I just subjected myself to the post-debate spin room, and asked one of the two people whose judgment on California elections I trust most -- and who is not affiliated with either campaign, and whose name I cannot use -- who would win out here on Tuesday, expecting he'd say Hillary. "It could go either way," he said. "From what I see, Obama is coming up." I blog this only because this person has long been very savvy on California elections.

--Harold Meyerson

First, a point of personal privilege. Who is this Howard Meyerson from Pasadena and why is he asking pro-Mitt Romney questions? When Jeanne Cummings of Politico read his question during the debate, I was compelled to yell to my assembled colleagues in the press room, already tittering, "That's not me!" Jeesh.

That disposed of, the debate broke down into two major parts: Into The Weeds on Healthcare, and How Obfuscating Can Hillary Get on Iraq, Anyway? Hillary was plainly better during the first half (she excels at the oral exam format), and Obama was clearly better in the second.

I have little to say about the first half, other than that around the point where Hillary was explaining what could be done with electronic medical records, I suspect millions of American eyes glazed over. Drowsing Americans may have awakened when Obama referred to the cost of foot amputations, a topic I don't think has ever come up in a presidential debate before. Or not.

But the during the Iraqi discussion, the fact that the candidates had far more time than they had in the earlier, multi-candidate debates began to work to Hillary's disadvantage. The more she argued that she had interpreted the October 2002 vote to authorize the war as a vote to authorize inspections, the more deeply ridiculous she became. At the time, the common understanding of the vote was that it authorized war. That is why 126 House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, opposed it. That is why there were major demonstrations in the streets across the country. That is why, here at The American Prospect, Bob Kuttner, Paul Starr and I co-authored an editorial then -- in October, as the vote approached -- warning against going to war and urging Democrats to oppose the resolution. If Hillary Clinton really thought that the vote was about sending inspectors into Iraq, even though, as she said during the debate, that she "did enormous investigation and due diligence," she was having a delusional moment. And I don't think she was.

As the discussion of Iraq continued, Clinton adopted a We're-Just-All-Antiwar-Folks-Here strategy. Once Obama got to the Senate, she said, the two had the same policy. She tried at times to characterize her withdrawal position as essentially indistinguishable from his. But Obama was at his sharpest during this part of the debate, insisting that setting a real deadline for withdrawal would concentrate the mind of the various Iraqi factions ("It can't be muddy; it can't be fuzzy," he said in perfect Ol' Man River cadence) and using his new rather gentle zinger line, that it's important not just to be ready but to be right from day one.

Precisely because of the terrifyingly high stakes of this debate, both candidates strove for a level of amity -- and got there. Did Obama need to be more aggressive? I don't think he could have, not when the two were sitting next to each other with millions of Americans watching just five days before they go to vote. The debate format doesn't permit Obama to soar as he does during his speeches, and policy details are Hillary's natural habitat. But if Obama wanted to convey the impression that he'd be a sober national leader of sound judgment, and able as the nominee to take on the Republicans -- and those were his goals going in -- then he succeeded.

Did he make enough progress to win? We'll know soon enough.

--Harold Meyerson

Barack Obama came to downtown Los Angeles this morning and was introduced as all but the reincarnation of Robert Kennedy.

Congressman Xavier Becerra, who represents East Los Angeles – the historic center of L.A.'s immense Latino community -- reminded the crowd at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College that, "40 years ago we saw a contest here in California. A young man named Robert F. Kennedy came to California." And, as he brought Obama to the stage, Becerra continued, "Give it up -- as if it were 40 years ago and you were watching Bobby Kennedy building an America of black, brown and white, telling us we could transcend our racial differences."

Obama raised no parallels himself, not surprisingly, but was eager to cite his own work on behalf of blacks and Latinos together. As a Chicago community organizer at a time when the city's giant steel mills were shutting down, he recalled, the impact was greatest on black workers and on the Mexican-Americans who traveled across the country for the work that the mills had offered. "People lost their jobs, communities had their stores boarded up, and people turned on one another." He then spoke of the job training and better schools and community development programs he had agitated for. "This is not just the rhetoric of a campaign," he said, in echo of John Edwards, "it's the cause of my life."

Obama affirmed his support for a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and for the Dream Act, but also turned repeatedly to the commonality of de facto black and Latino exclusion from the full benefits of American life. He quoted a woman he'd met on the campaign trail who had despaired of getting her daughter's school to remedy a problem and who told him, "schools aren't designed for people like us. Health care isn't designed for people like us," Obama continued, "the economy isn't designed for people like us. This is our country," he said, his voice rising, "America should be designed for people like us!"

How Obama will do here next Tuesday among "people like us" -- Latinos in particular -- remains an open question. The Obama operation in Latino L.A. is scrambling to get itself in place; an office on L.A.'s eastside was opened just this week. In a city where Latino mobilization has most effectively been undertaken by the union movement, the unions that matter the most don't have a dog in this fight. The California SEIU had endorsed John Edwards, and the L.A. County Federation of Labor -- the AFL-CIO in Los Angeles -- hasn't endorsed at all, of course, as the AFL-CIO holds back until a nominee is selected. Hillary is clearly the frontrunner both in Latino California and California generally, but polls do show Obama closing, and tomorrow morning, Ted Kennedy comes to East L.A. to stump for Obama. Among "older Mexican-Americans who remember Bobby's campaign," said Maria Elena Durazo, the head of the L.A. County Fed on temporary leave to work for Obama, the evocations of Bobby (who campaigned alongside Cesar Chavez, and who was the first major American pol to back the United Farm Workers) can only help.

--Harold Meyerson

Well, we can talk about all the demographic and groups and subgroups of John Edwards’ supporters who may or should or could break for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but here’s what Gallup shows for their three-day tracking polls from January 28 thru 30, charted along with previous results this month:

--Tom Schaller

• Some news from the money tree: Romney hasn't spent any in a February 5 state yet, Obama has raised 32 million dollars this month, while the McCain campaign started winning primaries in January despite being millions of dollars in debt.
• Also, Bill Clinton seems to have used his influence to aid a mining executive by praising a central Asian dictator (contrary to U.S. policy) and in return received a 31 million dollar donation for his foundation. That's pretty sleazy. It also makes Hillary Clinton the latest in a long line of female politicians hurt by their husbands' business dealings.
• Schwarzenegger endorses McCain. Hasta la vista, Romney. Except not really since registered Republicans aren't too fond of the governator and only they are allowed to vote in the primary.
• So the National Journal has ranked Barack Obama as the nation's most liberal senator which seems wrong to me, but is still kinda cool. It's also worth bearing in mind that the National Journal rankings are completely ridiculous. It's no coincidence that they also ranked John Kerry as the most liberal senator in 2004.
• Ralph Nader is also preparing for a presidential bid. 'Cause we all remember how he successfully drove John Kerry to the left in 2004 and took a large share of the vote. Oh wait...
• Finally, Obama picks up the endorsement of Kumar (real name Kal Penn).

--Sam Boyd

It was a bit surreal watching Mitt Romney and John McCain bickering last night over who has been more steadfast in support of a disastrous war that most Americans oppose and now think was not worth ever starting. (And what better forum than the Ronald Reagan Library for a debate that, at least in regard to Iraq, seemed hermetically sealed off from reality?)

I continue to find it amazing that, having full-throatedly advocated one of the great foreign policy blunders of American history, McCain should continue to tout his "experience" and "judgment." His draping himself in credit for the imagined "success of the surge" is likewise something to behold; He really seems to believe he deserves some sort of leadership medal for having had the gumption to criticize a manifestly failed policy (failed in its implementation, of course, not in its conception), and for coming out early in favor of a new strategy aimed at containing the countless and continuing negative consequences of that policy, and then interpreting that as "success." To illustrate this, I've written a short play.

MORE ...

EXT. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John McCain stand around a broken down car with smoke billowing from under the hood on Highway 40 near Dinosaur, Colorado. Cheney sneers into the distance. Rumsfeld is stabbing at the car with his finger. Bush reads a comic book.

MCCAIN: Gentlemen, this car has broken down. In order to achieve our goal of getting to Boston, the car will need a new engine. Also, we'll need to lose some dead weight. Rumsfeld, looks like you're walking.

RUMSFELD: What?

MCCAIN: Listen, I know we all agreed that the best way to get from DC to Boston was over the Rocky Mountains, but the fact is you were doing the driving, and I criticized you for it. You all heard me.

RUMSFELD: That's bogus, man.

CHENEY: You'd better not write a freaking book, Don.

BUSH: Heh, how does Iron Man go to the bathroom?

(Rumsfeld shrugs and walks a few steps to a waiting corporate limo, which whisks him away.)

MCCAIN: Here come some mechanics to put a new engine in the car.

(Later)

MCCAIN: There, the car has a new engine. Gentlemen, the strategy has succeeded!

MEDIA: (rolling up in a VW bus): But the new engine was only part of the plan. You're nowhere near Boston. In fact, the car seems to be rolling in the opposite direction ...

CHENEY: Why do you hate this car so much, Saddamalqaeda?

MEDIA: What? But--

MCCAIN: I repeat, the installation of the new engine was successful. And I supported it. You all heard me. Make me your leader.

MEDIA: Well, it is true, he did support putting a new engine in. And the straightness of his talk is straight, indeed. You know, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head just so, these barren foothills do start to look kind of like Boston.

MCCAIN: Right! Now who wants to watch a game with me at Fenway Canyon?

fin

--Matthew Duss

You may recall Ben Wittes arguing that once Mukasey was dutifully confirmed he wouldn't be able to stonewall because the Democrats would suddenly have more leverage because Mukasey would ... need them to accomplish some unspecified things. I was criticized for thinking that this was less than plausible. How's it working out?

Over the course of a long, maddening day, it's quickly manifest that Mukasey's legal opinions have a 30-second shelf life. He won't opine on what's happened in the past and he won't opine on anything that might happen in the future. When Sen. Arlen Specter—concerned about seven years of vast new claims of executive authority—asks Mukasey whether, in his view, the president "can break any law he pleases because he's the president—including, say, statutes banning torture," as well as FISA and the National Security Act, Mukasey replies, "I can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids."

"Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," Specter shoots back. Mukasey's response? "Both of those issues have been brought within statutes."

Specter is flabbergasted: "But he acted in violation of statutes, didn't he?"

"I don't know," Mukasey replies. But does is really matter? What's past is past.

Amazing -- apparently Mukasey didn't get the memo.

--Scott Lemieux

For the last few days, I've sat on my hands as the feminist movement's leading lights sought to smooth over the latest intramural wrangle over whether one could be a good feminist and vote for the man in this Democratic presidential primary. So far, little smoothing seems to have taken place, leaving this most dangerous of charges to linger. It began on Monday, when the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) issued a press release accusing Sen. Edward Kennedy of "betrayal" for his endorsement of the man whose name dare not be spoken, Hillary Clinton's "opponent". (In the meantime, NOW National President Kim Gandy issued a statement lauding Kennedy for his commitment to women's rights.)

The general word from movement leaders is that the women of NOW-NYS, led by Marcia Pappas, are entitled to their opinions. That was the line advanced last night on "Hardball" by the indomitable Faye Wattleton of the Center for the Advancement of Women. True enough. But so are those women -- feminists, even -- who have determined Barack Obama to be the better bet for women and other living things. I understand -- and even agree with -- the assertion by Gloria Steinem and Taylor Marsh that a woman with Obama's level of experience would not be given the time of day in a presidential nomination contest. But that doesn't mean that the woman in the race is necessarily going to make this world a better place for my spanking new grandniece, Julianna (born while Kennedy was endorsing Obama), than the guy will. And, by my lights, when I finally make up my mind, it will really be about Julianna.

I've been through this kind of loyalty-oath feminism before, most painfully during the porn wars of the 1980s, which served the right far better than they served the women's movement. Within the movement, a price was paid in strained relationships and the alienation of those younger women who came to see feminism as anti-sex.  Now, in the 21st century, it should be safe for a young feminist to vote for her generational priorities, or for any feminist to vote against a candidate who looked the other way while her surrogates played the race card.  During the racially charged South Carolina campaign, two African-American feminists, unknown to each other, speaking from homes hundreds of miles from each other, each quoted me the famous line from Sojourner Truth's plea for suffrage: Ain't I a woman?

