Howard Dean on The Colbert Report (video)

Video here. H/t to Darryl, who has the best "Multimedia Extravaganza!" on Fridays.

"House Dem Staffer: Liberals Are Worried That Leadership Will Cave On Iraq"

Greg Sargent:

Today the White House said No to all of Dems' offered concessions on Iraq, effectively telling the Dem Congressional leadership to take its "surrender date" and shove it deep into its posterior. So now what?

A Democratic leadership aide tells us that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Dem Rep. David Obey will be talking through the weekend to game out the next steps. Further talks with the White House are unlikely, at least this weekend, the aide says. So what do we make of the current political challenge facing Dems?

We checked in with a liberal House Dem staffer who is a sharp observer of Hill politics, and he gave us a surprisingly candid -- and dispiriting -- overview of the political situation. More after the jump.

Here's the situation in a nutshell, as best as we understand it. The White House says it simply won't accept any sort of timetable, even a waivable one. It says it won't accept any kind of benchmarks for progress in Iraq if there are any consequences for not meeting them. So aside from sending the bill back there are only two apparent possibilities left: Either the White House gives on one of these points. Or the Dem Congressional leadership caves and produces a bill funding the war until, say, September, with some sort of benchmarks but no accountability -- in other words, something that's effectively meaningless.

According to our Hill staffer, some liberals are beginning to fear that it will ultimately be the latter. They are persuaded that the Dem leadership will ultimately back down in hopes that other future legislative routes will prove more fertile.

"If this is what they go with, it begs the question, Why did we go through this whole exercise with the first supplemental and everything else?" our staffer asks. "What did we really accomplish?"

Worse, he says, aside from the fact that the benchmarks-with-no-accountability measure would be a substantive failure, it also contains a serious political pitfall. If the final compromise has (meaningless) benchmarks that the White House initially opposed, the possibility is that Republicans in Congress, by supporting such a measure, would be the ones perceived as having been the bridge of compromise between Congressional Dems and Bush.

"If the Republicans come across as brokering this deal, not only have we gained nothing, but they will have gained a lot," he says. "The Republicans will be the ones perceived to have brought Bush back into line. This is certainly not a gift we want to give them."

What about sending the same bill back to the President? According to our staffer, the perceived problem here is that House Dems have loudly proclaimed that a measure to fund the troops will have been created by Memorial Day. Recent polls suggest that Dems haven't done a good enough job explaining to the public that the Presidential veto -- not Congress -- is what's to blame for the lack of troop funding. So a repeat of the veto scenario is thus seeen as politically very risky, our staffer says.

"The storyline in the media would then be, `Dems fail to meet their own set deadlines, Dems in disarray,'" the staffer says. (Of course, sending the same bill back doesn't appear to be under consideration by the leadership in any case.)

So barring a situation where the standoff continues past Memorial Day, something Dems seem hell bent on avoiding, that leaves just options (a) and (b) above: Either the White House gives, or Dems cave. And some libs, at least, worry that it'll be (b). On the other hand, the Dem leadership insists it's committed to not giving Bush a blank check, and it has consistently hung much tougher than anyone expected and has steadily defied expectations in the process. So anything, of course, can happen.

Look, the whole process thus far in some ways has been very good for liberals. There have been straight up-or-down votes on ending the war in both the House and Senate. Progressives have gradually strengthened their hands in Congress.

But let's face it: The future -- the short term one, at least -- is looking uncertain at best. We'll know soon enough.

Howie P.S.: There is one word missing from the headline: "Again."

"Presidential campaigns chase elusive youth vote"

Chicago Tribune:

'Camp Obama' draws young volunteers to campaign--Dozens of high school and college students report Monday for the first week of a new summer camp, where the setting is a makeshift campaign office in a Loop high-rise and the activities include learning how to work a phone bank and knock on doors.

"Camp Obama," as it's called, also will offer a twist on the campfire chat: Campers will be schooled in the policies and promises of Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat whose presidential campaign is sponsoring the program.

The camp is one of several early efforts by presidential campaigns to court voters under 30, an age bracket growing in size and political interest with the potential to wield significant influence in the next election.

The campaigns have adopted new-media strategies aimed, at least in part, at Generation Facebook, and most are trying to turn the networks they build on-line into more old-fashioned activism.

Republican Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, for instance, has offered students a commission on the money they raise for his campaign. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) recently launched a text-messaging campaign, along with an on-line contest to pick her theme song.

Skeptical political veterans question whether a heavy investment in youth outreach is a high-yield proposition. Historically, young voters are significantly less likely than their elders to actually show up for primaries, caucuses and elections.

But those tracking the political interest among young people believe it's on the rise, and that efforts to get them involved are improving with every new Internet and social networking tool.

"Young adults are poised to become a real force in elections," said Kathleen Barr, research director at Young Voter Strategies, a non-partisan organization based at George Washington University. "This generation is more engaged than young adults in the past, in politics and community service, and the work everyone is doing to reach out to them is just more effective."

Depending on how big a pay-off they anticipate, campaigns are investing in youth outreach to varying degrees.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor seeking the Republican nomination, is polling high among voters between 18 and 24, according to a recent survey by Harvard University's Institute of Politics. .

Clinton has a volunteer youth coordinator who will join the campaign full-time in a few weeks. Students for Hillary chapters are forming on college campuses.

Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, recently ran a cross-country college tour trying to gin up campus activism for his campaign.

In addition, several non-partisan groups are working to promote turnout among voters under 30. The New Voters Project, formed in 2004 to recruit students, is planning to register voters on college campuses, in part by going door to door in dormitories.

Rock the Vote, which got more than 1 million people to download their voter registration forms from their web site, will repeat the effort in 2008.

Over the years, political veterans have come to the conclusion that youth voters aren't a good investment. In 1972, just more than 55 percent of eligible voters under 30 went to the polls, a high mark reached while the draft for the Viet Nam War was in effect.

Since then, the youth voting rate has risen over half just once, when 52 percent turned out in the 1992 presidential election.

For that reason, campaigns often set up only a bare-bones youth program but don't really give it a lot of attention.

"It's not unusual for presidential campaigns to give a nod to reaching out" to the young voters, said Ken Stroupe, chief of staff for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "There's a great deal of debate about whether it actually results in motivating young people to participate at higher levels . . . It's one thing to have young people putting posters on their dorm room doors. It's quite another to get them to attend the convention or the primary or the caucus."

