A few things as we bring this election cycle to a close.

1) The old Democratic Party method of selecting our nominee is starting to break down and needs to be fixed.

In the past it has been a money marathon. The candidates throw tons of money into the early states. Someone wins and gets momentum. They get all the money and everyone else is broke. And even if they weren’t the campaign finance system with it’s lucrative “matching funds” prevented them from spending the money to catch up. The internet and two or three prodigious fundraisers changed that. Neither Obama nor Clinton went broke before the end of the campaign even if Hillary did end the cycle with quite a bit of debt.

Then add to that mix proportional representation which split delegates far too evenly and you had a system that risked giving us the nightmare scenario of a deadlocked convention. If John Edwards hadn’t dropped out of the race with his lesser but still impressive fundraising ability we probably would’ve entered a situation which even the “superdelegates” couldn’t rescue the party from a deadlocked convention.

The band-aid is to adopt the Republican winner take all system. This year it would have benefitted Hillary Clinton. Maybe. I say maybe because the Hillary Clinton campaign lost because the Barack Obama campaign better understood and used the rules to their own advantage. If the rules changed, their strategy would have and they still might have won. This would at the very least make it easier for a frontrunner to build a lead and prevent deadlock.

It is less democratic but the important thing to remember about an electoral system is that it must balance the need to be fair with the need to make the decision of the voter mean something. If you only end up electing deadlocked factions who negotiate among themselves behind closed doors you have a system that is outwardly more democratic but in actuality makes it harder for the voter to see their opinion actually enacted.

Ideally we’d move to something better than the archaic system we inherited from the 19th century. For instance perhaps instant runoff voting. But unfortunately that is easier said than done. As we learned this year with the Michigan and Florida fiasco the state legislatures have a lot of say in how parties handle candidate selection. It isn’t clear the party could change the current system without at the very least federal legislation.

2) Hillary Clinton’s campaign helped more than it hurt Obama in the general election.

Last April I was livid at Hillary Clinton. I was ready to send her out on the party on a rail. I wanted a challenger to be found for her 2012 re-election bid ASAP. I didn’t believe and still don’t believe her bringing up issues like Reverend Wright did anything to strengthen Obama in the general election by getting him to “address” them and “get them out of the way” earlier. It only hurt Obama and caused the issues to resurface again and again the same way Willie Horton continued to hurt Dukakis after Al Gore brought the issue up during the New York Primary in 1988.

That said a complete fifty state primary campaign helped Obama and the Democratic Party. It brought excitement and organization to states and more importantly to parts of states that Democrats in the past ignored. People who had never voted in Democratic primaries before registered as Democrats. Organizations were built in states like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and North Dakota that proved useful in the general election.

Even if Obama had lost this organizing by both sides would’ve benefited Hillary Clinton and would’ve helped her contest states like West Virginia and Kentucky that otherwise would’ve been closed off to her.

The campaign was Iowa magnified nationally. Iowa being a state whose demographics on the surface looks hostile to Democrats but who we are able to court and often court quite well because every four years we shower attention on it.

The Obama – Clinton campaign helped us move closer to the dream of a fifty state strategy. That and her impressive commitment to campaign for the ticket after the convention are why I have moved on and have reconciled with Hillary.

3) Beware of early polls. The earlier the more meaningless.

Early polls are sirens. They are sweet music to the ears of political junkies but rarely if ever enlighten. We laugh at early polls in 2001 showing Joe Lieberman the frontrunner for 2004. In 2005 it was Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. We could go earlier. In 1989 it was Mario Cuomo. It 1985 it was still Mario Cuomo. In 1981 it was Ted Kennedy. Perhaps you could find an early poll showing someone else but there is a good chance whoever it showed was not the nominee for the Democratic Party. Remember this before assuming Sarah Palin will be the Republican nominee in 2012. Dan Quayle looked strong years before the 2000 contest started.

