Nation-Building

Here's the open thread for Day One of the RNC. I'm curious what people think of protests. Are they valuable in promoting the causes? Also, at the link is a post by David Asednik of Oxblog on how the media coverage contrasted with his view of the protests . UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias has more thoughts .

Here's the transcript of Dean and Blitzer people wanted. Thanks to Barb in comments.

Sepoy of Chapati Mystery has short account of some time he spend registering voters in Columbus, Ohio . It's both amusing and depressing. Here's my favorite part: "We were at a mall in downtown Columbus and it was pouring outside. I wanted to go inside but others told me that doing voter registeration inside the mall was not allowed. Huh? I didn't believe it but the manager of the mall, upon enquiry, exclaimed, 'I am a Republican,' and walked off. The question was, can we set up a small table by the entrance to offer voter registeration. So, I trolled the mall with the clipboard inconspicuously, casually asking people under the breath, 'Hey, you registered to vote, man?' yeah."

This landmark piece in the New York Times documents the rise of the "venture-capital" political movement on the left. There's something thrilling about the way that the complete One Party domination of the Republicans - leading to worship of party before principle - has been the impetus for a new breed of politics to rise on the Left, a new emergent infrastructure that has very little to do with the Democratic Party. It's nearly impossible to excerpt an 11-page story, but there are some important points I want to make. The first point is recognizing what democracy in America is truly up against - a vast, right wing conspiracy of money and "vertical integration" of conservative think tanks and mainstream media outlets, that is funded to the tune of 300 million dollars a year . The story is best told by - of all things - a Powerpoint presentation: Last summer, he got a call from Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a fund-raising and ...

Anyone still here? :) I've moved to Chicago for two months to do some research with my advisor, and will be back in Houston mid-October. But my dissertation is rolling towards completion, so it's unlikely I can maintain a high output of blogposts even after that. But there's still our whole community that we built here together, and I think many of you have voices that need to be heard. So I'd like to ask for nominations for regular ocntributors in comments to be posters. Anyone interested? email me at azizp at gmail dot com. I think it would be great especially to give our most prolific commentators like Anthony, Robert or Jo or any of the others a chance to try out their hand at frontpage posting. Let me know if you think you want to try it and I'll set you up! And a special call-out hat-tip to Barb, whose posts in comments are always front-page material. Please use your access! :)

"Dean brought that passion back into national politics. He is regularly criticized for saying 'the wrong thing,' which usually turns out to be (a) true and (b) what a lot of us were thinking. Those of us who lack a national voice are grateful to him. Truly, we all owe him -- Democrats who want to be themselves, Republicans who are worried about huge budget deficits, and everyone who cares about the democratic process and wants to see people get involved, argue, campaign and vote." And the redemption of liberal politics in the U.S. has only just begun. (Via Blog for America )

Discuss whatever. And by the way, over the weekend someone asked me if Muslims worshipped cats.