If the Republicans are to retake the House in 2010, presumably they should be able to hold onto seats they were able to win by 14 points in 2008. Or, then again, maybe not.

Lori Edwards' campaign for Florida's 12th Congressional district released a poll today boasting she's got the lead "despite the challenging political environment for Democrats going into 2010."

In a recent survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Edwards holds a 4-point edge over Republican challenger Dennis Ross, 46 - 42 percent. But the poll has a MOE of +/- 4.9 percentage points.

[...]

This survey of 400 likely November 2010 voters was conducted November 17 - 19, 2009 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. The survey is subject to a margin of error of approximately +/- 4.9 percentage points. The sample reflects the demographic composition of the likely 2010 electorate in this district. Party registration is 40 percent Democratic and 41 percent Republican.

That the Democrats are even competitive in Florida 12, let alone in the lead, sort of undermines the notion that their goose is cooked in 2010. Yes, John McCain only won this district by a 50 percent to 49 percent margin in 2008 -- but that does make this district significantly more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole, which backed Barack Obama by 7 points in 2008. What's more, as alluded to above, Adam Putnam, the Republican Congressman vacating this seat, won reelection last fall by a fairly strong 57 percent to 43 percent margin.

At present, the Cook Political Report views this race as "likely Republican" (or only potentially competitive, and not yet competitive), and the folks at Rothenberg don't even see this seat as being in play. Yet the Democrat leads here.

This isn't to say that the prospects for the Democrats are all rosy. For instance, the decision by Dennis Moore not to run for reelection decreases the likelihood that the Democrats will be able to hold on to his seat (though the Republicans do still have to figure out a way to nominate an electable candidate in this swing district, which is not always easy for them; though they managed to nominate the more moderate Lynn Jenkins in the neighboring second congressional district in 2008, I wouldn't bet on a moderate making it though a primary in district 3 in 2010). Nevertheless, if things are so bad for the Democrats, how are they competitive, let alone leading, in the Florida 12 open seat race?

On Wednesday afternoon, I had the chance to speak with Colorado's Democratic Governor Bill Ritter, a candidate for reelection in 2010. During the interview, Ritter and I covered a number of issues, including clean energy, education reform, bringing new jobs to Colorado, and, of course, the politics of his reelection bid.

Overall, Ritter sounded very much like another successful Colorado politician I interviewed for MyDD several years ago -- Gary Hart -- in framing his reelection bid not as a choice between left and right but rather as a choice between the past and the future, a choice between looking backwards and looking forwards. This rhetoric served Hart well both on the statewide and national level, and has thus far worked will for Ritter. The following is a rush transcript of the interview:

Jonathan Singer: What do you see as the biggest issue people should be looking at in the Governor's race next year?

Bill Ritter: The biggest issue, I think, is how governors are able to create jobs, and the job creation that we're going to do is not just about job creation, it's about sustainable job creation, things that will last, things that are 21st century. And I think the biggest issue for us will be our success in doing that, being able to run on the things that we've already been able to do but how we're going to keep doing that. This is still just such a massive downturn. The protracted length of this recession is, I think, causing everybody to be concerned about 2010, and rightly so.

Singer: What are some of the measures that you're doing in Colorado to address the issue of jobs?

Ritter: We were already ahead of this, because we already thought that we had to do a better job even before the downturn of bringing in these 21st century industries, as I call them. On the energy side, that's the new energy economy; jobs in the energy world that involve renewable energy, that involve energy efficiency, that involve smart grid technology, that involve building out the transmission grid. All those are a part of it.

Al Gore's new plan: "So, instead of science, I'm going with crazy. I'm going to start planning trees in politicians' front yards in the middle of the night and tape toy guns to the branches pointed to the door so when they wake up and walk out of their houses in the morning they'll think it's the forests coming to get their revenge."

Could this BE any more awesome? (You know, without the actual passage of a bill or treaty?)

The Nobel Laureate was also on 30 Rock for his second cameo on that show. But I thought the SNL bit was funnier.

From the Illinois Third Congressional district that is represented by Congressman Dan Lipinsi comes this story of heartbreak and tragedy coupled with an unbelievable lack of human decency by those who self-describe as Tea Party patriots.

From the South Town Star:

As a journalist covering Chicago politics, verifying information is like climbing a mountain of sand. With each step you take, the deeper you sink.

Last week while researching claims from a local Tea Party activist, I found myself asking a family for proof that they had lost an unborn grandchild.
The family, Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn.

Their daughter-in-law, Jenny, and an unborn grandchild died recently due in part, they believe, to a lack of health insurance. They said Jenny was not receiving regular prenatal care and ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock. Her baby died in the womb, and Jenny died a few weeks later, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old daughter.

Catherina Wojtowicz, of Chicago's Mount Greenwood community, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who "go from event to event and (cry) the same story."

When the Houghs spoke at the Lipinski event, some Tea Partiers ridiculed them. They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted. Midge Hough began to cry.

The audience, Wojtowicz later explained, was exasperated by stories of isolated tragedies that cloud debate over the health care bill itself.