Even if you go later it still makes no difference. Hillary Clinton was the dame of 2007. Howard Dean rocked 2003. The same goes for state polls in the primary. What we can see clearly is states like New Hampshire and Iowa with an intense early focus by the candidates are subject to change very quickly right at the end. And as for the other states where the candidates haven’t expended energy? A good number of those polls are worth less than the paper they are printed on.

Early state polls in the general election also have to be taken with a grain of salt. Every cycle there is a poll showing New Jersey vulnerable. Often one showing California as well. On the other side we’ve seen polls showing Texas close. In 2004 we saw state polls showing West Virginia within reach for John Kerry and Hawaii for Bush. In fact some conservatives were openly trumpeting a Republican “re-alignment” in Hawaii.

Early state poll numbers give campaigns an idea of where there might be an opening they can take advantage of. It does not necessarily predict where a state will go especially when it’s numbers seem out of whack from past trends. Obama took advantage in some states like Indiana with success. In other states with not so much.

One last thing. Don’t get hung up on the polling aggregates and think they are necessarily more accurate than the individual polls themselves. It is not unusual for an outlier to be correct and the average to be wrong.

Take all your polls with a grain of salt. And if it’s an early poll use the entire salt shaker.

4) When it comes to polling the national popular vote matters.

After 2000 we’ve conditioned ourselves for close electoral contests. And as outside observers have paid more attention to the micro-trends (the state numbers) rather than the macro-trends (the national numbers). But the fact is unless a race is absurdly close and under one percent of the popular vote like in 2000 or 1888 the electoral college will go to the national popular vote winner.

Even with Obama having over six point lead, state polls were still close in many states and looking at electoral-vote.com daily one could see theoretical paths to victory for McCain. The same way if we had that site back in 1988 we would’ve seen leading up to the election theoretical paths for a Dukakis victory. In fact a number of large states went VERY narrowly for Bush Sr. Theoretically you would’ve only had to move a relatively small number of votes to produce a Dukakis electoral victory.

But both Obama and Bush Sr showed those scenarios simply will never materialize with a popular vote victory margin of 6.7 or 7.8 percentage points.

While get out the vote efforts and strong state targeting DO matter especially since you have to always plan for a close election the states as a whole do follow to one degree or another national trends. Particularly “swing” states.

5) Democrats still need to reclaim the definition of liberal.

There is a debate raging right now whether America is now a “center-left” nation or a “center-right” nation. Both sides are correct. Far more Americans identify themselves as “conservative” than identify themselves as “liberal.” However if you go policy by policy the “liberal” position consistently comes out ahead. Before you get too giddy about the latter point you could say exactly the same thing during Ronald Reagan. And here is the problem we need to address.

Since at least the 1980s the word “liberal” has been tarred. Michael Dukakis who was undoubtably pretty “liberal” rather laughably denied he was one saying the election was about “competence” rather than “ideology.” George Bush Sr. based his entire campaign on Dukakis being a “liberal” and painting the most outrageous definition of it that he could using various wedge issues courtesy of Lee Atwater. There was never any push back from Dukakis on what that word meant.

Since then most people have run away from the “liberal” label. In fact this election cycle we saw one of the oddest phenomena. Left wing Democrats wearing the badge of Goldwater Conservative proudly. Some of it was the Goldwater family endorsing Obama and some of it is Goldwater certainly towards the end of his life had a libertarian streak. One that besides maybe the abortion issue was absent from his run in 1964.

Even the liberal blogs have moved away from the word “liberal” towards the word “progressive” since it has a more positive connotation.

This goes back to Ronald Reagan successfully constructing a strong definition of conservative. And I’ll note I’m talking about how they defined it not how they implemented it.

To be “conservative” on spending is to want to reign in wasteful spending. To be a “liberal” is the opposite. Even George W Bush wouldn’t admit to being a “liberal” in that category.

