10 Ideas for 2008 [Updated.]



This is the post of the day. Stop. Do not pass go. Go immediately to read 10 Ideas for 2008 from Pericles at Dailykos. For those who need further encouragement, I've posted a summary below, grouping them by which of our Core Values each is part of -- but quit messing around here, go read it all.



What ideas will liberal candidates be able to campaign on in 2008? The ones we start developing and promoting now. I have ten suggestions.



Protcting Freedom:



1. 9/11 didn't change everything. What didn't 9/11 change? Lots of things. The United States still needs allies. The Geneva Convention still makes sense. Imprisoning people without trials is still tyranny. Torture is still wrong. You still need to double-check your intelligence before you start shooting people. Stuff like that. If we take those issues one by one, and let the Right respond with "9/11 changed everything"-- we're going to lose.



3. America must be a leader in the world.



7. Free citizens must have courage. Today, Americans are afraid of terrorism, and so our freedom is slipping away. When George Bush says, "We're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here," his implicit message is that ordinary citizens don't have to be brave -- that's what we hire professional soldiers for. In the Right's vision, America only needs enough courageous citizens to staff the armed forces.



Liberals know the truth: that very very many Americans are courageous. And our courage is called for now.



Economic Progress:





5. Globalization belongs to us. [Quoting Howard Dean] "Globalization is here to stay whether we like it or not, but the rules for globalization are not. Both NAFTA and the WTO help large multinational corporations but ignore the needs for the people who work for them. In order to make globalization work we also have to globalize worker protection, labor rights, environmental rights and human rights. Free trade won't work under the present circumstances." The model for liberal globalization is the European Union.



6. Capitalism belongs to us.Capitalism does not mean corporatism. (According to Mussolini, fascism does.) Due to a mistake the Supreme Court made in 1886 - damn those activist judges! - corporations were declared "persons" and given the protection of the Bill of Rights. That's why it's so hard to get them under control. The First Amendment protects their political contributions, for example, while their right to privacy limits how much data the government can force them to reveal. (God help us if they ever start testing the limits of their right to bear arms.) Sadly, it will take a constitutional amendment to undo this, and we should get right on it.



Here he leaves out three important points: as Democrats we stand against (1) crony capitalism, which allows incompetent corporate executives like Ken Lay and George Bush to benefit at the expense of the owners and investors whose money they manage (2) special purpose legislation written by industry lobbyists, often to allow monopolies to stay in place (monopolies are a way of avoiding competition: when the government helps a monopoly stay in place, they are being anticapitalist) (3) lax environmental legislation that allows businesses save money by vandalizing our air and water, thereby stealing from the rest of us (because this is stealing, it is not only an economic but also a moral issue).



If we look deeply into the roots of capitalism, we can understand it better than the conservatives do and find a way to make it our own.



8. Protect the Commons. Over the past few decades, the Right has taken the word common out of common political usage. We no longer talk about the common good, for example. Public property doesn't belong to us, it belongs to nobody.



I might add that communities of all sizes -- our neighborhoods, our churches, our states, America as a whole -- share common goods and common property that we want to protect. Of Pericles' 10 excellent points, this is probably the one that is closest to the heart of the Democratic coalition



If you want a government that will take good care of all of your property, public as well as private, then you want a liberal government.



9. America is worth paying for. But if the government really belongs to us, then taxes just move our money from one account to another. From our personal accounts we can buy personal goods; from our common account we can buy common goods. If that notion sounds strange, think about stockholders and corporations. When a corporation retains its earnings for future investment rather than paying them out as dividends, the stockholders don't scream about theft. The corporation just owns that money for them; as long as it manages the money well, the stockholders are happy.



Taxes are your fair share of the expense of keeping the country going. And a good country is worth paying for. People who try to get out of paying taxes are denigrating our country. They're saying that America is not worth paying for. They are unpatriotic.



A progressive tax system recognizes the obvious fact that the rich gain the most from America; they should pay the most to keep it going.



Responsibility and Moral Values:



2. Morality is not sex. Practice this line: "You keep saying 'morality' but really you're just talking about sex." When Jesus listed the admission standards for Christians to get into Heaven (Matthew 25), not one of them concerned sex. The key idea was "Who did you help?" Letting the working poor get priced out of the health care system is immoral. Trumping up bogus charges about WMD and terrorism in order to start a war is immoral.



4. The Religious Right are Pharisees. Christianity belongs to us. All through the gospels, Jesus is being heckled by the Pharisees, a group that promoted a strict interpretation of Mosaic Law. Again and again, Jesus sides with the spirit of the law against the Pharisees' loyalty to the letter of the law. When Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and their ilk get going, you don't hear much about compassion and common sense; but you hear a lot about the letter of the law. That's the Pharisee position; it's not Christian.



Does reclaiming Christianity mean that the Left needs to throw out all the Jews and atheists? Of course not. It also doesn't mean that non-Christian liberals should give lip service to a religion they don't believe. But we need to recognize that Jesus is a cultural icon in this country, and he is on our side. When the Right claims that Jesus is on their side, we need to be able to argue convincingly that they are wrong. That means getting educated about the Bible and learning how to speak its language comfortably -- as Kerry could not. (Check out Forrester Church's God and Other Famous Liberals, John Shelby Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, or John Buehrens' Understanding the Bible.) You don't have to be black to quote Martin Luther King, you don't have to be Hindu to quote Mahatma Gandhi, and you don't have to be Christian to quote Jesus.



10. Democracy means trusting the people.

Liberals know the truth: that very very many Americans are courageous. And our courage is called for now.Here he leaves out three important points: as Democrats we stand against (1), which allows incompetent corporate executives like Ken Lay and George Bush to benefit at the expense of the owners and investors whose money they manage (2), often to allow monopolies to stay in place (monopolies are a way of avoiding competition: when the government helps a monopoly stay in place, they are being anticapitalist) (3)that allows businesses save money by vandalizing our air and water, thereby stealing from the rest of us (because this is stealing, it is not only an economic but also a moral issue).I might add that communities of all sizes -- our neighborhoods, our churches, our states, America as a whole -- share common goods and common property that we want to protect. Of Pericles' 10 excellent points, this is probably the one that is closest to the heart of the Democratic coalition

Domestic Violence Mel Gilles provides this fine analogy.



Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. .... Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”



And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.



They will tell you, every single day.



The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.



As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.



The analogical framework certianly holds a fair number of the facts. Among them, the growing liberal anger at the media for refusing to speak the truth: it comes from the same place as the abused child's anger at the silence of his abused mother, knowing that her #1 moral responsibility is to protect him from harm; knowing that if she would only speak up, they could both begin to climb out of hell.



Her prescription:



How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.



First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.



We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.



Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.



Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.

The analogical framework certianly holds a fair number of the facts. Among them, the growing liberal anger at the media for refusing to speak the truth: it comes from the same place as the abused child's anger at the silence of his abused mother, knowing that her #1 moral responsibility is to protect him from harm; knowing that if she would only speak up, they could both begin to climb out of hell.Her prescription:

Winning the South A southern Dailykos diarist on winning the south:



Direct Connection: A candidate, especially for President, must be able to communicate with voters in such a way as to show them that he/she knows what they are going through, and what is important to them. Telling people that you have a plan, and then referring them to johnkerry.com was just not a good way to do this. The key here is to be able to break down complicated policy into common sense terminology that everyone can understand and relate to.



Fighting Democrats Better Fight for the South So says Texas Democrat and recent TX Supreme Court candidate David Van Os, who is obviously a fighter.



In my recent race for the Texas Supreme Court against a right-wing pro-corporate Republican, I carried some rural Texas counties that John Kerry lost handily. My statewide margin of loss was 400,000 less than Kerry's margin of loss (of Texas). The difference between my campaign and Kerry's was that I directly challenged corporate power in a give 'em hell manner that wasn't crafted on the basis of any damn polls, but from my own passion because I'm mad as hell about the corporate takeover of government and Republican Party totalitarianism, and I said it on the stump just exactly the way I really feel it. Whereas John Kerry is so used to basing his votes and his positions on what pollsters tell him, he doesn't even know what he feels or believes. Rural Texas audiences didn't lynch me; to the contrary they responded with standing ovations. They are HUNGRY for FIGHTING Democrats to return, in a way they haven't seen the Democratic Party act in years. Their mommas and daddies loved "give 'em hell" Harry Truman, and they were brought up to think of the Democratic Party as the party of the people. But they don't see that any more. Party of the people means you mean what you say and say what you mean, and you don't run away from fights, and you fight for the people. For myself, I am not going to campaign for any Democratic nominees any more who are softies who are afraid to confront corporate power and Republican totalitarianism with passion and toughness.



Yes, the Democratic Party can get the heartland back. Whenever it rediscovers a politics of the heart and throws out all the polling, Democratic participation indexes, computer projections, and targeting and the consultants who peddle it, out the nearest window. That includes throwing out the "battleground" tactics. We damn sure aren't ever going to win in the South if we don't have the guts to fight for the South. Communicating from the heart will reclaim the heartland.



More of this quote at

More of this quote at kos and plenty more advocacy from Van Os at his site

Howard Dean for DNC Chair Set aside the issues of Dean as a personality (because the DNC Chair is fundamentally a real job rather than a celebrity position) and whether he's too liberal (he was, recall a darling of the centrist DLC).



