senator for a very short time.  Not the resume I would pick out of a pile to be President.  More troubling he was a hard-core DLC Democrat and in 2003 began a long transition to the populist he is today.  I don't have a huge problem with changing your positions over time, but I'd like to know what inspired him to completely change his politics.

Last three are all fine, except Kucinich was a disaster in his only experience as an executive.

Thanks for mentioning the New Politics Institute's work.  For those of you who are interested in this topic - and that should be everybody who cares about winning elections - we'll be updating that paper soon and you'll be able to find it at http://www.newpolitics.net

I actually didn't mean to imply that the data indicated any increase in opportunities for Hispanics, but rather that the data shows, as you said, "that progressives have a huge opportunity with Hispanics and need to take advantage of it."  I actually work for a progressive think tank and advocacy organization called NDN that does a lot of work in this area, and I encourage you to check it out at www.ndn.org and www.ndnblog.org.