--Adele M. Stan

Last summer, when he was out of money, John McCain agreed to accept public financing for his primary campaign -- matching funds that require accepting a limit on total spending in the primaries and on spending in each state. He, John Edwards, and several long-gone candidates were officially granted public funds, in December, but have not yet received the cash, though McCain has borrowed in anticipation of receiving $5.8 million in March.

Now that he is the front-runner, McCain is surely tempted to escape that commitment, and raise private funds rather than accept the constraints of the public system, but The Politico reported Tuesday that "it could be tougher getting out than it was getting in." (Hmmm, a little like Iraq, perhaps?):

Even if McCain decided not to accept the payments, he’d need the FEC to vote to allow him to withdraw from the system.

But a partisan dispute over nominations in the Senate has denied the six-seat panel the four members necessary for a quorum. [There are only two commissioners at the moment.]

“At this point, (McCain) is in the matching fund system. Right now, there is no mechanism for the commission to turn off the spigot,” said Marc Elias, a campaign finance lawyer who represented the aborted presidential campaign of Democrat Chris Dodd.

On the other hand, Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center (whose founder, Trevor Potter, happens to be the McCain campaign's lawyer) argues that as long as McCain sends the FEC a letter opting out of the public funds, he can ignore the limits.

Ryan is arguing for a gamble -- ignore the limits and hope that when the FEC is eventually reconstituted, it will "exercise its prosecutorial discretion and dismiss any complaint" over a plain violation of the law.

Assume Elias is right. Or that the McCain campaign for other reasons still needs the public money? The consequences for McCain -- especially in a match-up with Barack Obama  -- are huge. McCain had spent $39 million by the end of last year. The total spending limit in the primaries for candidates who accept public funding is -- according to the FEC -- "approximately $50 million." Now that the primaries are underway and he's buying airtime,  McCain will surely hit that limit soon, and may have hit it already.

If that happens, he will have no ability to raise or spend money until he receives his first public financing payment for the general election, after he is confirmed as the nominee at the Republican convention. From the day he hits the limit until September 4 -- as much as seven months -- will be a "dark period," when Clinton or Obama, who are not limited by the primary public financing system, will be free to keep raising and spending money, and defining McCain while he is silent. Note that it was the dark period that doomed Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, leading George W. Bush to be the first to opt out of public financing, in 2000.

The simplest way to avoid the dark period is to refuse public financing for the general election as well, which is a completely separate system. No one's ever done that, but the $85 million in public money for the general election can easily be made up with private money, and doubled or tripled, especially for the Republican nominee.

But there's a problem: McCain signed a pledge last year to accept public financing in the general election if his opponent did so. Only one Democrat signed the same pledge: Barack Obama. So if Obama's the Democratic nominee, that avenue is foreclosed.

The second way to avoid the dark period is to let outside groups pay for the campaign. That would be the 527 committees that were first popularized by Democrats in 2004, who were worried about a dark period themselves. (A problem that was solved when John Kerry opted out of public funds, allowing him to keep spending through the convention.) But McCain's crusade against 527s has been so fierce that he can hardly say, "never mind." 

A third way to resolve the whole question, I suppose, is to end the partisan dispute that prevents the FEC from forming a quorum. That could be done by the White House, if it withdrew the nomination of vote-suppression hack Hans von Spakovsky -- whose appointment has been blocked by none other than Barack Obama.

A couple weeks ago Yglesias, Drum, and Marc Lynch wrote about plans for a new French military base in Abu Dhabi. The speculation centered on French strategic thinking; was the intention to challenge what was becoming an American monopoly of influence in the Gulf? Was it intended as a message of resolve to Iran?

A recent article in Defense News sheds some additional light. Apart from whatever strategic motivations the French may have had, an important consideration was apparently arms sales:

[Musa} Al-Qallab said the new base will boost the French defense industry, whose regional sales include the Mirage 2000-9 jet fighter, Leclerc main battle tanks and a large variety of Eurocopter helicopters.
“This military partnership will eventually give a strong momentum to the French defense companies competing with U.S. and Russia for the lucrative UAE and gulf markets,” he said.
[Theodore] Karasik said Britain, China or Russia might attempt to copy the French move.

-- Robert Farley

Please. No.

--Dana Goldstein

(Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user wickenden.)

During my four years of college in Rhode Island, I came to deeply love the tiny Ocean State. It's flat, it's cold, and it's rainy, but damn, the politics are fascinating. (And Providence is an amazing food city. Really! With great architecture!)

In 2006, Rhode Islanders reluctantly sent Sen. Lincoln Chafee packing, despite their affection for his family legacy. Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq. He refused to vote for Bush in 2004, instead writing in the name of the president's father. Unsurprisingly, Chafee dropped out of the Republican Party last year. Now, in a memoir set to appear in April, Chafee becomes probably the only politician in America to laud his own defeat, writing:

I was a casualty of the system working in 2006, and while defeat is never easy, I give the voters credit: They made the connection between electing even popular Republicans at the cost of leaving the Senate in the hands of a leadership they had learned to mistrust.

According to the Providence Journal, Chafee, who is so proud of his antiwar stance, doesn't mention in the book that pro-war Republicans flocked to Rhode Island to campaign for him in 2006. But he does take Democrats who supported the war to task in stinging prose:

“Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.”

Chafee writes of his surprise at “how quickly key Democrats crumbled.” Democratic senators, Chafee writes, “went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration’s nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?”

I'm looking forward to reading the whole book and reviewing it for TAP.

--Dana Goldstein

The McCain campaign sent out an email late last night announcing that the candidate will be receiving a "major endorsement" today in California. Of course, most are guessing that the endorsement is from Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is supported by the fact that two are slated to take part in an environmental event together today.

Since they're getting together today to talk about the environment, and McCain seems to now be the clear frontrunner in the Republican race, let's take a moment to analyze the candidate's actual environmental record. He's given all kinds of kudos in the mainstream press for even appearing to care about environmental issues (which will surely only increase if/when he gets the Schwarzenegger endorsement), and his opponents have been attempting to paint him as being too liberal on the issue. Don't get me wrong, he has taken the Bush administration and the rest of the GOP establishment to task for subverting action on climate change, and he does have the better record and rhetoric on the subject than the rest of the Republican field.

But that isn't saying much. In reality, McCain is far from an environmental champion. The League of Conservation Voters gives him a lifetime score of just 26 percent. While he may have been a co-sponsor of the first Senate bill calling for mandatory reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions way back in 2003, he hasn't kept up to speed on what legislation like that should look like. The 2007 version of his Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act is weaker than most others that have been offered up, calling for a cap at 2004 levels by 2012 and gradual reductions to 30 percent of 2004 levels by 2050. Current science tells us we need 80 percent reductions by 2050 to avert catastrophic warming, putting McCain's plan way behind the times. He also voted against a renewable portfolio standard in 2005 that would have required the U.S. to draw 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and though he used to be a major critic of ethanol, he flip-flopped on the issue when running in Iowa. To his credit, he does still say he opposes government subsidies for ethanol.

Most importantly, while he says climate change is one of his top three issues, he offers only a paltry agenda on the subject. In speeches, he promises to wean the nation off "foreign oil" and lead the country to energy independence, but there doesn't appear to be any plan backing those promises.

So might McCain be better than the other Republicans on climate and environmental issues? Marginally. But a champion for environmental causes? Not likely.

--Kate Sheppard

With the departure of John Edwards from the race for the Democratic nomination yesterday, the focus now turns to how the vacuum left by his campaign will affect the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. First there is the question of delegates, which turns out to be the easiest puzzle to solve. According to the Democratic Convention Watch blog, all of Edwards' uncommitted superdelegates (27) will go back to a "no endorsement" pool. Edwards' delegates from the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries (12) will revert to uncommitted, while his caucus delegates from Iowa (17) will be reallocated to Obama and Clinton proportionately, based on their performance in those events.

The more important consequence of Edward's departure is where his supporters will go. Here, demographics appear decisive, yet inconclusive. A Times article yesterday on Southern Super Tuesday states notes widespread reluctance amongst white voters in these states to support Obama's campaign, although this doesn't automatically translate into support for Clinton.

Meanwhile, John Judis notes the significance of voters' age in determining candidate support. Older voters tended to support Edwards, he notes, which should translate into support for Clinton, given her past performance among older voters. And among "moderates" in New Hampshire, there appears to have been greater support for Obama than Clinton, based on a 19-point difference in disapproval ratings.

The exit polls in Florida might provide the most diverse demographic information, although it is unclear how voters in the Sunshine State were affected by the ongoing dispute between the state party and the DNC over the delegate slate. Given that turnout was quite high, however, these statistics would appear to have some value. Chris Cillizza notes that Edwards supporters are evenly divided on who to support next. Sixty percent of these supporters would be "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with Clinton, while 66 percent expressed the same sentiment for Obama.

All of this uncertainty might hinge on an Edwards endorsement, which could come before Super Tuesday, according to numerous reports. For now, Edwards has only sought a promise from Obama and Clinton to keep the issue of poverty front and center during the campaign, which each candidate readily accepted. According to Greg Sargent, though, the endorsement is highly coveted:

Top Edwards adviser Joe Trippi just confirmed to me by phone that the Hillary and Obama campaigns are already working overtime to woo Edwards to their sides -- even before his official dropout speech.

"They're banging down the doors," Trippi told me.

Whether these questions are resolved before February 5 or because of it, the new dynamics of a two-person race depend on who Edwards endorses. It does not seem likely that he will endorse Clinton, based on their past differences, which suggests that his dropping out before February 5 is meant to maximize his influence over the news cycle, should he endorse Obama. Whether an Edwards endorsement of Obama would substantially boost the latter's campaign is debatable, but it might prove decisive to marooned Edwards supporters, who are looking for someone new to back on the road to the White House.

--Mori Dinauer

Daniel Levy offers his take over at TAP Online:

The last week has been a period of grace, of partial freedom for the 1.4 million residents of the large open-air prison also known as Gaza. Last Wednesday Hamas activists apparently blew up the border barriers between Gaza and Egypt, and by morning it was a free for all. Gazans, used to being blockaded into 360 sq km, turned the Egyptian border towns of Rafah and El Arish into an impromptu and unlikely shopping mall/holiday resort. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans streamed into the Egyptian Sinai to stock up on basic goods and supplies, to visit family and to enjoy a respite from the claustrophobia of Gaza. More than just the border barrier has been blown apart, and even as it is now rebuilt, the Israeli, Egyptian, United States and Palestinian Authority policies have a very visible hole in them.

Events leading up to the Gazan furlough days have been infuriating, first and foremost from a humanitarian perspective, but beyond that in the short-sighted and self-defeating policies of the main protagonists. The escalation of the siege in Gaza was of course inhuman but it also did nothing to improve the security of the neighboring Israeli population -- it undermined the peace process that was supposed to have been re-launched and weakened the ability of the Arab states to support that process.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

That from the lips of televangelist and Mike Huckabee pal Kenneth Copeland, describing his response to Sen. Charles Grassley's investigation into his use of non-profit donor funds for his family's personal use, and to fund for-profit enterprises run by the Copeland family.

Copeland was shown Tuesday night on CBS News making that statement to his annual ministry conference -- the same conference at which he raised money for Huckabee. Take a look at the video for more clips of Copeland, interviews with ex-ministry employees who saw donor money funneled to for-profit purposes, and shots of Copeland's house sprawling mansion, and fleet of jets:

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Copeland is denying that he endorsed or raised money for Huckabee during his ministers' conference last week:

Russ Florence of Tulsa, Okla., a spokesman for Copeland, said in a statement that the event did not amount to an endorsement of Huckabee by Kenneth Copeland Ministries. He said Huckabee's campaign rented one of the rooms after the ministers' conference and Kenneth Copeland Ministries did not make a contribution to Huckabee's campaign.

"No offering was or has been taken for any political candidate by Kenneth Copeland Ministries or at a KCM event," Florence said.

