Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann (D), who, during his race for AG in 2006 named Eliot Spitzer as his role model, has refused twice to acquiesce to multiple calls to step down in the wake of admitting last week that he had a romantic relationship with his former scheduler (Dann is married with three children) and firing two of his top aides. As a result of this refusal, the Ohio Democratic Party has made their intentions to force Dann out extremely clear. From the Columbus Dispatch: The Ohio Democratic...

She and Ann Coulter should go on the road together. From Blue Ohioan: Leftwing Limbaughs This is what I’m talking about: “The Clinton campaign describes Hillary’s voters as older, white, and undereducated. Or as we called them in my neighborhood: white trash.” –Randi Rhodes How can this kind of s**t from those in the tank for Obama possibly be good for the Democratic party? [asterisks added by me] See here for my previous rant against Randi Rhodes. See also...

My love for David Gergen continues unabated (while I muted Wolf Blitzer). And he has just said on CNN that the longer the race for a Democratic nominee continues, the more likely it is that one of the two candidates will be forced to run as the other’s Vice President. What do you think of that!? He says it will be necessary to keep the party from completely fracturing. True? False? Irrelevant?

Thinking about the outlook for today’s Democratic presidential nominee primary in Pennsylvania is like being at a birthday party, blindfolded, wrist flexed back with a dart between your thumb and index finger, trying to decide where to pin the tail on the donkey. You just can’t figure out, after having been spun around and around and around, where to place the darn dart. In the case of the race between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, why is this so? Why are we unable to stick...

“New tools” can mean many different things these days and often involve social media of some type. But in a conference call today, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean described “the rollout of a new field effort and Neighborhood Volunteer organizing tool” as one that emphasizes face-to-face contact between neighbors. (Also referenced was a new ad called called, “Better Off,” which you can view here. It aims at Senator John McCain.) I didn’t get...

As you consider the output of the coverage you watch over the next few days related to the remaining primaries and their results in the Democratic presidential nominee race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, keep in mind this lengthy list of data and statistics that show how poorly the news media reflects the female population – especially among the gatekeepers. Three of my favorites: In newspapers, 38 percent of journalists working in daily newspapers are women; 65 percent of all...

Here’s something the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaign consultants, advisers, strategists, directors or whatever they call themselves should read, from Idaho State University: Noting the growing popularity of blogs as an information medium, [assistant professor in the James E. Rogers Department of Mass Communication at Idaho State University, Daekyung] Kim focused on blogging’s political impact. Blogs are online diaries or commentaries that readers can respond to and easily pass on to friends. Kim’s...

From NPR: The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Specter said the recurrence “was detected during a routine scan of his chest and abdomen. A biopsy confirmed that the cancer had returned in a chest lymph node.” Just last month he had talked about beating the disease while doing a tour for his new book, Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate.” This time, his stage is considered IIIA, which is “significantly less advanced,” according to the statement from Specter’s...

Overlooked So Far, The Nation’s Unmarried Women in 2008 was released two days ago. You can read the summary here and the full report here. From the summary: So far unmarried women are mostly overlooked, but they are a key to this year’s campaign. A fast-growing demographic that is increasingly focused on politics, these single, divorced, and widowed women compose 26 percent of the electorate—in other words, unmarried women are more than one in four of all voters. And appalling, unacceptable...

Although presidential opinion on gambling is unlikely to make or break the industry since it’s primarily a state and local issue, I often hold anomalous positions. So, discovering that Barack Obama, as a liberal candidate for the Democratic nominee does too makes me feel better. I don’t know how I came across this today and I can’t find the original Los Angeles Times article referenced in numerous other places, but I did find this American Prospect piece that compares Barack Obama’s...

I don’t have a ton of faith in this effort, but I don’t imagine it could be any worse than having members of my own synagogue intimate that I’m an anti-Semite because I don’t unequivocally support Israel. From Ynet: The [Israel] Foreign Affairs Ministry has long since been exerting considerable efforts to bring the prominent writers for an extensive tour of the country, in recognizing the influence many of the writers wield and the fact some of them represent websites that...

[First, I apologize for my long absence (well, a few days). I covered a conference called Women, Action & the Media at MIT last weekend and am still catching up.] Because, you know, having men and women trained to do that with ordinary weapons isn’t working out so well. Read the article from Wired here and the 2006 report here. From the report, highighted by the magazine article: Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons...

