"Political cartoons that appeared in newspapers on 11-5-08"

Howie P.S.: H/t to Rachel Smith Manrique. Rachel sent me this article by Molly Ivins in March, 2006 that was very prescient about the events of today.

Barack Obama

Rachel Maddow on "Obama Drama" (video)

MSNBC: video, (09:29).

Howie P.S.: If you stick around for the next story, you'll get to watch Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson discuss the "Bush legacy." The next story is "Does Obama have a job for McCain." And so on.

Barack Obama

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The prospect of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, perhaps the most prestigious cabinet position in any administration, sent people buzzing. But associates to both Democrats cautioned that their conversation included other cabinet possibilities and that no job was offered. Democrats said late Friday that Mr. Obama had also met with another oft-mentioned candidate for the post, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, to discuss the secretary of state job."-from the NY Times article, "Obama’s Talk With Clinton Starts Buzz."

Barack Obama

"Obama 60 Minutes Interview: Describes Moment Of Victory" (VIDEO)

Huffington Post, with video from CBS (00:44):

Here's a preview, where the two describe the moment they knew that the Democratic ticket had prevailed on Election Day:

Asked when it sunk in that her husband had won, Michelle Obama told Kroft, "I remember, we were watching the returns and, on one of the stations, Barack's picture came up and it said, 'President-Elect Barack Obama.' And I looked at him and said, 'You are the 44th president of the United States of America. Wow. What a country we live in.'"

"How about that?" President-elect Obama added. "Yeah. And then she said, 'Are you going take the girls to school in the morning?'"

"I did not," Michelle Obama replied, laughing. "I didn't say that."

Barack Obama

"Rachel Maddow Makes the Case for Why Lieberman Should Not Keep His Committee Chair" (with video)

Crooks and Liars, with video (06:06):

Rachel makes a very strong case for why Joe Lieberman should not remain the Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and why the damage he could do and already has done in that position far outweighs the slim hope he might vote with the Democrats when really needed.

Responding to Evan Bayh's promise that they'll take the chairmanship away from him if he tries to pull any investigative shenanigans on Obama, Maddow notes adroitly:

Are you really going to wait until he starts his first off-base witch-hunting investigation of Obama into whether he's a Marxist or a traitor or whatever, and then you're going to take away his gavel. [Laughs] I'm sure that's going to go over great.

... Listen, Democrats, you have lost Lieberman anyway. If you boot Lieberman out of his chairmanship, I know you probably won't get your 60 votes. But you do get a guy who politicized national security and homeland security in a disgusting fashion during this election, you do get him out of one of the most important security jobs in the government.

You go, Rachel. Why didn't the Democrats already do something about his failure to hold any hearings on hurricane Katrina and the no-bid contracts given to Cheney's buddies? Why have they allowed someone who's acted as a protection arm for the Bush administration to chair one of the most important Senate committees in the Congress already and not investigate the fraud and corruption that has occurred in this illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq?

How can Democrats think it would not be a complete political disaster if they tried to shut Lieberman down after he decided to use the position to possibly go after Obama in the same way Republicans went after Clinton for overblown controversies? Especially given the statements he's already made about Obama regarding foreign policy, particularly his oft-stated fear of what actions Obama might take as President?

Joe Lieberman needs to go before he can do any more damage than the Democrats have allowed him to do already.

"Dean Explains The Democrats' '50-State Strategy'" (audio)

NPR, audio (16:53):

Talk of the Nation, November 13, 2008 · Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, implemented the "50-State Strategy" to help the Democrats win big in 2008 — and it appears to have worked.

The "50-State Strategy" doesn't just focus on swing states and it doesn't write states off as "unwinnable." Instead, the goal is to campaign throughout the country, and win elections from the ground up.

Barack Obama

"In York, Pa., New Outlook After Obama's Win" (with audio)

NPR with audio (08:56):

When NPR last spoke to a diverse group of voters in York, Pa., a key swing state, in October, many expressed concern about the potential for turmoil in the wake of the presidential election — no matter who won.

But now, following Barack Obama's election as the nation's 44th president, and its first African-American one, there's a palpable sense of release among the group — no matter how people voted.

Michael Smith, 40, who is African-American, describes his outlook succinctly: "America is beautiful," he says with a smile.

Smith counsels black teenagers in York. And now he's telling them: No more excuses. Yet Smith says he's feeling a little self-conscious around white people these days.

"I think they're watching us, as, how are we going to handle it?" he says. "You know, we have to stand up and be counted, and represent, in a sense, to show America that it wasn't a mistake."

The day after the election, Smith put on a suit. "Boy … I looked like something. I feel like the president."

Searching For Acceptance

For Margie Orr, 63, an African-American who works for a civil rights group, the election brought a sense of acceptance — and a renewed sense of patriotism. In October, she told NPR that while she loves her country, she couldn't quite see herself hanging a flag outside her door.

But on election night, at a victory party where she says there were more white guests than black ones, she had a revelatory moment: "That night just made you feel like there is nothing wrong with the United States."

The moment was short lived.

Soon after, Orr and other York voters picked up the newspaper to find several upsetting letters to the editor. In one letter, the author chastised Obama for describing himself, in his victory speech, as a black man. Obama's father was a black man from Kenya, his mother, a white woman from Kansas.

"Where does he come off saying he's a black man?" The letter asked. "Is he that confused on color, or does he want to discredit his mother's color as a white person?"

That provocative letter started the voters in the group wondering what was really on its author's mind. Maribel Burgos, 46, who's Hispanic, thinks the letter writer, presumably white, was seeking what Orr had finally found: a sense of inclusion.

"They want [Obama] to now acknowledge the white part of him, so that they're now included in his administration, too," Burgos says.

Inclusion For McCain Supporters

What about those in the group who had supported Republican John McCain? Did they feel excluded from the celebrations of the past few days?

"No. I actually don't," says Sarah Yacoviello, 31, who voted for McCain.

Still, Yacoviello, who is anti-abortion, says she is not without qualms about Obama's victory. "I feel there's a social justice that's been done here with electing a black president. But I also feel the social injustice of abortion." Obama supports abortion rights.

One of the more surprising reactions came from another McCain supporter, Leah Moreland, 76.

In October, Moreland had expressed fears that chaos might follow an Obama victory; earlier, she had worried that he was secretly a Muslim, and she even implied he was a terrorist plant.

Now, Moreland offered praise for Obama's performance in his first press conference as president-elect. Her favorite part? When Obama, discussing his promise to his young daughters to get them a dog, described himself as a "mutt," too. With a tiny flick of humor, Obama had touched on centuries of American struggles over racial identity.

"Did anybody else hear him call himself a mutt?" Moreland asked the rest of the group. "I really chuckled at that. I just thought it was humorous, and I really enjoyed it."

Howie P.S.: This "new outlook" may also apply to comedians, according to this Eugene Robinson column in the WaPo: ""Comedy Tomorrow, History Tonight.

Barack Obama

Morning Joe: TIME: "Obama's new New Deal" (video)

MSNBC, video (08:53).

"Conference Call: The Deliberative Transition"

Al Giordano:

I just got off the phone listening-in to the "pad and pen only" press conference by Obama-Biden Transition Co-Chair John Podesta. It lasted almost an hour and I'm sure the rest of the media will report it extensively.(I haven't seen that yet, except for the Guardian UK story -Howie).

The first announcement contained some new rules:

• Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.
• Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.
• If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.
• If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.
• A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests.

