Clearly, the GOP wants a new messenger to deliver an old message and that was evident last night. For example, take this passage from Jindal’s speech:

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you – the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.

Huh? Empowering you? Who is you? Are ‘you’ one of the 600,000 people who lost their job last month? Are ‘you’ one of the 7.6% of Americans who are out of work? Are ‘you’ able to suck it up and just deal? No, ‘you’ are probably one of the 95% of Americans who will receive a tax cut from the stimulus legislation and ‘you’ are looking to the President and his party to help lift this country out of the ruins of this crushing economic meltdown. These smears on Democrats and false statements from GOP leaders don’t help the GOP move their agenda or their message down the road. They lose credibility because they are tone-deaf. They don’t need a smiley new messenger, they need to re-tool their agenda and present solutions.

I’m not sure how this plays in middle-America, but from where I sit, the speech fell flat. Considering Jindal has already visited Iowa and is expected to seek the GOP nomination in 2012 – this was a failure to launch.

Jason Linkins from the Huffington Post made a perfect comparison and one that I made to my fellow speech watchers during Jindal’s performance. Jason writes:

If it wasn’t such a dead-on comparison it would be catty to say out loud…but there’s no denying it: Bobby Jindal was totally channeling Kenneth The Page from NBC’s 30 Rock tonight. (With maybe a touch of “Moviefone guy.”)

Seriously, it’s uncanny. Close your eyes and see if you can detect any specific difference between Jindal’s opening paragraphs…

…and this special web-extra from 30 Rock, featuring Kenneth.

John McCain – September 4, 2008

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) has taken himself out of the running to be Barack Obama’s running mate. This comes as a surprise to many DC-types who have longed surmised that Senator Webb would be an effective number two on the Democratic ticket.

This now moves Governor Tim Kaine (also of Virginia) into the top spot in the Matthew J. Slutsky veepstakes.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder reports that Webb was a finalist on Senator Obama’s short list but refused to participate in the process further when he was asked to submit to a background check.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournaments require a team to win six games over several weeks. The Democratic National Committee requires a candidate to win 2,025 delegates over a period of many months. In basketball, there is no set number of points a team must score, they simply must score more than their opponent. In the Democratic nominating contest, however, until a candidate gets to the magic number, the game must go on. This is the current situation: barring an unforeseen political gaffe of epic proportions, a scandal, or a tremendous moment of political brilliance, neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton is likely to secure the requisite number of delegates through the remaining nominating contests, creating a March Madness just for the Democrats.

Unlike the basketball March Madness, the political March Madness has no controlling body, like the NCAA, that sets clear rules and enforces them to run an efficient tournament. The Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee effectively assured that Republican legislatures in states like Florida could wreak havoc on the legitimacy of the Democratic process. So instead of having selected a nominee with a finite number of contests left to decide the race, the Democrats are now embroiled in an intra-party squabble over which of a half a dozen metrics should be used to decide when the game is over. And instead of the DNC deciding, each team is putting forth their best argument for why the game should end or continue.

Keep reading for more.

The Clinton campaign, from the grassroots volunteer to the spouse of the candidate, argue that keeping the contest going is not only good for the party, but will be good for the eventual nominee. President Clinton has advised Democrats calling for an end to the campaign to “chill out,” to acknowledge that neither Democrat is a lock to win the general election, and to continue to support this race with no end. Not only is President Clinton’s contention empirically untrue in politics – that rough, drawn out primaries are good for the general election candidate – it is empirically untrue in sports. No fan would argue that her team should have to play triple overtime games to get to the finals, while her team’s eventual opponent should be allowed to end games in the third quarter. Scrimmages of the best offense versus the best defense might help a team get stronger, but full-contact games, played day after day, will inevitably grind down a starting roster. More to the point, the longer a game a team has to play, the more game tape their opponents get, and the more chances their opponents will have to identify their weaknesses and neutralize their strengths.

For Clinton’s argument to be true, the excitement generated by the Democratic primaries would need to have the capacity to be bottled by the eventual nominee and re-used in the general election. The problem is that the Clinton campaign is not using a positive, empowering message to drive up their supporters. Instead, they are relying on a mix of “us versus them” – the idea that it is the Obama campaign and his supporters, not the requisite delegate math and the DNC rules, that is calling for a close to the contest – while seeding doubt and mistrust among lower income white voters that Obama is just another candidate too unfamiliar to be trusted. Both of these streams of rhetoric will turn voters out to vote in primaries, but neither will help Obama if he is the eventual nominee. Excitement in a party’s primary is good for that party in the general only if that excitement hasn’t turned into visceral infighting that will cause the losing side to flee the party or stay home on election day. For proof of these negative effects, look no further than recent polls showing the distrust between Obama and Clinton supporters. More Democratic voters than at any time in the contest are ready to support McCain over the other Democratic candidate in a general election.

