Panhandle Slim…

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Okay, this is really cool.

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This is the main reason I like Hillary Clinton. Obama eroded the state parties and starved the outside progressive groups of cash (I’m convinced it was to destroy effective opposition to his Grand Bargain) and I’m absolutely thrilled Clinton wants to build them up again:

CONCORD, N.H. — Hillary Clinton had a message to relay in private meetings with state and local Democrats during her highly-choreographed swings through Iowa and New Hampshire this month: let me help you.
The implication? She’ll fix the party infrastructure that withered under President Barack Obama.

The Democratic front-runner has stressed the importance of bolstering — and in the case of Iowa, rebuilding — the state parties from the ground up, as they received scant national attention since 2008. Some Democrats even pin the blame on the president himself.

Clinton’s pitch is especially resonant in Iowa, where her team is already encouraging rural Democrats to run for their school boards and county commissions. It’s not just a standard exercise in party-building: Team Clinton is betting that the organizing and goodwill generated by this outreach will pay dividends when it comes time to flip the switch on her own caucus and primary machines.

“What typically happens is when a president comes in, the national [party] committee becomes a presidential re-elect, and that hollows out the local parties,” says former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who ran for president in 2004. The result, as outlined in the party’s February midterm autopsy report, has been sweeping losses for Democrats at every level during the Obama era, from statehouses to the U.S. House and Senate.

It was more than that, though. Obama was famous for his disinterest in helping down-ticket races, something county and state parties depend on.

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Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked classified government surveillance information, has some words for presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in an Al Jazeera interview airing Friday. Both 2016 front-runners have been critical of Snowden and his disclosures, but in the interview Snowden takes a more pointed jab at Clinton’s handling of her… Continue Reading »

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I love this song! Wilco:

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Patty Griffin:

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Jason Isbell:

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Panhandle Slim…

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