I don’t really know what it’s all about, but I know that one of my favorite readers and commenters is a Libertarian or at least holds a lot of libertarian views, so I thought he’d enjoy this post by The Boring Made Dull. [Here's an earlier TMV post about the move.] From the source, Fox News: In an announcement released late Tuesday, Gravel said he is joining the Libertarian ranks because it “is a party that combines a commitment to freedom and peace that can’t be found in the...

Oy. The numbers are coming fast and furious. I often don’t post this stuff because everyone else does but this is one crazy-a$$ Democratic primary. From Rasmussen: A solid majority of Democrats, 62%, aren’t ready for either candidate to leave the race. Nationally, Clinton and Obama are running essentially even among Likely Democratic Primary Voters in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Forty-seven percent (47%) of Obama supporters think Clinton should drop out. Thirty-eight...

From Gallup, re: Obama v. McCain: As would be expected, almost all Democratic voters who say they support Obama for their party’s nomination also say they would vote for him in a general election matchup against McCain. But only 59% of Democratic voters who support Clinton say they would vote for Obama against McCain, while 28% say they would vote for the Republican McCain. This suggests that some Clinton supporters are so strongly opposed to Obama (or so loyal to Clinton) that they would go...

Just last night I left this comment on this TMV post about wanting peace for children of Israel and Palestine: I don’t see anyone acknowledging what it would take for people who live in the occupied territories to believe that their children can live in peace and what it would take for people who live in the state of Israel to believe that their children can live in peace. What exactly might that be? One element is trust – trust that this is what both populations want. How do you build...

So, maybe I need to change the title of this post, Eliot Spitzer incident, Post Number 9 (ok, only Post Number 2): Is he a sex addict? Nope, just human (from 3/11/08) since it now looks as though part of his therapeutic involvement is going to revolve around a possible sex addiction. From the New York Post (hattip to Bad American): Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has gone into therapy in the wake of the hooker scandal that swept him out of office, a Spitzer insider told The Post yesterday. As part of...

Read the poll here. Margin of error is +/- 4.5 for all respondents (registered Dems), +/- 5.7 for likely Dem voters. From its summary: The March 2008 Franklin and Marshall College Poll suggests that Hillary Clinton has regained the solid advantage she held over Barack Obama prior to February. Clinton leads Obama by 16 points among likely Democratic primary voters, 51% to 35%. Her lead among likely Democratic primary voters has doubled since the February 2008 poll, conducted February 13-18, when her...

Sigh. How many times do we have to pray that we get a president smarter than George Bush? No. Really. Talk about a God who works in mysterious ways. What did Republican candidate for president and Arizona Senator John “I’m so experienced in foreign policy” McCain say this time? (You know I find something outrageous when I’m at this level of snark.) Oh – just this little tidbit, covered by MSNBC, Huffington Post and JTA, among others. From JTA: U.S. Sen. John McCain...

Will Barack Obama’s speech on race’s impact be that things get worse before they get better? As a a journalist, a woman, a white person, anything else that someone could you use to distinguish and identify me from anyone else, but especially as a sentient human being, I am made speechless by this story – which occurred a few days before Obama gave his speech on race, and which, as the reporter says, is, in her opinion, like many others except that it was caught on camera. When...

See the full video (with an accompanying text article) from here. Many key graphs, see this post for the text of the speech. Here is where he makes the Day One promise: When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make...

From Real Clear Politics: The World Beyond Iraq Fayetteville, NC March 19, 2008 As Prepared for Delivery Just before America’s entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war,” he said. “…But the right is more precious than peace.” Wilson’s words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief – to never hesitate to defend America, but to never...

The Families USA report, Dying for Coverage for Ohio, was released yesterday. Families USA has released similar reports for Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The site contains other resources, including a section called, The Uninsured. From the press release related to Ohio: “Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of Ohioans to an early death simply because they don’t have the same access to health...

The New York Daily News is reporting that,“In a stunning revelation, both [New York Governor David] Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.” In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with “a woman other than my wife,” beginning in 1999. … “This...

From the Union Leader: “A More Perfect Union” Remarks of Senator Barack Obama Constitution Center Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania As Prepared for Delivery “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled...