• The United Steelworkers Union, which had previously endorsed John Edwards, endorsed Barack Obama on the heels of his endorsement by Edwards.
• Take MoveOn's Bush-McCain Challenge. There's also a McCain vs. carrot round.
• Rich at Michigan Liberal has an account of Obama's Michigan visit, and at the same site, Hazen Pingree offers Obama some tips for winning Michigan.
• dnA uncovers The Buchanan Theorem.
• A sign of relief for us all:

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the U.S. economy slowed in 2007, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney saw their assets stay stable, according to financial disclosure reports released by the White House on Thursday.

  The reports showed little change for Bush and Cheney even as a collapse in the housing market caused a credit crunch and led the Federal Reserve to rapidly cut interest rates.

• McCain's lobbyist campaign consultants and staff continue to link him with dubious foreign governments. This time it's lobbyist and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, Vladimir Putin, and the Ukraine.
• In the aftermath of what they're calling Schaffer's "Mount Macaca" moment, the DSCC has put together a little quiz for Schaffer.
• In a sign that MI-09 candidate Gary Peters is gaining serious credibility in the local press, the Lansing State Journal blog upgraded the race from "lean incumbent" to "toss-up." In MI-07, Mark Schauer is at "lean challenger." Two progressive candidates with great prospects in a swing state -- what's not to love?
• Darcy Burner fans have two opportunities to catch up with her this week, one virtual, one in person. First, she'll be appearing in Second Life tonight to talk about the Responsible Plan on JayAckroyd's Virtually Speaking which will be simulcast on BlogTalkRadio. More detail in the link above. For Seattle area folks, you can see her and support a great cause at the NW Progressive Institute's Spring Gala. (--mcjoan)

• Katha Pollitt on backlash.
• The story of a viral video gone pro.
• Swing State Project upgrades NC-Sen from "Safe Republican" to "Likely Republican."
• Al Giordano identifies five stages of grief for Obama supporters.
• Late last night, TPM Election Central reported another superdelegate each to Obama and Clinton, leaving the total for Friday at Obama +9, Clinton +1.
• I'm sure that the backers of Michigan's 2004 anti-gay marriage amendment in no way intended it to outlaw domestic partnership benefits (yeah, right), but this week that obvious result was decided by the state's supreme court. The University of Michigan, though, is looking for ways around the prohibition. Not that it's any replacement for equality, but at least fewer people will lose their benefits.
• One of the day's must-reads comes from Glenn Greenwald, who has the documents proving the Bush administration's propagandistic intent with the military analyst program. Like where they were looking for people "that we can count on to carry our water."

Next thing you know, they'll be saying more and better Democrats in their press releases. Because continuing the fight for better Democrats is exactly what the SEIU is proposing for the months after November:

As part of the union's proposed "Justice for All" plan, SEIU members will continue the 2008 political campaign past the election and through the first 100 days of a new administration in order to win affordable healthcare and rebuild the middle class by restoring workers' freedom to join unions. What's more, the union is willing to spend $10 million to oppose elected leaders who turn their backs on these and other key issues for working people.

"This is our chance, our time to change America, and we are no longer willing to put up with the doubletalk and political hedging we've too often heard in the past," said SEIU President Andy Stern. "SEIU members expect that elected leaders will live up to their promises, and if they don't, we will work to elect someone else."

The union cites its support of Donna Edwards over Al Wynn in MD-04 as a model for future actions. Not a bad model, and one the netroots will be following, too.

That should keep Blue Dogs and spineless types on their toes.

Normally, you'd think Senators facing tough reelection battles would want the highest-profile help their party had to offer. You'd think that for Republicans that would be the incumbent president -- but of course, Bush has the worst disapproval rating since they started measuring that.

So in this, as in so many things, McCain will be standing in for Bush, going on the road for New Hampshire's John Sununu, Maine's Susan Collins, Oregon's Gordon Smith, and Minnesota's Norm Coleman. Because, as the Cook Report's Jennifer Duffy says:

"The interesting thing about McCain is that he may not help anybody, but he's not a drag on anybody," she said.

Yet. He's not a drag on anybody yet. Because he hasn't yet faced a settled Democratic nominee. Because the traditional media has given him a free ride, rarely pointing out that on the votes that matter, McCain's no maverick. When  the Republican party and George W. Bush need him, John McCain is reliably there for them.

