Right now on the front page of MyDD, one can read the host of this site opining:

"One RCB [sic*] vote changed everything."

This analysis can only be described as either willfully ignorant or deliberately inflammatory -- because no single vote or event changed the outcome of this Democratic contest.

Such unitary theories are by nature reductive and misleading. As far as I can see, the only point of making such a statement is to generate false pity for the losing candidate, and to instigate phony theories that the election was somehow stolen from the candidate who once held all the advantages and all the cards.

That contest was won fair and square by Barack Obama -- with a lot of help from the inept Clinton campaign. So let me try to list just a few of the votes and other events which collectively "changed everything" for Hillary Clinton -- changed her candidacy from one of inevitability, to one that has embarrassed many who once supported both her and her husband's political careers...

1) Hillary voting to give Bush the power to wage a falsely-justified war;

2) Hillary relying on tired establishment figures such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson to steer her strategy and message;

3) Hillary deciding to neglect the Iowa caucuses, until it was too late, giving Obama a huge national burst of publicity and momentum;

More after the jump...

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Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall just called out the Hillary Clinton campaign on the hypocrisy of its Florida/Michigan posturing:

Sen. Clinton ... is embarking on a gambit that is uncertain in its result and simply breathtaking in its cynicism.

Coming from Marshall -- who has been unstinting in investigating the Bush administration's excesses, while remaining evenhanded about the Democratic candidates -- this has got to sting.

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The owner of this site writes, in the current lead MyDD article:

[...] Clinton, I'm betting, has more interest in using her capital to reform the nomination process.

I support the idea that the Democrats ought to simplify the party's nominating process. But I have some questions (and answers) prompted by Jerome's observation:

1. QUESTION: Why did we never hear a peep from Bill or Hillary Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 elections about how the nomination process was flawed?

► ANSWER: Because the process worked in their favor in those election cycles.

[ More Q & A after the jump... ]

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... dies by the sword.

As we all know, Senator Clinton and her surrogates have tried repeatedly to tie Senator Obama to Louis Farrakhan and his noxious anti-Semitism.

But guess what? Clinton's most prominent supporter in Pennsylvania, who has been at her side and stumping for her all over the media and the state in advance of tomorrow's primary?

Well, Rendell praised Farrakhan.

And not eons ago. Last year. On video. With Farrakhan present.

Citations after the jump.

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For some time now, I've been concerned that Hillary Clinton might really be a Republican.

I know, I know. She says that she's a registered Democrat. Now, I've never actually seen her registration card. But I have no reason to doubt that she is really a Democrat, just like she says.

Well, actually, to be honest I maybe have a couple reasons to doubt it...

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For those Clinton supporters stoking the Obama "just words" flames, I say: Do you really want to continue this war of words?

On the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, an interesting quote from Hillary Clinton appears well above the fold:

"Mrs. Clinton told an audience that the Wisconsin primary and subsequent contests were 'a chance for all of you here to help take our country back.

ZOMG -- She said take our country back... It's plagiarism! Alert CNN, alert MSNBC, alert FoxNews, alert Lauer and Tapper and Limbaugh: Clinton is blatantly copying the language 2003-2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean.

"Take our country back,""take your country back,""I want my country back." These, of course, were the rallying cries of Dean (and Deaniacs like myself).

In fact, Dean used the phrase in announcing his campaign on June 23rd, 2003.

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Cross-posted at Daily Kos

My friend Peter was the first to expose me to MyDD. This week, we both appear in a  documentary called Two Square Miles -- a tale of conflict, controversy, change, and community in a small American city of just 7,500 souls.

Click here for YouTube preview

I hope some of you will check your local listings and catch the film on PBS. It's tailor made for MyDDers: a chance to see ordinary citizens rolling up their sleeves, getting their hands dirty, making Democracy work.

Please consider recommending, and read on after the jump.

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Imagine that the police in your town used pre-emptive arrests, psychological operations, misinformation, and infiltration of grassroots groups to control dissent and protest. What word would you use to describe that action?

The words intimidation and suppression come to my mind. But if you're a headline writer at The  New York Times, the word of choice to describe these un-American activities is ... calming:

Police Memos Say Arrest Tactics Calmed Protest

by Jim Dwyer

New York City police commanders discussed how they  had used "proactive arrests" at political demonstrations in 2002.

 Sounds reassuring, eh? See, the cops were just trying  to calm things down.

And those "discussions"? Those were actually in private, internal memoranda, brought to light only as a result of a lawsuit. By using the word "discussed" in the lede, the casual skimmer of the article might think this information came as a result of some up-front, open dialogue with the public.

More after the jump...

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With the apparent loss of Rodriguez to Cuellar, some are celebrating the netroots' major assist to Ciro and optimistically touting this as an honorable defeat in TX-28 that will lead to future victory there and elsewhere.

Others are disappointed, wondering what went wrong, and in a few cases pointing fingers at those who, they feel, failed to deliver despite intense support from Democrats all over the nation.

As someone who has been intensely involved with election campaigns on a local level, I have a strong interest in the mechanics of politics. This experience leads me to be skeptical of those trying to find a silver lining in this loss, while also discounting criticism that is not aimed at identifying specific problems -- and at building commitment to solving them in the future.

I'm not trying to armchair quarterback here, but rather to learn from a defeat. I've spent many, many hours preparing poll watchers and inspectors, building GOTV databases, designing mailers, courting candidates, defining campaign messages, poring over election law, helping to prepare challenges and lawsuits, writing press releases, going door-to-door, registering voters, and other nitty-gritty of local elections. I say this not to brag, but just to convey that for underdogs to win requires a virtually endless commitment to nailing down every detail.

When campaigns leave things to chance, or just cross their fingers, or say, "well, we did what we could," those candidates lose. People like Karl Rove are not geniuses; rather, they just work much harder on every detail of campaigns, over a long period of time, and don't accept mediocre results.

With all that said, here are some constructive questions that occur to me, strictly as an outside observer, that might be worth asking the Ciro campaign, and keeping in mind in future contests in that district and around the country. Those questions appear after the jump...

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From the diaries--Chris

We've all had this experience: We attend a meeting of the Concerned Citizens of Whoville. Lots of ideas are thrown around, in no particular order -- some awesome, some awful. Maybe an argument breaks out over strategy. A few people urge caution at every turn, finding reasons why every idea won't work, or is too "risky." Others build castles in the air -- plans and schemes which require dozens of volunteers, piles of cash, and years to come to fruition.

Then we all go home.

Until the next meeting.

And at that next meeting, the exact same thing happens: We argue. We brainstorm. We doodle. We wonder when the meeting will be adjourned so we can go home and do something useful, like folding laundry.

And everyone wonders: What happened to all those plans from the last committee meeting? Did anything get done since last month? Who was supposed to do those things? (Not me!) When will we ever save Whoville?

For those wanting to break this endless cycle of bad committee meetings which are all talk, no action, here is a short list of how you can stop having unproductive meetings, and start actually winning your grassroots battles.

13 specific pieces of advice follow after the jump...

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