One of the earlier diaries contained a letter to the editor that helped me get mine going, so I'm returning the favor for anyone else who wants some thought starters.

"For once, a Presidential debate that focused on issues rather than fluff and offered clear differences of opinion! America's first chance to see President Bush and Senator Kerry on the same stage should dispell the doubts that some voters have had, up until now, about John Kerry's ability to lead our country. Senator Kerry was clearly the calmer and more articulate of the two candidates, offering a consistent vision, succinct views backed up by facts, and a clear difference between his and the President's national security plans.

As Senator Kerry said at one point, "it's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong." As this debate made clear, this President has certainly been wrong many times in the past three and a half years, and I expect Senator Kerry to do much better for the next four years."

According to CNN, Republican Hostettler claims that he "completely forgot" that the gun was in his carry-on bag. I believe him, but I have to wonder where else he's packing that Glock.

If I recall correctly, Hostettler's district is competitive. I certainly hope that his boneheaded move loses him a bunch of swing votes!

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart made fun of a Kerry joke about gas prices, which went something like this:

The way gas prices are going, George Bush and Dick Cheney are going to have to car-pool to work.

As Stewart pointed out, George Bush already lives where he works.

I'm sure that the Kossack community can help the Kerry campaign by coming up with some better jokes about this topic. Please submit your ideas, and I'll submit the best ones to the Kerry blog.

The March 22 TNR has a "must read" article by Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Celli (subscription only, unfortunately) about the role of government in the free market. They present a strong argument that I hope will be used by Kerry and the Democratic Party to take the high ground in the argument about the proper relationship between government and business.

According to Spitzer and Celli,

Government should act to ensure that markets run cleanly as well as smoothly. It should prevent market failures and right them when they occur. And it should ensure that markets uphold the broad values of our culture rather than debase them. In this vision, government action is necessary for free markets to work as they are intended--in an open, competitive, and fair manner.

The AP's Lolita Baldor (Nedra's alter ego?) reports that Lieberman is about to drop out of the race.

Will he endorse anybody? Who?

I just received an email from Joe Trippi saying that Howard Dean will be on Letterman tonight! Howard and Judy will appear earlier tonight on ABC Prime Time Thursday.

I don't know if this will work for Dean, but it certainly gives him a better chance than doing nothing.

This one looks okay to me. Mostly straightforward coverage of positive aspects of the Carter visit and Judy Steinberg Dean's appearance at the Davenport rally.

There's is one example of overzealous fact-checking at the end:

In recent weeks, however, he has spent more time talking about religion and mentioned that it played a role in his decision in 2000 to sign landmark legislation giving marriage rights to gay couples -- a reason he never cited four years ago.

From the Des Moines Register

Reports surfaced Friday that Kerry once said the U.S. Agriculture Department should be abolished or scaled back to help "reduce the size of Washington."

"Get rid of the Agriculture Department, or at least render it three-quarters the size it is today," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a story published in the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette in 1996.

How much will this hurt Kerry in Iowa? The timing and substance of this statement looks bad for Kerry. However, the statement is from 1996, so he may be able to point to his more recent record.

I dislike trackers because their rolling average of past results (past 3 days) hides the larger variations in daily results, making it harder to know what's really going on.

Clark's recent move in the ARG New Hampshire tracker was a real trend, but the campaigns knew about it before we did because they were looking at daily polling results.

Other shifts in single day polling results turn out to be random error or bad polling that the three-day rolling average turns into a "trend." This happened several times in Gallup's Gore-Bush 2000 tracking, and each time the media bought into the nonexistent trend.

Rasmussen's tracker now contains either a day of bad data or a real change. Clark apparently equalled or edged out Dean in their 1/12 daily interviews -- that's the only way to explain the change from the 1/11 to 1/12 tracking results. Look for the 1/13 and 1/14 tracking to report further tightening in the Dean-Clark race.

                1/9   1/10   1/11   1/12
Dean          25%  24%  24%  21%  
Clark          15     16     16    17  
Edwards       6       7       9      9  
Lieberman  13     10       9      8  
Gephardt    11     10       7      8  
Kerry         10       9       8      8

Is 1/12 a real change? It's possible, given the continuing barrage of attacks on Dean. It could also be random; I have less confidence in tracking results from Friday, Saturday and Sunday interviewing than from weeknights, when there is more consistency in the types of people who are found at home. Politus and fladem have also questioned the reliability of Rasmussen's polling. They report that he is a right-wing-nut whose 2000 polls favored Bush.

I report, you decide.

Most likely, tomorrow's NH results will show another dip for Dean and a gain for Clark.

Why? Since 2/3 of the ARG tracking results are same from one day to the next, Dean's 2 point drop in one day actually means that his Jan 5 result is about 6 points worse than his January 2 result, while the reverse is true for Clark. This helps Clark's numbers and hurts Dean's for the next two days, even if the January 6-7 daily results look like January 3-4 rather than January 5.

So don't get excited if tomorrow's trend looks like this:

         Jan 2-4  Jan 3-5  Jan 4-6
Dean       39       37        36
Clark      12       14        15
Kerry      14       14        14

However, if you see Dean or Clark move 2 or more points higher or lower than 36/15, you will have some real news.
 

According to the FBI, we should now be worrying about people with almanacs.

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

Soon to come: beware of travelers carrying maps or atlases.

It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.