How alike are McCain and Bush? MoveOn puts you to the (f'ing difficult) test -- a test a lot of reporters could stand to take before they write their next stories squeeing over all the awesome straight-talking maverickness. If they start writing the story of the John McCain who actually stands in front of them instead of the one in their heads, by November he'll be as much of a drag on Sununu, Collins, Coleman, and Smith as Bush is today.

Race tracker wiki: NH-Sen ME-Sen OR-Sen MN-Sen

South Carolina and Maryland picked add-on delegates today to round out their complements of superdelegates. In SC, Inez Tenenbaum was selected based on her support for Obama. In MD, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Parris Glendening, who respectively support Clinton and Obama, were chosen.

In New Mexico, party chair Brian Colon announced his support for Obama.

And in Guam, where the candidates tied for pledged delegates, 2-2, Pilar Lujan and Jaime Paulino were elected party chair and vice-chair, thereby becoming superdelegates. Paulino is an Obama supporter, and Lujan has said her vote will go to the winner of the Guam caucus. Barring an outcome-changing recount, then, Obama picks up two superdelegates in Guam.

The totals for the day are Obama +5 unpledged delegates, Clinton +1, with each picking up 2 pledged delegates. Obama's margin is slightly increased, but equally important, the available delegate pool has once again shrunk, leaving Clinton needing a still-higher proportion of remaining delegates to win.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on the massive pressure being placed on some DC-area supers, many of whom are being lobbied not only by the candidates and campaigns but by random people in grocery stores and on the street. Because clearly what they lack is a sense of urgency or responsibility about this choice.

One endorsement not affecting the delegate count but reflecting a possible opinion swing is that of Friends of the Earth, which endorsed Obama today due to Clinton's support for a "gas tax holiday." A Siegel identifies Clinton's aggressively flawed position on that issue as one with the potential to push some environmentalists off the fence.

Unofficial result:

How's that for GOTV being crucial? Actually, of course, Obama and Clinton will each gain 2 pledged delegates from this result, but since new Guam party chair Pilar Lujan has said that as a superdelegate she would vote for the caucus winner, it gives Obama an advantage. Lujan's running mate had already endorsed Obama.

KUAM stresses that these results are unofficial and that there was significant ballot spoilage in Dededo, where Clinton had a strong win.

Eighteen districts counted (an earlier source said there were 19 districts, but this one is saying 21, so 3 to go, and those three among the largest):

(NB: If you follow the link, the headline says 1,720 to 1,509. The article  breaks the vote down by district but then quotes different totals than the headline. If you add up the district-by-district numbers they give, it indeed works out to 1,720 and 1,509. But it's confusing.)

Obama continues to hold at 53.3%.

Almost-immediate update: Only the largest district is left to go, and apparently Clinton would need to win that by 204 votes to win Guam. Current totals:

Guam Pacific Daily News:

For chair/vice-chair:

Update: With 16 districts counted:

It's held steady with 53.3% for Obama for the last couple of updates. Two of the largest districts have yet to report.

Remember that Guam has 8 half-votes for a total of four votes. Demconwatch reports that currently Obama and Clinton have each picked up one full delegate, with two more to be allocated.

Lujan and Paulino maintain their lead in the race for party chair and vice-chair, which would make them two of Guam's five super delegates, adding an Obama vote and an uncommitted.

Rasmussen. 5/1. 867 likely voters. MoE 3%.

This is Rasmussen's first Oregon poll; SurveyUSA is the only other source of recent Oregon numbers, and show Obama with a slightly narrower lead. Presumably once North Carolina and Indiana are done, Oregon will be polled more frequently (if polling remains relevant in the race).

Pacific News Center:

Pacific News Center reports this as a 6% lead.

For reference, those results were posted at 1:45 a.m. Guam time, which is 11:45 a.m. EDT. We'll continue looking for updates. CNN Political Ticker is also covering it, but they're currently a little behind Pacific News Center.

Update: Thanks to Scarce and Engine 08 in the comments, fresher results:

Guam Pacific Daily News.

Update II by kos:

This is also important:

Also on the ballot Saturday was the race for chairman and vice chairman of the U.S. territory's Democratic party. The winners of that race will serve as superdelegates. According to the election official, the slate of Pilar Lujan and Jaime Paulino currently leads the slate of Joseph Artero Cameron and Arlen Bordallo. Lujan remains uncommitted in the race for president while running-mate Paulino has endorsed Obama. Both Cameron and Bordallo have endorsed Clinton. Incumbent chairman Tony Charfauros and running-mate Mary Ann Cabrera are currently in third place. Neither has endorsed a presidential candidate.

