I haven't delved into the FEC reports myself, but I wonder how much of our glorious new fundraising advantage is a result of ill-gotten lobbyist/corporate gains.  Around the election, there was a well publicized shift in lobbyist/corporate giving from Republicans to Democrats, and I've recently heard about even the worst of the worst, like Tom Delay's lobbyist brother Randy, trying to do fundraisers for Democrats.  I also remember some hand-wringing about whether the shift in financial fortunes was going to take some of the wind out of our populist sails.  

So far our legislative accomplishments have fallen short of ideal, which is of course due to a whole raft of confusing and inter-related factors.  It's hard to say whether money is having an effect, and if so, what it is.  Still, I'd be interested to see some sort of research on how much our current advantage is due to these suspicious sources.

Now that Democrats have this impressive resume, the pace of the handwringing over the superiority of Republican operations can surely slow.  But we ignore their continued superiority in the important infrastructure areas at our own peril.  It may not be strictly accurate to say that every Democrat was conducting his or her campaign line by line out of Anthony Downs, but there we were, clearly broadsided by the fact that Republicans could win elections based on policies that were (seemingly obviously) much worse for just about everyone.

Westen also had a great article in last December's American Prospect about how Harold Ford could have better combated the racism of Corker's ads in the TN Senate race.  Westen suggested getting Bill Clinton in immediately to make a strongly worded speech about how Tennesseans are too smart to fall for that kind of racism.  You see, norms around racism have been changed so much that even the most backwoods hick in TN doesn't want to think of himself as racist.  Racist ads can only succeed as long as they are kept below the surface of consciousness, and I thought Westen made a great suggestion for how to bring it above.  Maybe not every suggestion he has is that practical (e.g. the robocalls), but I don't think it's wise to discount Westen.

Also, for reference: I believe they are spelled Westen (not Weston), Tomasky (not Tomsky), and New York Review of Books (not New York Times).  Sorry to be a jerk about that, but I love precision.

This is truly terrific news.  Opposition to the plan from the principled left is understandable, since campaign finance is clearly the big prize.  But between the Iraq debate and reading about Clinton's first two years in the White House, I've been thinking about how to direct advocacy lately.  A lot of it comes down to correctly identifying trade-offs: withdrawal vs. enforcement-free benchmarks is a legitimate trade-off.  Reforming one area of institutionalized corruption vs. reforming another is NOT.

Campaign finance/election reform is not mutually exclusive with lobbying reform.  Moreover, the two could well end up being cumulative.  It's hard to clear your yard by going right for the big trees--take out the underbrush first.

"Finally, we put together cable buys that were optimized to take advantage of cable's geographic and demographic targeting potential."

How did you do that?

I actually asked Dan Seals (D-IL) about this issue, since his unsuccessful campaign for the 10th district last cycle spent a lot on broadcast ads that were shown all over the Chicago market.  That market includes somewhere between 10 and 15 congressional districts, including northwestern Indiana.  I told Mr. Seals that it struck me as an inefficient use of campaign money, and he agreed.  But he said the advantage to him and his campaign was that it raised his profile and made his campaign look more serious, which in turn helped him raise money he wouldn't otherwise have been able to access.

I think that answer makes a lot of sense, for his campaign.  Many campaigns can be taken seriously by virtue of support from the DCCC, which didn't support the Seals campaign until very late last cycle.  So I guess the real lesson is that if the DCCC would broaden its playing field earlier, more campaigns could focus on microtargeting with cable rather than expensively establishing themselves on airwaves.

FYI Matt, I think you meant to write "News Corp." rather than "News Corps".

Otherwise an excellent post, though.

A couple years ago, and to a certain extent still today, the big topic on the left was how could we duplicate the incredible machine the right wingers had built up over 30 years that tied their whole message together, came up with innovative policy ides, and whatnot.  Some people effectively said that we need to replicate their result our own way, instead of just copying them.  This post helps illustrate why those people were right.

The Heritage Foundation and Fox News are impressive examples, but their net effect boils down to providing encouragement, cover, and ideas for politicians who wanted to take our country rightward.  Their vaunted control of the debate depended on there not being any organized resistance to call bullshit on their fabrications.  This post goes to show that we don't need direct counterparts to those institutions to be able to provide those same services AND neutralize their side, at least a little.

If states representing the 270 votes all go for this plan, then every candidate has to campaign in every state, no matter how any given state allots its votes.  As a resident of California, a blue state with a late primary, I don't think I have ever seen a presidential campaign ad on TV.  Under the current system, someone like George W. Bush is really only running for President of red states, then the rest of us have to live with it.  Imagine what he would be like if he had to appeal to people who lived outside the South.

A national popular election is much more democratic, but it will never happen Constitutionally since small states will always be able to block it.  This plan is great.

This is kind of what I was thinking would be the benefit of having our rep there.  Even when s/he doesn't get called on, there are still interesting stories to report on that we wouldn't see otherwise.  Like when a reporter for a major news outlet asks tough questions only to write a soft article.

Per the Onion, "I Am Ronald Wilson Reagan, King of Kings. Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair."

Defining Clinton like Republicans define Reagan is one of those tricky emulation problems.  Just as we want to emulate Republicans in their communications savvy but not their deceptiveness and chicanery, so we want to emulate them in looking out for our boy but not in elevating him to god-like status.  Recall that establishing Reagan's legacy has involved attempting to name everything the government touches after him and projecting all of everyone's ideals onto what was actually a pretty mediocre record.

My hands were tied! What, was I going to vote Kang? Fat chance.  Seriously though, thanks for the support.

Addendum: equally crucial to the idea of not going in with the idea of impeaching is not going in with the idea of not impeaching.  The post from earlier today made a good point that impeaching could risk a lot of political capital.  However, we're right back to being pantywaists if we turn up mountains of incontrovertible evidence that Bush has committed thousands and thousands of impeachable offenses and decide not to pursue impeachment.  It won't serve our interests any better to hold back in that instance.

This poll is framed as a matter of when, not how.  While it OUGHT to be a matter of when (you know it's bad when Nixon's cronies say you've committed an impeachable offense), and while it's fine to discuss it that way among ourselves, if it is approached that way in Congress I think it will backfire as a witch-hunt.  If it's approached not through "impeachment hearings" but through "lying about WMD's hearings" and "breaking the law to spy on citizens" hearings, then I think it should start right away because those will develop cut and dry evidence for impeachment.  Otherwise, it can't be anywhere close to the first thing we do.

In Howard Kurtz' column this morning (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587. html), he seems really taken aback at how popular Keith Olbermann is since Olbermann delivers what Kurtz calls opinions.  This makes Kurtz another example of a traditional media type who doesn't understand the actual reorganization.  Olbermann is popular because, to refer to Kurtz' example, he calls Bush dishonest; media consumers today realize that this is empirical fact, not opinion.  The old dogs in the media haven't learned this new trick.

I think it's related to the way things worked before Bush, where you could count on politicians being too scared to lie and distort too brazenly, which made it possible to stay out of the fray.  But the Republicans eventually realized how to game that system by being so dishonest that it far exceeded all belief, thus automatically making any accurate reporting partisan (for the other side).

My impression of Hoyer is that, whatever nice votes he's made, he's just not on board with the program, as it were.  I wish I had something to cite, but he's never displayed anything but selfishness as far as I know.  And I heard an unsubstantiated rumor that he has a hand in spreading the corruption stuff on Murtha, which obviously fits right in with my impression of him.  Clearly backstabbing individualism can't be accepted in our new majority, so if it's true, then even more reason not to support him.