A recent dkos article talked about good ideas that are political losers. The article asked for user additions to the list, but most of the comment thread was spent debating the merits of the existing items (especially the 55 mph speed limit) My late-added list got no response, so I'm reposting it as a diary.

Some of these ideas could definitely use work on the details. Essentially, all numbers I give are just for the sake of argument - assume that they could be adjusted.

Let's get started:

  1.  Free birth control. Any kind (yes, abortions too - this would still reduce abortions by about 90%). No questions asked. Aid to other countries to reproduce this program, and to educate about how the pill is NOT abortion.

From Fox (sorry, I'm just grabbing the quotes):

John McCain said Friday that the Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo Bay detainees is "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

...

"We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called ... habeas corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases," he said at a town hall meeting in New Jersey.

...

"These are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens in this country have," he said. "Now, my friends, there are some bad people down there...

Can you give us some examples, John?

There are some bad people."

I knew you could.

"Some of my supporters, and I've encouraged it,see some of Obama's victories as illegitimate. They might think that caucuses, which were an important part of his strategy, are less than democratic, and that we need to fix that. But that doesn't make him a cheater. That makes him a fighter, who knows how to use the rules to win. And let me tell you something about being a fighter.

"A lot of people want you to believe that being bipartisan is all about compromise. That's what the republicans always try to convince us. Find a Democrat who doesn't always meet them half way, and they'll call her names, they'll call her unreasonable. And way too often, the media buys the line, and even too many Democrats buy the line, and they'll start to give ground before the Republicans even blink.

"But that's just half of being bipartisan. You want a good compromise, you have to be reasonable when your opponent is being reasonable. But he also has to know that if he isn't reasonable, you will make him regret it. He has to feel the heat on his backside, and see his colleagues who hold back getting burned.

"After facing Barack Obama in this historic primary, I know one thing. Barack Obama is a fighter. And when he is elected president of the united states, Barack Obama will get things done for you."

Obama is getting in the "McCain-Bush" hits, one after another, on meaty issues... Katrina, war, economy, FISA, etc. McCain is starting to heat up, and pushes back with "Now everybody knows I'm independent."

Then Barack comes in with "John, I'm sorry. I understand you haven't always gotten along with Bush personally. But ideologically, you're reading from the same page. On issue after issue, you stand behind the key failures of the Bush administration. And as you've pursued your party's nomination, you've even created an impression of flip-flopping or pandering on these issues. So your personal differences with Bush might be important in your mind, but these are the facts."

And McCain just flips out.

What's your fantasy?

Nothing would make me happier than to see Bush and Cheney in jail. So what are the conditions that get them there, assuming impeachment does not happen in the remainder of their term? As far as I can see, all of the following has to happen:

1. They have to not have immunity as former heads of state.

Ways this could happen:

a) a US court decides immunity does not apply. I am not a lawyer, but I view this as politically unlikely.

b) Congress impeaches them even though they are already gone. This is actually a legal possibility, and it would strip their immunity, yet it is similarly politically unlikely.

c) they are under universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity (aggressive war, torture, and war crimes - a separate category which includes violating geneva conventions by holding innocents as effective prisoners of war without a state of war, thus making the imprisonment indefinite). There is no pardon and no statute of limitations for international prosecution in this case. The precondition is that it be impossible to convict them in their own country. Nothing would prove this impossibility more easily than a pardon. I think that this is the most likely way for immunity not to apply.

I know that there have been a lot of diaries about this, and I apologize if someone has already flagged these numbers. But the best calculation I can find of how many dishonest Clinton votes is from CNN's exit poll.

First, a definition. I am counting voters who voted for Clinton even though they intended to vote for McCain over Clinton in November. This is probably dishonest in the sense of Indiana law - in Indiana, to vote in the Democratic primary, you should have voted more Democrats in 2004 or intend to vote more Democrats in 2008. It is not necessarily dishonest in the sense that some fraction of these people may honestly prefer Clinton over Obama. Technically I suppose you could have been a true-blue democrat in 2004 but now prefer McCain, Clinton, Obama - but there are maybe a dozen voters like that.

Conveniently, CNN asked a question in their exit poll which fits my definition exactly.

The president of the United States admitted to approving torture last Friday. Right now, the ENTIRE rec list is made up of candidate diaries.

You can help this stop. All you have to do is not click the "recommend" button for candidate diaries. Yes, there are good ones. Yes, if you have something new to say about the primary, by all means, go ahead. But as long as you see a candidate diary on the recommended list (and there hasn't been a moment without at least one for months) do not recommend another one. And do not recommend that one either, to give the next one a chance.

That is all.

Bush's latest admission of approving torture meetings is the last shovelful of dirt on a camel who's back broke long ago. The facts behind it are not news, but the fact that he admitted it should be HUGE news.

''Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people'' by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at his Texas ranch. ``And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.''

Problem is, impeachment is the classic media no-no. We can be right, and the media will only think us out-of-touch. We can have the majority of Americans agreeing that Bush should be impeached if he did these things, and the media will only think "oh, America favors impeachment if, but doesn't yet favor impeachment now - that must mean they've already judged him innocent. Old news." We can scream our heads off, and the media will only sneer at our hysteria (and there's nothing like a good sneer to infuriate people).

So how do we do this? We need strategy. I don't have all the answers, but I have some ideas. Read my ideas below, then please use this comment thread to brainstorm.

I just gave the largest political contribution of my life, by a factor of 2, to attack Democrats.

