THIS LOOKS LIKE A QUAGMIRE to me.

JUST SAW A FOX NEWS REPORT that Wesley Clark’s campaign manager has resigned because he thinks that the campaign isn’t paying enough attention to the Internet. He must’ve been watching the Bloggercon webcast.

I call it the first scalp for Matt Gross, Dean’s Internet guy. And I suspect that Cam Barrett, Clark’s Internet guy, will get listened to more, now. At least, that’s how it should work.

UPDATE: Here’s the AP story, via via Dave Winer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve gotten a couple of emails suggesting that this is part of a bigger split between the grassroots, internet-based “draft Clark” folks and the Beltway professionals who have come in later. That’s to be expected, I suppose, but Clark needs to get it in hand soon. Having those kinds of problems this close to the primaries can’t be good.

ACCORDING TO DRUDGE, exit polls show big wins for Arnold and the recall. Are they right? Beats me.

UPDATE: Comments, from Occam’s Toothbrush — which is surely one of the best-named blogs in existence.

RANTINGPROFS is a blog on media and politics by two professors of communications studies at North Carolina and Northwestern. It’s worth checking out, even if they think I’m wrong about The New York Times.

LILY MALCOLM notes a further step in MoveOn’s descent into utter self-parody.

JESSE VENTURA’S RATINGS are weak. On the other hand, given that I write for MSNBC, and I didn’t even know his show was on the air until I saw this, the problem may have as much to do with the PR as with the show.

“THE ADVENT OF THE HOME MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY is not far off.” Is that a good thing? Um, it’s mixed.

ROBERT TAGORDA has a roundup of reports from bloggers who voted in the recall.

THERE’S A NEW POLITICS BLOG over at OpinionJournal, featuring John Fund and Holman Jenkins.

The bad news: It’ll soon be pay-only. The good news: It’s free at the moment.

Good day to start, guys!

WHILE EVERYONE IS WATCHING CALIFORNIA, lots of stuff is going on in Venezuela.

PHIL CARTER has comments on military voters in the California recall.

Meanwhile it’s Arnold Central over at Blogcritics.

THE CALIFORNIA RECALL TURNOUT is reportedly heavy.

I’m predicting a Schwarzenegger victory. One of my former students, a rather feisty woman, emailed that she voted for him. If the last-minute groping business didn’t scare her off, my guess is that it won’t scare off enough women to make a difference.

VIRGINIA POSTREL suggests that media negativity on Iraq stems from problems mentioned in her book, The Future and Its Enemies.

SGT. STRYKER writes that the war is over, and we’ve won. Thank goodness. It was starting to seem like a quagmire.

HALF-EMPTY OR HALF FULL?

The nation essentially is split in half over whether to accept gay and lesbian marriage, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds.

While 48% of those surveyed say allowing gay unions “will change our society for the worse,” 50% say they would be an improvement or have no effect.

That’s amazing progress. Less than 20 years ago, the Supreme Court said it was OK to send gay people to jail for having sex. Now half the country is comfortable with gay marriage.

UPDATE: Volokh isn’t so sure about this poll.

DANIEL DREZNER notes progress in Afghanistan, and points out what’s standing in the way of more rapid improvement.

NOAH SHACHTMAN WRITES about libertarians disenchanted with Bush. I think this is a real issue, though I note that in a way it’s mostly about the war: Shachtman quotes well-known antiwar libertarians like Jim Henley, Julian Sanchez, Gene Healy, Radley Balko, etc. That doesn’t make it less significant, politically, though.

How significant is it? I don’t know. Libertarians don’t control a lot of votes (and are deeply split on the war), but elections tend to be close these days. I think that Bush is far more vulnerable than most Republicans seem to think, and that Howard Dean might well be able to beat him, especially if he positions himself as reasonably pro-gun and doesn’t frighten people away by caving to too many Democratic special interests. Can Dean do that? Maybe. Democrats are desperate, as they were in 1992, and they will cut any candidate who looks like he can beat Bush a lot of slack. My prediction: a Dean/Edwards ticket.

UPDATE: Reader Chaim Karczag emails that only part of it is the war:

But it’s also about runaway domestic spending on social programs and a ballooning size of government. President Bush is spending like a drunken sailor and running huge deficits, while never once mentioning the need for fiscal prudence or that the government might be overextended. Compassionate conservatism is costing the country a fortune. Rolling back the frontiers of the state is simply not on the agenda. Dark days for those who harbor a libertarian impulse.

That’s right, and I wonder if the Shachtman article wasn’t Kuttnerized to emphasize the war (which Kuttner doesn’t like) and de-emphasize the big-government aspects (which Kuttner probably likes).

There’s an interesting structural issue here. I think that Republican Presidents have to overspend to protect their left flank (and they can get away with it because the press will let them — overspending is a Democratic stereotype, and the press mostly thinks in stereotypes). For the same reason, Democrats tend to be worse on civil liberties. So what do libertarians do?

TYPE M AND TYPE C: Arnold Kling writes an open letter to Paul Krugman.

STEVE VERDON VOTED in the recall today, and offers a firsthand report on the ballot’s complexities.

UPDATE: Here’s a report of voter harassment from California.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’m not sure, but I think that Howard Veit is calling me an asshole for suggesting that the California ballot is complex. Of course, by Howard’s standards that’s exceedingly mild. . . .

HILLARY RUNNING? Reader Leonard Murphy sends this:

Go to the Federal Election Commission homepage at www.fec.gov.
On the left of their homepage is a link labeled “Campaign Finance Reports and Data”, click it.
Scroll down a ways to Image/Query System, under that choose “View Financial Reports”…
Under the intro paragraph choose “Search the Report Image System”
In the dialogue box type “Clinton” and click “Get Listing”
20 entries down you`ll see “CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM”, click on the blue number “P00003392” beside her name.

Guess what? “Presidential Candidate 2004 “.

Hillary Rodham Clinton filed late Friday, Oct 3rd, with the Federal Election Commission to run for President in 2004.

I followed his instructions and it took me here. Sure looks that way.

UPDATE: Hmm. Several readers, meanwhile, note that this is likely someone else filing for her. I don’t know what that means.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez says the readers are right.

My readers: smarter than me, as usual.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More evidence that this is bogus, from Eugene Volokh.

MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN IS UP, and it’s an interview with Neal Stephenson, in which we discuss the Seventeenth Century’s relation to the present, in light of his new novel, Quicksilver.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster comments, and compares Stephenson to Umberto Eco. And John Scalzi writes that Quicksilver really is science fiction, even though Stephenson has managed to fool people into not noticing.

HOWARD DEAN IS A POLITICAL GENIUS: While various people are snarking at Patrick Kennedy’s condemnation of Dean’s second amendment stance, they’re missing the real story, which is that this is a masterstroke for Dean. This kind of thing won’t hurt Dean’s chances of getting the nomination, and being attacked by a Kennedy on gun control will be a big plus in the general election if Dean gets the nomination. Democrats will vote for him anyway, and it’ll help him with the many moderates put off by the gun-prohibitionist mindset of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg responds.

SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR MICHAEL MOORE: Hilarious, and devastating. And here are seven more.

KAUS is all over California matters, as you might expect.

UPDATE: Ex-Californian Virginia Postrel weighs in on Arnold, too, and isn’t as impressed as some.

EVERYBODY AT BLOGGERCON WAS DISSING THE BUSH CAMPAIGN for not having a blog.

Now Patrick Ruffini emails that it’s gotten one. Coincidence? Suuurre it is. . . . .