Southside Political Think Tank

Does this come as a shock to you? CT voters should think long and hardabout their beloved Holy Joe. He keeps lying about the Novemberelection. It refuted the GOP completely. but he seems to think it was acall for bi-partisanship…

My god..

Wallace: Joe Lieberman, grew up in John Bailey's  CT, Democratic VP nominee—You're saying you might vote Republican in 2008?

Lieberman: I am…

My Left Nutmeg caught this early this morning: About That "Single Issue"…

Lieberman:

I want Democrats to be back in the majority inWashington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man and hissupporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that.

"I'm open to supporting a Democrat, Republican, or evenan Independent if there's a strong one," the U.S. Senator fromConnecticut told "Fox News Sunday." "You make a decision based on awhole range of issues. But obviously, the positions that some candidates have taken in Iraq troubles me. Obviously, I will be looking at what positions they take in the larger war against Islamist terrorism."

 Hilarious. Joe is now a single-issue voter.

Yes, the Last Honest Man's opinion has changed drastically since just this past summer. From the July debate:

LIEBERMAN: That's why I say [Lamont] is running a single issue campaign.Every campaign, as President Clinton reminded us, is about the future.And what I'm saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for youand your families to get something done to make health care affordable,to get universal health insurance, to make America energy independent,to save your jobs and create new ones. That's what the Democratic Partyis all about.

He is a single issue candidate who is applying a litmus test to me.It's not good enough to be 90 percent voting with my colleagues in theSenate Democratic Caucus. He wants 100 percent. And when a party doesthat, it's the beginning of the defeat of that party.

And, the kicker:

I want Democrats to be back in the majority inWashington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man and hissupporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that.

The most pained look of the night on which George Bush delivered the most difficult State of the Union address of his presidency swept across the face of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice midway through the speech.

The President had just delivered the key lines from the foreign-policy section of a speech that -- despite much emphasis on domestic issues such as health care, education and immigration and --would be judged primarily on the effectiveness of his remarks regarding the Iraq War.

This was the point at which Bush needed to convince a skeptical Congress. And he gave it his all -- or, at the very least, all that his speech writers could muster.

"If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country -- and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict," said Bush, who was making the case for his surge of 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. "For American, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq, would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens...new recruits ... new resources ... and an even greater determination to harm America."

Then, again seeking to forge the clumsy link between the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and his war of whim in Iraq, Bush declared: "To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September 11 and invite tragedy. And ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East ... to succeed in Iraq ... and to spare the American people from this danger."

The carefully crafted applause line brought Rice to her feet, and she scanned the House chamber to see if it had connected with a Congress that has in recent weeks heard bipartisan expressions of opposition to the president's scheming to expand the war. There was little question that she was hoping for a signal that members of the House and Senate were prepared to give Bush the time he was pleading for in a speech that featured the line: "Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq--and I ask you to give it a chance to work."

The response to the "nothing is more important" line on Iraq was anything but enthusiastic, as many -- perhaps most -- members remained seated. The Congress was not convinced by a repetition of tired rhetoric from a president who has repeatedly misjudged and misguided the war on terror.

Senator Barack Obama, D-Illinois, explained after the speech was done that, "The pall over the room was Iraq."

Rice did not need Obama's analysis. She knew exactly how heavily that pall hung over the chamber as she settled back into her seat Tuesday night.

The Secretary of State was seen grimacing almost as agonizingly as when she was tried to make the case earlier this month for Bush's surge in an excruciating appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- during which she was grilled not just by Democrats but by Republicans.

Rice recognized that the job of selling the surge had not been made any easier by this State of the Union address.

Indeed, if there was an expression of the sentiments of the Congressional majority -- made up of Democrats and a growing number of dissenting Republicans -- it came in the response to the president's speech by Senator Jim Webb, D-Virginia.

"The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War,the Chief of Staff of the Army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable--and predicted--disarray that has followed," the Reagan Republican turned Democratic Senator explained.

"The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

"The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq."

Those are the words that, had they been spoken before the Congress Tuesday night, would have brought the chamber to its feet and earned the response Rice had hoped Bush would receive. They are, more significantly, the words that polls suggest the great mass of Americans long to hear not merely from one senator from Virginia but from a Congress that is prepared, finally, to restore the system of checks and balances and force this president to change course.

You want efficient government? Elect Democrats.

House Democrats brought their "100-hour" legislative agenda to a successful close Thursday evening.... The House finished work on all six measures in about 42 hours of floor time, less than half the limit set on their self-imposed clock.

Today's legislation would repeal subsidies to oil and gas companies and creates a Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve to invest in clean, renewable energy resources. Thirty-six Republicans voted with the Dems.