Huckabee campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said she could not confirm the amount raised, but said that Huckabee and Copeland spoke by phone last week. The former Arkansas governor also is an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

"Basically, Kenneth Copeland simply asked him how he could pray for him and the governor asked him to pray for physical stamina for the team and the financial resources that they need each day," she said. "I'm not sure who called who."

Huckabee's campaign released a statement saying it rented a room for "a separate event that was hosted by a private individual" and was not affiliated with Copeland's ministry. The campaign said the event conformed with campaign finance laws and tax regulations.

I wonder whether there will be a "several page lesson on 'no'" on this matter as well, and whether Grassley (and the IRS) will take no for an answer.

--Sarah Posner

The grueling schedule of our insane primary calendar took a toll tonight on the new GOP frontrunner, John McCain, who appeared onstage in a Los Angeles debate less than 24 hours after claiming his Florida primary victory in Miami. Mitt Romney by far got the better of the headline-grabbing exchange in tonight's debate, that over McCain's allegation that Romney had advocated a timetable for withdrawal. McCain's position is palpably false and can easily be disproved, which Romney did, but by dwelling so long on the question, McCain was reduced to protesting time and again that "timetable" was a buzzword of the time -- and, by implication, since Romney said the dread buzzword, the Mittster must have supported a timetable for withdrawal of our troops. By the time McCain had repeated this three or four times, he came across as querulous, which is only a few degrees removed from doddering. I'm not saying that this will derail McCain -- I don't think it will -- but it does suggest that McCain may grow ragged under the rigors of a long, frenzied campaign.

--Harold Meyerson

Let's all just take a moment to thank our lucky stars that Rudy Giuliani, a man who relentlessly tried to capitalize on the fear and confusion that Americans felt, and still feel, about 9/11, who tried and tried to sell himself as the embodiment of America's rage and the instrument of its unreasoning vengeance, and who offered America nothing but a future of disunity at home and endless war abroad, will not be president. If you have a loved one nearby, go hug him or her now.

--Matthew Duss

And he endorses McCain.

From our archives:
In our May 2007 cover story on Giuliani, Michael Tomasky warned conservatives: "If you knew Rudy like I know Rudy..." Well, apparently voters got to know Rudy, and didn't like him much.

Matt Duss described Giuliani's war cabinet.

And see Kate Sheppard's dispatch from Florida, "Rudy's Last Stand."

--The Editors

• John Edwards, after a long and inspiring campaign, is bowing out. If he'd run his 2008 campaign back in 2004 I think he'd be running for reelection right about now. Hard to see why he didn't stick around until February 5th though. My guess is he had polling that indicated a departure would help the candidate he favors (probably Obama). Or maybe it just took a while for the South Carolina results to sink in. In any event, he's done a great job of pushing the Democratic field to the left on issues from global warming to health care and for that I'm grateful. See also Jonathan Cohn and Ezra. Also see Tom on what went wrong and Dana on who benefits.

• One further note: the standard this-doesn't-help-Obama argument will concede that on an elite level most active high-information Edwards supporters like Obama more than Clinton, but then note that this doesn't necessarily reflect most voters' opinions. But, as I've written, superdelegates are almost certain to play a big role in the nomination and so elite support is important in and of itself since superdelegates are the establishment itself.
• The other big news of the day is McCain's victory in Florida. Of course since McCain is in the media's heart (as Chris Matthews put it) this is a decisive, campaign-ending blow to Mitt Romney and evidence of McCain's incredible strength as a candidate. Except that McCain only got where he is through sheer dumb luck and will be the target of vicious ads until February 5th. Still, it'd help if Romney could cheer up a little. As they say in Bronson, this ain't over.
• Y'know what is over? Rudy Giuliani's campaign. This has provoked a lot of chin scratching about where he went wrong, but we really should be talking about where the media went wrong. Why did most reporters simply refuse to grasp that the more voters learned about him the less they liked him? Giuliani had less chance of winning the Republican nomination than a syphilitic hobo has a of scoring a date at a sorority mixer. Kudos to NYT for explaining this, though would it have killed them to mention how every political pundit has played up his candidacy?
• Finally, since I took over the Lightning Round I've been dedicated to bringing you the best in wacky celebrity endorsements (and boy have there been a lot of them). Today, Obama picks up Hulk Hogan and Craig Newmark of craigslist (hat tip to Matt for both, but I think Ezra has the more ... substantive... take on the Hogan endorsement). Clinton counters with "Belvis, the black Elvis." Awesome.

Politicians always say they don’t pay attention to polls, but wouldn’t you know it, now that the economy shows up as the number one issue concerning voters, all the presidential candidates have come out with ads stressing their concern about the economy. As usual, it’s a collection of hits, near misses, and comical whiffs.

Let’s start with the Republicans, beginning with he of square jaw and fat bank account, Mitt Romney:

This ad unveils a new visual trope, the Rotating Tube of Praise. This is actually pretty clever -- if a viewer is left wondering, “What’s with the tubes?”, that means their eye was grabbed and they might even have read what was on them. But the end of the ad is curious. The announcer says, “We vote for Mitt Romney,” but if you aren’t squinting closely, you won’t realize that he’s reading from the National Review’s endorsement. What you’re more likely seeing as you hear the words is the photographs on the screen, which show Romney amongst voters. So who are the “we” voting for Mitt Romney? Judging from the pictures, the answer is old white people. You’ll never guess where this ad was airing.

On to John McCain’s Florida message:

Like some other McCain ads, this one has no visuals -- they just plop McCain in front of a flag and give him a script. And it’s an inelegant mash-up of a message on the economy and a message on national security. Perhaps the McCain camp believed that since McCain has plenty of credibility on national security (deserved or not), but no credibility on the economy, if they put the two together people would think he knows what he’s talking about on the latter, beyond his promise to crack Alan Greenspan’s book when he gets a chance. But unlike, say, The Grey Album, the combination doesn’t really work here. Other than the fact that national security and the economy are both, you know, issues, the message doesn’t unite them in any way.

Then, we’ve got Rudy Giuliani, whom I include here only for the entertainment value. I’m not clear on whether this ad has actually aired on TV, but give it a look:

First, Rudy’s record on stirring up fear remains intact. Second, I understand that all politics is local, but to this non-Floridian, this ad seems to take pandering to a ridiculous level. Not only is it all about hurricanes, but it’s got the Southern-accented announcer, and some incredibly inappropriate music that somebody obviously thought grooved in a Florida kind of way, but actually sounds like they grabbed it from a seventies porno movie. Perhaps next we’ll see, “Only Rudy will issue a presidential directive mandating that the University of Florida Gators win the national championship at least once every three years.”

On to the Democrats. First, we’ve got Hillary Clinton’s economic entry:

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Visually, this ad is incredibly busy – it has no fewer than eighteen images packed into its thirty seconds. Put aside the mention of Clinton’s economic plans, which are almost too quick to catch, and what you have are a series of images that could have come from any candidate on either side – current economy bad (foreclosure signs, worried middle-class people), transition to momentum-filled music, future economy good (bustling factories, houses being built, candidate nodding in understanding of people’s hopes and dreams). Clinton has always argued that she is in effect the wonk’s candidate – experienced, knowledgeable, with well thought-out plans for what ails us. We don’t get too much of that here, which is why Obama’s economic ad is an interesting counterpoint:

While other ads have showed him in his best forum (speaking to a large crowd), here we see Obama speaking in two other settings: in a small group, and alone to the camera. And instead of the soaring rhetoric, we get bullet points on policy details. It also hits the populist note (CEOs making more in ten minutes than ordinary workers make all year) and the empathetic note.

Put all these together, and the messages almost cancel each other out. What you’re left with is that all the candidates realize people are hurting, and want to help. And chances are that by the time one of them takes office a year from now, the economy won’t be so bad.

--Paul Waldman

Here's the line from John Edwards' dropping out speech that really touched me, as he spoke about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama:

It's time for me to step aside so that history can -- so that history can blaze its path. We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but what we do know is that our Democratic Party will make history.

It was a nod to the fact that whoever now wins the Democratic nomination, she or he will represent a historic first, a culmination of the social movements that defined twentieth century America and that continue to invigorate the American liberal movement. It will be, indeed, a proud moment for progressives, and Edwards had the grace to recognize that today.

--Dana Goldstein

I’m not sure how much these polls mean, but Barack Obama is now leading Hillary Clinton in Georgia and Colorado, states he never led her before this month and, in Colorado’s case, this week. Ditto for Connecticut, where as of today he is now tied with Clinton. And in Arizona, he’s cut her earlier lead of about 20 points in half. Other states—including big, critical states like California, Massachusetts and New Jersey—seem to be holding steady for Clinton, and Alabama is trending toward her.

Of course, many of these comparisons are between recent polls with results only a few weeks ago, while others compare recent results with polls from months ago; and the polling firms may be using different sampling and screening methods. It’s hard to conclude too much. But if Obama is tied in Connecticut and leading in Colorado and Georgia, states where he was losing by double-digits in the fall, there seems to be some tightening of the race.

And then there is the wildcard of the Edwards' supporters. I mean, who really knows what the hell is going to happen on Tuesday? Boy, this is getting really, really interesting.

--Tom Schaller

To follow up on what Ezra said: There was no Florida Democratic primary. Although the high turnout in a non-primary was heartening for Democratic prospects in November, the results are wholly meaningless as there was no campaign and no delegates at stake. Changing the rules ex post facto and claiming delegates for a specific candidate would be unambiguous electoral fraud. And whether the disenfranchisement of Florida Democrats for violating party rules was justified or not, it was agreed to in advance by every Democratic campaign -- including the one now trying to pretend that a real election was held. Seating delegates for a particular candidate would not enfranchise Florida Democrats, since they still would not have had the opportunity to vote in a real contested election with actual stakes. The only actual remedy for the party's decision would be to hold a real competitive primary at a later date, period.

--Scott Lemieux

• On the wonderfully ignominious collapse of Rudy!, I think Noam Scheiber gets it right: "Was Rudy's strategy flawed, or was it the candidate? I say the latter. Rudy spent a good chunk of time and money in New Hampshire in November and December. The net effect was to move his numbers down." Right. Claims that Giuliani's problem was strategy ignores not only the substantial amount of time and money he spent in New Hampshire but the fact that he effectively pulled out early for good reason; he was cratering. It's hard to see that just doing the same thing would have suddenly started working. The Florida firewall strategy had no chance of working, but that's because nothing can work when active campaigning actually hurts your numbers. It should also be noted that Giuliani was never a genuine frontrunner; you'd think that Lieberman 2004 would have made it clear that national polls well in advance of the primaries mean virtually nothing, but some people apparently have to be reminded every four years.
• John Holbo wonders how conservative pundits who have been attacking John McCain relentlessly ("perhaps not more liberal than Obama?" These people are nuts...) will deal with his impending nomination. It should be easy for conservatives to get over their McCain issues since overall he was always the most conservative of the major candidates, but of course if these pundits were rational they would already see that. I think he's leaving out the most obvious one, though. If Democrats give the GOP the gift of Clinton, which still seems very likely, these pundits can pretty much ignore McCain and focus entirely on Hillary Clinton's purported Trotskyism, murder and drug running operations, "shrillness," her husband's penis, etc. This almost exclusively misogynist resentment plus Clinton derangement strategy may not be enough -- ask Bob Dole -- but it's clearly where the conservative punditocracy is headed.

--Scott Lemieux

An interesting tidbit from the Florida exit poll: A full 43 percent of the Republican primary electorate believes abortion should be legal. Poor suckers. And look at their candidate preferences: 43 percent voted for McCain and 26 percent for Romney, both of whom have sworn to do everything in their power to overturn Roe v. Wade, while just 19 percent of the pro-choice Republicans chose Rudy Giuliani.

It's important to state that Giuliani did not run as pragmatically pro-choice. He did, after all, promise to appoint Roberts and Scalia types to the Supreme Court. But alone among the GOP field, Giuliani signaled at least grudging acceptance of the idea -- if not the reality -- of a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Debra Saunders suggested Giuliani would have made a stronger candidate if he had run as a pro-choice social moderate tough on terror. Perhaps then, more of the 43 percent of Floridian pro-choicers would have supported him.

