I wonder if we’re seeing the next step in a civil rights movement.

This weekend:

Proposition 8 rally in Kansas City

Join the Impact in Saint Louis

Proposition 8 rally in Kansas City – more photos

A year ago:

Much ado – an announcement in the Warrensburg newspaper, part 11

Yesterday:

One of the individuals who was the subject of all those letter to the editor wrote a letter which was published in the Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal (in print and online) on November 19th:

…I am just writing you all to say if you thought you all could scare us off it did not work. We still live in Warrensburg, Mo., area so if you have a problem with gay people in your town get over it because there are a lot more gay people living in Warrensburg than have the guts to come out and let everyone know…

I don’t think as many people are going to be silent anymore.

The P-D’s Jake Wagman thinks it surprising that Kit Bond would go for the auto bailout. Wagman notes that Bond’s website states that “government doesn’t create jobs, businesses do.”

Well, that may be true that Bond makes that claim on his website, but Bond does love him some pork. Look at Bond’s earmarks for FY2008 Appropriations. He certainly doesn’t mind spending government money to stimulate job growth; it’s partly why he has such a high approval rating when Republicans overall are in such disfavor. And he voted for the $700 billion financial bailout – why would he have qualms about loaning a great deal less to auto companies when thousands of jobs are on the line in Missouri?

After his unsuccessful run against Todd Akin in the Second Congressional, Bill Haas announced at the last meeting of West County Dems that he and some other concerned citizens had met and talked about the need for campaigning for 2010 races to start next spring.

It couldn’t hurt.

Deb Lavender wasn’t part of that conversation, but I got an e-mail from her this week saying that she is looking into having another go at Rick Stream in HD 94 in Kirkwood.

Deb got almost 46 percent of the vote there on November 4th, so taking another run at him seems reasonable. It’s true that with one short exception, that seat has been in Republican hands for fifty years, but the exception was that Jane Bogetto captured that seat in a 2005 special election–only to lose it in 2006, as the victim of (if you can believe such a thing) Republican smears.

So it’s possible to do it. Jim Trout came achingly close to winning Gibbons’ senate seat, which covers Kirkwood and Webster. Next door in Webster Groves, Jeanne Kirkton got 51.4 percent of the vote.

It’s true that Kirkton had some advantages Deb didn’t. For one, Jeanne had run for the state senate against Gibbons in ’04 and had that name recognition going for her. Also contributing to her name recognition was that Jeanne’s been on the Webster City Council. Bogetto had a similar advantage from having served on the Kirkwood School Board. The final advantage Jeanne had, which Deb didn’t this year and won’t have if she runs in two years, is that the Webster rep was termed out. Deb will have to face an incumbent.

On the plus side for Deb is that she ran an impressive race for someone who has never tried it before. She can look back at the past year and a half of effort, take pride in it, maybe wince at a few mistakes and learn from them.

I say it’s worth another try–and kudos to Deb for picking herself back up so quickly. If she decides to do it–are you listening, Bill?–she can start next spring.

photo of Deb with state party chairman John Temporiti, courtesy of Deb’s website

Brett Penrose on our current economic triumphs.

I called Senator Claire McCaskill’s office in Washington today to ask if she had voted to retain Joe Lieberman as chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. I was able to leave a message with Maria Speiser, Senator McCaskill’s press secretary. After a short round of telephone tag I was able to speak with Ms. Speiser.

I asked her how Senator McCaskill voted. Ms. Speiser replied that she had voted for Senator Lieberman. She added that her reason for doing so was to follow the lead of President-elect Obama – moving past the election and working together because there are a lot of challenges.

I asked – given Senator Lieberman’s previous lack of oversight hearings – if Senator McCaskill thought he would change his ways and if she was confident that he had done a good job as chair. Ms. Speiser replied that Senator McCaskill always encouraged oversight. Claire McCaskill is a member of the Homeland Security committee.

Finally, I asked how Senator McCaskill would explain retaining Senator Lieberman as chair to those in the grassroots who worked to elect Obama, all while Senator Lieberman did the opposite. Ms. Speiser replied that Senator McCaskill had worked hard [to elect Obama], too. Senator McCaskill’s view was that the election was over and we needed to move forward. Ms. Speiser added that President-elect Obama had also encouraged this view among senators.

President-elect Barack Obama addressed Governors’ Global Climate Summit via video.

It’s kind of nice to look forward to government policy based on, you know, actually science:

“…The science is beyond dispute, the facts are clear…”

Ah, the true value of not falling asleep during class while acquiring a solid liberal arts education…

Part 1: A blogger conference call with Howard Dean: “…the next state on my list is Texas.”

