From the Associated Press”

The Arizona senator, in remarks prepared for delivery Monday evening to the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan, promised to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which he said would affect as many as 30 million people by 2010. The tax was originally intended to make sure the wealthy do not exploit tax loopholes.

“I am committed to repealing this tax before millions of American families are forced to devote even more of their hard work to paying for the spending largesse in Washington,” McCain said in excerpts from his speech released by his campaign.

I thought it was odd the other day when I found out Fred Thompsons campaign manager was being replaced. Considering he isn’t even in the race yet the only thing I could think of, aside from personal issues, was that fundraising was down.

Now Kelly O’Donnell is reporting that sources inside the campaign acknowledge fundraising is indeed not meeting expectations and that the campaign will probably report $3 million raised so far, 2 million less than was being predicted.

This could be a move to just lower expectations or it could be a continued sign that the money is drying up for Republican candidates.

John Edwards provided details in Des Moines, Iowa today on his tax policy under the title “conomic Plan to Restore Fairness, Reform America’s Tax Code, & Reward Hard Work”. It has some basic tax premises that will be embraced by those on the left and heavily scorned by those on the right.

Objectives
(1) create three new tax breaks to honor and strengthen three pillars of America’s middle class: savings, work, and families
(2) require a fair contribution from the wealth of high-income Americans, reversing the shift of the tax code onto middle class wages
(3) end special tax breaks for insiders

How will he achieve it?
In short by raising taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for tax breaks (and social programs) for other Americans.

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The Washington Post has a good profile of the many issues & problems facing Howard Dean & The Democratic National Committee:

It won’t be a summer of love for Howard Dean, with peace and understanding in short supply.

The Democratic National Committee chairman faces several formidable challenges. Some states are determined to move up the dates of their presidential primaries despite the potential for upending the nomination process, and the party’s convention in Denver in 2008 is already dealing with nettlesome labor and financial woes.

Dean’s biggest test will come next year when the DNC will primarily serve as a shadow campaign operation for the party’s presidential nominee.

I would genuinely be surprised if the Democrats were not able to pull off an election victory this cycle but I have been urging caution all along in this blog. Politics is exciting because at any moment things can and often do go horribly, horribly wrong. Parties & campaigns have a habit of imploding just when they look poised to triumph and things generally don’t go according to plan.

The left wing of the Democratic Party seems like it doesn’t just want a victory, it wants on on its terms & though the focus is 100% on the candidates right now once there is a nominee all those state party chairs, delegates, interests etc. will run out of the woodwork attempting to get their own messages and faces on the national stage with the nominee.

Right now expectations are enormously high on the Democrats. Everyone expects big things from them as a party giving them a larger amount of room to fall. The expectations are the complete opposite for Republicans, frankly I don’t know how things can get much worse for the president or the party. I am sure something will come up (Alberto Gonzalez seems to redefine the term dumbass at every turn) but after awhile there is so much bad news that new bad news just gets added to the bin without much consideration.

The Washington Post looked into soon-to-be-candidate Fred Thompson’s past and found the following:

“When you are taking a look at Thompson as a conservative,” said ACU Chairman David Keene, “the negatives come down to plowing around with John McCain on campaign finance and a general sense that he sided with trial lawyers because of his background.”

The media seems to be working overtime in order to find anything that could possibly disqualify Thompson as a “conservative”. Thus far what they found hasn’t made a great case for him as either a conservative or non-conservative.

Basically my take is that in a Republican field where almost no candidate in the upper or even middle tier truly represents what the Democratic Party as a whole is looking to be, anyone who says they do and has some kind of viability (lets face it, Brownback isn’t going to be president) will do well regardless of lobbying or supporting trial lawyers.