This is a followup to my more general report on the convention over at DailyKos. These are some of the things John Edwards said in his speech to us at the California State Democratic Convention today. I apologize, but it's not a transcript-- I'm not that good! There may be videos posted of the speeches later-- check the party's Convention page. He gave a very "meat-and-potatoes" speech, I thought. I liked his stances on all the issues, and he was very specific as to how to accomplish each goal. Read on...

2006 Longitudinal Study

In a post some months ago, I discussed the Democratic National Committee's finances and how they seemed to have changed under Howard Dean.  At that time, I compared two snapshots in time-- the months of December 2003, and December 2005 (as it turns out, the numbers I used were actually for the respective Novembers).

Well, as I threatened promised lo those many months ago, I have now gone back and looked at the Democratic National Committee's finances over the course of the entire year to date (and included the end of last year too). These come straight from the figures reported on the FEC's website.  Have a look at what I found.

The Cold, Hard Numbers

A few weeks ago, I spotted a worried post or two about a late-January Roll Call article on some of the blogs. This article asserted that some of the Democratic party's leaders had called Dean on the carpet about the state of the DNC's finances:

 "Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are privately bristling over Howard Dean's management of the Democratic National Committee and have made those sentiments clear after new fundraising numbers showed he has spent nearly all the committee's cash and has little left to support their efforts to gain seats this cycle.

Several well-informed Democratic sources said Congressional leaders were furious last week when they learned the DNC has just $5.5 million in the bank, compared to the Republican National Committee's $34 million..."

Some worried that Dean and the Democratic Party were in trouble. Others, like Kos, blasted the article as B.S.:

"The cowardly shots in the beltway press come from disaffected insider consultants who see their lucrative gigs in danger. Dean is out raising money directly for the state parties and finally investing in the sort of infrastructure that Republicans spent decades building.

If it was up to these DC insiders, Dean would hoarde (sic) tens of millions to dump into television later this year, just as the DNC has done in the past. And just like in the past, the DNC would parsel out its advertising contracts to all the various consultancies to spread the money around, they would all take their nice fact commissions, and they'd laugh all the way to the bank.."

So which is it?

Following the time-honored advice of "Deep Throat", I decided to follow the money. So I turned to the FEC reports. Read on for the scoop.

Here are some links to sites that tell more about Amy Klobuchar, who is running for Mark Dayton's Senate seat.

• As Hennepin County Attorney
  
•   '98 campaign site for same
  
• Fairly extensive MN Star-Tribune article about her, including that she is a "DFL-er" (Democratic Farmer-Labor Party), daughter of Jim Klobuchar, and more
  
• Current Senate campaign website: http://www.amyklobuchar.com
  
• Wikipedia entry about her
  
• Outraises (R) candidate (as of April 5), MyDD
  

It would appear that Mark Dayton, whose e-mailing list I used to be on, gave it to Amy, because a Klobuchar campaign announcement email appeared in my Inbox purely out of the blue today (May 6th).  Kind of looks like an endorsement to me... anybody know if Wetterling also received his list?

Contents of her email to me are below the fold.

So sails the raven, on long black wings, o'er the stony hills of my dwelling town, blithely as the days when mastodons walked them, and blithely on will it sail, for long after this nation of mine has passed its mayfly existence long gone.

For all the nations are as mayflies to the race of ravens, ay, even the great ones, Kush and Persia, Egypt and Assyria and Rome have risen in their day and then fallen; the sun has set on the British Empire, and now, I fear, the wings of this my own dear nation do shew their tatters.

I received through the "grapevine" notice that DrivingVotes.org was looking for people to come up to the Sacramento DNC Caucus on January 22 and blog the proceedings.  It sounded like a good deal, so I signed on.

Here is my diary, in the truest sense of the word, on what I saw that day.