2008 round up

• Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Joe Biden (D-DE), both of whom have no shot at winning their party's nomination (or a general election were they to succeed), are campaigning together in Iowa for Biden's dumb soft-partition plan. It is dumb because it is A) too late to partition the country now; B) the one thing the Iraqi Parliament has done is vote this proposal down; C) it smacks of colonialism. [More on Biden's idiocy later]


• The only reason Rudy has been successful thus far in the GOP primary is because Republican primary voters like bullies on their behalf. All he does is make negative statements about Democrats, especially Hillary, and they lap it up. A-holes for Giulliani.


• I get "breaking news" from the New York Times sent to me via my Google Reader. And the most laughable breaking news of the day was this one: "A Senate Star Sparkles Less on the Stump"...and that "senate star" is Joe Biden. Anyone who has heard him speak at committee hearings or on Sunday talk shows knows he is a pompous windbag that is an exemplar of what is wrong with Washington. Here's a taste from a resent trip to Iowa:
  

  The senator explained that he had just barely caught the direct flight from Washington to Des Moines that evening, “since neither Hillary nor Barack will lend me their G5 jets,” and that there had been no time to change. “I got in the plane — I was meeting with President Talabani, you know, he’s the Kurdish leader in Iraq, and I literally ran from that meeting in the Capitol.”
  [...]
  Mr. Biden may sometimes seem a caricature for long-windedness in Washington, but he goes over well with Iowans, who sit nodding through his stories-within-stories about the Senate and his meetings with presidents and world leaders.
  [...]
  “I think I have the ingredients,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of around 50 people who gathered to hear him speak in Burlington. “I could be wrong, to state the obvious, and if I’m wrong, then you’ll have to watch me on the Sunday shows and in the Senate. But if I’m right, then you may have the chance to really, really change the world.”

  Iowans are just polite and Joe has all the ingredients of a electoral disaster. Go name drop at a cocktail party in the Beltway and leave these poor people alone.


• Go Log Cabin Republicans!


• Is Obama '08 Daschle '04? Just look at these facts...
  

  the major former Daschle staffers now in Obama's orbit:
  
  *Pete Rouse: Rouse served as Daschle's chief of staff for 20 years before the South Dakota Senator's defeat in 2004. Shortly afterward, he was selected to serve in that same post for Obama.
  
  *Robert Gibbs: Obama's communications director, Gibbs served in that same role at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the 2002 cycle. He was handpicked by the Daschle operation for that job.
  
  *Steve Hildebrand: Daschle's campaign manager in 2004 (and South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson's in 2002), Hildebrand accompanied Obama on a recent trip to Iowa and has been reaching out to potential staff behind the scenes. Hildebrand also ran the Iowa caucuses for then Vice President Al Gore in 2000.
  
  *Anita Dunn: Dunn, a longtime Daschle aide, has been tasked with straightening out Obama's Hopefund PAC through the end of this year. She will not be a part of any Obama bid as she is committed as a senior strategist for Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh (D).
  
  *Todd Webster: Webster is a former spokesman for Daschle and the brains behind www.runobama.com, a draft site for the Illinois Senator that has collected some 11,000 signatures urging him to run.

  Don't forget his finance team [larger image here]
I bought Wes Clark's new "presidential candidate book" and have just finished the introduction, but I am reminded again how terrible it was for him to have entered in so late that he missed Iowa, got crappy Gore '00 staffers and based his strategy on beating Dean in the February 3rd states. He would have been a terrific president. It also reminds me about how saddening it was to see him endorse Hillary this early. It would have been career suicide for Clark to support Edwards and maybe Obama should she win it all, but some how I was hoping for more.

Clark's loss in 2004 broke my political heart and I am still not ready to fall for any of these candidates yet. Although Obama is appealing, he is listening too much to those Daschle people who feed into his inner cautious streak.