I totally agree - incompetence implies there is a purpose or mission which was not realized because of failure or weakness on the part of leadership. The reality is the multiple failures of government we are seeing today are in fact the true goals of the conservative movement. As noted downthread it's allowed the cronies to keep their hand in the cookie jar and kick the lower and middle classes to the curb.

Another tangent to this is Iraq - while it would be easy to say the Decider has failed the mission in Iraq (and yet, very few Democrats are actually using this language... but I digress) the fact is that a endless state of war along with the media-enabled climate of public fear is a fundamental part of how this neocon-authoritarian regime is hanging onto power. Sure, the Republicans have had to bear political costs, but the conservative movement itself continues its hold on the rightmost 30% of the country, and they're not gonna relent anytime soon.

I think for our party to consolidate the gains of 2006 for a longer-term advantage in Congressional, presidential, and state races, it's going to take more than a stream of bad news about Republican failures. I'm afraid most of the Democratic presidential candidates are running safe campaigns right now and possibly even through the rest of the campaign. I think you always want a crystal-clear distinction between you and the other guy, and economically there's not a lot of difference between the two parties right now. So I tend to support candidates with populist leanings who can embody that distinction, and right now that's Edwards. (I like Gore and Richardson to an extent but their history in NAFTA is a big penalty in my book).

Yes, yes yes... it's impossible to over-sell this theme. Glad to see CAF putting it in the title of the meeting. Conservatism has failed because it was destined to fail - any political philosophy that boils down, more or less, to "government is always bad" is destined to failure, catastrophe, or worse. Conservatism has failed, it continues to fail all of us today, and will always fail in the future. Now if we could get some of our presidential candidates to pick up on it - can you imagine how much it would help us if the news cycle was filled with soundbytes containing "failure" and "conservatism" over and over (or "neoconservatism")?

Yeah, and the random questions where they asked for one-sentence answers, and the stupid raise-your-hands thing. Bad format.

This may be sexist, but there's just something odd about a couple where the woman towers over her boyfriend/husband. You just don't see it that often. But hey... more power to ya, Dennis.

The top three performed about to what I was expecting. Maybe if there were some voters checking them out for the first time, those folks might have had higher expectations for Obama, but that's probably not a whole lot of people - I think the high-information people who already had a horse are the ones who watched today. The big surprises for me were how shaky Richardson looked, and how hopped up Gravel was. Kinda reminiscent of Alan Schlesinger's first CT-Sen debate last year - he wanted to make a splash and get some name recognition by going big.

Great question about science and engineering education. And a decent answer from Biden - pay the teachers.

Gravel - wow.

Biden is Biden as usual, apart from the one-word answer. Richardson looks really uncomfortable - shifting around, seems like he can't hear Williams or something, and he has the lead in annoying hand gestures.

The other thing I was going to say - if anyone caught the pre-debate show, they had Brokaw on saying some crap along the lines of "the people don't want anymore partisan politics"... typical Lieberman-ish beltway media BS. Why is it these idiots only trot out that tired line when it's Democrats they're talking about? Americans don't give a shit if politicians are partisan or bipartisan - what they want is to fix the problems in the government and restore fairness and justice in this country. Tom Brokaw, I respect you, but as Bart Simpson would say "Get bent, sir."

I got my grad degree from a joint Rutgers-UMDNJ program. Talk about fiefdoms of bureaucracy...

Thanks for the post Matt - very thought provoking.

Kudos to MSNBC. Will radio syndication or WFAN follow?

And tell your favorite and non-favorite politicians to do the same. Imus should no longer be a go-to guy for politicians to be heard - they can go on Air America if they're progressive enough or Limbaugh if they're wingnut enough.

And that's why we have to call on our elected officials to skip his show when it comes back on the air. I would be shocked if Democratic '08 hopefuls make an appearance in the upcoming cycle. But how much ya wanna bet Lieberman goes on and pretend nothing happenned (recall he kissed Sharpton's ass for an endorsement and when he didn't get it, turned around and called Al a "divisive figure").

Progressives are patriots because they love their country not for what it is today, but for what it will be in the future. And we very much identify with the forward-looking vision of Jefferson and Paine who foresaw the grab for power that came to pass with Nixon and George II. For conservatives, especially ones who are wealthy, they have no vision of a better future because to question the current state of affairs is to question their own patriotism, from what I can gather.

Sirota has skewered Obama when he has made vague Clinton-ish equivocations, but he has also praised him when he's taken strong positions. And he has said that if Obama adds real substance to his rhetoric it would be good for the party. I think that's fair - as a progressive voice, Sirota has every right to use his position to push for candidates to embrace populism and put forth real policies.

As far as the Lamont-Obama thing goes, I think it's just a demonstration that Obama talks about audacity and boldness but is too cautious to actually do something to demonstrate boldness. As a Lamont volunteer I was really disappointed by Obama's actions last year, or rather, lack of action other than sending out an email. But I'd be willing to overlook that in the future if Obama "gets real" and shows a willingness to not only embrace movement building but also openly challenges entrenched structures (big money). I think so far he hasn't really done that and that's the reason Sirota gave a slight nod towards Edwards. I think this paragraph sums it up:

This isn't to say that Clinton or Obama are bad candidates. Obviously, they are way better than the Republican field, and Obama in particular has potential to grow into more of a leader - if he has the spine to shun the ruling-class sensibilities of the people he's surrounded himself with (as an aside - I sincerely hope this happens, though am not optimistic, considering Obama's top strategist is bragging to reporters that he is crafting a campaign aimed at shunning all ideology and issue-based stands in order to present a pure personality story).