But I think it's more likely that Republicans who consider themselves pro-choice simply rank the issue far down on their list of priorities. Like most Americans, they're thinking more about foreign policy and the economy right now. And also like most Americans, they've found they're not super comfortable voting for a candidate whose own children dislike him. Rudy, you old dog, it just wasn't meant to be.

--Dana Goldstein

The hope of John Edwards pushing forward, all the way to the convention, ends today. Edwards is scheduled to drop out of the presidential race at 1 pm this afternoon in New Orleans, where he'll also be speaking about poverty, an issue that animated his 2008 campaign from the beginning.

His departure is a sad moment, not least because Edwards' policies on health care, inequality, education, and so much more have framed this race, setting the progressive standard for his better-funded, media darling competitors. Hillary Clinton began her run imagining Edwards as her chief rival, and therein lay so much of his power: He alone had the ability, early in the primary, to define what it meant to challenge Clinton from the left.

And we'll miss Elizabeth Edwards' place on the national stage. The whole country was riveted by the story of the husband and wife team who chose together not to give in to cancer, but to fight on in a campaign more defined by issues than most.

That's not to say the Edwards campaign wasn't flawed -- it was. Check out my piece from Monday, in which I speak to Edwards advisors and other experts on why his populism failed to catch on. I also discuss who Edwards voters are likely to flip to, and explain why, somewhat counter-intuitively, Clinton may have an edge.

That's the question sure to be on everyone's lips today.

--Dana Goldstein

John Edwards is dropping out. I caught one of his final "barnstorming" events through small-town South Carolina last week, and wrote about it for Salon. In trying to figure out why he never clicked, four things struck me:

1. As the white male in a party whose 2004 nominee received almost three-quarters of his votes from either women or non-whites, he was always the minority in this race.
2. Second, his us-v-them message had more emphasis on “us” four years ago but turned toward too much focus on “them” this time out, and most people do not want to vote against something or somebody but for something.
3. Third, the primary/caucus calendar didn’t work in his favor.
4. And finally, his courageous transformation from a centrist DLC-type into a true populist was genuine, but served as a reminder to Democrats of their mistakes in compromising and joining with Republicans over the years on issues like Iraq and trade.

As I wrote in Salon, “In sum, 2008 is an uncomfortable year for John Edwards. Clinton is a woman and Obama an African-American in a multiracial party whose highest elected official is a woman. Clinton and Obama talk about change more in terms of what the good guys should do rather than why the bad guys should be run out of town. Clinton stands for a restoration of the Democratic politics of the 1990s, and Obama presents himself as a new-era, post-partisan Democrat. As the rural white underdog who abandoned his centrist posture to refashion himself as a populist anti-corporate bulldog, Edwards will be remembered as the 2008 contender forever in search of a winning coalition that simply wasn't there.”

--Tom Schaller

With pretty much all the votes counted, it's clear that turnout here in Florida yesterday was quite high on both sides. On the Democratic side, 1.7 million voters came out, or 47 percent of all those who cast votes yesterday. The GOP turnout was 1.9 million, or 53 percent of the total. This is big news for Democrats here in Florida, who regardless of what goes down with the delegates are trying to build their party in the long term so as to avoid a repeat of Election 2000. Democrats in the state came out in record numbers despite the fact that there was no campaigning here, no multi-million dollars dropped on the state by outsiders, and repeated claims by the press that the votes of Florida Democrats don't matter this primary. But it does matter in terms of getting voters here excited for November and committed to getting out the vote when that time comes.

What I've seen here among Democrats has been uplifting. Despite the situation, Clinton and Obama supporters were out on the street waving signs last night. The day before the election, they were calling registered Dems and reminding them to vote. The Obama group here had been going door-to-door since last July to talk to people about their candidate. Driving around the Tampa/St. Petersberg area yesterday I saw many people young and old out pushing for the Democratic candidates, while short of a few Ron Paul fans, I didn't see anywhere near the kind of authentic, grassroots support on the Republican side. All of the work for the other Republican candidates was going on by the official campaigns, which will pack up an go home today.

The real Floridians doing all the work for the Dems, though, are here to stay, and come November let's hope that pays off.

--Kate Sheppard

What is the takeaway from Hillary Clinton’s “victory” in Florida yesterday? There are (at least) two ways to look at it.

The first is that, generally speaking, she is preferred by Democrats by a roughly 3-to-2-to-1 margin over Barack Obama and John Edwards, respectively. That is, she is the default choice of the party, the favored if not favorite candidate in a name ID matchup. The alternative interpretation is this: The more people get to know both her and Obama, the worse she does and the better Obama does.

Check the math: Yesterday, in Florida, Clinton “won” by 17 points a non-competitive contest--in the literal sense that they didn’t compete, not in the sense that it was a blowout, though it was; that margin is eerily similar to her 16-point “victory” in the other non-competitive battle in Michigan. Now compare those results with her margins in the other four, truly competitive primaries and caucuses: Iowa, -8; New Hampshire, +3; Nevada, +6, and South Carolina, -27. If we computed a Real Clear Politics-style average of those four competitive races (and without weighting for the South Carolina vote, which was Obama’s biggest win in the largest turnout state among the four), Clinton’s average margin in the four competitive states is -6.5 points. So, when they run against each other, it’s Obama by a half dozen; but when they don’t she wins by about 16. That’s a 22-point swing. (N.B.: You can bet Mark Penn would be releasing memos of this sort if the situations were reversed.)

Don't these results tell us something more than the fact that Florida was, as Dana Milbank says, "much ado about nothing" in purely delegates-won terms? Yes, they tell us that when Clinton and Obama face off head-to-head, she performs worse--much worse. That's not nothing; that's something.

--Tom Schaller

These are only preliminary figures, but the Florida Democratic turnout today surpassed the combined turnout of the Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, at well over a million with not all precincts yet reported. It also surpassed the turnout for any primary on record ever in the state, according to the Florida Democratic Party.

--Kate Sheppard

Washington is fundamentally broken ... We're not going to change Washington by sending the same people back just to sit in different chairs ... It's time for the politicians to leave Washington and for the citizens to take over.

Of course, it's an unsubtle dig at McCain, who's been in Washington for quite some time. But it's also an interesting turn in his messaging. With Huckabee and Giuliani, essentially out of the picture now, the race is down to McCain and Romney. Romney's trying to cast himself as some kind of outsider untainted by The Establishment. Meanwhile, in reality land, it's McCain that The Establishment has a problem with, while they seem to be anointing Romney as their next golden boy. To ensure that, Romney also threw in some pandering to Bush in his speech: "Let's point out to those who criticize President Bush that it's thanks to him we've been safe these last six years."

And of course Romney's campaign staffers are trying to push the delusion that McCain is some kind of liberal. Chatting with campaign volunteer Paul Erickson after the speech, he was sure to point out that "Now the conservative movement has a chance to consolidate around a single candidate, Mitt Romney, to save the Reagan legacy."

I also ran into my Rednecks for Romney associate again, who said Romney's failure here was not getting out enough of the redneck voting bloc. "I'm going to have to go shake the bushes," he said. "That's the difference – the redneck vote."

--Kate Sheppard

Both CNN and Fox are calling Florida for John McCain, at 35 percent to Romney's 31 percent at this point. They're also predicting that Giuliani will drop out tomorrow and endorse McCain. More on these developments live from Mitt Central in a bit.

--Kate Sheppard

So I ended up at the Romney event this evening (sorry to the commenters who were plugging for Rudy; the bossfolks suggested I head here). Right now I'm in the basement of the hall where his party is being held, which is packed full of more reporters than any one candidate should merit. Everyone is dining on Romney-sponsored chicken-on-a-stick and baked brie. Many of these are the same reporters I've seen all week at rallies, who follow the candidate to their press sessions afterwards and ask deep questions like, "Why does your opponent hate you?" and "Your opponent says you hate puppies. Would you say that's true?" so it's insightful surreal observing them as they discuss and write up the exact same lack of news in a billion different ways.

And that not-really-newsworthy news so far is that with 32 percent of precincts reporting, McCain and Romney are neck-and-neck at 34 and 32 percent, respectively. Giuliani and Huckabee are within a point of each other in their race for third place. But that's only about a third of the votes so far, so we've still got a little while before any winners are declared on the Republican side

It should also be pointed out that for the Republicans, Florida is winner-take-all; one person will get all 57 delegates. Going into today, McCain has 32 delegates, Romney has 27 and Huckabee has 7, so these delegates will be a major boon to whomever gets to take them home. On the Democratic side, delegates are apportioned, so if they do decide to seat Florida at the convention, they would be split among the candidates.

So far, Clinton is pulling the state at 49 percent to Obama's 30, and Fox is calling it for Clinton. She's already given her victory speech in Davie, Fla. An excerpt:

I am convinced with this resounding vote, with the millions that will vote on Tuesday, we will send a message that America is back. I am so grateful to the countless Floridian who on their own organized, talked to their neighbors ... As we move forward on this campaign, all of your voices will go with me.

--Kate Sheppard

• The greatest show in politics moves to Florida today. Even though Florida only assigns delegates for the Republican race, the Democratic race is getting almost as much attention. While some ads for Obama have run there as part of a national ad buy, Clinton has a huge advantage since she wants to seat Florida's delegates while Obama doesn't. Florida democrats, naturally (but wrongly) upset about being excluded from the Democratic process would be made of stone if that didn't move them. This is actually one case where the mainstream media has done better than the political press--CNN for example doesn't mention on its front page that Democrats will vote today. This take is accurate (and hilarious).
• Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, much beloved by liberal bloggers (at least until her atrocious SOTU response yesterday) endorses Obama. Clinton picked up Rep. Maxine Waters.
• Bill Richardson waxes nostalgic about how Obama had his back in a debate.
• On the Republican side there's really not much to report. Mitt Romney or John McCain will win Florida. Whoever wins will be hailed as the new conquering Republican hero even though it'll probably be a pretty narrow win. I think at this point everyone is so sick of the GOP campaign they just want it to be over.
• Finally Ron Paul picks up the endorsement of ... Arlo Guthrie!?! Really? Say it ain't so Arlo.

--Sam Boyd

And their votes will matter on some level; they'll be reported in the press, and there's still the possibility that they'll be seated come convention time. But the press has done a pretty good job of convincing Dems here that their votes don't matter. The Hillsborough Dems received numerous calls from voters asking whether they were allowed to go vote. As I was sitting there, one man walked in and asked them, "Can I vote today? I thought it was just a Republican primary." And this guy was a relatively high-information citizen – a professor at a local college, lifelong Democrat, and regular voter.

The message that Democrats don't count is especially pernicious this primary, because there is a proposed amendment to the state constitution on the ballot that would change property taxes in the state, a move that would benefit average citizens very little and cause a major loss of revenue for local governments -- hurting schools, fire and police departments, and other municipal services.

But local Democratic organizations, volunteers working on behalf of the candidates, and regular citizens have been stepping up in the absence of the official campaigns here and working to counter the message that their votes don't matter. Susan Smith, a precinct chair in Hillsborough who was busy running people to the polls this afternoon, showed me a homemade Hillary Clinton flier that a 90-year-old man had been handing out in his retirement community. Up at the Marti-Maceo Afro-Cuban Club last night, volunteers from the local Barack Obama group were making get-out-the-vote calls on their own cell phones. In a state that has really been a battleground for Democrats and the butt of so many jokes since the 2000 election, Democrats are working hard to build their party and energize voters here. And that will make a big difference come November.

--Kate Sheppard

This last Sunday, Parag Khanna published a long excerpt of a new book in the New York Times Magazine. Dan Nexon at Duck of Minerva loved it. Dan Drezner didn't. I'm pretty much in the camp of the latter Dan, who opined:

I will heap praise on Khanna's agent for getting the excerpt placed into the Magazine. There's less demand than there used to be for prose stylings that read like Benjamin Barber after a three-day coke bender in Macao.