There's a lot of discussion about how this event will change the election prospects of Bush, Dean and/or others. Does it change any candidate preferences among the dkos community?

Watching Clinton's speech at the Harkin Steak Fry a couple of months ago reminded me of the man's awesome political talent. At the time, I thought that none of our 2004 Presidential candidates measured up to him as a stump speaker.

I no longer feel that way. I just came home from a Dean fund-raiser in Chicago, and Dean's new stump speech is on a par with any speech I have seen Clinton make.

Dean laid out, as thoroughly as you can in a stump speech, the mistakes of the Bush Administration and what he would do differently as President. He began with foreign policy (perhaps with Clark in the back of his mind), moved on to economic and domestic policy and then his vision of uniting rather than dividing our country.

The crowd was boisterous and quite willing to shout out questions. To my surprise, Dean not only acknowledged these people but interrupted his speech on several occasions to answer these questions.

I seldom given to effusive praise , but I'm making an exception for this amazing experience. If Dean appears anywhere near where you live in the next couple of months, go -- don't miss this speech!

Kos' and theoria's stories on defining and positioning the Democratic party contain and generated plenty of good ideas. In 2004, however, is the Democratic party is going to be defined by our candidate for President, not by anything we have to say.

Given that reality, it's important to understand how the candidates are positioning themselves and their campaigns. Their message may vary day to day Based on their audience, news developments and the activities of other candidates. Nonetheless, there should be an underlying positioning that is used to provide some overall direction to their messaging.

The announcement speeches of the candidates are good starting points for understanding their respective positionings. These speeches are ideal forums for defining a candidacy, and most were made fairly recently. For the 6 major candidates, the following statements seem to best describe their intended positionings:

Wesley Clark: "And together, we're going to march forward. Forward with a new vision. Forward to bring our children and grandchildren into a future, brightened by hope, courage, and our determination that we can do better. We will do better. And we will do it together."

Howard Dean:"We seek the great restoration of American values and the restoration of our nation's traditional purpose in the world. This is a campaign to unite and empower people everywhere."

John Edwards: "America deserves a president who understands the people of this country, works for the people of this country, and will stop at nothing to create opportunity for all the people of this country. That's the great promise of America -- a fair shake for all, a free ride for none."

Dick Gephardt : "We can build an America where we grow together, instead of being pulled apart -- where our economy's strong, because all our families are secure -- where nobody's left out or left behind."

Joe Lieberman: "I am confident that we as nation have what it takes to meet these challenges and renew the American Dream... But that will only happen if our leaders are ready to lead, willing to fight for what's right for the American people, and able to rise above partisan politics to put our country first."

John Kerry: "I am running so we can keep America's promise - to reward the hard work of middle class Americans and pull down the barriers that stand in their way and in the way of those struggling to join them; to restore our true strength in the world which comes from ideals, not arrogance; renew the commitment of our generation to pass this planet on to our children better than it was given to us."

I personally think that Dean and Gephardt have the best-stated positionings. Both articulate a positive vision for the country that can serve as an umbrella for their positions, and differences from Bush, on a variety of issues. It's probably not a coincidence that these, in the opinion of many, are the best-run campaigns.

The Edwards and Lieberman statements have some good elements, but they need to say less about themselves and more about the direction they want for our country.

Clark's statement is generic -- he mentions a new vision but does not define what that is. Hopefully he has done better in more recent speeches.

Kerry does not seem to understand the difference between policy positions and an overall positioning for himself.

Today's Wash Post story about how Dean went from barely on the radar screen to getting the endorsement of these two unions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28253-2003Nov11.html

It talks to Dean's ability to listen and react to good advice, and to outwork  his opponents.

In a November 3 Slate column,
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090636/
Daniel Drezner claims that the Center for Public Integrity "has no evidence to support its allegations" that the contracting process in Iraq and Afghanistan has favored Bush cronies and campaign contributors. Drezner backs up his claim by analyzing CPI data on 70 firms that have received Afghanistan and/or Iraq reconstruction money.

According to Drezner, "If the corruption argument is true, then the size of campaign contributions should be strongly and positively correlated with the size of government contracts...The bad news is, the correlation coefficient turns out to be 0.192 and not statistically significant."

Drezner is dead wrong. A better analysis of the CPI data that Drezner used shows a STRONG POSITIVE correlation between contributions to Bush and the size of reconstruction contracts. The flaw in Drezner's analysis, as footnoted in his story, is "the wide variation in both contract size (from $2.3 billion to $10,000) and campaign expenditures (from zero to $8.8 million)."

When dollar sizes vary this widely, a correlation analysis that compares dollars will be skewed by the handful of firms that with the largest contributions and/or contracts. This select group includes Halliburton and Bechtel, but also General Electric and Northrup Grumman. The latter companies top the contributors list but are well down the list of contracts, possibly because our government is not building a lot of weapons systems in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Instead of using raw dollars, it's better to rank the contributors and contractors according to their dollar amounts. Hmm...the top 20 contractors include 12 of the 21 firms that gave Bush at least $100,000. Furthermore, an analysis of the two sets of rankings produces a correlation coefficient of .559. This would be considered a moderately high correlation in an experimental setting; it's a very strong correlation for non-experimental, real-world data.

Now, I'm not going to claim that this PROVES that CPI's argument is correct. As Drezner himself notes, it would be better to have data for all of the firms that could have been considered for these reconstruction contracts. But I DO know that Drezner's argument, to put it mildly, is incorrect.