To be “conservative” on defense is to a support national defense. As opposed to a “weak” national defense.

To be “conservative” on crime is to demand tough punishment for crimes. To be a “liberal” would be to just let murderers and rapists go?

These far too pervasive definitions are not only why you have more “conservatives” than  “liberals” (or more people self identifying as being on the “right” than the “left”) but also why there are so many “moderates” and why these “moderates” lean overwelmingly towards the Democratic side. People who lean consistently left and on paper SHOULD identify as “liberals” don’t want to identify with the still scary “liberal” label.  So they identify instead with the true “moderates.”

I’m as cynical of labels as anyone and hate the idea of being thrown into a box. I also see areas of grey that don’t fit neatly into ideological labels. But that doesn’t change whether those labels exist and whether how they are defined affects us.

America will be self-identified as “center-right” regardless of how people feel about the entire Democratic agenda until we redefine what the center is and what it means to be “liberal.”

Until then Democrats will be on the defensive and have to claim to be “moderate” or “conservative” to escape being tarred as being something hardly anyone subscribes to outside of Republican talking points.

The goal should be simple. Take the popular Democratic agenda and define it as liberal. And say THIS is liberalism. Define it on our own terms as something that will have popular resonance. The Republicans called Obama the “most liberal” Senator in Congress. They defined what it meant (a virtual or even literal communist). We never defined what it meant. In contrast while we defined what it would mean to be the most conservative member of congress in a negative sense the Republicans have a positive definition of why it would actuallly be a good thing to be called the most conservative member.

If Frank Luntz has shown us anything since he came into the political scene it is the importance of controlling language. The Democatic Party whether we like it or not is the liberal party. We need to justify why that is a good thing. Or else the word will continue to be an albatross around our necks.

We need to define it so our leaders aren’t afraid to say. “Yes I am a liberal. I’m a liberal because I believe in this and this and this. And if that is what it means to be a liberal I’m proud to be one. And you should be one too because it’s the right thing for America.”

Only then can we truly be a “center-left” nation.

6) Joe Lieberman has already left the Democratic Party.

It’s time to get over the anger towards Lieberman as the Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party. In reality he isn’t among us. He’s an Independent who is aligned with us for our and his own convenience and self-interest. The anger only implies there is still an emotional bond that still binds the two sides.

Whether Joe wants to admit it or not he has no future in the Democratic Party. He can never win a primary to be renominated. Last time around he lost in the primary with the Democratic establishment completely behind him. In the general he received a lot of support from those who were otherwise voting for and supporting Democrats. Ned Lamont was ignored by most national Democats. That won’t be the case when Lieberman is up in 2012.

In 2006 the Republicans ceded the race. If he continues to caucus with the Democrats he shouldn’t depend on the Republicans being so gracious.

I advocated making a deal with Joe. That is on the basis of the belief he is an outsider who should only be allowed to see power within the caucus if he gives us something in return. Same reason I had no problem with us dealing with him in 2006. We got the ability to organize the Senate, kill nominations, and for awhile were able to launch some investigations into the Bush administration. This time we have more leverage we can use.

Unfortunately it looks like there was no deal with Joe. Just a slap on the wrist that will neither chasten him nor put him on notice. And for that the Democratic Caucus in the senate should be ashamed.

Given I have heard little of Joe trying to reach out to Democrats publicly or privately and the best his defenders can muster is fear over him stomping his feet and still feeling victimized I wouldn’t be surprised if he himself votes to strip himself of his chairmanship so he can be a media “martyr” And if that’s his attitude we should definitely oblige him.

But come 2012 we all will hopefully share the same desire. To see him lose. Joe’s best interest actually is to switch to the Republican Party now and hope he can pull off a Jodi Rell. He has a far better shot winning as a likable moderate Republican willing to vote for popular Democrats proposals than the most hated Democrat in the Democratic Party. Or as Joe and the Republicans would say the “Democrat Party”.