why it's not sexist to criticize palin's wardrobe

If people were making fun of Gov. Sarah Palin's wardrobe choices, then The View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck might have had a point when she was out stumping for Palin and her running mate, John McCain, but instead her attacks fell flat as she called criticisms of Palin's shopping spree "deliberately sexist."

Sorry, Elisabeth, but you're just flat out wrong on this one.

As we explained last week, the RNC spent $150,000 on a designer wardrobe for Palin's campaign appearances. This is relevant because Palin is attempting to appeal to Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber while painting the Democrats out to be the ones shopping at Neiman's while sipping their lattes. She can't have it both ways.

And there is no double standard here. First of all, the Obamas shop on a budget, and much ado has been made about the fact that Michelle Obama shops at H&M instead of pricy boutiques or department stores. Secondly, Democrats have come under fire for similar hypocrisy as Palin's. For instance, John Edwards' message of "Two Americas" fell flat after it was revealed that he received a $400 haircut.

Edwards is a man. The right endlessly criticized him for trying to appeal to blue-collar voters and leading an elite lifestyle. Now Hasselbeck and her ilk are going to have to suck it up when the Ferragamo is on the other foot.

the sarah palin show

We all shared a laugh at Tina Fey's deadringer impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, because Fey mocked some of the obvious holes in Palin's candidacy.

But will Middle America overlook these holes, among them zero foreign policy experience? Are they more interested in her family life than her politics, and if so will that help her or hurt her in the long run?

Americans have certainly tuned in to the Sarah Palin show, and as long as it continues the public will continue to eat it up.

The past eight years have been riddled with war and scandal, but Palin's life on display translates into a more understandable narrative that is more likely to resonate with the public. Sure, the majority of people have turned on the president and believe we should end the war in Iraq, but I'm willing to bet that a majority could also recite details on Britney Spears' rocky road to recovery and Lindsay Lohan's sexual orientation. Those are the kinds of stories that get readers and viewers, and we're learning that it doesn't really matter if we're stalking celubtantes or politicians through the media's omniscient eye, we still salivate over every luscious detail.

In the same way that the English relish in royal scandals, Americans love to dissect the personal lives of their own ruling class. But there's a difference in the Palin narrative when compared to say, the Clintons or John Edwards. While a sex scandal could potentially end a politician's career, family drama could prove to propel it.

While some in the blogosphere have dismissed Palin, Middle America has embraced her as one of their own. She's a Westerner, she's folksy and gutsy, sure, but as Eileen Smith explains at Poll Dancing, there's more to it than that: she's normal.

They raise their kids, go to work, go to church and do the little things that so often don’t garner media attention, but keep much of America stable and functioning. They feel slighted by a left-wing that has (fairly or unfairly) become the party of elites that scoff at IHOP patrons and can’t step inside Wal-Mart without trepidation (the selection of Joe “I have a much higher IQ than you” Biden doesn’t help). And Palin is the perfect stand-in for their ambitions: someone who has five kids, ran a city, now runs a state and, hell, hunts moose in her free time. She embodies the overlooked potential of normal people.

I've spoken with several Texans who feel that Sarah Palin is "one of us." They don't necessarily have to have or have had a pregnant teenager in order to empathise with her. They don't have to have a son going off to war in order to know how that must feel. They don't have to have raised a child with special needs to understand and appreciate how tough of a challenge it is. But they have done it, or their sister has done it, or their neighbor has done it. These are challenges that real Americans face on a daily basis. Middle America is not judging Palin for her family woes, they're rewarding her for them. They're defending her against media slights, and in some cases, pledging to give her their vote.

In a commentary for CNN today, Ed Rollins describes the situation perfectly:

What the country wants to know is do these candidates understand what's going on in their lives and in their neighbors' lives, and are they willing to try and fix it.

They want to get our soldiers home from Iraq as quickly as possible and leave that country as stable as it can be without us being there for another decade. They want someone who understands ordinary Americans are hurting and will try to find solutions to the economic mess we are in.

The leading "mainstream media" including ABC's condescending Charlie Gibson and The New York Times' Maureen Dowd have raced "North to Alaska" to find out what makes this woman tick. But alas, they show again and again that they just don't get it.

Nobody cares if Palin knows the Bush doctrine. I defy anyone to tell you what the Bush-Cheney strategy has been over the last seven years (other than getting re-elected) or what doctrine has been practiced by this "gang that can't shoot straight." And who cares? They are gone in 126 days.

What the media doesn't get is that Palin is one of us. She got to the top of the heap because she could relate to ordinary people, because she is ordinary people and through extraordinary efforts made it.

An unnamed Dallas area professional woman told me that she would be more likely to vote Republican with the addition of Palin to the ticket. Why? "She gets it." Obama and the Democrats are once again relegated to the elite class, and while McCain may be aloof, he is experienced and he can "train Sarah Palin for the job." The source went on to say that politicians usually lie or are corrupt, so if you can actually trust them and know that they understand your needs, specific policy becomes less important.

The woman said she had voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, but is usually Republican-leaning. So we have to realize that the Palin pick may not be drawing away potential Obama voters in droves, but it's certainly inspiring previously disenchanted Republicans to make plans to support their party this time.

Clinton is reminding her voters why it's so important for them to choose Obama, but many women voters did not choose Clinton in the primary or do not have loyalty to her and are beyond her grasp. Clinton is taking the right track, though, and should continue to pound out the differences between potential Obama and McCain administrations, to really highlight it for anyone on the edge. Joe Biden needs to step up his game, as well, because he has hardly gotten half of the coverage that Palin has gotten since their respective VP announcements.

Polls show that McCain is suddenly leading the race among white women, though. This bounce can only be contributed to Palin's addition to his ticket. While black women (along with the vast majority of black voters in general) are pretty much locked up for Obama, white women have become a voting block to be reckoned with, and presently McCain holds the advantage.

It's true that the Palin bounce could be temporary, but Democrats would do well not to underestimate it.

[This post is part two of our Sarah Palin series. Be sure to read part one, The Palin Pick.]

Another Angry Democrat

The "angry" Edwards theme has really picked up steam this week heading into the Iowa caucuses. Apparently the beltway punditry is trying to lighten their holiday workload by recycling old editorials from the Howard Dean campaign.

You remember the warnings about Howard Dean? Disregarding everything we knew about his decade as Vermont's governor, the media painted him as angry, alienating, and gaffe-prone. Talking heads predicted that a country run by such a volatile leader would surely result in endless gridlock and political meltdown.

When Dean ended up chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, the GOP revved up the spin machine into high gear. They gleefully reported his fundraising efforts were lagging, and forecast his imminent impeachment.

....the good doctor has worked with such zeal alienating voters and contributors that Republicans can only sit back and enjoy. The Democrats would be crazy to keep him, but they may prefer to let him and the DNC become irrelevant rather than suffer the public-relations crisis of a party purge.

Funny thing with Dean, though. His 50-state strategy emphasizing reform helped re-energize the Democratic base. Instead of a tenure marked by controversy and contention, his leadership has led to a remarkably unified and successful Democratic Party, which has set records for fundraising. The results of the 2006 election are hard to argue with. So maybe, just maybe, all that hotair about Gov. Dean being a hothead was a bit overblown, eh?

So with that in mind, Stuart Rothenberg's recent editorial evokes a little anger and a lot of deja vu. Rothenberg derides an "angry" John Edwards as divisive, and predicts an Edwards presidency would incite warfare between the middle class and the working class.

With all due respect, Stuart, you really need to get out more. White collar workers are every bit as much at risk in today's economy as blue collar, as companies outsource more and more high tech jobs and cut back on pensions and health care to squeeze profits. And while three dollar gasoline leaves the working poor choosing between transportation and utilities, in the tony suburbs, government's failure to take even the smallest baby steps in securing energy independence or curbing greenhouses gases is seen as a threat to the future of our children. The soccer moms and the waitress moms are on the same page on more issues that one might think.

