[Cross-posted earlier this morning at The Drum Major Institute, which you should definitely read every single day!]

"I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative."

Hear this much? As Schwarzenegger's victory in supposedly-blue California and Mike Huckabee's recent populist-driven, expectations-beating 2nd place in the Iowa straw poll both indicate, progressives are still incredibly vulnerable on economic issues. Simplistic as it is, and seemingly regardless of how many bridges and levees collapse, anti-tax messages still have amazing traction with the American public.

To start to turn back this kind of thinking, we need a good, positive story about the economy to tell. We'll get there. But before we get to people saying "I'm socially liberal and fiscally progressive," we need to first budge folks off the dime. When we start to hear "I'm socially liberal and fiscally, I don't know what I am, but I'm definitely not a conservative," we'll be making progress.

To that end, for your debating with the conservative relatives pleasure, after the flip you will find a grab-bag of a few points on why fiscal conservatism just doesn't work, with tons of linky goodness:

From the latest missive from the Hillary camp, Bill Clinton sez:

You're going to see someone who has the experience and the ideas to bring about real change, and who is ready to lead this country on day one.

This is an incredibly dangerous road to start down. I will not stand by and watch the kind of destructive primary that is going to bring our party down. No:

Update! New subtitle stolen from my lovely wife's kickass diary over at mydd...

http://mydd.com/...

Bonus update: One more great thinking point in email from a guy I work with:

Obviously Rush sees this as a key argument for the 08 campaign. Making racial attacks an OK way of deciding who to vote for is destructive and divisive for this country.

Rush's "Barack the Magic Negro" bit looks like it's about to boil over. He is viciously attacking a TV station in Sacramento that reported the story, and the station's website is running a poll asking whether this is racist or not. Currently the poll is showing 91% not racist to 9% racist. I know, I know, another poll, yadda yadda yadda, but this is really outrageous...

http://cbs13.com/...

Write 'em a letter here: http://cbs13.com/...

More information and thinking points on this on the flip...

[Cross-posted at Speak Out California.]

Barack Obama's announcement speech was terrific. It had some genuinely spine-tingling moments; moments we haven't had in far too long, like where he stands tall against right wing scapegoating of immigrants and gay people. But about two thirds of the way through, he gets into the "Let us" section. There are 20 uses of the construction "let us..." packed into the next six paragraphs. This was the weakest part of the speech. It felt like an ordinary laundry list, like he stepped out of telling an otherwise compelling story for those few paragraphs.

Education, health care, support for unions, ending of poverty, energy independence - these are all great goals, these are my goals as a progressive. So why did this part feel so flat?

You'll be shocked to know that your sources in the corporate media may not be telling you the entire truth here. The Voter Activation Network (VAN) is a web based voter contact database and tracking system that a number of state Democratic parties and other organizations are using to keep track of their field and direct mail operations. (Full disclosure: I'm the project director of California VoterConnect, and as of a few months ago we are a customer of theirs.)

The folks running this system have a unique perspective on how we're doing. On the flip is a letter from one of the principals of this organization (published here with his express permission) with some perhaps surprising and potentially great news...

With the roots of a philosophy of progressivism - interdependence and expanding substantial freedom - covered now in slightly more detail, here's a first take on a full progressive response to Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles that dates originally back to 1957, the hazy dawn of movement conservativism.

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries.

The ideology dodge here is a little bit of a funny tactic. Kirk protesteth a bit too much and he returns to it again and again. Don't look behind the curtain, there's no idelogy here! But there's more:

One of the most destructive legacies of the conservative movement is the diminishing they have inflicted on the concept of freedom. This seems counterintuitive, perhaps, but all the relentless yammering that emanates from conservatives about freedom is perhaps a signal of their weakness on this issue, one of fundamental and historical importance to the American project...

About a year ago, I came across a couple of references to conservative thinker Russell Kirk. His ten conservative principles, first published in 1957 and last updated in 1993, was reportedly a great influence on the thinking of Barry Goldwater and others at the dawn of movement conservativism.

Apparently, no one on our side ever wrote a response. I'd like to be proven wrong, but if someone did, it isn't showing up on google.

I've drafted the first part of such a response, a ten progressive principles approach that answers Kirk point by point. But I want to start with just one principle...

