You give the netroots an inch, they take the whole party. In response to John Kerry blasting Joe Lieberman on This Week with George Stephanopoulos (in a transparent — and successful — attempt to appeal to the netroots), a Kos contributor writes in a post on the homepage: “Let’s hope all 2008 hopefuls jump on the bandwagon and begin to realize that cutting Joe off is one non-negotiable requirement to nomination.”

Mark my words, the temper tantrums and “non-negotiable requirements” of the Kos wing of the Democratic Party will, if they are adhered to, send the 2008 nominee down to a crushing defeat faster than you can say “Walter Mondale.” I realize that a majority of the country is against the war in Iraq, but it isn’t just about Iraq, it’s about a whole radical mindset that infects the far left which is now flexing its muscles and trying to assert total dominance over the party. The biggest mistake the Kos Kidz can make — and are now making — is to believe that because 60% or whatever of the public is now antiwar, that means 60% of the public is on the left-wing bandwagon. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more the true colors of the lefties are exposed — particularly their cynical, conspiratorial view of the war on terror, the American government, and politics and society in general — the more moderates will decide that the Republicans are the less scary of the two evils.

Oh, no you didn’t!

Democrats shook up tradition on Saturday by vaulting Nevada and South Carolina into the first wave of 2008 presidential contests along with Iowa and New Hampshire - a move intended to add racial and geographic diversity to the early voting.

The decision by the Democratic National Committee leaves Iowa as the nation’s first presidential caucus and New Hampshire as the first primary, but wedges Nevada’s caucuses before New Hampshire and South Carolina’s primary soon afterward.

To which the New Hampshirians reply: This means war! “The DNC did not give New Hampshire its primary, and it is not taking it away,” said the Granite State’s governor, John Lynch.

New Hampshire objected loudly to the lineup and has threatened to leapfrog over the other contests to retain its pre-eminent role.

The plot thickens!

Eager to avoid such a rebellion, Democrats also adopted sanctions to penalize presidential candidates who campaign in states that cut in line.

How? By denying them delegates from those states! More here:

The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to penalize 2008 presidential candidates who defied a new nominating calendar devised to lessen the longtime influence of New Hampshire and Iowa, the two states that have traditionally kicked off the nominating process.

The sanctions will be directed at candidates who campaign in any state that refuses to follow a 2008 calendar of primaries and caucuses that was also approved Saturday. Any candidate who campaigns in a state that does not abide by the new calendar will be stripped at the party convention of delegates won in that state.

That’s a clever idea, but it isn’t going to work:

Despite the vote, the fighting over the calendar may not be over. … Several Democrats said candidates might make the calculation that it is worth losing delegates — assuming New Hampshire defies the party and the party penalizes candidates — to get the attention that might come from an early New Hampshire victory.

I think that calculation would most definitely be correct, so much so that it’s completely obvious, so obvious that everyone will make it and this whole thing will fail utterly.

Because of the way the media covers the primaries, and because the public doesn’t really understand how the system works, delegates don’t really matter in the early weeks of the campaign; momentum matters. And a New Hampshire victory, even if it results in zero delegates, means lots of momentum — and the best way to achieve a New Hampshire victory might be to take a “bold” stand against this DNC decision, as John Kerry, John Edwards and Evan Bayh are already doing. Which is why every single candidate will ultimately take the same “bold stand,” which is why this attempt by the DNC to change the rules of the game is basically doomed to fail. New Hampshire still holds all the cards, delegates or no. (And really, if every single candidate campaigns in New Hampshire — which they will — is the DNC seriously going to follow through on its threat to strip ALL of the candidates of their New Hampshire delegates, thus demoting the nation’s most famous primary to a D.C.-style delegate-less primary, and earning the everlasting ire of Granite State residents? I think not.)

P.S. DNC chairman Howard Dean is from Vermont — New Hampshire’s neighbor to the west. New Hampshire and Vermont do not always get along. This will get ugly fast.

Michael Barone ponders a McCain-Lieberman ticket, which he thinks would win the 2008 election going away. Though he’s envisioning it as a Republican ticket, not a third-party ticket. Hat tip: InstaPundit, who says of the hypothetical pairing, “I’m not sure how I feel about that — they’re both nanny-staters with whom I’m deeply uncomfortable, but at least they’re sensible on defense.”

[UPDATE: InstaPundit is running a poll: McCain-Lieberman or Giuliani-Romney? The latter is winning in a landslide so far, but only 239 votes have been cast.]

