All the bugs aside, I think that the new site is a huge improvement. I particularly appreciate the reader blogs and “recommended reader posts” section. It’s definitely caused me to spend more time contributing, to the detriment of my productivity at work. The quality of user posts seems to have improved as well, perhaps because of the required registration.

I do, however, see some flaws in the reader recommendation system. Initially, it worked very well, but the recommended reader posts section is starting to go stale. For instance, flyonthewall's super tuesday analysis is stellar, but super tuesday is over, and the post is still 4th on the recommended list. I'm sure that he/she has new posts that should replace it.

The staleness seems to have happened for two reasons:

1) The recommended reader posts get a lot more visits than the recent reader posts, so they get still more recommendations, which pushes them even higher in the ranking.

2) The number of reader posts has increased so that new posts now move quickly through the recent posts lists before anyone has a chance to read and recommend them. I've commented on posts, and then a few hours later, I can't find the post anymore.

I'd like to start a list of ideas for improving the functionality. If anyone has suggestions, please add them to the comments (and recommend this post, so we can keep the thread live for a little while).

Suggestions:

1) Time out user recommendations. Recommendations more than a few days old should be discounted. That way, recommended posts will fall off the list when they go stale, but posts that continue to receive recommendations will stay up.

2) Increase the length of the recommended list. That will make the threshold for stickiness lower. Recommendations by a few users will get the post into the list where more users can see it and recommend it.

3) Increase the length of the recent posts list. That will give recent posts a little more time to be read before they fall off.

4) The "all reader posts" section should have a headline index. Currently, you can only seem them in long view, which makes it hard to find a thread that you were following but has fallen of the lists.

Still no word from Edwards and Gore. Another big one, in light of the VA primary, is Jim Webb. Webb could particularly help Clinton with her anti-war credibility.

Three options:

1) Personal ambition: They want to be part of the next administration and are waiting for a winner in order to avoid choosing the wrong side. This seems particularly likely for Edwards, who is certainly ambitious and needs a platform to promote his agenda, and unlikely for Webb, who's in his first Senate term.

2) Avoid the fray: They want to cast themselves as Democratic statesmen who do not (or no who longer) dirty themselves in party politics. This seems likely for Gore, who has positioned himself as a statesman and has found channels outside of party politics for promoting his agenda.

3) Clinch the nomination: According this scenario, they're looking out for the Democratic party. No one wants this thing to go down to the wire. If they endorse now, the endorsee will get a boost, but the race will still be open. They may be waiting for one of the candidates to pull ahead, at which point they will put their weight behind that candidate in order to help wrap up the race and move on to a united front for the general election.

She's out of money, and most of the Feb. primaries favor Obama. What we can look forward to next week:

It's a hell of a start to a six-day period where she could lose as many as seven primaries. On Saturday, Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana go to the polls. Washington is a caucus where Obama is favored by 20 points, Nebraska is another one of those flyover caucuses that Obama dominated last night, and Louisiana, even post-Katrina, has one of the biggest black electorates in the country. On Sunday there's Maine, on Tuesday there's D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. Clinton has signaled only that she'll compete for Virginia and Maine.

http://reason.com/blog/show/124843.html

Moreover, due to lack of funds, it looks like she's focusing mainly on big state primaries in March & April:

Clinton, with less money to spend and less confident of her prospects in the February contests, will instead concentrate on Ohio and Texas, large states with primaries March 4 and where polling shows her with a significant lead. She even is looking ahead to Pennsylvania's primary April 22, believing a largely elderly population there will favor the former first lady.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iU_P23eyGmxqE8EEa7ba6r86BpIwD8UL4P9O0

I think that strategy worked ok on Tuesday, when all the states voted at once, but it's more problematic when the next big states aren't until March. Obama will score a lot runs before Texas and Ohio even get up to bat, and that could create momentum that makes Clinton look increasingly like the loser. Obama movement could be particularly important for the big three endorsement holdouts: Gore, Edwards, and Richardson.

It's the day before Super Tuesday and the primary in NY, TPM's home base. I'd love to see a TPM Democratic endorsement today. So I'm starting a reader petition of sorts to ask TPM to make an endorsement, or, at the very least, to explain why they do not intend to do so.

If you'd like to "sign" this petition. Please add a comment and/or click "Recommend this!"

