By Al Giordano

There's a predictable flutter of puffed-up "outrage" from some blogger sectors about President-elect Obama's choice of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to chair the Democratic National Committee. But I'm with Nate:

Kaine does strike me as being a pretty good fit for this position, though. He oozes a certain sort of optimistic sincerity that ought to play pretty well on television, where he's liable to be deployed ubiquitously on the Sunday Morning talk circuit, perhaps sometimes playing "good cop" to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. It seems probable that Kaine's role is going to be more about public relations than tactics, with the latter function to be fulfilled in large part by elements of the Obama apparatus itself.

And here's another point that most seem to be missing so far. The biggest challenge for the Democratic Party in the years to come - especially if, as promised by candidate Obama, immigration reform gives twelve million (mostly) Mexican-Americans a path to citizenship and voting - will be to consolidate those voters as base Democrats. That, alone, would cement former swing states Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada into the D column, and bring along Arizona and, gasp, Texas, too, and turn Obama's 2008 victory into a long-term generational shift.

Nobody should presume that the Democrats have the Hispanic-American vote locked up for the future. Republicans are making their own plays toward millions of economically liberal but socially conservative Hispanic-American voters (which is why George W. Bush himself pushed hard for immigration reform in 2007). Kaine provides the perfect profile for accomplishing that task.

For starters, Kaine speaks Spanish, and fluently (during my September interview with him in the Virginia governor's office we conversed in Spanish for part of it, leading his press secretary Gordon Hickey to comment "well, I guess I don't have to be here now").

Not since Senator Chris Dodd chaired the DNC (1995-1997) has that position been filled by someone who could communicate in that language.

Ambinder calls the pending Kaine appointment a prelude to "Howard Dean's 50 state strategy on steroids."

And if there's any doubt as to whether the community-organizer-in-chief is going to remain hands-on his national political organization, two top aids have drawn up a 500 page memo "of what went right and what went wrong in each state's field operation. A book-length treatment was given to Obama to read over the holidays."

The smattering of negativism from some corners toward Kaine's appointment (although not a single one of 300+ DNC members has so far displayed any displeasure at all with the pick) is based on the kind of stupid distortions of his positions from some self-proclaimed progressives that mimic the Sean Hannity types on the right: they claim he's "anti-gay" (he's not) and "anti-choice" (while his personal views - like those of Obama, Biden, John Kerry and others are a matter, they all say, of their religious faith, all, like Kaine, are governmentally pro-choice).

What they seem to object to is the suggestion, distasteful to them, that anybody should be appointed to any position - even if it's not a government or policy position, which DNC chair assuredly is not - who argues "I'm personally against abortion but will enforce Roe v. Wade" or who defends gay rights without being for gay marriage.

It's a particularly poor argument in this case, since the DNC chair's role is to advocate for whatever positions are held by the Democratic president, and what Kaine's critics fail to see is that his personal views will make him a more effective advocate supporting Obama's stance in favor of gay civil unions and abortion rights than if the DNC chair were someone more ideologically bent that way. It's far more powerful when someone like Kaine argues, as he has, for defending the right to abortion on legal grounds, and when he condemns discrimination against gays and lesbians, precisely because those on the other side of the divide can see somebody who is nuanced on these questions giving them, too, permission to support Democratic policies and politicians despite disagreement with them over some social issues.

Here's an example. The moderate National Catholic Weekly is swayed:

I never thought I would live to see the day. If anyone had any doubts about Barack Obama's willingness to listen to pro-life Democrats, his selection of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to head the Democratic National Committee should settle those doubts. Obama means business.

Governor Kaine is clearly one of the president-elect's favorite fellow politicians. He was on the short-list for the vice-presidency but his lack of foreign policy credentials was deemed an insurmountable hurdle. But, Kaine is also pro-life. There are those in the GOP who will contest the point. They correctly point out that Kaine said during his campaign that he would enforce the law and the law is Roe v. Wade. Of course, this was a mere statement of fact. The Governor of Virginia, like the Governor of any other state, must abide by the laws of the United States. We fought a great and terrible civil war, much of it on the soil of Virginia, on precisely this point.

But, Kaine said more than that he would enforce the laws. He took the time to explain his opposition to abortion and to capital punishment. In historically Republican and conservative Virginia, Kaine's opposition to capital punishment was even more of an impediment to his election than his opposition to abortion! He explained why his Catholic views were important to him, and how he saw those views making different claims upon his conscience and upon his veto power. Most importantly, he was not afraid to admit that there is some ambivalence about how religious views intersect with the duties of public office. NARAL refused to endorse his candidacy.

Meanwhile, the radical Pro Life News finds Kaine's views to be operationally pro-choice:

"Obama is naming pro-abortion Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to serve as the next chairman of the national Democratic Party."

An appointment like this drives a stake between moderate and radical sectors of the Republican (and Independent) social right wing and is devastating to their previous coalition.

It's part and parcel of Obama's mission to disarm the time bomb of social issues and neutralize them as weapons for the right.

US News & World Report notes:

Barack Obama's decision to tap Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to be the next Democratic National Committee chairman is a sign that the party will very likely continue and perhaps expand on the unprecedented faith outreach initiatives that Howard Dean launched during his tenure as chair.

Kaine's 2005 run for governor was one of the few statewide races in the year following the Democrats' landslide defeat among so-called values voters, and his bid became a test case for many of the faith-based tactics that have now become commonplace among Democrats.

For instance, some of the first ads that Kaine-a Catholic who spent nine months as a missionary in Honduras-ran in 2005 were on Christian radio, a format that had been ignored by most Democratic candidates before that time. The Kaine campaign wanted to establish the candidate's Christian identity early, so that he could talk about his faith closer to Election Day without appearing opportunistic or disingenuous, a major fear of Democrats at the time.

MyDD front-pager Bob Brigham outlined five absolutely spurious and unconvincing arguments against Kaine at DNC:

1. We need a full time DNC Chair, not a part-time Chair. Kaine apparently intends to half-ass it for the first year, which should be a deal-breaker.

2. His one real moment on the national stage, giving the rebuttal to Bush's 2008 2006 state of the union, was an unmitigated failure.

3. He's Anti-Choice!

4. The Virginia bloggers who know him best have been very unsatisfied with his gubernatorial term.Raising Kaine, the blog that bears his name, should have been renamed Razing Kaine before it shut down and Not Larry Sabato has been on a twitter-tear (but has a great backgrounder re-posted on Tim Kain and Jim Gilmore).

5. Terry McAuliffe, the last DLC'er from Virginia who ran the DNC, literally ran the Democratic Party into the ground.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid and the fifth point is even stupider, especially because Brigham's claims are dreadfully errant on the real facts.

One, Obama is installing his own team as DNC staff, to be headed by 31-year-old Jennifer Brigid O'Malley Dillon, whose role as Battleground States Director for Obama's presidential campaign (after her original candidate, John Edwards, left the race) is described here:

(started April 2008)  Deputy campaign manager on John Edwards for President after serving as state director on his Iowa caucus campaign.  Campaign manager on Rep. Jim Davis' 2006 gubernatorial campaign in Florida.  Deputy campaign manager for Sen. Tom Daschle's 2004 Senate re-election campaign in South Dakota.  Field director on Sen. Edwards' 2003-04 Iowa caucus campaign.  In 2002 O'Malley served as field director for the South Dakota Democratic Coordinated Campaign, then as field director for Sen. Mary Landrieu's runoff campaign.  In 2001 she was campaign manager for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.  In 1999-2000 O'Malley was volunteer coordinator for Gore in the NH primary, then worked as a field organizer in New York and Pennsylvania, and in the general election, she was regional field director for the Missouri Coordinated Campaign in the St. Louis Metro area.  O'Malley is a 1998 graduate of Tufts University and hails from Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts.

Got it? She's a field organizer! And she'll be running the shop, day to day. When has that ever happened?

Two, Brigham's suggestion that Kaine isn't good on TV is beyond ignorant. Here he is last summer with Charlie Rose (and that interview provides clues as to the "new politics" style with which Kaine will lead the DNC, including his undeniable enthusiasm for the 50 state strategy and for declining PAC and lobbyist money). Kaine's capacity to humanize politics and take it out of the realm of cartoon caricature makes him uniquely skilled on television:

And here he is smacking down Karl Rove on Meet the Press last August:

More like Obama on television than perhaps any other major Democratic official, Kaine smiles as he sticks the knife in his adversaries, and makes it seem like he's being the kindest most decent sort from your neighborhood while he absolutely massacres them with niceness.

Three, Brigham's claim that Kaine is "anti-choice" is a gross distortion, unworthy of serious blog punditry - a typical deception that comes from not disclosing the whole truth - about a governor that did not interfere with a single woman's right to terminate a pregnancy during his tenure in Virginia and did not block a single medical procedure. We really must denounce and reject such dishonesty when it comes from those purporting to come from the progressive side of the aisle. I disassociate myself from such nonsense because it would embarrass me for anyone to presume that the kind of thoughtless ranting of Brigham's diary in any way represents me. It doesn't. And it probably doesn't represent most of you either.

Four, bloggers in his home state are upset with Kaine. Big whoop and so what? Bloggers in the home states of every other major elected official are upset with them, too.

And five, that he comes from the same state as the nefarious Terry McAuliffe is the kind of BS argument one would expect from a barstool at closing time. Does that mean that anybody from Virginia should be disqualified? Heck, I come from the same state as Son of Sam and David Rockefeller. Brigham comes from the same state as Charlie Manson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. ‘Nuff said. It's such a non-argument that it doesn't even dignify a response.

Tim Kaine is a leader uniquely in tune with the times we live in and with the new politics that Obama has ushered in. I can't think of anybody more suited to the task of being the public face and voice of Obama's party - a party that now seeks to include those of us without a party - than Kaine, who, I wrote at the time, would have been a great choice for vice president or for attorney general (and we may see him in one or the other in the future, once his gubernatorial term is up in early 2010). I'd rather work with people like him than with the stuck-in-the-seventies politically-correct crowd that lost every battle it ever claimed to fight and that is whining about this pick.

Expect a press conference in the coming days making Kaine's ascension to DNC chair official, and let the new order of the ages begin.

By Al Giordano

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson today withdrew his name from nomination for US Commerce Secretary:

A federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Richardson's political activities won a lucrative New Mexico state contract...

A person familiar with the proceedings has told The Associated Press that the grand jury is looking into possible "pay-to-play" dealings between CDR Financial Products and someone in a position to push the contract through with the state of New Mexico.

The Washington Post reported on grand jury activity surrounding the New Mexico contract on December 16:

In the New Mexico case, the FBI and federal prosecutors are investigating how CDR, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., won lucrative fees from the New Mexico Finance Authority in 2004 soon after donating $100,000 to two Richardson organizations.

From 2003 to 2004, CDR Financial gave $75,000 to Sí Se Puede, which paid for expenses at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. CDR's president and founder, David Rubin, also gave $25,000 to Moving America Forward, which funded Richardson's efforts to register Hispanic and American Indian voters.

Two weeks later, Richardson bows out.

