Chris Bowers: The Needle of the Eye
By Stirling Newberry of TPM Cafe

Every governing movement needs people who can find arbitrage opportunities. Every time you or anyone else flies into DCA - National Airport, you are benefiting from some sharp eyed New Dealer who told FDR that there was a pot of money, and that it could be used to create a commercial airfield. Those who have, and hoard, pots of money don't like it, but the benefits of putting them into use are undeniable. This ability is the point of the needle - a smooth piercing of the problems of the day.

Chris Bowers has that gift, and if his use it or lose it campaign to get uncontested Democratic incumbents to put their unused cash in to the kitty doesn't make him a candidate for working in, or advising, the next Democratic Majority, then the Democratic Party needs new Human Resources people. It is officially all over the traditional media.

Chris Bowers is unpreposessing to look at - thin, vaguely unkempt in the way that people who spend their time focusing on details and problems often are, and without that trace of self-possession that is often mistaken for arrogance by others. Instead, Chris let's his ideas speak for themselves. And I mean "idea" in the sense of a term of art. In politics and business an "idea" is an arbitrage opportunity - where there is money just sitting there, waiting to be put to better use. Ideas, the big meta-ideological kind, are ways to get people to generate ideas. That's how a governing era works - it has big Ideas, and from them people generate the day to day shifts of effort and allocations of money and resources which push the country along in the right direction. A party taking power, in particular needs ideas of this kind, because it needs something to generate visible results while the longer term changes are put into place.

FROM THE BURNT ORANGE REPORT

This is stunning in a very very good way. The latest poll (done by the DCCC, albeit, but still a serious poll) has the race in CD-22 as:

DeLay 49
Morrison 39
Fjetland (I) 7

That's right- Morrison (who has very very low name ID at this point) is within 10 points of beating the 20 year incumbent majority leader of the House.

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~meo232/sloganator/

This is a Yahoo group about the sloganator:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BushCheneySloganator/

At the halfway point of a politically critical 36-hour news cycle, we think it is important to take stock of lessons learned, and figure out how to apply them.

Lesson: Just because Matt Drudge says "jump!," you people don't have to respond by saying "Yes, sir, high how, sir, and may we land, sir?!?"

Applied: Please don't call and e-mail us for confirmation every time Drudge runs something; his 37.8% accuracy rate and quirky sensibilities (that's a euphemism) can have a disproportionate impact on the election, if y'all let that happen.