As I was saying, this has been a very good Democratic campaign.

Fred's trying to muscle into the news cycle.... "Trying" maybe.

To: Interested Members of the Media
From: Karen Hanretty, Deputy Communications Director
Date: 12/13/2007
Re: Fred Thompson Campaign Apologies

In light of Mike Huckabee's heartfelt apology to Mitt Romney for making reference to Romney's religion in the New York Times Magazine, we at the Thompson Campaign would like to offer Huckabee our own heartfelt apologies for some references we've made about his record as Governor of Arkansas.

We apologize for pointing out that as Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee offered in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. That's something he'd probably just as soon no one talk about.

Read the rest after the jump. And, no, it does not end with "NOT!"

(more...)

Today's Washington Post fronts a story about Democrats blaming each other for the lack of progress on their agenda. But as our commenters have so often pointed out, the real issue is tension between the House and the Senate--and specifically, the fact that Republicans in the Senate are using the filibuster in ways it has never been used before, not just over big pieces of legislation like the budget and the energy bills, but over ... well, pretty much everything.

So that brings me back to something I raised last summer (and caught a fair amount of grief over in our comments section): If the Republicans want to filibuster, perhaps Majority Leader Harry Reid should consider the possibility of ... letting them filibuster. You know what I mean--filibuster in the old Mr.-Smith-Goes-To-Washington sense, where they actually have to come to the Senate floor and talk and talk and talk until they drop, not filibuster in the throw-up-your-hands-and-move-on sense that we see today.

Before making this proposal, I called two of my favorite Smart Guys. Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution calls this idea impractical. Given the fact that Republicans could muster 41 people on most things to hold the floor, a real filibuster could go on interminably: "The bottom line is, the modern Senate can't run without unanimous consent agreements. ...It isn't as if a different strategy would have produced a different outcome." With so much must-pass legislation before him, Mann says, Reid's only real option is to "take your lumps and get it done."

But Norm Ornstein at the American Enterprise Insitute thinks Reid should call the Republicans' bluff, starting with holding the Senate in session five long days a week. "You have a different Senate now. Frankly, they're soft," says Ornstein. "If they had the backbone and the discipline to do it, it would work."

As for me, I'd like to see Reid give it a try, just to see what happened.

UPDATE: I probably should have highlighted this from the Post story. Charlie Rangel is in the Norm Ornstein school:

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) accuses Senate Democratic leaders of developing "Stockholm syndrome," showing sympathy to their Republican captors by caving in on legislation to provide middle-class tax cuts paid for with tax increases on the super-rich, tying war funding to troop withdrawal timelines, and mandating renewable energy quotas. If Republicans want to filibuster a bill, Rangel said, Reid should keep the bill on the Senate floor and force the Republicans to talk it to death.

UPDATE2: A friend e-mails:

Oh my God--Ornstein and Mann don't agree?! That's like a disagreement
between Moses and Jesus. This is more complicated than I thought.

A few thoughts. First of all, it was almost nostalgic seeing them all on the same Iowa platform for the last time--even felt a twinge for the missing Kucinich--because this has been one of the better, more substantive Democratic fields I've covered. They have identified the most important issues--multilateralism overseas, comprehensive health insurance reform, global warming, a more equitable tax system--and taken brave, detailed stands on them.

On the down side, their positions on trade (implausibly thinking that other countries will submit to our labor and environmental standards, however desirable that idea might be) and No Child Left Behind (irresponsibly taking teachers, who need to be more, not less, accountable for the success of their students, off the hook) represent wholesale pandering to special interests of the sort that Democrats never acknowledge--the labor unions. There are ways to strengthen and expand the middle class, especially those affected by changes in the global economy--universal health insurance, wage insurance, tuition tax credits, jobs programs to repair infrastructure and conserve energy. That's where the emphasis should be...along with an emphasis on taxing wealth the same way we tax work, and closing corporate loopholes, to pay for those programs. Most of these Democrats support those sorts of programs, which is honorable and, in the context of Republican tax demagoguery, courageous. But it doesn't mean that it's acceptable to mislead the public about trade or the need for real education reform.

As for the individual performances:

Obama, clearly, is feeling it. He's still sort of fuzzy in debate, but now he's fuzzy in a presidential way. His answer on priorities for the first year was a strong, non-fuzzy exception: he'd call in the Joint Chiefs and give them a new mission--ending our involvement in Iraq. He also had the best line the of the debate. When asked why he had so many former Clinton advisors on his foreign policy team, Hillary Clinton--disastrously--interrupted, "I'd like to hear the answer to that one!" And Obama, faster than a speeding bullet, shot back: "Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well."

Clinton seemed a little desperate, to me at least. She was authoritative, detailed and strong on substance, as always. She cracked a few jokes, tried to seem less scripted. As noted above, that didn't always work. Also, a technical matter: When she was really clicking on the campaign trail this year, she had slowed down her pace and lowered the timbre of her voice--made it sound warmer. Now she's back to talking fast and nasal again. I don't mind it, but others may find it abrasive.

