Andrew Sullivan has links in his blog to various writings each one of which has Prairie Weather panting, almost erotically, and saying, "yes, yes! more, more!"
First there's a deft analysis of the appeal of one presidential candidate which errs only in assuming that it's the young who "get it." Nope. The appeal is much more general. But aside from that, the insights are very nice.
Then there's another deft analysis of another candidate which... Well, you already know Prairie Weather's take on her.
We usually check into Washington Note a lot but we missed a post that Sullivan adds to his links. We agree 159% or more with Steve Clemons that bipartisanship is far less preferable at this point than dissidence.
Boy! we wish, along with Clemons, that there were a "dissident" ticket.
What the Republican and Democratic party members need to realize is that both of their party apparatuses have been taken over by a combination of ideological and utopian zealots as well as a policy-blind secretariat that passively follows the ideologues. The pragmatists and realists in both parties -- particularly in foreign policy but also in other spheres as well -- have been in decline.
T'hell with the vapid, silly Bloomberg effort. The undissident, old-boy-network meeting scheduled for the University of Oklahoma, in which Michael Bloomberg is due to be anointed by Chuck Hagel and Dave Boren and others, is a bunch of hooey. Or, to quote Steve Clemons' more temperate appeal:
The sad but real truth today is that the Bush administration came in to office in 2001 under suspect circumstances but roared and behaved as if it had won an 80% mandate. The Democrats folded and gave Bush all the room to run he wanted. There is mutual responsibility and complicity in the results we have today.
I don't want more bipartisanship for its own sake. I want dissident Republicans and dissident Democrats to make this government work in the way it is supposed to work -- and to deliver on the policies that the public expects.
So a message to David Boren and Sam Nunn -- whose personal animosity towards gays and lesbians many of whom have done great service to this country is not forgotten here -- is make your meeting about an overhaul of American public policy both domestically and in the national security and foreign policy spheres.