Here's the official statement:

STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT ELECT BARACK OBAMA

It is with deep regret that I accept Governor Bill Richardson's decision to withdraw his name for nomination as the next Secretary of Commerce. Governor Richardson is an outstanding public servant and would have brought to the job of Commerce Secretary and our economic team great insights accumulated through an extraordinary career in federal and state office. It is a measure of his willingness to put the nation first that he has removed himself as a candidate for the Cabinet in order to avoid any delay in filling this important economic post at this critical time. Although we must move quickly to fill the void left by Governor Richardson's decision, I look forward to his future service to our country and in my administration.

STATEMENT OF GOVERNOR BILL RICHARDSON

For nearly three decades, I have been honored to serve my state and our nation in Congress, at the U.N., as Secretary of Energy and as governor.  So when the President-elect asked me to serve as Secretary of Commerce, I felt a duty to answer the call.I felt that duty particularly because America is facing such extraordinary economic challenges.  The Department of Commerce must play an important role in solving them by helping to grow the new jobs and businesses America so badly needs.

It is also because of that sense of urgency about the work of the Commerce Department that I have asked the President-elect not to move forward with my nomination at this time.I do so with great sorrow.  But a pending investigation of a company that has done business with New Mexico state government promises to extend for several weeks or, perhaps, even months.

Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact. But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process. Given the gravity of the economic situation the nation is facing, I could not in good conscience ask the President-elect and his Administration to delay for one day the important work that needs to be done.

So, for now, I will remain in the job I love, Governor of New Mexico, and will continue to work every day, with Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish, to make a positive difference in the lives of New Mexicans.  I believe she will be a terrific governor in the future. I appreciate the confidence President-elect Obama has shown in me, and value our friendship and working partnership.  I told him that I am eager to serve in the future in any way he deems useful.  And like all Americans, I pray for his success and the success of our beloved country.

New Mexico Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish - whose rise to the state's top job is now cut off at the pass - is probably more upset about this development than anybody else.

Obama's key words - "I look forward to his future service to our country and in my administration" - indicate that he doesn't think Richardson's problems will be permanent or long term.

This is how the "no drama" approach to government works. No individual is owed a particular post. And if - even through no fault of his or her own - that person might become a distraction, it's time to step aside until such a time as matters no longer distract.

Now, here's where this latest development gets interesting...

Somewhere in a country called Albany, in a state called New York, Governor David Paterson is reading the newspaper and thinking that if a questionable $100,000 in contributions can derail a cabinet nomination, he sure made the right call in waiting for a bona fide US Senate vacancy before naming his pick.

The New York Times reported yesterday:

An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

It remains to be seen if one hundred-thousand dollar mini-scandal will gain as much traction as another, and whether Richardson's withdrawal might open the exit door for others.

Finally, I opine that US Rep. Xavier Becerra - who reportedly turned down Obama's offer to be US Trade Representative (Becerra's position in House leadership is arguably a more powerful position than trade rep) - could excel at the job of Commerce Secretary.

Never a dull moment, so far, in 2009!

Update: Meanwhile, it's beginning to look a lot like governance. This just in from the Obama transition:

President-elect Barack Obama will meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Capitol Hill on Monday.  Vice President-elect Joe Biden will join Obama for a meeting with Democratic and Republican congressional leadership on Capitol Hill on Monday afternoon.  Meeting participants will include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader John Boehner, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. There will be a pooled spray at the top of the bi-partisan meeting.

President-elect Barack Obama will hold a meeting with his top economic advisors on Monday afternoon at his Washington DC transition office.   There will be a pooled spray at the end of the meeting.  Participants in the meeting will include Melody Barnes, Director-designate, Domestic Policy Council; Carol Browner, Assistant-designate to the President for Energy and Climate Change; Former Senator Tom Daschle, Health and Human Services Secretary-designate and Director-designate, White House Office on Health Reform;  Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff-designate; Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary-designate; Ron Klain, Chief of Staff-designate, Vice President-elect; Peter Orszag, Director-designate, Office of Management and Budget; Christina Romer, Director-designate, Council of Economic Advisors and Lawrence Summers, Director-designate, National Economic Council. 

Sixteen days and counting...

By Al Giordano

 

Part II has, in my view, the most memorable lines of Obama's victory speech...

"I know you didn't do this for me. You did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas: that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it...

"My journey began on the streets of Chicago doing what so many of you have done for this campaign and all the campaigns here in Iowa: Organizing and working and fighting to make people's lives just a little bit better. I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay, and a lot of sacrifices. There are days of disappointment but sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this...

"You'll be able to look back at this night and say that this was the moment when it all began... when the improbable beat what Washington said was inevitable... This was the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism, the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment. Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months we've been teased, even derided, for talking about hope. We always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, to work for it, and to fight for it."

Most pollsters had a dreadful time attempting to take measurement of what the results of the Iowa caucuses would be. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com wrote, on January 2, 2008 (correction: 2007!) that Iowa was "the pollster's nightmare":

The most puzzling - as noted by our friend Mickey Kaus - involves the performance of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in two polls of likely Democratic caucus goers conducted in Iowa in late December by Research2000 and the American Research Group (ARG). Both showed John Edwards with roughly the same support (20-22%). ARG Research 2000 showed Clinton leading with 31% and Obama running distant forth (at 10%) behind outgoing Iowa governor Tom Vilsack (17%). Research 2000 ARG showed Obama and Edwards tied for first (22%), with Clinton running forth (10%) behind Vilsack (17%).

So...Hillary Clinton is either their clear front runner in Iowa (with 31%) or running a distant fourth (with 10%).

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the pollster's nightmare: The Iowa Caucuses.

