I won't be voting for Hillary.  I have made that clear for some time.  Not in the primary and not in the general election.  

But I don't think she did do that bad here. David Gregory is a major league a-hole.  Hillary answered the question well enough (no more evasive than any politician trying to stay on message). In eight years, I have never seen Gregory give it this good to Bush.

What I find telling is that Gregory felt free to go after Hillary to this extent.  The Clintons represent the worst of all worlds.  They are too much of the insiders to challenge the dysfunctional corporate media status quo (indeed, they enable and perpetuate it).  And yet, they cannot command the respect of the media.  They instill no fear in the David Gregorys of the world.

Admittedly, I am sure that this is a choice that Edwards would have preferred to not have had to make.  

Yes, this will hurt him with endorsements.  BUT, Edwards smartly realized that this cash infusion will help him win the early primary states (most voters aren't savvy enough to understand).  

If Edwards improves slightly, he could grab a commanding lead early and sew up the nomination.  Sure, he would be exposed to GOP attacks later on without money to fight back. Better that than being knocked out and preserving unused donor capacity.

Die-hard Hillary's supporters are virtually invisible in the blogosphere.  But it doesn't surprise me that they would migrate to a site dedicated to all that is holy for Hillary: polling.

My suspicion is that Obama's supporters tend not to be as interested in the raw political numbers, hence MyDD is not as favorable site as many others.  Also, they may not have the stomach for intra-party battling.

Edwards seems to attract the bulk of online Democrats who are both informed and unhappy with status quo in D.C.  After watching the party get beaten up for the past 14 years, Edwards supporters are ready to fight, including against Vichy Dems.  I am not surprised to see a healthy presence here.

Hillary?  Well, if polls didn't exist she wouldn't have a campaign.  It doesn't surprise me that MyDD would see the biggest outpouring of HRC support of any major left-leaning blog.

Hillary's supporters do not do her any favors on the "internets". They offer, bar none, the stupidest political arguments that you will see on Democratic blogs, other than those of rank wingnut trolls.

It is one thing to support your candidate.  It is another thing to offer patently bogus arguments that insult the intelligence of all involved.

Like many informed Democrats, I am leaning towards Edwards, accepting of Obama, and hoping for Gore.  But that doesn't mean that I would withhold criticism of any of them, if I thought they screwed up.  For instance, I still maintain that Gore ran a lousy campaign in 2000, Obama was a fool for sticking by Lieberman in CT, and Edwards caved on his war vote.  Hell, I even criticized Edwards for his cheap shot at Hillary's wardrobe in a past debate.

BTW, I too am an INTP. I don't recall that portion of the personality type before but it is dead-on bullseye.

p.s. stop procrastinating.

"Hillary is Back"  

I can only shake my head.  Back?  Where have you been for the past 14 years on health care?

Hillary has a mountain to climb to reclaim her credibility on this issue.  It isn't about plans and proposals.  It's about making it happen.  Plans don't rein in the influence of bad actors, people do.  Hillary can come out with a thousand plans.  Until she is willing to put her political career at risk to fight for change, it is all hot air.

BTW, next time you want to bolster Hillary's cred, you might want to avoid citing to a GOP hack like Novak.  I am not surprised that Hillary's supporters think she is so tough.  They will mistake a surgical evisceration by Robert Novak for a complimentary story!

The following quotes hardly make Hillary look good, and only reinforce GOP-peddled, anti-liberal stereotypes:

...disguised as a routine extension of an immensely popular, non-controversial 10-year-old program of providing coverage to poor children. In fact, this proposal is the thin edge of the wedge to achieve the longtime goal of government-supplied universal health insurance and the suffocation of the private system.

But where to find money to cover the massive cost?

In sum, SCHIP turns out to be socialized medicine for "kids" (and many adults).

I love the imagery of Hillary's devious meddling, combined with Hillary shrinking beneath the pushback from the GOP:

A principal sponsor of the $75 billion program is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose hand is detected in health care struggles the past 15 years. After the Clinton administration's sweeping "Hillarycare" failed in 1994 and contributed to that year's Republican takeover of Congress,the first lady miniaturized her goals by limiting coverage to poor children.

But look out! Hillary may have slunk away, but she has an Agenda:

SCHIP [...] has been a beloved "kids" program whose faults were overlooked, much like the Head Start school program. [...]  The massive expansion was proposed by Sen. Clinton this year, furthering her promise of "step by step" advancement toward universal health care.

Yes, it truly is a nefarious scheme:

An indirect but pervasive impact of Sen. Clinton's grand design[...]

This is what you want people to read about Hillary's plan?  Earth to Hillary supporters, Novak is not your friend.

When has Hillary EVER brought a "howitzer" against Republicans?

This is an honest question.  There are many Democrats who believe that she is too accomodating, too compromising, and too risk averse to fight Republicans head on.