Recent articles on Edwards even refer to his campaign theme as strident, a slap also frequently taken at Hillary Clinton, but one which still makes those of us old enough to remember Geraldine Ferraro grit our teeth. It behooves us to remember that this is the same media that in 2000 endorsed a Texas governor, who couldn't put together a coherent sentence on the campaign trail that wasn't prescripted, because his frat boy antics and pet names made him more fun on the campaign bus. Then they defended all his subsequent bone-headed policies by interpreting ideological stubbornness as leadership, saying "well, at least you know where he stands."

NTL hasn't endorsed any presidential candidate and doesn't plan to do so. Truth is, like much of the Democratic electorate, we're pretty happy with our choices and looking forward to the end of the primary season when the real debate begins. In the meantime, though, we call foul on any attempt to make personalities (or race, gender or religion) the central issue in this election. To do so is to do the GOP's dirty work for them. And frankly, we think the American people are smarter than that.

For more, see Eye on Williamson's "It's Not the Polarization, It's the Lack of Choice that Keeps Voters at Home" and David Sirota's "Gauging the Fear Inside the Palace Walls."

Bipartisanship Is Not the Answer

As John Edwards surging poll numbers are raising the exciting prospect that the Democratic presidential nomination might become a horse race, Edwards is coming under increasing attack from the press questioning whether his populist stance and increasingly tough anti-corporate rhetoric are seen as polarizing.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Edwards said he was trying to ease fears about his electability by arguing that his sharply populist message is not polarizing. "It's not divisive at all," he said, "it's uniting."

Wait, wasn't it just a few months ago that Hillary Clinton was being decried as unelectable she was seen as too divisive? But she's the anti-populist. That's right, she's polarizing because she's a woman. Or a Clinton, take your pick. And Obama is guilty as well, even though he's running on a platform to transcend partisanship. But he's still divisive because he's black.

Listening to all the pundits ratchet up the heat on the Democrats to play nice, I keep coming back to Digby's post on the topic last winter, shortly after the Democrats regained congress:

As regular readers know, I've been pondering this infuriating fixation on bipartisanship and moderation for the last couple of weeks and watching aghast as the press does the wingnuts' bidding, setting up the Dems as failing to fulfill their promise to the American people that they would be moderate and bipartisan if they won the election. This was simply not on the agenda during the election, other than that the House Democrats would restore some sort of fairness to the rules and pass anti-corruption legislation. In fact, the entire election was about the Democrats taking power to provide some needed checks and balance on the Republicans.

Oddly, however, in the last couple of weeks, the media has been obsessing that the election reflected a desire among the American people for the congress to stop fighting and work together, which makes no sense. The Republican congress didn't fight --- the Democrats just caterwauled ineffectually from the sidelines, while the Republicans did what they wanted. There was no gridlock, they passed virtually every piece of legislation they wanted and the congress was perfectly in sync with the president. If comity was what people were concerned about they obviously would have kept undivided government.

The American people voted for the Democrats because they wanted them to stop the Republican juggernaut.

The public is rightfully upset with Congress over their failure to stop Bush's agenda in 2007. But the answer is to play hardball while strategizing for a larger majority in the next election, not to find more ways to compromise. Previous calls from the GOP for moderation merely provided the political cover to stay the course, and the result has been a legislative agenda vastly out of sync with the views of its electorate on every key policy issue: the war, fiscal responsibility, healthcare, energy.

And as for presidential candidates and "divisiveness," the Republican strategy since the days of Lee Atwater has been to pit one segment of the electorate against the other. Now that legacy is playing out in prime time as the Republicans attack one another over immigration (anti-Hispanic), terrorism (anti-Muslim), and religious bona fides (anti-Mormon). Does anyone think that electing any of the current Republican presidential candidates will result in a less contentious executive-legislative interface than any of the Democrats mentioned above?

If the media wants to make this an issue for the campaign, they at least need to apply the standard evenly. Try googling the names of any of the candidates + "divisive" and see which party's candidates have the highest hits.

vote in the texas eprimary!

