You may remember the stupidity of the Senate Judiciary Committee this past summer, where Chairman Leahy put off the vote on the nomination to the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals of right-wing bigot Judge Leslie Southwick until Republicans had enough votes to win.  Whereas, if Leahy had held the vote early in the summer, he had the votes to defeat the nomination.

Well, Majority Leader Reid is proving just as incompetent.

He's "the guy with the resume."  That's his angle, even more so than the "Hispanic," since he has explicitly stated:

But I wouldn't run as a Hispanic candidate. I would run as an American, proud to be Hispanic, proud of my heritage. It's a growing, dynamic community in this country. But I wouldn't just be focusing on Hispanic issues or trying to get the Hispanic vote.

Questioning the choice of using "Hispanic" versus "Latino" aside, he is a "bio" candidate, running on his credentials and experience.  Though I have certain issues with the way he has handled his work, the list of titles are undoubtedly impressive: congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy, and Governor of New Mexico.

Past experience, however, is once removed even from past votes, and even past votes or legislation don't predict how candidates will act in a new office in the future.

Note: I wrote this post for my own tiny blog, the readership being my friends who may or may not be as politically literate as the readers of this site; I reposted here just to add my outlook on what is a topic that has been analyzed by much larger politic minds than my own.  Thanks for bearing with me.  -Kevin

anti-wedge issues, ballot measures, and a 50-state strategy.
Definitions:
50-State Strategy: Great summaries on the 50-state strategy, and why it works (both today and historically).  The short version is, as the old adage goes, showing up is half the battle.

Ballot measures: Although referenda have existed in the U.S. since before we were the U.S. (e.g. town hall meetings in New England), it was during the Progressive Era of the very late 19th and very early 20th centuries that statewide ballot measures (initiatives or referenda) became a widespread form of large-scale direct democracy, starting with a city-based system in Nebraska (go Huskers) in 1897, and the first statewide popular system in South Dakota in 1898.  California adopted their process in 1911 and have been plagued by the decision ever since.  Twenty-four mostly Western states adopted the process by popular vote before 1918, the culmination of the Progressive Era, and thirteen more (plus DC) adopted the process by popular vote between 1956 and 1996; there are 37 states today (and DC) that have ballot initiatives.  For more info, an excellent history here.

Anti-wedge issues: I don't know if this is an actual term... I sort of just made it up on the fly, though no doubt someone has already thought of it, or coined a better term.  The way a "wedge issue" works is to divide the populace by vilifying a particular class of people (women, LGBTQI, immigrants, people of color) through the vilification of a right or program that is intended to guarantee that group equal protection under the law/the same rights as everyone else living in this country/protection against systemic discrimination.  It is called a wedge issue because it is supposed to create a "wedge" within one political coalition, say, New Deal Democrats, in order to both suppress voter turnout among that coalition and to try to convince some of those voters that despite the fact that the people promoting the wedge issue, say, reactionary Big Business Republicans, have opposite interests from coalition members on just about every other issue, the coalition members should nonetheless support them out of hate for whatever group is being vilified.

My analysis below the fold...

Profuse apologies if this was already blogged here (or at dKos' religion thingy, which I don't really keep track of); I did a quick search and didn't find anything, but searching non-legal databases is not my expertise.

I have no desire to beat a dead horse.  I actually think the constant, perennial cries for "values talk" and "the Left learning how to talk about Religion."  I think that Liberation Theology is a better guide, not framing politics in religion, but vice versa (not in a blasphemous way, though Pope Benedict apparently believes Liberation Theology is a bit blasphemous, but in the way that as a philosophy, religion IS political).

In fact, I'm not even "religious," whatever that means.  But enough disclaimers from me.  I came across Bono's speech at the Nat'l Prayer Breakfast (here: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=soj omail.display&issue=060203&cooki es_enabled=false#3) that took place earlier this month.  It was really good.

Excerpts below.

With heavy winds and delays at my layover at Phoenix Sky Harbor, I had a good seven hours to read all of Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." For those who read "The Tipping Point" and enjoyed the part about how Dan Rather's millisecond facial ticks helped contribute to Republican victories, Blink has other great insights that can be applied to politics, society, and everything else. My favorite parts are the so-called "Warren Harding Error" and the subsequent discussion of the flaws with Clinton-esque policy-by-polling. A fantastic read.

I just took my final today in my Election Law course and thus have been thinking for the past several days about the Voting Rights Act.  For those not familiar, a summary below.  My point here is just another example of the importance of Democrats reclaiming at least one house in Congress in 2006.  Failure to do so may allow for states to slide back into Jim Crow era politics.

Here's a petition started by some CT residents fed up with Lieberman.  It first takes Joe to task, and then demands:

1. Bring the troops home.
   
2. Stop supporting torture.

Sign if interested at:
http://thestruggle.org/petition1.htm

I was going to post this as a comment on the Bill Richardson profile thread, but I began to write and couldn't stop writing, and thought it was more appropriate as a diary.  Thanks in advance to those who read it, from a frequent reader but infrequent diarist.

To remind people who vaguely remember the late 90s' nuclear labs "scandal," a PRC intelligence agent gave US agents documentation indicating that the PRC  knew the design of a relatively modern U.S. thermonuclear warhead and computer code that would allow for more simulated (and thus more secretive) tests of such a warhead.  The MSM and wingnuts went apeshit and tried to use it as fodder to attack Richardson's management of nuclear labs.