For months, the Democratic Party has been wringing its hands trying to come up with a candidate to take on Douglas.  While we might be annoyed by Pollina’s early entrance to the race, blame for the lack of candidates cannot be laid at the Prog’s feet.  Nor can we say Douglas is unbeatable.  The simple fact is the man is tolerated by voters, not loved or even respected.

It is getting very late in the day for a dem candidate to get moving, but I think there is more of an opportunity for victory than the conventional wisdom would suggest. Here are my thoughts on how a Democratic candidate might actually step forward and run a winning campaign:

1) Run from the Center.  mydog and others have pointed out that Pollina’s candidacy actually gives Dems an opportunity to run from the center.  this is spot-on.  Intead of lamenting Pollina muddying the waters, use his candidacy to hammer home the differences between Dems and Progs.  Paint Pollina as a far left candidate with no experience and force the left wing of the democratic party to make a tough choice: go with Pollina and lose badly or suck it up and go with the Dems and get most of what you want.

I could be wrong, but I suspect there are a lot more independents and moderate republican voters who are in play in this election than lefty voters.  Why fight Pollina for 10% when you can battle Douglas for 30%?  By running from the center, a candidate can appeal to those voters who are looking for an alternative to Douglas, but terrified that the Dems will just hike taxes.  Running on a centrist platform will suck the oxygen right out of douglas’ core message to voters: I am all that stands between you and endless tax increases.

2) Run against the legislature.  for whatever reason, the Democratic leadership has wasted the last two years on a host of boutique issues. I realize this categorization will piss off some people, but I think it is a reasonable assessment.    

A Dem candidate for governor needs to come out and say that s/he will focus only on ‘bread and butter’ issues: education funding, economic development and health care.  Paint the legislature as captured by special interests and offer a positive vision for the state’s economic future (instead of whining about Douglas’ whining about Vermont’s high tax burden).    

3) Hammer Douglas on competence.  Given the many follies of our Governor this should be a no-brainer and it helps paint him as ‘Bush-lite.’  

Of course, the key element missing here is a candidate able and willing to run… hope springs eternal!

   

( – promoted by odum)

The NYT fronts with a very good piece outlining some of the flaws in the whole carbon neutral concept:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/world/europe/22norway.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin 

I've spent a lot of time in Norway and the thought of them being carbon-neutral is delusional.  It is a classic petro-economy.  Take away the North Sea fields and you have a small, cold and poor fishing economy.  

I used to be a big fan of the whole carbon neutral thing, but now I am increasingly skeptical.  Buying offsets basically exports your responsibility to a poor country.  On a small scale, I think this is an ok thing.  On a large scale, I think it is asking for trouble.  I was just in Indonesia and there is increasing tension between international groups trying to buy up forest for carbon sinks and local communities, which want to use the land as they see fit.   Classic local control issues (something we Vermonters can relate to).

 Of course, then there is the problem of verification of offsets – still a pretty problematic subject.  The EU is further along than the US on this, but auditing these offsets is tricky. As we've discovered with the sub-prime mess, any time you create a security where you can't really assess the value or the risk, you are asking for trouble.

I am increasingly of the belief we simply need a carbon tax for energy as it enters the country.  Complement that with an estimated carbon tax for raw materials and finished goods coming into the country to ensure that we don't simply export the emission emitters.

That would price the emissions and minimize the externalities.  

(Amen. – promoted by odum)

I went to school in Richmond, VA – capital of the confederacy.  A city whose main boulevard is adorned with monuments to Lee, Stuart and Jackson (more recently Arthur Ashe was added, but that was a bitter fight).  Many of my fellow students did not refer to the Civil War – it was the War of Northern Aggression.  The Stars and Bars hung in many dorm rooms. 

I have a deep love of the south – its people, food and culture, but I also have no illusions about its dark history.  Get outside of NoVA, Tidewater and Richmond and Virginia is a deeply southern state.  

Last night, 59% of white Virginian males voted for a black candidate for president.  A majority of rural voters did as well.  More Virginians voted for Obama than voted for the entire republican slate.

Are we living in the era of post-racial politics.  Certainly not and I doubt we ever will.  However, last night's results illustrate how much things change.

As pundits go, I am generally pretty fond of Paul Krugman.  He is a top-notch economist and he speaks with a progressive voice on a variety of issues.

This morning, however, he seems to be taking his cues from Robert Novak:

He talks about all the venom coming from the Obama camp, but doesn't cite a single example.  Not one.  The two examples he does cite are ones the Obama camp had nothing to do with: HRC's comments on MLK and LBJ and this week's Shuster-flap.

I am not saying the Obama campaign is a bunch of saints. Michelle Obama should have clear and forthright that they will support HRC if she is the nominee, but that is pretty minor stuff and I think there are a lot of Democrats who feel similarly (including yours truly).  Obama also has a very strong response to criticism (Look at what they said about Bush after his comments over the weekend), but this is a presidential campaign.

So Obama spews some sort of mystical venom, but Krugman concludes that he may not be up to responding to a swiftboating. 