Even though it seems like we'll be deciding our next president any day now considering the number of debates and the near-rabid attention the media is giving the race, the first votes won't be cast in the Democratic Primary until early next year.

Since more and more states are having earlier primaries and the de facto candidate is usually crowned before we ever hit the voting booth, the Texas Democratic Party is letting Texas Democrats pick their candidate now through an online poll: the TDP ePrimary poll.

Sure, it's unofficial and unscientific. But why not lend your favorite national ticket Democrat some support? It will be an informal sampling of the current mood of Texas Democrats, and who they may decide to support in the primary. But it won't work without enough people taking a couple of minutes to cast their vote.

Each candidate (excluding Obama, whose team instead offers a news widget) gives a personal message to Texas Democrats. Dennis Kucinich's message even comes in the form of a YouTube video.

Here are some excerpts:

"It is clear that Texans are ready for change, and I have the experience to bring about change in Washington. I am proud to have the support of elected officials and community leaders across Texas -- including Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Congressmen Henry Cuellar and Ruben Hinojosa -- and I am asking for your help and support."
- Hillary Clinton


"It’s been an honor to get to know so many great Texas Democrats during this campaign and in my time as Governor of New Mexico. You know what I’ve done and where I stand. When I’m President, we’re going to get all of our troops out of Iraq—all of them."
- Bill Richardson


"In Texas and across the country, we face a crucial choice -- whether to do what America has always done in times like these – change direction and move boldly into the future or wander in the same stale direction we have traveled in our recent past."
-John Edwards

You can vote in the TDP ePrimary poll through Friday, Sept. 7. Daily tallies will be posted beginning Sept. 4.

the debate of the future

At last night's CNN/YouTube debate among the Democratic candidates, a full slate of primary contenders were vying for your vote, but in the end, the format won.

Voters recorded videos of themselves and submitted them to YouTube. CNN then picked the cream of the crop and presented the best questions to the assembled candidates.

Political debates that incorporate the public are undoubtedly the way of the future. After the debate ended, moderator Anderson Cooper said on CNN that he couldn't imagine future political debates that did not follow a similar format.

But who among the candidates really shone last night? Who stood out? Who earned some votes? Reaction was mixed.

According to Easter Lemming Liberal News, four different panels chose three different winners. After the debate ended, the CNN broadcasters said that New Hampshire voters were most impressed with Barack Obama, while Nevada voters were equally impressed with Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson.

Mike Gravel appeared incredibly feisty and ready for a fight, but unfortunately CNN only allotted him four minutes and ten seconds, as opposed to Barack Obama who talked for more than fifteen minutes, even out-talking host Anderson Cooper. Gravel even used some of his time to comment on that sad state of affairs. He spent the rest of the time calling the other candidates the advocates for mainstream Washington and keeping things at the status quo.

John Edwards, often polling at third behind Clinton and Obama in surveys of potential voters, may have hit a speed bump when asked about gay marriage. He said that his wife Elizabeth supports gay marriage, but that he does not. When pressed, he admitted that he supported civil unions and that he was still, with much of America, "on a journey."

Some of the submitted questions were hard-hitting and probably would never have been asked in a traditional debate. For instance, one voter asked for a response to critics that said Hillary Clinton was not feminine enough and that Barack Obama was not black enough. Edwards said that if anyone considered not voting for Clinton or Obama based on gender or race, he did not want their vote either.

(Unfortunately, though, Edwards brought gender to the forefront again later when asked to say one good thing and one bad thing about Hillary, and he said he didn't like her jacket. It was all in good fun, but isn't that what we're trying to get away from?)

When Clinton was asked whether or not she would be taken seriously abroad, she pointed to female foreign leaders in Germany, Chile, and various other countries. She also said that she couldn't see a more fitting thing to have a woman American president addressing the treatment of women in Muslim countries.

Clinton was also asked about the dynasty problem (that is, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton). If she were elected and re-elected, the Bushes and the Clintons would have controlled the American presidency for 28 years. The senator responded humorously, saying that Bush shouldn't have been elected in 2000 and that she was under the impression that a different person had won.

