dennis kucinich

With Labor Day weekend past, schools all over the country are back in full session, barbecues are being stowed safely away from fall rains, and it's officially go time for presidential primary campaigns. The period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving is a hot and heavy one. In the next couple months, traditional media coverage will intensify and many citizens who have been ignoring the whole horserace -- or at best tracking headlines -- will start tuning in in earnest. Here are some things I'll be looking for:

Personnel Changes
As the campaign really heats up, we can expect some candidates to drop out. Those who have little cash on hand (Walnuts?) and are unable to gain traction in the polls will increasingly face questions as to how/why they're continuing to run. Those like Kucinich and Tancredo who have issues at the heart of their candidacies will stick with it to "change the debate." Others, like Joe "Running A Cabinet Position" Biden will face a more serious existential crisis.

Also, Fred Thompson will make his entry into the race official this week. With early buzz so far not mixing well with reality, Thompson's campaign reminds me more and more of Wes Clark's bid in 2003. Both were pitched as saviors of troubled parties and took off quickly in the polls. Clark crashed and burned when the participatory movement that drafted him into the race bucked and crumbled under the direction of an "official" campaign. Thompson has no such movement management problem, but his image-vs-reality issues may lead to a similarly messy meeting between the rubber and the road.

Gloves Coming Off
As media coverage drives name-recognition of all top-tier candidates into the 90th percentile, candidates looking to pick up support are increasingly going to have to look at who they can take it away from. At the polls, politics boils down to a zero sum game and those who win do so at the expense of those who lose. I expect more risky stances, more aggressive attacks, and of course the opening of mudslinging season, as campaigns in need start digging into their opposition research files, either directly or (see below) working through functionally-independent surrogates.

Frontrunners like Sen. Clinton will start taking serious incoming fire from multiple parties, but also look for 2nd and 3rd place candidates to try and pick off issue-based support from non-contending candidates, or to siphon off demographic support based on endorsements.

Independent Expenditures
This is about the time last cycle when "independent" operators started to make waves in the primary states. Remember the "Latte-sipping, volvo-driving liberal freakshow?" Expect more of that as interest groups enter the fray.

From the left, MoveOn and other groups have already run ads targeting members of congress, mostly tied to Iraq and Bush-support, but they may soon start setting their sites on Rudy McRomney and Hollywood Fred. Now is the time for opponents to define one-another's public perception, and those playing the long game are already looking at how this primary season will set the stage for next November's final showdown. In the end, there can be only one.

Shake It Up!
All in all, I'm hoping the increased pressure will shake up what has been a relatively stagnant race. I'm also curious to see who (if anyone) makes a strong play for (or possibly against!) the Millennial generation as a homestretch maneuver. I'll have more on that soon.

What are you looking/hoping for?

• How Green is your candidate? Grist will let you know with a new election '08 series and widget to deliver news directly to your blog of SocNet profile.
• Think Progress reports that Fox's Daily Show knock-off, The Half-Hour News Hour, is getting canned:
  

  The reviews for the program were consistently dismal. Its very first review, from the Orlando Sentinel, decried the “[l]aughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts. … If we’re lucky, we’ll never hear of this dreadful show again.” “Sometimes the humor is so heavy-handed that it seems almost like self-parody,” said the New York Times. “The 1/2 Hour News Hour is slow torture all by itself,” said the Philadelpha Inquirer.

  What the right-wing failed to grasp is Jon Stewart is funny not because he spins falsehoods but because he tells the truth.

• Student loan shenanigans continue. Nelnet is being forced to pay a $1million fine (peanuts, really) for deceptive marketing practices. This after Nebraska Attorney General Jim Bruning, who had originally "forgiven" Nelnet's fine, was revealed to have received campaign contributions from NelNet employees. The Higher Ed Watch article is ugly. Bruning goes to bat big-time for the corporate lenders, going so far as to call NY AG Cuomo's investigations into the industry (which have revealed major corruption) as an "embarassment." Bruning is the real embarassment. For any Nebraska FM readers: what can y'all do to get this joker out of office?
• The Washington Blade profiles David Hardt and Chris Anderson, the new heads of the Young Democrats, who had this to say about the future of YDA:
  

  “Right now I want to grow the organization,” he said. “We need to have better organization and communication between the national organization and local chapters. Young people make up the largest voter block and we need to raise money to reach young voters.”