Howard Dean devoted substantial resources to young voters in 2004, Stroupe notes, but his primary bid fizzled when his network of on-line supporters failed to show up in numbers strong enough to nominate him.

But others say such conclusions are based on statistics that are too old to be instructive.

"That's so 1996," said Hans Riemer, the former Rock the Vote organizer now running Obama's youth operation. "Over the last couple of elections, we've seen young people's participation starting to climb. And new tools are in development that allow you to reach them . . . You can't blame campaigns for not reaching out to young people if they don't know who they are, where they live and how to reach them, but that is changing dramatically."

Though it's hard to tell exactly how much each of the campaigns is pouring into youth outreach, the Obama operation appears to be devoting at least as much as other campaigns.

Riemer is a paid staffer dedicated full-time to youth outreach, and he has two full-time staff deputies. In addition, the campaign is paying youth staff in early primary states, though officials won't say how many there are or where, exactly, they work.

Those staffers work in tandem with Students for Barack Obama, a group of Obama supporters who met up via Facebook and formed their own independent group but who now coordinate their activities with the official campaign.

Camp Obama is a separate operation, not unlike the training sessions routinely held by political campaigns for smaller groups of people. It's open to volunteers of all ages, but most of the 1,500 who have signed up so far are college students.

On Monday, 50 people will arrive for the camp in the new offices, decorated with some inexpensive office furniture and set up like a campaign headquarters. Half the attendees come from the Chicago area, so they'll stay overnight at home, while the others will board with Obama supporters who have volunteered to take them in.

During the day, they'll learn practical campaign skills - "Campaigning 101," one organizer called it - and also will hear from longtime Obama friends and associates who will talk about his biography and policy positions.

Riemer's division isn't running the camp, but Obama aides say that reflects an attempt to focus every part of the campaign partly on young voters.

"The bottom line is, we have to leverage the entire campaign," said Riemer. "Everyone involved in the campaign has to incorporate it in some matter. That's the hardest part. That's what campaigns typically don't do."

"Edwards Slow in Shaping Calif. Campaign"

AP:

John Edwards says California will play ``a huge role'' in determining the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, yet he's running a shoestring campaign here compared with his top rivals.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has appointed a campaign manager, political director and field organizer in the nation's largest state, and she has a Los Angeles office devoted to fundraising.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is leasing an office for a four-person fundraising team in Los Angeles, and he's hired a national consulting firm from Pasadena.

Even New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who will officially announce his candidacy in Los Angeles on Monday, has a small paid staff in the state.

By contrast, Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential candidate, has no campaign office or paid political staff in the state, though two fundraising firms are on his payroll.

It's still relatively early in the race, but for Edwards the situation suggests a tricky political calculus: win or at least make strong showings in earlier primary and caucus states - notably Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - then use that momentum to create a surge of donations to mount an airwaves campaign in California.

The first presidential caucus state is Iowa, and Edwards has a robust campaign in the state. He finished second there when he was a presidential candidate in 2004 and leads in polls this year.

However, Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who's worked on presidential campaigns for Bill Clinton, Dick Gephardt and Edward Kennedy, said if Edwards stumbles in Iowa ``he won't have a California campaign.''

Carrick said that even while concentrating on the earlier states Edwards must establish a campaign in California if he is to take advantage of early momentum.

Carrick recalled that in 1988 Gephardt, the former Missouri senator, won Iowa and finished second in the New Hampshire primary, but he didn't have the organization in other states to be competitive and fell out of the race.

California assumed new prominence in the presidential election this year when state lawmakers moved up its primary by four months, to Feb. 5. The state, long a font of political dollars, has seen a succession of candidates making trips here.

Edwards' campaign says the candidate's most important investment in California is his time. He has spent all or part of 13 days in the state this year, more than other leading Democrats.

"Michelle Obama Adds New Role to Balancing Act" (with video)

NY Times, with video (4:33):

It was a triumphant moment for Barack Obama: He was walking through the Capitol for the very first time as a United States senator in January 2005, trailed by photographers, hangers-on, and finally, his amused wife. Rolling her eyes as she pulled a reporter aside, Michelle Obama said, “Maybe one day, he will do something to warrant all this attention.”

Two years and one presidential announcement later, the sarcasm is gone, and a woman who has said she dislikes politics is assuming a starring role in her husband’s campaign for the White House.

Last week, in Windham, N.H., Mrs. Obama charmed a houseful of Democratic voters, speaking of her romance with the candidate and kneeling next to two little boys and their sister to inquire, “Which one of you is the troublemaker?”

She was still a bit irreverent: “I’m sure this guy is weird,” she said, describing her initial reaction to her husband’s name. But she turned earnest when talking of the presidency. “I know Barack is something special,” she said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Mrs. Obama’s is the trickiest of political performances. She is a black woman in a campaign in which no one knows quite what role race or gender will play. She has a propensity for bluntness and a fierce competitive drive. (“She’s a little meaner than I am,” her husband jokes.)

Her counterparts include Bill Clinton, the former president and consummate campaigner hoping to become the First Gent; and Elizabeth Edwards, who has been praised across the political spectrum for her tenacity in dealing with incurable cancer.

Even successful first lady auditions can be remembered as political don’ts: take Nancy Reagan (regarded as too adoring of her husband) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (too eager to share his job), to say nothing of spouses of losing candidates, like Judith Steinberg Dean (too absent) and Teresa Heinz Kerry (too outspoken).

Faced with those discouraging precedents, Mrs. Obama, 43, is trying a fresh approach: running as everywoman, a wife, professional, mother, volunteer.

While her husband’s story is singular — how many other Hawaiian-Indonesian-African-Midwestern sensations are there? — Mrs. Obama is his more down-to-earth counterpart, drawing parallels between the voters’ daily balancing acts and her own. The role suits her natural frankness — she has gone so far as to talk about how she had to cope with an overflowing toilet — and yet confines it safely to the domestic sphere.

In an interview, Mrs. Obama said that she is still unprepared to take on the role for which she is trying out.

“My God, who can sit here and say, ‘I’m ready to be president and first lady?’ ” she asked. But like her husband, she is running on biography, suggesting that her most important qualifications are her life experiences. Daughter of a Chicago city pump operator who had multiple sclerosis, she graduated from Princeton and Harvard and juggles her job as a hospital executive with motherhood and civic work.

Mrs. Obama dislikes politics, friends and family confirmed, but not as much as she dislikes losing. Craig Robinson, her brother and the Brown University men’s basketball coach, said his sister did not enjoy organized sports when she was younger because she so hated defeat and even now pouts when a board game does not go her way. His sister is brainy and warm, he said, but also a force to be reckoned with.