The case for Dean, as I see it, is that a long series of Establishment Democrats have failed to articulate our party's core values, and as a result our coalition is missing some of the people who would naturally join it. Howard Dean's internetcentric campaign offers a model for how to fix this: a model of how, in the current age, to raise funds in record-setting amounts, to keep our base linked together and activated, and to do much of our business in the open, so that good ideas can get from the grass roots of the coalition to the top. We want to develop core values with explicit input from thousands of people, in the manner of MoveOn.org. We want coalition-building to take place in this sort of public fashion. Following Matt Stoller's suggestions, we want focus group results from swing voters and polling data to be public, we want policy discussions to emerge through wikis culled out of blogs, and we want the internals of ad campaigns to be open. We want to fix the primary system so that voters in swing states pick our presidential nominees.



Only with a Reform DNC Chair like Dean can we hope to begin winning elections like this last one by 20 points like we should be. Inasmuch as there are other candidates who looked like reformers, I'm looking at them too, but the pickings are mostly Dean. I see two immediate sorts of action that are needed.



I. Contact your DNC Members and ask them to vote for Howard Dean



This can be done by phone using the up-to-date (8 November 2004) list at



II. Money



I haven't seen a discussion of this, but it seems likely to me that what we do with our money between now and the January election of the DNC Chair matters a great deal.



Where do we put that money if we want it to help get Dean in? It might be that making a This can be done by phone using the up-to-date (8 November 2004) list at Phraxos or by email using the email addresses that have been collected for many of the members here I haven't seen a discussion of this, but it seems likely to me that what we do with our money between now and the January election of the DNC Chair matters a great deal.Where do we put that money if we want it to help get Dean in? It might be that making a contribution to democracyforamerica.org (formerly deanforamerica) is helpful because it makes clear that he is a prodigious fundraiser. It might be that key DNC members would have their heads turned if they recieved campaign contributions from Dean advocates. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Howard Dean for DNC Chair From Draft Howard:



The Republicans and media elites who manufacture conventional wisdom diagnose our problems for us: we’re wrong on the issues, they say, and we’re on the wrong side of what they call culture. They are wrong.



Our first problem is message. We let Republicans define the debate. They run on guns, God and gays—and instead of standing up for our values we try to excuse their extremism. We move further and further to the right and we fear standing up against what we know to be wrong. We compromise our values for the sake of victory and wind up with neither integrity nor victory.



Our other problem is morale. It says something about the state of our party that so many of us believe what Republicans and a complicit media tell us about ourselves. Many of our leaders and our ordinary members have been convinced that our fundamental values are simply wrong.



We are a party that passionately believes in every person’s right to see a doctor; that poverty and inequality in the world’s richest nation are a disgrace; that we have a responsibility to help people grow old with dignity; that a nation must manage its finances responsibly and not pass more and more debt to our children; and that America should be both the military and moral leader of the world.



Our party is in crisis. We need a leader who will not only convince America that we are right—we need a leader who will inspire us to stand up for the fundamental values we know are right.



In sum, we need Howard Dean. In sum, we need Howard Dean.

Howard Dean for DNC Chair Rep. Mark Cohen (D, PA) speaks out in support of Howard Dean:



The Democratic National Committee has never had a party chair like Howard Dean. That is one of the reasons why the Republicans control the White House...



A Dean Chairmanship will open the party up to the grassroots. It will be the best funded Democratic Party ever. It will be the party with the most volunteers ever, the party that builds on the many successes of the 2004 campaigns.

...

Traditionalists will scoff that Dean is too liberal, that Americans do not want liberals. What Americans do not want is arrogant, isolated, holier than thou elitists. Some such people are liberals,and the image of liberalism has been tarred by these examples, but most are not. Howard Dean is a straight-talking above average American who can lead, inspire, and mobilize. He is a liberal in the broad generic sense in which the vast majority of Democrats are liberals, but not in the narrow, derogatory sense of the term.



He can be the greatest Democratic Chairman we ever had. Hopefully, the Democratic National Committee will be wise enough, independent enough, and responsive enough to give him--and us--that opportunity.



Campaign Finance Reform Suggested by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times:



Funnel campaign donations through a blind trust. The funkiest idea in politics is to make donations anonymous even to the recipient. Citizens would make contributions through a blind trust, so that candidates wouldn't know to whom they were beholden.



If officials don't know who their major contributors are, they can't invite them to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom or write tax loopholes. A donor might boast about having made a contribution, but special interests will realize they can save money by telling politicians that they have donated when they haven't, and then politicians will doubt these boasts.



Such a system of shielding names of donors exists in 10 states, to some degree, for judicial candidates. A provocative book by Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, "Voting With Dollars," makes an excellent case that the system be applied more broadly, but we need some innovative state (Oregon, do you hear that?) to take the leap.





Our pompous right-wing press Weldon Berger, writing on PressThink, caught Sam Donaldson bloviating:



Sam Donaldson told an audience at the University of North Carolina: "Anybody who goes windsurfing as the great American sport doesn't understand what they do in Omaha." (In this instance, it's the down-home Donaldson who's clueless about Nebraska, home to the Toucan Open stop on the US Windsurfing national circuit.)



As with so much media bloviation, the bogosity of Donaldson's comment is immediately obvious to those of us (millions?) who learned to windsurf in the middle of the country. Perhaps the abstract concept that Donaldson doesn't have is lake. As with so much media bloviation, the bogosity of Donaldson's comment is immediately obvious to those of us (millions?) who learned to windsurf in the middle of the country. Perhaps the abstract concept that Donaldson doesn't have is

From Atrios, Red State, Blue State Our friends at Atrios do a little debunking of the red-state blue-state nonsense.



The red state-blue state divide ... is nothing more than a rebranding of David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise argument that there are two competing and incompatible cultures in America today. But when a reporter tried to verify the facts underlying Brooks’ thesis they didn’t check out [Philly Magazine]. The post-2004 election version of the "Bobo" theory is on just as flimsy grounds.



The modern conservative movement sells itself as “a revolt of the little people against a high and mighty liberal elite.”. It feeds on a feeling of victimization and resentment that many "red staters" feel right now. And the ability of the right to play into that feeling of victimization rests on the premise of a divided america: us versus them, red versus blue. There is no reason we have to adopt their framework.





The choicest bit from the



As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home. "On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu -- steak au jus, 'slippery beef pot pie,' or whatever -- I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's," he wrote. "I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and 'seafood delight' trying to drop $20. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it."



Taking Brooks's cue, I lunched at the Chambersburg Red Lobster and quickly realized that he could not have waded through much surf-and-turf at all. The "Steak and Lobster" combination with grilled center-cut New York strip is the most expensive thing on the menu. It costs $28.75. "Most of our checks are over $20," said Becka, my waitress. "There are a lot of ways to spend over $20."



So Brooks is busted on two sets of grounds: busted by the visit to Red Lobster, and busted by the fact that we weren't born yesterday, we know that it's easy to spend $20 for dinner at Red Lobster. Who actually reads these books?

The choicest bit from the Philly Magazine article So Brooks is busted on two sets of grounds: busted by the visit to Red Lobster, and busted by the fact that we weren't born yesterday, we know that it's easy to spend $20 for dinner at Red Lobster. Who actually reads these books?

DNC Committee-Members Contact List Complete DNC roster, 2004-2008 term, compiled Nov 8, 2004, and sent to me last week. These are the people who vote on the new DNC Chair, so if you want to support Howard Dean, these are the people to call (especially the officers and the members from your state).



The State Democratic Party Executive Directors also sit on the DNC, but I keep them in a separate list here.



If you prefer the official PDF version, aldon has made it available here.

