The Democratic Party won, last night. The Republican race is growing increasingly acrimonious, with Mitt Romney yesterday accusing John McCain of using “Nixonian tactics,” while, by contrast, debate host CNN and others headlined the comity displayed by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is great for the Democratic party, and helpful to both candidates.

As Senator Clinton said, in the debate itself:

So we have differences both at home and around the world, but, again, I would emphasize that what really is important here, because the Republicans were in California debating yesterday, they are more of the same.

Neither of us, just by looking at us, you can tell, we are not more of the same. We will change our country.

Big Tent Democrat concurs:

From the moment they walked out on the stage, an African American and a woman, the Democrats won. Whomever wins the nomination, whomever wins the election, Democrats won. And America won.

He referred to Eugene Robinson’s comment, during the post-debate analysis, that the most electrifying moment came when the two candidates simply walked out on the stage. This is a new America and a better America. I remember the electricity in 1984, when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running-mate; those at the San Francisco convention said it was palpable. Everyone knew the ticket was doomed to lose to media darling Ronald Reagan, but having a woman on a major party’s ticket was an achingly long-overdue revolution. That same year, Jesse Jackson won five primaries or caucuses. He won 13 in 1988. Even with the nation regressing, under the Reagan Administration, the Democratic Party was courageously moving forward.

This year makes the advances of 1984 seem trivial. Big Tent also referenced the withdrawal statement of John Edwards, when he announced he was getting out of the way of history. For all the subtle and not-so-subtle strains of racism and misogyny that have bubbled up, this past month, this nation will never look back. The next time there is a serious candidate who is African American and/or a woman, it won’t even be an issue. That will be the greatest legacy of this historic winter.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

In a stunning political development this evening according to the Associated Press, the Florida Supreme Court has intervened in the Florida Republican Primary and declared George W. Bush the winner over Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee.

Senator John McCain, ever the patriot and loyal soldier, had this response

I knew in my heart of hearts that I’d never be able to win in a state full of geezers.  Even so, I’m delighted that the prize deservedly went to President Bush.  In anticipation of this development, I hopped on a plane to Washington, DC and personally congratulated the President. The voters of Florida have chosen wisely.

If you want to talk Democratic ideas, look no further than the Kennedy clan. They tend to be dismissed as People Magazine American Royalty, but that says more about our media than about them. With Senator Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy having endorsed Barack Obama, and with the Clinton campaign reminding voters that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend have already endorsed Hillary, the Kennedy family is back making headlines. That can only be a good thing.

The Clintons deserve credit for having made our national health care crisis a national issue, in the 1990s. Of course, their plan was a byzantine mess, and it didn’t go nearly far enough. For that matter, none of the current leading Democratic candidates advocate single-payer national health care, so they’re all offering but different flavors of incrementalism. No surprise. As I keep writing, despite the campaign rhetoric, they are all basically traditional Democratic centrists. Of course, as I also keep writing, even as the Democratic candidates approach the major issues with nothing revolutionary, the Republican candidates rarely even notice there are issues to approach. We can argue over the nuances of the incrementalist approaches of Senators Clinton, Edwards, and Obama, but if you want a good, cynical laugh, take a look at the Republican candidates’ approaches. But if you want to talk about vision and leadership on health care, look no further than Senator Kennedy. He wrote a book about it. In 1972. He’s been advocating for National Health Insurance since the 1970s. Among many other issues on which he has consistently been ahead of the times, he’s also been advocating for clean, renewable energy sources, since the 1970s. In our government, there is no greater champion for people, the environment, and innovative ideas than Senator Kennedy. And that has been the case for decades.

I’m also a particular fan of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I’ve long hoped he’d get involved in electoral politics, but I also understand the many and complex reasons for his not doing so. But my admiration of Kennedy has nothing to do with his father or his family; it has everything to do with his ideas. No one better articulates the rationale for environmentalism. The most common criticism of environmentalism is that it’s bad for the economy, and fundamentally opposed to capitalism. In a 2005 speech at the Sierra Club’s National Convention, Kennedy turned that around. Environmentalism is not only not bad for capitalism, it is a means of rescuing true free-market capitalism.

I think we can all agree that race baiting, whatever its origin in each individual case, is poisoning the well in the Democratic primary. It’s the issue that just won’t die; the one that needs a stake through its heart – ASAP, please.

Consider this quote from a TIME.com piece:

Obama’s impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state’s voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama’s candidacy pushed turnout to record levels – a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that “is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table.”

But that’s not the cute part.

The “cute part” was the title of the piece, which has been changed.

This link shows you a screenshot of the piece as originally titled.

In the current environment, you cannot tell me that that is an accident.

Well, you could tell me that….but I’d ask you what you were smoking.

Contact: [email protected]

‘Cuz I’m gonna.

Enough of this crap.