The Nation

Tomorrow night, March 20 at 7p.m., at Wake Forest University Tom Schaller will debate Bob Moser on the question of the Democratic Party's strategy towards the South. The debate will be held in Room 1312 of the Worrell Professional Center and respondents include yours truly and Delmas Parker, second vice chair of the NC Democratic Party, along with David Coates, politics professor at Wake Forest.

This debate's genesis was a work of BlueNC and the blogosphere in more ways than one. Read the rest for more on the debate and on the blogosphere's role.

We recently got an email from a publicity coordinator of The Nation, who wanted to call our attention to this excellent piece by Bob Moser, currently running in the magazine. You have to admire a publicist who digs in to the blogosphere to spread the word about an article, even if he does laud lavish compliments on our labor of love here in the Old North State.

Taking a tour of southern blogs recently, I've been really impressed with BlueNC's comprehensive, nuts and bolts coverage. We here at The Nation wanted to let you know about our cover story this week, "The Way Down South." In the article, Bob Moser, one of our contributing writers, explores the relationship between the Dems and the South and its implications for the future of the Democratic party. We'd like this to be part of a larger conversation, one we hope you and your readers will be part of.

In the November 20 edition of The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel gives a list of ten things we should consider to strengthen our democracy here at home. With voters being dropped from the rolls with no notice, machines counting votes that can never be verified and voters staying home in record numbers it is obvious we have a problem in this country.

Many of her ideas have already been discussed here in the pages of BlueNC. I think these are discussions we should continue, especially with the elections over and problems we might have encountered fresh on our minds.

The piece by Katrina is subscription only, but I don't think she will mind if I list all ten of her suggestions to help guide our discussions. Also, for those subscribers, here is a link. I'm not sure I agree with everything she says, but the piece and the subsequent letters to the editor printed in this past week's edition give a great starting place for those of us who follow elections.

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