If Obama is the nominee, I think it presents the GOP hate machine with a real vexxing challenge.  Obama is not John Kerry or Al Gore – he is much more charismatic and able to provide a robust response to a swiftboating. The glove that throws the return punch may have a velvet glove on, but there is an iron fist underneath.

I accept the fact that Krugman doesn't like Obama.  However, if he is going to attack him, I'd like to see Krugman do it as a member of the reality-based pundit community. 

This is an interesting little tidbit:

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=lets_call_t

Carbon emissions are now seen as a risk factor for these large infrastructure investments.  This may sound like a little thing, but it is actually huge.  You can't put up a coal plant unless you can get it financed and this seems to indicate the cost of capital is going up.

Did anyone else see this today?

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080205/OPINION/802050317/1006

I think this piece is really annoying.  It is poorly written and only semi-coherent.  Billy Joel, Jimmy Carter, sheep, bass and subaru all covered in 700 words.  I am stunned that a paper, even one of the Freeps somewhat dubious editorial standards, would publish it.

What bugs me about this piece is its 'holier than thou' tone. Goss may be right about full-size SUVs, but this is not the way to change people's minds.  Being self-righteous always invites a backlash.      

( – promoted by odum)

By the standards of this blog, I am fairly pro-business.  I tend to believe that the market, like government, can be an effective policy tool under the right circumstances.

So as a left-leaning free-marketeer, I want to express my opposition to the idea of leasing the lottery to a private firm.  Governor Douglas’ proposal makes little policy sense and even less economic sense.

The company that would lease the lottery (for an upfront payment of $55 million) would need to more than double lottery sales within 5 years to justify the upfront investment.  That will require aggressive marketing, new products, etc.

If sales do double, the state will only see the present-value of that $55 million (the difference being the gross margin for the company leasing the lottery).

I have nothing against gambling (I am possibly the world’s worst poker player).  Like most vices, it is part of the human character.   However, I am not a big fan of seeing them aggressively marketed or promoted because there is always a percentage of society that can not limit their urges.  Ultimately, society has to pay those costs in the form of lost wages, bankruptcies, broken families.  

Since the lottery is a pretty regressive form of income generation for the state to being with, I don’t think it is something we ought to be pushing on people.

Lastly, a one-time payment will  not deal with the underlying policy problem: either the state needs to increase taxes or it needs to decrease spending.  Leasing the lottery merely postpones that discussion for a year…. to a non-election year.

I am just back from Moscow, Sri Lanka and Singapore and was stunned at the level of interest in the US Presidential elections.  I was, repeatedly, interrogated at length about the primaries and the candidates.  I had a beer with one Brit who went on in excruciating detail about the brilliance of Rudy's Florida strategy (this conversation was before the primary there), but most of the interest was directed towards Obama and HRC.  Throughout the entire trip, in cabs, on planes, over dinner – the election came up constantly.

 I lived overseas through 3 presidential elections, but I have never seen foreign interest in a primary election process (the primary system is a bit like baseball to Europeans and Asians – they know Americans care about it, but they don't understand it).  

Roger Cohen in the NYT has his take on this phenomenon:

I am not quite sure I am ready to take the interest as a validation of our way of life the way Cohen does, but I do think it is an indication that our system does still have some vitality left in it.  

( – promoted by odum)

Regardless of how the nomination fight comes out, I think the Iowa caucus will go do in history as a historic moment.  Clearly, the fact that a bunch of white folks trundled out in the cold to support a black candidate for president is a historic moment, but there is another less momentous, but not unimportant shift: from the Boomers to GenX.

GenXers have always grown up in the shadow of the boomer generation.  We grew up with the fights about Vietnam, civil rights and the culture wars echoing in our ears even though we were too young to be involved in them.   We were frequently critiqued for being uninterested in politics and civic life.

Yes, it is true, GenXers as a group seem a lot less interested in going to protests and sit-ins.  Voting trends have largely been in decline among young people. While that was seen as apathy among many liberal Boomers, it masked a more subtle civic engagement.  Starting in the early 90s and continuing to today, community service rates soared among young people.  GenXers weren’t, as a group, terribly interested in protesting, but they were keen on helping their neighbors.  

I think the Iowa caucus will go down as the day Generation X roared for the first time.  The candidates who drew younger voters not only had a message of change, but they also engaged voters in new ways.  Edwards has been an impressive machine that relies quite a bit on community service.  Obama’s transcendent message resonates about the need to stop arguing and get the job done.  Even Ron Paul’s call for getting the government out people’s lives embodies a very GenX view of conservatism.

It is easy to overstate generational values, but I do think there is something to this.  Huge numbers of people under the age of 35 are now participating in the process for the first time.  I think that is because, for the first time, we have candidates that are articulating messages that resonate among young people.  For the first time in my adult life, we have presidential candidates that are not re-fighting the Vietnam war or the culture wars for the 10,000th time.  We have a black candidate who is not all about civil rights.  We have a woman candidate who is not about feminism.  About time!!!

This time round the roar may not be enough to carry the day, but I feel that at last there are political leaders speaking to our generation.  Boomers are a large and vocal bunch, so I have no doubts that they will continue to dominate the political scene, but at  least now we have a seat at the table…  

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

I think this Diary sums up how many Obama supporters feel:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…