At last night's 25th anniversary of the odious Federalist Society of right-wing lawyers, Rudy Giuliani spoke of America's "mission" to save the world.

It was this nation that saved the world from the two great tyrannies of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism," he said. "It's this country that's going to save civilization from Islamic terrorism."

According to liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald, Giuliani's "messianic fervor" is an example of "the paranoid style" that Richard Hofstetter identified as a major flaw in American politics.  

With 97% of the vote in, Steve Beshear was ahead 58.9% to 41.1% for incumbent Republican Ernie Fletcher.  That 17% margin had been pretty steady since the first weeks after the gubernatorial primaries in the spring.  

It's worth mentioning that Beshear has a lot of faults in common with the national democratic leadership.  He's about as colorless as a politician can get (I met him this spring), relatively conservative, and basically risk averse.  The same could be said about Pelosi and Reid after they caved into Bush over Iraq war funding.  In many ways, the Democratic congressional leadership has been potted plants ever since.  That's the case with Beshear as well.  He was there during the campaign, he was working hard, he didn't look particularly good or bad, and he didn't do much on his own.  Actually, that sounds like a lot of Democrats

Yet Beshear still won handily.  I believe two things kept Beshear 17% ahead throughout the election campaign.  There was the fact that the Republicans were somewhat divided as a result of Ann Northup's primary challenge to Fletcher.  More important, opinion hardened against Fletcher early as evidenced by Fletcher's Bush-like approval ratings.  Partisan Democrats grew more committed to replacing Fletcher, weak Democrats decided to vote their party, and swing voters swung to Beshear without thinking too much about Beshear himself.  It was an election that a potted Democrat could win and Beshear was the right plant at the right time.

Hillary Rebounds Quickly--Although Hillary Clinton did not respond well to Tim Russert's wedge-sniffing question about illegal immigrants at last week's Philadelphia debate, she recovered quickly. In short order, Hillary's staff complained about "piling on" by male Democratic candidates and then Hillary herself gave a speech at Wellesley College (her alma mater) focusing on the pathbreaking nature of her status as the first female contender for the presidency. By the end of the week, the wobble had been forgotten in the deluge of commentary on Hillary "playing the gender card." One can't help but think that Hillary and her staff played the situation well.  Certainly Sen. Clinton needs to be stronger when challenged by people like Russert, but she proved effective at changing the terms of the post-debate debate. By way of contrast, John Edwards is still suffering from his $400 haircut.

The Rally Around Hillary Effect. The most surprising post-debate development was that liberal bloggers like Matthew Yglesias, Digby, Melissa McEwan, and Matt Stoller all rallied around Hillary. This was a first for the liberal blogging crowd, all of whom are considerably to the left of Hillary Clinton and have been experimenting with giving their support to Obama. Defending Hillary's right to be proud of being a trailblazer, the liberal bloggers united to stress the fact that male candidates have been playing the gender card in every presidential election since Washington's 1792 campaign.

Although I am an atheist, I've never denied the presence of the miraculous.  How could I?  Look at this beautiful world.  What were the odds of such a planet being formed out of the big bang?  Miraculously high!

And now I have the pleasure to announce that I've been witness to yet another miracle--a miracle that is not nearly as significant as the formation of a life-sustaining planet but something that is awesome to behold nonetheless.

Drum roll please!  In what has to count as a journalistic miracle, Fred Barnes has had an idea.

When John Edwards spoke in Prestonsburg, KY today, I decided to be a good father and drive the 1 1/2 hours with my daughter to hear him speak.

The speech was advertised for 2pm, but Edwards had already started speaking at 1:55 when we arrived. No surprise for the Appalachian poverty belt, his theme was the "Two Americas." The One America was the very rich and the "Other America" was the rest of us who work for a living and struggle to make ends meet. All of Edwards' stories were about the "Other America"--the hospital workers who could not afford health care, the families that were still poor despite being fully employed, and the tortures of the disability system. The same was the case with his policy prescriptions of universal health coverage, making unionization easier, raising the minimum wage, and making college available for everyone. Edwards embraces the values of equality, work, and responsibility, and all of his policy prescriptions were geared to making things somewhat easier for working people to get by.

Edwards is a skilled speaker but his speech was not rousing and he really needed to rouse this crowd. The people at the speech clearly enjoyed the celebrity aspect of John Edwards speaking in Prestonsburg and wanted to get excited about him as a presidential candidate. In the final analysis, they didn't get excited though. Edwards didn't deliver the goods as a candidate and people were still thinking of him more as a celebrity as they walked away from the speech.

One of the interesting features of contemporary American politics is the lack of a functional center. Before Katrina, there was a center-right consensus in the mainstream media that Bush was an appealing guy and his administration filled with interesting characters, that Karl Rove was outplaying the Democrats at the political game, and that the invasion of Iraq was certainly appropriate if not downright noble. Even though most of them were registered Democrats, media members did not like the Clintons, Al Gore, Hillary's health care plan, or the Lewinsky scandal. And they liked the anti-war zealots, anti-corporate warriors, and good government critics of the Bush administration even less. The Bush crowd might have been dogmatic and partisan but they had an aura of victory and strength while their opponents seemed like so many whiners and losers.

The Bush administration's troubles have been almost as big a problem for columnists like David Broder and Thomas Friedman, major television personalities like Chris Matthews, and the White House press corps as they've been for Bush himself. Now that President Bush has been discredited and Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales have become targets of public loathing, consensus moderates are at a loss. If the Bush administration is not credible, how can people like David Broder pose the subtle questions, make calls for compromise, and explore the larger perspectives that are the basic coin of their writing?

I've been engaged in an on-conversation with Dan Gerstein, the former lead strategist for the Lieberman re-election campaign, for the better part of the month. Most of the conversation has been in this blog as well as in my MyDD diary and most of it has been about whether Gerstein is a conservative or not. I've never been convinced that he's not a conservative. In this post, however, I change the ground of the discussion from my criticism of Gerstein to some suggestions for bridging the divide between moderate types like himself and the activist liberal bloggers. This diary is a response to Gerstein's most recent reply to me. Gerstein's reply is the most recent blog post before this one. Dear Dan,

Definining Conservatism, Continued

In the latest round of my online conversation with Ric Caric, a progressive blogger from Kentucky, Ric responded to my detailed explanation of why I am not a conservative (and why that distinction matters) by saying he was unpersuaded. After sorting through Ric's reasoning, I realize that pretty much nothing I say is going to sway him on this specific point -- he's pretty locked into his own definition of what a conservative is. But I still think this dialogue is worth continuing, largely because it is helping to tease out an existential argument that I believe Democrats need to openly engage in, and also because Ric seems like a good guy and I enjoy the give-and-take, no matter our disagreements.

So here goes Round 5. . .