I agree. The article itself links to a recent debate where Obama agrees there's no real crisis. Then he happens to use the word "crisis" in an interview.

Calling this a gaffe would be hyperbole. But to imply that he's reinforcing a "right-wing frame" because in one article he mentions a crisis which previously claimed doesn't exist seems to be far too critical for my taste.

We can't have a person running for president who is on message all of the time. Clearly, Obama knows the real fiscal problems are with medicare/caid and not with SS.

Unilateral preemptive attacks?

I thought Obama's entire purpose in his speech was that his goal as president was to decrease terrorists, not increase their numbers.

I'm sure I'm not the only American who thinks that if we have actionable intelligence, we should act on it. This is vastly different from the Iraq war. Do most myDD commenters feel Afghanistan was a mistake?

Do you, Jerome?

I'm a little shocked that if we knew where a mass murderer was, we'd not try to get him. That's not what you're saying, is it?

I disagree. For most candidates, having an insider DC organization support them is a good thing, not something to fear.

Ed Case is a decent guy, and he's not a conservative by any means. Constantly bashing him as being part of the DLC is as idiotic as bashing members of the NRA who happen to be Democrats.

Let's evaulate his candidacy by his stands on issues, not by some silly litmus test.

Wow. I'm going to head over to the boodle right now to invite everyone over to MyDD to help defend your honor.

This is, sadly, the only post on MyDD I've ever seen where I feel strongly against the viewpoints expressed. Joel has always been a voice of reason and sanity (in a comedic way, of course) fighting against the dark side of Gene Weingarten and his ilk!

We should definitely have a competition to see who's the most "facile" writer at the Post. My guess would probably be the late Ben, of Red America fame, although some of the Going Out Gurus posts tend to be a little silly. Of course, there's always Dr. Krauthammer...

I agree. All the other suggestions are clear and well thought out, but why would "impeaching" Rumsfeld even be on the list? Rummy may have made some serious mistakes, but he serves at the whim of the President. And the media love him, so it'd be a tough battle to face.

Not to mention the most important point: why?

Throw out #1 and you got yourself a stand-up list.

As a fellow "DC Democrat" I also think it's a bit annoying to consistently lump us un-represented folk into the same category as the bigwigs downtown.

Perhaps "Establishment Dems" or "Conventional Wisdom Dems" would be a better way to describe who you're talking about.

When you see how low the approval is for Democrats in Washington (better than the GOP but still very low) we should work hard not to drive our own negatives up.

Now that I've read the whole report, I think it's definitely well crafted. The disctinction between local and regional blogs is one that I haven't paid much attention to before.

One question that raises is this: is it more important to have official candidate blogs in local races or to have local people who cover local politics? I've found that many candidate blogs tend to be somewhat less community oriented, but if Democrats as a party demanded that everyone running for office setup a blog, perhaps that could change.

At the same time, encouraging bloggers to focus on local races seems like a great idea, but one that would be difficult to put into practice. How could any large thinktank/non-profit encourage local users to start political blogs?

So I'm back to where I started, namely, the efficacy of focusing on campaigns versus focusing on local activists. I'm not sure which would be better.

quick scan...there's a mistake in the HTML version in the bolded text in the third sentence. It should say "memo is" but it actually says "memois". Kind of silly, but it should be easy to fix.

Is a great guy...but he will only have 6 years under his belt. Let's see him beat Allen, restore VA to fiscal prudence (which he's been doing so far!) and help add another Democratic Senate seat.

Plus, that would give us TWO Warners in the Senate! How can you beat that?

If the issue is financial, as you indicated, then that problem has just been solved. The combination of an infusion of money and the withdrawal of Greenwood couldn't be better for Schrader...if netizens had simply coughed up cash or if Greenwood's retirement hadn't caused people to donate, she wouldn't be doing so well. As it is, it's a nice one-two punch to knock a GOP rep out of the district. Go Ginny!