“Everyone in the family is afraid of her,” he said with a smile. Asked if Mr. Obama used a nicotine patch to quit smoking, Mr. Robinson cracked up. “Michelle Obama!” he said. “That’s one hell of a patch right there!”

Accordingly, she threw herself into her husband’s campaign from the start, asking to meet with aides running every aspect of it. Friends says she is decisive and pragmatic, perhaps more so than the candidate.

At a meeting last October, when some advisers were impressing upon Mr. Obama the importance of discipline and telling him he could not rely on oratorical talents alone in a national campaign, he began offering explanations. One participant recalled that Mrs. Obama cut him off, saying, “We’re talking about you right now.” He did not say another word.

Now she is traveling as much as three days a week, headlining events and becoming an attraction in her own right. Aides say that she will not make policy speeches or attack other candidates, and Mrs. Obama says that she makes a sharp distinction between her role and that of the campaign staff.

For instance, after the first Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina in April, she walked on stage and gave her husband a big hug. But she did not offer a critique of his performance because, she said, she wants to keep her marriage “sort of stress-free, free of the discussion, free of the analysis, free of the assessment.”

Instead, she serves as roaming ambassador. For African-American audiences, Mrs. Obama is one of their own, with a more familiar background than that of her husband. At a black church in Cincinnati last week, the audience mmm-hmmm-ed approval throughout her speech.

To female audiences, Mrs. Obama emphasizes her struggle to balance travel, work meetings and homework detail. Last Monday, for instance, Mrs. Obama zoomed out of bed, to the airport, onto a flight to New Hampshire, through two campaign events and a McDonald’s drive-through, then back to the Midwest and into her two daughters’ waiting arms.

“I wake up every morning wondering how on the earth I am going to pull off that next minor miracle of getting through the day,” she said at a “Women for Obama” event last month in Chicago.

Most politicians draw a curtain of privacy around their families. Mrs. Obama takes voters into daily life in her Chicago kitchen (where Mr. Obama sometimes fails to put the butter away, she says), and even, with an anecdote about an overflowing toilet, her bathroom.

Such patter draws a contrast with the lives of other presidential contenders, including those of John Edwards, who lives in a 28,000-square-foot mansion; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor whose remarriage has strained his relations with his children; and Mrs. Clinton, with her past marital trials.

“I think that that sort of statement is all about the Clintons, and it’s also designed to resonate with middle-income Americans who have quote unquote normal marriages in which the spouse at home calls the other and asks to bring home a bag of salad,” said Nancy Beck Young, a history professor who has made a study of first ladies and will teach at the University of Houston this fall.

Mrs. Obama is learning political wife speak: She claims, for example, she has not thought very much about what kind of first lady Mrs. Clinton was. She still shows flashes of frankness, especially about the cost of Mr. Obama’s political career.

The couple once pledged to give their daughters — Malia, now 8, and Sasha, 5 — the kind of dinner-together-every-night childhood that Mrs. Obama had growing up in Chicago. Now, the senator is mostly on the road or in Washington.

Although Mrs. Obama describes her husband as a loving father, she worries about the actual amount of fathering he is doing. Mr. Obama has acknowledged in his book that his absences caused tensions when the girls were younger. And his wife initially resisted his presidential ambitions, fearing the impact on their family life.

Even before the presidential race, life was a whirl of how-does-she-do-it multitasking for Mrs. Obama, with 4:30 a.m. treadmill sessions and meals prepared at lightning speed. “She’s kind of low on the Martha Stewart scale,” said Verna Williams, a longtime friend, “more like Rachael Ray, get it done in 30 minutes.” To help out, Mrs. Obama’s mother will retire this summer from her job as a bank secretary and care for the girls more frequently.

The Obamas began their careers as equals, and Mr. Obama is fond of saying that his wife has the skills, if not the experience or patience, to run for office. But now she is ceding her career to his, reducing her time at the hospital to a 20 percent commitment (and her paycheck to $42,436 from $212,180), though she remains on the board of TreeHouse Foods, a supplier of Wal-Mart.

She expresses no regret about scaling down her job at the hospital, where colleagues say she excels at tackling thorny problems. But this winter, after spotting a book on the Obamas’ coffee table celebrating Mr. Obama’s Senate victory, her staff created a matching volume of her accomplishments. Mrs. Obama wept when she saw it.

At campaign appearances, Mrs. Obama gets approving reviews. “People do judge a candidate by his wife — or her husband,” said Lynne Snierson, a marketing executive who has watched countless candidates trudge through New Hampshire.

When Mrs. Obama mentioned her daughters at an event in New Hampshire, one woman cooed about “bringing laughter back to the White House,” while two retirees whispered that she was the picture of “everyday elegance” in her red sweater set and smooth flip of a hairstyle.

It was the same perfectly calibrated look reflected in a recent cover of Ebony magazine. Seeking to make the couple look as presidential as possible, Harriette Cole, the magazine’s creative director, said stylists at the photo shoot offered Mrs. Obama a strand of West Wing-appropriate pearls.

She had already brought her own.

"Air America Makes Big Plans; Invites Big Names For Re-Launch"

New York Business:

Air America is scheduling a high-profile lineup of presidential candidates, political players and celebrities for next week as part of the liberal talk network's "relaunch" after suffering financial woes.

Democratic candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, along with luminaries like Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Gloria Steinem, are among the more than 30 guests scheduled, the network announced Thursday.

New shows are also being added to the schedule, featuring famous correspondents and hosts, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Arianna Huffington and Bob Kerrey. The network also redesigned its Web site, where hosts will regularly blog along with a newly-hired blogger, Nancy Scola.

"Video Of Obama's Slam Of Hillary's Vote For War"

Greg Sargent:

Here's some video of the Obama criticism of Hillary on Iraq we referenced below:


Listening to it, Obama's criticism comes across as tougher than I'd originally thought -- asked if this highlighted a difference in the judgment of the two candidates, Obama replied flatly: "It does."

We think this is a significant moment in the campaign -- the first time to our knowledge that Obama has sought to highlight his pre-war differences with Hillary in such stark terms.

It'll be interesting to see: (a) If Camp Obama will continue to press this point; and (b) If it'll have resonance with voters. Polls seem to suggest that the Dem electorate is less inclined to hold Hillary's initial war vote against her than the pundits predicted. We'll see.