But you say she will bring a "howitzer".  Boy, I'd love to see that.  Do you have any evidence to back that up?  Can you give me an example of her bringing said "howitzer"?

All Democrats are well positioned for the general election.  That's my point.  We should be picking the most qualified.  Which, with all due respect is not Hillary, who has virtually ZERO executive experience.  And the experience she does have (see, health care fiasco) is less than impressive.

The GOP is in full meltdown.  The rats are scrambling from the sinking ship.  And Hillary is playing the "electability" card?

I think even Dennis Kucinich would have a punchers chance of winning in '08.  Can we PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE just pick a good candidate and not listen to this garbage about who can beat the GOP?

Momentum?  Are you kidding me?  And you think the testimony of Harriet Miers is going to provide the momentum?

Look, a majority of Americans support the impeachment of Dick Cheney.  I haven't seen the numbers on Gonzales, but the news openly reports that the DOJ in D.C. has virtually shut down from the scandals.  Dems could impeach Gonzales in a heart beat.  

I recognize that some Democrats don't support impeachment.  They think we should just wait out the rest of the Bush term.  If they want to take impeachment off the table that is their choice.  I disagree with it, but I understand their argument.

But if that is their choice, can we stop with the faux-scandal investigations?  What is the point if will KNOW that anything that turns up will NOT lead to impeachment?  

Gonzales is a lying, water-carrying fool.  Miers is an unethical sycophant.  Bush and Cheney are openly stonewalling and obstructing justice.  We know all that now.  We don't need months more of stupid hearings and court proceedings to find it out.

Either you give the Bush-Cheney team a pass or you don't.  Just make up your mind.

You are entitled to your opinion, but my opinion was in no way affected by the GOP spin.  I thought Edwards underperformed as I watched it live. And I do so now.

However, you raise an interesting point.  If candidate A "wins" a debate in the sense that, immediately after the debate, more people think he won, but then in the days following and leading up to the election, candidate B manages to convince the public that he in fact won, who cares what people thought about immediately after the debate.

What Republicans seem to remember and Democrats seem to forget is that the point of the campaign is to win the election.  The point of a debate isn't to win the debate.  The point of the debate is to win the election. The entire campaign is the "debate."  If the voters remembered Cheney winning the debate on election day then he won the debate.

Where we can both agree is that post-debate, the Bush-Cheney camp kicked the butt of the Kerry-Edwards camp.

The progressive TV show that I would most like to see would be one that emerged from the Talking Points Memo muckrakers.  Although I used to think that what they did was just called investigative journalism and not "progressive" in a partisan sense.

Frankly, I think the JetBlue/YearlyKos drama is way overblown.  It is absurd for overtly partisan organizations to court corporate sponsorship of any nature.  This isn't about being in or out of the mainstream.  Even if YearlyKos is thoroughly mainstream, it is directly tied to a single political party.  No corporation wants to get so mixed up in political controversy.

Moreover, do kossacks really want to get into a situation where they would potentially find themselves, whether this year or in the future,  self-censoring the event in order to avoid the criticisms of corporate sponsors?

The reason is that people around here are informed about politics and don't tune in to a debate to learn anything substantive.  They tune in to see how well the debaters are able to articulate their messages, attack their opponent's weaknesses, defuse their opponent's strengths, and avoid making gaffes.

Edwards is generally considered to have lost because he was debating from a position of strength:  He was more charismatic, Democratic policies were more popularly generally, and Cheney was responsible for many of the administration's largest mistakes over the past 3 1/2 years.

"Winning" in this context isn't about who a focus group though did better on the whole (I'm sure they preferred Edwards, generally.  Cheney has never been a popular fellow, even in his own party), it's about whether you walked out stronger than you were when you walked in.  On that score, it was a huge mis oportunity for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

Was Edwards able to defuse Cheney's strength of appearing as a sober and serious elder statesman of politics?  Not so much.  Was Cheney able to defuse Edwards' strength relating emotionally to people?  Yes.  Was Edwards able to attack Cheney's weakness of not being able to emote?  Not so much. Was Cheney able to attack Edwards' weakness of being "too young" and "too green"?  Yes.

Are you serious?

Kerry made a lot of mistakes but choosing Edwards over Richardson was not one of them.

Edwards had a great message, upbeat, yet progessive, that Kerry buried post-convention.  If anything, Kerry needed MORE Edwards.

In contrast, Richardson is TERRIBLE in public (much to my dismay, as I will readily concede that his resume rivals that of ANY Democrat of the past 20 years).

On TV he acts defensive and apologetic. He fails to stay on message.  He cannot articulate a vision.

The biggest criticism of Edwards that I had was that Cheney cleaned his clock in the VP debate.  But I am quite confident that Richardson would have fared even worse, as he is terrible at rebutting GOP talking points.  In fact, he often repeats them.