Thanks for the comment. I'll bet that General Clark had a smart, very young staffer who thought up that bit of guerrilla theatre. Very clever. Maybe we should track the ways the new media are employed in th epolitical arena. I confess to feeling a tiny bit puffed up that I predicted Dean and Gephardt. I will write another piece, probably, after New Hampshire and before the first big round of primaries February 3, including South Carolina and MIssouri. Will Edwards sell in the North; will Kerry sell in the South,etc? Strange that a fashion parade leads to nominations.

It's certainly becoming more of a race. Although the course and species are still in question. I'm going to be presumptious here so please forgive me if I overstep. New media are already an enormous part of this campaign and have been so for over 2 years in various guises. www.moveon.org ; www.truemajority.org ; www.centerforamericanprogress.org and www.mediawhoresonline.com (the source of my information about Wesley Clark's sweater) just to name a few.

There is only one thing to be said about Wesley Clark's judgement. When the NATO forces were moving into Kosovo the Russians went ahead and siezed the airport. Wesley Clark ordered British General Sir Micheal Jackson to kick them out. Jackson replied "Fuck you, I'm not going to start World War 3" and refused. Is this the man you want to run the U.S.A? There is only one candidate who opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that was Howard Dean. Because they supported an illegal invasion of a country that presented no tangible threat to the U.S, because they bought into the lies, disinformation and fear-mongering that made that act of aggression possible, none of the other candidates deserve to be elected. The American people are still being duped by a compliant media into believing that there is a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, but a significant majority will evetually wake up, and then they will question who in the Democratic Party climbed on to the bandwagon and are therefore complicit in the killing, maiming and devastation. Hopefully then they will punish the pack and honour the reward the lone dissenter.

Let's not count Dean out quite yet. The General is certainly a fall back position but there are still lots of nitwits who really do believe Iraq was about oil and that Bush/Hitler is a trope which will sell. (You might like my now rather dated American Spectator piece, The Children's Hour. Which I would link to if David would get html enabled on thsese comments.) Dean simply lost it last night and, other than the 20 somethings he thought he was pumping up, made it clear he was entirely unfit to lead America. Hissy fits are not, as the soccer mums would say, apppropriate, for men who have an atomic football within arm's length. Various political wags have referred to Clark as Dean 2.0. Seems to fit. Sir Micheal had the measure of the man in Kosovo. It does not matter how liberal you are, judgement does matter. Looking forward to your reflections: you can read mine at www.jaycurrie.com.

While I'm not without my preference too I'm also equally interested in how the entire drama itself unfolds this year. How each party, indeed how the various factions *within* each party, deploys it's assets and engages it's constituencies. We can't vote in primaries and caucuses, we can't even really influence the vote, so our clamour toward one another as regards the virtues and vices of specific candidates is at best gratifyingly recreational. The USA is a profoundly more conservative country than is Canada. Virtually all of our small "c" as well as large "C" conservative politicians or candidates still verge on being too liberal for US politics. As for Canadian liberals or social democrats, well...I find it good to remember this every time I start finding myself getting distressed at US politics. There's nothing *I* can do about the choices *they* make except escalate my blood pressure.

http://www.campaigndesk.org/ is the website for the Columbia Journalism Review's new service. In their own words: "American democracy is built around election campaigns that voters see and hear mainly through the press. Thus is the quality of our democracy directly connected to the quality of the coverage of those campaigns. Columbia Journalism Review and others who work to improve that coverage by pointing out flaws and strengths have, until now, been at a disadvantage. Our analysis often came too late: after the voting public had already acted on the basis of what the press had told it. CJR's Campaign Desk offers a way around this problem. Using the power of the World Wide Web, The Campaign Desk attempts to get inside the news cycle and enrich campaign journalism in real time. Our goal is to straighten and deepen campaign coverage almost as it is being written and produced. The Desk is politically nonpartisan; its only biases are toward accuracy, fairness, and thoroughness. Its focus is not on what politicians say and do, but on how the press is presenting (or not presenting) the political story to the public. It will monitor not just news reporting, but also political analysis and commentary, assessing the accuracy of the facts behind the argument and the fairness of the framing. It will be a resource not only for conscientious journalists, but also for all citizens who want the best possible version of a free press at a time when it matters most. "

As one that votes in US elections I appreciate reading other folks' take on our political races. I found the comments on the differences between Canadian consevatives and US conservatives amusing but accurate. I also found the consternation at the difference in length of our election process and that of Canada strange. Citizens of the US are often accused of having a 60 second attention span, yet the one place where this is demonstrably not true, our election process, is where we get dinged. ;-) Thanks again for the different perspective.