The hope of Obama's candidacy is not just about a future administration, but about a campaign that is already being transformed. I don't think Republican attacks are going to work in the same way as they have in the past. I'm thinking here of McCain's key comment: that Obama is "eloquent but empty". Here's the problem.

As Clinton's poll numbers go down in both Iowa and New Hampshire, her campaign is faced with a potentially big dilemma. On the one hand, as this diary by markw suggests, the Clinton campaign will want to begin setting up a narrative where even IF she loses Iowa and New Hampshire, she can still win the primary.

There is arguably one fact, or more exactly, lie, that has been at the center of American politics for the last twenty-five years: the lie that raising taxes on a small group of wealthy Americans is actually raising taxes on ordinary, middle-class and working-class citizens.

The right-wing celebrates Petraeus's claim that Sunni factions in Anbar have rejected Al Qaeda. As the New York Times puts it, "Other areas are following suit, he adds."

According to the ever reliable Politico, Fred Thompson will enter the Republican race, announcing on the July 4th weekend.

The challenge here: just how fast can we mount some good opposition research?

Here's one important way that I think we need to frame the emerging John Warner GOP-Senate proposal on Iraq, which "would threaten billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Iraq" for unmet benchmarks, rather than setting up a timeline or pulling back the troops.

This punishes the troops, by keeping THEM in Iraq even while pulling back money that is supposed to make them safer.

This is in quick response to this searing, disturbing paragraph from the AP report about the abduction and search for 3 U.S. soldiers:

Troops surrounded the town of Youssifiyah and told residents over loudspeakers to stay inside, residents said. They then methodically searched the houses, focusing on possible secret chambers under the floors where the soldiers might be hidden, residents said. The soldiers marked each searched house with a white piece of cloth. Soldiers also searched cars entering and leaving the town, writing "searched" on the side of each vehicle they had inspected. Several people were arrested, witnesses said.

Well Bush didn't say these exact words,  but here'sthe comments from a beautifully-unnamed "senior administration official" in the Washington Post who we take it speaks for Bush: "If you say the next two months are make or break, I think I can predict what we'll see. We will see a sustained series of suicide attacks. It's a really harmful approach. There is a risk you can push [the Iraqi government] off a cliff."

A serious problem occurred at the Washington Post on May 3. They issued a front-page, lead article called "Democrats Back Down on Iraq Timetable" which revolved around this important piece of news: "Democrats offer[ed] the first major concession" in negotiations about the Iraq war bill, "an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq."

A rare glimpse from the Washington Post about who is actually fighting the U.S. in Iraq. In this case, Shiite forces in Baghdad who are using a different, more deadly form of armor-piercing, tank-piercing projectile explosive. Strikingly, this information is only appearing because it is sanctioned by the U.S. military, so that the article begins:

From ABC news: "In his speech the president did not threaten any specific consequences for the government or any impact on U.S. participation in the war if the benchmarks are not met." It seems likely that at least part of the post-veto political situation is going to revolve around "benchmarks" that measure the Maliki regime's progress on a number of issues. One point that I don't think has been hit forcefully enough by the Democrats yet:

Did anyone else just see Carl Levin on This Week? He came out strongly against cutting off funding for the war.

To Paraphrase Phil Ochs

Here's one way to understand the politics of the Feingold-Reid proposal today: they're using the potential leverage of a Bush veto on the Supplemental bill to defuse Mitch McConnell's filibuster threats.

Sampson's testimony is really striking for insight into a venal patronage mill. Sampson was charged with hiring and firing. This is a very serious responsibility -- not as serious as going to war, or life-and-death budget decisions, but one that many Americans can more directly relate to. Nor was he just charged with hiring and firing anyone: these were the leading prosecutors in the U.S.

I started reading the artist-currently-known-as-big-tent-dem when he penned some of the most persuasive and substantive posts advocating Wesley Clark's 2004 candidacy. I'm glad to read his diary this morning about Obama.

I think there is a categorical confusion between two kinds of unity at stake in Obama's insurgent campaign for the presidency. One view is exemplified in David Sirota's diary today:"But he also seems to believe that the reason our country has such challenges is because all sides of every issue have not come together in unity."

I was struck this morning when reading new diaries on Daily Kos about what seems like the ever-more inevitable escalation that Bush will propose shortly after the New Year. Predictions are appropriately on our minds these days, facing this possibility of increased violence and intensified war in Iraq. Sadly, we need to remember that Bush has always had two "enemies" in mind when he has made major decisions about Iraq: an enemy abroad, which goes by many names (axis-of-evil, dead-enders, terrorists, al qaeda, extremists, insurgents, etc) and an enemy right here that has one name: the Democratic party.