One of the perks of being in person at an event like the Big Tent and the DNC Convention in general is getting access to some really cool events you can't get to anywhere else.  No, I'm not talking about the after-parties; those actually tend to be fairly lame, imho.  I'm talking about the really informative morning and afternoon sessions where activists have the opportunity to learn things you can't get elsewhere.

Today, the New Leaders Council (not in any way affiliated with the odious DLC) put together a lunch meeting where a pollster from DemocracyCorps (Greenberg) presented for the first time their latest Mountain West polling data, just made available here on their site (PDF only).  It's an awesome wealth of material that confirms what most of us DFH bloggers have been saying for a long time: Obama is our best candidate with great coattails; there is no "Hispanic" problem; the best way to win swing voters is to play to progressive strengths; and John McCain has a serious uphill road to hew in the Mountain West.

Don't look at what people say: look instead at what they do.  My father drummed this healthy advice incessantly into my head as a child, and it has never yet failed me as a guide to human feelings and motivations.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the latest poll, the latest 24-hour news cycle, the latest back-and-forth rhetorical volley that we lose sight of the big picture.  And that big picture says one thing: despite the false protestations of confidence, the GOP is really, really desperate.

Forget anything you're seeing come out of the mouth of any GOP operative.  Forget any crowing you may or may not be seeing about the latest Gallup poll.  Forget any false humility or concern you hear from this Democrat or that.  Just look at what's happening.

As I sit here charging my laptop at Google's fantastic "retreat" at the Big Tent, I'm still trying to take it all in.  Being among so many creative and talented bloggers both here and at Netroots Nation earlier this month is a truly humbling experience: there's nothing quite like the synergy of so many people all working, each in their own unique way, to advance the progressive cause, largely without institutional backing of any kind.

It feels, in a certain sense, like we've arrived.  The movement our network of creative and passionate individuals has created already seems to be just as powerful and influential as anything on the Right.  The Big Tent, after all, is the place to be in Denver this week, with top-notch panels and presentations and the best creative and online media networking opportunities anywhere.  We've helped elect a swatch of more and better Democrats from Jon Tester to Jim Webb, officially pushed Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic Party, and provided a bulwark that was instrumental in defeating the DLC wing of the Party in this year's primaries.

Today brings us news of the GOP desperately seeking to win the presidential election for Barack Obama.  No, I'm not talking about McCain's giving away Colorado on a silver platter--though it is awfully nice of him to help us out like that.

I'm talking about the attention game.  Every Republican strategist in the their right mind knows that the GOP's only chance to win this presidential election is to make it a referendum on Obama, rather than on John McCain and the Bush Presidency.  Republicans know that by the time Obama and the DNC have spent all their advertising money, John McCain will be synonymous with Bush's 3rd term and voters will reject that option implicitly unless the election becomes entirely about the alternative, giving the GOP the chance to paint that alternative as unthinkable.  

Let's face it: McCain has been doing better in the polls lately.  The Gallup tracker shows McCain even with Obama today, while the Pollster composite shows him gaining (though still far behind).  As Sean points out over at Nate Silver's place, this is mostly due to McCain's shoring up his conservative base.

Meanwhile, McCain's lurch toward negative campaigning and embrace of GOP talking points doesn't (yet) seem to have hurt him all that much with independents and moderates.  Yes, it's early: polls this far out don't mean much; most people are watching Michael Phelps, not a bunch of guys arguing in suits; the conventions and debates will change the landscape; polls don't measure ground game or enthusiasm; the really negative ads haven't really started yet.  Still, it's worth considering how to stem McCain's momentum such as it is, and how best to reverse the trend.

[Update: hadn't seen Meteor Blades' diary when I wrote this.  It's spot on.]

I have a very busy day, so just a few words here on the John Edwards affair.

Both sides are wrong.  Those who moralize in harsh tones about Edwards' affair are wrong.  We frankly have no idea what the circumstances were of the affair.  We have no idea how many times he saw the "other woman".  We have no idea if the child is his.  We have no idea whether or at what point Elizabeth Edwards knew.

Unlike Vitter, Spitzer or Craig, John Edwards broke no laws.  And What goes on within a family is their own business.  How a human being deals with their own weaknesses is also their own business.  And "causing embarrassment to the Party"?  Please.  What are we--Pravda?

Update: Link to video of the interview here (MSNBC's embed function doesn't work on dkos)

On Hardball today, Mike Barnicle just made a fairly explosive statement.  They were talking about Ron Suskind's new book The Way of the World, in which Suskind alleges via interviews with multiple colleagues and subordinates of George Tenet the explosive charge that the Bush Administration gave the CIA an actual paper ordering them to forge a document drawing connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Suskind was on the show, and faced fierce questioning from Barnicle--specifically about why Suskind didn't interview Tenet himself.  Suskind responded that Tenet was confused and "did not remember" a large number of incidents from the time, including the famous "slam dunk" remarks--but that numerous colleagues and subordinates keep detailed records.

It appears that even the usually level-headed (if staunchly neoliberal) Financial Times has caught a case of the stoopids.  That, or they've decided  to come out unrepentantly  in John McCain's camp.  Either way, their article today on the presidential race has to earn of the top awards for specious, misleading stupidity in campaign journalism this year.

The article begins with the tired question of why Obama isn't leading John McCain by bigger margins--since, apparently, 336 electoral votes given current polling isn't enough.