Edwards is really punching the populist message, perhap a bit too hard: he repeated his corporate power, corporate greed riff about three times too many--made him seem a windup doll, not nearly as effective as he is on the stump. Edwards deserves a lot of credit for forcing courage from this field--on health insurance, global warming and other issues--by stepping out first with detailed policy plans, but I get the sense that he's getting worried about his prospects.

The other three--Dodd, Biden and Richardson--made some good points, as always, but failed to change the shape or trajectory of the debate. I'll have more to say about the Democratic field in my column this week.

After distancing itself from his comments about Obama's drug use, the Clinton campaign has decided to distance itself from him. Here's a statement from Bill Shaheen that was just released by the campaign:

“I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Senator Clinton or the Clinton campaign. Senator Clinton has been running a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to America's families. She is the best qualified to be the next President of the United States because she can lead starting on day one. I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the Co-Chair of the Hillary for President campaign. This election is too important and we must all get back to electing the best qualified candidate who has the record of making change happen in this country. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”

So there seems to be a consensus now in the press about the state and direction of the Democratic race, judging by the saturation level of stories telling us about Hillary Clinton's dire straits. With the Democratic contenders debating for the last time before the Iowa caucuses as I write (I'm on a train, so not watching), it seems like a good time to note that -- trends, media mood swings and polls notwithstanding -- this thing ain't over. Not only that, but there's a good chance that today's stories -- the ones that suggest Hillary is tanking in Iowa, that her campaign staff is in turmoil, and that even New Hampshire won't save her -- are as likely to be lagging indicators as they are accurate prophesies. Which is not to say that I think Hillary has staunched the bleeding or Obama has plateaued or Edwards has got his mojo back. I don't know. And I'm not saying that the stories about Clinton's woes or Obama's surge are wrong. I think they're probably right. But what happens when everyone in the media writes or broadcasts the same story is that the sheer throwweight of observation about what's happening now becomes predictive about what will happen later. And if we learned anything from 2004, it's that outcomes in Iowa can't be predicted three weeks in advance any more than they could have been when the conventional wisdom held that Hillary was marching inexorably to victory. Having said that -- who's winning the debate?

Maybe we should re-think the CW that Hillary Clinton isn't as inspiring as Barack Obama. How else to explain the recent rash of over zealous junior staffers?

I do think it's interesting that the post which prompted the sock-puppetry was one of those "policy" thingees people are always demanding.

For those of you that watch the SwampCast just to pick on my hair, a filler episode:

Did that happen? Apparently there's a Halperin report card on it, so I guess so... There's a Dem one this afternoon, the last one before the caucuses. (Yay!) Yesterday's was bashed as boring, and as avoiding the most important headlines of the day (the NIE, Iraq). Today's might be as well -- but I'm told that the DMR debates are watched pretty closely within Iowa, and if they miss issues of national importance, the do focus on issues that Iowa caucus goers care about. How the candidates do is probably less important, for those trying to figure out Iowa, than the questions they're asked. For more on that, you can read the transcript of the GOP debate here.

Ambinder has a smart take on the "oh-we-wouldn't-use-Obama's-drug-use-against-him-but-those-big-bad-Republicans-might!" strategy that was sent up the Clinton flag pole (that's what she said, heh-heh) yesterday:

By publicly raising some as-yet unanswered questions about Obama's use of cocaine as a teenager, Billy Shaheen virtually guarantees that Obama will never be asked those questions or that if he is asked, he'll use a valid excuse to opt out of answering them. ("Why," he might say, "should I respond to a Clinton smear?")

[...]

Regardless: this unforced error will hurt. Billy Shaheen wants Democrats to think about Obama and cocaine, but what they'll think about, instead, is how the Clinton campaign is raising the issue. It's fair to assume that Shaheen's comments were not sanctioned by Arlington.

And while I think he's probably right that the campaign brain trust didn't orchestrate Sheehan's comments, it's mistakes like this where the myth of the Hillary press team's competence actually hurts them. Jonah Goldberg helpfully illustrates what I suspect is a popular theory among Republicans and a large minority of Democrats:

So when the Clinton team's top man in New Hampshire attacks Barack Obama's past drug use (couched in the "concern" that the GOP will make an issue of it if he wins the nomination) and then "disavows" the comments I find it hard to believe anyone is buying. For months we've been told how disciplined this campaign is and now that the polls aren't going her way this happens by accident? Nah-ah.

UPDATE: An Andrew Sullivan reader follows up on another way Sheehan's comments may hurt Clinton:

The second generation story emerging from yesterday's Billy Shaheen story is that African Americans are up in arms over the insinuation that Obama will be asked if he was a drug dealer. On African American radio stations, callers were correctly observing that not even the most in-your-face reporters asked Al Gore or George W Bush if he actually sold drugs as opposed to using them. Why is a black candidate who admitted to youthful drug use expected to answer such questions? I truly think Hillary needs to fire Shaheen to repair the potential rift, and not just make him apologize, which is what they've done. This story really could cause the first serious black flight from Hillary.