These were described as the most stringent rules ever on a transition team to fulfill Obama's campaign pledges to "change the way Washington works and end the influence of lobbyists."

The transition team "will employ 450 people, with a budget of $12 million," with offices in Washington DC and Chicago. More than 100 security clearances have already been granted to team members by federal law enforcement.

Later this week, the transition will announce the members of "agency review teams" that will evaluate "over one hundred departments, agencies and commissions" to provide incoming cabinet and sub-cabinet officials with information on them. Their names will be posted at change.gov. The transition will be "the strictest and most far reaching" and the "most open and transparent in history."

Here are some additional points I gleaned from the question and answer session:

Obama won't attend the G-20 Economic Summit: "We only have one president at a time," said Podesta. "The president-elect will not be meeting with leaders who are coming to Washington. He will be in Chicago." In some cases, top aides will meet with foreign leaders while they are in DC.

Don't Expect Any Cabinet Nominations Until December: "No president other than George Herbert Walker Bush has named a cabinet member before December, going back to the Kennedy administration." Obama himself will make those announcements, mostly from Chicago. Special early attention is being given to "the economic team and the national security team." There is extensive vetting going on (no doubt Podesta remembers how President Clinton's first and second nominations for Attorney General - Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood - crashed upon the discovery that each had hired undocumented workers, which also served to mire that administration in media turmoil at the precise moment when it had wanted to hit the ground running on policy). Obama will meet with each of his cabinet secretaries in person before approving them. Podesta made a joke about the press doing "stakeouts" to try and find out with whom he is meeting.

Expect more than one token Republican: President-elect Obama "wants to see people who are not just Democrats in office, to reach out and have Republicans and Independents not just on a token level," and that will extend to sub-cabinet posts as well.

No Quid Pro Quo on Colombian Trade Deal: Podesta pushed back at press reports that President Bush had suggested exchanging his support for an economic recovery package for the US-Colombia trade agreement, which, Podesta iterated, "should be dealt with on its own merits."

Economic Recovery-Stimulus Package Will Be First Order of Business: If the previous Congress hasn't passed one already.

Every Executive Order by Bush is Under Review: Those that Obama promised during the campaign to rescind, will be eliminated immediately.

"He Intends to Close the Facility at Guantanamo": In those words.

Withdrawing from Iraq: The policy "will be consistent with what he said in the campaign."

In sum, the approach is extremely deliberative and organized to adhere exactly to promises made during the campaign. There won't likely be any "Trojan Horse" attempts to spring unannounced initiatives in the early days of the administration. No real surprise there, to anyone that has been studying Obama carefully for clues as to how he will govern.

Barack Obama

"Obama acts to drive the lobbyists out of Washington"

Independent UK:

Strict new rules on the backroom deal-makers; President-elect hopes to succeed where others failed--The leader of Barack Obama's transition team has delivered some bad news to the hordes of lobbyists plying their trade in the fancy restaurants and faceless offices along Pennsylvania Avenue: they are not welcome.

John Podesta, the transition chief, has revealed a set of draconian new regulations aimed at curbing the excessive influence of lobbyists, as Mr Obama promised throughout his election campaign. They are to be denied their normal role of greasing the wheels of the new administration's costly transition to power by paying for office space and staff between now and the inauguration on 20 January.

Mr Podesta unveiled what he said was "the strictest, the most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history," and declared "that the undue influence of Washington lobbyists and the revolving door of Washington ceases to exist."

The White House and the Capitol are the two most impressive buildings in Washington but power is really along Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street, where the top-tier lobbyists arrange access to decision-makers and cut backroom deals for special interest groups.

Now, in the dying days of the Bush administration, an unprecedented frenzy is under way as Washington's legal and lobbying establishment tries to get its hands on some of the $700bn (£470bn) financial rescue package for clients before a deadline of tomorrow.

One of the top firms is Alston & Bird, which boasts it has the former Republican presidential contender and senator, Bob Dole, on its books. But Democrats are no slouches at lobbying either. The national co-chair of Mr Obama's election campaign, former Senator Tom Daschle also works for Alston & Bird though not, we are assured, as a registered lobbyist. Instead he provides "high level advisory and strategic advice" to the company.

To cope with the crush of lobbyists at its doors, the Treasury Department hired Jeb Mason, a 32-year old Texan who wears cowboy boots and hat to work. A former White House aide of the political adviser Karl Rove, he is now the point of call for the hired guns of the banking industry, insurance and credit card companies lining up to get some of the taxpayers' billions.

Talking about the dozens of phone calls and emails he gets from lobbyists, he told the New York Times, "this must have been how the Politburo felt".

Mr Obama's transition team is planning to hire about 450 people, who will be divided between Washington and Chicago, at a cost of about $12m. Less than half of that amount will be paid for from the public purse and Mr Obama is planning to fund the rest by asking the more than 3 million people who poured small amounts of money into his campaign to make up the rest. No incoming president before him has had access to such a potential well of money and his team has already sent out emails offering "Victory T-shirts" in return for fresh contributions.

Ever since Ronald Reagan's day, corporations and law firms have picked up the tab for presidential transitions. To avoid even the appearance of abuse, the Obama team is limiting private donations to a maximum of $5,000 and will disclose the names of all donors. "So you'll see our contributions... to the transition prior to the inauguration, yes," Mr Podesta said.

One problem the Obama transition team faces is that some of the brightest Washington brains it might want to hire for the transition and later in government are already registered lobbyists. "I've heard the other complaint, which is we're leaving all these experts on the side... We're leaving all the people who know everything out in the cold," Mr Podesta said. "And so be it."

Mr Podesta, who is himself the head of a think-tank, the Centre for American Progress, says that any lobbyists who are hired will be banned from working in areas for which they have previously lobbied.

And anyone who turns to lobbying after gaining insights and contacts working on the transition for the next 69 days, will be barred for 12 months from lobbying the new administration on a subject area they worked on.

The restrictions are viewed as pious hopes by many in Washington. Former president Bill Clinton tried to restrict lobbyists and failed. President Bush did little to stop their growth and they are now a multibillion-dollar business of influence. Even if Mr Obama succeeds in limiting their access to his administration, Congressmen and women are particularly soft targets. For many politicians, getting elected and serving a term or two is merely a rite of passage on the road to a lucrative Pennsylvania Avenue career.

Barack Obama

"Maddow Wears PJs To Show Solidarity For Bloggers" (video)

thinkprogress, video (01:13).

"Jarrett Offers Glimpse Into Obama Administration" (with audio)

NPR with audio (05:14):

The day after meeting face to face with President Bush at the White House in a momentous affair, President-elect Barack Obama continues to work on his transition to take over the Oval Office on Jan. 20.

One person leading the transition is Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest confidants and a longtime friend.

As an insider to Obama's strategy and his meetings, Jarrett called Obama's Monday meeting with Bush "very cordial" and said it was a good sign that he invited Obama so soon after the election.

"It was a very productive meeting and it was a good first step," Jarrett told NPR's Melissa Block.

"It was an opportunity for Obama to put clearly on the table the issues that he had emphasized in the course of the campaign," she said. "Putting people back to work, making sure that we stabilize our economy in the midst of this economic crisis, ensuring that people are not losing their homes as a result of foreclosure, having an infrastructure bill that will also put people to work. And then do the work that we need so desperately: our roads, our bridges, our schools."

An Obama Administration

Jarrett said Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy that will be charged with focusing on cities and "have a comprehensive approach to urban development."

It is unclear who will lead the office, which will be tasked with advocating for cities and targeting programs in a "logical and systematic way," but it is a key position, according to Jarrett.