To say that militarily strong states are feeble because they cannot easily bring order to minor states is like saying that a pneumatic hammer is weak because it is not suitable for drilling decayed teeth.

--Robert Farley

As I've written elsewhere, social moderates and liberals with a twinkle in their eye for John McCain are living in another universe. Anti-choice and anti-LGBT signaling are an overt part of his campaign. Here, via Jonathan Martin, is the text of a McCain robocall, recorded in a woman's voice, that rolled out in Florida yesterday.

I’m calling with an urgent Mitt Romney [unintelligible]

We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being.

Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he still hasn’t changed the law. He told gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy. Now, it’s something different.

Unfortunately, on issue after issue Mitt Romney has treated social issues voters as fools, thinking we won’t catch on. Sorry, Mitt, we know you aren’t trustworthy on the most important issue and you aren’t a conservative.

Paid for by John McCain 2008.

On another note, this call is proof that Republicans are willing to bank on Ted Kennedy's ability to act as a scarecrow to the base. Could Kennedy's endorsement of Obama end up hurting Obama's appeal to Independent and Republican voters in a general election?

--Dana Goldstein

Noah Pollak has a follow-up smear to his earlier smear of Samantha Power, in which, among other delights, he interprets Powers' suggestion (in a 2002 interview, during one of the most violent periods of the second intifada) of the possible necessity of an American-led peacekeeping force in Palestinian areas as advocacy for "an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories." You know, if you squint really hard and tilt your head ... no, not really.

Meanwhile, Pollak's fellow contender Eric Trager comments on Barack Obama's recent phone call with American Jewish leaders, in which which Obama reiterated his support for Israel in the face of rumors to the contrary. Trager expresses sadness over the innuendos being spread against Obama's campaign, as if unaware that his magazine is a player in the effort. Then Trager gives us this:

Yet one question remains legitimate: how can voters who care about the U.S.-Israel relationship be reassured that Obama’s staunchly pro-Israel declarations are not mere pandering? After all, Obama is on record as having called for an “even-handed approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2000, just as the Palestinians commenced the Second Intifada following Camp David.

Good heavens, "an even-handed approach"? What's next, wearing a keffiyeh? Driving a VW bus? Yeah, sure Obama says he's staunchly pro- Israel, and he has a record of supporting staunchly pro-Israel policies, but does he really feel it? You know, like, really? Questions remain.

--Matthew Duss

Here's some commentary from my dad, Steven Goldstein, a New York native who now lives in Tallahassee. He's part of the famed "transplant" voting bloc that was supposed to help the New Yorkers in the race. At least on the GOP side, that support is evaporating for Rudy Giuliani. But my dad articulates why, in the minds of so many Baby Boomer Florida Dems, Clinton remains their favorite, even despite the Ted Kennedy endorsement, which brought back so many inspiring memories of the 1960s.

My dad's opinions, of course, are completely his own, and represent neither my opinions of those of TAP. I think he's too willing, for example, to overlook Clinton's wrong-headed vote to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. But commenters -- please be respectful if you disagree. This is my dad's first foray into blogging!

I'm voting for Hillary tomorrow morning. She reflects my centrist/liberal views on domestic issues and, regarding foreign policy, I feel she has the best balance of world view common sense and "balls" than any of the candidates, Republicans or Democrats. The Kennedy support of Obama does have an influence on me. I greatly admire the Kennedy family, worts and all. JFK and RFK were heroes to me. JFK was "my" President more than any other. I met RFK and shook his hand when he was running for his New York Senate seat.

Yes, it does very much feel that Obama is a political successor to JFK. JFK was no liberal in today's sense but he was compared to Nixon, the Republicans, and the politics as usual at the time, in 1960. Obama does generate much of the same excitement that JFK did. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination I will support him enthusiastically. My heart pulls me to Obama. My brain pulls me to Hillary. I'm voting for Hillary.

--Dana Goldstein

Paul Starr considers what to do about the Florida and Michigan delegates:

If the contest for the Democratic nomination continues to be close, there is a risk that the decisive issue will be a procedural question--the seating of the 366 delegates from Michigan and Florida at the Democratic Convention--and that whichever side loses, the nomination may be regarded as illegitimate.

But unlike 2000, this year the Democratic Party itself--the Democratic National Committee, the two state parties in Michigan and Florida, and representatives of the Clinton and Obama campaigns--could negotiate a resolution to avert damage to the eventual party ticket. The resolution might include a round of caucuses in both states in early June to choose delegates whom the national party and all sides could accept as fairly chosen. And, if the race goes that far, those caucuses could tip the nomination one way or the other.

Read the rest, and comment, here.

--The Editors

Listening right now to David Plouffe, Obama campaign chair, on a media call that was led off by Sen. John Kerry. Here are quick translations of Kerry's opening remarks, which were directly specifically and near exclusively focused on the Clinton campaign's attempt to claim significance from what happens today in Florida:

"The bottom line is that Florida offers no delegates. It should not become part of some spin campaign...So now here we are with AFSCME spending trying millions of dollars…to assign some meaning to a contest that the chair of the party has said awards no delegates."

"You have a contrast today, a juxtaposition. You have an avoidance of a rule set up by the chair to create something that isn’t supposed to be something. In my judgment, personally, as voters look at the meaning of the Florida primary, the voters are not looking for spin to win the news cycle…they’re looking for a real kind of unity to unite the country."

--Tom Schaller

UPDATE: “We think it’s a very political maneuver and one we think voters will see as too cute by half,” added Plouffe. “And if [Hillary Clinton] wants to spend the night in a non-February 5 primary state, that’s fine with us.”

I thought this passage from the Times story about Kennedy's endorsement of Obama was interesting:

In a 20-minute address, Mr. Kennedy hailed Mr. Obama’s ability to transcend racial divisions. Mr. Kennedy, who associates said had become furious by the tone of the Democratic campaign, including the words and actions of former President Bill Clinton, said Mr. Obama would usher in a new era of politics.

And one can say the same thing about some of her policy panders. I can maybe see it in the immediate aftermath of Texas v. Johnson when such silliness briefly became a salient issue, but at this late date does anyone think that sponsoring Constitution flag-burning legislation is going to convince anyone to vote for her? I actually am inclined to think that her vote on the war represents a sincere conviction that the war was right, but for those who think that it was political positioning her judgment has quite clearly been erroneous -- her position on the war would deprive her of a crucial issue in the general but also could quite possibly cost her the Democratic nomination. I'm all for politics being the art of the possible, but Clinton's political instincts don't always seem especially sound to me.

Or, to put it another way, not only does Mark Penn make me worry a little bit about the policy direction of a Clinton administration (compared to the other major Dems), I see little reason to believe that he's any great shakes as a political tactician either.

Despite the fact that the Democratic National Committee is penalizing Florida Democrats by taking away all their delegates, Democrats here have voted in record numbers already. As of the end of early voting on Sunday, 437,038 Democrats had voted, and another 70,000 absentee ballots were expected. That's more than quadruple the number of Democrats that voted early or absentee in the 2004 primary. Without the national campaigns here, the get-out-the-vote work is being done by local Democratic organizations and fleets of volunteers who have organized their own work on behalf of the candidates, putting out materials like the bumper sticker above in hopes of getting Dems riled up for the primary. It still remains to be seen what effect the delegate situation will have on overall voter turnout today, though.

The Clinton campaign is now trying to push how important the Florida vote is today, hosting a conference call with reporters. "Floridians want their voices heard, and their voices will be heard tonight," said campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle. "We hope and we expect the Florida delegates will be seated. With this level of participation we don't think they will be able not to seat the delegates."

"The decision not to seat delegates was the decision of the DNC," added Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn. "We think that a million people coming out to vote matter."

Clinton will also be making an appearance in Florida this evening after polls close, which she's assuming will be a victory speech, as she's got a clear lead in the polls here. Here camp is playing up Florida in hopes it will give her more positive coverage going into Super Tuesday.

I agree it was a bad call for the DNC to disenfranchise voters in Florida, the biggest, most diverse state to hold a primary thus far. But the Clinton camp's emphasis on the importance of Florida seems pretty disingenuous at this point. They could have raised a stink about this a few months ago when they thought they'd make a clean sweep on the nomination. They could have refused to sign the pledge not to campaign here. They didn't, and at this point, it seems more desperate than sincere.

--Kate Sheppard

I caught Mitt Romney's final rally this morning as Floridians head to the polls. While he's been ramping up attacks on chief rival John McCain over the past few days, he was sure not to mention him by name today: "Washington is so fundamentally broken. To fix Washington, you can't just send people who have been there for years, and just put them in different chairs," he told the crowd. And later: "One of the candidates running for president said the economy is not his strong suit. Well, it's my strong suit."

At the really I also encountered Mike Freese, pictured above, a voter I interviewed at a McCain event last week. On Friday he was still deciding between Romney, McCain and Giuliani; today he was decked out in Mitt paraphernalia and passing out stickers to people at the door. He says he picked Romney because of McCain's negative campaigning, which is funny, since both candidates have been engaging in plenty of that down here. Mostly though I wonder how he reconciles his support with Romney's chicken-eating method.

--Kate Sheppard

Brad Plumer, writing about John McCain's stated intention to delegate his judicial nomination decisions to Sam Brownback, correctly notes that liberals who expect a secret socially liberal McCain to emerge from behind a mask of 0% NARAL ratings, votes for Robert Bork, support for complete bans on abortion, etc. are people you definitely want to invite to your next poker game.

To add to the amusement, Brad notes the apparent conservative consternation over McCain's alleged statement that he would appoint justices like John Roberts but not like Sam Alito. So, in other words, instead of appointing justices who will reach conservative results in 24 out of 24 5-4 cases he'll appoint...justices who will reach conservative results in 24 out of 24 5-4 cases. To call the distinction between them "paltry" may overstate it; they're remarkably similar judges, wrapping wholly doctrinaire reactionary positions behind a meaningless veneer of formal minimalism. If you switched the names on their opinions at random I don't think anyone could tell the difference. I'd love for a reporter to have McCain explain the distinction, but at any rate what we've learned is that if John McCain was president by the end of his term Antonin Scalia would probably be the median vote on the Court.

--Scott Lemieux

I feel like I just spotted a unicorn. Note the scotch tape holding it on the car -- definitely a DIY effort.

--Kate Sheppard

Rudy Giuliani put out a last-minute ad here yesterday that, better than anything I wrote about the demise of his campaign this weekend, shows how desperate he's become. The ad, titled, "Not Endorsed," makes the case that he's the most conservative candidate and should therefore win because all those folks in the giant liberal media conspiracy have gone for the other Republican candidates:

I'm deciding which results party to attend tonight: that of McCain or Romney, who stand a chance of winning, or Giuliani's, so I can revel in some schadenfreude. Feel free to leave your opinion about which you'd rather read about in the comments section.

--Kate Sheppard

Something was nagging me about Bill Clinton’s devious little comparison Saturday morning, as the South Carolina polls were opening, of Barack Obama with Jesse Jackson, and how Jackson had won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. And then I remembered what it was: Clinton won South Carolina the next cycle, in 1992.

And if you think he has forgotten that, think again. Here’s a direct quote from Clinton, transcribed from my tape recorder, which he gave at the very start of his remarks to a largely black audience in the black-majority town of Kingstree, SC, on the evening of January 23, less than 72 hours before he offered his curious, Jackson-Obama analogy:

“I thank the people of South Carolina who supported me in the past. I think the second primary I won in 1992 was the South Carolina primary. I lost the first four of five elections in the primaries in 1992, the whole season, and the people here have been very good to me and I’m grateful.”

So, yes, I guess the “black candidate” does win South Carolina every time: Since 1984 at least, that means, Jackson, Clinton, Al Gore and now Obama—bruthas, all. And yet, in just 16 years, winning South Carolina in Clinton’s own mind has gone from a key, catapulting victory to just an insignificant state because the black guy always wins it.