* denotes Chair

# denotes member of the Executive Committee

CHAIR #Terence R. McAuliffe 430 S. Capitol St., SE Washington, DC 20003 W:202-863-8121 VICE CHAIRS #Linda Chavez-Thompson 815 16th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-637-5233 #Hon. Gloria Molina 500 W. Temple St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 W:213-974-4111 #Hon. Lottie H. Shackelford 1720 Abigail St. Little Rock, AR 72204 W:202-863-8175 #Hon. Wellington Webb 1660 Lincoln Denver, CO 80264 W:303-893-9322 VICE CHAIR; PRESIDENT, ASDC #Mark Brewer 37414 Stonegate Cir. Clinton Twp., MI 48036 W:517-371-5410 TREASURER #Andrew Tobias 430 S. Capitol St., SE Washington, DC 20003 W:212-580-8612 SECRETARY #Alice Germond 430 S. Capitol St., SE Washington, DC 20003 W:202-863-7183 NATIONAL FINANCE CHAIR #Maureen White 998 5th Ave. New York, NY 10028 W:202-863-7169 DEPUTY CHAIRS Hon. Mike Honda 503 Cannon House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-2631 Ben Johnson 501 Oneida Pl., NW Washington, DC 20011 W:202-973-5899 Susan Turnbull 16 Royal Dominion Ct. Bethesda, MD 20817 W:301-469-7811 ALABAMA * Redding Pitt PO Box 950 Montgomery, AL 36101 W:205-324-1212 #Amy K. Burks 2831 Summerwind Dr., SE Decatur, AL 35603 Randy Kelley 1527 Litchfield Ave. Gadsden, AL 35903 Hon. Yvonne Kennedy 1205 Glennon Ave. Mobile, AL 36603 W:251-690-6416 Dr. Joe L. Reed PO Box 4177 Montgomery, AL 36103 W:334-834-9790 ALASKA * Scott Sterling 2000 E. Dowling Rd. Anchorage, AK 99507 W:907-376-8076 Claudia Douglas PO Box 870628 Wasilla, AK 99687 Hon. John Davies PO Box 81781 Fairbanks, AK 99709 Cindy Spanyers 15360 Glacier Hwy. Juneau, AK 99801 AMERICAN SAMOA * Dr. Oreta M. Togafau PO Box 353 Pago Pago, AS 96799 W:684-633-1372 Tuiasina S. Laumoli PO Box 6968 Pago Pago, AS 96799 W:684-633-1195 Therese L. Hunkin PO Box 371 Pago Pago, AS 96799 W:684-699-5808 Fagafaga D. Langkilde PO Box 3505 Pago Pago, AS 96799 W:011-684-633-53 ARIZONA * James E. Pederson 2800 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85004 W:602-265-2888 Sue Tucker 1515 W. Los Filos Tuscon, AZ 85704 Janice C. Brunson 4745 E. Charles Dr. Paradise Valley, AZ 85253 Joe Rios PO Box 334 Kearney, AZ 85237 Hon. Carolyn Warner 4455 E Camelback Phoenix, AZ 85018 W:602-957-7552 ARKANSAS * Ron Oliver 3901 Bunker Hill N. Little Rock, AR 72116 W:501-372-7407 Karla Bradley 3300 Cherokee Dr. Fayetteville, AR 72701 Don Beavers 6001 Cypress Creek N. Little Rock, AR 72116 Martha Dixon 701 Clinton Arkadelphia, AR 71923 CALIFORNIA *#Hon. Art Torres 1388 Sutter St. San Francisco, CA 94109 W:213-239-8730 Alexandra Gallardo Rooker 13801 Paramount Blvd. Paramount, CA 90723 #Steven K. Alari 1009 E. 1st St. Long Beach, CA 90802 W:213-239-8518 Rachel Binah PO Box 464 Little River, CA 95456 Mary Ellen Early 14843 Huston St. Sherman Oaks, CA 91403 W:818-902-3925 Edward Espinoza 6006 Loomis St. Lakewood, CA 90713 W:562-421-2800 Inola Henry 2232 W. 24th Los Angeles, CA 90018 W:213-660-8423 Alice A. Huffman 1315 I St., Ste. 200 Sacramento, CA 95814 W:916-498-1890 Aleita J. Huguenin 6318 Auga Vista Ct. Rancho Murieta, CA 95683 W:916-325-1500 Hon. Carole Migden 465 California St. San Francisco, CA 94106 W:415-557-3000 Bob Mulholland 1051 Adlar Ct. Chico, CA 95926 W:916-442-5707 Christine Pelosi 17 3rd St., NE Washington, DC 20002 John A. Perez 1916 N. Alexandria Los Angeles, CA 90027 W:714-995-4601 Robert Rankin 250 W. 235 St. Carson, CA 90745 Garry S. Shay 6748 Hillpark Los Angeles, CA 90068 W:818-502-7503 Christopher Stampolis PO Box 508 San Jose, CA 95103 W: #Keith Umemoto 6456 S. Land Park Dr. Sacramento, CA 95831 W:916-274-5733 Alicia Wang 2350 Anza St. San Francisco, CA 94118 W:415-771-7739 Hon. Maxine Waters 10124 S. Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90003 W:323-757-8900 #Hon. Rosalind Wyman 10430 Bellagio Rd. Los Angeles, CA 90077 Steven Ybarra PO Box 367 Sacramento, CA 95812 W:916-442-7211 COLORADO * Chris Gates 777 Santa Fe Denver, CO 80204 W:303-623-4762 Julia Hicks 8300 Sheridan Blvd. Arvada, CO 80003 Debbie Marquez PO Box 2829 Edwards, CO 81632 Jonathan W. Postal 7843 E. 8th Pl. Denver, CO 80230 W:303-837-0202 Mannie Rodriguez 1435 Kokai Circle Denver, CO 80221 CONNECTICUT * Hon. George Jepsen 380 Franklin Ave. Hartford, CT 06114 W:860-296-1775 #Dorothy Mrowka 399 Lebanon Ave. Colchester, CT 06415 Hon. Anthony Avallone 75 Broad St. Milford, CT 06460 W:203-783-1200 Ellen Camhi 50 Arnold Dr. Stamford, CT 06905 John W. Olsen 56 Town Line Rd. Rocky Hill, CT 06067 W:860-571-6191 DELAWARE * Richard Bayard PO Box 25130 Wilmington, DE 19899 W:302-655-5000 Leah Betts 113 Magnolia St. Milton, DE 19968 Bert DiClemente 3801 Greenville Ctr. Greenville, DE 19807 W:302-661-6713 Karen Valentine 702 Ponderosa Dr. Magnolia, DE 19962 W:302-323-2121 DEMOCRATS ABROAD *#Rachelle J. Valladares 5 Hopewell Yard United Kingdom SE5 7QS Dr. John L. McCreery 55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-Ku Japan 220-0006 W:011-81-45-314- Robert Bell 77 Brunswick Ave. CANADA M55 2L8 W:416-972-9505 Connie Borde 240 bis Blvd. St. Germain Paris, France W:331-4549-1470 Jamey Dumas Bell Rock House St. Andrews KY169RG W:441334478764 Liv Gibbons 17 Seafield, Baldaylefd Ireland W:353416772204 Theresa Morelli Casella Postale 44, 210 20 Casciago (VA) Italy W:39-0332820788 Brent O'Leary 4-22-1 Minami Aoyama Tokyo Japan W:81-90-1704-740 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA * Wanda Lockridge 419 Valley Ave., SE Washington, DC 20032 W:202-463-5529 Ron Bitondo 2115 Tunlaw Rd., NW Washington, DC 20007 W:202-412-5186 #Arrington Dixon 2401 Shannon Pl., SE Washington, DC 20020 Marilyn Tyler Brown 3050 Chestnut St., NW Washington, DC 20010 FLORIDA * Hon. Scott Maddox PO Box 1758 Tallahassee, FL 32303 W:850-222-3411

