I was pleased to learn that my dad, who is in my judgment a Republican-leaning independent, is probably going to vote for a Democrat this year. I was even more pleased to find that he was leaning towards supporting Obama in the primary.

Plus one for Obama in Orange County!

In that case, I have no problem with a "caucus" of this kind (especially if they allowed internet voting as mentioned above). My problem is with Iowa-style caucusing.

I am also unsure of all these "conspiracy theories" about the state-level Michigan Republicans banding together to try to serve Karl Rove's supposed bidding. Even if this were all part of Rove's master plan to meddle in the 2008 election, he should be careful what he wishes for lest he wants a Democratic candidate who can "win in a bar fight" with Republicans, as someone once observed (appropriately, IMHO) on this site.

I am unsympathetic to the idea of a caucus and consider myself a pretty faithful progressive. Special interests are a fact of not just politics but life. James Madison essentially asserts this in Federalist No. 10:

"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them every where brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society."

But when these special interests being to subvert the basic principle of voting, which is the only real input the people have in our republic, my patience begins to evaporate very quickly. Those who've written here before me in favor of a primary have said most of what there is to say, so I won't repeat them.

I think most of us are missing the mark. The real question should be: should the states have to follow the DNC's rules as to when they are able to hold their primary? Let's debate that instead of Karl Rove and primary v. caucus (both of which are borderline absurd debates anyway).

I'm not sure if anyone else is as impressed by this as I am, but the Democrats knocked off six incumbent senators this cycle. Six! We all know how difficult it is to defeat an incumbent politician, but incumbent senators seem to be famously resiliant. Or perhaps this is just an illusion since they have elections three times as infrequently.

By my research, the last time a party defeated six or more incumbent senators was 1982.

Boy, I love me some wikipedia.

Optimistic:

Lamont 58
Lieberman 42

Lieberman publicly maintains he will run as an independent for some time, and then drops out within a few weeks after seeing his support in the polls fall through.

So yes, Kerry only gained 5 points, but Bush lost 3, and your opponent's loss is your gain. :)

Though, I might remind us that Kerry didn't vote to go to war, per se, but voted to give the President the authority, to better equip him in the diplomatic efforts that were supposed to follow. Obviously that endeavor for a peaceful solution never unfolded. I truly believe Kerry would have exercised an effective strategy of containment with the authority to use force in his diplomatic toolset. I suppose the same conjecture can be made of Bush (substituting the word "could" in place of "would"). But we all know that Bush didn't really ever have any plan that didn't involve war.