Nation-Building

Below is the text of an article by Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation . She had a nice review of Dean's latest book, You Have The Power . I Just thought going into these last few days of this election that it was a nice reminder to all of us that we should be proud of the work we have done through Dean for Kerry, the left and the DLC: Enjoying the BACKBONE gang? Of course, there's still a lot of work to do yet to get rid of Bush, if it really is possible. Still, Dean is right that a Kerry win is simply a stopgap for the twisted Bush effort. (I mean, to have my patriotism questioned by people who are now working hard and proudly to suppress and deny people their right to vote in anticipation of a massive turnout? How American is that? As American as apple pie, I suppose, in the minds of Tom Delay's busloads of angry mobs ready to terrorize Floridians again in the name of democracy.) Good Luck to all of us next Tuesday, but really, the fight kind of begins for us the nex...

Any comments on this poll which has Bush at 18% among African-Americans?

The theme that the tough fight over Wisconsin represents a serious problem for the Kerry campaign is misguided. You could just as easily mention President Bush's 43% job approval in Ohio . He can't win with that number, and if it holds up and Kerry wins those 20 electoral votes, it's Bush who needs to flip at least two blue states while holding on to all the remaining red. (Cross-posted at my blog .)

link is an mp3. it's Hilarious :)

Have they saved the best for last? UPDATE: Cheney never met Edwards. Bush doesn't know he owns a timber company and denies saying he wasn't that concerned about Bin Laden. Does the Republican ticket have some sort of memory problems? UPDATE: My tax cut joke is here .

Barack Obama was in Wisconsin supporting Russ Feingold. As a Feingold volunteer, I found this comments inspiring. If you do, too, click here . Let's make the midwest a new center of our brand of politics!

There's really not a lot to say about this. What to do about it is discussed at the link.

"The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: "The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined." -- Al Gore, writing in the New York Times

Luke Skywalker versus Emperor Palpatine. Discuss "Your overconfidence is your weakness." "Your faith in your friends is yours."

This promises to be interesting indeed: Three-time Republican presidential nomination hopeful Pat Buchanan and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean will go head to head in Irvine Auditorium on Oct. 19, the Social Planning and Events Committee's Connaissance branch announced Friday. The event, open to the Penn community and moderated by Annenberg School for Communication Dean Michael Delli Carpini, will center on the issues of the upcoming presidential election. "This event is all about informing those who are uninformed," Connaissance board member and College senior Mark Guterman said. "Both of these leaders can speak very honestly and openly about the parties and their respective platforms." Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans chairman and Wharton senior David Copley expressed surprise, but also excitement, at the prospect of a debate between Buchanan and Dean. "These are not party politicians," he said. "Pat Buchanan has...

What did you think? Here are some of my impressions, in somewhat random order. I didn't want to live-blog it, I preferred to let the debate sink in and percolate a bit. I'm cross-posting to UNMEDIA and my Red State and my DailyKos diaries as well. Bush scored a point with the Korean multi-lateral issue, rather than Kerry's focus on bilateral talks. While its true that Bush could not convincing articulate why multilateral talks including China were superior, neither could Kerry articulate why they were inferior, and on that issue, the burden of proof is with Kerry to demonstrate why things should change. True, N. Korea went nuclear on Bush's watch, but what's Kerry going to DO about it on his watch? Kerry's point that 30-some countries had a greater WMD capability than Iraq was, as Josh puts it, a hammer-blow indeed. It completely shut down the Bush line that invading Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat. I found Bush too repetitive o...