So the other day Johnny Mac offered a vision of the world after a first McCain term, a glimpse 0f 2013 one reporter dubbed “a magic carpet ride” to the future. No specifics on how to achieve the vision, mind you. Just the halcyon fantasy itself: Osama captured, the troops returning home, morning again in America. Iraq will be a fully functional democracy, helping us reduce Al Queda’s influence to negligible levels. And the level of violence in our new vacation destination in the heart of the Middle East?

“Spasmodic,” says McCain.

That’s the bright shiny penny for the American voter? Vote McCain, and catastrophic violence will dwindle to the merely spasmodic. Last time we checked, though, the definition of “spasmodic” ran like so: “Relating to, affected by, or having the character of a spasm; convulsive.” Like Jeffersonian Democracy, but with abdominal seizures, sort of.

Even in the duty-free magic carpet ride speech, that’s as good as it gets, apparently.

McCain 2008: The Convulsive Violence in Iraq You Deserve.

The State Convention in Barre will be a madhouse. Who can get to know someone’s convictions in a huge cattle call with hundreds of other activists shouting, begging, hugging, and just generally schmoozing? So VDB means to help. In the week remaining before the Barre event, we’ll be introducing you to as many prospective Obama delegates as we can. What do they have in common? Good hearts, sharp political minds, and long histories as loyal VDB readers. — PB

The Parade of Delegates: Michaels Edition
Name: Jill Michaels (Trademark hat pictured above)

Location: My home and home office are in a small cottage on the “Main Street” in South Strafford, or the “lower village” as it is called by locals. My husband and I have been here for 17 years this summer, having moved to Vermont two years earlier from Philadelphia.

For those who don’t know Strafford, it is a town of 1,000 people about 15 miles from the intersection of I89 and I91 – a part of the “Upper Valley” of Vermont and New Hampshire. We are also home to Ned Coffin, and until recently his wife, the legendary Democratic activist Vi Coffin. Thanks in large part to Ned and Vi, Strafford regularly has the highest per capita voter turnout and the highest per capita vote total for progressive Democrats in the state.

Interests: It must be clear that politics, public policy and supporting community participation are my passions in the public arena. In my working life I harness that passion in economic development projects, including job creation, business recruitment, and community-supported real estate development – especially in downtowns and village centers. I am a voracious reader, an ever-evolving gardener, and a long time supporter of CSAs, coops and the local food movement. I am also committed to my family (including two grandsons).

What Brought You Home to VDB: Just as I remember where I was when Kennedy was shot (in front of Smokey Joe’s — a men’s-only hang out on the University of Pennsylvania Campus that has since been razed), I know the moment I first met VDB. It was when Tom Elliot, a staffer in Matt Dunne’s campaign for Lt. Governor, sent me the article headlined “The Cheetah” — still one of VDB’s best efforts.

Current Political Talking Points: I began my working life as a community organizer in the low-income and minority neighborhoods of Philadelphia and my political activity in what was then known as the “bloody fifth ward” of that city. Even though I am a woman “of a certain age” who might be expected to support Hillary Clinton, my days as an organizer meant that I was attracted immediately to Obama’s brilliant expansion of local community organizing strategies into a national movement.

And when he took that vision and incorporated the web-based fundraising and 50-state strategy of our own Howard Dean, I knew immediately that Barack Obama was very, very special.

I also could almost feel, even at a distance of 300+ miles, the enormous pride that the members of the Philadelphia communities I worked in so long ago were taking in seeing this smart and engaging man take the country by storm.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I had the opportunity to be a very small part of the dawn of a new era.

Last Word on the Presidential Race: 33 years ago, after losing the race for precinct captain in the 25th division of Philadelphia’s 5th Ward (for the second time), I promised my son I would never run for anything again (he has always hated to lose, and it was at least as bad if I lost). This is the first time I’ve gone back on that promise, but he understands Jill Michaels

The estimable Dan Barlow covers VDB’s desperate bid to become an Obama delegate for the Rutland Herald. Only one correction: Barlow reports that we “jokingly” refer to the bid as a “sacred vow.” But the vow is no joke: we’ve known nuns with less urgency. We spend a good hour a day just visualizing the State Convention itself, and the moment when we are called to go to Denver. That moment looks, not surprisingly, a lot like the image below. See you in Barre.

While we were obsessing over the upcoming State convention, the Edwards endorsement that might or might not bring down the house in Michigan tonight, and why Symington gave Pollina seven months head start in the race for Governor, Peter Welch brought the House into line behind a bill to cut off shipments of oil to the Strategic Reserve, which Bush had refused to do. And which history shows will indeed lower the price at the pump.