Rasmussen Reports: "National Poll: Clinton 35% Obama 33%"

Rasmussen Reports:

For the fourth time in five weeks, a national Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Democratic Primary Voters shows Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama within two points of each other. This week, it’s Clinton 35% Obama 33%. Former Senator John Edwards is in third place with 14% support. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is a distant fourth at 3%.

However, the race may not be as close as those numbers suggest. The Rasmussen Reports sample includes not only Democrats, but also independents who say they are likely to vote in a Democratic Primary. Among Democrats only, Clinton leads by eight percentage points, 39% to 31% (with Edwards at 15%). That’s little changed from a week ago when Clinton led by eleven among Democrats in the survey.

Obama does better when independents are included because he currently holds a two-to-one advantage over Clinton among those potential voters. Both the number and the preferences of independent voters is more volatile than the preferences of core Democratic voters. Some states have open primaries allowing independents to participate, others allow Democrats only. If the current trends were to continue throughout the Primary season, Clinton would handily win the states allowing only Democrats to vote while Obama would be competitive in others.

This puts Clinton in a similar position to John Kerry in 2004 and George W. Bush in 2000. As Kerry swept to the nomination, John Edwards was most competitive in states that allowed independents to participate in their primaries. In Election 2000, Senator John McCain was able to surprise Bush in New Hampshire due to that state’s open Primary and the fact that there was little competition on the Democratic side of the debate. Throughout his challenge, McCain was most competitive in places that allowed independents to participate. However, he was never a serious threat to Bush in states with Republican-only primaries.

"Edwards Downplays Time at Hedge Fund"

AP:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Tuesday that his work for a hedge fund shouldn't overshadow his efforts on poverty and other issues after the 2004 campaign.

``If you look at what I've done since the last election, it is true that I did consulting work for a hedge fund, part time,'' Edwards told The Associated Press in a brief interview. ``It's also true that I started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina, that I led minimum wage initiatives in six states - all successful - that I started a college-for-everyone program for poor communities in eastern North Carolina, that I helped organize thousands of workers into unions, that I did humanitarian work in Africa.''

Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee, again declined to say how much money he was paid for his yearlong position with the New York-based Fortress Investment Group. ``It will come out when the disclosure comes out,'' Edwards said, referring to financial reports due Tuesday.

Last week, in an interview with the AP, Edwards said he worked for a hedge fund between presidential campaigns to learn about financial markets and their relationship to poverty - and to make money too.

Fortress reported assets of about $35.1 billion as of Dec. 31, 2006. Hedge funds, now numbering more than 9,000 in the U.S. with assets estimated to exceed $1 trillion, traditionally cater to the rich, as well as pension funds and university endowments, but are increasingly luring less wealthy investors.

Edwards said his work at Fortress should be put into context with the anti-poverty work he's undertaken since he and John Kerry made a failed run for the White House.

``If you look at all the things I've done since the last election, it's pretty clear where my commitment is,'' he said.

Edwards was in Iowa to announce the support of 1,500 women caucus-goers. In the interview, Edwards said the experience he gained in the 2004 Iowa caucuses have taught him the need for a grass-roots organization in the state.

``I can tell you I've been through this,'' he said. ``I'm experienced and seasoned at what it takes to organize in Iowa.''

Although his main Democratic rivals, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, draw larger crowds, Edwards said is focused more on organizing. Such work paid off in a surprising second-place showing in Iowa in 2004 and will pay dividends again, he said.

Only about 100,000 Democratic activists will likely show up to decide the caucuses on Jan. 14, and most will have met at least one of the candidates. Edwards said the comfort level he's built with activists over the years is a distinct advantage.

``I think the importance of it is that people in Iowa - caucus-goers - feel like they know me, they know Elizabeth,'' said Edwards. ``That comfort level makes it easier for them to hear what you want to do as president. It doesn't yet mean they are for you, but it means they are more receptive to what you have to say.''

Tuesday's visit was Edwards' 23rd to Iowa since the 2004 election.
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Tuesday that his work for a hedge fund shouldn't overshadow his efforts on poverty and other issues after the 2004 campaign.

``If you look at what I've done since the last election, it is true that I did consulting work for a hedge fund, part time,'' Edwards told The Associated Press in a brief interview. ``It's also true that I started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina, that I led minimum wage initiatives in six states - all successful - that I started a college-for-everyone program for poor communities in eastern North Carolina, that I helped organize thousands of workers into unions, that I did humanitarian work in Africa.''

Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee, again declined to say how much money he was paid for his yearlong position with the New York-based Fortress Investment Group. ``It will come out when the disclosure comes out,'' Edwards said, referring to financial reports due Tuesday.

Last week, in an interview with the AP, Edwards said he worked for a hedge fund between presidential campaigns to learn about financial markets and their relationship to poverty - and to make money too.

Fortress reported assets of about $35.1 billion as of Dec. 31, 2006. Hedge funds, now numbering more than 9,000 in the U.S. with assets estimated to exceed $1 trillion, traditionally cater to the rich, as well as pension funds and university endowments, but are increasingly luring less wealthy investors.

Edwards said his work at Fortress should be put into context with the anti-poverty work he's undertaken since he and John Kerry made a failed run for the White House.

``If you look at all the things I've done since the last election, it's pretty clear where my commitment is,'' he said.

Edwards was in Iowa to announce the support of 1,500 women caucus-goers. In the interview, Edwards said the experience he gained in the 2004 Iowa caucuses have taught him the need for a grass-roots organization in the state.

``I can tell you I've been through this,'' he said. ``I'm experienced and seasoned at what it takes to organize in Iowa.''

Although his main Democratic rivals, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, draw larger crowds, Edwards said is focused more on organizing. Such work paid off in a surprising second-place showing in Iowa in 2004 and will pay dividends again, he said.

Only about 100,000 Democratic activists will likely show up to decide the caucuses on Jan. 14, and most will have met at least one of the candidates. Edwards said the comfort level he's built with activists over the years is a distinct advantage.

``I think the importance of it is that people in Iowa - caucus-goers - feel like they know me, they know Elizabeth,'' said Edwards. ``That comfort level makes it easier for them to hear what you want to do as president. It doesn't yet mean they are for you, but it means they are more receptive to what you have to say.''

Tuesday's visit was Edwards' 23rd to Iowa since the 2004 election.

"ABC: Most 2008 front-runners break tradition; won't release income taxes" (with video)

RAW STORY, with video (3:26):

2008 candidates for the White House are breaking tradition by not making public their income tax records, ABC's Good Morning America reports.