"For those of us who have worked in city governments across the country, we recognize how invaluable that person will be," she says.

When asked whether Obama would seek to reverse executive orders President Bush signed, including those concerning stem-cell research and oil and gas drilling, Jarrett said that the president-elect would have the attorney general comb through those after taking office and "determine which ones need to be revoked immediately."

A Sentimental Moment

Seeing Obama at the White House on Monday, Jarrett said she was "very moved by President-elect Obama's accomplishment."

"I think his ability to win this election, despite the odds that he started [with], and to engage people who have never been involved in the process before and have them come out in record numbers and vote for his candidacy — it's something that I think all of America should be so deeply moved and heartened by," she said. "So yes, it is kind of a shifting of the power. And we saw that so poignantly yesterday on the steps of the White House. And I think it speaks so well of the future of our country."

As for how she reacted election night, when she watched Obama win from Chicago, Jarrett said she was moved to tears.

"But I cry all of the time," she said. "Certainly in the last week, I have shed a lot of tears. It's not even so much about Barack Obama — as proud as I am of him as my friend and Michelle — and, I think, what they will be able to do for our country. I also just feel so good about our country."

She added: "We were here in Grant Park the night of the election, and I watched strangers hugging one another, people who have never met before. So we have to capture that enthusiasm and that jubilance. And we have to channel it in a constructive direction, where everybody can feel that they have a stake at the table and they have a role to play in improving our country."

Barack Obama

Howard Dean: "Auto industry must modernize" (video)

MSNBC, video (12:25).

Howie P.S.: Towards the end, the panel on "Morning Joe" forces Dean to admit "I was right" about the 50-state strategy. They thought so, too.

Roundup: Howard Dean, Barack Obama and The Transition

"Dean Seeks Some Respect (and Credit) for Obama’s Victory" (Nagourney-NY Times):

Looking back at this presidential election, there is no question that Mr. Obama competed in — and won — states where Democrats had been shut out for years. But was this really the result of Mr. Dean’s 50-state strategy?

"Obama's debt to Howard Dean" (Salon):

As Dean leaves the helm of the Democratic National Committee, one thing is clear: He got it right with his controversial 50-state strategy.

"Five Lessons from Obama's Campaign That Aren't Marketing Pseudospeak" (Gawker):

Now that Obama hath ascended to America's throne, it's time for everyone to speak loudly about the Lessons Learned. Did we learn that Obama won because eight years of heinous mismanagement made everyone hate Republicans? Ha, no, that would be far too easy. The real lessons are all these crazy marketing strategies the Obama campaign used, allegedly! After the jump, we'll tell you five actual lessons of the Obama victory, and why things haven't changed as much as everyone says.

"The New Liberalism" (George Packer-The New Yorker):

How the economic crisis can help Obama redefine the Democrats....the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious. But what philosophy of government will characterize it? ...the power of Obama’s Presidency will ultimately hinge on how he chooses to interpret the “modern application” of liberalism in the twenty-first century.

"Barack Obama is looking more like a realist" (LA Times):

It's starting to look as though Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's family empire is living on, even though she lost the Democratic primary.

"Obama Looks To Harness Grass-Roots Support" (NPR-with audio):

Howard Dean, the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says he's thrilled at the vast number of people Obama has brought into the party.

"He's changed all the rules — not just with the use of the Internet and the fundraising — but he's changed the rules in terms of how you ask people for their vote, and who you ask for your vote," Dean says.

"Silver, Sifry, and Giordano in Chicago" (video)

TheFieldAG, video (02:50):

Al Giordano leads a discussion about "Organizing the President" at DePaul University in Chicago.

"The elusive Team Obama"

Walter Shapiro:

It's proving difficult to peer inside Obama's still tightly closed Cabinet. But so far his presidential transition has looked deliberate and impressive. Amid the fervid speculation over the identity of the next secretary of state or even the next assistant secretary of labor for administration and management, there is a truth that is galling to gossip-mongers -- Barack Obama and his closest advisors know how to keep secrets. With nearly 10 percent of the transition period between administrations already gone, we know more about the factors that will dictate the selection of the White House puppy than we do about the reasoning behind the choice of a would-be Treasury secretary.

As Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of Obama's transition team, put it with deliberate blandness on "Meet the Press" Sunday: "I think one of the real strengths of Sen. Obama's campaign and now President-elect Obama's transition is that he really does like to think this through thoroughly and not telecast what he's going to do until he's ready to make a decision."

No one wants to read articles titled "Entire Obama Administration Shrouded in Mist and Mystery." So to accentuate the positive, we do have a pretty reliable handle as to who will be in the room with Obama (and presumably Joe Biden) when the major personnel decisions are made. There will be Jarrett, an African-American Chicago real estate entrepreneur who has been close friends to the president-elect and the incoming first lady for two decades; Pete Rouse, the press-shy former chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who performed the same role for a newly elected Illinois senator named Obama; the Chicago-born John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff, who stealthily organized the Obama transition during the fall campaign from his Washington perch at the Center for American Progress; David Axelrod, the Chicago-based political strategist, who was the inspiration behind both Obama's up-from-nowhere 2004 Senate victory and his 2008 run for the Rose Garden; and incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a sharp-elbowed veteran of the Clinton White House who was elected to Congress in 2002 (from Chicago, natch) with the help of Axelrod (double natch).

With all these Chicagoans (aside from Rouse) creating the Obama administration, it is time to drop the Second City urban inferiority complex. If there is an ideological orientation to this team, it seems to be Democratic centrism rather than full-throated liberalism. Bill Galston, a former top domestic advisor to Clinton now at the Brookings Institution, notes that Obama "has a great respect for expertise. His instinct is that in any field, gather the leading experts and go after them." As Galston puts it, "This is not amateur hour -- this is not crony time." Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on governmental organization, said admiringly, "Obama is extremely well-prepared. There is a lot of talk coming out of the Bush administration about a seamless transition. But in many instances, the Obama people know as much about what is happening in the Cabinet agencies as the Bush people do."

After a historic election, the press and the public are craving names -- any names -- to put flesh and flash on that vague entity known as the Obama administration. Even if Cabinet appointments have almost never been unveiled in November, there is a panting eagerness for personnel action in the face of the financial crisis. "So many reporters are saying that he has to name his Treasury secretary this week or next week, but you can't do this without a decision-making process in place," says political scientist Martha Kumar, who directs the White House Transition Project, an academic center designed to assist the president-elect and his team. Kumar points out that a White House counsel needs to be appointed, and presumably will soon do the vetting of Cabinet officials and formally establish ethics guidelines.

Presidential scholar Stephen Hess, a veteran of the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, has just published "What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect." Hess takes a bemused view of the media's obsession with compiling lists of the purported front-runners for every government job this side of ambassador to Latvia, even if the names turn out mostly to be wrong. As Hess recalled, "Ed Meese, who ran transition for Reagan in 1980, came up with the Meese Rule: 'People who know don't talk and people who talk don't know.' That is as true now as it was then." As a senior Obama advisor bluntly puts it, "Almost everything you read about transition is not accurate."

Major news organizations, which have invested heavily in putting their reporters on the campaign planes, expect nonstop scoops about appointments even when those close to the personnel decisions have taken vows of silence. Having covered the 1992 Clinton campaign for Time, I recall with embarrassment sitting in my room at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock (where transition headquarters were located) waiting for someone -- anyone -- to call me back for a name-the-Cabinet story. With my deadline looming, political advisor Paul Began broke the radio silence to say that he had not talked to Clinton since Election Night and was totally out of the loop on appointments, but did mercifully pass along a few third-hand rumors. Out of this kind of chaff, I concocted a Cabinet story more notable for being done than being right.