Diane Glasser 7379 W. Devon Dr. Tamarac, FL 33321 Hon. Clarence Anthony 300 S.E. 3rd Ave. South Bay, FL 33493 Jon Ausman 2202 Woodlawn Dr. Tallahassee, FL 32303 W:850-414-4519 Cathy Bartolotti 4023 N. Lincoln Ave Tampa, FL 33607 Terrie Brady 1601 Atlantic Blvd. Jacksonville, FL 32205 W:904-396-4063 Mitchell Ceasar 8181 W. Broward Blvd. Plantation, FL 33324 W:954-475-2500 Hon. Joyce Cusack 224 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand, FL 32720 W:850-488-0580 Allan Katz 106 East College, Ste. 1200 Tallahassee, FL 32301 W:850-425-1605 Chuck Mohlke PO Box 2312 Naples, FL 34106 W:239-649-3090 Hon. Diana Wasserman-Rubin 5731 S.W. 196 Ln. Southwest Ranches, FL 33332 W:954-357-7008 GEORGIA * Robert Kahn 25 Whitlock Pl., SW Marietta, GA 30064 W:770-427-2145 Hattie B. Dorsey 100 Peachtree St. Atlanta, GA 30303 W:404-522-2637 Carole Dabbs 4009 Dorchester Walk Kennesaw, GA 30144 Hon. Shirley Franklin 1258 Tuckawanna Dr. Atlanta, GA 30311 W:404-330-6845 Lonnie Plott 501 Pulliam St., SW; Ste. 250 Atlanta, GA 30312 W:404-523-8107 Richard Ray 501 Pulliam St., SW Atlanta, GA 30236 W:404-525-2793 GUAM * Michael Phillips 410 West O'Brien Dr. Hagatna, GU 96910 W:671-477-2223 Isabel S. A. (Becky) Lujan PO Box 22343 GMF Barrigada, GU 96921 W:671-479-8664 Benjamin J. F. Cruz 123 Manga St. Piti, GU 96915 W:671-475-6969 Taling Taitano PO Box 27025 Barrigada, GU 96921 W:671-472-5252 HAWAII * Brickwood Galuteria 3462 Pakui St. Honolulu, HI 96816 W:808-596-2985 Stephanie Ohigashi 179 Halona St. Wailuku, HI 96793 W:808-249-0183 Richard Port 1600 Ala Nloana Blvd. #3100 Honolulu, HI 96815 Marie Dolly Strazar 36 Hualilili St. Hilo, HI 96720 IDAHO * Hon. Carolyn Boyce 982 E. River Park Ln. Boise, ID 83706 W:208-322-1852 Hon. Edgar Malepeai 585 S. 19th Ave. Pocatello, ID 83201 Hon. Gail Bray 6301 N. Pierce Park Ln. Boise, ID 83703 W:208-854-1144 Grant Burgoyne 2203 Mountain View Dr. Boise, ID 83706 W:208-345-2654 ILLINOIS * Hon. Michael Madigan PO Box 518 Springfield, IL 62705 W:217-546-7404 Hon. Constance Howard 432 E. 88th St. Chicago, IL 60619 Margaret Blackshere 8150 W. Monroe St. Niles, IL 60714 W:312-251-1414 #Hon. Thomas C. Hynes 30 N. LaSalle St. Chicago, IL 60602 W:312-917-8830 Hon. Emil Jones Jr. 11357 S. Lowe Chicago, IL 60628 Thomas Lakin 301 Evans St. Wood River, IL 62095 W:618-254-1127 Hon. Iris Y. Martinez 3154 W. Grace St. Apt. 1 Chicago, IL 60641 W:773-283-7000 Hon. John Rednour PO Box 428 DuQuoin, IL 62832 W:618-542-2111 Hon. Carol Rowan 6033 N. Sheridan Chicago, IL 60660 W:773-769-1717 Darlena Williams-Burnett 1648 W. Warren Blvd. Chicago, IL 60612 W:312-603-3981 INDIANA * Kipper Tew One N. Capitol, Ste. 200 Indianapolis, IN 46204 W:317-231-7110 Cordelia Lewis Burks 2943 N. Kenwood Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46208 Phoebe Crane 1585 N. US Hwy. 421 Whitestown, IN 46075 Hon. Robert Pastrick 4527 Indianapolis Blvd. E. Chicago, IN 46312 W:219-391-8200 Terry L. Thurman 5850 Fortune Cir., W Indianapolis, IN 46241 W:317-247-5515 IOWA * Gordon Fischer 801 Grand Ave. Des Moines, IA 50309 W:515-246-5895 Julianne Thomas 4749 Mount Vernon Rd., SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52403 Sandy Opstredt 1309 Park View Story City, IA 50248 W:515-265-6193 Ken Rains 4800 Euclid Ave. Des Moines, IA 50310 W: KANSAS * Lawrence Gates 10990 Quivera Overland Park, KS 66210 W:913-661-0222 Teresa Krusor 7 Braidhills Dr. Winfield, KS 67516 E. Lee Kinch 601 Honeybrook Ln. Derby, KS 67037 W:316-265-3366 Randy Roy 400 SW Whitehall Ln. Topeka, KS 66606 W:785-230-4030 KENTUCKY VACANCY> Kerry Morgan 1239 State St. Bowling Green, KY 42101 W:270-782-3030 Moretta Bosley 2940 Tanglewood Dr. Owensboro, KY 42303 Terry McBrayer 4630 Bosworth Ln. Lexington, KY 40510 W:859-231-8780 Jo Etta Wickliffe 505 Ashley Camp Rd. Harrodsburg, KY 40330 W:859-734-3316 LOUISIANA * Mike Skinner 701 Government St. Baton Rouge, LA 70802 W:225-336-4155 Mary Lou Winters 310 Rue St. Peter Metarie, LA 70005 Patsy Arceneaux 17978 Silver Creek Ct. Baton Rouge, LA 70810 Hon. Renee Gill Pratt 1718 Toledano St. New Orleans, LA 70115 W:504-565-6320 Jerry McKernan 8710 Jefferson Baton Rouge, LA 70816 W:225-926-1234 MAINE * Dorothy Melanson 114 Hardy Rd. Falmouth, ME 04105 David Garrity 174 Danforth St. Portland, ME 04102 W:207-774-5412 Jennifer DeChant 1008 Middle St. Bath, ME 04530 Sam Spencer 97 Pine St. Portland, ME 04102 MARYLAND * Hon. Isiah "Ike" Leggett 188 Main St. Annapolis, MD 21401 Hon. Sue Hecht 2498 Bear Den Rd. Frederick, MD 21701 Glenard S. Middleton 1410 Bush St. Baltimore, MD 21209 Hon. Gregory Pecoraro 603 Thornbury Ct. Westminster, MD 21158 W:410-887-8019 Karren Pope-Onwukwe 6001 43rd St. Hyattsville, MD 20781 W:301-927-3145 Susan Turnbull 16 Royal Dominion Ct. Bethesda, MD 20817 W:301-469-7811 MASSACHUSETTS * Philip W. Johnston 99 Summer St. Boston, MA 02110 W:617-338-2726 Debra Kozikowski 34 White St. Chicopee, MA 01013 W:413-594-7497 Gus Bickford 95 North Main St. Westford, MA 01886 Hon. Raymond Jordan 11 Ingersoll Grove Springfield, MA 01109 W:860-240-4800 David M. O'Brien 510 Barretts Mill Rd. Concord, MA 01742 Diane Saxe 12 Coventry Rd. Grafton, MA 01519 W:401-455-4137 Margaret D. Xifaras 34 Piney Point Rd. Marion, MA 02738 W:508-993-9924 MICHIGAN *#Mark Brewer 37414 Stonegate Cir. Clinton Twp., MI 48036 W:517-371-5410 #Arthenia Abbott 419 S. Washington Sq. Lansing, MI 48933 W:517-487-5966 Elizabeth Bunn International Union UAW Detroit, MI 48214 W:313-926-5035 Debbie Dingell 5208 Royal Vale Ln. Dearborn, MI 48126 W:202-775-5068 Joyce Lalonde 24801 Rosalind Ave. Eastpointe, MI 48201 W:586-825-2230 Jeffrey Radjewski 26449 Birchcrest Chesterfield Twp., MI 48051 W:313-963-2130 Jim Sype 1845 Pine Knoll Okemos, MI 48864 Richard N. Wiener 721 N. Capitol Lansing, MI 48806 W:517-335-7845 VACANCY> MINNESOTA * Mike Erlandson 2809 E. Lake of Isles Pkwy. Minneapolis, MN 55408 Tarryl Clark 255 E. Plato Blvd. St. Paul, MN 55107 W:651-251-6315 Ken Foxworth 614 4th St. Minneapolis, MN 55404 W:612-879-7526 Nancy Larson 21950 CSAH #4 Dassel, MN 55325 W:320-275-3130 Rick Stafford 3154 Bloomington Ave. S. #202 Minneapolis, MN 55407 Jackie Stevenson 3541 Robinwood Ter. Minneatonka, MN 55305 MISSISSIPPI * Wayne Dowdy 301 Cherokee St. McComb, MS 39648 W:601-783-6600 Carnelia Pettis Fondren 835 Hwy. 6 W Oxford, MS 38655 W:662-234-3304 Johnnie Patton 6513 Trace Dr. Jackson, MS 39213 Everett Sanders PO Box 565 Natchez, MS 39121 W:601-445-5570 MISSOURI * Hon. Roger Wilson 419 East High St. Jefferson City, MO 65102 W:573-636-5241 Maddie Moore PO Box 719 Jefferson City, MO 65102 W:573-636-5241 Dr. Doug Brooks 3734 Chipmunk Joplin, MO 64801 W:417-782-1910 Mark Bryant 3743 Harrison Kansas City, MO 64109 W:816-753-1000 Leila Medley 3820 Terra Bella Jefferson City, MO 65109 W:573-634-3202 Sandra A. Querry 2913 S.W. 13th St. Lee's Summit, MO 64081 MONTANA *#Hon. Bob Ream 521 Clarke St. Helena, MT 59601 W:406-442-9520 Carol Juneau PO Box 55 Browning, MT 59417 Jean Lemire Dahlman 3335 Old Highway 10 Rd. Forsyth, MT 59327 Hon. Ed Tinsley 1236 9th Ave. Helena, MT 59601 NEBRASKA * Steven Achelpohl 6420 Underwood Ave. Omaha, NE 68132 W:402-346-1900 Cynthia LaMere 600 Pioneer Pl. S. Sioux City, NE 68776 W:712-428-7154 Kathleen Fahey 1451 N. 133 St. Omaha, NE 68154 Vince Powers 4115 13th St., Ste. 300 Lincoln, NE 68508 W:402-474-8000 NEVADA * Adriana Martinez 1499 Sunair Cir. Las Vegas, NV 89110 Brian Wallace 919 US 395 S Gardnerville, NV 89410 W:775-265-8637 Steven Horsford 9030 W. Sahara Ave. Las Vegas, NV 89117 W:702-399-5627 Hon. Dina Titus 1637 Travois Cir. Las Vegas, NV 89119 W:702-895-3756 NEW HAMPSHIRE * Kathleen Sullivan 192 S. Mammoth Rd. Manchester, NH 03109 #Hon. Raymond Buckley 24 Gabrielle St. Manchester, NH 03103 W:603-271-8511 Gaetan DiGangi 2 Shore Dr. Merrimack, NH 03054 Anita Freedman 195 Hillside Dr. Portsmouth, NH 03801 NEW JERSEY * Hon. Bonnie Watson Coleman 196 W. State St. Trenton, NJ 08608 W:609-392-3367 Hon. Joseph Cryan 985 Stuyvesant Ave. Union, NJ 07083 W:908-624-0880 Tonio Burgos 115 Broadway New York, NY 10006 W:212-566-5600 Alfred C. DeCotiis 500 Frank W. Burr Blvd. Teaneck, NJ 07666 W:201-928-1100 Hon. June S. Fischer 9 Maddaket Scotch Plains, NJ 07076 Donald Norcross Camden Co. Democratic Headquarters Cherry Hill, NJ 08003 W:856-424-5257 Christine "Roz" Samuels 28 The Crescent Montclair, NJ 07042 W:973-643-8430 NEW MEXICO * John Wertheim 401 Dartmouth SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 W:505-450-4199 Annadelle Sanchez 920 Denton St. Espanola, NM 89532 #Mary Gail Gwaltney 1910 N. Alameda Blvd. Las Cruces, NM 88005 Hon. Raymond Sanchez PO Box 1966 Albuquerque, NM 87103 W:505-247-4321 NEW YORK * Hon. Herman D. Farrell Jr. 60 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10010 W:212-725-8825 Denise W. King 12 Mill St. Chatham, NY 12037 W:518-392-1560 Hon. Dominic Baranello 5 