[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Dennis Kucinich

http://www.dennis4president.com/home/

[Note: The Kucinich campaign was unable to provide a speech transcript from Congressman Kucinich for this series. A campaign official told me that Kucinich always speaks "extemporaneously" without notes, therefore they had no speeches available. I decided to relax the rules to allow their campaign to present me with something from Kucinich, so I am reprinting a position paper from the Kucinich website here instead of a speech. If you follow the link above and click on "Audio/Video" there are Kucinich speeches available for viewing or listening to on their campaign website.]

Strength Through Peace

Dennis Kucinich is the only Democrat running for President who has voted against authorizing the war in Iraq and against funding its continuation. He has proposed a bold, new policy to re-establish America's place in the world. Diplomacy and a return to statesmanship as the path to strong international leadership. A new policy of investing in our communities and our infrastructure. A new policy of Strength through Peace.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Hillary Clinton

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/

Remarks at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner

Des Moines, Iowa
11/10/07

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Iowa Democrats. Thank you all. Thank you. What a night. What a great, great night. Thank you all. There's no better place to be than right here in Iowa with the great elected officials that you have: your governor, your lieutenant governor, your congressional delegation, our wonderful friend, Senator Tom Harkin and his wife Ruth. Isn't it a special treat to have the Speaker of the House, Madam Speaker here tonight?

You know, on January 20th, 2009, someone will stand on the steps of the Capitol and raise his or her hand to take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States of America. And we are here tonight to make sure that that next president is a Democrat. Because, we know, after seven years of George W. Bush, seven years of incompetence, cronyism, and corruption, seven years of a government of the few by the few and for the few. We, as a nation cannot afford any other choice.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Bill Richardson

http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/home

Hard Choices:
The Responsible Way Forward for Iraq and our Military

Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
10/4/07

Thank you for having me here. It is an honor to be able to share with you today my thoughts about how we can end the war in Iraq -- and also to discuss some lessons which we must learn from this ongoing tragedy.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Barack Obama

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

A Change We Can Believe In

Spartanburg, South Carolina
11/3/07

One year from now, you will have the chance to walk into a voting booth, pull back the curtain, and choose the next President of the United States.

Here's the good news -- for the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot. The name Dick Cheney will not appear on the ballot. The era of Scooter Libby justice, and Brownie incompetence, and the Karl Rove politics of fear and cynicism will be over.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

John Edwards

http://johnedwards.com/

The Moral Test of Our Generation

Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire
10/29/07

Many of you know that I am the son of a mill worker -- that I rose from modest means and have been blessed in so many ways in life. Elizabeth and I have so much to be grateful for.

And all of you know about some of the challenges we have faced in my family. But there came a time, a few months ago, when Elizabeth and I had to decide, in the quiet of a hospital room, after many hours of tests and getting pretty bad news -- what we were going to do with our lives.

And we made our decision. That we were not going to go quietly into the night -- that we were going to stand and fight for what we believe in.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Joe Biden

http://www.joebiden.com/home

National Security and Civil Rights

Drake University School of Law, Des Moines, Iowa
4/3/07

Since before our founding, the United States has been set apart by its uncompromising commitment to the rule of law and individual rights and civil liberties.

The values embodied in our constitutional government have been the pole star by which the world has set its moral compass.

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[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For the next eight days, we will be repeating our "Campaign Speech Series" from 2007, when we printed the full text of a speech given by every Democratic candidate. You can read the original introduction to this series to see the details of how it was put together, if you're interested. While we realize that these speeches are not exactly relevant to where we stand today, we still thought it'd be worthwhile to run them while we're on hiatus here. Regular columns are currently scheduled to return June 9th.]

Chris Dodd

http://chrisdodd.com/home

Rekindling the Flame -- A Call for A New American Patriotism

Nashua City Hall Plaza, Nashua, New Hampshire
6/23/07

Thank you, Mike, for that generous introduction, for your support and for your quarter-century of service to this community. I know of no more tireless advocate for firefighters, first responders and public safety.

Let me also thank Matt Wilhelm for his service and remarks, all the elected officials with us today, as well as Bernie and Alice Boutin.

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[Program Note: Regular readers may be scratching their heads over one of two things when they see this article today: "Where's the Friday Talking Points column, Chris?" and/or "Why are you running the Obama Poll Watch column for May when there are still four days left in the month?" The answer to both of these questions is the same: because I'm about to go on vacation. See the note I've posted on my site for full details. In a nutshell, Friday Talking Points will be on hiatus until 6/10/11, and then skip another week after that, until it returns to regular service on 6/24/11. My apologies for the interruption in our regular schedule.]

Obama's Best Month Ever

Due to this column's premature nature, I just have to state up front that the numbers we're using this month are preliminary. There are still four days left in the calendar month, which could cause the numbers discussed here to change slightly when the polling data is in. Any changes should be minor, and will be properly adjusted in next month's column. But the trendlines for May are so solid, at this point, that the final numbers should be very close to where we're going to peg them today. Just wanted to get that big caveat out of the way before we begin.