Here's the aggregation of polls in Iowa which had Senator Clinton in the lead right up until the end:

The "entrance poll" taken by the networks as Iowans entered the caucuses that evening had Obama at 35 percent (winning a whopping 57 percent of all caucus-goers under 30), with Edwards and Clinton in the mid 20 percentiles.

The final results (after supporters of also-rans Richardson, Biden, Dodd and Kucinich made their second choices) were:

Obama 38 percent

Edwards 30

Clinton 29

It was that Iowa victory that catapulted Obama upward and toward the eventual nomination and election as president of the United States.

The aggregation of national polls showed Obama twenty points behind Clinton in the Autumn of 2007. He began to inch upward in December and after Iowa shot straight up, finally overtaking Clinton in mid-February and never slipping behind after that:

Iowa gave viability to Obama's campaign and created an almost immediate shift in the African-American vote nationwide which, until a year ago tonight, had, according to all polls, supported Clinton over Obama. Iowa caused many African-Americans (and others) who had thought that white folks would never support a black presidential candidate to look at the results of lily white Iowa and conclude, "yes, we can."

I've got the staff here digging through the archives to find some of my postings from that week, a year ago, at another now-defunct website (we've got them, it's just a matter of conducting an archeological dig!), but I wanted to get those videos up in time for happy hour.

Update: And here it is, my post from January 2, 2008...

It's not the polls that tell us who will win tomorrow, but other factors: field organization (it really does matter), message, resources and how they've been deployed. All of them point to an Obama victory in Iowa tomorrow.

Just a few days ago when all holiday season polls were showing Clinton or Edwards ahead or surging in Iowa, I tried to gently suggest, in a number of ways, why Obama is, polls be damned, likely to win college educated women away from Clinton and hold onto college educated men against a late surge from Edwards. And I also opined that while everyone talks about his younger voter support, that Obama's "nuclear weapon" would be Independent voters flooding the Democratic caucuses in record numbers.

That Des Moines Register pollster J. Anne Selzer found that weapon on her radar screen will, if it comes true, increase the deserved mystique and credibility that surrounds her ability to figure out who will turn out to vote before the balloting starts. Even if she's off by nine points on her projection that 40 percent of Democratic caucus-goers will be Independent voters, she'll still have been closer to the real number than any other pollster, and will have told, in advance, the story of tomorrow night. (The DMR tonight offers more detail on the Independent tsunami that it reports is headed the Democrats' way.) But even if her poll had shown opposite results, I'd still be predicting an Obama win for tomorrow.

Obama is likely to win because he staffed the largest field organization and he did so early: more field offices and - prior to a wave of late arrivals over the past month for Clinton - he had more staff on Iowan ground than any other candidate. Through the Camp Obama training programs all summer long, the Obama campaign prepared its troops well through a program developed by, among others, veteran community organizer Marshall Ganz and rising field superstar Temo Figueroa.

Clinton's Iowa field marshal Theresa Vilmain as much as admitted to reporters that Clinton got a late start in Iowa. Meanwhile, Obama targeted young people (the others ignored them or scorned them as non-voting miscreants) including Independents, and defended them when DMR political reporter David Yepsen crusaded briefly against non-native students at Iowa universities participating. While Clinton, Dodd and Biden pandered to Yepsen, Obama dug in - at some risk, given Yepsen's long arm over the process - and showed mettle that should reap dividends tomorrow night.

During the many debates, while pundits opined that Obama had lackluster performances, something else was going on at ground level: TV news focus groups of Iowa voters showed Obama usually convincing more Hawkeye state voters that watched them than the other candidates. Obama has consistently drawn the largest crowds throughout Iowa all year long and over the past week, and in hyper-active effort to avoid the errors of Howard Dean four years ago, his campaign prioritized enlisting those that came to fill out pledge cards to caucus and be incorporated into the campaign organization.

The proximity of Obama's state of Illinois to Iowa will also play a role in this victory: he's likely to build up margins of victory in Eastern Iowa border counties, some quite populous. (For those that think that the late US Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois failed to do that in 1988, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to William Saletan's finding that year that Simon may have actually won the '88 Iowa caucuses.) 

Money has also played a role, as it always does in politics. This year, the turnout of first-time caucus-goers, including Independent voters, will also be fueled by simple math. Halperin quotes CBS News' Campaign Notebook tonight: "Candidates spent $65 million in Iowa this year, three times 2004's total." Well, you often get back what you pay out, and Obama's success fundraising with (what is now approaching) 500,000 donors, most of them small, gave him the resources to go dollar for dollar with the once inevitable Clinton machine, even if we include in the totals  the $2.5 million in independent expenditures made on her behalf.

Yes, money can't buy you love, so in the end it comes down to Obama's buzzword of "change," now recited by all candidates. (When, as today, Clinton say she is "fired up and ready to go," Iowans understand the "me-too" nature of such proclamations. The writing is on the wall.)

For all these reasons and more, that's why I call tomorrow's Iowa caucus for Obama.

(Bold-type emphasis added.)

And to think, a year later, we're 17 days away from that then-underdog taking the oath of office.

Then it will really be show time.

By Al Giordano

The debate over what is a local decision for New York - about who will fill the state's upcoming US Senate vacancy - has been waged upstate, downstate and with unusual passion out of state. At the center of the debate is Caroline Kennedy - the next big political super-weapon in the Democratic Party's arsenal - and rival camps are either reaching to put that armament into their own hands or to prevent it from emerging at all.

Yet all the pushing and shoving is correctly at the margins. The person whom New York law has given the title and deed to wield that weapon (or any other of his choosing, although the secondary pickin's are slim) is Governor David Paterson, who is playing his part rather masterfully in a manner that will maximize his own lasting ability to influence national policy and snare federal funding for his state from Albany.