That’s huge for a guy with less than eighteen months in Washington.

So we don’t care if it is his first term: no more of this “freshman Congressman” noise. From now on, the guy’s a sophomore in our book. At the very least.

Profound congratulations go out to the folks at Green Mountain Daily, selected to become the official Vermont bloggers of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. Were we not bound by a Sacred Vow to become an Obama delegate to same, VDB would have fought them tooth and nail. But it’s better this way: in a best-case scenario, we’ll both be in Denver, and they’ll be lucky if that town isn’t two miles high by the time we’re through.

From left to right, GOP candidates Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo respond to an audience member’s unexpected query, “How many of you have sworn a secret and abiding allegiance to ultra-liberal blogger John Odum?”

In October of 2001, I had dinner with James Carville at the now-defunct New England Culinary Institute in Burlington. He was larger than life, and very much on purpose: walking the restaurant before we sat down to give everyone a chance to recognize him, almost shouting at the table. But the most surprising thing to me was that he almost immediately began to tout Hillary Clinton as a candidate for President.

You need to remember that this was less than a year after Clinton had been elected to the Senate from New York, and Bill Clinton’s series of last-minute pardons were still fouling the political air.

But Carville was crystal clear: she was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and when were the pundits and the media going to give her a chance? I took a few pages of notes when I got home, and there it is when I look back today: “Pushed Hillary Clinton as a Presidential candidate, and wasn’t about to take no for an answer.”

Not hard to see that the plan was in place then, and it continued apace for the next five or six years, with Carville in the catbird seat at CNN, and only belatedly acknowledging his committment to her candidacy.

It was going to be his Second Coming, a way to recapture the instant guru status he attained in the months just prior to Bill Clinton’s win in 1992. It was going to be his answer to Howard Dean and all the other newer figures who had shouldered their way past him in the Party, and in the eye of the media.

So when Carville admitted yesterday, on a college campus in South Carolina, that he thinks “the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee,” it spoke volumes.

Forget West Virginia: Carville threw in the towel.

That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

You know the buried lede: the nugget of shocking information an editor purposefully or carelessly relegates to the jump page. But what do you call a key story element that never makes it into mainstream news articles at all? That, friends, is what we call an overlooked lede, also known as a “blog post.” And in today’s case, we’re speaking specifically of Big Joe Lieberman’s decision to leave the Democratic Party. Missed that? That’s our point.

Many outlets are reporting today that Lieberman went on CNN over the weekend to distribute the new McCain talking point on Obama: that although Obama “clearly doesn’t support any of the values and goals of Hamas,” Americans should wonder why the terrorist organization would “welcome” his election.

“And it suggests,” Big Joe finished, “the difference between these two candidates.”

Talk about your fatuous little concern trolls.

Put aside that Lieberman is slagging the presumptive nominee of the party with which he caucuses; put aside that he’s echoing all the worst sorts of Rovian attacks, the mindless technique of pairing undefined candidates with hate-saturated words and images; put aside that he’s trying, in the sleaziest way possible, to have it both ways, claiming the moral high ground by clearing Obama of the very charge he continues to level.

What’s really key here is that Lieberman is announcing his departure from the Democratic Party.

Think about it. This particular bridge is a bridge too far for Democrats, and everyone in both parties knows it: painting Democrats with the terrorist brush is what marked the original post-911 schism, when Bush set about trying to unseat Democrats who had actually leaned his way following the attacks on NY.

By moving to this point in early May, rather than late October, Lieberman is clarifying an itinerary that might otherwise have remained obscure: he has a great deal of distance to cover in the next six months.

But what’s left, in terms of that ideological distance?

He’s let us know that he’ll be keynoting the Republican convention, in all likelihood; he’s made it clear that he’ll be a constant fixture on the campaign trail, in attack dog mode. If not a Vice President, then a surrogate not above a little vice.

There is only one answer, but it’s too glaring to reach the mainstream accounts as yet: ipso facto, Lieberman is leaving the Democratic Party. He may be moving out the back door, of course, by making his behavior just outrageous enough to earn himself a rebuke, a rebuke he will use as pretext to exit.

But the man is out the door, never you fear.

Why not remain an “Independent Democrat,” especially with a pliable, codependent Senate Majority Leader like Harry Reid?