In other Lieberman-related news, Joe is leading Ned 46% to 41% in the first post-primary poll of general-election voters. A poster at Daily Kos implausibly asserts that “we have to consider” 41% to be Lamont’s “floor” and 46% to be Lieberman’s “ceiling.” Umm, wishful thinking much? Yes, it’s possible that Lieberman’s numbers will go down because Schlesinger’s will go up from 6%, and yes, it’s possible that Lamont’s numbers will go up as voters become more familiar with him. It’s also possible that Lamont’s numbers will go down as voters become more familiar with him, and Lieberman’s numbers will go up as Lamont increasingly reveals himself to be, in Dean Barnett’s words, an “empty suit.” To claim that the result of this race is somehow pre-ordained is just silly.

Mickey Kaus ponders something that I too have pondered:

So if Lieberman wins as an independent, and the Democrats pick up six seats in November, doesn’t that mean Lieberman gets to decide which party controls the Senate? And if so, do the Democrats really want to take Kos’ advice and piss him off? Just asking!

Lieberman says he’s running as an “independent Democrat” and has pledged to organize with the Dems. I don’t believe he will change his tune on that — and he certainly wouldn’t do so for petty personal reasons, or in response to psuedo-bribes from the Republicans; Joe is better than that — but I would absolutely love to see Lieberman as the 51st member of a Democratic majority, because although he wouldn’t actually jump ship, just the threat that he might do so would make him a very powerful man in Washington. Not only that, but on individual votes, he certainly wouldn’t have any reason to be beholden to the Democratic leadership, and could frequently be a “decider,” as Dubya would say. And of course, last but not least, the whole thing would make Kos look dumb, which is always a positive in my book.

In other Joe-related news… as Dane mentioned earlier, the New York Times’s David Brooks published a provocative — and, alas, subscription-only — column today in which he argued that there is a subsurface “McCain-Lieberman Party” lurking beneath the bipolar, red-blue veneer of American politics, just waiting for its opportunity to cast off the surly bonds of partisanship and touch the face of Joementum… or something like that.

Apparently Brooks has been reading my blog, considering I’ve been talking about “McCain-Lieberman” incessantly since Tuesday. (E.g., here, here, here, here and here.) Or, uh, maybe he and I, and about a gazillion other people, all had the same freakin’ obvious idea at the same time. (Again I quote Casey: “Man, at this point the Lieberman-McCain ticket is like those two friends from school who have been eyeing each other all year and just seriously need to knock boots. Do it for America, John and Joe. Make some fruity purple babies and fix the freaking country already.” Heh.)

But unlike Casey and me, Brooks isn’t talking about McCain-Lieberman ticket, per se. Rather, he’s holding up John and Joe more as symbolic representatives of an idea whose time has come. And, contra Andrew, he think it’s an idea that just might work. But just what is the idea? Here’s an excerpt:

The McCain-Lieberman Party begins with a rejection of the Sunni-Shiite style of politics itself. It rejects those whose emotional attachment to their party is so all-consuming it becomes a form of tribalism, and who believe the only way to get American voters to respond is through aggression and stridency.

The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess.

But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people.

The McCain-Lieberman Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and that more people want to vote for civility than for venom.

On policy grounds, too, the McCain-Lieberman Party is distinct. On foreign policy, it agrees with Tony Blair (who could not win a Democratic primary in the U.S. today): The civilized world faces an arc of Islamic extremism that was not caused by American overreaction, and that will only get stronger if America withdraws.

On fiscal policy, the McCain-Lieberman Party sees a Republican Party that will not raise taxes and a Democratic Party that will not cut benefits, and understands that to avoid bankruptcy the country must do both.

On globalization, the McCain-Lieberman Party believes that free trade reduces poverty but that government must invest in human capital so people can compete. It believes in comprehensive immigration reform.

The McCain-Lieberman Party sees Democrats in the grip of teachers’ unions and Republicans who let corporations write environmental rules. It sees two parties that depend on the culture war for internal cohesion and that make abortion a litmus test.

Hey, I could join that party! Read the whole thing, if you can. (Hint, for those of you with free Lexis-Nexis accounts… it’s on there.)

Unfortunately The NYT is annoying with their NYT select thing but here is the link anyway. If you get the paper version, or can abscond with it from a co-workers desk, it is David Brooks Party no.3. Brooks is one of those people that I rarely agree with, but almost always find what he has to say interesting. Today I mostly agree with what he has to say about politics in America. He has struck a cord with present political reality. I also found it interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with all the proper noun choices he made. But the idea, and that’s the thing really, is remarkably astute and important. I do plan to write more on this topic later; but I shall leave at this for now.