There are, of course, occasional orchestrated leaks as a way to gauge how the Senate and important constituency groups might react to a potential controversial nominee. "What the Obama people have been trying to do in floating Larry Summers' name for secretary of the Treasury is to gauge how upset his appointment will make the feminist community," theorizes Paul Light. Other possible Cabinet nominees like Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (for attorney general) have suddenly grown reticent about talking about their political future with longtime friends.

A presidential transition is a time of hope and heartbreak as the incoming president's team allocates the ultimate prize in politics: high-prestige jobs that will burnish a résumé for a lifetime. Obama's first week has been impressive, with hints of months of careful planning behind the scenes, as opposed to the make-it-up-as-we-go-along improvisation famously carried out by Bill Clinton. Transition is a grueling test for any incoming president, who after the rigors of a long campaign deserves a few weeks on a beach with his family. But with Wall Street in turmoil and America bogged down in two wars, these 10 remaining weeks until Inauguration will soon be recalled as the relaxing good old days for Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States.

Howie P.S.: Is Shapiro describing the same state of affairs that was referred to as a penchant for "secrecy" during the Bush/Cheney dynasty?
Barack Obama

"The Doctor Who Cured the Democrat Party"

John Nichols:

When Howard Dean, fresh off a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination that ended with a scream, announced that he would seek the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, the right-wing echo chamber exploded with delight.

Asserting that Dean would forever consign Democrats to also-ran status, radio ranter Rush Limbaugh shouted: "Please, make him chairman. Please! Please! Please!"

Political strategist turned Fox News blowhard Dick Morris was pithier, declaring that: "In choosing their new national leader, the Democratic Party is publishing a... succinct suicide note. It reads 'Chairman Howard Dean.'"

That was in early 2005, when Republicans controlled the presidency, enjoyed solid majorities in both chambers of the Congress and were on the march at the local and state government levels. Democrats seemed directionless and dysfunctional, and White House political czar Karl Rove was talking about how America was realigning as a permanently conservative nation.

While other Democratic leaders talked tactics and considered compromises, Dean promised to "show up and fight."

"The Democratic Party will not win elections or build a lasting majority solely by changing its rhetoric, nor will we win by adopting the other side's positions," the former governor of Vermont said when he announced his candidacy for the party job. "We must say what we mean -- and mean real change when we say it."

That scared some folks. But not the 477 members of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC members refused to accept the counsel of Limbaugh and Morris, or that of the Washington-insider Democrats who feared Dean's edgy approach and swore that the party could not sustain a 50-state strategy.

Dean was elected, and he immediately began throwing punches.

In his first weeks as DNC chair, Dean dismissed Republicans as "evil," "corrupt" and -- while the Terri Schiavo case was making headlines -- "brain-dead." He referred to his radio nemesis as "drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh" and, which other top Democrats shied away from saying George Bush and his aides lied about the reasons for attacking Iraq, the DNC chair told television interviewers that: "I think the Downing Street Memos and other pieces of evidence, including the 9/11 Commission, have indicated that the administration was not truthful to the American people about how we got to Iraq. I think that's a fact."

Dean did not play the game of politics in the way that White House political czar Karl Rove and his media expected. In fact, Dean did not treat politics as a game.

When the DNC chair said, "I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country, I really do," everyone knew he meant it. And, as it turned out, Americans were coming around to the same conclusion.

How do we know?

These are the last days of 2008, when Democrats control the White House, Congress and the majority of statehouses. Now that Democrats have won 53 percent of the popular vote in the race for the presidency -- the best total for the party since 1964 -- and 69 percent of the Electoral College (with votes from formerly red states such as Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia), andnow that the party has picked up once-Republican House seats in Mississippi and Louisiana and once-Republican Senate seats in North Carolina and Virginia (and, come December, perhaps Georgia), Dean's 50-state strategy is looking pretty smart. And his edgy style seems to have been the right fit for a nation that has since 2005 grown steadily angrier over Republican misrule.

Dean is now preparing to step down as DNC chair, as he always said he would after one term.

Dean is no fool; he understand that DNC chairs do not call their own shots when the party controls the White House and he is not inclined to take political direction from others -- especially his sometimes nemesis, 50-state-strategy critic and incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. (Although, it should be noted, Dean might be inclined to cooperate on policy matters with Emanuel, should Obama decide to make the good doctor secretary of Health and Human Services.)

The fact is that Dean's work is done. He was an essential player in the transformation of the Democratic Party from what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described back in 2005 -- "essentially a glorified fund-raising mechanism" -- into the clearly-defined "movement" party that Barack Obama would lead in 2008.

With that 50-state strategy, his full embrace of netroots activism and, above all, his refusal to pull punches, Dean made being a Democrat mean something. That turned out to be the cure for what ailed a party that has benefited immeasurably from the doctor's able treatment of its condition.

Meet Valerie Jarrett, Co-Chair of the Obama transition team (video) (UPDATED)

UPDATE: New extended interview with Valerie Jarrett from CNN, video (04:30).

tariq0aziz, video (00:44):

From an interview on Meet the Press on November 9, 2008.

Valerie Jarrett, Co-Chair of the Obama transition team states:

"Important for President-elect Obama to 'begin to rule' on day one."

Barack Obama

Veteran's Day Excerpts

"Matthews to Todd Harris: You Speak With A Forked Tongue" (Crooks and Liars with video):

Chris Matthews calls B.S. on Todd Harris for the double standard Republicans have whereby they can come in with slim wins and do exactly what they want and claim a mandate for themselves, and then expect Democrats to pussyfoot around and apologize for being there when they win by large margins.

"How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power" (NY Times):

The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

More profoundly, while many people think that President-elect Obama is a gift to the Democratic Party, he could actually hasten its demise. Political parties supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, all things that Mr. Obama already owns.

"Giving Lieberman a pass?" (Markos):

Sure, Lieberman has argued that if he loses Homeland Security he'll bolt, but he's bluffing. He's still got 2012 to think about, and being in a GOP minority with zero committee chairmanships won't do him any favors, either politically or substantively on policy matters.

So call his bluff. Give him some other committee chairmanship. If he doesn't like it and bolts, it won't be because Democrats pushed him out.

Barack Obama

"Political Roast : Obama Emanuel 2005" (video)

PoliticalVLOGZ, video (07:48):

CSPAN rebroadcast a roast from 2005 where Barack Obama takes on his future White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Howie P.S.: This video is going viral, right now.

Barack Obama

"Obama And Bush Meeting At White House" (VIDEO)

FOX News, video (01:13).

"Dean Prepares To Step Down As DNC Chair"

Sam Stein:

After four years at the helm of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean is preparing to relinquish his chairmanship.

Dean, who has been serving in the post since 2005, has said in the past that he would serve only one term, though his successful work with the Obama campaign had led some Democrats to wonder whether he would stay on into the next administration. This won't be the case, officials at the DNC confirm. He will serve as chair until his term ends in January. The party will settle on a new head when it hosts a meeting during the week of Obama's inauguration.

In sheer political terms, the choice really wasn't Dean's to make. Indeed, any decision on who will serve as the next DNC chair will come with directives from Obama and his aides. And a name being floated around as a possible Dean replacement is one of the president-elect's closest allies: Claire McCaskill, the junior Senator from Missouri and a national co-chair of the Obama campaign.