This month was the best month President Barack Obama has ever had in the polls, when measured as change over the previous month. If you count it one way (measured by absolute values) Obama's best month was technically the second month into his term -- when he was still enjoying his "honeymoon" period, and had 63.4 percent support from the public. But in terms of actually changing public opinion, May was indeed the best month Obama's had, by far.

There's a simple reason for this, of course, which might be labeled: "What a difference a death makes." President Obama announced at the very beginning of the month that Osama Bin Laden was dead, and his poll numbers reacted almost immediately. For simplicity's sake here, we're going to call this his "OBL bounce."

This OBL bounce was the biggest bump Obama has yet experienced in his poll numbers. It reversed the last few months' downward trend in his numbers, and gained back all the ground Obama has lost since November of 2009 -- a full eighteen months' worth. Obama enjoyed both the biggest upward bounce in his job approval average for the month, as well as the biggest downward slide in his job disapproval average.

Let's take a look at the chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

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First off, there will be no column today, sorry. Even more drastic, after tomorrow's column, service is about to get very intermittent for the next month. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I'm about to travel to London, Dublin, and Paris to attend a wedding and deal with some other family issues and visits. The second is that almost immediately after returning, I will be flying off once again to attend Netroots Nation.

What it all means to you, Dear Reader, is lots of repeat columns. For which I apologize in advance.

Here is the CW.com schedule for the rest of the month and into June, as it stands now.

Today: no column. For those wishing to explore an issue everyone else seems to be ignoring, I leave the following homework assignment -- Which two Republicans conveniently weren't present for the Ryan budget vote in the Senate? There are 47 Republican senators. Of these, 40 voted for the Ryan budget. Five voted against it -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But that only adds up to 45. So which two very conveniently weren't there? By ducking out, these two avoided their names being in the news about the vote, but also avoided having to vote for it. Dig these names out, because everybody else in the media seems content to allow them to fly under the radar.

Tomorrow: for the first time ever, we are going to prematurely run an Obama Poll Watch column -- before the month under discussion is actually even over. We had two choices: run it four days early, or run it eight or nine days late. Running it late would have meant it was "last week's news" in a very noticeable way; so instead we're going to run it early, and then correct the numbers (if they need minor correction) next month. Also, we want to run this now because it's going to be a fun column to write, as May was the best month the president has ever had in the polls (at least measured as change from the previous month).

What this also means, sadly, is that the Obama Poll Watch column will pre-empt our usual Friday Talking Points column. Both of these recurring series take an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work here, and it just wasn't possible to do both right before leaving. So I'll try to remember when I get back to: (1.) give Kathy Hochul a well-earned MIDOTW award for her stunning upset in NY-26; and (2.) rescind Harry Reid's MDDOTW award from a few weeks ago and award him his own MIDOTW in its stead, for forcing the Ryan budget vote in the Senate -- with exquisite timing.

Next week: I'll be gone all week. Repeat columns will run. They will be wildly out of date, but may be an interesting look back. Treat each of these as an "open thread," and feel free to discuss whatever you feel like in the comments.

The week after: I'll be returning mid-week, but cannot guarantee when columns will resume (who knows what the Icelandic volcanoes will be doing at that point?). Hopefully, the Friday Talking Points will return on June 10th.

The following week: A few new columns will post, but then I'm off again midweek to Netroots Nation. Perhaps I'll post some things live from the conference this year (I blew off doing so last year), but I haven't worked everything out that far in advance yet.

We will return to our normal schedule here on Monday, June 20th.

A word of caution to everyone: Play nice. Rather than just shutting the site down while I'm absent, I've always kept things up and running here in my absence. This has worked out, for the most part, admirably well in the past. So let's keep that record up. And be warned that Europe actually does have internet access, and I will be checking in when I can (although I can't promise when or how often that will be). So let's keep things under control in the comments section, OK guys and gals?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Sometimes special elections are harbingers of things to come. And sometimes they are not. The tricky part is that nobody can tell the difference until long afterwards. Which certainly doesn't stop rampant speculation in the meantime. Last night, a Democrat pulled off a surprising upset in New York's 26th congressional district, in an election that was forced due to the resignation of a House member who got caught trolling the internet (with shirtless pictures, no less) for extramarital fun and games. What this signifies for the 2012 election is anyone's guess, at this point.

Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin and Tea Party candidate Jack Davis in a very red district in upstate New York. The big issue in the race was the Paul Ryan budget plan, which would change Medicare as we know it into a voucher system. Hochul decided to make this the centerpiece of her race, and the Republicans responded by pouring money into the district in support of their candidate (who supported the Ryan plan). Despite being heavily outspent in a very Republican district, Hochul won.

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