Beyond reading The Killer Angels, Homage to Catalonia and, say, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I am not much a student of military strategy. Nor have I studied social movements from any perspective much beyond that of a ground-level observer, nor much political history beyond the American 20th century histories I've been consuming voraciously since I got involved in the process in 2002.

But the events of the past forty eight hours, on this dark anniversy no less, feel like the beginnings of some kind of shift. We are watching an ideology crumble before us. Perhaps every generation gets this opportunity, but nothing like it has happened in my lifetime. The moorings of the philosophy of governance that has given us the lies of the Iraq war, decades of economic stagnation, private affluence and public squalor, and the Katrina disaster are pulling loose from the bottom.

Look at these two blogrolls.

their's...
    http://bearflagleague.com/
ours...
    http://speakoutca.org/weblog/

On the flip: why we rule.

There's a lot here, but skip to the end where I get to the basic principles, if you'd like. There's a permanent version of this posted here, which I will continue to update. Let me know what you think!

Ha, that was under the one-line limit. So OK, I'll ask a bigger and more intereting question: are there any good books on on-line promotion? Or any good, trusted sites in general? It seems like there are a million snake-oil salespeople out there. What's good?

Follow the click for the rest...

Here is why:

1. Proven Results

Even with an insurgent campaign that started late and was by all accounts held together with duct tape and spitballs, Dean built a national organization, raised more money faster than any previous Democrat and nearly won the party nomination.  Who knows what kind of electoral chaos would've ensued if he'd had time to level the big guns.

http://www.speakoutca.org/

We were inspired by these folks...

http://www.onwardoregon.org/

who, when we contacted them, very kindly encouraged us to steal everything we could from them.

I know everyone's focused on the national fireworks but I'd appreciate any feedback on this site and idea that this community could provide.  It's a very simple site for now; we made the decision to minimize the feature set so we could ship it in time to have some impact this cycle, especially with regard to the ballot propositions.  But we have big plans for after the smoke clears.

Thanks in advance for your input and (here comes the shameless pandering) for your recommendations of this diary, should you find it worthy.  I'll have a more official announce email (suitable for widespread forwarding) tomorrow.  I'll post that here too, if there's interest.

Practically everything comes back to this.  "Bush is decisive"... because he attacked Iraq.  "Bush acted to protect us after 9-11"... because he attacked Iraq.  "Bush is a strong leader"... because he attacked Iraq.

The tactic they've used to sell this Big Lie is very clever: Bush has hardly ever come out and said directly that 9-11 and Iraq are connected.  Instead, every time he or any of the Republicans mention 9-11, Iraq is the next thing they talk about.  They don't have to explicitly make the connection - as long as the linguistic proximity and repetitions are there, people are make the connections themselves.  The absence of evidence doesn't matter because as far as our brains are concerned, proximity IS evidence.

To paraphrase Tom Tomorrow, you have to be in awe of their evil genius.

The best way to deprogram this is just to watch for it.  Practically every time you hear 9-11, you know Iraq is next.  They are in the process of exploiting this tragedy for political gain far more fully and completely than any other event in the history of humanity has ever been exploited.  They are going to leave no corner of exploitation untrammeled.  I thought the Swift Boat Vets for Bush attacks on Senator Kerry were the most digusting thing I'd ever seen, but this leaves the Swift Vets in the dust.

Orrin Hatch tonight said "we will never forget, and we will never forgive."  Never forgive?  The equally Christian and humanist principle of forgiveness has been completely abandoned by this party.  And the President said (literally!) that we can't win the war on terror.

So the lines are drawn.  President Bush and the Republicans have abandoned the fundamental principles of morality, and even so they still don't have a plan to win the war on terror.  Kerry hasn't abandoned his principles and he has a plan.  Out here in reality, Iraq and 9-11 are separate.  We will be able to remind enough voters of that reality to win this thing?

If you've gotten an email with a subject something like Observations of a Law Professor, and you want to put the kibosh on it but don't have the time, you are more than welcome to follow that link to my reply.  Use whatever suits you.

Without going into too much detail, I am a recovering AMT victim. (if you do want the details or are into financial schaudenfreude, you can read the congressional testimony I submitted a while ago)  The fact that Bush has put the budget in this fiscal straightjacket makes me just shy of completely insane.  I keep a stiff board near my computer to pound my head against every time I read any tax related story.  Thump thump thump.

Here's where it gets worse: in the minds of most Americans, the Democrats aren't suggesting any kind of viable alternative.  More...