There is some speculation that the former VP will endorse Obama in the next few days. I would assume he would have to do it today or tomorrow. Monday might not be enough notice to shake up Super Tuesday.

The first debate between Senators Clinton and Obama is being televised live right now from Hollywood, CA on CNN.

It's going to be pretty interesting watching the two of them go back and forth over the next two hours. If you're watching, post your thoughts on the comments page.

State Senate Dems unveil stimulus package

David Callender — 1/30/2008 1:28 pm

In response to a softening national economy, majority Democrats in the state Senate today unveiled their own economic stimulus package, which they said would create more than 2,500 jobs in Wisconsin.

The plan, which includes $50 million a year in new spending on road projects and supports a fee increase to fund a commuter rail line in southeast Wisconsin, would be financed by closing a loophole that allows firms that do business in Wisconsin to establish corporate headquarters in Nevada to escape paying taxes here.

Democrats said closing the so-called "Las Vegas loophole" would generate about $90 million in new tax revenues.

"This should not be turned into the usual partisan play that portrays Democrats as tax-hikers," said Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston. "It's time we level the playing field" between Wisconsin businesses and other firms.

The plan is expected to compete for legislative attention with Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's plan, which calls for increased tax breaks for businesses, particularly those in high-tech and biotechnology fields.

Doyle's plan, unveiled during his State of the State speech last week, emphasizes long-term private investments in Wisconsin through preferential tax treatment, while the Senate plan calls for immediate direct investments in large-scale public works projects.

Decker said his members have not yet taken a position on Doyle's plan and are still awaiting details of the proposal.

"We think it's important to put people to work in Wisconsin right now," Decker said. "If we want to jump-start Wisconsin's economy, we have to have a program that gets the biggest bang for the buck."

The Democratic plan would:

* Increase funding for the state highway rehabilitation program and major highway development program, which Democrats said would "translate to about 2,500 good-paying jobs for our state."
* Increase car rental fees by $13 in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine to pay for the KRM commuter rail line. Democrats had supported the plan in the state budget, but it was rejected by majority Republicans in the Assembly.
* Increase child care assistance to middle-income families by $15 million annually. Democrats said many middle-class families "are getting squeezed by increased child care costs because those costs are increasing at about twice the rate of inflation."
* Provide $5 million a year in increased funding for incentive grants for state technical colleges for "emerging occupations" geared toward local business needs. A portion of the money would be set aside specifically to train welders, a high-paying occupation for which there is currently a shortage of workers.
* Provide $8 million a year in increased funding for renewable energy grants and loans.
* Increase financial aid for UW and technical college students by $1.3 million annually.

There was no immediate response to the Democrats' plan from Assembly Republicans or Doyle's office.

MSNBC reports:

DENVER - Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters'sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned.

I guess we could have seen it coming. This leaves a lot of Wisconsinites and Democrats in general without their favorite candidate -- who will Edwards supporters back now? Is Edwards a potential VP candidate? Who will shape the issues?

Labels: 2008

With all of the speculation going recently regarding the CDems and our role in the District 5 County Board race, I thought I'd write a little about what my role has been in this campaign and what my thoughts are on the race. Please take these comments as my own, and not those of the Executive Board or the Membership as a whole. (And as a shameless plug for our next meeting, I encourage you to stop by 1651 Humanities on February 6th to vote in our endorsement meeting and hear more about becoming a delegate at the DNC in Denver this summer.)

I started thinking about this race early last fall, well before Supervisor Kumar decided not to seek reelection. It was pretty clear to me that he was not doing a good job representing the District (full disclosure: I was the campaign manager for Adam Korn in 2006 running against Mr. Kumar for his seat). While I don't have the hatred for our Supervisor that many on our campus seem to have, I think that he has done and said a lot of things that reflect poorly on students. That said, on principle, I agree with him more than we disagree. He's a liberal, a progressive, and while I think he goes to the extreme too often I appreciate his contributions to the discourse.

I found myself in a tough situation as early fall turned into November and no one had yet announced their campaign. As the rumors of David Lapidus' candidacy started to fly, I was surprised to find that both Suchita Shah and Eli Lewien had come out in support of Mr. Lapidus before he had even declared. Nothing against David, to the contrary I will be the first to say that he knows more about county government than anyone else in District 5. But knowledge alone can't be the basis of my vote. We had no knowledge of how he would vote for Chair, and I had questions as to how his "Libertarian streak" would affect his support of social services and public health programs I consider vital. That said, it ended up being a non-issue as he dropped out before getting in.

So there we were, still no candidate and the semester winding down. With the filling deadline on January 2nd, I thought that there was a chance that we might not even get a single candidate on the ballot. To me, that was the worst part. And to their credit, I applaud both Conor O'Hagan and Wyndham Manning for caring enough about this District to actually run for the seat. It's easy for the rest of us to hurl stones at them, and while I agree with Jason Smathers that they both have a lot to learn about campaigning and local government, the fact remains that they stepped up to the plate.