Atlantic Ave. Blue Point, NY 11715 Hon. Vivian E. Cook 126-44 144th St. Jamaica, NY 11436 W:718-322-3975 Emily Giske 95 Horatio St. New York, NY 10014 W:212-431-4748 #Hon. Judith H. Hope 9 Two Holes of Water Rd. East Hampton, NY 11937 W:212-725-8825 Maria Luna 839 Riverside Dr. New York, NY 10032 Hon. Thomas J. Manton 19-14 21st Rd. Astoria, NY 11105 W:718-459-9000 Dennis Mehiel c/o Sweetheart Cup Company New York, NY 10016 W:212-779-7448 Hon. Clarence Norman Jr. 16 Court St. Brooklyn, NY 11241 W:718-756-1776 Hon. Roberto Ramirez 895 Broadway New York, NY 10013 W:212-505-6633 Irene Stein 101 Brandywine Dr. Ithaca, NY 14850 Sylvia Tokasz 42 Countryside Ln. Depew, NY 14043 W:716-887-8709 Robert Zimmerman 160 Middle Neck Rd. Great Neck, NY 11021 W:516-829-8374 NORTH CAROLINA *#Barbara K. Allen 220 Hillsborough St. Raleigh, NC 27603 W:919-821-2777 Jerry Meek c/o North Carolina Democratic Party Raleigh, NC 27603 W:919-821-2777 Dr. Jeanette Council 3310 Lake Bend Dr. Fayetteville, NC 28311 W:910-497-1843 Muriel K. Offerman 105 Schaffer Close Cary, NC 27511 W:919-733-3395 David Parker PO Box 112 Statesville, NC 28687 W:704-871-0300 Carol W. Peterson 221 Racquet Club Rd Asheville, NC 28803 #Everett Ward 3112 Falconhurst Dr. Wake Forest, NC 27587 W:919-733-2520 NORTH DAKOTA * Tom Dickson 9922 Island Rd. Bismark, ND 58503 W:701-222-4400 Dr. Mary Wakefield 370115th Ave., S Grand Forks, ND 58202 W:701-777-3899 Hon. Jim Maxson 6 9th St., SE Minot, ND 58701 W:701-839-6704 Renee Pfenning 4739 Haycreek Dr. Bismarck, ND 58501 OHIO * Denny White 271 E. State Columbus, OH 43215 W:614-221-6563 Hon. Rhine L. McLin 1130 Germantown St. Dayton, OH 45408 W:937-333-3653 William Burga 395 E. Broad St. Columbus, OH 43215 W:614-224-8271 Enid Goubeaux 242 Hickory Dr. Greenville, OH 45331 Lloyd Mahaffey 7270 Salisbury Rd. Maumee, OH 43537 W:419-893-4677 Hon. Mark Mallory Ohio Senate Columbus, OH 43215 W:614-466-5980 Ronald L. Malone 6805 Oak Creek Dr. Columbus, OH 43229 W:614-523-7550 Patricia Moss 6800 N. High St. Columbus, OH 43085 W:614-841-1918 Hon. Stephanie Tubbs Jones 3645 Warrensville Center Rd. Cleveland, OH 44122 W:202-225-7032 OKLAHOMA * Jay Parmley 2152-C W. Brooks Norman, OK 73069 W:405-427-3366 Debbe Leftwich 2125 S.W. 85 Oklahoma City, OK 73159 #Jim Frasier PO Box 799 Tulsa, OK 74101 W:918-584-4724 Betty McElderry 822 W. Grant Purcell, OK 73080 OREGON * Jim Edmunson 1460 Oak Dr. Eugene, OR 97404 W:541-485-0203 Meredith Wood Smith 2211 N.E. 21st Ave. Portland, OR 97212 Mary Botkin 3215 S.E. Stark St. Portland, OR 97214 W:503-239-9858 Wayne Kinney Box 3273 LaGrande, OR 97850 PENNSYLVANIA * Hon. T.J. Rooney 510 N. 3rd St. Harrisburg, PA 17101 W:717-238-9381 Hon. Jean A. Milko 2934 McKelvey Rd. Pittsburgh, PA 15221 W:412-350-5334 Rena Baumgartner RR 4 Kunkletown, PA 18058 W:570-629-0471 Carol Ann Campbell 236 N. 59th St. Philadelphia, PA 19139 Hon. Ronald R. Donatucci 104 Queen St. Philadelphia, PA 19147 W:215-686-6250 William M. George 231 State St. Harrisburg, PA 17101 W:717-231-2841 Marcel Groen 1254 Lenox Rd. Jenkintown, PA 19046 W:215-299-2705 Hon. Sophie Masloff 6315 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15217 Ian Murray 3818 State St. Erie, PA 16508 Evelyn D. Richardson 6908 Kedron St. Pittsburgh, PA 15208 PUERTO RICO * Hon. Roberto L. Prats PMB 138 San Juan, PR 00901 W:787-721-8098 Luisette Cabanas MSC 602; Ste. 105 San Juan, PR 00927 Dr. Celita Arroyo de Roques Orquidea St., #62 San Juan, PR 00927 Hon. Kenneth McClintock Urb. Sabanera Cidra, PR 00793 W:787-722-4010 RHODE ISLAND * William J. Lynch 35 Pequot Rd. Pawtucket, RI 02861 W:401-351-7700 Edna O'Neill Mattson 74 Maplewood Dr. N. Kingstown, RI 02852 W:401-825-2391 Hon. Frank Montanaro 39 Weaver St. Cranston, RI 02920 W:401-272-6870 Hon. Eleanor Slater 159 Division St. East Greenwich, RI 02818 SOUTH CAROLINA * Joe Erwin Erwin-Penland, Inc. Greenville, SC 29601 W:864-271-0500 #Carol F. Khare PO Box 50627 Columbia, SC 29250 W:803-799-7550 #Hon. Gilda Cobb-Hunter 112 Estate Ct. Orangeburg, SC 29115 W:803-534-2448 Waring Howe Jr. 57 Broad St. Charleston, SC 29401 W:843-722-8269 SOUTH DAKOTA * Judy Olson R. Duhamel 1106 Hylane Dr. Rapid City, SD 57701 #Dennis Langley 13137 Thunderhead Falls Ln. Rapid City, SD 57702 W:913-962-9999 Hon. Nick Nemec 19757 327th Ave. Holabird, SD 57540 Sharon Stroschein 37302 143rd St. Mansfield, SD 57460 W:605-226-3440 TENNESSEE * Randy Button 1136 Brentwood Point Kingston, TN 37763 W:615-327-9779 Elisa Parker 1208 Carnton Ln. Franklin, TN 37064 W:615-371-2474 Will Cheek 712 Enquirer Ave. Nashville, TN 37205 Dr. Inez Crutchfield 3507 Geneva Cir. Nashville, TN 37209 Jimmie Farris 937 E. Riverwalk Memphis, TN 38120 Hon. William Owen 5233 Lance Dr. Knoxville, TN 37929 W:865-544-4220 TEXAS * Charles E. Soechting 701 Rio Grande Austin, TX 78701 W:512-478-9800 Gabrielle Hadnot 4316 Europa St. Houston, TX 77022 W:713-697-6732 Hon. Yvonne Davis PO Box 3727 Dallas, TX 75208 W:214-941-3895 Hon. Al Edwards 4913 1/2 Griggs Rd. Houston, TX 77021 W:713-741-8800 Norma Fisher Flores 7409 Lakehurst El Paso, TX 79912 W:915-581-7925 Jaime A. Gonzalez Jr. 817 E. Esperanza Ave. McAllen, TX 78501 W:956-664-0100 David Holmes 1781 Spyglass Dr. Austin, TX 78746 Sue Lovell 1802 W. Main Houston, TX 77098 John Patrick 413 Meadow Run Dr. Friendswood, TX 77546 W:713-450-3882 Betty Richie 1307 Roanoke Graham, TX 76450 #Bob Slagle 1601 Oakhill Sherman, TX 75092 W:903-893-1107 Senfronia Thompson 1301 Travis, #300 Houston, TX 77002 W:713-651-9353 UTAH * Donald K. Dunn 455 S. 300 E Salt Lake City, UT 84111 W:801-328-1212 Nancy Jane Woodside 1343 S. Slate Canyon Dr. Provo, UT 84606 W:801-356-0674 Helen Langan 1373 E. Chokecherry Dr. Bountiful, UT 84010 W:801-832-2682 Bill Orton 36 N. Wolcott St. SLC, UT 84103 W:801-531-6686 VERMONT * Hon. Scudder Parker PO Box 1102 Montpelier, VT 05601 W:802-223-4848 Allison Sultan 17 Roberts St. Montpelier, VT 05601 W:802-485-2308 Billi Gosh 477 Holman Drive Brookfield, VT 05036 Hon. Chuck Ross Jr. 394 Tyler Bridge Rd. Hinesburg, VT 05461 W:802-865-4407 VIRGIN ISLANDS * Hon. James A. O'Bryan Jr. PO Box 501 St. Thomas, VI 00804 W:340-693-4340 Carmen Gonzalez PO Box 4382 St. Croix, VI 00804 Maria "Chi-Chi" Heywood PO Box 7849 St. Croix, VI 00823 Derek Hodge PO Box 303678 St. Thomas, VI 00803 W:340-774-3971 VIRGINIA * Hon. Kerry Donley 609 N. Pickett St. Alexandria, VA 22304 W:703-531-2949 Jennifer L. McClellan 1722 Floyd Ave. Richmond, VA 23220 W:804-772-1512 Hon. Jerrauld C. Jones 506 Colonial Ave. Norfolk, VA 23507 W:804-371-0704 Daniel G. LeBlanc 3315 W. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23230 W:804-355-7444 #Mame Reiley 501 Slaters Ln. Alexandria, VA 22314 W:703-519-7984 #Susan Swecker 3327 W. Franklin St. Richmond, VA 23221 WASHINGTON * Paul Berendt PO Box 4027 Seattle, WA 98104 W:206-583-0664 #Ya-Yue J. Van 7268 Lakeside Woods Dr. Indianapolis, IN 46278 W:317-638-0244 Ed Cote 4608 Olive St. Vancouver, WA 98663 #Karen Marchioro 3408 116th Ave., NE Bellevue, WA 98004 W:425-827-6136 David T. McDonald Preston Gates & Ellis LLP Seattle, WA 98104 W:206-370-7957 Patricia Whitefoot PO Box 460 Wapato, WA 98952 W:509-454-3139 WEST VIRGINIA * G. Nick Casey, Jr. PO Box 1746 Charleston, WV 25326 W:304-345-2000 Emilie Holroyd 1438 Main St. Princeton, WV 24740 Jim Bowen 501 Leon Sullivan Way Charleston, WV 25301 W:304-344-3557 Marie L. Prezioso PO Box 5224 Charleston, WV 25361 W:304-345-3421 WISCONSIN *#Linda Honold 1633 N. Prospect Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53202 Tim Sullivan 424 S. Main St. Verona, WI 53593 Stan Gruszynski W3034 Twin Creek Rd Porterfield, W 54159 Jason Rae 112 Rueter Ave. Rice Lake, WI 54868 Melissa Schroeder 510 N. Genesee St. Marrill, WI 54452 W:715-842-5606 Paula Zellner 619 W. Richmond St. Shawano, WI 54166 WYOMING * Hon. Mike Gierau PO Box 2975 Jackson, WY 83001 Nancy Drummond 1427 Spaulding Sheridan, WY 82801 Hon. Pete Jorgensen PO Box 9550 Jackson, WY 83002 W:307-733-5150 Cynthia Nunley 864 N 4th St. Lander, WY 82520 MEMBERS-AT-LARGE Donald Afflick 2267 Virgil Pl. Bronx, NY 10473 W:212-815-1978 Mario Baeza 123 Hillside Ave. Englewood, NJ 07631 W:212-771-4147 Morton Bahr 2737 Devonshire Pl., NW Washington, DC 20008 W:202-434-1110 Willie Barrow 930 E. 50th St. Chicago, IL 60615 W:773-256-2741 Lu Battaglieri MEA E. Lansing, MI 48826 W:517-332-6551 Jeremy Bernard 1423 Carmonna Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90019 W:310-209-7279 Donna Brazile 1001 G St. NW Washington, DC 20001 Thomas Buffenbarger 3200 Goldmine Rd. Brookeville, MD 20833 W:301-967-4502 Anna Burger 1313 L St., NW Washington, DC 20005 W:202-898-3303 Mary Eva Candon 2122 California St., NW Washington, DC 20008 W:202-222-0555 Yolanda Caraway 1054 31st St., NW Washington, DC 20007 W:202-965-2810 Joseph Cari Jr. 31st National Plaza Chicago, IL 60602 W:312-977-4470 Joe