I fully expected Edwards to endorse Obama before Super Tuesday. But here it is, Monday, and nothing. No rumors, no press releases, nada. It's a shame. By the time he endorses, the race may be all but finished.

Lost in the argument about whose health care plan is more universal is
the more important question of who will be more likely to get his or
her health care plan--and other policies--passed. The Dems are likely
to pick up seats in both houses, but they're unlikely to capture a
veto-proof majority in the Senate, which means that a Democratic
president will have to win over some Republicans and make sure to keep
all the Democrats in line.

One of Hillary Clinton's primary arguments against Barack Obama is that
she is the candidate who can best "deliver change" due to her
experience and to having learned from past mistakes.

Some argue that Clinton won't be effective because she's too partisan
to work with Republicans. This argument is right but for the wrong
reason. Clinton's partisanship waxes and wanes with the popularity of
the Democrats (or rather the unpopularity of the Republicans) and her
political aspirations. When the Republicans controlled congress and the
2008 election was far in the future, Clinton was actually quite
effective at establishing relationships with Republican colleagues and
working with them to accomplish objectives. From the NYT 4/29/06:

With Senator Trent Lott, she worked on improving the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. With Representative Tom DeLay it
was foster children. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House,
jumped in with her on a health care initiative, and the Senate majority
leader, Bill Frist, was a partner on legislation concerning
computerized medical records. The list goes on: Senator Robert Bennett
on flag-burning; Senator Rick Santorum on children's exposure to
graphic images; Senator John Sununu on S.U.V. taillights; Senator Mike
DeWine on asthma.

So Clinton will work with Republicans. The question is, will
Republicans work with Clinton? When she was just a junior senator in a
Republican congress working on bi-partisan issues, it was not a
problem. But as a Democratic president trying to push controversial
policies though congress, it would be an entirely different story.
Hillary Clinton has been a bogeyman to the Republican base for 15
years. Any Republican legislators who vote with Clinton on high-profile
controversial issues would be blasted by right-wing pundits, risk
attacks from conservative challengers, and alienate their bases.
Conversely, Republicans who tie up Clinton bills and nominations would
be cheered for sticking it to the president that conservatives love to
hate. Bill Clinton's health care plan failed for many reasons, but
chief among them was the fact that Republicans tied the plan to Hillary
Clinton and so were able to rally in opposition to it by demonizing
her. I fear that there would be many more such doomed plans under a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Clinton's second handicap when it comes to getting things done is a
lack of charisma. Charisma is often disparaged as an unimportant
quality--you don't have to want to get a beer with your president as
long as he or she is effective. But charisma plays an important role in
the ability of a president to be effective. Approval ratings reflect
performance and also events that a president cannot necessarily
control, such as economic downturns. Charismatic presidents like Bill
Clinton and Ronald Reagan (the "teflon" president) have been able to
maintain high approval ratings even as scandals and negative events
unfold around them. Uncharismatic presidents like George Bush Sr. are
much more likely to see precipitous drops in their approval ratings
when things go poorly. Hillary Clinton would be such a president.

Presidents with low approval ratings are less likely to be able to get
things done, as we're now seeing with Bush Jr. Their opponents are more
likely to fight them, their allies are less likely to support them,
their parties are more likely to lose midterm elections, depriving them
of the majority necessary to accomplish legislative objectives.

Barack Obama, when it comes to Republican appeal and charisma, is the
exact opposite of Hillary Clinton. Despite a voting record that is at
least as progressive as Clinton's, Republicans actually like him. Some
Democrats see his Republican appeal as a turn off, but a president who
appeals to Republicans while pushing a progressive agenda is the best
thing that could possibly happen to the country and the Democratic
party. Obama is the reverse Reagan--an extreme conservative who
appealed to many Democrats. An Obama presidency would mean that "Obama
Republicans" would be an important factor for years to come.

Second, Obama is the most charismatic candidate to run for president
since Ronald Reagan. This charisma should not be dismissed as a "pretty
face". It's a tremendous asset which would enable him to push his
agenda through congress and fill the legislature with Democratic
candidates riding his coattails.

I don't mean to suggest that it would always be easy for Obama or that
he wouldn't encounter fierce opposition at times, but because of
qualities that he has and Clinton lacks, he would as President
encounter significantly less opposition and be much more likely to
defeat it. Thus, Barack Obama , not Hillary Clinton, is the Democratic
candidate who would be most able to get things done.