"What we are talking about is the bill," she said. "We've all had family members pass away, but would this health care bill really have prevented (Jenny's) death? We do question it."

It certainly was a low mark in a very dark week. What could be more illustrative of our state's political marshland than openly mocking a grieving family?

"I'm very sorry about the whole lack of dialogue," Wojtowicz said. "My reaction to Midge? I don't know what to say."

Neither do I.

You can watch the Town Hall meeting (h/t to Susie Madrak at C&L):

It's a sad day in America when the death of an expectant mother and child for lack of insurance is mocked. And as noted, it certainly was a low mark for a very dark movement.

The Kansas City Star reports that the six-term Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore, a Blue Dog, who represents the heavily Republican Kansas Third Congressional district will not seek re-election in 2010. Rep. Moore won 56 percent of the vote in last year's election against his Republican challenger, state senator Nick Jordan.  President Obama narrowly carried the KS-03 with 51 percent of the vote though in 2004, Bush took 55 percent.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, a Democrat who confounded the GOP by winning six consecutive elections in a heavily Republican district, will not seek re-election next year, key Democrats said Sunday.

Moore, who represented Johnson, Wyandotte and a portion of Douglas counties, will issue a statement today explaining his decision and outlining his plans. Moore, 64, is expected to finish out his term, which ends in January 2011.

He also will meet with members of his staff in his Washington office.

Moore and members of his staff could not be reached for comment Sunday night. Moore was said to be flying back to Washington in the early evening.

The news is likely to open a political gold rush of potential successors by members of both parties. The last time a 3rd District election did not feature an incumbent was in 1996, following the retirement of 12-year incumbent Republican Jan Meyers.

As of Sunday, former Kansas lawmaker Patricia Lightner and two little-known district residents, Daniel Gilyeat and John Rysavy, were the only Republicans actively campaigning.

But in recent days, other Republicans have begun to assess their chances. Among them are Nick Jordan, who was the 2008 GOP nominee;Charlotte O'Hara, who ran unsuccessfully twice againstAnnabeth Surbaugh for a spot on the Johnson County Commission; andGreg Musil, an Overland Park lawyer who ran for the seat in 2000.

Though a leading member of the Blue Dogs, Rep. Moore, voted for the stimulus, cap-and-trade energy legislation and the health care bill. In 2000, he was one of 73 Democrats to vote for a free-trade pact with China, costing him Teamsters support. He was one of just 21 Democrats who supported fast-track trade authority to expand NAFTA. And in 2007, Rep. Moore authored the Teri Zenner Social Worker Safety Act to better protect those who work with people who might become violent named after Teri Zenner, a caseworker with the Johnson County Mental Health Center in Kansas, who was killed on August 17, 2004, while making a home visit to a client.

The cartoon from 1896 depicts William Jennings Bryan as a giant anaconda named populism devouring a hapless ass. Substitute Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck for Bryan and a pachyderm for the ass and you have a modern day version. Perhaps a two-headed snake is warranted; perhaps even a multi-headed hydra is in order for a GOP bent on playing to its lowest denominator. Populism has a long trajectory in America and while it has knocked on the door of the White House, it has never managed to get in with perhaps the exception of Andrew Jackson. Otherwise, populist fervor has either been on the outside looking in or political elites have managed to successfully co-opt it, nipping the furor by addressing the complaints and concerns of the discontented.

Historian Michael Kazin, an expert on William Jennings Bryan, calls populism more a style of organizing than anything else. He finds that right-wing populists typically drum up resentments based on differences of religion and cultural style while their progressive counterparts have focused on economic grievances. Chip Berlet, a journalist, and Matthew Lyons, a historian, who have done extensive work on the subject of right-wing populism, argue that right-wing populist movements are a subset of repressive populist movements. In their view, a right-wing populist movement is a repressive populist movement motivated or defined centrally by a backlash against liberation movements, social reform, or revolution. They argue that "this does not mean that right-wing populism’s goals are only defensive or reactive, but rather that its growth is fueled in a central way by fears of the Left and its political gains." It is, thus, to be expected that any Democratic administration, never mind one headed by the first African-American President, would spark a backlash.

Populism is an ideologically diverse ism. Populism can come from the left, the right or even the center as is the case in present day Slovakia. Defying a simple definition, it is easiest to describe populism as a mass-based reactionary force in response to some event or pressure. Populism most often arises in societies under duress and it takes on an anti-elitist character. In Latin America, for example, populism is what happens when elites fail - Hugo Chávez's Venezuela being the best modern day example of Latin populism. His rise is wholly explained by the failure of elites to create a more egalitarian Venezuela. Previously, Latin American populism had more of a decidedly rightist tinge under Getulio Vargas' Estado Novo in Brazil or Juan Domingo Perón's Argentina though there have certainly been leftist populist regimes as well, for example Bolivia's Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario that took power in 1952. But as of late Latin American populism has tacked left in response to the failure of neo-liberalism, while American populism has tacked right in response to the exact same failure of free market ideology.

That, I think, is due to the unique character of American conservatism, one that is now evermore imbued with populist trappings. Since the 1960s whenever mainline conservatism is defeated at the polls, conservatives hunker down and get even more radical. Richard Nixon's narrow defeat at the hands of Kennedy in 1960 begets Barry Goldwater in 1964; Gerald Ford's 1976 defeat opens the way to Ronald Reagan's triumph in 1980; and Bob Dole's 1996 loss enables a George W. Bush four years later. In the wake of the loss of the mainline McCain in 2008, the GOP of 2009 has again decided that its problem is that it is not conservative enough. So out with Dede Scozzafava, Newt Gingrich, Charlie Crist, Bob Bennett, and Lindsey Graham and in with Doug Hoffman, Marco Rubio, Chuck DeVore, J.D. Hayworth and Jason Chaffetz. In today's GOP, the RINO has been marked for extinction. Putting them on the endangered species list is likely of no avail. This Jacobin party is ready to consume its own. It is also in marked contrast to the Democratic party which has generally headed to the center after crushing electoral defeats. After the liberal McGovern came a centrist Carter, after the liberal Mondale came the less liberal Dukakis followed by the even less liberal Clinton. More recently after the openly liberal Kerry comes the pragmatic centrism of Obama. While Democratic defeat has been followed more often that not by a reflective introspection, on the GOP side electoral defeat brings an emotive rush seemingly off the cliff of orthodoxy.

Another defining characteristic of American conservatism is that it is intimately intertwined with American evangelicalism and as long as this remains the case, populism in America is bound to have a right-wing flavour. It is not a coincidence that this crowd runs with Jesus, albeit one more in tune with Leviticus than any Sermon on the Mount. Evangelicalism is but a petri dish for the bacterium of right-wing populism. Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and now Mike Huckabee are three who have melded their Christian faith with a right-wing populism in recent years.

The other fertile plain of American right-wing populism is the white nationalism now respouting across the redder corners of America. These people feel that they have lost their country and they want it back. It should be noted that in the 19th century, left-leaning American populism had agrarian roots - James Weaver was from Iowa and William Jennings Bryan from Nebraska but right-wing populism has its roots in the South. It is the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, a counterrevolutionary backlash against the abolition of slavery and the political rights provided blacks under the Fourteenth Amendment, that marked the advent of right wing populism in the United States. And the second iteration would come in the 1920s first in Georgia before spreading elsewhere again courtesy of the KKK in response to increasing immigration and other perceived social ills. In 1924 the Klan played a decisive role in engineering the elections of officials from coast to coast, including the mayors of Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon. In Colorado and Indiana, they placed enough Klansmen in positions of power to effectively control the state government. Known as the "Invisible Empire," the KKK's presence was felt across the country. Right-wing populism, part of that nativist legacy, today remains largely the province of white America.

It is, indeed, bizarre that the dispossessed of this land should embrace the country club ideology of the Republican party but neither logic nor erudition are a defining quality of this crowd. While populism can be roughly defined as the call for the empowerment of ordinary people in all areas of life, its language is one of an us versus them. Its ethos all too often subsumed in vast conspiracy theories. It is a faith-based politics that spurns reason and eschews anything smacking of intellectualism and elitism. Theirs is a worldview defined by their own notions of what they believe to be "common sense" and they see nefarious plots afoot everywhere they look. And modern day American right-wing populism has now spawned two patron saints - St. Sarah of the Dispossessed and St. Glenn the Conspiratorial not to mention a whole host of other minor characters that include the white knight Pat Buchanan and the queen of zany Michele Bachmann. Even Doug "Acorn Stole My Election" Hoffman, a millionaire with a half million dollar antique car collection, is seen as a populist.

I'm not sure that I buy the premise of John King's question -- that a vote in favor of healthcare reform is bad politics -- but not a bad answer from Michael Bennet.

"If you get to the final point and you are a critical vote for health care reform and every piece of evidence tells you if you support the bill you will lose your job, would you cast the vote and lose your job?" CNN's John King asked Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado on Sunday's State of the Union.

"Yes," Bennet bluntly and simply replied.

With this answer, Bennet has actually taken a big step towards improving his chances at reelection. To get to the general election, Bennet will have to get past former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in the Democratic primary -- and nothing could improve his chances more than answering King the way he did today, standing strong for healthcare reform in the face of challenge from the Beltway common wisdom. And at least from this vantage, Bennet probably helped himself in the general, too. The failure of healthcare reform could doom the reelection chances of a good number of potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents, depressing the turnout of the party base; moving the process forward, both on an actual level (through his vote on cloture last night) and on a messaging level (coming out strongly in favor of reform), could help forestall that worst-case scenario for the Democrats, thus helping his chances in a general. So not a bad Sunday show appearance for Bennet. Not bad at all.

No, nothing from Andrew Sullivan worth pointing to, but a lot of interesting reads out there, about Palin & populism, and what it all means, here they are:

The NYT's overview: Republicans Eye the Tiger of Populism

I'm reading Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" by Crunchy Con, that Ross Douthat comments upon.

The NYT's today can't resist, with both Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd writing about Palin.

And finally, Matt Taibbi, who sums up a lot of what I have said about Sarah Palin from the moment she entered the scene, Sarah Palin, WWE Star.