"My sense is that the Obama folks are pretty insular and don't want somebody else building the party and haven't even decided what building the party means for them," explained one aide. "I bet they go with a split chair again ... McCaskill at Chair, and somebody like Steve Hildebrand [Obama's Deputy Campaign Manager] at Operational Chair."

Regardless of who takes over, the next chair will inherit an organization far different from the one that existed four years ago. Under Dean's tenure, the DNC implemented the hotly-debated 50-state-strategy, a program designed to rebuild the party into a continental force, one in which Democrats drained the resources of Republicans while simultaneously building up younger talent. Obama's incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and others were critical, believing that the policy wasted valuable resources on impossible races and needlessly forfeited otherwise winnable seats during the 2006 congressional elections. Successes in 2008, however, have largely quieted those critiques.

Indeed, four years later, it seems, Dean's vision is poised to become party orthodoxy. Dean told a Democratic operative that he is hoping to extract promises from all potential replacement candidates to preserve the 50-state-strategy. Other insiders, meanwhile, say that the next DNC chair, regardless of who it is, will build upon the model because of its tangible successes.

"The 50-state-strategy was successful in laying the groundwork for 2006 and 2008," said strategist and DNC member Donna Brazile. "Clearly, the strategy has reaped a harvest of new voters for Democrats and the next Chair will no doubt build upon this foundation for 2010 and beyond. Remember, we have some interesting statewide and mayoral elections next year before the all out organizing for redistricting."

"Life of the party"

Eric Alterman:

It's amazing how quickly Barack Obama has gone from an unknown state senator to president-elect of the United States--

Five years ago, I was invited to a book party at Harry Evans and Tina Brown's East Side New York townhouse for former Bill Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, at which Blumenthal let it be known that ex-President Clinton would be in attendance. Even though I had to give a talk about my own just-published book What Liberal Media? in Park Slope, Brooklyn that night, they had given me a town car, and I decided to stop by the party on my way and say hello for 15 minutes or so. I did, and left, and that's the end of my part of the story.

But I also brought a friend named Katie who was then a youngish freelance journalist, and I thought she could make some useful contacts. When I went to Brooklyn, I left Katie at the party, and I don't remember talking about it again with her. But years later, I heard from yet another friend, Ed Epstein, who met Katie at the party, that she had spent much of the night talking to a guest who had been brought by Clinton's friend Vernon Jordan. He was a young, black state senator from Illinois with big ears. And in all the commotion surrounding Clinton, he was pretty much left alone. Katie is a nice person, and so she ambled over so he wouldn't feel so left out of things. That was March 2003, and the journey from there to here is almost unfathomable, but there it is.

Two years later, in early 2005, I received an invitation to a small dinner in Washington with the same fellow, now a first-term senator from Illinois. I did not have any strong feelings about him before going. I hadn't watched his 2004 convention speech, and while I'd heard nothing but good things about him, I am pretty cynical about the gap between what politicians want you to think about them and what they really are. There's something about American politics - perhaps the constant need to raise money combined with the celebrity-mad media that covers them - that interferes with their ability to speak naturally and honestly with anyone but their closest friends and family.

Anyway, we were seated together, and while the dinner was off the record and so I can't report anything that was said, I can report that I was left in awe of the man's genuineness and lack of pretence, of his self-confidence, self-possession and natural intelligence, and his lack of embarrassment when it came to the inspirational aspects of the message he hoped to convey. What's more, he was not merely liberal, but self-confidently liberal at a moment when this species was becoming rarer and rarer in American national politics, so depressing was our interpretation of the results of the 2004 election.

I had to pinch myself after the dinner was over - well, metaphorically anyway - to keep myself from falling in love with the guy. He upended almost all of my preconceived notions about politicians, even the ones I liked and admired. Walking around Washington that night, I thought to myself, well, this country can't be hopeless if, post Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, that's the kind of black leadership we are producing. I wondered if maybe, someday - say, 20 years from now - he might have been able to make Americans sufficiently comfortable with his manner to run successfully for president. Yeah, 20 years felt about right.

Make no mistake, people. Barack Obama will disappoint all of us at some point in the future. That's because we live in an imperfect world with a far worse political system, one driven not merely by cynicism but also money, power and status that derives from all the worst qualities that popular people exploited in high school. But he is, I felt that night and continue to feel today, the absolute best and brightest our political system has produced since John and Robert Kennedy and perhaps since Franklin D Roosevelt. And need I add, both FDR and JFK were not merely white, but also incredibly rich, born to enormously influential and ambitious political families. Barack Obama did it all on his own.

Still, we've been around since 1789. It's been a long time coming, but thanks to the superlative, inventive and incredibly well self-disciplined presidential campaign run by Barack Obama and company, a change has finally come.

Barack Obama

60 Minutes: "Obama's Inner Circle Talks" (video)

CBS, video (13:14).

"backbone campaign election night party 2008" (video)

Peter Ray, video (08:55).

Howie P.S.: In case you don't know, the Backbone Campaign is based on Vashon Island, near Seatttle, and "is a grassroots effort to embolden citizens and elected officials to stand up for progressive values."

"Under Obama, Web Would Be the Way" (Updated)

UPDATE: Ari Melber puts this WaPo story in a broader context with "Obama's Secret Email Network Revealed."

WaPo:

CHICAGO -- Armed with millions of e-mail addresses and a political operation that harnessed the Internet like no campaign before it, Barack Obama will enter the White House with the opportunity to create the first truly "wired" presidency.

Obama aides and allies are preparing a major expansion of the White House communications operation, enabling them to reach out directly to the supporters they have collected over 21 months without having to go through the mainstream media.

Just as John F. Kennedy mastered television as a medium for taking his message to the public, Obama is poised to transform the art of political communication once again, said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who first helped integrate the Internet into campaigning four years ago.

"He's going to be the first president to be connected in this way, directly, with millions of Americans," Trippi said.

The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.

Millions more made up the volunteer corps that organized his enormous rallies, registered millions of voters and held countless gatherings to plug the senator to friends and neighbors. On Election Day, they served as the backbone of Obama's get-out-the-vote operation, reaching voters by phone and at the front door, serving coffee at polling stations and babysitting so parents could stand in line at voting precincts.

After Obama declared victory, his campaign sent a text message announcing that his supporters hadn't heard the last from the president-elect. Obama conveyed a similar message to his staff in a campaignwide conference call Wednesday, signaling that his election was the beginning, and not the culmination, of a political movement.

Accordingly, the president-elect's http://www.change.gov transition Web site features a blog and a suggestion form, signaling the kinds of direct and instantaneous interaction that the Obama administration will encourage, perhaps with an eye toward turning its following into the biggest special-interest group in Washington.

Once Obama is sworn in, those backers may be summoned to push reluctant members of Congress to support legislation, to offer feedback on initiatives and to enlist in administration-supported causes in local communities. Obama would also be positioned to ask his supporters to back his favored candidates with fundraising and turnout support in the 2010 midterm elections.

"There's this network of people now," said Martha Page, a neighborhood leader in Warren County, outside Cincinnati, where Obama managed to reduce a traditionally large Republican vote margin. Page received six calls Wednesday from volunteers looking for new assignments. "It's a sea change," she said.

People in technology circles have been musing for months about how Obama would use his list, said Peter Daou, who oversaw Internet operations for the Senate campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). "Once you have people connected through a network, you can't disconnect. It's like unbreaking an egg. People all across the country have formed these groups to support Obama. They've worked together for a successful purpose," Daou said. "You don't let go of that easily."