Paterson has already succeeded - with Kennedy's help - in smacking down the attempt by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to attach his own "brand" to that of Kennedy more closely than any other New York political figure. But - watch, listen and learn from a pro - Paterson has already outmaneuvered Bloomberg and will emerge more cleanly "co-branded" to his eventual senate pick.

I've mentioned previously how arguments against Kennedy based on highly charged (and inaccurately used) words like "nepotism" or "monarchy" or the sexist "princess" diatribes from some corners would only backfire with Paterson, himself the son of a New York political legend, heir to his own dynasty and keeper of its flame.

Part-and-parcel of Paterson's political acumen - like the best New York politicians throughout a long and legendary history, he's unconventional yet with encyclopedic knowledge of the conventions of others - is that he knows how terribly off-target the speculation in the Big Apple tabloids, the New York Times, their columnists and the rest of the Empire State media usually are when trying to make a story more sensational than it really is. While bloggers and others have been led around by the nose ring by the Big Apple media mavens and their daily parade of false scoops surrounding Kennedy's quest to become senator, Paterson's strategy for the senate appointment is coming better into focus, and marches to his own drummer.

During his New Year's Day Open House at the Governor's Mansion - to which 300 rank-and-file citizens that won their tickets by online lottery were invited - he effectively narrowed the field of would-be senators by stating, flatly and clearly, that he won't be appointing any "caretaker" merely to keep the seat warm until the 2010 elections:

"I'm actually opposed to that. It would cause New York to lose seniority. And in the United State senate, the most effective senators are the ones who have seniority. So, I'm hoping the person I select wins the primary," Paterson said.

Got it? The "appoint a caretaker" boomlet is now officially dead. Gone are the dreams of some that elder statespersons like Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo or Geraldine Ferraro or Liz Holtzman or Bob Kerrey might enter the Senate temporarily to make for an "open primary" by the long-term aspirants next year. It makes no sense to argue for or against it now. The big man has spoken and taken it off the table. And that forces Kennedy's detractors to make more specific cases for a particular candidate or another, without the vague "caretaker" crutch to lean on.

Here's video of Paterson saying it, courtesy of Albany's NY 9 cable news.

According to the Albany Times Union - in a story titled, Paterson: No Senate ‘Caretaker' - the Governor outlined with greater specificity than ever what he is seeking for his senate pick:

When asked the qualities he was looking for in his pick, Paterson said: "First, an ability to help New York state, particularly through this fiscal difficulty. Second, 'who is going to be the best senator five years from now?' Not necessarily the day they're appointed. Third, creativity. In other words: ideas that could crystallize into solutions, particularly our economic problems."

"Obviously experience in public service, experience in any kind of service that could translate into senatorial service," he said, adding he wants a candidate who will "think about hope more than experience, and who will think about the promise more than the reality, because for the next, I'd say four or five years, we're going to need the most positive point of view, the most positive advocacy for our state, which has been hardest hit in the economic crisis."

The emergence of Paterson's public stance against a "caretaker" appointment comes after much blogosphere lobbying for such a scenario. Perhaps Paterson sees it as others of us do: that most of the "caretaker" talk comes from out-of-state where concern about the seniority of New York's next senator clearly is not considered as important it is for most New Yorkers and their governor. And perhaps he also senses what others of us sense: that much of the pro-caretaker argument has come from those favoring other candidates, but unable to rally significant support for any specific possible appointee head-to-head against the benefits of appointing Caroline Kennedy.

Before coming back to the Paterson-v-Bloomberg power struggle, let me offer a few words on what the blogosphere debate over a Kennedy appointment demonstrates about forming narratives that do or don't sway public opinion.

One esteemed colleague took issue with Caroline Kennedy's statement last week that "Well, if he doesn't select me, I would support the person that he does select."

To others, it seemed at odds with previous statements by Kennedy that she would run for the Senate in 2010 whether or not she would be appointed first. The difference is easily explained: the earlier answer was appropriate to a "caretaker" scenario, but by last week Kennedy seemed to be operating under the belief that Paterson would be looking to appoint somebody to run and win again in 2010 and 2012. Do you know what Kennedy's shift in language likely indicates? That Paterson told Kennedy of his rejection of a "caretaker" appointment at least a week before he told the rest of us. If true, that would also indicate her continuance on an inside track while Paterson gives courtesy interviews and considers any and every comer to the post.

Despite the calls from some corners - including that of Mayor Bloomberg - that Paterson announce his choice now, the Governor has much better reasons to hold off.

First, Senator Clinton must be confirmed by the US Senate before becoming Secretary of State: While her nomination will likely be easily confirmed, a smart governor never counts his vacancies before they hatch. Can you imagine the political disaster that would befall Paterson if he announced his pick only for Clinton to later change her mind and decide she wanted to remain in the Senate instead? Or if some other unforeseen obstacle were to arise to derail her confirmation? It is the better part of prudence to wait until it's official before appointing her successor.

Second, the longer it takes for Clinton to win confirmation, the more weeks that a unique set of power levers remain in Paterson's hands. With more than a dozen powerful New Yorkers openly interested in becoming senator, he's the master of all of them until he names one. Kennedy, Attorney General Cuomo, US Reps Nadler, Maloney, Israel, Higgins, Gillibrand - even Hinchey was mentioned yesterday - plus Buffalo Mayor Brown and Suffolk County Executive Suozzi, each have to ask "how high?" every time the Governor or his staff picks up the phone and asks one to jump a favor for him. And that's not to mention others that are openly supporting an aspirant - US Rep. Louise Slaughter for Kennedy, Bloomberg rumored for Kennedy and the 900 pound president-elect in the room who clearly is fond of Kennedy and likely is hoping for her appointment - the appointment gives all extra motive to want to curry favor with Paterson, too. The governor would be crazy to let go of that power prematurely. And crazy, he is not.