To recap the first 100 42 hours, in addition to today's action the House passed bills to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, increase the minimum wage, expand stem cell research, lower prescription drug costs, and cut student loan interest rates.

Speaker Pelosi, take a bow.

Last night, as he continued to try and sell his overwhelmingly unpopular plan to escalate troop levels in Iraq, George Bush sat down for an interview with Jim Lehrer.  But rather than going through the now familiar regurgitation of his latest talking points, let's focus on a few excerpts from the commander, decider and educator-in-chief.  And let's begin with this deep thought:

...look, death is terrible -

And he should know.  So far, 3026 servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq.  And Iraqi civilians? Well that depends on who you ask.  When that question was posed toBush a year ago, it led to this exchange

Q Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know theapproximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis Iinclude civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less...

Yes.

Q Mr. President, thank you --

THE PRESIDENT: I'll repeat the question. If I don't like it, I'll make it up. (Laughter and applause.)

On the other hand, the British Medical journal, The Lancet, puts that number closer to 655,000.  But hey, as terrible as death is, at least history will see it all as, "just a comma," in the grand scheme of things.  Not to mention a good set-up for a laugh line.

And what about Bush's decision to escalate the war?

Look, I had a choice to make, Jim, and that is - one - do what we'redoing. And one could define that maybe a slow failure. Secondly,withdraw out of Baghdad and hope for the best. I would think that wouldbe expedited failure.  And thirdly is to help this Iraqi governmentwith additional forces - help them do what they need to do, which is toprovide security in Baghdad.

Considering that his "thirdly" option is what we've been doing sincethe mission was accomplished, you could say that he has decided to staythe slow failure course.

And what about the fact that the military and their families are the only ones making any sacrifice for this war?

Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean,they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images ofviolence on TV every night.

So tonight when you kick back with a beer to watch an hour of Anderson Cooper 360, rest easy knowing that you are doing your part to win the Global War on Terror.  Cheers.  

Bob Novak, in his latest Evans-Noval Political Report newsletter:

The gloom pervading the Republican Party cannot be exaggerated. Thelong-range GOP outlook for 2008 is grim. The consensus is that U.S.troops must be off the ground of Iraq by next year to prevent anelectoral catastrophe in the next election [...]

Iraq, one of Bush's top political advisers now notes, is a blackhole for the Republican Party. A nationally prominent Republicanpollster reported confidentially on Capitol Hill after the President'sspeech that if U.S. boots are still on the ground in Iraq and U.S.blood is still being spilled there at the end of the year, the GOPdisaster in 2008 will eclipse 2006.

This is supposedly consensus inside the Republican Party.We've been seeing a growing rift develop between Bush (and McCain) and pretty much everyone else in the conservative establishment.

There is no longer any support, anywhere, for this war. While Cheney may hopelessly pull out that "opponents are unpatriotic" card one lasttime, fact is, they can't even keep their own in line anymore.

Bush's desperate gambit to save his "legacy" is on a collision course with his own party's fight for self-preservation.

"Would any of you have any difficulty fairly judging the believability of former or present members of the Bush Administration?"

In a Washington courtroom on Tuesday morning, federal district court Judge Reggie Walton read that question to the pool of potential jurors, and that was a fair way of summing up the big question of the trial: did Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lie to cover up his own participation in a White House campaign that was mounted to protect the Bush administration's misleading case for war in Iraq?

Libby is on trial for having made false statements to FBI and a grand jury investigating the leaking of Valerie Wilson's CIA identity. But his credibility (or lack thereof) is a reflection of the administration's credibility (or lack thereof). Yet due to the normal workings of a federal court, Libby will be judged by Washington, DC, residents who are in a distinct minority: people who have not already concluded that Bush officials are not to be trusted.

Libby's defense is that he forgot the truth when he appeared before FBI agents and the grand jury. At issue is what he said about his involvement in the CIA leak. The reality is this: in June and July 2003, when the White House was trying to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (who was accusing the administration of exaggerating the prewar intelligence), Libby, as part of this effort, disclosed information about Wilson's wife (a.k.a Valerie Plame) to two reporters--Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time. After the Plame leak became a criminal matter, Libby (who was not a source for the Robert Novak column that outed Valerie Wilson) told investigators that he had learned about Valerie Wilson and her CIA connection from reporters and had passed this information along to other reporters. In other words, he was just sharing gossip, not official information; he had no reason to know if this hearsay was true.

The problem (for Libby) is this: Fitzgerald has developed plenty of evidence showing that Libby actively sought and received information on Joseph Wilson and his wife before the whole Wilson imbroglio detonated and before Libby spoke to reporters. This information--which noted that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer--was classified. It came to him from the State Department, the CIA and Cheney.