Humor was prevalent throughout the debate. One submitted video featured a talking snowman asking about global warming. Another asked the candidates if their feelings were hurt by the attention that the media gives to Al Gore. Bill Richardson said he liked all of the candidates and thought each of them would make a good vice president.

If you missed the debate, you can read the transcripts or watch the videos online. See where your favorite candidate stands on important issues like global warming, No Child Left Behind, national health insurance, and the war in Iraq. If you want to watch specific issues discussed, YouTube has single videos of each particular question.

CNN and YouTube will continue in this vein of technology-age debates on September 17, when the Republican candidates take the stage and field questions from voters.

EDIT: CNN website users that participated in the debate scorecard said that Hillary Clinton won the debate (46% voted for her, while Obama garnered 28% of the nearly 7,000 votes). The poll also shows that viewers thought Joe Biden knew most about the issues, that Barack Obama's campaign would get the biggest boost, that John Edwards had the best singular answer to a user-generated question, and that Bill Richardson showed the most disappointing performance.

A Race to the Bottom

Participants in Women’s Legislative Days, held in Austin in January, were introduced to a publication entitled "Texas on the Brink: How Texas Ranks Among the 50 States," issued by Senator Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso.

Several Texas blogs, including TexasKaos and the Houston Chronicle blog, have cited statistics from the report, but these facts bear repeating because they quantify our state’s race for the bottom.

Here are just a few statistics from the report:

Texas ranks 50th in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma

Texas SAT scores rank 47th

Texas ranks 44th in the percentage of women living above the poverty level

Texas is 1st in the number of job discrimination lawsuits

Texas is 5th in teenage birth rate

Texas ranks first in the percentage of uninsured children and adults

Texas ranks 44th in the percentage of eligible voters who vote

The most disturbing statistic from the report, however, is this: 45% of families in Texas earn poverty-level wages. Thus, we have the dubious distinction of being 2nd in the nation in income inequality between rich and poor.

When John Edwards talks about two Americas—one for the rich, another for the poor—Texas illustrates his point. That’s surely nothing to brag about.

Supreme Court Rules on Late Term Abortion

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court today voted to uphold the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003" which bans a procedure used to terminate pregnancies after the first trimester. The procedure in question, intact dilation and extraction, represents about 2,200 abortion procedures performed yearly.

So much of this debate is in the abstract. Texas Kaos has an affecting story about a woman who had the procedure after learning her baby had spina bifida. Read this story and then ask yourself whether you want the government making this choice instead of leaving it to a patient and her doctor.

Here is a sampling of responses to the court's decision:

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- a Judiciary Committee member who opposed confirming Roberts and Alito -- said she's "truly shocked" at "a major strike against woman's right to choose. ... This decision clearly demonstrates the real impact on privacy rights that has occurred through President Bush's efforts to nominate judges whose views are out of the mainstream of American legal thought."

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, called it "the height of arrogance. The five Justices who voted to ban this procedure must believe that having `juris doctor' degrees entitles them to instruct the nation's medical professionals on patient care.

Rudy Giuliani issued a statement: "The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion. I agree with it." But in 2000, Giuliani said he agreed with President Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1997, saying then -- in response to a question about whether if he, as a senator, would have "vote[d] with the president or against the president" -- that he would have "vote[d] to preserve the option for women."

Senator Barack Obama: I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.

John Edwards: "This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake -- starting with, as the court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose."

Amy Hagstrom Miller, board chairman of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers: "There is definitely a concern that this ruling could come down and really affect procedures done as early as 12 weeks. The providers want to know that what we do is okay. We are the kind of people that comply with laws."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "According to the expert testimony … introduced, the safety advantages of intact D&E are marked for women with certain medical conditions, for example, uterine scarring, bleeding disorders, heart disease, or compromised immune systems......The majority's decision "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition: "Clearly, this decision paves the way for the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade. Our hope is that the Department of Justice will move aggressively to ensure the bipartisan banning of this barbaric procedure is immediately enforced. "

Senator Sam Brownback: “I applaud the Court for finding that the constitution ‘expresses respect for the dignity of human life,’ and hope that this decision signals the Court’s willingness to revisit and reverse Roe v. Wade.”

coulter's words were indefensible

Last Saturday, we told you about conservative author and speaker Ann Coulter using a gay slur to describe Democratic candidate John Edwards.