The senate vacancy plus the addition of Kennedy to the equation have given Paterson the perfect storm through which to consolidate his incumbency after rising into the job last year from the office of Lieutenant Governor only due to the self-caused misfortune of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer. The senate vacancy battle has upped Paterson's national profile and media reach, and the spectacle of all these powerful people on bended knee before him offers an image of a strong and powerful governor, worthy of the Empire State in all its notorious pride in itself.

The longer this drags on, the more it seems as if Paterson has been governor forever and erases any sense of the rookie newness with which his ascension last year began.

Some colleagues with whom more often I agree (and look forward to siding with in future battles) have spearheaded opposition to Kennedy's appointment. That tends to happen sometimes in primaries and other competitions like this one, and none of us should take it personally when others have a differing view. Our much admired friend Markos Moulitsas, for example, is - with his opposition to Caroline Kennedy - a worthy adversary upon which to sharpen one's arguments. He's a pro at writing narratives and elbowing them into the media debate. That's one of the reasons I urge everyone to read his book, Taking on the System, because we should all learn from that.

Then again, as we say South of the Border: ¡No hay cachorro que pueda con el viejo lobo! And this old wolf is enjoying the sparring session over this dispute (that, luckily, with the "caretaker" scenario disposed of, won't last more than another month).

One of the passages of that terrific book that I quoted in my review said:

"Effective leaders draw people into their cause by creating powerful stories, with clear distinctions between good and evil, hero and villain. Instead of bemoaning the fact that Americans love their entertainment culture, political activists need to borrow Hollywood's proven methods to structure gripping narratives and compelling communications strategies. Making politics and causes participatory, exciting, and fun is key to sustaining citizen involvement."

In this case, Kos is casting Kennedy in the role of villain, and that's an uphill climb, including, evidently, among the 60 or 70 percent of the users of his site that in poll after poll continue to support Kennedy, particularly in light of another point he made in that same paragraph. Substitute the word "Kennedy" for "entertainment" and the words would read:

"Instead of bemoaning the fact that Americans love their Kennedy culture, political activists need to borrow the Kennedys' proven methods to structure gripping narratives and compelling communications strategies."

And that's what some are doing - including probably Governor Paterson, who fate has handed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make the Kennedy meme work uniquely for him. The words "exciting" and "fun" go hand in hand with the pizzazz that the Kennedy organization has long brought to American politics and the Democratic Party in particular.

The anti-Kennedy narrative may have its natural allies in some pockets of commercial media punditry, but just hasn't gotten traction (Paterson himself yesterday answered a reporter's question about whether Kennedy's recent public appearances and statements have hurt her quest with a curt "no," and the criteria he listed, above, for an appointee "'who is going to be the best senator five years from now?' Not necessarily the day they're appointed" and for a senator who will "think about hope more than experience," provide a set of conditions that more snugly fit Kennedy than other aspirants.

One of the reasons the anti-Kennedy arguments haven't gotten traction is that they're inconsistent and contradict each other. On the December 21 we were told that Kennedy "won't commit to supporting Democrats" but on December 27 the new beef was that Kennedy wouldn't commit to opposing Democrats in a primary. Such blogger gymnastics only succeed in making heads spin.

On December 17 we were told, on the same day, first that Kennedy was somehow a bad choice because the New York Times had a negative lede about her (comparing Kennedy to Governor Palin) and a few hours later that essay was updated to criticize Kennedy because the same New York Times story had changed its headline and lede with a more positive spin based on later appearances and statements by Kennedy that same day.

On December 18, much ado was made over a statement by embattled US Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) claiming that he knew who Paterson would appoint and that everybody else would find out "when he selects him." Kennedy detractors sought solace in that masculinization of the supposed choice. But Rangel himself quickly walked that one back, correcting, through his staff, to New York Observer reporter Jason Horowitz:

Rangel's office just pointed out to me that the interview in question took place a week ago, on December 11, before the psuedo-official Kennedy campaign rollout, and strongly advised against reading too much into the remark.

In the aforementioned December 21 argument (when Kennedy supposedly would not commit to supporting Democrats, days before the new problem was that she would not commit to opposing them) her association "with the kind of people who work with the Bloombergs" was another supposed problem. But by December 31, it was a new problem that those "kind of people" were reportedly no longer working on Kennedy's behalf.

That argument got even dicier when later on the same day the Bloomberg aide in question reiterated his support for Kennedy:

Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey insisted this morning that, contrary to multiple media reports, he has not backed off his efforts to help his "friend" Caroline Kennedy in her quest for Hillary Clinton's US Senate seat.

When crafting a narrative, the most successful ones - that is, those with the best chance of emerging as "the" narrative shared by public opinion - are based on reality and demonstrable facts. But when the facts and the next events in the parade don't support the narrative it's understandable that the proposed narrative becomes more of a fishing expedition in-search-of a narrative than a full-fledged narrative itself. If one argument sticks, the arguer simply does not quickly move to an opposite argument. In other words, if "but a Bloomberg guy supports her" had worked to sway public and blogger opinion, we wouldn't hear "but a Bloomberg guy no longer supports her" as the next argument from the same camp. The same goes with the "but she won't support Democrats" and the "but she won't oppose Democrats" doozies, and the "but the NY Times slammed her" morph to "but the NY Times praised her" arguments.

Those self-contradicting points do not add up to a bona fide narrative, not by the standards that our esteemed colleague usually demonstrates and that were so well explained in his book. Each undercuts the next, erases the previous into the dustbin of unsuccessful attempts at narrative construction. In defense of such contradictory narratives I'll just say that, so far, there is not yet any convincing narrative - certainly none likely to convince a political wise man like Paterson - against appointing Kennedy, and that's after a month of attempts to build one.