It amazes me that in a city with as much political history and involvement as Madison, with a campus that had the second-highest voter turnout in the country in 2006, that we would have only two people who wanted to run for this seat (did I mention it pays $8,200/year?).

A week before finals, Scott Resnick told me that he had found someone who was interested in running for the seat and asked if I wanted to meet with him. I met with Conor, and after a short conversation about what his values and policy priorities would be, agreed to help him out. At the time, he was the only person I knew of who was interested in running for the seat. I helped him get his paperwork filed and got him in touch with Citizens for Dane County's Future, the progressive caucus of the non-partisan County Board.

On January 2nd, I was in Iowa for the caucuses when I heard that Wyndham had jumped into the race. Certainly not unheard of, Alder Eli Judge was a late entrant into his race as well if memory serves me, but nonetheless unforeseen. Scott had by this time signed up as Conor's treasurer, and was working with him on crafting a message. It was about a week later that I learned that Conor had asked Molly Rivera to be his Campaign Manager. (I should point out that both Scott and Molly are members of the Executive Board, but both are ex-officio members and cannot vote in EBoard endorsements.)

Since our return to school I've been helping Conor by giving policy and campaign advice (insert Korn campaign joke here...) to the best of my ability, while still keeping my focus on the Presidential Primary coming up on February 19th. Regardless of what anyone might say about the campaign two years ago, I think I've learned quite a bit about campus politics since then and am much better suited to help out in a race today than I was back then.

I want to briefly point one thing out. I have never been contacted by Wyndham in regards to his campaign, and while I'm hoping to meet with him sometime this week, it's my impression that he feels a CDM General Membership endorsement is beyond his reach. I think he made a serious error in writing off our endorsement so quickly. He had a chance the other night to bring new supporters to our State of the Union Party to make sure they qualified to vote under our clarified attendance rule but chose not to do so. If Mr. Smathers' column today was accurate, and Wyndham began this campaign as a "half-joke" then I guess I sadly overestimated the level of involvement of this campus in the greater community. That said, I'm still willing to meet with Wyndham, offer him any advice he may ask for, and be of service to him on any questions he has about the College Dems and our endorsement process.

Again, I'm under the impression that he doesn't want my help. That's fine, understandable, and he has a very intelligent man in Jesse Russell running his campaign who I'm sure knows much more about local politics than I do.

Given my involvement in Conor's campaign, I decided that it would be best to avoid any appearance of impropriety by removing myself from the EBoard recommendation process (along with Scott and Molly). Despite the statement that I'd want my involvement in the race to be "shady," I removed myself in an attempt to remove all doubt and would have gladly told anyone exactly what I had done for Conor if they had asked. The rest of the board conducted the interviews and came to a final decision (without Molly, Scott, or myself in the room). The product of which was a "No Recommendation" from our Executive Board based partly in the inexperience of both candidates and partly in the belief that any recommendation made would be tainted with the appearance of impropriety. I stress "appearance" because I think that by taking myself and the other involved members of our Executive Board out of the meeting, what was left were six voting members who went in with truly open minds. Anyone is welcome to question that, but I believe that how we chose to conduct our process was fair to both the candidates and our members.

That pretty much brings us up to date. We have no more CDM events scheduled between now and our endorsement meeting, and our Rapid Response Chair Anna Smith is in the process of updating our membership list to reflect all of those people who have turned out at our events this academic year. We are also getting an updated list of paid Democratic Party of Wisconsin members, our other requirement for voting at our meetings.

I hope that I haven't been shrewed in this process. I hope that I've contributed to the candidates a little of what is most important to me as a lifelong resident of Dane County and that I've done so in a way that was fair and open. I should have written this sooner and put much of the speculation to rest, and for that I'm sorry. If you have questions that I've failed to address I'd encourage you to ask them on the comments section so that I might be able to respond publicly to them.

One last thing: My focus right now has shifted back to where it should rightfully be, and that's on our GOTV Campaign for the Presidential Primary. We've had an extraordinary response from people who are willing to volunteer and be Dorm and Ward Captains (look for new Ogg Hall to make a statement) and over the next couple days we'll be finalizing our plans for that effort. I, for one, am hoping for a Super Tuesday that answers few questions and shifts focus to us two weeks later. It'd be pretty sweet to see Barack, Hillary, and John all in one week (Kucinich reportedly going to campaign in Hawaii [can you blame him?]).

Again, let me know if you have questions about the process or my involvement. I'm very happy to answer anything that I can. Thanks for your time, I think this may exceed the length of some of David's past posts...