--Tom Schaller

The Internet Gods chose last night, smack in the middle of the State of the Union, to crash the Prospect site, so please excuse our lack of live commentary on the speech. I had been excited about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' official Democratic rejoinder, but her speech left me cold. It relied on feel-good platitudes over any real, specific critique of President Bush. An entire passage on S-CHIP failed to mention that Bush had vetoed the legislation, denying 10 million children health care. Is there any easier shot to take? Is there any more important domestic issue in America today? And on the war, Sebelius simply did not say it should end. Sample fuzzy-wuzzy line:

The new Democratic majority of Congress and the vast majority of Americans are ready - ready to chart a new course. If more Republicans in Congress stand with us this year, we won't have to wait for a new President to restore America's role in the world, and fight a more effective war on terror.

This rhetoric felt like a time machine back to 2004. Don't we now know enough and aren't we tough enough to critique the surge happy-talk?

Sebelius is expected in the coming days to endorse Barack Obama. But that hasn't stopped Obama from releasing this much, much better response speech to the SOTU. I recommend it.

--Dana Goldstein

Herewith, a half dozen suggestions of things Barack Obama could do this week to improve his chances on Super Tuesday:

1. For the next week, only refer to the Clintons in the plural, as in “The Clintons” or “my three opponents in this race, John Edwards and The Clintons.” Lines like these will get you a lot of media play and will force Hillary to respond to questions about her independence by asserting that she, not they, is the candidate—a response that will then also get a lot of play, and take her off her experience/ready-to-lead-on-day-one message.
2. On Wednesday, ask Democrats rhetorically why Karl Rove and other top Republicans (see George Packer’s New Yorker piece last week, e.g.) seem to be hoping against hope that they don’t draw the candidate with the hopeful message in the general, but instead want Hillary to win the nomination.
3. On Thursday night during the Los Angeles debate, remind Latino voters that one of your campaign slogans from both the 2004 senate bid and your current presidential bid--“yes, we can”-- happens to roughly translate to “Si, se puede.” Then make a joke about yourself (humor being your weak spot, as the smart folks at Slate’s “gabfest” podcast correctly observed this week) being a gringo who knows little more than those three words in Spanish--but how those three matter most.
4. On Friday, roll out your wife Michele for a big speech about women’s issues that serves as a powerful reminder that when Hillary Clinton says all the candidates are blessed to have talented spouses, she isn’t lying.
5. Call Al Gore, promise him the Moon if necessary, tell him it’s time to get off the sidelines, and roll him out as an endorsement on Saturday, in time for the Sunday talk shows. Unlike four years ago with Howard Dean (when Gore’s approval numbers were a mere fraction of what they are today), this endorsement would matter.
6. On Monday, talk about how you, as nominee, would make it a special focus not only to campaign hard on your own behalf, but to provide substantial effort and resources to swing congressional states and districts, specifically the two dozen open House seats created by Republican retirements or deaths.

--Tom Schaller

From the things that might go over well in a Republican primary but not so much in the general election files: multiple, endless wars.

McCain at a campaign stop Sunday: "It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars."

And yesterday: "If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden .... I will make sure that we will never surrender, and that the goal is victory."

But even at last night's rally in Tampa, which was packed with plenty of military types and veterans, that part of his message didn't seem to go over that well. Sure, the crowd was happy to hear he's going to hunt down bin Laden. But few voters are zealous about more wars. While he was trying out-posture Romney and Giuliani on national security on the final day before the primary, it might be beneficial for him to recall that the Iraq War isn't that popular, and the number of people willing to support more wars is pretty low -- even with Republicans.

--Kate Sheppard

• I think Ted Kennedy is pretty cool, but I have to say I'm pretty surprised by how much play his endorsement of Obama is getting. I mean, what was the last endorsement reporters brought their children to? How important it will turn out to be remains to be seen, but it's interesting how his support is being interpreted in the larger narrative of the Obama campaign. Jonathan Cohn explains over at the Plank. Also see Ezra on the generational meaning of the endorsement, Chris Cillizza on the symbolism, Marc Ambinder on the politics, and Brian Beutler on what it says about Clinton's much-vaunted legislative chops (also see this longer article Noam Scheiber on the same topic).
• The Clinton campaign has largely responded stoically to the endorsement. At least one group of supporters is completely flipping out though.
• Also I hear there was a primary on Saturday (see Joe Klein's excellent take). Hard to believe that was two days ago. This hasn't been a good couple of days for Clinton. First her aggressive strategy against Obama blew up in her face, undermining one half of the argument for her candidacy (her political savvy) and then the most important and experienced liberal lion of the Senate came out in favor of her opponent undermining the other half of her argument (her legislative savvy). Of course it remains to be seen what the actual, y'know, voters think.
• Meanwhile, the attempt by some Clinton supporters (not the campaign) to pretend as if Bill Clinton wasn't saying Obama only won South Carolina because he's black has the slight problem of being completely bogus.
• Meanwhile supporters of John Edwards (remember him, national media?) are floating the idea of him as attorney general. But what went wrong exactly with his campaign? I like this take. And where will the Edwards supporters go as his campaign starts to loose steam? Dana rounds up the evidence in a new piece on the main site.
  
• It's not all roses for Obama though as Howard Kurtz (not an entirely unbiased source I realize) suggests trouble among the Obama traveling press.
• John McCain, meanwhile, is taking heat from conservatives for suggesting he'd appoint judges like John Roberts but not Samuel Alito. Yes, really.
• Shorter Rudy: "See, those liberal silly-heads don't like me so you should!" For more Rudy-freude and a deeper analysis of his campaign's collapse see Kate's new dispatch from the field on the main site.
  

• We really need to resist the idea that Mitt Romney is just some awkward but basically likable geek. I mean, he's my man Mitt and I want him to win the primary because I think he'd be the least bad president and also the worst candidate, but he's also, as Barney Frank says, the most intellectually dishonest person in the history of American politics. Arguing for doubling the size of Guantanamo isn't some cute bit of awkward misstatement.
  
• Finally, the biggest evidence of Obama's success I've seen yet: video of Obama's victory speech is more popular on YouTube than video of Britney Spears topless. Really. On the one hand, it's kinda sad that's surprising, on the other hand it's still awesome. Great catch by Ari Melber over at The Nation.

Bob Somerby makes a good point about the rush of some pundits to blame Obama losing New Hampshire despite the polls on the Bradley effect. Particularly given that, for example, Harold Ford's final vote totals were similar to his poll numbers, the fact that Obama greatly overperformed his poll numbers in South Carolina suggests that the more logical explanation is that in volatile races in which turnout is enormously important it's simply difficult to get accurate polls. (And as John McWhorter pointed out, Obama didn't underperform; Clinton overperformed, which seems especially difficult to explain with the Bradley effect.) It's hard to know for certain if the Bradley effect is in play (for that matter, it's far from certain that Bradley himself was the victim of the Bradley effect), but it seems silly to speculate about it given the difficulty of polling primaries.

--Scott Lemieux

A couple of updates on my piece on delegates from last week (warning, lots of wonkery ahead):

First off, the New York Times has short piece on superdelegates that covers a lot of the same ground but neglects to note that Edwards has some and incorrectly states that pledged delegates are required to vote for the candidate they are pledged to (there may be state rules, but that doesn't affect the outcome at the DNC if a delegate breaks them as far as I can tell). Still, I'm glad to see that the media is starting to figure out that this is going to be a big deal.

If you weren't convinced the delegate race is going to remain tight the New York Times had a much better piece about the details of delegate allocation by Adam Nagourney. Some states assign delegates by congressional district as well as state-wide and, since the delegates are assigned proportionally, that means that a close vote only results in a delegate advantage for the person who gets more votes if the congressional district has an odd number of delegates (in which case the candidate with a plurality gets one extra delegate). Just in case the system wasn't weird enough. This is yet another reason the delegate count will be fairly even coming out of February 5th no matter what the acutal popular vote is.

Incidentally, the tight delegate race is yet another reason Kennedy's endorsement of Obama matters more than it might otherwise. Superdelegates are going to play a role in the eventual decision almost certainly and, as political insiders, they will certainly be influenced by Kennedy's opinion.

And in case the Florida/Michigan delegate mess wasn't confusing enough, Ben Smith tries to explain exactly who decides if they're seated:

The possibility would come if the candidate who won Florida, say Hillary, also held a plurality, but not a majority of delegates. The decision on seating Florida would have to be made by the credentials committee, which is composed 25 people appointed by Howard Dean, and 161 who are chosen according to a formula that reflects -- but isn't identical to -- the outcome of the primaries and caucuses in each state.

So there's a scenario under which Clinton doesn't quite have enough delegates, but her allies gain control of the credentials committee, seat Florida, and push her over the top. Secondarily, it's possible that a minority, pro-Clinton report out of the credentials committee could be taken to the floor (though if Clinton doesn't have enough votes there for the nomination, it's hard to see how she'd have enough to seat Florida).

The key detail, though, is whether a pro-Florida/Michigan (anti-Clinton) minority report can be taken to the floor as well. If so, FL and MI will only be seated if Clinton already has enough votes to win the nomination (a delegate who isn't pro-Clinton wouldn't vote to seat a pro-Clinton delegation).

Still, this is troubling because of the perception of illegitimacy. A victory that seems to come from a procedural trick (or actually does) will cause a lot of consternation and rightly so. It also could be a neat way to launder support from superdelegates that might otherwise be perceived as illegitimate (by allowing her victory, on paper, to rely on pledged delegates only).

--Sam Boyd

It’s hard to peel away from the presidential race, and I’m as guilty as anyone else, but there are some interesting developments in what might be called the "Pending Republican Open House Seat Disaster of 2008" chronicles.

First, New York Republican Jim Walsh announced his retirement last week. His district is in central New York, and as it happens I remember his first campaign, in 1988. I was president of College Republicans at SUNY-Oswego (yes, it’s true) and went to a Walsh-Dan Quayle event that year. In 2006, Walsh got a pretty good scare in is district (which has a Partisan Voting Index of +3.4 Democratic) from Dan Maffei, a smart, young Dan Moynihan acolyte, last time around. Maffei immediately becomes the favorite to win this November.

More shocking, second, is the news from Wyoming's at-large race, where another near-miss Democratic candidate from 2006 who is also giving it another go this cycle, Gary Trauner , looks pretty solid. According to a Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Casper Star-Tribune, Trauner leads potential Republican nominee Cynthia Lummis by a statistically-insignificant point in the race. This is actually more startling of a result, given that the seat from which Republican Rep. Barbara Cubin is retiring has a PVI of +19.4R.

--Tom Schaller

Some local television stations that were not permitted inside instead interviewed and filmed the long line of students and Obama supporters lying and rallying on the sidewalks around Bender Arena (one man insisted the line stretched for at least a mile). Maybe most indicative of the buzz surrounding Obama's campaign was the fact that the two girls in front of me were College Republicans, one (unsurprisingly) from Obama's home state of Illinois, and the other from upstate New York.

--Kyle Winslow

I just watched Ted Kennedy's endorsement speech of Barack Obama from TAP's warm conference room after Ezra and I -- along with about 100 other journalists -- were turned away from the Obama rally's press entrance after waiting an hour outside in the cold. It was an utter mad scene. Eminences such as David Brooks and Time magazine's Karen Tumulty were shuttled inside, past a mob of increasingly desperate journos from CNN, NBC, and small outlets like TAP. A few reporters had brought along their children -- on a school day no less! -- to participate in what actually felt (not to gush or anything) like a truly symbolic, historic event: The highest profile members of the Kennedy family turning out to name Obama as the successor to JFK's brand of transcendent Democratic politics.

Kennedy's speech today was much longer than Obama's, and was so energetic -- a far cry from the still witty, but elderly-seeming Senator I've seen so many times on Capitol Hill. Kennedy focused on Obama's ability to channel JFK-levels of inspiration and use good judgment on foreign policy and other issues. And he got big applause for co-opting Hillary Clinton's tag line with a huge, teasing smile on his face: "I know he will be ready on day one!" Kennedy shouted, shooting Obama a thumbs-up sign. Kennedy must have been thinking, "Muster all you've got -- this could be your last big speech."

Obama responded by saying that the program that brought his Kenyan father to the United States to study had been supported by President Kennedy, a touching story that hasn't been trotted out before.

