The Chris Moeller Archives

First in the nation

The early campaign season has long been dominated by the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary, but the 48 other nifty states have grown tired of conceding their political power to the Hawkeye and Granite States, and the revolts have begun in earnest. Legislative action in states such as Florida and Nevada moving up the primary dates for the 2008 campaign cycle may cause Iowa Democrats and Republicans to go to the polls as early as November of this year to adhere to a state law mandating a first-in-the-nation voting status.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has given Florida officials 30 days to abandon their newly-determined January 29th primary date, and if they refuse to comply, will strip them of all of their '08 convention delegates. In effect, this would make the Florida race, a "beauty pageant," with the results being merely cosmetic, the equivalent, if you will, of the Iowa Republicans' mid-summer straw poll.

What we're seeing is the growing dissatisfaction, state by state, of voters that feel powerless within the two parties' nomination structure. The irony is that Dean is acting to preserve the Iowa/New Hampshire, status quo voting apparatus that leveled his own presidential campaign in 2004; and the harsh reality is that no primary schedule these two parties choose will make them more accountable to their neglected constituents. The checks have been cashed.

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The United Transportation Union, with 125,000 members working in the railroad, bus, and public transportation industries, threw their political weight today behind the White House candidacy of Hillary Clinton. This is the first major union endorsement of the season for a candidate who has been a champion of corporate globalism, a woman who has opposed the renegotiation of the working-class-crippling World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, and the early 1990s measure that permanently normalized trade relations with China's totalitarian government, all of which have led to a $900 billion trade deficit for the United States.

The labor movement is dead. Or extremely sleepy.

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During my absence the last two weeks, poor people in American began exerting their economic power. Barbara Ehrenreich explains.

posted by CM @ 9:26 PM