If Artero (first last name is the paternal, like mine) and Bordallo win, that's two more delegates for Clinton, while Lujan and Paulino would be +1 Obama plus an uncommitted.

With 13 districts counted:

Bill Clinton, ostensibly referring to Barack Obama's supporters:

"The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules," he said. "In West Virginia and Arkansas, we know that when we see it."

Let's think about this for a minute: Bill Clinton is a driving force behind the campaign that has tried to insist that Florida and Michigan should count, even though the rules say they don't. Even though its own top advisors voted for the rules that say Florida and Michigan don't count. That's the same campaign that has tried to discount caucus states, even though the rules say they count. The campaign that has tried to get the press to rechristen super delegates as automatic delegates. This is a campaign that has shown time and again that there is not a rule of the Democratic nomination process they will not attempt to undercut if it will benefit Hillary Clinton.

And Bill Clinton wants to talk about how Obama's supporters think they should play by a different set of rules?

I have another definition for Bill. Psychological projection:

• "Projection is the opposite defense mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have."
• "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."
• "Attributing one's own undesirable traits to other people or agencies."

This is a story that is on the one hand very local, and on the other has far-reaching national implications. It is no big stretch to say that the VRWC, the vast rightwing conspiracy, is attempting a takeover of Dartmouth College.

What does it matter if the far right takes over Dartmouth? It means just over a thousand students a year being taught by professors to whom a conservative litmus test has been applied. It means a new training ground for rightwing pundits like Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza (both of whom came out of Dartmouth in the 1980s heyday of the Dartmouth Review). It means a prestigious academic home from which conservative faculty could themselves act as pundits, or draw support for their research. And it provides a blueprint for future assaults on other colleges and universities; it is, in the words of one of its leaders, part of a "multigenerational battle."

Here's the deal: Dartmouth has an unusually small board of trustees, with half the trustees historically elected by the alumni. In recent years, a group of alums has organized to elect hard right trustees, with the intent of rolling back two decades of Dartmouth's movement away from its infamously conservative past. Because the board of trustees is so small, it is vulnerable to the election of just a few people. (By way of comparison, Colgate University, with 2,750 students, has 34 trustees, while Dartmouth, with 4,100 students, has 18.)

When the college acted to make a full takeover of the board more difficult by expanding its size, the conservative-controlled Association of Alumni sued the college, supported by outside conservative groups. Now, the AoA is about to begin its elections, and the VRWC is continuing its mission to take over Dartmouth's alumni governance, continue the lawsuit, and influence the course of the college for generations.

Are these the people you want leading one of the nation's top colleges?

• Current trustee Stephen Smith has questioned evolution and defended fraternities sanctioned by Dartmouth for "publishing date-rape techniques in their house newsletter" and "secretly videotaping women hooking up with brothers."
• Current trustee Todd Zywicki, a professor at the incredibly conservative George Mason School of Law, used his blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy as a platform to aid his candidacy for Dartmouth trustee; he went on to say, in remarks at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, that former Dartmouth president James Freedman was a "truly evil man" trying to promote "Political correctness in all forms."
• Candidate for Association of Alumni (the group currently suing the college) First Vice President Martin "Bert" Boles spoke in February at an Opus Dei conference and has contributed money to the Club for Growth and Alan Keyes.
• Candidate for Association of Alumni Second Vice President Paul Mirengoff blogs at Power Line. Enough said.

In his Pope Center remarks, Zywicki laid out some of the plan:

It's going to be a multigenerational battle; it's going to take a lot of resources, and a lot of struggle. And I think what you have to understand is that those who control the university today they don't believe in God and they don't believe in country.

--snip--

Secondly we need to think about investing in alternative institutions or simultaneously or alternatively. Which is, that is we need to start thinking about creating and supporting alternative institutions. Elite institutions matter, absolutely, that's where the leaders of society are disproportionately going to be found. But we need to find the shining lights elsewhere and start nurturing these. I will just tell you about George Mason Law School....Our faculty are willing to engage on leading issues of the day, the second amendment, affirmative action, those sorts of things. We were the ones who sponsored the brief supporting the military, we wrote the brief supporting the military in the Fair  v. Rumsfeld case, which we were then vindicated in eight to nothing in the Supreme Court. All the other law schools were on the other side of that issue....Because if reform is going to come I think it's going to come from these new institutions, not from those that are already within the elite institutions. People like Michael Monger and Robbie George, these people are sui generis right, you can't replicate them. If they come along, grab the opportunity and ride it. You have to invest in people and not just programs.

