I wrote yesterday about what I called Dobson's big swerve, wherein he is working on finding a way to paint Barack Obama as so religiously radical that he will have no choice but to support, reluctantly, John McCain. (Yeah, there's some sarcasm in that sentence.) It started a little more quickly than I expected, probably fueled by Obama's recent 12 and 15 point leads nationally in the Newsweek and LA Times polls. Yes, it's early, but if Dobson can come out and McCain happens to narrow the gap (which is almost inevitable), then he can declare victory and get some of his strut back.

Lanny Davis has an article in Politico (via Balloon Juice) in which he presents some suggestions for the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee in their upcoming decision about the Florida and Michigan delegations. It has a few problems, the first of which pops up in the opening sentence.

Here are two important neutral principles that should guide the Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee when it meets May 31 to decide whether to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations — and, if so, how to allocate them between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The problem is, of course, the idea that anything Lanny Davis has to say on this matter is neutral. Davis shouldn't utter that word in this discussion--hell, he shouldn't even wear a gray suit when discussing this subject. He's a Clinton partisan, and that doesn't mean his ideas are without merit--it just means that they aren't neutral. He will interpret the situation with his candidate's best interest at heart. Let's not pretend otherwise.

The headline reads "The White Stuff", with the subhead "A new NEWSWEEK Poll underscores Obama's racial challenge." This is their argument:

Even as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama is facing lingering problems winning the support of white voters--including some in his own party. In a new NEWSWEEK Poll of registered voters, Obama trails presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain 40 percent to 52 percent among whites.

So the big local news is that Barack Obama was in Florida tonight, working on improving his numbers against John McCain for the general election.

And in case there's any doubt, yes, I'm working under the assumption that he is the presumptive nominee.

So anyway, Senator Obama was in Florida tonight, talking to a group of high rollers in Westin after having talked to the B'nai Torah congregation in Boca Raton, and there were some protesters there. I'll let the Sun-Sentinel pick it up from here.

Today's NY Times Week In Review asks a question sure to anger Hillary Clinton's most stalwart supporters--who will be her successor as the next viable woman candidate for the Presidency? It will anger some because it assumes that Clinton's run this year is over, others because it assumes she won't have another shot at it, but the real problem with the article is that it works off the belief that a woman can't break the same trail to the presidency that Barack Obama seems to be blazing. In short, it's buying into the conventional wisdom, when the proof of this campaign cycle has been that conventional wisdom means little now.

Veepstakes

Don't blame me--I didn't come up with the word. But since political punditry means (apparently) bloviating on things over which 1) you have no control and 2) you have little, if any special knowledge, I'm going to chime in with some thoughts on the VP spot for Barack Obama.

First of all, via Bark Bark Woof Woof, here's a game from Salon where you get to answer some stupid questions and they'll tell you who you should favor for the VP slot. It follows a pretty basic process-of-elimination algorithm--what do I care which side the nominee parts his or her hair on, or even if there's hair to part? But it did get me thinking about ways to narrow the field, so I've come up with some basic--and fairly obvious, I think--ground rules for selecting a running mate.

Michael Hirsh, in Newsweek has a piece up about what he's calling the "Kerryization of Barack Obama." It's a terrific example of the myopia of the media toward the role they play in the public perception of candidates. That's not what he's talking about, mind you--he's acting as though this stuff just happens and the media is there to report on it.

The specter of John Kerry in 2004 is beginning to haunt the Democrats in 2008. It is the specter of wimpy campaigns past. It showed up, like Banquo's ghost, at the debate Wednesday night in Philadelphia, particularly when Hillary Clinton joined with ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson to nip away at the edges of Barack Obama's patriotism. Between the questions about Obama's meager association with William Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the suspicions raised by his lack of a flag lapel pin, the likely nominee is slowly being turned into John Kerry. He is becoming, in other words, a candidate who may be mostly right about national security but who will lack the Red State street cred to carry his point—and the election.

Dear Senator Clinton,
You deserve better from your supporters. This image, currently gracing the top of No Quarter, should not be representative of your campaign. I know you're trying to make hay of Obama's comments, and while I disagree with your assessment of them, being a person who grew up in that environment and feeling plenty of bitterness at my government, I don't think it's wrong for you to try to get some momentum out of it. Politics is a bloodsport after all.

At least, that's what I have to figure based on the way it's written.

There's a piece in the Washington Post this morning--I got it via MSNBC--about Barack Obama's fundraising prowess, and the basic claim is that he's not as grassroots as he seems, at least in terms of where he's getting his cash. Okay, I'm willing to listen--he's raised a lot of money, after all, and it certainly isn't all coming from people who can barely rub two nickels together.