Another win for the maverick, and this one was winner-take-all! He just keeps squeaking by on conservative divisions and dominating the moderates. Thompson dropping out helped Romney but clearly not enough. Giuliani is also reported to be dropping out due to his atrocious showing (he has no one to blame but himself for his ludicrous campaign strategy. Without competition from Rudy, McCain will be able to monopolize the moderate/independent vote on Super Tuesday, continue to get a chunk of national-security conservatives, and will almost certainly be unstoppable. Then again, when independents have a choice, maybe they will assume McCain is a sure thing and vote in the Democratic primaries. There still COULD be a brokered convention on the Republican side if the ultra conservatives get smart and coalesce behind a candidate, probably Romney, and Huckabee stays in and continues to take good chunks of the vote in states with lots of evangelicals. Am I missing anything?

I don't really know what to say about the Democrats except that both Clinton and Obama still have a chance but Clinton has a serious edge if you look at national polling. The demographics of the Democratic primary electorate also don't favor Obama.

Update: Like clockwork, Giuliani will endorse McCain tomorrow.

Percentages McCain Romney
Male---56-------35-------32
Female-44-------32-------30

It's too close to call but it looks like McCain has just the slightest edge, since it's the Republican primary significantly more men than women voted in it.

Interestingly whites and Protestants seem to have gone to Romney (he's considered more conservative) while Catholics and minorities (mainly Hispanics) went for McCain overwhelmingly.

Hillary obviously won overwhelmingly, although Obama continues to win overwhelmingly among black voters, garnering 76%.

Update: There continues to be atrociously low turnout from young people, seems to decline from primary to primary (although to be fair, Florida's Democratic primary was rather meaningless), under 10% in both primaries.

Final Update: Close to half of the Republican electorate was over age 60 and they favored McCain by 3 points. Those over 65 favored him by 7. No gender gap. Only a third of voters were evangelicals, which explains Huckabee's weakness.

The Democratic voters were 60% female and 40% over 60, both key groups for Hillary Clinton.

Can Florida have one election without massive voting problems?

-Polling stations open late
-Voting machines won't work, voters told to come back later
-Wait times of more than an hour
-Poll workers accidentally deactivate voting machines
-Poll workers tell voters there is no Democratic primary today or that their votes "won't count"
-Registered independents given Republican primary ballots
-Registered Democrats given independent ballots
-Voters told they've voted when they hadn't and have to cast provisional ballots
-Voting machines fail to tabulate votes

What's next, exit polls show Jews voted for Ron Paul? That's all just from two articles. According to Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browing, this is nothing more than "common everyday election fare."

If this is par for the course in a primary election with maybe 30% turnout, the general is sure to be an absolute nightmare. At least they have nice weather down there...

Nobody pretends to believe that the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire are about winning delegates. Campaigns pour millions of dollars into states with smaller populations than a single borough of New York City to gain momentum, legitimacy, and media attention. However, as the primary season continues, and the Democratic race remains open, the delegate count actually does begin to matter. Here's an article from Rasmussen Reports about the possibility of an Obama nomination even if Hillary Clinton does sweep the Super Tuesday states.

Since Democrats give out delegates proportionally (except in Nevada and Iowa), Obama could garner plenty of delegates in states where he might lose close elections, like California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. He'll even pick up quite a few in New York. And if Edwards gives his delegates to Obama at the convention, it would be an easy victory. As the article says, not likely, but possible.

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Waelti Announces Candidacy for Wisconsin Assembly
Education, economic development, healthcare highlighted
as priorities for 80th District

MONROE, Wis., Jan. 28, 2008 – Economist and Green County native John Waelti on Sunday formally announced his candidacy for Wisconsin’s 80th Assembly District. The 80th Assembly District encompasses Green County and parts of Lafayette, Dane and Rock Counties. Surrounded by family, friends and dozens of supporters at Monroe’s historic Turner Hall, Waelti outlined a campaign platform focusing on education, healthcare and economic development.

“Farm life in Green County is where I established my values of thrift and hard work,” said Waelti. “I was educated in Monroe public schools, which paved the way for opportunities later in life. Wisconsin is a leader in education, but we can do better. We need to address K-12 financing mechanisms that force public school districts to revert to divisive referenda. We must also ensure that our UW system maximizes its contribution to Wisconsin’s quality of life, and that our technical colleges provide the skills necessary for today’s economy and future economic growth.”

While stressing that many problems facing American workers require federal action, Waelti said that state legislators must also press for solutions. “While the national economy has grown and productivity has increased, median incomes have languished,” said Waelti. “That's not how American democratic capitalism is supposed to work. People are anxious over health care costs. Too many people are but one illness or accident away from economic devastation.”