"For years, part of the election ritual has included taking a peek at the candidates' tax returns. But this election? Different," says ABC's Robin Roberts. "Almost all the top candidates are keeping their taxes a secret."

Adds senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "This year's crop of presidential front-runners, with one exception, is refusing to abide by this tradition, and that's not the only thing they're keeping secret."

The lone top candidate willing to release his tax information is Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who says, "I think it's critical that people know who their candidates are, what our sources of income are, if we have any potential conflicts."

"Obama To Support Feingold Amendment Cutting Off War Funding"

Greg Sargent (TPM Cafe):

Obama will vote for the Feingold amendment:

“Tomorrow, I expect cloture votes on two other proposals. One is the Reid-Feingold plan, which would begin a withdrawal of troops in 120 days and end all combat operations on April 1. The other is Senator Levin's proposal, which would create standards and benchmarks for additional funding.”

“I will support both, not because I believe either is the best answer, but because I want to send a strong statement to the Iraqi government, the President and my Republican colleagues that it's long past time to change course.”

“Meanwhile, I'll continue to press for my own plan, and work to find the 16 votes in the Senate to pass it with a veto-proof majority and bring our troops home quickly, safely and responsibly.”

Perhaps most interesting is Obama's optimism that ultimately Dems will be able to secure enough support to override subsequent Presidential vetoes. He says the following about the Congressional approach vetoed by the President last month: "I think it will become the framework for a bipartisan coalition the President can't resist."

Seems like a long way from here to that veto-proof majority to us. But who knows?

Meanwhile, we'll bring you Hillary's position when it becomes available.

"Dodd Campaign Hires Traveling Blogger"

Ari Melber (The Nation):

Presidential candidate Chris Dodd has hired a traveling blogger to write and videoblog his campaign trips in real time. While candidates typically travel with a retinue of advisers, spokespersons and "body" aides, this may be the first traveling blogger in presidential campaign history.

The blogger, Matt Browner Hamlin, has written for websites such as The Huffington Post and Connecticut's MyLeftNutmeg, but this is his first campaign job. He was an active volunteer supporter of Ned Lamont, the Greenwich businessman whose netroots-powered campaign defeated Connecticut's other Senator, Joe Lieberman, in a primary last year. Browner Hamlin will join another Lamont enthusiast, Tim Tagaris, who runs Dodd's Internet strategy and previously worked for the Lamont Campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Dodd was impressed by innovation and impact of Internet activists in his state, and his campaign has experimented online more than most of his competitors. The official website already offers behind the scenes videos, like senior staff discussing the recent debate and shots of Dodd backstage at the Daily Show, and Browner Hamlin says he will provide enough video and blogging from the trail to make the campaign "transparent in real time." The Dodd Campaign also relaunched its website today and it is planning a large Internet ad buy.

Writing as an independent blogger, Browner Hamlin has lamented how serious "issue candidates" like Dodd and Bill Richardson were unfairly ignored by both the MSM and the netroots: I think it's really sad that the one place where all candidates should be given a fair shake based on what they've done and what they stand for -- the blogosphere -- has fully adopted the same conventional wisdom that is put forth by people like Chris Mathews, Adam Nagourney, and the staff of The Politico. Namely, that the Democrats have a three person race between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards and no one else stands a chance [...]

Bill Clinton and Howard Dean succeeded because grassroots activists took them seriously when the mainstream press did not. I find it sad that this cycle the grassroots, particularly grassroots pundits on the blogs, has shown no real willingness to part ways from the mainstream press assessment of who is viable and who is not. If the second tier candidate - the issue candidate - is dead, it is we who have killed it.

The Dodd Campaign was smart to tap a true believer who challenges the conventional wisdom in the blogs and the papers, even if he's never worked on a campaign before. Dodd is not "second tier" on the issues; his policies on Iraq, human rights and energy are some of the boldest and most thoughtful in the entire field. A travelling blogger might just press others to cover that substance, or disintermediate the entire horse-race framework so that voters can judge for themselves.

Update: The Dodd Campaign has now issued a press release quoting Tagaris' view of his new colleague: "Bringing an experienced blogger like Matt aboard gives us the exciting opportunity to provide Democratic primary voters with the kind of window into a campaign that hasn't been seen before in Presidential politics. [...] With Matt's help, the campaign will be able to successfully reach out to the blogosphere and the netroots and engage them in Senator Dodd's bold and exciting run for the White House."

Howie P.S.: Melber says he lives in Seattle so we'll have to smoke him out, rub elbows and talk politics.

"Wealthy anti-war activist a Demo candidate for president"

David Postman:

Dal LaMagna, anti-war activist, wealthy businessman, blogger and confidante to Rep. Jim McDermott and members of the Iraqi Parliament, is running for president.

LaMagna confirmed just now that he will run and his Web site has gone live. The campaign also e-mailed potential supporters today saying an announcement will come soon.

That announcement may come from Baghdad.

LaMagna told me that he wants to fly to Iraq to continue his anti-war work with Iraqi members of parliament, then announce his run for the presidency as he leaves Iraq to return to the United States.

The e-mail sent to potential supporters says:

But, it's not going to be your typical campaign. Instead of traveling the country shaking hand while visiting diners, Dal intends to continue working towards stopping the violence in Iraq and constructing a competent government in waiting. He'll be traveling to Iraq where he hopes to cut through the Gordian knot and help facilitate an end to the violence by meeting with Iraqi citizens, generals, and representatives of the Resistance.

At the same time, his campaign staff will be working at home, listening to Americans and what they want in their government, determining the best ways to address the wealth disparity in the country, and promoting responsible capitalism, among a host of other issues.

Since January, LaMagna has been living and working in D.C., trying to get members of Congress to listen to Iraqis as part of the debate on ending the war. The New York Times wrote today about one of LaMagna's major efforts, being the D.C. host for Muhammad al-Daini, a Sunni Arab member of the Iraqi Parliament.

"The problem in Iraq is the American Army," Mr. Daini told a group of attentive American legislators gathered last week in the office of Representative Jim McDermott, an antiwar Democrat from Seattle. "What brought terrorism, what brought Al Qaida and what brought Iranian influence is the Americans."