Having said that, the third point is that institutions do matter. Institutions matter a lot, which is what we've done is build institutions around the periphery like these centers, which again I think are very, very important and very, very useful. But fundamentally institutions matter. Jesus was great but Peter was just as important. Right? It's great to have people out doing these things but institutions are where the actions are, institutions is where you draw kids in and educate them with a fundamental curriculum and that sort of thing. People don't want to invest in overhead, for instance. But you've got to start thinking about getting institutions like George Mason Law School or wherever and building those programs and investing in them if it is going to be a multigenerational project of bringing them up to prominence so that they can compete.

This is a radical program to bring the worst intersection of neo-con and fundamentalist thought to higher education -- to engage in a multigenerational battle to take over your children's education, and the airwaves, and the courts. It's not just about what happens in the colleges themselves, but about the influence they can have, about the conservative infrastructure they can have waiting for the next time a George W. Bush is elected president and wants to staff an administration with lawyers who will find the justification for torture, for steamrolling Congress, for the unitary executive.

They have set up institutions to lend themselves credibility -- rightwing candidates at Dartmouth often cite FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. This group is ostensibly committed to free speech, but somehow it always seems to be the speech of frat brothers who've "jokingly" published date-rape manuals that FIRE is most concerned about. It's funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others. According to SourceWatch:

FIRE is a major proponent of the intellectual diversity movement which aims to dismantle the so-called liberal bias in higher academia.

--snip--

FIRE also has a legal network which connects students who feel their rights have been violated by faculty or administrators with attorneys specializing in FIRE's major talking points.

Then there's ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA was founded in 1995 by Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman, among others. Its current president, Anne Neal, worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities under Lynne Cheney in the first Bush administration. ACTA can often be found inveighing against the Dartmouth administration and supporting the actions -- including the lawsuit -- of its rightwing movement alums.

When you read articles about these conflicts, then, there are always outside, neutral-sounding groups weighing in against the college. If you don't know that they are conservative front groups, it might sound convincing. And that's the point. You build institutions so that whenever you need it, there's an "expert" to give the media a quote supporting you, to fund your lawsuits, to be a constant source of money and manpower and support for the generations-long project of moving American higher education drastically to the right.

This isn't just Dartmouth. It's just the first step.

What you can do:

If you are a Dartmouth alum, or know any, the Association of Alumni elections begin tomorrow, April 28, and run until June 5. VOTE

For more information before you vote, go to Dartmouth Undying, the group organized to retake the AoA and drop the lawsuit against the college.

I would encourage you to vote for their slate (not, as you will see, a set of wild-eyed radicals) -- but equally I would encourage you to do your research. Look seriously at their candidates; don't vote for someone you know nothing about. In this case, getting the lawsuit dropped so that the college can defend itself against the Todd Zywickis and Stephen Smiths is of paramount importance.

If you aren't a Dartmouth alum, but are an alum of a school that allows you to vote on trustees or alumni groups, take this as a reminder of the importance of that. Research your candidates and vote, or those elections may become vulnerable to organized groups trying to impose radical agendas.

When you see groups like FIRE and ACTA being quoted, know what's going on. Know what their agenda is and look for ways to unveil it in individual conflicts.

Even if you don't know much about organized labor, you may have heard about Andy Stern and the SEIU. Stern has been profiled on 60 Minutes and in many other venues; he is without question the highest-profile labor leader in the country, frequently celebrated for his innovation and the energy he has brought to the SEIU. DHinMI interviewed him in 2005 for this site, suggesting -- less glowingly -- that "Andy Stern is on a quest for whatever he thinks is new."

And lately, even if you don't know much about organized labor, you may have noticed just a few SEIU-related ads on this and other blogs (where "just a few" = ironic understatement). So what's up?

These ads, coming from at least three separate groups, come out of issues far too complicated to fully explain here, but here goes a shot:

As Daily Kos diarist (and my father) Dan Clawson points out,

Any time an individual or organization gets held up as a model of success it invites others to launch criticisms, and that’s certainly been the case for SEIU, which may simultaneously be the most admired and the most criticized of all unions today.  Those criticisms focus above all on SEIU’s top-down staff-driven model, and the consequent lack of democracy, combined with the argument that this sometimes leads SEIU to collaborate with employers.