After each round of March Madness basketball games, the winning teams get several days off before their next performance. Even die hard fans would insist that their beloved teams needed time to heal and rest before their next contest. In the same vein, the Clinton campaign should think long and hard about the prospects of stretching the primary fight all the way to the end of August. The Democratic nominee this year will need extra time to appease the other side’s base supporters, to mend the rifts inside the party before November. The remaining states on the nominating schedule are not necessarily the states in which a Democratic candidate would choose to spend time towards winning the general election.

The Clinton campaign has changed its sights to a strategy based on stretching out the race until Obama makes some horrendous gaffe or enough blood is drawn from him that he chooses to relent rather than face more attacks. It’s disguised as an interest in “counting every vote” and “making sure Obama is tough enough to face the vast right-wing conspiracy.” This strategy is effective because Obama can’t score enough points to win the game without some outside intervention. There is no game clock at this point, until a sufficient number of superdelegates decide that they’ve seen enough. At some point, the Clintons’ argument about making Obama stronger has to give way to giving Obama some time to rest, to reflect on lessons learned, and to get ready for the general election. At some point, responsible leaders of the Democratic Party have to say that enough time has lapsed, enough shots have been taken, and that it’s clear a winner has emerged. The longer they wait, the greater the risk that for wont of the greatest scrimmage ever played, the championship game was lost.

Associated Press reports:

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose popularity plummeted after two hurricanes devastated Louisiana during her term, announced Tuesday that she will not seek re-election.

Blanco has been burdened by the sluggish pace of recovery and by pressure within the Democratic Party, but she said she wanted to push through important initiatives without having to worry about political considerations.

“I am doing this so we can work without interference from election year politics,” she said in a televised appearance from the governor’s mansion Tuesday evening.

She had already broken the news in phone calls to legislative leaders, a meeting with her Cabinet secretaries and in a letter to her staff.

The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Bill as consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be led by a woman one day. “Stay tuned,” she said.

The Sunday Times quotes some Democratic insiders, including members of the Clinton team saying that she may forgo a White House bid and decide instead to become a member of the Senate leadership. This after Steve Clemons wrote much the same thing just a month ago.

Friends of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate.

…

“I would not be surprised if she were to decide that the best contribution she can make to her country is to forget about being president and become a consensus-maker in the Senate,” said a leading Democratic party insider. “She believes there is no trust between the two political sides and that we can’t function as a democracy without it.”

Only Sen. Clinton knows what Sen. Clinton will decide to do. In November, she’ll have a big decision to make: Play it safe or go for the gold? Either way, she’s going to be re-elected to the U.S. Senate this fall and she will be well positioned, both financially and in terms of her rock-star status, to make a solid run for the Democratic nomination in ‘08. Stay tuned.

From Democratic Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (MI-14):

“Losing a campaign is tough. But for one who has carried the banner of the Democratic Party for thirty years, has been awarded the party’s nomination to the Senate three times, and has been chosen to fill a Presidential ticket, now it is time to abide the wishes of his electorate and show the same support that the party has shown him over the full course of his career. Senator Lieberman should reject the bitterness of losing and the politics of division and bring the party together for November.

When primaries are over and Democrats in a state have made their choice, all Democratic elected officials, everywhere, have an obligation to coalesce around that choice. Now, the choice is Senator Lieberman’s: will he do the right thing and respect the choice of his party or tarnish a respected career in public service?”

Couldn’t have said it better myself…

Today the Democractic Party launched a new project: 100 Actions, a website dedicated to electing Democrats in 2006 through an action that you can take every day.

Each day, a new action will appear that will help make that happen. Some actions may be as simple as writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Others may be things like volunteering for a campaign, organizing people for an event, or mailing postcards with the Democratic agenda printed on them. Whatever the action, meaningful activism through Election Day helps Democrats in every race in the country — from school board to U.S. Senate.

Today’s action is simple. Volunteer. We’ll be closely following this site and other tools that you can use as we approach the all-important November elections.

-Michael Dukakis, January 20th, 2006

Former presidential candidate and professor extraordinaire, Michael Dukakis, gives his strategy for Democrats leading-up to the 2006 elections.