Check out some photos from the event:

Here I am, in good spirits after we gave up on being admitted to the rally. Note the hope-mongers behind me, who are still pressing up to the door, arguing with the security guards: "No, I'm from CNN! You don't understand!"

Hordes of AU students were also turned away -- the rumor was some kids had camped outside the arena since last night.

--Dana Goldstein

In terms of how it plans to fight the enemies the America might face, not so much, but in terms of how it can fight the Navy and the Army for precious procurement funds, absolutely. Thomas Ricks:

Here, the Air Force uses the jargon of modern warfare to discuss its competition with the Army and Navy. Usually, it is China that U.S. officers describe as a "peer competitor" -- that is, a real or potential adversary. But in these briefing slides, it is the other services that the Air Force is targeting. And this "Budget Battle" is a "Zero Sum Gain" -- meaning that some services are going to win and some are going to lose. Hey, it's a "non-permissive environment" (that is, hostile situation) out there.

The larger point to be made is that while there may be some good reasons to build organizational walls between services, the creation of such walls inevitably leads to bureaucratic conflict and competition. In the context of government defense procurement, this competition doesn't necessarily mean that we get more for our dollar; rather, it can often mean that we just spend a lot more dollars for a lot more stuff that we don't actually need. Consequently, it's probably best to have as few independent military organizations as possible.

Also see Armchair Generalist and Abu Muqawama.

-- Robert Farley

We're at a gas station. And the reason for that is that I want to underscore the fact that Senator McCain's McCain-Lieberman would be a very expensive bill for the people of Florida. By our calculation, a family of four would have to spend about an extra $1,000 a year if McCain-Lieberman became law. And again that's because gasoline would rise in price by approximately .50 cents a gallon and natural gas would rise about 20 percent. The burden on Florida homeowners would obviously be excessive.

Well, probably not as excessive as the burdens of much of your state going underwater or being thumped with a few more catastrophic hurricanes. But more importantly, Mitt Romney himself supported joining a regional cap-and-trade plan two years ago when he was governor of Massachusetts, saying it was "a great thing for the commonwealth" that would "create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

"I'm convinced it is good business," he said at the time.

Of course, then he changed his mind and pulled Massachusetts out of the pact. So now he's hoping that opposing it will help him win Florida somehow, which seems unlikely. Considering they're one of the states most challenged by the prospect of catastrophic warming, support for government action is pretty high here even among Republicans. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist, who endorsed McCain over the weekend, even lists the issue a top priority.

Mitt's pandering to the industries who oppose action on climate change helped him in Michigan, but it seems like it could only hurt him here.

--Kate Sheppard

Over at Contentions, Noah Pollak writes “there has been an awakening in recent days to the presence of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel.” As evidence of this “awakening,” Pollak offers a couple of articles by Ed Lasky, the substance of which hovers somewhere around your basic right-wing chain email, and a column by Jerusalem Post crank Caroline Glick, (imagine Charles Krauthammer without the jokes) that draws heavily from Lasky’s articles. Quite an awakening.

Picking one of Barack Obama’s advisers, Harvard professor Samantha Power, Pollak offers this interview quote as evidence of her "hostile views":

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests–especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace–seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.

Going to the actual interview, we can see what Pollak omitted from the quote:

Look at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. Also…

Powers' comments about Halliburton and Israel are two elements of a broader critique of the way that American foreign policy is formulated. By “yadda-yaddaing” the bit about Halliburton, Pollak is clearly trying to create the impression that Powers is some kind of Israel-obsessed extremist.

Pollak bangs on:

Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.

“Telling,” really? What does it tell us? Oh, Noah Pollak thinks you know (wink wink, it rhymes with "shmanti-Shmemitism".) Et voila! through a transparently tendentious interpretation of one (doctored) quote and some unsubtle insinuation, Pollak has manufactured yet another slanderous Israel-hater for Commentary’s readers to fear.

The truth is that none of Obama’s foreign policy advisers are “hostile” to Israel, at least not in the way that most speakers of the English language define the word. They represent a range of views on Israel and the Middle East, all of which, like Obama's, lie solidly within the American academic and political mainstream. As Glenn Greenwald noted last month, in reality it is Commentary and associated neoconservative goons who are the real outliers here, constantly hyping new threats, making a lot of noise, and attempting to chill debate through baseless assertions and irresponsible innuendos, while actually representing a relatively small faction of hard-line pro-war, pro-Israel extremists. (Gershom Gorenberg recently contested very effectively the idea that the policies supported by this crowd are truly "pro-Israel.") In the peculiar moral universe of Commentary, simply implying that the special U.S.-Israel relationship has ever produced a single negative consequence is quite enough to get one branded “hostile to Israel,” and even suggesting that Israel bears a share of responsibility for its conflict with the Palestinians is enough to get one compared to (gasp!) Jimmy Carter. (Not even Ehud Olmert is immune!) I suppose it’s become redundant to point out the irony that, even as Noah Pollak excoriates Samantha Power for supposedly “assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy,” by attempting to throw dirt on her reputation, and on Barack Obama’s campaign, with his careless and malignant rhetorical shenanigans, Pollak is engaged in precisely the sort of behavior that Mearsheimer and Walt lament in their book.

--Matthew Duss

Later today I'll be watching Barack Obama speak at American University alongside Ted and Caroline Kennedy, who, by this point, you already know have endorsed Obama.

But the less glamorous endorsement of this past weekend -- though perhaps the more telling one -- was Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's show of support for John McCain ahead of Tuesday's primary in the state. Watching the video of the event, I though Crist demonstrated a charismatic jocularity. Could he be V.P. material? You know, double down on the white hair appeal and potentially bring along a swing state?

Seems unlikely. While Crist is a Republican traditionalist when it comes to God, guns, and gays (read: anti-choice, anti-recognition of gay relationships and gay parenting, and an A+ NRA rating), he's also been called Florida's "first black governor" due to his aggressive prosecution of hate crimes and support for voting rights for felons who've served their time. Crist also championed a law that requires a paper trail for all ballots cast in the state, an important reform after African Americans were disproportionately disenfranchised by the hanging chad debacle of 2000. So while Crist matches McCain's record of some (limited) independent thinking, he doesn't really reassure the skeptical corners of the Republican base, which is what the Arizona senator would most likely be looking for in a running mate. That, of course, is why all fingers are pointing toward Huckabee, with his Christian conservative cred.

Another factor not in Crist's favor: He's unmarried and has no children, which would likely raise eyebrows among the "family values" crowd.

--Dana Goldstein

Several New York firefighters from the International Association of Firefighters are here in Florida following Rudy Giuliani around to let voters know that despite all Rudy's touting of his 9/11 record, there are plenty of people in New York who don't see the former mayor as a hero. They've also been running ads and have set up an anti-Rudy website, which surely aren't helping the candidate here as he makes his last-ditch efforts at a comeback.

--Kate Sheppard

Mike Huckabee made an appearance at Orlando's First Baptist Church yesterday morning. Rev. David Uth told the congregation about serving as a minister in Arkansas at the same time as Huckabee, and their ongoing friendship. While the candidate didn't give any speeches, he asked the 14,000-member congregation to pray for him, and cited several passages of scripture. The church's prayer asked for God to "form a hedge of protection" around him and put their brother in the position of leadership through God's will.

Uth emphasized that all the candidates had been invited to the church and that Huckabee's appearance should not be construed as an endorsement. But it's pretty clear here that Huckabee has the backing of pretty much all the major evangelical leaders in the state. His candidacy has been supported by, among many others, Matthew Staver, head of the Liberty Council; Jay Strack, an Orlando minister and motivational speaker; Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma and a host of other Christian magazines; Joel Hunter, pastor of the 12,000-member Northland Church; and John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family. And last week, Huckbee met with 20 leaders from large churches from across the the state to talk about his candidacy, according to the leader of one megachurch here. There are also several different voter guides circulating the state that paint Huckabee as the only candidate with a passing grade on all their issues.

At least 30 percent of Florida voters identify as "part of the conservative Christian political movement," and though Huckabee is trailing in the polls here, were all these people to vote tomorrow, he still stands a chance of performing impressively. The rumor here in Florida is that while he isn't likely to win, a second- or third-place finish might help demonstrate that he has the kind of support that might make him a good vice presidential pick for someone like John McCain.

--Kate Sheppard

As I reported last week, according to former Bush adviser Doug Wead, a person attending televangelist and Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's invitation-only ministers' conference last week reported that Copeland "reconvened" the group as a "private meeting" and raised some emergency campaign funds for Mike Huckabee. IRS rules prevent tax-exempt organizations from using their resources to endorse or campaign for a candidate.

Last week, Kenneth Copeland Ministries did not respond to TAP's request for comment. This morning, the Trinity Foundation, a Dallas televangelist watchdog group, has posted video clips of Copeland at the conference, in which which he describes a conversation he had with Huckabee last year about the Grassley investigation. Copeland says that "at the Lord's instruction," he had invited Huckabee to appear on his television program, which was taped before the Grassley investigation broke. Copeland then asked the candidate ordained minister of the gospel whether he still wanted him to air the broadcasts. According to Copeland, Huckabee "hollered":

"Are you kidding me? Why should I stand with them and not stand with you? They've only got 11 percent approval rating." And then he said, "Kenneth Copeland, I will stand with you." He said, "You're trying to get prosperity to the people and they're trying to take it away from 'em." He said, "I will stand with you any time, anywhere, on any issue." That settled that right there. I said, "Yeah, that's my man! That's my man, right there."

In a second clip, Copeland says that he will not turn over information about donations to the ministry because it "belongs to God," adding that he won't even turn it over in response to a subpoena.

--Sarah Posner

The official email statement from Hillary Clinton congratulating Barack Obama on his win in South Carolina seems pretty mundane at first, until you get to this line: "We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the twenty-two states as well as American Samoa who will vote on February 5th."

But wait. Florida doesn't matter to the Dems. At least it's not supposed to, according to the DNC. Unless of course you're Hillary Clinton and you want to make it matter, because it may actually matter for you. She's poised to win pretty solidly here, though for the time she won't get any delegates out of it, and she must be hoping the win will give her a bounce before Super Tuesday. Though the Democrats aren't allowed to campaign here, there aren't any rules against pandering via email. There are also no rules against fundraising here, which Clinton will be doing at a $1,000-per-person event on Monday in Sarasota. So she's certainly hoping to make it matter here for her.

--Kate Sheppard

At a Sarasota restaurant today, Rudy Giuliani busted out the newest secret weapon in his increasingly desperate campaign: Jon Voight. You know, Angelina Jolie's dad? Midnight Cowboy? It's like a Chuck Norris endorsement, minus the kitsch. Voight rallied the crowd for Rudy by talking about how New York was once an awful place, but then "An angel came from God to save the city." He followed with a story about how he almost wasn't picked for the role in Midnight Cowboy, but then he was, which is how it's going to be for Rudy here in Florida, he said.

Deep.

--Kate Sheppard

• One thing I've learned writing the LR is that political news actually diminishes right before a primary. It makes sense, when you think about it, since any speculation will be proved wrong tomorrow, while it's still fresh in people's minds, rather than a week or two later when it has been forgotten. Also, who's going to make big news right before the news cycle is taken over by a an election?
• One exception to this is Hillary Clinton's announcement of a plan to try and seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. A lot of people are wondering why she'd make such a polarizing move like that now. I was confused too until I realized, it's got to be a bid for votes in Florida which votes on Tuesday. Why else would she announce it now? Confused about this whole delegate thing? See my article from yesterday. And yes, as Ezra says, this is a big deal.
• In case you thought the fighting was over, Clinton is now claiming Obama is the aggressor. In other news, newly revealed documents show that the USS Madox and Turner Joy were attacked by Vietnamese boats in the gulf of Tonkin.
• CNN meanwhile is finally getting around to removing several Clinton backers from their slots as supposedly neutral political analysts.
• Prospect co-founder and former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich ain't soundin' so friendly.
• In the ridiculous attack primary, the Anti-Defamation League is making a strong showing with its criticism of an ad that touts Obama as a "committed Christian." Shocking, I know.
• This morning's Lightning Round didn't mention last night's debate because, one, the debate was apparently very boring and, two, it was actually written yesterday before the debate. Which makes it really weird that I wrote about Mitt Romney, economy-whisperer since that same phrase now refers to a bizarre voice that whispered "raise taxes" while the camera showed him.
• Huckabee, meanwhile, hearts ... atheists? Cool.
• John McCain doesn't understand economics, case study #187: He thinks that Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman, Pete Peterson and the Concord group represent a school of economic thought.
• Finally, there's not enough hard-boiled, muckraking investigative journalism (I, for one, never get around to boiling my rake) but SlateV steps boldly into the breech with this piece on whether you can eat squirrels and, if so, whether you can cook them in a popcorn popper.