Recently, the SEIU is engaged in conflicts on two fronts. In March, ongoing competition between the union and the rival California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee escalated in Ohio, when the CNA/NNOC sent organizers to deter workers from joining the SEIU in a scheduled vote. The SEIU alleged union-busting; the CNA/NNOC alleged an unacceptable sweetheart deal with the employer. (And both took out a lot of BlogAds.)

The SEIU and CNA are expressing a major strategic difference. The SEIU is emphasizing union density -- to have as many workers as possible in the same industry or same area be unionized, because then non-union employers have to raise their wages to compete, rather than undercutting the wages paid by union employers. (For more on the importance of density, see NathanNewman's excellent 2006 diary.) To achieve this, the SEIU under Andy Stern has become known for reaching cooperative deals with employers in order to reach the greatest number of workers; the CNA argues that these deals go too far and eliminate many of the benefits of union membership, limiting the gains a union contract will make.

This, then, is not simply a turf war in Ohio, it's about the direction of the labor movement, not just about how best to serve union members but about how best to serve all workers, not just about how to gain strength but about the very definition of strength.

Dan Clawson:

The charge has been made that in order to get the Ohio fast-track to a union election, SEIU made a deal with the boss, Catholic Healthcare Partners.  My response is:  Of course they did, and so what?....For good or ill, these days ALL unions that I know of make a deal with the boss:  they sign a collective bargaining agreement and have a process for handling grievances.  

The question is not "did the union make a deal with the boss?" but rather "what kind of deal did it make?"  The deal that is made generally depends on power:  how many workers are committed to the cause, how militant are they willing to be, what strategic position do they have, what kinds of allies do the workers have among other unions, community groups, faith-based communities, and the general public?  It depends as well on the union’s militance, leadership, and willingness to take risks.  One of the best sessions at the Labor Notes conference focused on neutrality agreements:  in what circumstances do they make sense?  What sorts of conditions should unions resist no matter what, and what sorts of conditions are an acceptable compromise?  What sorts of leverage enable us to win better agreements?  SEIU’s seminal Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign involved not just a strike, but hundreds of people tying up traffic in downtown Los Angeles during rush hour, police beating workers, and the threat of re-doubled disruption.  Under that pressure the boss, that is, building owners, made a deal.

One crucial issue in evaluating any neutrality agreement, or any other agreement with an employer, is:  Does this build workers’ power, or undercut workers’ power?  What does it do in the short-run, and what does it do for the long-run?  An agreement can provide immediate benefits, but at the expense of undercutting workers’ long-run ability to build more power.  Alternatively, a deal can look bad for the short-run but position workers and the union to make major gains at a later time.  

And the thing is, we don't really know. We don't know the exact details of the SEIU deal with the employer in Ohio, but more, we don't know what would happen years down the road. When the first contract would be up for renegotiation, would having organized these workers have led to further organization and better wages and conditions in the area such that the next contract would be measurably better? Or would a poor contract have led to workers becoming frustrated with their union, to lowered incentive to join unions and lowered union power?

So it's entirely possible for this conflict to involve each union fighting for what it sees not only as its own best interest, but the interest of the workers and of the labor movement as a whole. The conflict has grown particularly bitter, though, with the SEIU aggressively disrupting a conference held by Labor Notes, an organization dedicated to union debate.

Meanwhile, the SEIU is in a dispute with one of its own largest locals, United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW), led by local president Sal Rosselli, whose criticisms of Stern's SEIU leadership echo those of the CNA:

Rosselli has launched a war against Stern that has spilled out into the open in recent months. His complaints--that Stern has made the union too undemocratic, that he has cut secret deals with employers, that he cares more about enlarging the union than serving its existing members--are resonating with at least some of SEIU's rank and file. And they raise difficult questions, not just about Stern's particular ideas but about what a union in twenty-first-century America ought to be. Can a union be too large for its own good? How closely should a union cooperate with employers? Does a union exist primarily for the benefit of its members--or to serve the interests of American labor as a whole? And who, in the end, gets to make these decisions? How much power belongs to a union's members? And how much should rest with leaders like Stern?