Now, back to the Paterson v. Bloomberg power struggle...

Back on Christmas Eve, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (I was his constituent on the Lower East Side, and am not a fan of the man who killed rent control in New York, but his influence in NY politics, even we detractors acknowledge, is huge) told an Albany talk radio station that Paterson should be wary of Kennedy and basically called her a puppet for the Bloomberg machine:

The Legislature's top Democrat yesterday dubbed Caroline Kennedy a candidate of Mayor Bloomberg and questioned her loyalties to Gov. Paterson.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Kennedy's candidacy for Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat is "being promoted by the mayor, by his deputy mayor [Kevin Sheekey], for political aspirations."

"And if I were the governor, I would look and question whether this is the appointment I would want to make: whether her first obligation might be to the mayor of the City of New York, rather than to the governor who would be appointing her," Silver added.

That was interesting (and also cited by Kennedy's critics) because Silver's words marked the first public indication of a political tug-of-war between Paterson and Bloomberg over whose senator she would be.

Well, a week later, Paterson has already won the upper hand and Silver seems convinced of it enough to walk back his original claim:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who last week sharply questioned whether Caroline Kennedy should be appointed to the US Senate, said yesterday he's rethinking his views because he believes Gov. Paterson may soon pick her.

"I have determined there's a good possibility she will be the appointee of the governor," Silver, the state's second most powerful Democrat, told The Post.

"If she is the appointee of the governor, I will certainly be supportive of her. I will work for her and will work strenuously for her election."

... Asked if he was now more favorably inclined toward Kennedy then he was last week, Silver responded, "Yes, it's true."

... he reached the conclusion her appointment was likely because of "public opinion polls, which are not negative, and because the governor, I think, wants to run [in 2010] with a strong candidate, and I'm sure . . . having a well-known woman on the ticket will be helpful."

The latest mini-chapters in this saga have been the trial balloons floated through the LA Times and Associated Press about Paterson supposedly wanting to appoint a "caretaker" like Bill Clinton to occupy the seat temporarily.

Paterson, with his New Year's Day statements, has slammed the door on the "caretaker" gambit and made it clear that the senator he appoints will be the same one he backs for election in 2010.

Meanwhile, keen political observers have to hand it to Paterson. He's been playing this like a virtuoso. When he's done making everybody dance to his tune, pwning Bloomberg, and successfully co-branding with Kennedy, he'll emerge with a new respect and gravitas that will help him get elected in 2010 and rise many members of his party up with him.

In other words, Paterson has, step by step, constructed a more successful narrative, one that makes the Democratic Party's newest super-weapon - Caroline Kennedy - his own. It's an opportunity he so far has brilliantly leveraged and if he pulls it off he'll be bigger and stronger and on a more national stage, one that will be interesting and fun to watch in the years to come.

By Al Giordano

Although our ships passed on many 1970s nights, I’ve never met James Wolcott, the writer’s writer at Vanity Fair whom New York Magazine has called “the most powerful pen in popular culture.” He once emailed me his phone number, but I don't recall that we’ve ever talked (an omission that this slacker very much intends to correct someday). Of course, I’ve read him since way back in his Village Voice salad days and his late 70s reflections on Vonnegut in The New York Review of Books.

Daily, I’m one of the tens of thousands who surf hungrily to his Vanity Fair blog hoping for a meal or even a morsel of Wolcott’s stand-alone prose. It’s always a good day when he does post. With a single hammer-of-Thor sentence, he’ll banish a modern-day Loki into the cartoon-clown Google hell of sticky definition. In the next paragraph he’ll raise a meek but worthy Valkyrie to the royal dinner table, or at least a fighting path to it.

Wolcott staffs the night shift at that lonely outpost of the nearly extinct literary nobility that formed some of us, and that is responsible for more of your culture than most will ever know. He is the coming legitimate heir to Gore Vidal, the ambassador for all of us authentic New Yorkers in exile, the watcher that holds the golden banner high amidst the rubble so that once the invasion by the mediocre finally crashes along with their pestilent market (with a shock wave that will chase out the usurpers, and with them the price of rent they’ve driven), Wolcott, in my dream, shall be the trumpet-blowing herald who signals, “it’s safe to come home now, your Eden is restored.” I’m not sure I’d believe it from anybody else. And we – all of us, that motley and scattered crew - will gallop down Broadway on horseback, machetes in one hand, saxophones in the other, and the proverbial arc of justice will bend once more.

Oh, lord, you roll your eyes, there goes Giordano with another foray into his windmill-tilting talk of passing a camel through the eye of a needle… or of loading a mulatto into a sling shot, bouncing him off Goliath’s eye and into… the White House.

In my utopia, the new crèche for December living rooms and windowsills throughout the civilized world would reenact a 1976 moment from the dark railroad flat of the late CBGBs. Miniature stick figures of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd will shoot Strat lightning at each other from across the cockroached stage. A tiny jukebox – the new xmas tree of light - will play the B-52s “Rock Lobster.” (Joe Camel will be there, too.) One of the 16-year-olds at the front table with a sloe gin fizz will look a lot like me, and over there on the barstool will be a 23-year-old James Wolcott, absorbing it all for preservation in future Gospels.

Each crèche will display a small plaque with this quotation from Mary Harron, from Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (1996, Grove Press, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain):

"When I'd walk into CBGB's I'd get so excited. My heart would just be racing every time I did that block. The doors would open and I'd be there… Everything was new, and it was so exciting because I knew I was walking into the future."