Several reasons, but the most important is this: Lieberman has had a schoolgirl crush on McCain for more than a decade now, and now is go time. It’s time for him to make the strongest possible move he can, to show his loyalty in the way that those with schoolgirl crushes do: Big Joe is going to leave his own clique and join McCain’s.

Optimal time to do so?

Forty-five days before the Republican National Convention. Which puts it just a month before the Democratic Convention. More than enough to set up a competing narrative, wouldn’t you say? It’s devious, and fake as plastic roses, but the media will make it a story secondary in size only to the ongoing story of the general election itself.

Fiendishly clever. Dazzlingly disloyal.

Oh so Liebermaniacal.

And that, as Robert Blake used to say, before he killed his wife and beat the rap, is the name of that tune.

As regular readers know, we took a Sacred Vow months ago: to travel personally to Denver, to do battle with anyone who would seek, for any reason, to impede Obama’s nomination there. And of course, we would also act as your eyes and ears behind the stage-managed curtain. But that involves being elected from the State Convention down in Barre, itself a logistical nightmare just two weeks away.

Offers of help continue to come in over the transom, but remember the numbers are stark: only 3 male Obama delegates will eventually go to Denver, and last best estimates place the number seeking a plane ticket at 50 or more. And of course, some of those 50 are well-known politicos with their own built-in constituencies.

But we have you.

And at this point, we really need your help.

If you’ll be in Barre for the State Convention on the 24th, and would consider giving us a boost, please get in touch. Hit the “Contact” button at the top of your screen; we haunt the keyboard 24/7/52, jonesing for email, so the wait won’t be long before we’re talking strategy.

Even if you won’t be there, but know someone who will, you can help. Turn them on to VDB, and let its narcotic effects work their junkie magic.

We’ll keep you posted as D-Day nears.

Ohio superdelegate Representative Zack Space: “My position hasn’t changed, and I’m not going to back anybody anytime soon . . . . once it becomes apparent who the nominee is, I’ll make my decision.” Don’t misunderstand: we here at VDB stand in awe of the manhood and steely nerve of Space. Still, we have one niggling question.

Can it still really be called a “decision” at that point? Just a technical point.

Zack Space, indeed.

Late Update, Friday, 9:43 am:

Then again, some of these folks apparently have some internal structural formation performing the function of a spine: three more superdelegates have come out for Obama in the last few hours, one of whom represents a switch from Clinton. Effectively, a movement of 4 in Obama’s direction.

And you know what that means, baby: ABC News is now reporting for the first time that Obama has surpassed Hillary’s lead among the superdelegates, 267-265.

Which is sweet news. But why do we feel, in an odd way, like James Caan at the end of Misery?

We asked a simple but unanswerable question last week: would the presence of Anthony Pollina in the Governor’s race, particularly in the absence of a declared Democratic candidate, be enough to scare Governor Jim Douglas straight on the Yankee Decommissioning Fund bill. Well, the question is pretty answerable now. No, in a word.

For those of you who missed it, the bill would have forced Entergy, in the event that they spin off another fledgling company to hold the bag on their unregulated nuclear assets, to substantially strengthen its financial committments in the area of decommissioning.

But Douglas, who has consistently shielded Entergy from aggressive oversight, seems to have made a very clear-eyed decision: that having given Pollina six months to firm up his reliable 25% of the vote, and having waited until early May to begin organizing behind Symington, Democrats are in no position to make him pay substantially at the polls.

And maybe so. But maybe not. This is an issue that won’t go away, especially since as the ball game goes forward, Entergy will need Douglas to set more than a few more gubernatorial picks. And each time, as we go forward to November, more and more people in the stands will be paying attention.

But what can we do in the meantime?

Well, this whole issue has us waxing nostalgic for the Audio Dream Theater trilogy that we turned out last year with sound wizard Alex Ball and aspiring voice deity Neil Jensen.

The premise? Douglas and Dubie are two hapless superheroes, just muddling along trying to raise corporate profits and sully the environment, when suddenly they’re drawn into an epic battle with their worst Democratic nightmares.

And Episode III: Statehouse of the Living Dead, prophetically enough, features a battle to the death between Douglas and Gaye Symington.

Think Firesign Theater meets Monty Python meets, like, the Rutland Herald. It’s full-tilt audio, with some of the best and snarkiest humor you’ll hear on an overcast Thursday morning in May.

If you’re new to VDB, and you managed to miss these productions, they’re listed on the right sidebar under “The Jim Douglas Trilogy.” But here’s the first to get you started. And remember, no politician truly fears for his political life until the jokes start. Enjoy.