So Libby's faulty memory defense goes beyond a simple I-forgot-who-said-what. What he--or his lawyers--claim is that he completely forgot his own attempts to gather material on Wilson (and also forgot the information he obtained) and that when reporters several weeks later supposedly passed him rumors about Valerie Wilson, this did not jog his memory and cause him to recall what he had previously known. One major obstacle for Libby is that the reporters in question--including NBC's Tim Russert, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Cooper and Miller--do not support his version of events.

More important, Libby's account relies on two purported major memory lapses that may be difficult for a jury to accept: that after collecting material on Wilson and his wife, Libby had no memory of doing so and that he completely confused his recollection of conversations he had with the reporters. Libby is essentially arguing that he forgot to remember what he had once known but had forgotten.

Yet Libby's advocates claim that Cheney's former chief of staff was the victim of a minor memory slip because he was a busy guy. On NPR the day the trial began, Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and conservative activist, said, "It's true. If you are involved in high-pressure situations....in the afternoon you don't remember exactly what you did in the morning." And when I ran into Lanny Davis, the former spinner for President Bill Clinton and Yale classmate of George W. Bush, during the trial's lunch break, he insisted that Libby might have indeed misremembered events. "That's what happens when you're doing push-back," Davis insisted. If Cheney is called as a witness by Libby's attorneys--as is expected--his testimony will presumably bolster such an argument.

Will a jury go for this? Will jurors believe that Libby, the ever-attentive aide, forgot within weeks that Cheney had told him that Valerie Wilson worked at the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA?

All that will be decided when the jury votes. But first, jurors have to be selected. As Judge Walton, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and Libby's lawyers reviewed the initial nine prospective jurors--searching for people with little knowledge and few opinions of the case--they found some who said they could not be impartial. One young woman noted that she was "completely without objectivity" regarding the integrity of Bush administration officials. She did not believe them. She was gone. After being extensively questioned, a financial planner conceded that if Cheney's testimony was contradicted by another witness he could not regard the vice president as equally credible. He, too, was excused.

Walton hopes to have jurors selected by the end of Thursday, and opening arguments are scheduled for Monday. But it may be tough for the judge to find citizens who truly have no hard-and-fast views on the honesty of Cheney and the Bush administration. And that's the point.

After his party's dramatic defeat on November 7, George W. Bush seemed, however briefly, to recognize that his Iraq policy wasn't working. He fired Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, promised to take the Iraq Study Group's report "very seriously" and pledged to work with the new Congress. But his speech January 10 announcing an escalation of the US occupation of Iraq confirms that Bush's "new way forward" is just more of the same, and that his contemptuous disregard of the will of the people and their elected representatives is unchanged.

The President's escalation, set to begin January 15, is the first test of the new Congress. The American people voted to get our troops out of Iraq, not dug deeper in, and it is up to Congress to see that it is done. Democratic leaders announced before Bush's speech that they would offer House and Senate resolutions opposing the escalation. And even though that escalation may be under way by the time Congress acts, and even though the resolution is nonbinding, it can still serve as a highly public rebuke to an imperial White House.

Some Democrats, most notably Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Joe Biden, are peddling the notion that "as a practical matter, there is no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.'" But in fact, the opposite is true. A report by the Center for American Progress makes clear that past Congresses have curtailed or ended military deployments. The report notes, for example, that in 1983 the Lebanon Emergency Assistance Act required the President to return to seek authorization if he wished to expand the size of the US contingent in Lebanon. Congress has also acted to cut war funding. In 1970, the report notes, the Supplemental Foreign Assistance Law "prohibited the use of any funds for the introduction of US troops to Cambodia."

While resolutions opposing a troop increase are useful, the Democrats must follow them up with concrete measures that directly challenge Bush's war policy. Jack Murtha, chair of the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, has vowed to comb through the Administration's upcoming $100 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and "fence the funding"--potentially redirecting money from a troop increase toward redeployment. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will shortly introduce a six-month proposal for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.

Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative Ed Markey have introduced legislation that would require Congressional approval of any troop increase above the total in Iraq as of January 9. Kennedy said in a speech that same day that it's time for Congress to reassert its "rightful role" in deciding war policy. Noting the similarity between Bush's justification for adding more troops and that used for a similar increase in Vietnam, Kennedy recalled discussion of a commitment to "help to lay the cornerstone for a diverse and independent Asia" and to "stay the course." "That is not President Bush speaking," said Kennedy. "It is President Lyndon Johnson, forty years ago, ordering a hundred thousand more American soldiers to Vietnam."

Even if Congress is ultimately unable to prevent the troop increase, a series of hearings, votes and resolutions can confront the President on his strategy and can lay the groundwork for the larger battle of ending the war.