Carmichael 901 St. Louis St. Springfield, MO 65806 W:417-864-8000 #Alvaro Cifuentes 601 13th St., NW Washington, DC 20005 W:202-879-5819 Hon. Cardiss Collins 1110 Roundhouse Ln. Alexandria, VA 22314 Hon. Elijah Cummings 1632 Longworth House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-4741 Hon. Lois M. DeBerry 15 Legislative Plaza Nashville, TN 37243 W:615-741-3830 Hon. Inez Dickens 2153 7th Ave. New York, NY 10027 W:212-749-2580 #Barbara Easterling 6101 Edsall Rd. Alexandria, VA 22304 W:202-434-1410 #Maria Echaveste 1801 K St., NW Washington, DC 20006 Joel Ferguson 1223 Turner St. Lansing, MI 48906 W:517-371-2515 Hartina Flournoy 1517 30th St., NW Washington, DC 20007 W:202-393-6334 Patricia Ford 1313 L St., NW Washington, DC 20005 W:202-659-4929 Donald L. Fowler PO Box 50627 Columbia, SC 29250 W:803-799-7550 John Gage AFGE - 80 F St., NW Washington, DC 20001 W:202-639-6455 Nely Galan Galan Entertainment Venice, CA 90291 W:310-823-2822 Maria Garcia 689 N. Ohio Aurora, IL 60505 #Hon. Yvonne A. Gates 500 S. Grand Central Pkwy. Las Vegas, NV 89155 W:702-455-0855 Janice Griffin 2201 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA 22201 W:703-469-1917 Hon. Alexis Herman 1933 H St., NW Washington, DC 20005 W:202-833-8800 Hon. Mike Honda 503 Cannon House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-2631 #Harold Ickes The Ickes & Enright Group Washington, DC 20036 W:202-887-6726 DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS' ASSOCIATION *#Hon. Tom Vilsack Office of the Governor Des Moines, IA 50319 W:515-281-5211 #Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson 1511 Longworth House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-8885 #Hon. Harvey Johnson Jr. PO Box 17 Jackson, MS 39205 W:601-960-1084 Ben Johnson 501 Oneida Pl., NW Washington, DC 20011 W:202-973-5899 Dr. Elaine C. Kamarck 1230 Park Ave. New York, NY 10128 W:617-495-9002 Hon. Ron Kirk Gardere Wynne Sewell Dallas, TX 75201 W:214-999-4170 #Frank LaMere 600 Pioneer Pl. S. Sioux City, NE 68776 W:402-494-6266 Weldon H. Latham 2099 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-663-7252 Miguel D. Lausell Esq. 3050 K St., NW Washington 20007 W:202-295-5057 Belkis (Bel) Leong-Hong 1 Bayswater Ct. Gaithersburg, MD 20878 W:301-948-1682 #Leon Lynch USWA Pittsburgh, PA 15222 W:412-562-2307 #Hon. Ramona Martinez 10064 W. Vassar Pl. Denver, CO 80227 W:303-618-7263 Edward J. McElroy 555 New Jersey Ave., NW Washington, DC 20001 W:202-393-6303 Gerald McEntee 1625 L St., NW Washington, DC 20036 W:202-429-1100 Richard P. Michalski 9000 Machinists Pl. Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 W:301-967-4575 Mona Mohib 2301 Cathedral Ave., NW Washington, DC 20008 W:202-638-3730 #Minyon Moore Dewey Square Group Washington, DC 20001 W:202-638-5616 Mary Jo Neville 4310 Oakwood Landing Ct. Dayton, MD 21036 W:410-263-6600 Gloria Nieto 1451 Santa Cruz Dr. Santa Fe, NM 87505 W:505-474-7602 Mona Pasquil PO Box 382 Walnut Grove, CA 95690 W:916-567-2945 R. Scott Pastrick 1801 K St., NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-530-0500 Carol Pensky 4821 W St., NW Washington, DC 20007 W:202-625-0125 Gail Rasmussen PO Box 61 Eagle Point, OR 97524 W:541-830-6396 Lula Rodriguez 177 Ocean Lane Dr. Key Biscayne, FL 33149 W:305-347-1659 #James Roosevelt Jr. 14 Meadow Way Cambridge, MA 02138 W:781-466-8564 Mirian Saez 6208 32nd Pl., NW Washington, DC 20015 Patricia A. Scarcelli 240 E. 10th St. N. Wildwood, NJ 08260 Bernice Scott 1748 Poultry Ln. Gadsen, SC 29052 W:803-256-4000 Richard Shoemaker International Union, UAW Detroit, MI 48214 W:313-926-5304 #Elizabeth M. Smith 555 New Jersey Ave., NW Washington, DC 20001 W:202-879-4436 Edward M. Smith 1 N. Old State Capitol Plaza Springfield, IL 62701 W:217-522-3381 Alan Solomont One Gateway Ctr. Newton, MA 02458 W:617-630-8081 #Jeffrey B. Soref 7 Gramercy Pk., W New York, NY 10003 W:212-473-1060 #Marianne C. Spraggins 2500 Peachtree Rd. Atlanta, GA 30305 W:917-513-3057 Michael Steed 2001 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-595-2960 John J. Sweeney 815 16th St., NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-637-5221 Norma Torres 501 Brookside Ln. Pomona, CA 91767 W:909-620-2082 Dr. C. Delores Tucker 8484 Georgia Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20910 W:301-562-8000 Hon. Antonio Villaraigosa 2004 Colorado Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90041 W:213-485-3335 #Vernon R. Watkins 1625 L St., NW Washington, DC 20036 W:202-429-1124 Hon. Diane Watson 125 Cannon House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-7084 Mark S. Weiner 1 Weingeroff Blvd. Cranston, RI 02910 W:401-467-3170 Randi Weingarten United Federation of Teachers New York, NY 10004 W:212-598-9215 #Dr. James J. Zogby 6319 Western Ave. Washington, DC 20015 W:202-429-9210 Hon. Gary Locke Office of the Governor Olympia, WA 98504 W:360-902-4111 Bill Richardson Office of the Governor Santa Fe, NM 87501 W:505-476-2200 CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES *#Hon. Thomas A. Daschle S-221 Washington, DC 20510 W:202-224-2321 *#Hon. Nancy Pelosi 2371 Rayburn House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515 W:202-225-0100 Hon. John Breaux 503 Hart Senate Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20510 W:202-224-4623 Hon. Maxine Waters 10124 S. Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90003 W:323-757-8900 NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF DEMOCRATIC MAYORS *#Hon. Douglas H. Palmer City of Trenton Trenton, NJ 08608 W:609-989-3030 Hon. Jane Campbell Cleveland City Hall Cleveland, OH 44114 W:216-664-3990 Hon. Kwame Kilpatrick City of Detroit - Executive Office Detroit, MI 48226 W:313-224-3465 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DEMOCRATIC LIEUTENANT GOVERNORS * Hon. Sally Pederson Governor's Office Des Moines, IA 50319 W:515-281-5211 Hon. Charles Fogarty PO Box 12 Harmony, RI 02829 W:401-222-2371 DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION OF SECRETARIES OF STATE Hon. Chet Culver Secretary of State Des Moines, IA 50319 W:515-281-8993 Hon. Deb Markowitz Secretary of State Montpelier, VT 05609 W:802-828-2148 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DEMOCRATIC STATE TREASURERS * Hon. Michael L. Fitzgerald State Capitol Bldg. Des Moines, IA 50319 W:515-281-5368 Hon. Dale McCormick State Treasurer's Office Augusta, ME 04330 W:207-624-7477 DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATIVE CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE *#Hon. Thomas "Mike" V. Miller Jr. PO Box 219 Clinton, MD 20735 W:410-841-3700 Hon. Kate Brown PO Box 5271 Portland, OR 97208 W:503-963-9611 Hon. Kevin Murray State Capitol Sacramento, CA 95814 W:916-445-8800 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC COUNTY OFFICIALS *#Hon. Ron Sims King County Courthouse Seattle, WA 98104 W:206-296-4054 Hon. Christina Montague 1245 Island Dr. Ann Arbor, MI 48105 W:734-434-4611 Hon. Oscar Soliz Clerk Nueces Cnty. Corpus Christi, TX 78413 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS CONFERENCE *#Hon. Carroll G. Robinson 3401 Prospect Houston, TX 77004 W:713-313-6848 Hon. Joycelyn V. Johnson 2426 Edison Ct. Winston-Salem, NC 27101 W:336-727-2224 Hon. Myron Lowery City of Memphis Memphis, TN 38103 W:901-576-6786 NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DEMOCRATIC WOMEN Barbara Mansfield PO Box 72 Bastrop, LA 71221 Virgie Rollins 19432 Burlington Dr. Detroit, MI 48203 Hon. Ruth C. Rudy 179 Rudy Ln. Centre Hall, PA 16828 COLLEGE DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA * Grant Woodard 930 Burns St. Stratford, IA 50249 W:515-249-2026 LaToia Jones 1093 West Avenue 317 Atlanta, GA 30315 YOUNG DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA *#Chris Gallaway 7512 Snowpea Ct. Alexandria, VA 22306 Clinton Bench 12 Boynton St. Swampscott, MA 01907 W:617-973-8853 Alexis Tameron 1059 S. Miller Mesa, AZ 85204 W:602-300-5823 DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION OF ATTORNEYS GENERAL #Hon. Patricia A. Madrid 6701 Los Trechos, NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 W:505-827-6000 Hon. Tom Miller 1305 E. Walnut St. Des Moines, IA 50319 W:515-281-5164 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ETHNIC COORDINATING COMMITTEE Martin Dunleavy 218 4th St., SE Washington, DC 20003 W:202-393-4449 Christine Warnke Hogan & Hartson Washington, DC 20004 W:202-637-5645 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC SENIORS COORDINATING COUNCIL Dr. Eugene Callendar 325 W. 86th St. New York, NY 10024 Maria Cordone IAM Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 W:301-967-4500 MEMBER AT-LARGE EMERITUS Evelyn Dubrow 888 16th St., NW Washington, DC 20006 W:202-347-7417 SECRETARY EMERITUS Kathleen M. Vick 430 S. Capitol St., SE Washington, DC 20003 W:202-479-5140