Mr. Daini, soft-spoken and generally unsmiling, has been ushered from meeting to meeting by a public relations firm paid by an American businessman who calls the Iraqi politician "a true humanitarian." The businessman, Dal LaMagna, says he is devoting the fortune he made selling his high-end grooming tools business, Tweezerman, to seeking an end to the violence in Iraq, a goal he says Mr. Daini shares.

But a closer look at Mr. Daini's record in Iraq suggests a more complicated picture. The real lesson of his tour may be the difficulty of sorting out from Washington who is who in a distant, bitter sectarian conflagration, where hyperbole is rife and solid facts are hard to come by.

According to the Times, Daini's Shiite opponents say he has ties to Sunni insurgents.

He has publicly praised the Sunni insurgency for taking on American troops, and a reporter for a Shiite newspaper has accused him of complicity in the killing of the reporter's brother.

The Iraqi government says that documents Daini has been showing people in D.C. — and are said to be evidence of wrongdoing by the Maliki government — are forgeries.

LaMagna told me the story was "pretty tough." He told the Times he stands by Daini:

I like to hang with someone to get to know him," said Mr. LaMagna. "We brought in a cook. I jog with him in the morning. We have the same agenda: we want to stop the violence."

The Times didn't know that LaMagna was planning a run for president, or that Daini may play a supporting role in the campaign. Daini is scheduled to return to Baghdad Wednesday. Said LaMagna:

"He's going to go over and set things up so I can actually meet with people who I ordinarily wouldn't be able to meet with and then I'll go over there and expect to declare from there."

LaMagna said he would not stay in the heavily fortified Green Zone while in Iraq but get out to talk to as many Iraqis as he can. He said that being a candidate for president, even one not well known in America, will help open doors for him in Iraq.

"I don't know what it is about the White House. Even if you're running for the White House people take you more seriously. It helps getting access."

LaMagna is wealthy from the sale of his beauty tools business, Tweezerman. But he doesn't plan on spending much of that on his campaign. He says he has already loaned his campaign $49,000, which would still allow him to qualify for federal funds, too.

He calls himself a "progressive capitalist" and says that gives him a different take on issues than his ideological peer, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the liberal anti-war candidate making his second run for the Democratic presidential nomination. LaMagna said he also talked to some of the major Democratic candidates already in the race, but found their interest in him limited.

"I made an attempt to get myself involved in the other campaigns and sure they want me involved. They want me to raise money for them. But that's not what I'm about."

LaMagna ran as a Democrat for Congress from New York in 1996 and 2000. He lives in Poulsbo and D.C. He founded ProgressiveGovernemnt.org, and blogs at the Huffington Post.

He was co-chairman of Cantwell's 2006 re-election campaign. He got that post after he played a key role in getting Cantwell's Democratic primary opponent, Mark Wilson, to quit the race and join the incumbent's campaign.

I ran into LaMagna in January at reception for Cantwell. He told me he had just moved to D.C. to work full time trying to bring Iraqis to D.C. in an effort to help end the violence in Iraq.

He and McDermott met with Iraqis in Jordan on a trip in November. They came up with a plan that they said represented what Iraqis want as part of an end to the war. McDermott and LaMagna said that Iraqis want U.S. troops out of the cities and instead sent to guard the borders with Iran and Syria. They also want the former Iraqi army reconstituted and rearmed.

"Obama pressed on his war funding votes"

Lynn Sweet (Chicago Sun-Times):

Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama was pressed on why, when he was running for the Senate in 2003, he opposed extra funding for the Iraq war, yet voted for supplemental spending bills bankrolling the war once in office, in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Obama also declined on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos to say what he would do if confronted with a war-funding measure that did not include a timeline for withdrawal.

That's because Obama's short- term strategy is to mount a campaign-within-a-campaign to try to find enough GOP senators to get the 67 votes needed to override President Bush's veto of an Iraq war funding bill with mandated timelines sending soldiers home.

Getting a Senate supermajority is very much a long shot. On the House side, Democrats would also need Republican defections to override a veto.

In recent appearances in Louisiana, Iowa and Missouri, Obama has taken swings at Republican senators from those states for not supporting the bill Bush recently vetoed with war funding plus timelines for getting troops out of Iraq.

War spending, and Obama's record, came up in the ABC interview, taped Friday in Des Moines, Iowa, because the Democratic-controlled Congress is searching for a compromise to commit Bush to winding down the war while still supplying money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trying again, the House on Thursday passed a measure 221-205 providing money only until August and with no firm target dates for getting soldiers out of Iraq. That vote, mostly along party lines, showed House Republicans are not yet ready to break ranks.

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leaders are searching for an alternative because, they say, the House approach will not win Senate approval, much less stand down the veto Bush has promised.

When it comes to Iraq war spending, Obama faces a more complex and vastly higher-stakes situation in 2007 running for president than he did in 2003 running for an Illinois Senate seat.

Obama told Stephanopoulos it was "political suicide" for him to be against the Iraq war in 2003. However, antiwar sentiment in Illinois was higher than in the rest of the country. In the March 2004 Illinois primary, Obama was helped by being the only antiwar contender.

Against this backdrop, Obama said while running for the Senate that he would not, if in the Senate, vote for an $87 billion supplemental appropriation to bankroll the war and Iraqi reconstruction. Once in the Senate, Obama voted for all of the Iraq war funding bills.

Obama told Stephanopoulos he opposed the $87 billion because "I was trying to establish a principle at that time," and the $87 billion legislation included wasteful spending.

Some antiwar Democrats have been voting for war appropriations these last few years because they have wanted to be supportive of U.S. troops and send them the supplies they needed.

Obama, once in the Senate, became one of them.

To read the entire interview, click to blog entry below this one.

"Obama Seeks War-Funding Compromise" (with video)

ABC News, with video (25:21):

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., could support a war-funding bill that includes benchmarks but lacks a timetable for withdrawal, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive "This Week" interview.

But Obama made clear he opposes giving the president a "blank check" for the war in Iraq.

"There's got to be something that signals the president is changing course, and that there are consequences to the Iraqi government failing to meet some of the benchmarks that we're talking about," Obama said.

And while, like the rest of the Democratic field for president, Obama has emphasized his support for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, he left the door open to returning to the country if the situation continues to deteriorate, especially if withdrawal were to incite a Shiite genocide of the Sunnis.

"I think we have some moral and humanitarian responsibilities to the Iraqi people," said Obama. "And that has to be factored in. I can't anticipate what Iraq will look like a year from now, because so much depends on how we carry out this phased redeployment and how effective we are when it comes to diplomacy."