Update: I guess I'm not quite as jaded by the Bush Administration as many commenters.  Personally, I find it quite believable that this guy was a right-wing nutcase; and given that Dick Cheney himself was terrified by the anthrax attacks, I doubt very much the anthrax attacks were directly perpetrated by the Administration.  But I'm no expert on this, just the bearer of the news.

UPDATE 2: Glenn Greenwald has changed my mind.  This article today is truly explosive.  This is an extraordinary scandal--and if it goes any higher than one or two people at the lab, it could be the item that forever discredits the neocons and lands a bunch of people in jail--or worse.  We're talking treason, terrorism and attempted murder here.

Most denizens of the progressive blogosphere already know that electing any Republican, McSame included, is a really bad idea.  And increasingly, the general public has become disenchanted enough with the Bush/Republican brand that they, too, are coming to understand that we cannot afford four more years of the same contempt for basic governance in the White House.

And yet, a candidate with an adequate and serious rationale for the Presidency could theoretically overcome that disadvantage.  A candidate with a strong brand, and a clear reason why s/he should be elected president, would have a real shot at the highest office under the American two-party system.

McCain's biggest problem, though, isn't his age or even his connection to Bush.  McCain's problem is that he hasn't yet given anybody a real reason to vote for him beyond the fact that he isn't Obama.

There's no denying the extraordinary power of the traditional media in driving a narrative.  

This story caught by Mark Nickolas over at Political Base deserves a lot more attention than it has received.  It turns out that not only is McCain getting killed by the traditional media, his advertising campaigns just aren't working, either.  Voters seem to be immune to the appeals of an angry, befuddled septuagenarian looking to preside over Bush's 3rd term.

Many have noted that Maliki's preference for Obama's Iraq plan has put the Bush/McCain tag team in the untenable position of appearing to support the Democratic position on Iraq, or of attempting to throw Maliki under the bus, or of creating a preposterous middle ground between "time horizons" and "timetables."  The bobbing, weaving and dancing on Iraq that the GOP is having to do in the wake of this news leaves many Republican strategists rightly believing that, to sum it up, "they're fucked."

Today was the first opportunity I have had to see Al Gore in person. [update: actually, check that--it's the 2nd time.  I did see him once before briefly in Los Angeles promoting An Inconvenient Truth.]

Even at my comparatively young age, I'm fairly jaded when it comes to celebrities of any stripe.  Even though I lived for almost eight years in the middle of Los Angeles, I rarely glimpsed media or film celebrities and never cared when I did.  Usually, when I see a politician or  major figure for the first time in the flesh I have the typical "letdown" reaction: they seem neither as charismatic nor as engaging as they do on television or YouTube.

Al Gore is just...different.  Sitting three tables away from the main stage where Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi took questions from the audience, I could feel the energizing vibe of the former Vice-President's visionary and charismatic appeal in a way that appalls me when I see it in other "fanboys/girls".  But with Al, call me naive: I just can't help myself.

Everyone who pays any attention to politics knows that the GOP is on its heels.  On every issue from the war to healthcare to the environment to the middle-class economy, the American people have sided firmly with Democrats and progressives.  The issues have always favored Democrats, of course.  But the prominence of those issues as the basis for voting as well as the strength with which those issues clearly favor Democrats first made itself abundantly clear in 2006.

And the same thing is likely to happen in 2008, with the outside chance of a filibuster-proof Senate to boot.

Congratulations, Congressional Democrats.  Today you've managed to pass a bill so outrageously offensive to the Constitution that even the wingnut crazies at Free Republic know it's bad news.

I do have to credit even our nutty blogger friends on the other side of the aisle: we bloggers do have the ability to see past the next electioneering challenge, lobbyist threat or potential attack ad to survey the damage a Constitution-gutting bill would do in the wrong hands.  Sure, they're silly enough to believe that the Libs/Commies will use this expanded Executive power to round up all the guns and make Spanish the official language--but give them credit for knowing when too much Executive Power is a really, really bad idea.

It's true: nobody's perfect.  But there is an even more important reason not to hyperventilate about the latest statement or vote Barack Obama may have made that is not fully in keeping with our vision of progressive politics and electoral strategy.  That reason is the Overton Window.

For those unfamiliar with it from my previous writings and from my panel on the subject at last year's YearlyKos, the Overton Window is a method for shifting public policy that takes a universe of policy outcomes on a certain topic, lists them in order from progressive to conservative, assesses the political acceptability of each, and deliberately encourages friendly think tanks and media organizations to promote the solutions that fall just outside current acceptability in order to "shift the window" in the public discourse.

Today is a day of mourning for those of us who love our Constitution, our Country, and the commitment to Rule of Law.  Whether on account of fear of Republican attacks, or of corruption in pandering to telecom interests, or fear of retribution for their own complicity in Constitutional crimes, a minority of House Democrats combined with the reprobate Republicans to pass through a travesty of legislation that allows the Bush Administration and their big telecom allies retroactive immunity and a free pass for gutting the 4th Amendment.  There is still fighting to be done to remove some of the worst provisions of the bill in the Senate--and we fight we must.

Still, however, we are right to feel betrayed.  Progressives and freedom-loving Americans of all stripes are justifiably upset.  Furious.  Disheartened.  Depressed.

And yet, it bears reminding that it matters little, in the grand scheme of things, whether a good FISA bill gets passed or not.  The upshot of this legislation, and the betrayal of America and its Constitution, was guaranteed from the very first moment that Nancy Pelosi famously uttered the words, "Impeachment is off the table."