Following graduation from Monroe High School and three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Waelti obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. After earning advanced degrees in economics from the University of Arizona and the University of California, Waelti served as an economist at the University of Minnesota and New Mexico State University for more than 30 years.

Waelti also spent a year at the Pentagon as economic advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works). He spent two years teaching in Kenya and four years in academic administration in Oman. “Education and public policy have been my life,” said Waelti. “It's in my blood.”

When Waelti returned to Monroe, he quickly found himself involved in local government. In 2005 he was appointed, and in 2006 subsequently elected, to the Monroe Board of Education. He was later appointed by Monroe town chair Allie Mayer to the Township Smart Growth Committee, and by Governor Jim Doyle to the Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

Waelti sees himself as a consensus seeker and a coalition builder—qualities he believes essential to be an effective legislator. “Politics in the best sense of the word is the art of the possible,” he said. “I’m less interested in partisan politics than I am in getting something done.

Waelti’s daughter, Kara, is a registered nurse in Madison employed by Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin. His son, John, is a former broadcaster and currently a corporate communications professional. His wife, Sherry, is well known in Monroe as the former owner of Merle Norman Studio on Monroe’s square.

Daphne Newman Stassin of Brodhead will serve as Waelti’s campaign manager, and former Evansville mayor Janis Ringhand will serve as campaign treasurer.

Big day for Republicans. It's the Florida primary and Rudy Giuliani, who has spent more time there than any other candidate, and has said for months now that Florida would be his firewall, is coming in 3rd in the polls, if not in 4th. What's Rudy going to say now? That he'll win New York and California?

The game is up -- Bush's final State of the Union address is over. All things considered, it may have been his worst one yet. Gone is the command of the podium we witnessed in 2003 and 2004 -- the President stumbled routinely throughout. Gone is any conviction of having broken political ground. Gone even is the opportunity to have fun at the President's expense: Bush has long ceased to make us laugh with his clumsy leadership. Now all we feel is sad -- sad at the dreary incompetence of the past eight years, sad at all the opportunities we thwarted, sad for the way the United States could be right now if things had gone a little differently.

In 2000 Bush declared he'd come to Washington to change the tone and forge bipartisan consensus. Tonight we saw that same man, seven years later, throw up his hands and tacitly admit he has failed. To be sure, there were gestures of compromise -- the insistence on an independent Palestinian state, a rational plan to solve the immigration program, and an affirmation that global warming is indeed a problem. Bush has come around on several important things. But tonight's speech was chiefly a laundry list of recycled talking points, none of them more than momentarily stirring, all spoken in misleadingly uncontroversial terms.

A popular Democratic candidate talks relentlessly about hope for the future. But I didn't feel hope tonight. Did he? Did anybody?

After interviewing both candidates for Dane County Board District 5 and after considerable discussion, the CDM Executive Board is offering no recommendation to the CDM Membership. Both Conor O'Hagan and Wyndham Manning are candidates that would adequately represent the district and students, and both have shortcomings that will hopefully be addressed during the course of their campaigns. However, as an Executive Board, we did not feel that a recommendation in favor of either candidate would be fair because of the involvement of members of the board with an individual campaign. Those board members with ties to a campaign were not involved in any part of the questioning or discussion. Both Mr. O'Hagan and Mr. Manning will have the opportunity to present to the Membership and to answer questions during the February 6 Membership endorsement meeting. We, the Executive Board, leave it to the Membership to decide whom it would like to endorse - one, both, or neither.

The other day Bill Clinton noted that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, and many people saw this as race-baiting and undermining Obama's candidacy. I even questioned, momentarily, why Pres. Clinton thought to mention the Jackson candidacy, but I guess Jesse Jackson wasn't offended and doesn't care. Money quote from the Times:

In his conversation with Mr. Obama on Saturday, Mr. Jackson said, “He told me what Bill had said. And I said to Barack, as a tactical matter, resist any temptation to come down to that level. There may be temptations, especially when the media keeps saying ‘Barack is black,’ and they never said ‘Dukakis is white’ or ‘Hillary is white,’’ he said, referring to Michael Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination in 1988.

Case closed, basically. Until very recently, the media were doing a laudable job avoiding the bogus "racial narrative" of the campaign. 2008 is the post-racial, post-gender election, and Democrats should be proud of this. We don't have enough time, period, to focus on the barriers we're breaking through. There is a gigantic intra-party ideological conflict to attend to.

After his niece Caroline endorsed Obama in a New York Times op-ed today, Ted Kennedy has come out in support of Obama as well. He's reported to be planning to stump aggressively for Obama.

The Clinton campaign countered by releasing a press release touting the endorsement of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of Bobby Kennedy and a former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

Does anybody else see how pathetic this is? One family is considered so important that campaigns are squabbling about who is more popular within the family. Who cares what Caroline Kennedy thinks? Joseph P. Kennedy would be proud.