But Daou noted that the initiative could have a downside. Obama faced an intense backlash when he broke from the left on the issue of immunity for telecommunications companies that took part in the warrantless wiretapping program. "People who have helped you reach this historic goal by self-organizing can also organize in opposition to your policies," he said.

As part of the presidential transition, Obama officials are looking to add a significant "new media" component to the White House communications operation. The campaign employed 95 people in its Internet operation, building a user-friendly Web site that served as a platform for grass-roots activities and distributed statements, policy positions and footage of Obama events. The White House Web operation will follow a similar but probably more ambitious path, transition officials said.

The process is just beginning, and many questions remain unanswered. The simplest approach might be to convert the campaign organization into an incarnation aimed at 2012 and an anticipated run for reelection, but some inside the Obama team are concerned about appearing too overtly political. Another course could be to create a nonprofit organization. Obama officials said all options would be examined over the coming weeks.

Over the course of the campaign, Obama's e-mail list gathered not only names and contact information, but also details about issues important to those supporters.

In past years, such lists were considered useful tools for political campaigns but not particularly helpful for governing. But Peter Greenberger, manager of political advertising for Google, said such information could be a boon for Obama in building public support for policy proposals.

The White House could "geo-target" ads so they appear online in congressional districts where members remain undecided. Obama could use Internet ads to solicit signatures for petitions, or he could place display and video ads contextually -- so they would appear on the screen next to news coverage of his proposals.

"If there's an article in the New York Times or The Washington Post about health-care legislation," Greenberger said, "the administration or a pro-Obama advocacy organization could run an ad right alongside it."

Republicans have also seen the potential value in organizing online. In recent days, a small group of prominent young Republicans launched a Web site, http://www.rebuildtheparty.com, calling on their party's next chairman to use the Internet to organize and galvanize their grass roots.

"Online organizing is by far the most efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign in 2012," the Web site says.

Barack Obama

Gregoire Campaign Memo: How we won

You can read the memo from Kelly Evans, Gregoire's campaign manager here. (You can't cut and past a PDF document.) There's a summary story here in the Seattle Times, but I hate to send you there, as I am still not over my anger for the Blethen-boating of Darcy Burner.

"The Other Winner"

President Bush denied California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. The president-elect says he will overturn that decision.

Matt Bai:

(This article will appear in the November 16, 2008, edition of the New York Times Magazine.)

There was a moment last summer when Howard Dean’s tenure as chairman of the Democratic Party seemed on the verge of a colossal failure. The party’s nomination process, which was supposed to have been settled by March, was devolving into a rolling civil war without end, and Democrats grumbled that Dean — who might have stepped in and sorted out the mess before it got to the convention floor — seemed reluctant to intervene. Of all the various party entities that raise money, only Dean’s national committee was getting clobbered by Republicans. For years, Democratic Congressional leaders had been mocking Dean’s “50-state strategy” — his plan to rebuild local parties in every state, especially in rural areas of the South and West, by hiring organizers rather than saving that money for television ads in perennial battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio. Now they whispered that his incompetence might cost them the White House.

When I spoke to him on the day after Barack Obama swept into the White House with the largest Congressional Democratic majorities since the 1970s, Dean, characteristically defiant, refused to admit to feeling vindicated. “Everyone asks me that,” he said. “Vindication is not an emotion that ever touches me, because I don’t have any doubts when I’m doing it.” But if election night stamped Obama indelibly into the pages of American history, then Dean’s place in that history, too, should probably be revisited. Very nearly discarded by his contemporaries as a spectacularly flawed presidential candidate and a bumbling chairman, Dean may well be remembered instead as the flinty figure who bridged the distance between one generation of Democrats and the next, the man who first gave voice to liberal fury and tapped transformative technologies at the dawn of the century — and then channeled all of it into rebuilding the party’s grass-roots apparatus. Just as Ronald Reagan and the conservatives learned from Barry Goldwater, just as Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers took inspiration from reformers like Robert La Follette, so, too, did Obama and the new progressives in America evolve from Howard Dean.

Skeptics will argue, of course, that Dean’s stewardship of the party had little to do with the Democratic rout. After all, conservative states like Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina were in play principally because Republicans had so badly mismanaged the government and because of an economic collapse that was, to be a little crass, remarkably fortunate. And in Obama, the party fielded a nominee this time who was, for all his lack of experience, vastly more compelling than his most recent predecessors on the ticket.

And yet, it was Dean, back when Obama was still serving in the Illinois State Senate, who first introduced his party to the idea that, in the Internet age, a campaign could be built from the ground up, that door-to-door organizing could matter more than TV ads. And it was Dean who argued forcefully, as chairman, that Democrats in this new era could compete in the reddest of states and build a truly national party at a time when others in the party were belittling rural voters and agitating for a complete withdrawal from the South. Now the Republicans are the ones who find themselves reduced to regional influence, their shrinking Congressional delegations confined mostly to the South and West. (Remarkably, not a single New England Republican now remains in the House.) Dean didn’t create the conditions that made that reversal possible, but he always said that if you wanted to be in a position to take advantage of favorable circumstances, then you had to at least have basic party infrastructures in place. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” Dean told me, not for the first time. “You show up, you keep working and hopefully you catch a break.”

That he did. Dean inherited a party so dispirited after its defeat in 2004 that few other Democrats of note expressed the least interest in running it; the party he relinquishes this January, making way for whomever Obama chooses to succeed him, will firmly control all three power centers in Washington, brandishing a decisive governing mandate for the first time since 1992. (Obama’s 53 percent of the popular vote hardly qualifies as the “landslide” that some commentators said it was but, as Andrei Cherny noted on Huffington Post, Obama is only the fourth Democrat in American history to win at least 51 percent of the vote.) The important question for Democrats to consider now is what that mandate actually means.

Even before the country voted, as the contours of a Democratic wave began to come into focus, a story line of the election was taking hold among Democrats in Washington: repulsed by the incompetence of the Bush administration, American voters had at last renounced the conservative ethos of the Reagan-Bush era and had moved, en masse, to embrace the Democratic Party and its agenda. Polls showed, after all, that the number of people identifying themselves as Republicans had fallen sharply, while the ranks of those calling themselves Democrats had swelled. Surveys indicated that voters, in the wake of the credit crisis, had warmed to the idea of activist government. In fact, the election results, and especially the pivotal Democratic victories in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, seemed to validate the influential theory of the “emerging Democratic majority,” advanced by the liberal political analysts Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis in 2002. Combing through demographic trends, Teixeira and Judis hypothesized then that increasing numbers of nonwhite and new-economy voters would soon transform the country’s electoral landscape and create new opportunities for Democrats, most notably in the West.

The cautionary note here, for jubilant Democrats, is that there is little reason to believe that the electoral trend in their favor actually reflects any widespread ideological shift. If you only look at numerical majorities, it might well seem that the story of the last 20 years in American politics is one in which voters have swerved erratically from one ideological pole to the next, embracing a harsh kind of conservatism in 1994 and then a resurgent liberalism in 2006. In reality, though, the American public doesn’t seem to move very much in its basic attitudes about government, which have remained mostly pragmatic and predictable; simply put, people tend to want a little more government when times are tough and a little less when things are going well. The number of voters who identified themselves in exit polls as conservative, liberal or moderate remained virtually unchanged between 2004 and 2008 — and in fact, those numbers have been more or less steady for decades.