  Amen.

• A blogger at Campus Progress notes that Senator Pat Leahy just wrapped up a bit piece in the new Batman movie. The blogger "doesn't know what to do with" the information, but I do - applaud it. Leahy is on the front lines right now in fighting Republican corruption in government. Yay on him for realizing that popular culture is a tool to embrace in that fight, not a pariah to attack (as some other Democrats seem to think *cough*Hillary and Lieberman*cough*).
• "Fair and Balanced" Fox News got caught editing Democratic candidate Al Franken's Wikipedia entry.
• Finally, what if the last five years were a giant Batman episode, and Dennis Kucinich a Superhero? Keep your eye out for Teen-Wolf Blitzer:
  

Via BoingBoing - a chart comparing the issue positions of all the presidential candidates - Democrats and Republicans.

This afternoon I'll be live blogging from ACORN's presidential forum, which is being held in the best city in America-- Philadelphia (hey, stop laughing, before I show you what we mean by "Brotherly Love"- think older brothers and noogies). Only three of the candidates--Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich-- are attending, but it still should be an interesting time.

The forum will be webcast on ACORN's site, and there will be a number of other bloggers there as well, including a few from some of the bigger liberal political blogs. For a full list of bloggers check ACORN's Candidate's Forum blog.

Update: there's no wireless here, and typing too much on my blackberry kills my thumbs, so I won't be able to really write much. It's packed here, and after a long wait and lots of call and answers/chants, Hillary just came on.didn't take long for the first screaming nut to start, and nobody is stopping him. This is really weird. Now they're trying to talk to him. And now, after two or three awkward minutes, he's leaving, screaming and singing all the way.

Update 2: I just left the Forum, after listening to Hillary's speech and the Q&A session. The Senetor from New York gave a really impassioned speech which was met by loud cheers, though I have to say that every time I hear Hillary talk about health care or a living wage or predatory lending (hello bankruptcy bill!). The more I see, the less I like, though I still think she'd be a formidable Democratic candidate, and she definitely shares her husband's ability to work a crowd

Either way, there was just no way I was going to wait around for Kucinich and then stand for an hour while he speaks, and I heard Edwards speak two weeks ago.

Update 3: Edwards just finished, and as usual I really like what he has to say about issues effecting the poor and working class in America. He didn't seem to get the same amount of cheering and applause as Hillary, though it could have been some combination of the fact that he went on over 3 hours after the event began and the cheering could be a lot less audible over the interwebs, but I was really surprised that ACORN member aren't going gaga over a guy who seems to be running mainly on their issues. I did think that Edwards statement that "I don't need to read your position papers... Because they're already my positions!" was a bit clumsily worded, and in general his orating abilities aren't at the same level as Clinton or Obama, but I definitely think he has more substance than either of them.

Cross posted at MyDD. Please recommend.

One of the things I want to do through the course of this primary is track the "youthroots," or "under 30" grassroots organizing on behalf of candidates - campus groups, high school groups, or other identified youth groups (like Punx for Dean in '04). I want to not only track these groups, but look at how they organize their members, how they coordinate with each other, and how they coordinate with the "official" youth operations of the campaigns. The end goal being to compare, contrast, and establish best practices for youth outreach.

As a start to that project, I've compiled a list of all the groups I could find for each candidate based on some simple Google searches (candidate name + youth, student, teen, high school), a look at the blogrolls/links, and some quick surfing on MySpace and FaceBook. I'll follow it up with emails to the administrators of all those groups and report back the results later this week along with some more thoughts as to who's youthroots are organizing most effectively and why. If you are part of - or know of - any other youthroots that I'm missing for any candidate, please add a link in the comments.

There are some preliminary thoughts based on initial observations offered throughout the post.