New to the National Stage

Obama burst onto the national stage three years ago, with a fiery and passionate keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. But thirteen weeks after announcing his candidacy for president, it is clear that Obama has intentionally adopted a more low-key approach to campaigning in the early primary states.

"What I don't do when I'm campaigning is to try to press a lot of hot buttons and use a lot of cheap applause buttons, because I want people to get a sense of how I think about this process," said Obama. "I think that one of the problems with political speeches is that we all know what folks want to hear. We know who the conventional, stereotypical enemies are on any given issue, and we have a tendency, I think, to play up to that. And I actually think that we're in this moment in history right now where honesty, admitting complexity is a good thing."

But while Obama talks often about the need to compromise and find middle ground in politics, he also maintained that he is realistic about the limits of that approach.

"I'm not naive enough to think that if we all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' that somehow health care gets solved or education gets solved," said Obama.

Still, Obama told Stephanopoulos he sees his ability to bring people together as his strength.

"I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other," said Obama. "I think that I have the ability to make people get beyond some of the divisions that plague our society and to focus on common sense and reason. And that's been in short supply over the last several years."

Security Threats

For the first time in a television interview, Obama discussed his new Secret Service protection, and said he was initially reluctant to receive it.

"I'm not an entourage guy," Obama said. "You know, up until recently, I was still taking my wife Michelle's grocery list and going to the grocery store once in a while."

Following reports that Obama was going to receive protection from the Secret Service, fellow Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin said some of the threats against Obama were racially motivated. But Obama said he doesn't think race will be a big barrier in his run for president.

"What I'm confident about, though, as I travel around the country, is that people are decent at their core in America," said Obama. "If I don't win, it's not going to be because of my race. It's going to be because I didn't project a vision of leadership that gave people confidence. It's going to be because of something I didn't do as opposed to because I'm African-American."

The Chicago Tribune headlines one comment from the ABC interview: "Obama mocks Bush in interview." Lynn Sweet (Chicago Sun-Times) provides the transcript. Taylor Marsh is not a fan of Obama or Stephanopoulos and links to his interview with John Edwards to support her position.

"Join Barack for the Seattle Kickoff"

Washington State for Barack Obama 2008:

Senator Obama is coming to town! And here is your chance to see him at the:

Obama for America Community Kickoff Event

Friday, June 1, 2007
5:30 pm

Qwest Event Center’s WaMu Theater
800 Occidental Avenue S
Seattle, Washington

Tickets: $100, $50, $25 (Price associated with proximity to stage)
To purchase tickets, go to: http://my.barackobama.com/seattlekickoff

After the Seattle Kickoff, there will be Sponsors Reception ($2300)7:00-8:00pm and a General Reception 7:30-9:00 pm ($500) at The Westin, 1900 Fifth Avenue, Seattle, Washington. To purchase tickets, go to: https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/seattle

"Netroots Renewed"

Newsweek:

Joe Rospars, a Howard Dean Web strategist, was at Vermont HQ when he got the bad news. The calls came from co-workers who'd flown out to Iowa, a week before the 2004 caucuses, to help. Sure, they said, Dean's Net team lured 8,000 supporters to the Hawkeye State. But once those volunteers descended, things got painfully low-tech. They highlighted voter lists, cut them into pieces and glued like-colored strips on new sheets of paper. Using these scraps to walk the precincts, they wound up knocking on the same doors over and over. Iowans were irritated—and so was Rospars.

Three years later, Rospars has emerged as one of a core group of Dean Internet staffers using the lessons of '04 to help '08 contenders do better. The hope: that smart Web 2.0 tools, stronger candidates and a more-wired electorate will enable their new clients to succeed where Dean failed—in winning the White House. As Barack Obama's new-media director, Rospars is one of three Dean alums involved in the senator's online ops; three others work for John Edwards, including, as of April 19, Dean campaign guru Joe Trippi. "This year, there are no excuses," he says. "The Web will affect this election more than any other medium."

Obama and Edwards have already unveiled '08's most advanced sites, according to a Hotline poll of Dem Internet insiders. Next up: testing whether all that Web 2.0 tech can win votes. Obama's goal is internalization. After Dean lost, Rospars founded tech consultancy Blue State Digital, which made a social-networking tool called Party Builder for the DNC. He's repurposed it as My.BarackObama.com. By corralling supporters within the walls of the campaign, it overcomes a major Dean struggle: organizing activists scattered across external sites like Meetup.com. The site, run by Facebook founder Chris Hughes, lets Obama fans create profiles, plan parties, blog and (of course) raise money. But under the hood, it helps the campaign monitor events, spot local leaders and connect would-be activists.

Dean alums Mathew Gross and Ben Brandzel are focused less on harnessing energy for Edwards than generating it. In March '03, Gross launched Dean's campaign blog—a first. Now senior adviser to Edwards's e-team, he strives for a similar sense of openness. Edwards's site boasts a community blog and links to 23 external social networks, while the in-house social network, One Corps, emphasizes activism over elections. The appearance, says Brandzel, is of a "movement" with supporters as "agents of change." "We have to rely on the people to get good at spreading the word," he says.

Both approaches have their pitfalls. In February, two Edwards bloggers provoked controversy after posting inflammatory entries on their personal blogs. (Both resigned.) Two weeks ago, Rospars, seeking more control over Obama's MySpace presence, commandeered an unofficial, 160,000-member Obama profile run by a supporter. The move generated bad buzz. Such are the risks of navigating this frontier—not that Dean alums are discouraged. Trippi is focused on YouTube; his first video, which debuted May 2, strings together uploaded clips of supporters opposing the Iraq War. Obama's new MyPolicy program asks voters to submit issue proposals, which Rospars says will be incorporated into Obama's platform. "Open source" policy is a nifty idea, but will it help on the ground? Rospars doesn't know.

"Beware of anyone who tells you this isn't all experimentation," he says. "They're definitely lying."

""Anger. Pain. Death. Madness" - Hometown Baghdad" (video)

Chat The Planet: with video (1:55)

There are a million ways to vent your anger in Baghdad. In this episode, Adel chooses graffiti.

"Edwards Adviser Joe Trippi Slams Iraq Compromise Strategies As "Baloney""

Greg Sargent (TPM):

Joe Trippi -- the former Howard Dean Web guru and now top Web adviser to John Edwards -- doesn't think much of the things Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are doing in the Senate to end the war -- he calls those efforts "baloney, and everybody knows it."

