The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

p> LOCKE IN br> Democrats aren't waiting around to hear snippets and leaked themes of President Bush's State of the Union Address to be made on January 28. Already the Democratic National Committee is drafting its response to that speech, which will be delivered by Gov. Gary Locke of Washington. Locke, an Asian American, is, according to a DNC source, going to hit Bush on the kitchen-table issues of jobs, the economy and fiscal disaster in the states, for which many Democratic governors blame Bush administration policies. /p>

Locke, the incoming president of the National Governors Association, beat out New Mexico's officially Hispanic Gov. Bill Richardson, who had been campaigning for the opportunity to take pot shots at Bush's speech. "We knew we needed a person of diversity doing the talking," says a Democratic communications staffer in the Senate. "But Richardson blew it with all this North Korea stuff."

It won't be just Locke beating on Bush. Senate minority leader Tom Daschle has scheduled what his people are calling a "major" economic address on January 24, four days before Bush utters the words "My fellow Americans ... " Daschle's team, in concert with the DNC, has been holding small focus groups to measure just what ideas and even what words play best. That same data is also playing into Locke's speech.

"These may be the two best shots we have to really get some traction on the issues we think will help us sink this administration," says the Senate staffer. "They will lay the groundwork for everything else we try to do in the coming months."

p> NO STOPPING HER br> Former senator Carol Moseley-Braun is expected to announce today that she will be running for her old seat on Capitol Hill. Moseley-Braun lost it six years ago to Republican Peter Fitzgerald

topics:
NATO, North Korea