Andy Stern's internal critics in the SEIU point to his practice of trusteeing locals that aren't on board with his plans, replacing their elected leadership with control from the top (in fact, many people believe that Rosselli's rebellion will lead to the UHW being trusteed despite its successes), and merging locals:

While mergers are often a useful tool for reform, some critics worry the power can be abused, not least because, under labor law, Stern is allowed to appoint the president of a newly merged local for up to three years before elections are held. Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, points out that the process can sometimes "be used to stifle dissent"--if, say, an unruly local is thrown into a much larger one.

Though the UHW has denounced the CNA's actions in Ohio, and has had its own problems with CNA raiding, several of its allegations against the SEIU -- of deals cut with employers against worker interests, for instance -- echo those of the CNA.

If the SEIU trustees the UHW, it will have cast serious doubt on its commitment to democracy -- which should be at the heart of representing workers. If, however, they embrace the debate, we might find in this moment of conflict a possibility for real advances, for a robust debate about how to take advantage of the opportunities unions might gain from a Democratic president, for involving workers in a debate about what direction unions should take, for producing healthy competition between different models of unionism as exemplars of each try to demonstrate their advantages to prospective members.

Yesterday an anti-union group launched a TV ad against the Employee Free Choice Act. In case you'd forgotten, the EFCA is the most important piece of pro-worker, pro-union legislation under consideration in recent years.

The EFCA has three main parts.  First, it requires certification of a union once a majority of employees in a workplace have signed up for the union.  Currently, after a majority of employees have requested a union, employers can force an election.  This may sound democratic enough, but in fact it allows employers to use their power over workers to campaign against the union, often harassing and firing union supporters in the process.

Second, the EFCA prevents employers from dragging out negotiations on a first union contract by creating provisions for mediation and arbitration.  Third, it strengthens penalties on employers who fire union supporters during union drives - such firings are illegal, but the current penalties are too small to serve as effective deterrents.

Workers need this bill. By removing opportunities for employers to bully and intimidate workers, the Employee Free Choice Act would make union organizing much more democratic. And since tens of millions of workers would like to be able to join unions, a more democratic process would mean more union jobs, a stronger middle class, and a stronger Democratic party.

So this is not a popular piece of legislation among corporations, and its overwhelming passage in the House last year must've made them nervous. They know this issue isn't going away, which is why they're stayed on the attack. The new ad, which piles on every anti-union stereotype possible, as Geenius at Wrok's diary details, comes from the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace:

CDW is a front group for business associations, industry lobbying groups, and right-wing policy centers who are against workers getting a fair shake in this economy. Its financial backers include some of the most virulent anti-worker and anti-union organizations in the country, including:

• the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most powerful business lobbying organization,
• the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a group whose biggest member is Wal-Mart, the poster child for low wages,
• and the Associated Builders and Contractors, an association of anti-union contractors who fight against workers having unions to improve their wages and safety on the job.

So you can see where they totally have workers' best interests in mind.

Because the ad is airing nationally, this would be a good time to remind your elected representatives that you support the Employee Free Choice Act.

• Gail Collins on John McCain and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:

  So McCain made it clear that if he had been in Washington, he would have voted no because the bill "opens us up for lawsuits, for all kinds of problems and difficulties."

  How much straighter can talk get? True, this is pretty much like saying that you’re voting against the federal budget because it involves spending. Still, there is no denying that a bill making it possible for people who have been discriminated against to go to court for redress would open somebody up to the possibility of a lawsuit.

• Disability issues are rarely discussed in the presidential race (certainly such frivolous things aren't discussed in serious network debates), but if you have any interest in disability policy -- or even if you think you don't -- Michael Berube's post at Crooked Timber is a must-read, and a model for writing about campaigns and the issues.
• Wow. The New York Times goes for full-on objectification of women.
• Swing State Project continues to track NRCC and DCCC expenditures in LA-06 and MS-01.
• Eric B. at Michigan Liberal has a request for Jennifer Granholm:

  Governor ... please stop.

  Represent the interests of the people whose state you were elected to lead, not the presidential candidate who you endorsed.

• How much thought do you give your food's carbon footprint? Chances are, it's too big and growing.
• The editors of The Nation on bitter politics.
• Tula Connell:

  If you’re a U.S. woman and aren’t getting paid for doing the same work as men, it’s your fault.

  If you’re a woman and are overweight or smoke, you’re personally responsible for contributing to the sinking U.S. life expectancy rate.

  (Follow the link before you get pissed at Tula.)

Yet another poll finds the Indiana primary looking extremely competitive.

