A girl in a sun dress is plucking the petals off of a daisy in a field of flowers. She counts the number of petals she plucks until she has run out. A countdown for a nuclear test starts, she freezes and the camera peers into her eyes.

[asset|aid=874|format=image|formatter=asset|title=progressive-split_0.gif|width=168|height=168|align=none|resizable=true]

What is a Progressive?
What are Progressive issues? When you say the word Progressive what
images come to mind? The term
progressive comes from the late 19th and early 20th
Century when the vast changes brought by industrialization and as an
alternative both to the traditional conservative response to both social and
economic issues to the various more or less radical forms of Socialism.

A Gallup poll released yesterday reports that 19% of Obama supporters say they'll vote for McCain over Clinton and a full 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain over Obama. Cue much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth from Democratic party flaks who claim the increasingly bitter primary contest will mean that Democratic voters will abandon the party in the fall if their favored nominee doesn't come out on top.

I'm optimistic that this won't happen — I don't have a huge amount of faith in my fellow man, but I do assume that my fellow Democrats are a) not stupid and b) not so embroiled in ego-politics that they'll let their bruised feelings get in the way of our best chance in years to have a president who'll further progressive policy aims.

Dear Democratic Party leaders:

Hi there. It's Laura. I'll keep this note brief, since I know you're busy people with lots of hands to shake and power lunches to attend. I just have a simple plea.

Make it stop.

By "it," of course, I mean the Democratic primary race. Seriously, it's got to end soon.

Whatever you choose to call tomorrow -- Super Tuesday, Super-Duper Tuesday, Tsunami Tuesday -- we can probably agree that when it's over we'll have a much better idea of who each party's nominee is going to be. The ever-thinning field of candidates left standing will narrow even more. And you know what? After over a year of watching a stable of candidates undertake frenzied campaigning, I find myself a little sad that a lot of these people we've grown so used to having in our daily lives will up and disappear. Call it end-of-campaign nostalgia.