Hillary Clinton's continued candidacy got some support today from a most unlikely backer--DNC Chair Howard Dean. And if ever there were a person who had reason to be peeved at the Clintons, it's Howard Dean.

After all, they opposed his nomination to become DNC Chair, casting around time and again for someone else to take the job. They've sneered at his 50-state strategy a number of times, and Clinton donors have tried to pressure him to give Michigan and Florida a pass on the rules their parties violated. Why on earth would he try to quiet the calls for Hillary Clinton to get out of the race?

The top story right now is about the big money Dems who are trying to intimidate Speaker Pelosi. Checkbook waving, it's called.

Well, we have checkbooks too.

One of the goals of this community is to crash the gates, right? To exert the power of the many over the interests of the few? Well, here's our chance. Let's find out how much those twenty people have given to the DCCC, and have a netroots push to match it. Who's got more stroke? I think we do. and we should prove it.

The Associated Press announced this evening that the death toll for the Iraq War reached 4,000 today. That number is incorrect. It is correct to say that 4,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, but it is incorrect to say that the death toll--even with the descriptive "American" added--for the war reached 4,000.

The problem is that that number doesn't count civilians, and it doesn't count Iraqis, and as a result, the American public doesn't have a real sense of just how devastating this war has been.

Nothing I am saying here is new. People have been making this same statement almost since the beginning of the war, and at one point, there was even some public outrage over the fact that the US wasn't doing civilian body counts. But that faded, just like coverage of the war has faded in recent months, thus enabling the farcical notion that the surge is working.

The national pundits can go ahead and stop trying to figure out how to redo Florida's misbegotten primary, according to Senate Democratic leader Steve Geller.

Geller, of Cooper City, said something the talking heads don’t know is that 15 counties in Florida are already getting rid of touch-screen machines in anticipation of a move to paper ballots over the summer.

"You’ve got (15) counties that, unless you’re planning on standing there counting the votes on your fingers, there are no voting machines," said Geller.

Also, Geller said because of logistics, including mailing overseas and military ballots, it takes 90 days to do a primary. With the Democratic National Committee’s June 10 deadline for primaries, that means Gov. Charlie Crist would have to sign a bill authorizing a new primary on Monday, Geller said.

Jena's Mayor is upset. He's irate, in fact, that his town has become what he calls "the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied." To be fair, most of us writing about the Jena 6 have only made the last claim there, and it's pretty undeniable. One thing that I've consistently said on the matter is that the Jena situation is not limited to that town, or even to the South--racism is an ongoing and intractable problem in this nation, and this brief outburst of publicity probably isn't going to make a major change in that. Jena's not the epicenter of hatred and racism in this country--it's just the one that made the national stage.

The question was bogus, too.

We've all heard the question, or some form of it--right-wingers gave Michael Moore shit for his version of it in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when he collared Congresspeople outside the Capitol and asked if their kids were serving in Iraq.

"Are any of your five sons currently serving in the United States military and if not are any of them planning to support the war on terror by enlisting in the United States Military."

Romney's answer was stupid, no question, but the question is a bogus one as well, and I'm no fan of Romney or this war, as anyone who reads my posts understands, because there's really only one legitimate answer to that question.

Ask them.

Jim Naugle, the man who is turning the embarrassing of the city he "governs" into an art form, has outdone himself. You see, this all began with a push to buy a robo-toilet for Fort Lauderdale Beach, which my co-blogger deliciously named the Crapbot 3000. Personally, I'm in favor of the high-tech toilet, just not for the reason Naugle gave.

Once every couple of months, I do something crazy, something nonsensical, something for which I have no good reason to do it, and it doesn't even involve karaoke or Maker's Mark whiskey.

Okay, maybe it has something to do with the whiskey.

I click on David Brooks's column in the NY Times. I know--friends don't let friends click on David Brooks, but since I'm already half-inebriated, let me take the hit for you.

According to Brooks, Bush may well be a genius. Or an idiot. But chances are it's the former rather than the latter.

I'm a Louisiana expatriate, and I still take an interest in Louisiana politics, because despite what people from other parts of the country say, Louisiana politics is easily the most entertaining. Politicians pull stunts down there that would have a dictator of a Banana Republic blanch and steady himself on a kitchen counter.

So in that spirit, I offer the following suggestion to Governor Blanco. If David "Diaper" Vitter resigns from the Senate, I have the perfect suggestion for his replacement.

You.