Research 2000 for WANE, WISH, and WSBT. 4/23-24. 400 likely voters. MoE 5%. (3/31-4/2)

There's been a little movement since R2K's last poll, but all within the margin of error, moving from a tie to a different tie.

Research 2000 also polled general election match-ups.

4/21-24. 600 likely voters. MoE 4%.

McCain edges up over 50% against both Democrats, with, as in the primary poll, Obama having a statistically-insignificant edge over Clinton. According to these numbers, Indiana isn't out of the question for November, though there will be stronger pick-up opportunities.

There's this question that the traditional media likes to ask:

"Why aren't there more women blogging about politics?"

or

"Why are most of the big political bloggers men?"

or implications of

"What are male political bloggers doing to keep women from being successful?"

Reporters start with an easy premise: The bloggers their readers are most likely to have heard of are men. Markos Moulitsas. Duncan "Atrios" Black. Josh Marshall. The problem is, all too often, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Recently, Megan Carpentier of Glamour magazine's blog Glamocracy asked Markos why there aren't as many female political bloggers. He answered:

I disagree with that notion. The Daily Kos executive editor, a  blogger, of course, is female. Digby is female. Jane Hamsher is female. There are other prominent women (including seven on Daily Kos) writing in group blogs. [links added]

That answer didn't fit the premise of Carpentier's piece, so it wasn't used. To maintain her premise, Carpentier also sloughed off Arianna Huffington in a sentence -- sure, the blogger who's building a freaking empire, who appears on television the most and whose site was recently written up in the New Yorker is a woman, but...

To maintain her premise, Carpentier relied on readers not looking too closely at the quotes she did use:

Some say it's because the men got a head start. Jen Moseley, the politics editor at Feministing says, "I think there are a lot of female political bloggers out there. But since most of the 'old guard' big political blogs (funny that something 4-5 years old can be considered old now), were started by men, so they're still looked at as the only ones that matter."

Still looked at as the only ones that matter? Looked at by whom? Perhaps by reporters asking why all the bloggers that matter are men? That's not a question Carpentier's real eager to address.

Or again,

Amy Richards, an author and one of the co-founders of Third Wave, thinks that the amount of attention focused on the boys might be more than just their first-mover status—it's an artifact of their historical control of the media. Richards claims that "Political punditry has always been dominated by men and thus blogging is likely to follow that pattern." Richards agrees that women aren't becoming blogospheric stars as quickly as some of their male colleagues. She says, "I know that women are jumping into this debate with their opinions and perspectives, but because they are doing so in spaces more likely to attract women—they aren't being legitimized."

Aren't being legitimized...by whom, now?

Time and time again, reporters write articles that reproduce the divisions they claim to be questioning. They ask why there aren't more well-known political bloggers who are women, and refuse to mention widely-read counterexamples. They ask why the best-known women bloggers are feminist, not political, bloggers (as if feminism isn't politics), and quote women identified as feminist bloggers to make their point.

But who the media chooses to quote is just a little bit relevant to which bloggers are best known. Blog audiences can be earned entirely within the blogosphere, it's true, through stellar writing that draws links that funnel readers. But appearing on television or being cited in the traditional media can boost your prominence: If the New Yorker fails to name the blogger they quote responding to Robin Morgan, then Ann Friedman doesn't get credit as either a political or a feminist blogger. It's a truism in the blogosphere that links are currency, but it's as true that traditional media mentions are currency, albeit of a slightly different sort. Links get you more traffic, but media mentions get you the kind of external validation that leads to still more media mentions.

In 2006, Chris Bowers explained how a related process worked for MyDD:

Within the progressive blogosphere, our relative influence far exceeds our relative traffic levels. For example, at Yearly Kos, the MyDD caucus was streaming out into the hallway, and apparently was impossible to get into after the thirst two or three minutes. Fire Dog Lake, a remarkable and extremely important blog that held a caucus at the same time, at least doubles MyDD in terms of traffic. Still, from what I understand, we actually had more people at our caucus. This was not because not because we had a large number of regular commenters there. Instead, it was because droves of reporters, candidates, and staffers had come to our caucus. Every political reporter came to that event. Candidates even came and asked how they got endorsed. We even asked the audience if they had ever worked on a campaign in a paid position, and over half of the audience raised their hands.

