Great article in the NYT today about how the Bush campaign is using local radio as an important part of its campaign outreach strategy.

“‘You can win a national election 50,000 listeners at a time,’ said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.”

DailyKos (great left-leaning politics blog, BTW) pulls together some interesting coverage (and commentary) on the use of open-source software by the Dean and Clark campaigns. Worth reading. What’s most interesting to me is the fact that this conversation is happening on a politics blog, not on Slashdot.

Bev Harris, electronic voting watchdog, and Andy Stephenson, candidate for Secretary of State here in Washington, are holding a press conference tomorrow morning. Here’s what they’ve got….

What we have, in Washington State, is this:

WeWe’ve got the state election director misstating when versions were certified, somebody at the secretary of state’s office signing off on software with no NASED number, and when we try to find out what software is actually authorized, we get the buffalo shuffle. We’ve got a convicted drug dealer printing our ballots, a 23-count embezzler programming our voting system, and our absentee ballots are being funneled through a private company that hires mainly immigrants but also people straight out of prison.

We’ve now documented 10 states that are using unauthorized software, and internal memos that indicate that five Diebold programmers uploaded these unauthorized programs, knowing that this was not allowed.

This is a long-simmering story that the powers that be can’t quite manage to kill. And I think it may well be one of the most important stories of the decade, because it’s about secret machinations that may (or may not, to be fair) be undermining the very foundation of our democratic society.

Howard Dean will the the Democratic nominee. Why?

Lieberman? His former running mate just endorsed Dean. Talk about a kiss of death. He should be out of the race by next week. Next.

Kerry? He’s behind 20 points in New Hampshire. Next.

Gep? He might squeak out a victory in Iowa, but beyond that he’s spent. Next.

Edwards? Still showing no ability to raise money or run a campaign. Next

Clark? Too bad he didn’t enter the race three months earlier. If he’s smart he’ll take the VP slot.

On to more interesting questions:

Can the Democrats find the message (and the medium) that beats the Republicans lies (and their $200 million)?

Can Howard Dean get the media to like him? (A good way to track this would be to monitor Lexis/Nexis for articles that mention “Dean” and “anger”.) Note that Bush’s ability to make reporters think he was a nice guy played a major role in helping him avoid media scrutiny.

Even if Dean manages to take the white house in 2004, what is our strategy for winning back Congress in 2006/2008? That’s a much, much harder problem.

Will the 527s (MoveOn, Americans Coming Together, etc.) turn into yet another clutch of big-money funded, unaccountable interest groups that are more interested in being perceived as “players” than in rebuilding civil society in a nation that Bowls Alone?

Internesting analysis from Don Hazen at Alternet of MoveOn’s attempts to end-run around the mainstream media by organizing house party film screenings.

Can substantial numbers of MoveOn members register friendly voters, gather email addresses, hold the corporate media accountable, bring together voters in various ways at the grassroots in the so-called “battleground states” – and perhaps most importantly, communicate a positive clear vision of a different future that is an attractive alternative to the current administration?

Can this networked super-constituency evolve from well-informed financial supporters to election organizers? In a sense, the whole world is watching to find out.

DailyKos has a nice piece on Political Entrepreneurialsm in which he argues that the New Democrat Network shows how “[d]emocrats are reorienting to both emulate the vehicles of the GOP’s success (foundations, think tanks, a renewed focus on grassroots organizing) and to use new technologies to gain competitive advantages.”

The article, and particularly the followup comments, are worth a read — they contain some interesting thoughts about left-vs-center, Green vs. Democrat, and the role of environmentalism as a core Democrat issue.