Compiled by the Office of the Secretary

Office of the Secretary

Alice Travis Germond, Secretary Compiled by the Office of the SecretaryOffice of the SecretaryAlice Travis Germond, Secretary

Gay Smoking Ban Here in New York, we're hoping to impose a gay smoking ban.



Gay smoking is a threat to the institution of smoking.

Howard Dean for DNC Chair One reason to support Howard Dean for DNC Chair is the fine language put forward in support of him at DraftHoward.com



Across the country our candidates failed to make the case for the Democratic Party.



The Republicans and media elites who manufacture conventional wisdom diagnose our problems for us: we’re wrong on the issues, they say, and we’re on the wrong side of what they call culture. They are wrong.



Our first problem is message. We let Republicans define the debate. They run on guns, God and gays—and instead of standing up for our values we try to excuse their extremism. We move further and further to the right and we fear standing up against what we know to be wrong. We compromise our values for the sake of victory and wind up with neither integrity nor victory.



He has an even more important virtue, which is that he's willing to run politics openly. But what they say is true too. He has an even more important virtue, which is that he's willing to run politics openly. But what they say is true too.

Wrong-wing Media and Relgion

Media allowed conservative religious leaders to define "moral values"



In five days following election, conservative religious figures made 15 media appearances to progressive religious leaders' five [on the tv networks].



This is particularly hurtful, I think because the wrongness of it runs even deeper than usual. Not only do the media claim to be following a standard of fairness, but this is a moral matter. Nothing about the standard allows that when religious leaders are consulted about moral values 3 Republicans should be consulted for every Democrat.



Falwell compared Kerry's unwillingness to oppose gay marriage through an amendment to the U.S. constitution to the unwillingness of many to strongly oppose slavery in the mid-19th century: "the fact that he [Kerry] would not support a federal marriage amendment, it equates in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one or two that's OK. We don't buy that."

This is particularly hurtful, I think because the wrongness of it runs even deeper than usual. Not only do the media claim to be following a standard of fairness, but this is a moral matter. Nothing about the standard allows that when religious leaders are consulted about moral values 3 Republicans should be consulted for every Democrat. Mediamatters has more, and you can contact CNN MSNBC , or any of the others.

Corporations Buy Republican Politicians Politicalmonkeyline has the latest goods on corporate buy-offs of politicians, and the survey says.......Republicans. Of corporate PACs giving more than $100,000 this cycle, 245/268 (91%) gave most of that money to Republicans. ExxonMobil, for example, gave 96% of their money to Republicans. Wendy's, for another, gave 93% to Republicans. (They'd love to hear your (polite) comments.) Halliburton is not far behind.



Followed by J.C. Penney, ChevronTexaco, Ford, and (get out the hankies) Home Depot. Home Depot! But they sell such loving products.

From Nepal

Reform Democrats are Fighting Democrats Kid Oakland of the Kososphere (and, one presumes, Oakland) offers this vision of reform Democrats:



When we look out to the broad playing field of Democrats, in the short term, the single most important characteristic to judge someone on is whether they will fight for our party and help us retake legislative majorities in the legislatures of this nation by fighting for our constituencies.



I don't care if you're liberal or progressive, and vote for everything I support...if you can't get out there, stick your neck out and pitch in to our common fight, then, sad to say, we don't need you.



What does this mean in pragmatic terms? Well, for one, it means that in 2005 we are going to have to come up with a set of judgements about how our candidates are doing....and be prepared to run primary challenges in 2006 against those who are simply "phoning it in."



Phone-it-in Democrats no longer cut it, and need to be told so...and that is the dominant message the activist wing of the party needs to send. (not ideological purity...not litmus test issues...not "we can help you with the internet"...fight in spirit and in deeds is our demand.



Something is Broken with the Red State Idea To wit: there are too many states where Republican Presidential candidates win by big margins, but the results in the state houses, governors' mansions, and even the US House and Senate don't correspond. Why did Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in Montana -- and Gore by 25 -- yet in Montana the Governor and one of the Senators are Democrats, as are a majority in the upper state house and 50/100 in the lower state house?



I've always taken this as a puzzle, but it's a big enough discrepancy that we have to face the fact that there is an answer, and we have to set ourselves the gola of finding it. Perhaps it's because retail politics plays a significantly bigger role at the state level? Perhaps the cheap, seedy divisive messages that Republican Presidential candidates use count on distance for their division (e.g. the Massachusetts librul attack)? Perhaps state candidates use a different message? Perhaps Dems problem is entirely due to how they message foreign policy?



As a politically aware Democrat who has lived only in large, Blue states, and whose friends are all solid Democrats, I have no idea. Presumably it involves the way that those undecided voters think about politics. But someone needs to figure this out.



Because this is the sort of problem that dominates the Democrats' ability to lose Presidential elections that they should be winning by 20 points: everything we don't understand about how we get our votes, we have to figure out. Right down to understanding the individual thought processes of individual voters in the 50 states. Right down to understanding how the things we say modify the attitudes of each American. The Dems are a coalition, and they're a much smaller coalition than they should be.



[Updated.]



After reading this, Rocky offered the plausible idea that the difference is due to the right-wing media. First, in the presidential race, Fox and the far-right media are there to shill for the Republican non-stop; they're too busy and important to shill for governors. Less idealogical outlets such as CNN provide a different problem to the presidential race. Because they are obsessed with the partisan bickering narrative, in which conflicts are always been the defined left and right (and because he-said-she-said journalism, which they refer to as 'objectivity', and which guides everything they do, says that there are two sides to every story and those two sides are the right and the left) they tar presidential politics politics with the brush of right-wing bias, and their coverage alone, according to this theory, is enough to skew Montana 20 points to the right. But since the national media only cover national candidates, state-level candidates escape relatively unscathed. Obviously there is local press, but it covers different issues -- more pork, less foreign policy -- and perhaps the inherent right-wing bias that the press has is less felt in local coverage.

Bush Orders 50% Increase in Number of CIA Analysts A fascinating development (audio) because it indicates either



(a) that he gets it, despite the fact that there is another closely related thing that he doesn't get (the fact that demanding political loyalty from fact-finding analysts harms our nation)



(b) fanfare about a soon-to-be-unfunded mandate



History tells us it will be the latter (remember the SEC?) but I am fascinated anyway, much like the liberal guppies in the right-wing media will be.



Oh wait, this just in: the directive comes with no new money, and no time-line. History tells us it will be the latter (remember the SEC?) but I am fascinated anyway, much like the liberal guppies in the right-wing media will be.Oh wait, this just in: the directive comes with no new money,

Right-wing Bias in New York Times Coverage of the "Istook Amendment" More right-wing lies from the New York Times.



David E. Rosenbaum failed to verify claims made by people he quoted and omitted key pieces of information relevant to the story, including the exact language of the clause in question. While Rosenbaum filled in some additional details in a follow-up article on the subject published on November 23, he ignored contradictions between the two stories and failed to point out that an unverified claim made by a Republican committee staff member he quoted the previous day was, in fact, false.



has more details. Mediamatters has more details.

