Peter Blake weighs in on the Western Primary (Caucuses) in his column in today's Rocky Mountain News [December 7, 2005, "Blake: Dems turn eyes to West"]. He writes, "It's a long shot, but Colorado could hold its 2008 presidential caucus or primary in January, months earlier than usual.
Many national Democrats are eager to end the stranglehold that New Hampshire and Iowa have had on the early presidential action because they consider the electorates in those two states to be insufficiently diverse. The Democratic National Committee appointed a 40-member commission to study the primary calendar last spring. Nobody paid much attention to it until recently, when Iowans and New Hampshirites discovered they might have to share national attention - not to mention heavy rental-car, hotel-room and television-advertising revenue - with other states. The primary commission, which meets in Washington this weekend, is considering a plan that would add one Western and one Southern state to the January calendar. The four Western states under consideration are Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada as well as Colorado. But Mike Stratton, a Colorado political strategist who's on the commission, conceded Nevada is the likely choice."
Hotline On Call: "Ex-NC Sen. John Edwards is in talks to help a powerful labor union launch a nationwide campaign to organize hotel workers, labor sources tell The Hotline. UniteHere represents more than 440,000 active hotel workers, retail employees, laundry workers, restaurant, food service and gaming employees. Its officers are fans of Edwards. Before it merged with the hotel union HERE in 2003, UNITE, a textiles union, endorsed him for the Democratic presidential nomination. Unions' economic might has waned, but they remain influential in the Democratic Party. Labor dues still fund most of the Democratic Party's GOTV efforts and its field campaigns. Many Dem politicians and office-seekers and the party's leading lights often appear at union events and issue press releases promoting labor rights. Some souls even join the occasional picket line. But Edwards, who has kept an unusually active profile for a former Senator, is showing labor leaders that he'll back up his own pro-labor words with meaningful action. Earlier this year, UniteHere left the AFL-CIO to help found a dissident umbrella group, the Change To Win coalition. 55 percent of UniteHere's budget is slated for organizing, and the union now has campaigns underway at Cintas, Hilton and several gaming companies. Most of the major casinos on the Las Vegas strip are UniteHere shops. Neither UniteHere nor Edwards' spokesperson would confirm that he plans to play an official role in a new organizing campaign." Thanks to Left in the West for the link.
Juan Cole: "Speaking in San Antonio on Monday, Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean said that the US cannot win in Iraq. The link just given, to WOAI, allows you to listen to the interview. He called for bringing the national guards home from Iraq immediately."
TalkLeft: "The New York Times reports that the White House and Sen. John Mcain are nearing a compromise on the torture amendment. The White House is said to be ready to yield to McCain on his insistence that the CIA not be exempted from the Amendment. But, McCain is willing to consider the inclusion of a standard that limits liability of CIA officers."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
6:48:13 AM 
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