Austin Bay jumps on the McCain-Lieberman ‘08 bandwagon. I’d prefer Lieberman-McCain, of course, but realistically, Austin’s suggestion is the far more likely one. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) My brother-in-law Casey is also on board:

Man, at this point the Lieberman-McCain ticket is like those two friends from school who have been eyeing each other all year and just seriously need to knock boots.

Do it for America, John and Joe. Make some fruity purple babies and fix the freaking country already.

Heh.

It’s a longshot, I know. But as I wrote yesterday, Lieberman’s “concession” speech really did sound, in parts, like the opening salvo of a third-party movement. He talked about a “new politics of unity and purpose.” Sign me up, Joe! If yesterday’s result is the event that ultimately triggers the formation of a principled centrist party, I will kiss Kos’s and Ned Lamont’s feet.

Via Drudge:

On a congressional trip to Estonia, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest!

Delighted, the leader of the overseas delegation, Sen. John McCain, quickly agreed, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Saturday.

The after-dinner game went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much. McCain later told people how unexpectedly fun he found Hillary to be. …

“One of the guys,” is the way McCain describes her.

Heh. The article will apparently be on the front page of tomorrow’s Times. It’s not just about the drinking game, of course, but about the broader issue of how “Clinton and McCain have developed an amiable relationship”:

[T]he interplay between the two senators — both celebrities, both self-styled centrists, both with compelling personal narratives and a knack for infuriating their own parties’ bases — remains intriguing as they navigate the early phase of a presidential race with an eye toward conceivably running against one another.

This is something that’s been floating around in my head for the past few days… I’ll express it in SAT-style analogy form…

John Kerry’s recent conversion to one of the most extreme anti-war politicians in mainstream Democratic politics : offensively blatant pandering to the Antiwar Left ::
George W. Bush’s biennial pre-election promotion of an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment : offensively blatant pandering to the Religious Right

Seriously, as much as I disagree with both positions — Kerry’s anti-war position and Bush’s anti-gay-marriage position — I’m pretty sure I would be even more offended by these guys’ transparent political posturing if I agreed with them. Both of them clearly must believe that their own base is incredibly stupid, if they think anyone will take this crap seriously. (And, alas, they’re probably both right to a large extent.)

At least when Al Gore goes on his unhinged anti-war, anti-Bush tirades, I can sort of halfway moderately almost kinda sorta respect what he’s saying, because it seems like he genuinely believes it. I may not agree with a single word that’s coming out of his mouth, indeed I may think it’s entirely foolish, but at least he’s an honest, consistent fool. He was giving unhinged speeches about Iraq back in 2002 and 2003, long before it was the hip thing to do. That gives him some street cred, if nothing else.

Kerry, on the other hand, is just a deceitful, dreadful dumbass — he “voted for it before he voted against it,” and now he’s gone from moderately anti-war to radically so, just because he thinks that’s what he needs to do to win the nomination in 2008. (Don’t even get me started on how absurd and pathetic it is that he thinks he should be nominee again in 2008, given what a miserable failure he was in 2004, losing to an unpopular incumbent who any competent candidate would have wiped the floor with.)

Bill Clinton did the same thing, I suppose — going wherever the political winds blew — but at least he was good at it: he was such a great speaker and politician, he made you believe (or almost believe) that his lies were true, his panders were positions and his flip-flops were genuine changes of heart. Kerry has no such political skill, and thus he comes across like an unprincipled hypocrite… which is precisely what he is.

I’ve honestly gotten to the point where I’m ashamed that I voted for Kerry in 2004. I wish I had voted for the Libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik, or perhaps cast a write-in vote for Joe Lieberman. Given that I lived in a noncompetitive red state (Indiana), I could have cast such a “protest vote” without any worries about “throwing the election to Bush.” Instead, I held my nose and gave a meaningless vote to a worthless candidate who was and is totally unworthy of my support, and it burns me now to have that blot on my voting record. (Not that it’s actually recorded anywhere, except on this blog, but… you know what I mean.) I don’t feel the same way about supporting Gore in 2000; I wouldn’t vote for him again today, but back then, I think he was a decent choice. But Kerry? Kerry hasn’t changed. He was like this all along, and now it’s just becoming even more painfully obvious. What a freakin’ tool he is. Seriously.

An election involving Hillary Clinton might set an all-time record for the lowest number of undecided voters.

But you already knew that, and so did I. The question is, do Democratic primary voters? Save us, O Mighty Iowa!

