In the brilliant 1998 film Bulworth, Warren Beatty's character Senator Jay Bulworth begins to do something politicians rarely do: tell the truth 100% of the time. Bulworth's first appearance in which he tells the truth occurs at a black church in LA.

Angry black woman: Are you sayin' the Democratic Party don't care about the African-American community?

Bullworth: Isn't that OBVIOUS? You got half your kids are out of work and the other half are in jail. Do you see ANY Democrat doing anything about it? Certainly not me! So what're you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on! Come on, you're not gonna vote Republican! Let's call a spade a spade!
[Loud, angry booing]

To a much lesser degree (and in a more politically correct way!), Barack Obama is starting to tell the truth. Only, he is now telling the truth Democrats don't want to hear; namely, he is telling them that, in order to win, he is going to do things they don't want him to do. Some purist Democrats are crying foul and threatening to stay home or vote for his opponent. But, like Bulworth before him, Obama knows this is hogwash.

There is a saying that "no news is bad news." But this saying, however, has exceptions. And most of these exceptions relate to the Democratic Party. Today's DNC meeting is making news and, in my opinion, it is making bad news for not only our party, but our country.

In this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, they have a very interesting article entitled "Athletic Supporters: Sports stars weigh in with presidential picks." The article begins:

Last Week SI conducted a poll or nearly 350 players in the three major in-season leagues - MLB, the NHL and the NBA - asking them which candidate they support in the presidential election. (Only eligible voters were surveyed, and they were guaranteed anonymity.)

While this may seem like a gimmicky poll of pro athletes, the demographics of each of these sports is quite representational of the 2008 Presidential race thus far.

Last November, I went to Betucci's here in Boston with New York Times Magazine reporter Matt Bai. He had just given a speech at Boston College about his book The Argument and, having sponsored his speech as a member of the student senate, I got the chance to attend a dinner with him and the president of the College Democrats. After talking about his book, politics, and the like, I asked him what the best book he ever read about politics was. His answer: Richard Ben Cramer's 1000 page tome What It Takes which is about the 1988 presidential campaign. Several months later, after finally finishing it, I can't help but think about it in the context of the 2008 presidential race.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson, the founder of our beloved Democratic Party, was robbed of the presidency by what he called a "corrupt bargain." If Obama can maintain his lead in pledged delegates (a notion becoming widely accepted), it seems as though the only way Hillary Clinton can deny him of the nomination is through a smoke-filled, back-room deal reminiscent of the 1824 election.

There are two pieces of conventional wisdom that seem to be floating around the political world this Super Bowl Sunday: one, that Obama may be surging in California and two, that an Obama win in California would be the beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton. Call me crazy, but I tend to believe in both of these notions.

The National Journal today announced that Barack Obama was the most liberal member of the US Senate in 2007. Hillary Clinton, on the other hands, ranks 16th.

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's "comeback" in New Hampshire and her squeak-by in Nevada, many Obama supporters both on this blog and elsewhere began to express sentiment for a very taboo ideal - not voting for Hillary if she is the nominee. Saying anything remotely close to this has, and will always be, a no-no on Daily Kos nomatter what. But, a little over a week before Super Tuesday, I think it is important to try to understand where these folks are coming from.

Much has been written comparing Barack Obama, the crusading insurgent in the 2008 Democratic primary, to Gary Hart, the crusading insurgent in the 1984 Democratic primary season. In that year, Hart was the outsider challenging Walter Mondale, the insider, for the nomination. This year, as the score seems tied between Obama and Clinton just as it was between Hart and Mondale in 1984, I was interested to see whether the 1984-2008 parallel was accurate and, if so, whether what happened in that year will be any indication of what will happen in 2008.

Read and weep. Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by the Des Moines Register.

With dissension at home and distrust abroad, as American troops continue to fight wars on two fronts, the times call for two essential qualities in the next American president," the Register’s editorial board concluded. "Those qualities became the paramount considerations in making endorsements for the Democratic and Republican nominees in the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

Talk about fear-mongering. According to Billy Shaheen, husband of former NH Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, Obama's admitted drug use will hurt him in the general election and therefore we should not choose him as our nominee. While, to me, this seems like yet another desperate attempt from the Clinton campaign to "fight back" against Obama's poll surge, I think there is a larger issue that must be addressed. Obama is the first post-Baby Boom presidential candidate. His youth was not in the 60s or 70s - he is a child of the 80s, a time where cocaine, and marijuana, were quite popular. It is likely that how Obama responds to this will be how other members of his generation will respond down the road.

Dear fellow Kossacks,

Take a second from thinking about the Democratic race and shudder at the rise of Mike Huckabee in the most recent Iowa polls. It is always comforting, to me at least, that the Republicans seemed dead set on nominating one of two men, Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, next year. Romney, a Mormon who started embracing conservtive values last year, or Giuliani, the pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun thrice divorced mayor. Talk about not exciting the base that re-elected W. in 2004. But now, things are changing and it's time to talk seriously about our possible opponent next November.

If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Or, to quote a friend of mine, if you can't take the heat, go back to the kitchen. This diary is by no means a veiled attempt at sexism. However, within the post-debate spin coming from Hillary's campaign, it is widely being implied that she, a woman, was attacked by six (gasp!) men during Tuesday's debate. But if this election and her candidacy is really not about sex, why is she framing it that way?

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but there seems to have been a semi-revolt against the candidacy of Barack Obama on the blogsphere lately. Today's frontpage post by Kos on the difference between Dodd and Obama is pretty heavy on the anti-Obama side. Two days ago, Matt Stoller at OpenLeft wrote an apocolyptic post entitled "Obama is Done" in which he said the following:

In an interview in today's Washington Post, Majority Leader Harry Reid made it clear that he may be open to compromise with the GOP when it comes to dealing with Iraq. This shift, which seems to be coming as we all brace of a September showdown over the war, is obviously going to upset some people (myself included) who believe he, nor the rest of the majority-blessed Democrats, have not done enough to end this war in their eight months in power.

I will be more than upfront when I say that, from time to time since this campaign began and since he has entered the Senate, I have been somewhat critical of Barack Obama. Much of this criticism came about for me the way it came about for many people – he seemed far too cautious. However, in the aftermath of the YouTube/CNN debate in which he was attacked for saying he would engage in rigorous diplomacy, he has been nothing short of stellar. It seemed as if, on that night, he finally realized that Clinton was running away with this thing and that he needed to show the differences between them.

Ever since that debate, the race for the Democratic nomination has more or less been a two-on-two contest between Clinton and Obama. The back and fourth between the two has been electric: she called him "naïve," he called her "Bush/Cheney light." She scolded him like an angry mother for his judgment on Pakistan, he showed her up for judgment, or lack thereof, on the vote to authorize Iraq. And so on.

Today marks the one year anniversary of Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary. It was a special day for me; so much so that I wrote my thesis on it. After a brief introduction, it began like this:

American progressives have a problem in the post 9/11 world and that problem is how we deal with terrorism. To a lesser extent than in 2004, when Karl Rove and the Bush team successfully painted John Kerry as "weak" when it came to dealing with national security, terrorism will still be on the minds of many American voters when they go the polls to select our next president.  We know this to be true not from polls, though polls there are, but because the sad reality is that, no matter who is elected next November, they will be forced to deal with the foreign policy of George W. Bush. With our reputation tainted abroad and our troops bogged down in the mountains of Afghanistan and the deadly streets of Iraq, decisions need to be made. But what kind of decisions do we, as progressives, hope are made?