Pressure is growing on Congress to act. A coalition of peace groups, led by Win Without War, is planning a series of protests across the country. On Martin Luther King Day, the Appeal to Redress, calling for withdrawal and signed by close to 1,000 current members of the military, will be presented to Congress. And on January 27, United for Peace and Justice will mount an antiwar rally in Washington. "A clear response from the American people will shore up support in the Congress," says former Congressman and Win Without War national director Tom Andrews.

Ratcheting up the pressure on Congress is urgent. Blocking the escalation is the first step toward bringing the troops home.

With his decision to file the necessary paperwork to launch a presidential campaign exploratory committee, Barack Obama puts an end to speculation about whether he really is interested in being the Democratic nominee in 2008.

The exploratory committee is political performance art. Obama's not exploring anything. He's preparing a candidacy that, if all goes as planned, will be launched officially on February 10 in Chicago.

So Obama is running.

Now, the question is: How far will he get?

To a much greater extent than the other announced and prospective candidates for the party's nomination, that depends on the immediate response of grassroots Democrats to his prospective candidacy.

There is no question that Obama is a political superstar. That allows him to leap over many of the hurdles that are erected by the overseers of the American political process.

Obama does not need to build name recognition, in the sense that more senior figures such as Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack must. Even before he delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the Chicagoan was the most prominent state senator in the nation.

After Obama delivered that address to the approval of the delegates--and to generous reviews from most of the political and media class--he secured his US Senate seat and arrived in Washington accompanied by some of the highest expectation ever attached to a new member of Congress.

Predictably, Obama failed to meet those inflated expectations. His relative caution on the big-picture issues of Iraq and domestic civil liberties, combined with some disappointing votes on consumer and economic issues, disappointed many of the serious activists who had been most enthusiastic about his appearance on the national political scene.

As candidates began to position themselves for the 2008 presidential race, however, Obama began to look more and more attractive.

On the list of possible candidates, he was, with New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, one of three genuine first-tier figures--high-profile politicians with what a man who skipped the 2008 race, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, describes as the "star power" to draw media attention merely by opening their mouths, assemble a crowd anywhere in the country and, presumably, to rapidly raise the money needed to remain viable throughout the caucus and primary process that will identify the nominee.

As Obama made the rounds of state party conventions, fundraising events and rallies during the 2006 Congressional election season, grassroots Democrats remembered his inspired speaking in Boston, rather than his uninspired votes in Washington. And they gave him a welcome that most politicians can only dream of.

The message from the party base was clear: Clinton had not closed the deal. There was an opening for another first-tier contender in the Democratic race, and Obama could take it.

Instantaneously, Obama was a contender and thus began the process that culminated with Tuesday's announcement of the exploratory committee.

Did Obama hit the trail for Democratic Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in the fall of 2006 with a plan to propel himself into the 2008 competition? Perhaps. He is, by his own admission, ambitious. But most of the evidence suggests that he was taken aback by the intensity of the response he got.

Obama's stepped back to consider his options, and he was smart enough to recognize that the opportunity was real and that it might not come again.

So, now, he has stepped up, and in.

By establishing the exploratory committee, he will be able to raise money to hire staff and build a basic campaign infrastructure in advance of the expected formal announcement in February. He'll need it. Clinton and another contender, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, are far ahead of Obama when it comes to putting together the multistate campaign apparatus that is needed in a fast-paced presidential campaign.

Can Obama catch up? Yes, but only if the grassroots Democrats who have been so enthusiastic about the prospect of his candidacy now turn that enthusiasm into practical commitments in states such as Iowa, where the first caucuses will be held a year from this week, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. That transition will have something to do with Obama's star power, of course, but it will have much more to do with how he defines himself.

Democrats like Barack Obama. But they don't necessarily know what it is about him that appeals to them.

Obama's challenge is to quickly provide grassroots Democrats with a rationale for his candidacy. There will be a lot of discussion about how he must compete with Clinton, but that's not the challenge. If she runs, Clinton will do so as what she is: a cautious centrist with lots of money and prominent support but with dubious grassroots appeal.

Obama's real challenge will be to make sure that he compares favorably with Edwards. The 2004 Democratic nominee for Vice President has done a reasonably good job of identifying himself as the Democrat who wants to bring the troops home from Iraq and address fundamental issues of economic and social injustice at home. And he has spent a lot of time talking about those issues with the party faithful in the states where Democratic activists and voters will make or break Democratic candidates. Already, Edwards is beginning to attract the endorsements--particularly from labor union leaders and members--and the volunteer base that he needs in states such as Iowa and Nevada. Obama will have to move quickly, and seriously, if he wants to block not just Clinton but Edwards. That is the only way for him to transform his star power into the practical support base for a winning candidacy.

Poll #908091 January Straw Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

Who is your favorite potential 2008 candidate from the list below?