I think one thing that will definitely come from tonight's debate is the notion of just how good the Democratic field looks.

OK, yeah we had the utterly charming Mike Gravel saying we have no enemies...a caricature of "The Left" if I ever saw...

But Brownback and Tancredo and Hunter on the same stage? Woopeee!!!

And, please moderators: Ask Tommy Thompson about the Jews.

Pretty please???

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...

I am pretty amused by this "Failure of Conservatism Conference" that is going on somewhere in DC today - does TPMMedia have anyone there?

sPh

Did you hear that Condi and Bush have admitted they were wrong and Pelosi was correct?

Yeah, Condi headed to talks with Syria! Now I want the press to hammer Condi the way they did Pelosi.

Why does Condi hate our freedoms? :-)
Traitor!!
Terrorist lover!!

Reagan worship has always creeped me out. But then, that's the model the contemporary conservative movement uses with all their so-called leaders. Shudder.

This is completely unrelated, but did I miss a post-mortem on Harold Ford's "visit" to TPM. I don't get in everyday, but I do notice that most visitors have a post-mortem after their week. What I seem to be able to find from Ford's time here was two condescending posts, then silence. Too audience, no doubt, but I wonder. Did he learn anything? Did he even pretend to learn anything? Did that ever go anywhere?

It's unclear to me. Basically what happened is that despite my explanations and warnings they didn't quite understand what they were getting into or how to deal with it and when things went awry they just kind of stopped. Hopefully they'll engage more productively next time, I think they could gain a lot by being a part of this discussion.

I can see it now.  For the Democratic debate, Brian Williams asking John Edwards why a haircut costs $400.  This week, Chris Matthews asking why Democrats have such expensive hair.

It is increasingly clear that the news industry will remain in the hip pocket of the GOP as long as it wants to remain comfortably deregulated.

The most perceptive comment I ever heard made about Reagan or Reaganism came from my brother. His is an astronomer and educator. Once in the mid-1980’s he said about the Reagan administration that the problem with grappling with Reaganism was that “we don’t have a word for it.” It was never possible to effectively conceptualize what exactly it was that Reagan represented. Without that concept, attempts to react were unfocused and inarticulate.

A personal experience I had in those same years kind of captured that problem. As I experienced it, I took the episode for what it appeared to be. My more astute politico friends have always said it was probably a bit of street theatre. I was riding a crowded commuter light rail to work one morning when a gentleman whose demeanor suggested a mental disability began to speak out loud, as if to himself. In his slurred and emotion filled tone, he repeated loudly “I don’t understand.” He went through a litany of Reagan’s offenses to working people. Reagan opposes labor union he said. He broke the air traffic controllers union he said. Why do working people support him he asked? Everything Reagan does works against their interest. “I don’t understand.”

If it was a performance it was a good one. At the time I thought to myself that even a mentally handicapped person could see the obvious truth about Reaganism. What an irony I thought. But what were those commuters to do? Write a letter to Tip O’Neill? I’ve never found a word that conceptualizes Reaganism. I have resigned myself to thinking of it as an intermediate stage in the evolution of some political movement, a process toward speciation. Perhaps that political movement is the now defined Conservative Republicanism. Perhaps the trajectory of evolution is still arcing upward.

Today the Democrats stand on the threshold of inheriting the national government. They will inherit by default, being a political party sans leader and sans clear direction. Voting Democrat may be nothing more than “double or nothing.” Surely "double or nothing" describes the only choice facing Republican voters.

J. McCutchen

The DNC's out with an email advertising their live blog from the RR Liberry...Kick em while they're down...sweet

I've always been fascinated that the prime mover for this naming is Grover Norquist, who somehow manages to reconcile unfundent mandates for Reagan-naming with his calls for repeal of unfair taxation.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

"Unfair taxation" ...?

Norquist wants to repeal government, including much of the military to be replaced with soldiers of fortune. Not just taxation.

Norquist's political ideology is oligarchy and his philosophy is nihilism.

In his world view, corporate America is the most ruthlessly Socially Darwinian institution, and should therefore rule. No anti-trust, anti-pollution, clean-water, medical-standards, or any other form of regulation is needed whatsoever in his world view. Instead, "consumer choice" combined with an armed militia culture would fend for themselves.

Needless to say, he's crazy.

His notion of "small government" is straight out of the middle ages when goods goods were hand crafted by local artisans and local barons ruled small fiefdoms. If the local food merchant sold you poisined food, he'd be lynched. If the local baron was crooked, he might be lynched, providing his military was weak enough.

It's totally absurd for today, in the world of trans-national corporations, when every good we purchase requires trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure, from universities to factories to shipping. Norquist's world view would quickly lead to monopolies controlling the productions of all goods including vital commodities, setting prices as they please, such as we now see in Russia.

J. McCutchen

Billary You GO GIRL!!

Robert Bryd is headed to the Floor to offer legislation de-authorizing the war.

Hillary accompanies

STRONG STROKE

Maybe it'll come up in the debate tonight

Reagan represented the latent racism (with a tint of faux machismo) of the white blue collar worker. Reagan was "gonna get the niggers off welfare". They're the same people who will always support the police regardless of the most recent controversy. They're also the same people who orgasmed when they shouted "USA, USA, WE'RE NUMBER ONE, WE'RE NUMBER ONE" after Reagan "conquored" Granada.
Today, they buy "I support the troops" car magnets.

I wonder how many air traffic controllers voted for Reagan for the above reasons.

I omitted the fact that Regan and his cohort favor the wealthy because that's a given.

By the way, the same people support George Bush today. Its amazing how readily people build the gallows Republicans use to hang them