Here's the email I sent to my friends about it:

Some basics: Hillary cannot win on pledged delegates. She cannot even come close. My own calculations say that even if she gets a uniform 25% +/- .1% lead, she only closes the >160-delegate gap (conservative numbers after yesterday) by 124 (an extra delegate in all the 5-or-more delegate races and in half of the 4-delegate ones).

She can, however, win. If she convinces the superdelegates to break for her, or even gets Florida seated (Michigan is IMO impossible), she can take an average 10-point victory (which is not at all implausible, if the momentum shifts) and close the gap with superdelegates. Her current super- lead is around 50, that could easily grow to 75  or more if the remaining supers broke in the same proportions. This is not just practice, it is serious.

What are Obama's strategies?

I hear a lot of people complaining about the debate moderation. I support Obama, but I agree it was pretty predictably unfair to Clinton to have Russert there. But there's one thing I haven't heard too much, even though it seems to me like the most obvious point. So I'm going to say it with a poll:

I have been a Nader defender on DKos. I hate it when people lump Nader supporters in with Bush supporters, and when they forget what Gore/Leiberman 2000 was really like, or forget what "safe state" means. I tried to vote for Nader twice ('96 and '00, in '96 my voter registration was purged on some technicality so I couldn't vote). I do not regret those choices.

Yet this is just pitiful. No, not because he's "only hurting Democrats". If that's what he wants to do then that is his right, though I won't support him. But because he's only hurting his OWN stated principles, the principles which got him my vote twice.

I have a very specific reason for saying this.

I support Obama, and I think that by now it is clear he is going to win.

But Hillary Clinton is one of the strong democrats in the Senate, and a role model to millions of people - yes, including men - in the United States and around the world.

There are many here - including me - who have, in the heat of battle, exaggerated her flaws. I hope and believe that this will not persist once the fight is over. She is on our side.

We've all seen the analysis that they can't win on pledged delagates alone. We can all imagine the rancor if it gets ugly. Not now - but mid-March, when things are clearer - we all want them to work it out, one way or the other.

If things aren't crystal clear by then - for instance, if the margin is still tight enough that FL and MI swing things - I doubt either of them will want to just back down without a consolation prize.

But the VP slot is a horrible consolation prize. It doesn't help them in the general, and there are reasons for both of them not to really want it. Besides, either way, we would lose a real democrat in the senate (I know the VP sometimes gets a senate vote, but not the same).

I think that either one of them would make a great senate majority leader. And so I'm making this poll to see if you agree.

Note: when answering the poll, please think about both candidates. If one thing has been proven is that we have TWO strong contenders able to stay standing when anybody else would be out, so don't assume anything.

I have been googling around and they're really harder to find than you might think. All I want to know is, what are the popular totals for Clinton, Obama, Specific Other, and Uncommitted, INCLUDING CAUCUSES.

Multiplying vote numbers by percentages is fine.

I know, everybody says it's about the delegates. And I'm not claiming thats 100% anti-democratic - delegate totals tend to weight by population, not by voters, and that is good in many ways (corrects for the greater hassle of a caucus, for example, or for the open/closed primary difference). But if you want one, simple, unbiased number of who is REALLY winning and by how much, then you can't beat popular totals.

update: using the numbers from SloMoDem, total totals:

50.26% - 49.74%. Obviously both would be below 50 if you counted Edwards etc.

MSNBC:

Obama took the stage at Tulane... he seemed to have Clinton in his sights when he said, "You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out."

I support you, and I'm a white male. But I do not tolerate coded racism from your opponent, and I do not tolerate coded sexism from you.

This is sexist code language, Hillary is the cat. It is subtle and most people will probably say "awww, he probably didn't mean it that way". I give you more credit than that, you know exactly how to use your words.

Please do not do it again.

And that is all I have to say about that. Keep challenging that status quo.

Update: Also, this is stupid. You already have the misogynist vote (like it or not), and women vote more anyway, especially in the Democratic primary.

On the phonebanking page of my.barackobama.com, there are 4 options: general GOTV phonebanking, Spanish phonebanking, and 2 flavors of woman-to-woman phonebanking. The Spanish phonebanking gives you some New Mexico numbers (505 area code).

The first page of the script are unchanged from what they had up this weekend, so I freaked out and started to write this diary to give you a better script. Not to worry: the body of the script has been updated for today. But the "leave a message" script is totally wrong! I have a script below.

If you get a person, all you have to do is change "February 5th" to "today" and follow it. However, if you get a machine, or if you are on Linux and do not have Flash or are using Gnash, the caucus location lookup tool is unusable - here are the links you need for that:

You know when you fall in love? At first you have reservations, you wonder if it can work... you try to hold back... but then they say or do all the right things, or at least enough of them, and you let go... and you fall... and you start to spend the day daydreaming about them, having fantasies... and really you're as much in love with the fantasies as you are with the real person...

After the debate last night, I'm about there with Obama. I'm so far on cloud 9 that even I, the most rabid Anybody-But-Clinton-ist imaginable, am even ready to be generous, to make nice with her. Because after last night, says the fanboy in me, she's gonna lose - and much as I fault her judgement on Iraq, it is really true that she can't get a fair break. She can't ride on Bill's positives, but I refuse to taint her with his negatives either.

I know it can't last. You fall in love, if you're lucky maybe it leads to marriage, and when things settle down, things aren't perfect anymore. You hate the way they leave their dirty shoes in the middle of the floor, and you fight about money, and things just aren't so romantic. But if you had really thought about all of that beforehand, you wouldn't have gotten married in the first place, and after all, that would be bad for your life expectancy...