President Clinton is in California. Sometimes, if I close my eyes I can almost forget he is not the President anymore. Almost. I hear he gave a rousing speech in Los Angeles, railing against the recall and urging Californians to vote against it. This week a number of prominent national Democrats are making their way to California to get the "party faithful" out and voting on October 7 in the hopes that the recall fails or else that Bustamante wins if the recall prevails. I wonder if that sort of thing works. I mean, is it possible that people who are otherwise disengaged - or perhaps just underengaged - can be swayed to vote a particular way just because they see the Governor with another politician they like? I guess it is...otherwise campaigns would not use the tactic. It just seems, I don't know, somehow implausible to me.

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I wonder when Wesley Clark is going to make his announcement. "They" say he is 90 percent certain to run. Part of me hopes he does and part of me hopes he doesn't. I don't want there to be such disunity in the Party that the candidates start attacking each other and basically write Bush's re-election campaign script for him. And I definitely think that if Clark stayed out, Dean would be our man and I think - I know - he can pull out a win. Dream scenario - they get together, Dean and Clark, and decide to run as a ticket and approach the primaries now, as a ticket. They can lock it up. I don't think it matters who is at the top of the ticket either. Either way, I am confident this is a winning strategy. I had long hoped, during the 2000 campaign, that Al Gore would take this approach...I thought it would be a good way to shore up his messaging and balance his negatives early enough that he would be at full strength for the entire length of the election season and come into the general election with a commanding lead and a decisive win.

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Rumor has it J-Lo and Ben broke up.