Could the senior senator from Connecticut be the Democrats’ much-needed anti-Hillary? I doubt it (who has ever heard of Chris Dodd, except for party insiders, political junkies and Connecticut residents?), but he’s thinking about running in 2008.

The Washington Post reports than Eleanor Holmes Norton’s plan to give Washington, D.C. a seat in the House of Representatives is gaining momentum. That’s good news for D.C. residents and opponents of “taxation without representation” everywhere… but the real story for political nerds is the one that Alec Oveis notes: because the plan calls for adding two new House seats (one from D.C. and one from Utah — which would have been “next in line” to gain a seat after the 2000 census), it would make the total number of electors in the Electoral College an odd number, thus eliminating the possibility of a 269-269 tie that would send a presidential election to the House (which would have happened with a shift of 18,776 votes in 3 states in 2004). Under the plan, D.C. would still get 3 electors (that’s enshrined in the Constitution), but the extra elector for Utah would mean a grand total of 539 electors, instead of 538.

Now, here’s a scenario to chew on: imagine that this plan passes, and the Electoral College is adjusted accordingly in time for the 2008 election. And then imagine that the Democrats take back the House in November, and hold onto it in 2008. And then imagine that in 2008, the Republican candidate wins by a margin of 270-269… with the new Utah elector casting the deciding vote. The GOP victory will be Eleanor Holmes Norton’s fault! If not for her plan’s passage, the election would have been 269-269, and the Democratic House would have elected the Democrat! But instead, the Republicans win, thanks to Norton’s gift to Utah! Heh.

P.S. Actually, it’s not quite as simple as “imagine that the Democrats take back the House.” In the event there is no Electoral College majority, the House votes by state delegation, not by member. So the Dems would need to take over a majority of state delegations in order to control the House voting in the event of a E.C. tie. Still, the fact remains that Norton’s plan, while not affecting the balance in the House, does effectively give the GOP a “free” presidential elector, since Utah isn’t going to vote Democratic anytime soon. :) On the other hand, it gives the Dems a +1 edge in House delegations, since D.C. is now a delegation for them, whereas Utah was Republican anyway. So, although the plan would make E.C. ties impossible, in the event of a three-way split in which nobody gets a majority, this could actually help the Dems. But now I’m officially giving this way too much thought. :)

Following up on this post… a very interesting revelation, courtesy of Mickey Kaus:

A Rasmussen robo-poll reports that a third party candidate who promised to build a barrier along the Mexican border and make enforcement of immigration law his top priority beats the generic “Republican” nominee by 9 points– 30-21– and runs practically even with the generic “Democratic” nominee (who gets 31%). The border-centric third-party candidacy actually takes more votes from the Democratic side than the Republican side!. But it draws heavily from both parties, and as heavily from “moderates” as from “conservatives.” …

Yes, this is a robo-poll (though voters may feel more comfortable telling a robot what they really think). And yes, as Rasmussen notes, “This result probably reflects unhappiness with both parties on the immigration issue rather than a true opportunity for a third party.” And yes, candidates with appealing specifics often beat undefined, generic party choices. Still, it raises suspicions about the semi-confected, hothouse Beltway CW that a tough, non-”comprehensive,” enforcement-first approach is a political loser in the short term.

But will Chris scratch? :) And of more Immediate interest, will Joe jump ship?
First the Old news ~ story April 5, but actually dating back much longer than that :) ~

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd is tinkering with his presidential bandwagon again.

Dodd said Monday that he’s thinking about a 2008 run but won’t say much more. He told the Associated Press: “It’s an itch. Could grow. Could disappear. It’s an itch. It’s not a bad word to use.”

He’s had the itch a long time…

…The Connecticut Democrat has played this game before, notably in the 2004 race, when he eventually decided not to pursue the White House…

Read whole thing.

Chris Dodd is a good man. And one helluva Stump Speaker too. If we’d run him in ‘04 I think he’d have won. Unlike our admirable but Dour neighbor to the North whom we Nominated, Chris is neither Haughty, Sepulchral, Aloof, nor Frenchified. :) Quite the contrary: he’s a Jolly Irish Man of the People through & through. :) (Granted, he always Wannabee a Kennedee :> but we could’ve Finessed that stuff for a campaign season. :)

Now for the New (albeit Predictable) News ~ emphases & campaignsite Links added ~

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman refused today to rule out an independent candidacy if he loses the Democratic nomination, saying his re-election to a fourth term is too important for Connecticut.

“The definitive answer is that I am not foreclosing the option,” Lieberman said. “If I wanted to run as an independent I would do it today. I don’t. I am a Democrat. I want to run as a Democrat.”

(more…)