Coulter has taken a lot of flack for her comments, but an editorial in the most recent issue of Lewisville-based newspaper the News-Connection almost treats Coulter's hate speech as if it were acceptable:

Nevertheless, she has her defenders who say that liberal Democrats use hate speech all the time when referring to the president, the vice-president or others with whom they disagree.

Case in point: liberal commentator Bill Maher’s recent statement that if Vice-President Dick Cheney was dead, more people would live.

That’s pretty close to saying he wishes Cheney would die, otherwise, there’d be no point in making the statement. Consequently, if we are to make a comparison of the two comments, it would be fair to say that wishing the vice president would die is much worse than calling a candidate a name that equates with words like, wuss, wimp or sissy.

First of all, Bill Maher is a liberal comedian. He's made many references that were detrimental to Democrats, as well, and most likely considers himself an independent voter, but there's no denying he's on the left side of the political spectrum. Regardless, his comment was said in the context of an HBO show that people watch expecting to see political comedy. Maher may have crossed the line, but what does that have to do with Ann Coulter calling someone a faggot? Absolutely nothing.

When Ann Coulter made her comment, on the other hand, she was at a conference with the Republican elite, including 2008 presidential candidates. Coulter is not seen by the Republican community as a comedian: she was invited to appear as the keynote speaker for a dinner hosted by the Denton County Republican Party, where she appeared alongside Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Coulter defended her comments in the same way that the News-Connection did, according to McBlogger:

"'Faggot isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays," Coulter said on "Hannity and Colmes" Monday night. "It's a schoolyard taunt meaning 'wuss,' and unless you're telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to a gay person."

Coulter and the News-Connection should take note: the word "faggot" is extremely offensive to gays and lesbians, and there is no excuse for using it. Using a fallacious argument like, "But look at what so-and-so said, and he's a liberal" does not excuse hate speech.

Even Coulter's explanation of her comments is offensive... using a stigmatized word like "faggot," which obviously refers to homosexuals, and saying that it means "wuss" is demeaning, let alone an invented excuse for Coulter's outrageous statement.

NTL respectfully commends Republican candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani for condemning Ann Coulter's comments and labeling them "wildly inappropriate," instead of making excuses for them likes others have done.

And via Pink Dome, you know it's bad when even ultra-conservative blogger Michelle Malkin finds your comments "an intentionally-tossed verbal grenade," "garbage," and worries that children that attended the event could end up "spewing... epithets."

coulter uses gay slur to describe john edwards

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter had a few choice words to describe Democrat John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina and currently a second-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, at a conference hosted by the American Conservative Union.

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

By the rehab reference, Coulter refers to actor Isaiah Washington, who entered rehab after using the gay slur about "Grey's Anatomy" co-star T.R. Knight (once on the set of the series, and a second time while defending himself at the Golden Globes). Knight later said he was in fact gay.

Edwards' campaign manager David Bonior, in an email to supporters, said that Coulter's comments about Edwards, a married man, were "outrageous" and "no accident." He advocates using "one of the worst moments in American politics" to raise $100,000 for the Edwards campaign.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement:

“There is no place in political discourse for this kind of hate-filled and bigoted comments. While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on the issues, we should all be able to agree that this kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds. The American people want a serious, thoughtful debate of the issues. Republicans–including the Republican presidential candidates who shared the podium with Ann Coulter today–should denounce her hateful remarks.”

You can see the video for yourself at Think Progress.

john edwards in dallas tomorrow

John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina and the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the 2004 election (and possible presidential contender in 2008), will be visiting Dallas tomorrow evening for a signing in promotion of his new picture book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

When: Friday, December 1 at 7 p.m.
Where: Borders, 10720 Preston Rd., Dallas