I've had my share of complaints about Obama (okay, more than my share) but I think electing him is one of the most important thing progressives can do. I also think he'll beat McCain by out-organizing and out-planning him. Which is to say that money, always the mother's milk of politics, is especially important. I'm excited by his 50-state strategy and will do what I can to make sure he has the funds to maintain it.

I don't want to fawn over Feingold; he's just a pol, after all; but he's showing once again why he's the best Senator there is, with apologies to Sanders, Brown, Kennedy, and Reed.

What strikes me most about the debate in the House over FISA is how much it resembles national security debates in 2001 and 2002, with many Dems supporting awful bills for fear of appearing soft. You'd never know that in the interim there'd been a disastrous Republican war.

There's a depressing diaryon the rec list right now. It applauds Obama's support of the FISA "compromise" because it will prevent the media and the right-wing from portraying him as weak.

Not too long ago (as recently as last week), it seemed that everyone in the netroots agreed that we shouldn't let fear of our political opponents dictate important choices on national security.

No, not the economy, nor Iraq, nor health care, nor trade, not even McCain's love affair with the past.

Affirmative action.

Obama has stated that he thinks affirmative actions programs in schools and elsewhere should focus less on race and more on class. He should make this a big issue in this campaign. Doing so could help him not only win the election but build a black-white coalition that could lead to sweeping progressive change.

Already diaried? Probably, but so what? It deserves a few diaries.

This is one of those shocking-not-shocking-at all-reports that have become commonplace in the Age of Bush:
according to a (credible) reporter, Bush is preparing for a permanent occupation of Iraq.

You remember Kyl-Lieberman, right? It became a big issue in the primary because Hillary Clinton supported it. She took lots of heat primarily because it classified Iran's Revolutionary Guard as an international terrorist organization. This week, after McCain criticized Obama for opposing the measure, Obama said he opposed it because of its implications for the war in Iraq, not because of its language on the Revolutionary Guard.

The right-wing press is accusing Obama of flip-flopping, but this, in fact, has been Obama's position all along, or at least since he finally clarified his position. He was wrong then, and he's wrong now.

A black man is the Democratic Party nominee for president. If you're not excited and amazed, you're dead inside, or perhaps merely distracted. People are rightly celebrating the history that was made last night, but I hope another fact doesn't get lost: a progressive is the Democratic nominee for president.

His progressivism can be elusive. His focus on consensus and unity sometimes obscures and even undercuts his progressivism. But perspective is needed. He's the most progressive Democratic nominee in 40 years.

Pew just put out a new poll. The general findings won't surprise you, but the particulars might. It seem to validate the effort of Democrats to link McCain to Bush. (Of course, it's McCain who linked himself to Bush. We're just pointing it out.)

I know you're tired of hearing about it, but I'm going to keep talking about it as long as the Obama, his campaign, and so many Obama supporters refuse to acknowledge the obvious: he's performed poorly among white working class voters in every part of the country.

I'm not sure if it's spin or denial or some combination. (I guess if Hillary were poised to win the nomination, her supporters would be denying her problem with African-Americans.) For a while, when Hillary's campaign was alive and kicking, it made certain political sense to deny the problem, given that it was central to her electability argument. But now that Obama is the sure nominee, it makes no sense to uphold the pretense. On the contrary, failure to acknowledge the problem may prevent Obama from solving it.

We can debate about whether the problem poses a minor or large risk to his candidacy; but on the question of whether he has a problem, there can be no debate. The truth below the fold.

In case you haven't heard what Bush said:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

In the short term, of course it's good for Democrats that Bush in the news, because he has Dahmer-like approval ratings. But the soft-on-national security charge--which was echoed by John McCain--still threatens to hurt Democrats, especially if they continue to respond the way they did today.

His problem, you see, is that Jews are generally progressive. A new poll by Gallup finds that in a prospective match up against Barack Obama, McCains loses among Jews 2 to 1.

Details below.

I've got a friend in the CIA in Pakistan. He leaked me this memo from Bin Laden himself. Pretty interesting...

One of the year's most important stories got lost in the furor over Reverend Wright:

...a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

This is just the latest evidence that abuse of detainees was systematic and that Bush and his inner circle--as well as senior military officials--are to blame.

What do we do with this knowledge?
What does Barack Obama do?

I don't think this has been diaried yet; unfortunately I don't have time to do so in any depth.

John Bolton is calling for George Bush to launch an attack on Iran. Bolton, of course, is no fringe player but a former administration official who has the trust of both Bush and Cheney.

Excerpts of the article, which appeared in the Telegraph on Monday, below.

I was planning to stay out of the primary wars today, but I made the mistake of checking in and saw the disgusting, elitist, destructive diary at the top of the rec list. Here's the money quote: White working class voters are, the author claims:

People who historically can't identify their own interest?  People who vote on the basis of beer, and bowling?

Don't you just love the Faux-News question marks. Yeah, okay, white working class voters are too stupid to know what's good for them.

Clinton is portraying Obama as an out-of-touch, effete, liberal elitist who can't relate to (white) working class and voters. If and when Obama wins the nomination, McCain will do the same.

Obama's problem in real. In every state but Wisconsin, even Illinois, he's failed to win the majority of white, blue-collar workers. According to a new poll, McCain crushes Obama among white working class voters in key states. For a while the campaign (and some progressives) seemed willing to write off these voters. Obama has come to recognize that he has a problem, but the changes enacted by his campaign are mostly cosmetic and will do little to solve it.

He can forget about bowling and basketball, he can forget about talking about his humble roots and his single mother. For Obama there's only one answer, and it's called progressive populism.

Let me first say that on the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, Obama has shown more boldness than most pols with presidential aspirations. The possibility that he might bring some sanity and decency to American policy on this issue is a reason I voted for him.

But as the campaign has progressed, he's gotten more timid on the issue. And now he's timid to the point of compromising his principles.