For your frontpage series of candidate advocacy diaries on MyDD, which were never rah-rah tributes, but instead always thoughtful, interesting essays...

For never being particularly harsh toward other candidates, or their supporters...

And for your steadfast faith, which you espoused long before Iowa, that your favorite - ahem, favourite - candidate would overtake a frontrunner whose lead seemed insurmountable.

You picked the winner, and you've been a terrific advocate for him.

As Capt. Picard would say:  "Nicely done!"

There's really no trick to getting on the Rec List. Enough people press the Recommend button, and voila!

Every day there are meritorious diaries written, which get few or no recommendations.

This site attracts bunches of folks (like me) who sometimes decry the often pathetic hyperpartisan/hyperbolic discourse - and bunches of folks who write and recommend such hyperpartisan/hyperbolic diaries.  Those in the latter group aren't performing a magic trick, they're just pressing the Rec button more consistantly than the rest of us are (and, to their credit, churning out more diaries).

If, compared to the hyperpartisans, we were just as consistant about pressing that Rec button for interesting or enlightening or cleverly humorous diaries that come along  (and if we did the yeoman's work of contributing more such diaries) then we'd NECESSARILY see higher quality diaries on the Recommended List.

Instead of decrying the discourse, we should write more, and Rec more.

Back in 2006, before any Democrats had announced their intentions to run, I was cheering the quality of our potential field, which included such top-notch Democrats as Gore, Edwards, Clark, Clinton, and Obama.  I also wrote:

I hope that having such a high-quality field won't, perversely, lead to a greater-than-normal number of gratuitous potshots being taken by Democratic bloggers and diarists

Well, if only I had a nickle for every one of those gratuitous potshots!

Today we have a recommended diary on MyDD which charges a Democratic presidential candidate with lying (in capital letters, no less!) - and the charge is so cockamamy that even to call it cockamamy is to elevate it too much. Yet, alas, the diarist is not too embarrassed to pen it in his diary, and the recommenders are not too embarrassed to press the Recommend button.  

The issue? Obama has more than once said he was "a law professor" or "a constitutional law professor" at the University of Chicago. He did indeed "serve as a professor of law" at this university, according to the university, but his staff title was "Senior Lecturer," not "Professor."   Thus he was a small-p professor, not a big-P Professor.

Did Obama nefariously imply that he was a big-P professor? Should he have been very careful, as the diarist argues, to say "I taught law" rather than "I was a professor of law".  After all, people may not hear the a and may well conclude in any event that he was a big-P and not a small-p professor.

As if it needed to be stated:  this Democratic presidential candidate has a great deal of expertise in the field of constitutional law, which is what allowed him to be hired to teach constitutional law at a prestigious law school.  Thus, no one who has come to believe that this Democratic presidential candidate has a great deal of expertise in the field of constitutional law, has formed a false belief.

Giving the diarist the benefit of the doubt, I would assume he is a fine and loyal Democrat.  Nonetheless his diary unfortunately exhibits the characteristics of both trolling and concern-trolling.  Trolling because the title of the diary makes a completely over-the-top charge that a Democratic presidential candidate is guilty of "lying", and concern-trolling because the diarist asserts that if Obama wasn't fibbing, then in the best case he was foolishly careless to use the word "professor" since it could be used against him!

About Sen. Obama, MyDD diarist Universal writes:

I hope that you are not our nominee. But if you are, I will not cast my vote for you. I cannot, in any good conscience, do so...

Whether or not I cast my vote against you remains to be seen. Hopefully you will not be nominated, and I won't face that choice.

And over on DailyKos, the prolific diarist teacherken is driven by his conscience to write that he will abstain from voting for Sen. Clinton is she is the nominee.  In each case, the candidate's tactics are deemed so self-centered and harmful to the party that the diarist could not in "good conscience" vote for that person if they are the Democratic nominee.  At least teacherken was not entertaining the notion of voting against the Democratic nominee. Still, even the notion of abstaining is bad enough.

Of course, it's very likely some of the people who post such commentary during campaign season are Republican trolls, but some (longtime progressive diarist teacherken, for example) obviously are sincere Democrats.  For what it's worth, I'll repeat here some of my response to teacherken, since I find the position equally meritless coming from either candidate's camp.

Or Hillary Clinton.  Either one.

You'll put aside whatever issues you have with Obama or with Clinton, and you'll cast your vote for the Democratic nominee.

Because the issues you have with either candidate pale in significance compared to the difference between electing a Democratic president and electing a Republican president.

Originally posted on DailyKos on Jan 17, 2008 at 06:00:55 PM EST

A wildly ambitious idea appeared in a diary here on Monday.  Can supporters of a mainstream candidate match (and even surpass!) the unprecedented one-day fundraising effort recently orchestrated by followers of a wacko fringe candidate?

(You can click the picture to reach the contribution form on the Campaign website, johnedwards.com.)

If I were to say that our chances of matching the pre-Iowa fundraising alchemy of the Ron Paulies was "unlikely" - well, I think that would be quite an understatement. I would think anticipating a one-day draw of even 1/2 million - let alone 7 million - would be quite optimistic.

But so what?  Let's be optimistic.  Let's be ambitious.  After all, we're supporting a candidate who knows that having ambitious goals is the first step toward achieving great things:

In a diary up today, dataguy has a poll asking who supporters of John Edwards will turn to, given dataguy's observation that

For whatever reason, he is losing ground.  He will not win SC.  If he does not win the state of his birth, where can he win?

I believe that he will continue through SuperDuper Tuesday.  He will be out at that point if he wins no states.  I see no prospects for him to win anything, so I do not see him continuing.

This race should have already taught us something about premature conclusions. Months ago, many people on the blogs had concluded that McCain was toast. Days ago, many people on the blogs had concluded that Clinton was toast.

As I argued in a previous diary, Edwards's from-the-gut passion and focus on subjects like poverty make him appealing as an RFK-type candidate; Clinton evokes competence and a firm grasp of detail, making her appealing as a Dukakis-type candidate (I don't mean that in a demeaning way at all - I was a fan of the Duke); while Obama appears self-confident, smart, energetic, and has an aura of greatness about him, making him a JFK-type candidate.

In a three-way battle between a JFK, an RFK, and a Duke, it's not too surprising to see the JFK candidate able to capture a plurality. Could an RFK or a Duke beat a JFK one-on-one?  Maybe, but it's a moot point so long as it's a 3-candidate race; and neither our RFK nor our Duke is likely to quit!