It's like when Hotline's Blogometer revealed that among all progressive blogs, MyDD was their second most cited in 2005 (look at all the right-wingers on their top-ten list), behind only Dailykos. That sort of blew my mind when I read that, considering that in terms of traffic, we rank only around 10th or 12th among progressive blogs. I have seen other significant other data, including citations from Google News, Nexis, and even private marketing surveys suggesting that establishment types read us at vastly disproportionate rates to our overall traffic. In overall terms of establishment readership, we always come in second, (well) behind Dailykos.

And yet, when the traditional media wants to account for Chris Bowers being (arguably) more prominent than Jane Hamsher, or Ezra Klein more prominent than Ann Friedman, they always turn to bloggers for explanations. Why do we bloggers produce these inequalities, they want to know.

Megan Carpentier wrote a really stupid piece for Glamocracy, and her failure to quote Markos rejecting her premise makes you wonder how many other people she left out because what they said didn't fit her narrative.  But she didn't pioneer this kind of stupidity. She was rerunning a hackneyed story the traditional media has been telling about blogging for quite some time. There are lots of different stories to write about blogs and gender -- never mind "prominent" bloggers, why does it seem that state bloggers are so disproportionately male? How do women and men blogging together at group blogs get treated differently by readers or the traditional media? Is it the case that men started the earlier blogs, and if so, at what rate have women been catching up? Whose blogging is more likely to lead to paid work as an institutional or campaign blogger, as a journalist, as a consultant? Do meat-world credentials play a different role in how male and female bloggers are received? These questions don't get asked, going unmentioned to leave room for the fortieth retread of "why are the three bloggers the laziest journalist can think of all men?"

So let's be clear: Bloggers do not succeed or fail in a bloggy vacuum. Site traffic and links from other bloggers are relevant measures of success, but by the standards of the traditional media, appearances in said traditional media are equally important. And we do not dole those out.

If a reporter looks at a political blogger, will she be counted as feminist, not political, blogging?

If a reporter looks at a political blogger, will she stop counting as a woman?

If reporter looks at a political blogger, will her existence be acknowledged at all?

We're here, writing thousands of words a week on every political topic imaginable. If you don't see us, look to yourself.

Hotline has a major round-up of Senate fundraising numbers; Senate Guru reformatted much of the information to be a little more readable, and has some thoughts.

I see lots of good news here. Democrats may be playing even less defense than expected. Only three Democratic incumbents -- Landrieu, Durbin, and Kerry -- have Republican challengers with more than $70k cash on hand, and Durbin and Kerry are safe nonetheless. That leaves a lot of room for Democrats to focus on open seats and taking out Republican incumbents.

And several of those Republican incumbents should be sweating the money situation. Al Franken outraised Norm Coleman ($2.2 million to $2.1 million), and Jeanne Shaheen outraised John Sununu ($1.2 million to $1 million); both Franken and Shaheen trail in the cash on hand department, but continued solid fundraising (and good polls in Minnesota and great ones in New Hampshire) is pretty damn sweet. Next door to New Hampshire, Maine's Tom Allen trails Susan Collins but has an impressive $2.6 million cash on hand.

In the battle for New Mexico and Colorado's open seats, the Udalls are kicking ass. New Mexico's Tom raised more than Republicans Wilson and Pearce combined, and holds a similar cash on hand advantage. Colorado's Mark outraised sweatshop-promoter Schaffer ($1.5 million to $1 million) and has nearly double the cash on hand.

Mark Warner continues to pull in ridiculous money ($2.5 million) on the way to joining Jim Webb in Virginia's senate delegation.

Unfortunately, in Oregon Merkley and Novick are underperforming financially, just as they've been showing other signs of weakness. And Texan Rick Noriega's totals (both money raised this quarter and cash on hand) weren't where they should be, though Burnt Orange Report points out that his fundraising picked up substantially in the latter part of the quarter, once it was clear he was the nominee.

But back on the up side, Andrew Rice pulled in an extremely nice-for-Oklahoma $431k. Oklahoma will remain a long, long shot, but Rice could outperform expectations -- that would be some serious map-expansion. Add in races like Alaska and Mississippi, where Democrats Mark Begich and Ronnie Musgrove may trail their opponents in fundraising but are polling well, and it continues to look like a great year for Democrats.

For context and rankings on these races and more, see brownsox' State of the Senate: April.

Race tracker wiki: MN-Sen NH-Sen OK-Sen OR-Sen NM-Sen CO-Sen VA-Sen