Nor does Trippi think much of Hillary's proposal to deauthorize the war. "Like we didn't do that in Vietnam?" he says scathingly. "I mean, come on."

Trippi made the comments in a long interview I did with him yesterday. When I asked him if it was really fair to say that Edwards was more antiwar than his Presidential rivals, Trippi unloaded:

"Not by a long shot. It's not even a close call. I mean, they are sitting around wondering how they're going to find sixteen Republican Senators to override the President's veto. That's baloney and everyone knows it. But that's what they're working to do. You have deauthorization of the war. Like we didn't do that in Vietnam? I mean, come on."

"There's only one candidate who's saying, `Send the President the same bill again and again, he's the one who's not funding the troops," Trippi continued, in a reference to Edwards. "That's a far, far cry from, `Hey, let's go find sixteen phantom Republican Senators,' or `Hey, let's deauthorize the war.' Sixteen words got us into this war, and sixteen phantom Republican Senators aren't going to get us out."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed Trippi's broadside: "Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the very start, back in 2002 when it wasn't popular to be against this war," Burton said. "And he introduced a plan in January that would have begun withdrawing our combat forces on May 1st and would have brought them home by March 31st, while forcing the Iraqi government to meet its obligations." The Clinton camp declined comment.

Much more from Trippi's interview with me on a bunch of topics, including the new netroots landscape, after the jump.

From our interview with Trippi:

ELECTION CENTRAL: What is the single greatest challenge facing Edwards in building his online profile?

JOE TRIPPI: Look, it's the same for everybody -- building your own unique community. The mistake a lot of campaigns make is trying to make an already existing community their own.

EC: Edwards has made some very credible efforts to position himself as the netroots candidate -- but how do you account for the fact that Obama and Hillary both outraised him online, Obama by a large amount?

TRIPPI: It's the massive amount of press converage that both of them get. All CNN will talk about is the Obama-Clinton thing. The problem is also that on some level, a lot of people aren't paying as much attention right now, and the mainstream media is driving people to [Hillary and Obama's] sites. It's easy to build an online community when the mainstream media is helping.

The netroots needs to look at [MSM coverage of Hillary and Obama] and say, "What the hell's going on here? Are we really going to mimic that or is there a way we can go around it?" It's the same thing that happened with Dean in 2003. In the early days, when no one was really paying attention, the netroots made a huge difference and helped form a candidacy that would have gone by the wayside as far as the mainstream media was concerned. It's a similar kind of situation now.

EC: But the difference this time is that the netroots were united behind Dean, while now they aren't united behind anybody -- there is no real netroots candidate this time. Doesn't this fact -- combined with the media attention for Clinton and Obama -- create serious problems for Edwards?

TRIPPI: Look, let's face reality. In 2003 there was only one campaign that was out there trying to organize online. the rest of the campaigns were literally laughing their asses off at the Dean campaign. Guess what -- no one's laughing now. So no one is gonna have the internet to themselves. There's never going to be a netroots candidate in that sense anymore. Ever, I don't think.

[Given that fact], we feel we did an incredible job in the first quarter, both offline and online. Look at Dean in 2003. He came in dead last in the first quarter. I know. I was there.

My point is, any other candidate that’s run for president can look at us and see that we have the candidate, and we have the message. We’re leading in Iowa, and we have arguably one of the two or three best web campaigns going on; they would gladly trade places with us.

EC: Edwards voted for the war, and his posture was precisely what you and Dean's campaign built a movement in reaction to. How can you justify working for him now? And why should netroots people take his sincerity at face value?

TRIPPI: I really was convinced that the Dean campaign would be my last. But I sat there looking at where the war was going, and wondered, "How the hell can I sit on the sidelines? I'm still relatively young, although I'm an old fart, and I should make one more run at it."

Yes, Edwards supported the war. But he owned up to it and said it was a mistake. He opposes it. He's got a real timetable for how we should get out. When you look at the real issues facing this country right now, I don't think [the choice between the candidates is a close call.

EC: But the other candidates are working to end the war in Congress in a whole bunch of ways. Is it really fair to claim that Edwards is somehow more antiwar than they are?

TRIPPI: It's not even a close call. I mean, they are sitting around wondering how they're going to find sixteen Republican Senators to override the President's veto? That's baloney and everyone knows it. But that's what they're working to do. Or you have deauthorization of the war. Like we didn't do that in Vietnam? I mean, come on. The Congress has funding authority and they need to use it.

There's only one candidate who's saying, "Send the President the same bill again and again, he's the one who's not funding the troops." That's a far, far cry from, "Hey, let's go find sixteen phantom Republican Senators," or "Hey, let's deauthorize the war." Sixteen words got us into this war, and sixteen phantom Republican Senators aren't going to get us out. Any compromise that would get 16 votes isn’t a compromise worth making.

EC: But just the other day Edwards said that the only way to end the war is to defund it. Why, then, is he demanding that Congress send this bill back to the President when it does fund the troops? Isn't that a clear contradiction?

TRIPPI: What we know is that this is the bill that got through both the House and the Senate. Edwads has his plan that would immediately withdraw 40,000-50,000 troops and bring the rest home in an orderly fashion in about a year. But [the current bill] already got the votes in the House and Senate. It's a reasonable plan that does what the American people wanted to have done. Right now the thing to do is not to get softer, to compromise. It's not to cave to this guy. It's to send this one back. That's what the American people want.

EC: Can you give us a preview of your future Web plans for Edwards?

TRIPPI: We're trying to look at You Tube in a different way. we're really happy with the success of our "We the People" ad. I've only been around a couple of weeks, and the web team hasn't gotten sick of me yet. I have thrown some furniture around...

EC: But what about the future?

TRIPPI: You'll have to wait and see. We are not going to be that transparent at this moment. Although we are for transparency, I will not be transparent right now.

June 1st Obama Seattle Visit Details Confirmed

David Postman (Seattle Times):

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will be in Seattle June 1 for two fundraisers. This will be the kickoff of his Washington state campaign.

The first event will cost from $25 to $100 per ticket and the more donors pay the closer they'll be to the stage. That's at the WaMu Theater in Quest Field Event Center. That evening there is a VIP fundraiser a the Westin. That will cost $2,300 for a photo with the senator, or $500 to just get into the reception.

The sponsors listed for the VIP fundraiser shows that Obama, with little experience in Seattle, has already lined up some Democratic stalwarts. The big names include Norm Rice, Congressman Adam Smith, Cynthia Stroum, Matthew Bergman, and Nick Hanauer.