That future is here. It took five or six more years for a 20-year-old Barack Obama to land on Manhattan island, into the milieu created by the sum of our bit parts. He would later confess on page 100 of Dreams from My Father:

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated."

This week, in Wolcott’s determination of winners and losers of 2008 for Vanity Fair, the sea upon which all 2008 boats rose was that very same, once alienated, Columbia University student who wrote those words.

Wolcott (not for the first time) shined some of that Asgardian light on your battered correspondent:

The first to grasp the portent of what was taking shape was the prophet of the Obama paradigm shift, the journalist/activist/online editor/blogger Al Giordano, who, as a student of the teachings and tactics of community organizer Saul Alinsky (whose Rules for Radicals is the guerrilla guide for domestic insurgents), divined the advantage that Obama’s small-donor base gave him against old-school juggernauts. In a prescient article for The Boston Phoenix in September 2007, a full year before the Democratic convention, Giordano saw a distant dot heading down the railroad tracks and perceived that the Hillary Is Inevitable story line was Old Hollywood, about to be overthrown by an emerging social grid. He foresaw “a different narrative than has ever occurred before—especially because most of Obama’s record-breaking campaign war chest comes from small donors.… Obama is raising campaign money faster than even the Clinton machine is. So the real surprise of the 2008 Democratic nomination contest is that, for the first time since Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign, the upstart rival will be able to outspend the anointed Democratic front-runner.” Outspend and outmaneuver. “It is Obama’s history as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago—and the application of that experience to organizing his campaign—that is making the 2008 cycle distinct from previous ones. Where [Howard] Dean failed to convert his donor-activist base into effective organization, Obama is apparently writing the book on how to do it.”

Mainly, I’m pleased to be mentioned in the company of the other “winners of 2008” that the essay mentioned, some of the small cadre of players that it wouldn’t embarrass me to be seen with, first and foremost the colleague I labeled “genius of the year” back on xmas day:

No shiny arrow shot swifter and loftier from obscurity to quotable authority than Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight.com site became the expert sensation of the election season. (Five hundred thirty-eight is the sum of electoral-college votes up for contention.) Crunching poll numbers until they sang with clarity, Silver, a managing partner and sabermetrician at Baseball Prospectus and a former Daily Kos diarist, made many of the old pros look as if they were stuck in the previous century, milking cows. Not only did his disciplined models and microfine data mining command respect, his prognostications hit the Zen mark on Election Day. “This uncanny accuracy is the equivalent of dropping a penny from the top of a 50 story building and landing it in a shot glass,” John Cole wrote at Balloon Juice. “This is sick accurate.” Silver also became an instant cable-news savant, his geek-genius glasses and owlish mien worthy of a Starfleet sub-adjutant whose quadratic equations coolly foil an attack from a Romulan vessel while the senior officers are frantically poking at their touch screens.

And…

Sarah Silverman, whose “Great Schlep” viral video campaign to noodge Jews to migrate to Florida to persuade their cranky grandparents to vote for Obama…

And…

Rachel Maddow’s captivating rise from minor-league hottie to prom-queen media darling. After regular guest appearances on Race for the White House with David Gregory and Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Maddow—a host on the liberal Air America talk-radio network, whose collegial humor and buoyant crusading defied the stereotype of the ranting lefty driven bonkers by Bush-Cheney—was awarded her own prime-time show on MSNBC, a time slot that had been a cemetery plot, claiming the souls of Deborah Norville, Dan Abrams, and others whose names are writ in mist. The ratings rocketed far beyond expectations.

Silver is 30, Maddow is 35, Silverman is 39, Obama is 47, I’m, well, a wee bit elder, and Wolcott is the virtual big brother some of us never had, but those that were there know that from that Bowery manger the Novus Ordo Seclorum has come full circle. (And, yes, I'm not bothered by the glaring "one of these things is not like the other" pay grades on that list: My leisure time here in low budget paradise is intact.)

While others may gnash their teeth and chew their nails worrying about becoming broken hearted once again, others of us begin 2009 in a state of aroused peace, on the edges of our seats, taking another sip of sloe gin and waiting for the Grand Stratocaster to slice time and space with its next glorious note.

Wondering, “who is this mischievous herald who is more generous to me than Norman Mailer was to him?” I consulted the oracle alongside Asgard's rainbow bridge known as YouTube. Here he is on Charlie Rose, talking about two topics dear to me, New York, ya know, and the daunting writer’s struggle to complete that next page without painting one's self into a corner:

Wolcott, our fellow college dropout, Bleeker-and-Bowery alumni, and autodidact extraordinaire, is said to be “working on a memoir of 1970s Manhattan,” when there truly was “a place for us, somewhere a place for us,” and a moment that will also be counted – hey, ho, let’s go! - in the codices of secret history, among the winners of the year that just was.

By Al Giordano

With a little over twelve hours to go in 2008, we're just under $500 short of our year-end fundraising goal. (The web team will update the map-graph shortly.) That means if just 25 of you send in an Andrew Jackson (above), or ten of you donate an Ulysses S. Grant, or five of you contribute a Benjamin Franklin before the day is out, we'll have turned the continent blue and be off to a running start in 2009.

You can donate online at The Fund for Authentic Journalism web page.

Or you can send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism

PO Box 241

Natick, MA 01760 USA

Thank you to everybody that contributed - not just in currency, but with comments (here and at the Field Hands site), news tips and ideas - to make this work so worthwhile in 2008, and we'll see you around the corner next year.

(This being the anniversary of when I first began serving this life sentence on earth, blogging will be light today.)

2008 wasn't a bad year, really, compared so many previous ones. Let's make 2009 work for all of us, too.

y ¡Feliz Año!