Is there a battle shaping up between advocates on each side of this one? A few weeks ago, at a pow-wow on Preschool that was held in Manhattan, some Preschool diehards were grumbling that they were having trouble making political headway because the smaller class size lobby was sucking up all the air around state and national policymakers, forcing frustrated preschool-backers to fight for budgetary leftovers. I thought to myself: My God, has it really come to this?

Then the annual fundraising letter/survey arrived at The Chalkboard's home from the Democratic National Committee. (The Chalkboard and his wife once gave money to the DNC during a very heady Crosby, Stills and Nash concert in Milwaukee in the early 90's. Long story, but now we get hounded with the fake "grassroots survey" every year, undoubtedly along with most left-leaning readers of this blog.)

(Note: The rest of this post is for Democrats only, especially if you attended meetings of the Kerry-Haters-For-Kerry club in 2004. Republicans, please skip ahead. This needn't concern you.)

This year's survey from Howard Dean lists three possible priorities for national Dems on the issue of education:

#8. Thinking about the issue of education, which of the following is your number one priority? Please select only one answer.

• Funding for early education programs like Head Start.
• Funding for elementary and middle school education to reduce class sizes.
• Funding for tuition aid programs to make college more affordable.

Good grief. Aside from the annoyingly limited options, is this fight between these factions for real? Thankfully, the whole survey thing is bogus. (You try telling Reg Weaver that surveys show the public isn't in synch with the NEA's legislative agenda! Weaver to DNC: "Surveys? We don't need no stinking surveys!") If the question is for real, however, it might not be too early to start predicting that Dems will once again get their backsides handed to them by Republicans on the education issue. For another look at the problem, click here.