Part 2:

…Question: Hi Governor Dean. I was just wondering, you know, as you’re preparing to move on from the DNC if you, you know, have any preferences as to who you’d like to be as the next chairman, and, and the advice for that person, and, and also what you see as the future of the fifty state strategy under your successor and your own personal plans for [crosstalk]…

Howard Dean: Well, you know, I, I’ve done a transition memo for the Obama folks, so I know I’m not going to publicly say what’s in the transition memo, but I think I can broadly outline. First of all, the Obama campaign used a fifty state strategy in order to win this election. He, he had an office in places like Utah, which everybody knew we weren’t gonna win. So it’s extraordinary what he has done, not just for the country, but the Democratic Party. And I have no doubt that that will continue with the new chair. I don’t have an advice for a specific person for the new chair. I do believe that the party gets run differently when you have an incumbent Democratic president. I think he ought to have a person who’s very loyal to him as the executive director, because that’s where the decisions are really going to be made. And he will run the party, through his people, for the next four years, and hopefully the next eight years. And I think I guess that’s about all I can say, but I have every confidence that the fifty state strategy will continue and the map will be expanded even further in 2010 and 2012…

…Question: Hey Howard.

Howard Dean: Hi.

Question: Hey, I, I blog out of New Orleans and we have a kind of special difficult circumstances here. And we’re in a deep red state. I’m curious as to how the fifty state, state strategy over the next couple years may make inroads in red states where Democratic Party infrastructures have been a hindrance.

Howard Dean: Well, in, the, the, in New Orleans, in Louisiana we don’t think the Democratic, there are some states where the Democratic party structure is a hindrance, but Louisiana is not one of them. The problem with Louisiana is because of Katrina. We basically had to support their party in ways that we didn’t have to do for anybody else. And, that, their, their difficulty, again, with Democratic poli..Party politics in Louisiana is it’s very hard to get the capacity to run the party without having, having a governor, and without having the ability that you have when you’re, in, in sort of a stable situation. I don’t think politically Louisiana has been a particularly stable situation since Katrina. What with the huge population changes and, and the change in the political climate because of the reaction to Katrina. That doesn’t mean we’re gonna give up on Louisiana. We’re not. I actually took a bus tour through Louisiana before we even decided which states were gonna be in the mix and I…Louisiana and Mississippi were two states that we thought might be in the mix. So, we’ll, that is, but you’re right, Louisiana is a special circumstance which is gonna require some special attention and we’ve done some of that but clearly there’s gonna have to be more of that from the next DNC chair…

…Question: Governor Dean, here in New Mexico we had a big swing this year and in votes, in votes, especially among Hispanics. I was wondering what kind of outreach you guys did specifically for Hispanics [crosstalk]…

Howard Dean: We had the largest Hispanic outreach in the history of the Democratic Party. I think we spent twenty million to start with, and more than that, reaching out to Hispanics all over the country. And a lot of it was the thing that you expect, Spanish language TV and newspaper and radio. Interviews. But we had an enormous number of Latino organizers on the ground in these key states making contact with, with prospective voters. Florida was the other place where we just spent enormous amount of money, time, and effort in the Hispanic population. Organizing in the community, in ways that I think have never been done before. We started, actually, before we knew who the nominee was gonna be. A couple of years ago I reached out to Hispanic evangelical ministers, Protestant ministers, who had been meeting with Bush, partly because of the faith based outreach. But immigration allowed us the opening to begin to talk with them and some of them have become our friends and they worked very hard for the Democratic ticket within the bounds of their tax exempt requirements. And that was a huge help to us. And so we did get big assist from the Republican immigration language. It wasn’t so much the policy but the language that they used to discuss American citizens who were Hispanic, let alone immigrants…

…Question: Hi, Governor Dean, happy birthday by the way.

Howard Dean: Thank you.

Question: How frustrating is it for you as DNC chair, with West Virginia, where every office from the governor on down is pretty much controlled by the Democrats, but we’ve lost the last three presidential elections. And what can be done about that?

Howard Dean: Well, actually, it’s much better to be in a position of West Virginia than it is, say, in Alabama where you have a Republican governor. We’ve got a great Democratic governor and Democratic office holders and now we’ve just got to figure out how to translate that into winning the presidency. We came back. We were way behind, we came back, hey Joe Biden made a last minute visit to West Virginia. So West Virginia is one of those states like Texas we just got, we can, we can keep working at it and we can win it again. And when we do, the whole political dynamic will have changed. This is it again, a generational shift that’s going on in West Virginia and, and other parts of Appalachia. And I think we just gotta work our way through it and keep working hard. But I don’t, I don’t, it’s not, West Virginia is not the least bit frustrating to me. I, I was very pleased by what happened in West Virginia. We didn’t win, but we really closed the gap in the last couple of weeks. And that means that the momentum will be with us in the next election…

…I just want to say thank you all. Look forward to, hopefully, seeing you all in person one of these, maybe at the convention, the Netroots convention next year…