The real trend line in our politics — from Ross Perot and Bill Clinton in 1992 to Obama this year — speaks not to any change in governing philosophy but to a growing frustration with incumbency and dogma, a sense that both parties are more concerned with perpetuating their own power than they are with adapting government to a fast-changing world. Voters aren’t really identifying more closely with one party or another when they periodically revolt; they are simply defining themselves against whoever happens to be in charge at the moment.

Perhaps because he is too young to have lived in a world where party affiliations were as unshakable as religious beliefs, or perhaps because he has spent so little of his life in Washington, Obama seems intuitively to understand this dynamic. (His chief strategist, David Axelrod, has long understood it, too.) Obama’s entire campaign was based on the rather amorphous idea of “change” and postpartisan ideals, on an indictment of the two-party status quo, more than on any ideological argument about the role of government. It now falls to Obama, as it did to Bill Clinton in 1993, to pursue a realist’s agenda while somehow restraining the forces in his own party — powerful liberal committee chairmen, sprawling interest groups — who would overreach, attempting to make of the party’s mandate something that it is not.

One significant difference between then and now, however, lies in the nature of the tensions in the Democratic coalition. Clinton’s party was riven, predictably enough, by geography and ideology; like Jimmy Carter before him, Clinton tried to straddle an ever-widening gap between Northern and coastal liberals whose ideal of government remained expansive and those Southern and Western Democrats who embraced a more centrist or even conservative philosophy. This was, of course, the same basic divide that underlaid the Democrats’ governing coalition since Franklin Roosevelt.

Obama’s landscape is less familiar. Surely there will be some residual clashes between left and center in Obama’s party, but his real challenge isn’t so much ideological as it is generational, a reconciling of worldviews forged in contrasting American moments. Obama’s candidacy was propelled chiefly by groups that are emerging in American politics. He represents the new and ascendant service-industry unions, for instance, as opposed to the industrial-age unions that supported Hillary Clinton. He speaks more to younger voters — the 40-and-under crowd — than to their boomer parents, more to African-American families than to their leaders in churches and in Congress, who came to him only grudgingly. Obama ignites more passion among the millions of lesser-engaged, text-messaging Americans who signed up for accounts on his site (and who, in many cases, volunteered for their first political campaign) than he does among the party’s older, stalwart activists.

This younger Democratic base stands less on loyalty to institutions generally, and that includes the Democratic Party itself. These voters represent a generation of Americans reared in the cynical, detached environment after Watergate rather than in the idealist, more doctrinaire atmosphere of the ’60s. To keep his party unified, Obama will have to embody this modern, less-partisan ethos while at the same time respecting the power and conviction of an older set of Democrats who nurture a less-flexible liberal ideal and who aren’t yet ready to step aside. Obama’s task is to somehow move away from reflexively partisan solutions — no trade deals, no charter schools, no entitlement reform — even as he defers to a generation of leaders for whom ideology and partisanship are the guiding paradigms of political thought.

Voters will be watching to see how Obama achieves this balancing act within his own party — and none more so, perhaps, than those conservative voters who are waiting to see whether this young Democrat will really deliver the systemic change he promised. In a conversation not long before the end of the campaign, Obama told me he understood that these voters didn’t yet feel they knew him and that, even if they voted for him because of their economic jitters, their support would represent little more than an opportunity for him to prove, as president, that he could move beyond the partisan divisions of the last generation. Howard Dean was right to insist that a Democrat in the online age could redraw the political map, and for that he deserves more than passing mention in subsequent histories of the time. But the job of creating a more lasting realignment always falls — as it did in the eras of the New Dealers and the conservative movement — to a president with the vision and temperament to pull the country forcibly into the future. For Obama and his party, the only 50-state strategy now is to govern as if they mean it.

Howie P.S.: You can see how the above may apply in light of this story in today's Washington Post: "Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions." Commenting on this story, SusanG posted "Our long national nightmare is over" on Kos yesterday afternoon. Krugman advises Obama not to "think small" in "The Obama Agenda."

Barack Obama

"Obama delivers first radio address as president-elect " (with audio)

AMERICAblog, with audio:

Obama delivered his first radio address as president-elect today. George Bush also delivered his weekly addressed and promised the transition would be "seamless." You know, I always hated linking to that whitehouse.gov website. That's going to change.

The audio of Obama's address is here. I am also providing the full transcript:

On Tuesday, Americans stood in lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen. It didn’t matter who they were or where they came from; what they looked like or what party they belonged to – they came out and cast their ballot because they believed that in this country, our destiny is not written for us, but by us. We should all take pride in the fact that we once again displayed for the world the power of our democracy, and reaffirmed the great American ideal that this is a nation where anything is possible.

This week, I spoke with President Bush, who graciously offered his full support and assistance in this period of transition. Michelle and I look forward to meeting with him and the First Lady on Monday to begin that process. This speaks to a fundamental recognition that here in America we can compete vigorously in elections and challenge each other’s ideas, yet come together in service of a common purpose once the voting is done. And that is particularly important at a moment when we face the most serious challenges of our lifetime.

Yesterday, we woke to more sobering news about the state of our economy. The 240,000 jobs lost in October marks the 10th consecutive month that our economy has shed jobs. In total, we’ve lost nearly 1.2 million jobs this year, and more than 10 million Americans are now unemployed. Tens of millions of families are struggling to figure out how to pay the bills and stay in their homes. Their stories are an urgent reminder that we are facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime, and we must act swiftly to resolve them.

In the wake of these disturbing reports, I met with members of my Transition Economic Advisory Board, who will help guide the work of my transition team in developing a strong set of policies to respond to this crisis. While we must recognize that we only have one President at a time and that President Bush is the leader of our government, I want to ensure that we hit the ground running on January 20th because we don’t have a moment to lose.

We discussed several of the most immediate challenges facing our economy and key priorities on which to focus in the days and weeks ahead to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity.

First, we need a rescue plan for the middle class that invests in immediate efforts to create jobs and provides relief to families that are watching their paychecks shrink and their life savings disappear.

Then, we’ll address the spreading impact of the financial crisis on other sectors of our economy, and ensure that the rescue plan that passed Congress is working to stabilize financial markets while protecting taxpayers, helping homeowners, and not unduly rewarding the management of financial firms that are receiving government assistance.

Finally, we will move forward with a set of policies that will grow our middle-class and strengthen our economy in the long-term. We can’t afford to wait on moving forward on the key priorities that I identified during the campaign, including clean energy, health care, education and tax relief for middle class families.

Let me close by saying I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead. We’ve taken some major actions to date, and we will need further actions during this transition and subsequent months. Some of those choices will be difficult, but America is a strong and resilient country. I know that we will succeed if we put aside partisanship and work together as one nation. And that is what I intend to do.

Barack Obama

"Obama's Best Advice Will Come From Reich, Bonior"

John Nichols:

Barack Obama appeared at his first press conference as the president-elect of the United States on a day of sobering economic news. Just hours earlier, the Department of Labor had reported that 240,000 American jobs were lost in October, bringing the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent -- the highest rate in 14 years. And General Motors, the hobbled giant of American manufacturing, was announcing that it might not have enough money to make it through the end of the year.

Though his 20-minute appearance offered few details regarding specific plans, Obama acknowledged the fact that, "We are facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime..." So it was not surprising that the president-to-be would surround himself with a few dozen economic wingmen and women, as well as his new chief of staff -- Clintonite neo-liberal Rahm Emanuel.