Verizon Fights to Keep Wireless Away from You Mediachannel has the story



The reality today is that we live in an era where large corporations work hand-in-hand with lobbyists and compliant legislators to stifle any technology that returns control of our media system to the public.



The latest evidence lies hidden within a Bill en route to the desk of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. House Bill 30 -- an industry-drafted and inspired sprawl of corporate concessions -- has tucked within its more than 70 pages an amendment that effectively kills efforts in Philadelphia to provide citywide wireless access at little or no charge.



The bill cleared both Pennsylvania's House and Senate on Friday. A signature from Governor Rendell would scuttle "Philadelphia Wireless" -- an ambitious plan to build a Wi-Fi network to serve the city's working-class communities -- before the project could begin.

...

The industry pulls considerable weight in Washington -- spending more than $160 million since 1999 on efforts to woo legislators and win support for policies that effectively hand over publicly owned media assets, such as our airwaves, to private control. Industry lobbyists have also spread out across the country to uproot local competition and defend big media interests town to town.



Ring-wing Bias in The New York Times The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy, by Howard Friel and Richard Falk, has just been released. From the publisher:



In this meticulously researched study—the first part of a two-volume work—Howard Friel and Richard Falk demonstrate how the newspaper of record in the United States has consistently, over the last 50 years, misreported the facts related to the wars waged by the United States. From Vietnam in the 1960s to Nicaragua in the 1980s and Iraq today, the authors accuse the New York Times of serial distortions. They claim that such coverage now threatens not only world legal order but constitutional democracy in the United States.



Falk and Friel show that, despite numerous US threats to invade Iraq, and despite the fact that an invasion of one country by another implicates fundamental aspects of the UN Charter and international law, the New York Times editorial page never mentioned the words “UN Charter” or “international law” in any of its 70 editorials on Iraq from September 11, 2001, to March 20, 2003. The authors also show that the editorial page supported the Bush administration’s WMD claims against Iraq, and that its magazine, op-ed and news pages performed just as poorly.



In conclusion the authors suggest an alternative editorial policy of “strict scrutiny” that incorporates the UN Charter and the US Constitution in the Times coverage of the use and threat of force by the United States and the protection of civil and human rights at home and abroad.



Richard Falk, you may remember, played Columbo on TV.

Richard Falk, you may remember, played Columbo on TV.

Disclaimer Stickers for Science Textbooks

DeLay Rule Media Matters is going apeshit over the DeLay rule. I'm off to their site to send a few emails.

Prosecuter Ronnie Earle on The DeLay Rule The New York Times does a bit of its job, as usual on page 27.



Ronnie Earle is investiating Tom DeLay and his office for what appear to be illegal fundraising activities. DeLay, as you know, is the House leader of the Republicans, who are the party of personal responsibility. I mean, you know, in, um, the lies that they tell. That The Times prints on page.....1. Back here on page 27, Earle's Op-ed:



Politicians in Congress are responsible for the leaders they choose. Their choices reflect their moral values.



Every law enforcement officer depends on the moral values and integrity of society for backup; they are like body armor. The cynical destruction of moral values at the top makes it hard for law enforcement to do its job.



In terms of moral values, this is where the rubber meets the road. The rules you apply to yourself are the true test of your moral values.



The thinly veiled personal attacks on me by Mr. DeLay's supporters in this case are no different from those in the cases of any of the 15 elected officials this office has prosecuted in my 27-year tenure. Most of these officials - 12 Democrats and three Republicans - have accused me of having political motives. What else are they going to say?



For most of my tenure the Democrats held the power in state government. Now Republicans do. Most crimes by elected officials involve the abuse of power; you have to have power before you can abuse it.



There is no limit to what you can do if you have the power to change the rules. Congress may make its own rules, but the public makes the rule of law, and depends for its peace on the enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy at the highest levels of government is toxic to the moral fiber that holds our communities together.



The open contempt for moral values by our elected officials has a corrosive effect. It is a sad day for law enforcement when Congress offers such poor leadership on moral values and ethical behavior. We are a moral people, and the first lesson of democracy is not to hold the public in contempt.



Ed Helms live from Iran What will pass for election campaigning in the upcoming Iraqi election? "Assassinations and kidnappings -- or as they call it in Iraq, 'Going negative.' "

Clinton Talks Back to the Right-wing Media For those of you who thought ABCNews wasn't right-wing, this just in from Eric Boehlert at Salon.



But Clinton flashed real irritation when Jennings suggested some historians thought that Clinton's presidency had lacked "moral authority," without mentioning its having been tarnished by independent counsel Kenneth Starr's multiple investigations.



"You don't want to go here, Peter," snapped Clinton, who proceeded to criticize the reporting of ABC News, in particular, in the 1990s. "Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked.

...

A number of independent observers judge [ABC's stories about Whitewatever, by reporter Jackie Judd and producer Chris Vlasto] to have failed journalistic standards. Some have even suggested that Vlasto took on a unique role as a kind of unofficial advisor to the Starr legal team as he worked behind the scenes and confronted fellow journalists who did not hew to Starr's line.

...

other scoops from unnamed "sources" did not stand up. On Jan. 25, 1998, Judd appeared on ABC's "This Week" and reported, "Several sources have told us that in the spring of 1996, the president and Lewinsky were caught in an intimate encounter in a private area of the White House." The revelation set off a month's worth of cable TV chatter, but the report that Clinton and Lewinsky were found out proved to be fictitious.



The Los Angeles Times later reported, "Judd did not say who her sources were, how many sources she had or what the sources' affiliations or allegiances were. She had not spoken to the alleged eyewitness herself and didn't know who the eyewitness was or even, as she conceded on the air, whether the alleged witness was a Secret Service agent or a member of the White House staff."



Although Vlasto was covering the Whitewater story on an ongoing basis for ABC, he took the unusual step in April 1996 of writing a conspiracy-minded Op-Ed for a competing news outlet -- the right-wing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. The column, which opened with key Whitewater figure Susan McDougal telling Vlasto off the record, "I know where all the bodies are buried" (a claim McDougal denies ever making), ran the same day McDougal appeared before a Little Rock, Ark., grand jury to answer Whitewater questions or face a criminal contempt indictment. Starr's prosecutors entered Vlasto's column as evidence to bolster their assertion that she was withholding information.



There's plenty more.

DNC Chair: Rosenberg From No Retreat, No Surrender:



For the first time in modern history, we have the potential to build a party free from the special interest strangehold that has corrupted our government and alienated people from the political process.



During this election cycle ordinary people became the biggest special interest. The next leader of our party needs to expand that base and solidify that support.



Howard Dean led the way and made the new model work. But Simon says he wants to take us back to the bad old days.



An Anthropologist Among the Undecided Voters From the New Replublic. Christopher Hayes's anecdotal observations from seven weeks talking to swing voters in Wisconson. These are highly recommended.



Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn't have much luck.



Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don't enjoy politics. Political junkies tend to assume that undecided voters are undecided because they don't care enough to make up their minds. But while I found that most undecided voters are, as one Kerry aide put it to The New York Times, "relatively low-information, relatively disengaged," the lack of engagement wasn't a sign that they didn't care. After all, if they truly didn't care, they wouldn't have been planning to vote. The undecided voters I talked to did care about politics, or at least judged it to be important; they just didn't enjoy politics.



The mere fact that you're reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.



A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists....When I mentioned the "mess in Iraq" he lit up. "We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil," he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: "I mean we should have dominated the place; that's the only thing these people understand. ... Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats."

...

While Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with.



I particularly enjoyed his observations on the importance (none) of using issues to win undecided votes:



Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." ... More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number....The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them....The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December. [Which, by the way, he has done, not by being elected, but through his personal relationship with God.]



To cite one example: I had a conversation with an undecided truck driver who was despondent because he had just hit a woman's car after having worked a week straight. He didn't think the accident was his fault and he was angry about being sued. "There's too many lawsuits these days," he told me. I was set to have to rebut a "tort reform" argument, but it never came. Even though there was a ready-made connection between what was happening in his life and a campaign issue, he never made the leap. I asked him about the company he worked for and whether it would cover his legal expenses; he said he didn't think so. I asked him if he was unionized and he said no. "The last job was unionized," he said. "They would have covered my expenses." I tried to steer him towards a political discussion about how Kerry would stand up for workers' rights and protect unions, but it never got anywhere. He didn't seem to think there was any connection between politics and whether his company would cover his legal costs. Had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of tort reform, it might have benefited Bush; had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of labor rights, it might have benefited Kerry. He made neither, and remained undecided.



In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values--we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?



Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues--a familiarity that may not exist.



As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon "issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary--of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.



Christopher Hayes is a freelance writer living in Chicago.



[And spending far more time collecting data than I would have wanted to. Thank you, Christopher.] I particularly enjoyed his observations on the importance (none) of using issues to win undecided votes:

The Cabinet of Yes Men Fox's Brit Hume v. Juan Williams



WILLIAMS: No, no, the arrogance, the overreaching is you have a cadre of people who all agree with you about everything.



WALLACE: But they're his Cabinet.



WILLIAMS: No, they're his Cabinet, and therefore they're supposed to be smart, thoughtful people who know a great deal about their area of expertise. Instead, you have people who --



HUME: Wait a minute. What makes you think those people don't know about the area? Do you say that Condoleezza Rice doesn't know foreign policy?



Well, somebody needs to say it.



Why might one think that a Sovietologist was suitable for a high post in this government?



Bush may live in a September 10th world, but his Secretary of State is straight from 1977. Well, somebody needs to say it.Why might one think that awas suitable for a high post in this government?Bush may live in a September 10th world, but his Secretary of State is straight from 1977.