Most of the advisors who stood with the senator who on January 20 will assume responsibility for an economy in crisis were more in Emanuel's investment-banker, free-trader mold than that of the tens of millions of workers and farmers who elected Obama as an agent of change. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was to the side of the stage. Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was just behind Obama. Another former treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, was in the room and perhaps in the running for a top spot in the administration.

But not everyone on stage stands on the wrong side of the equation.

It was reassuring to see two faces in the crowd of Obama's counselors on questions of markets, bailouts, unemployment and trade who actually understand that the Democrat was elected by Main Street not Wall Street.

Standing to one side of the President-elect was David Bonior, the former congressman from Michigan who clashed frequently and unapologetically with both Bill Clinton and George Bush on trade policy. Bonior, one of the truest allies of organized labor ever to gain a leadership role in Congress, has continued to work closely with unions -- especially those in the manufacturing sector -- since leaving the House. Going into the 2008 election season, he aligned himself with the campaign of John Edwards. While it is true that Edwards turned out to be something of a disappointment as a candidate -- and as an individual -- he was more right on economic issues than any of the other contenders. And it is reassuring, indeed, to see that he is in the room as discussions about an Obama administration's approach to questions of whether and how to stabilize the domestic auto industry, in particular, and manufacturing in general. Notably, the President-elect signaled his support at the press conference for federal investment in the renewal of the auto industry.

Also appearing with Obama was Robert Reich, the economist who served with some frustration as Secretary of Labor during the early years of Clinton's presidency. Since leaving the last Democratic administration, Reich has renewed his progressive commitments, steering toward a far sounder position on the issues than many of his former colleagues. During the Wall Street bailout debate of late September, he was a voice of reason who gave meaning to the often vague discussion about how to respond to the needs of Main Street. During his 2002 campaign for governor of Massachusetts, Reich scoped out a distinctly progressive vision for economic development -- emphasizing investment in the renewal of urban areas and the development of new uses for old factories. Long before others were speaking seriously about a green economy -- and the industrial policies that might make it work -- Reich was talking these ideas up.

There are no guarantees that either Bonior or Reich will have top level roles in an Obama administration -- although Bonior has been boomed by some as a contender for Secretary of Labor. But it is hopeful that they are in the room, and on the stage, as Obama begins to answer the question of whether he really will balance the sympathies for Wall Street that were so dominant during the Clinton and Bush years with a new understanding of the need to put the federal government on the hurting folks on Main Street.

"We need a rescue plan for the middle class that invests in immediate efforts to create jobs and provides relief to families that are watching their paychecks shrink and their life savings disappear," Barack Obama said in his opening statement before taking questions.

If he is serious about that, Obama is going to need to listen a lot more closely to David Bonior and Robert Reich than to Rahm Emanuel and Robert Rubin.

Barack Obama

"The Obama Uprising:The way he won is as significant as his victory itself. Can he keep the movement going?"

Eleanor Clift:

The morning-after emphasis on race in the wake of Barack Obama's resounding victory is appropriate, given our history as a country. It was not that long ago when dogs were unleashed and firehoses turned on black people for wanting to integrate public facilities or attend college. But Obama's election has significance way beyond race. The way he raised money and mobilized voters represents a taking back of the country, a grassroots movement, even an uprising, that will have echoes far into the future.

Criticized for abandoning the public finance system, he upheld the spirit of reform by breaking the grip of the big donors and special interests. Millions of people contributed to the Obama campaign with the average contribution under $100, a new netroots populism that can sustain him as president during the tough times ahead. His immediate challenge will be figuring out how to keep together and activated this new citizens' army that he created. It will take all his oratorical skills to keep enthusiasm high once he starts making decisions that have no immediate payoffs, and there are no more election-night highs.

Watching him on the stage in Grant Park accepting the acclamation of the voters, he was his same steady self—if anything, more sober-minded. He wasn't flying high with the taste of victory, and his words were pitched as much to those who didn't support him. He didn't mention Martin Luther King, Jr. by name, but his speech borrowed from King in its cadences and aspirations in the same way that President Bush in his speeches drops references to biblical passages that only those in the know would pick up on. "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there," Obama said as the crowd chanted "Yes we can!"

King's final speech before he was assassinated envisioned the Promised Land. "I may not get there with you," he declared in words that would later seem prescient. "But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

When an aide mused aloud in the week before the election why anyone would want the job of president given all the problems, Obama replied that it's the best time to be president because in the midst of crisis it's easier to break down bureaucratic barriers and actually do something. It was a typically analytical response, but he wouldn't be human if he didn't have some qualms about the burdens about to be placed on his slim shoulders. NBC's Tom Brokaw jokingly remarked that once it was clear who had won, Obama had asked for a recount. Indeed, Obama himself had said earlier in the campaign that the possibility of losing didn't wake him up at night; it was the thought of winning.

Obama strategist David Axelrod recalled standing in the green room with Obama minutes before he would go onstage for the debate with John McCain. The days before the high-stakes encounter had been chaotic with the financial crisis breaking around them and McCain declaring he was suspending his campaign and might not attend the debate in order to return to Washington and help craft the bailout package. A day of debate prep was lost in the frantic back and forth with Treasury officials. Axelrod found the tension in the green room "suffocating." He turned to Obama and asked, "Are you nervous?" "Yes, but it's a good kind of nervous," Obama said. "Just give me the ball."

Now he's got the ball, and he'll be judged by his performance. His first appointment, the hard-hitting and abrasive Rahm Emanuel, signals both toughness and conviction. Emanuel is firmly entrenched in moderate, DLC politics, co-authoring a book with Bruce Reed, the keeper of the centrist flame at the Democratic Leadership Council. Republicans will try to demonize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the far left version of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, but both will resist playing to type. Pelosi has a bigger and more conservative majority and Reid, a pro-life Mormon, is up for re-election in 2010. How far left can they go—especially with no money?

Obama joins the pantheon of FDR and LBJ as the third biggest vote getter on the Democratic side in terms of the percentage of votes cast. Franklin Roosevelt took office during the depths of the Great Depression; Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. At the beginning of his improbable journey, Obama counted himself among those who wondered whether someone named Barack Hussein Obama could be elected president. "Obama resurrects American Dream," declared the headline of a German newspaper. Obama has changed how the world sees us, and how we see ourselves. He has a big job ahead—but he's got a bigger head start than most presidents get.

Barack Obama

"WA-08: Burner Concedes"

mcjoan:

The Seattle PI has called the race in WA-08 for Reichert.

Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert has won re-election in Washington's 8th Congressional District, defeating two-time Democratic challenger Darcy Burner in a close race.

With almost 80 percent of the expected vote counted from Tuesday's election, Reichert's lead was nearing 8,000 votes Friday. Roughly 270,000 votes have been tallied.

Darcy had the following statement, via e-mail:

"It is likely at this point that Congressman Reichert has won re-election, and while we will certainly ensure that every valid vote is counted, we accept the decision of the voters.

"I would like to thank the thousands of people who put so much time and effort into the campaign, as well as the countless thousands more who went beyond voting to actively participate in our democratic process this year. The election of Barack Obama as our new President will ensure that the change to the direction of our country called for in this campaign is realized in the new year."

The Seattle Times spurious attack on Darcy's character, calling her a liar because she accurately described her Harvard degree, apparently worked. So they succeeded in re-electing an already ineffective incumbent who will be even more so mired deep in the minority, with a Democratic president.

Congratulations, Emily Heffter and the Seattle Times. You just assured progress on key issues like transportation and environmental protection in the 8th District won't have an effective proponent in the House. At least we've got good Senators.