--Sam Boyd

Mitt Romney made a stop at an airport in Clearwater this afternoon in which he rolled out ... a new sign to illustrate his dedication to fixing the economy. "The economy is what we've been hearing about as we go across the state," Romney told the crowd of mostly reporters gathered for the even. His speech touched on a few aspects of the stimulus plan he released this week, and came in under two minutes, clearly delivered more out of obligation than inspiration. But hey, he definitely has the most promising signs on the issue among the Republican candidates.

--Kate Sheppard

For anyone interested in learning a little more about what's inside the pages of my new book, God's Profits, about prosperity televangelists and the Republican Party, you can check it out via radio and on the web this weekend. I'll be a guest on the Air America program Ring of Fire, and, if you missed the interview I did on the Bob Edwards Show on XM Radio this week, it will be replayed on the public radio stations listed here this weekend. And on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. EST, I'll be discussing the book at the Firedoglake Book Salon.

--Sarah Posner

I have an answer to Ezra's question, "where is the progressive tax proposal?" Going back to the 2004 campaign, I've been arguing similarly that Democratic candidates should make real tax reform a centerpiece of their agendas. I'd particularly like to see a focus on what's called "horizontal equity" -- that all types of income should be treated alike and people with the same income should pay the same tax -- which would mean eliminating the special treatment of capital gains and dividend income, and in turn getting rid of the hedge fund and carried interest "loopholes," which exist only because of the incentives to redefine income as cap gains. Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Rahm Emanuel's "Fair, Flat Tax" would be my preferred starting point.

An even more ambitious reform vision is Yale law professor Michael Graetz's " Competitive Tax Plan," which would eliminate the income tax for households under $100,000 in income, and substitute a Value-Added Tax. Given the level of revenues we'll need in the years ahead, a balance of taxation of income and consumption seems responsible, although there's a lot of complexity in making sure such a plan is fair to low-income households.

But I keep being told by those who know more about this than I do that the moment is not right for big tax reform, the demand isn't there, the pieces aren't in place, as they were in the mid-1980s. I'm not fully persuaded, as I still think a robust reform message, rather than another layer of little tax credits, is a way for Democrats to sidestep the cruel duality of the question of whether you will raise taxes or lower taxes.

But I think it's right in one respect: As part of another project I'm involved in, we looked at public opinion on taxes, and the best thing you can say is that it is a "low-salience" issue.

Making the election a referendum on taxation would be dangerous, waking up an issue on which the progressive position doesn't have a clear advantage over the simple "cut taxes" mantra of John McCain or Mitt Romney (who proudly signed Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge.)

Some issues, like health care, need to be in play in the election, need to be in "contested political space," so that an electoral victory creates a mandate and momentum for a solution. But that's not a universal rule. Some issues are best left off the electoral table, to avoid a political outcome that would restrict freedom of movement later.

The political moment for tax reform will come, whether it's an issue in the election or not. It will come when the 2001 tax cuts expire in 2010. Republicans know that they can't get every cut renewed, as they weren't even able to get a permanent repeal of the Estate Tax, with a Republican majority. Democrats won't want to let every tax cut expire either, especially if the economy is still in bad shape. At the same time, they may need revenues for health care, while also looking at schemes to reverse climate change that may produce significant revenue. That's a moment to put everything on the table -- restructuring of the income tax, consumption taxes, energy taxes, and figure out how all the pieces can work together to create a fair tax system that provides adequate revenue.

In the old days, before the Reagan tax cuts, taxes were an afterthought -- decisions about spending came first, and Congress's responsibility was to find enough revenue to almost pay for their spending. For the last 30 years, and especially the last six, taxes have come first, and have placed a constraint on all other choices, creating, for example, Hillary Clinton's recent insistence that any investment had to be "paid for" with cuts elsewhere. With the public more relaxed about taxes than it has been in years, we have the potential to make taxation once again the means by which we achieve our goals, rather than an end in itself. And so, I'm not that worried that the candidates haven't taken my advice or Ezra's about tax reform.

-- Mark Schmitt

Polling a distant third in his native state, John Edwards has never looked so good. At a young voters forum in Columbia, Edwards addressed a modest gathering of 300 or so in a campaign sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans, with an ink stain on the pocket. "I'm the underdog in this race," he said. "I don't have all the money, the media, the glitz."

Considering that a third to half the room was holding a camera or taking notes, Edwards appeared right about only two of those things. He's lost the shiny, perma-pressed tie he wore in Iowa, and his limited budget and lessened ability to draw crowds means he's doing more events like this one: tucked away in a corner of a convention center, where the buffet lunch upstairs was attracting more attention than the presidential candidate railing against the special interests. At last, Edwards was looking more like the scrappy working man his stump speech claims he is, and less like a trial lawyer channeling the populist voice of Joe Trippi.

If Edwards is staying in the race to keep his message in the mix, the audience members seemed to have a similar idea. During a generously-timed Q&A, people in sloganed t-shirts and green hard hats threw gentle lobs on children, health care, and the environment. Edwards compliantly grounded the questions into the infield, but not before taking a moment to congratulate the speakers on their commitments.

The only real heat came at the end, when a 72-year-old African-American woman, whose parents had not been able to vote, offered a rhetorically-elegant indictment of segregation in public schools. "We're two nations, black and white, unequal and hostile!" she said.

For the first time that afternoon, the audience burst into spontaneous, thundering applause.

--Kelly Nuxoll

Maybe if Peggy Noonan tried to avoid writing things like:

This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush's stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and to lead his country toward that vision of rightness. We have had many unusual men as president and some seemed like a gift and some didn't. Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.

A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.

She wouldn't look so silly years later when she writes something like:

George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

On the other hand, someone who writes something like:

I first saw [President Reagan] as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little ...frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads.

Is clearly already playing for the silly team. And I haven't even mentioned the dolphin thing.

--Matthew Duss

The Clinton campaign appears not only to be fighting hard in the state it hinted it might pass up, but also seeking to diffuse Obama's apparent advantage among African-American voters.

Clinton is speaking across the state today. She began this morning with a rally at Benedict College, a historically black school in Columbia. Race was addressed before she even took the mike. Former New York Mayor David Dinkins, accompanying Clinton this morning, admitted many people had asked him if he felt "awkward supporting Senator Clinton when a person of color is running." Dinkins reiterated the message of the three other African-Americans who provided introductions for Clinton: Voters should consider what's best for the nation before they consider a candidate's race.

"Who do you know who can do the job, instead of who you hope and dream could do the job?" Dinkins said. The phrasing was an explicit jab at Obama's campaign slogan and eerily reminiscent of Bill Clinton's accusation that Obama's unwavering stance against the Iraq war was a "fairy tale."

Dinkins explicitly invoked the former president, who just this morning was chided by the New York Times for his "overheated comments."

"We need to get back to the place we enjoyed with Bill Clinton, on the road to prosperity," Dinkins said. The sentiment seemed to be a response to the perception that Bill Clinton has lost credibility with African-Americans by attacking Obama.

The candidate herself offered a speech pitched to an audience that was two-thirds African American and (guessing by the setting of a Baptist church) likely predominately Christian. She remembered visiting a health clinic focusing on asthma, which disproportionately affects African-Americans. Clinton offered a vision of a government that is run "not just on policies and proposals, but on prayer." She touched on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the need for universal health insurance, and caring for veterans after their return from Iraq. All of these issues are national concerns, but also resonate particularly with many African-Americans.

But not everyone in the audience read Clinton's remarks as a specific appeal to he African American community. "Absolutely not. She didn't address race," one supporter said bluntly. "This is about who can do the best job for the country at this time."

--Kelly Nuxoll

John McCain hosted a national security roundtable in Tampa this afternoon, an effort to set himself apart from the other Republican candidates by stressing his experience and support from defense, security, and intelligence officials who are respected among conservatives. Seated before a 20 by 30 foot American flag and flanked by respected establishment figures, McCain tried to combine both steadfast support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and criticism of the Democratic candidates for "waving the white flag") with criticism of the way the Bush administration has run those wars. "I still believe the fundamental challenge of the 21st century is that of Islamic extremism ... We've got to have a new strategy." said McCain. "I would much rather lose a political campaign than lose a war."

The race here gets tighter by the hour, with the most recent poll numbers putting McCain and Romney tied at 23.3 percent, followed by Giuliani at 16 percent and Huckabee at 13 percent. While the race is becoming increasingly about the economy, where the frontrunners don't really differ that much, McCain is hoping to siphon off some voters from Giuliani, who early in the race staked himself out here as the national security candidate. After his abysmal performance in the first primary states, a number of former Giuliani supporters are now jumping ship for other campaigns – and McCain is hoping an increased emphasis on the subject will win pull those voters to his campaign.

But at the roundtable, McCain talked only briefly himself, offering few specifics about how he would increase military enrollment and funding, instead deferring to the endorsements of the others in the summit. His stable of supporters included former director of homeland security Tom Ridge, Sen. Lindsey Graham, retired U.S. Navy admirals Jerry Johnson and Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and James Woolsey, director of the CIA under Bill Clinton. "There are a couple hundred years of defending this nation at this table," said McCain. "People will judge you by the company you keep." Graham was effluent in his praise of the candidate: "I hope you get to be president not just because you're my friend, but because I think we have to get this war right, and I think you're going to get it right better than anybody else around." The panelists were also sure to mention, on several occasions, that McCain was endorsed yesterday by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

McCain also gained the endorsement of Sen. Mel Martinez today, which is sure to give him a boost here. Martinez is the former Orange County mayor and chairman of the Republican National Committee, and he's popular with the much-coveted Cuban-American voting bloc, a group that Giuliani has been hoping to do well with.

By all accounts here, it seems that Giuliani's losses are shaping up to be McCain's gains.

--Kate Sheppard

Via the Foreign Policy Passport blog, an update on the so-called "renaissance" in nuclear power usage in some European countries. Britain is scheduled to increase deployment of new power plants. But for all of the talk about nuclear power being a potential solution to the problems of a carbon-based economy, the same challenges associated with nuclear power 30 years ago are still with us today. Has an acceptable alternative to "burying nuclear waste where no one will ever find it" ever really emerged? What about the costs associated with the "new" security threats of the post-9/11 world?

Organized opposition to nuclear power isn't going away any time soon, but neither is the fascination with -- and reliance upon -- technological solutions to our energy problems. At the Republican debate last night in Boca Raton, Florida, Rudy Giuliani was asked why he was against a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases. His response?

The very best way to do it is to support the technologies that are alternatives that can save the environment, and to get us to the point where those technologies can actually take over.

We haven't -- we haven't licensed a nuclear power plant in 30 years. France is 80 percent nuclear; we're 20 percent nuclear, we're going down to 15 percent nuclear. We have to crack through there.

We need to expand the use of hybrid vehicles.

We need to expand the use of clean coal. Carbon sequestration is expensive, but it's a process that works.

Giuliani went on to cite other examples of technology-based solutions, of which nuclear was simply one of many. (As an aside, one wonders why the cost of carbon sequestration doesn't bother him but the cost of capping greenhouses does). John McCain, when asked a similar question, responded in favor of mandatory carbon caps, but also threw in nuclear power as a supplement ("We need to go back to nuclear power").

The Democrats, in their last debate, didn't discuss nuclear power. But during their Jan. 15 debate in Las Vegas, the inevitable Yucca Mountain question came up. While all three candidates had no problem with being "against" Yucca, John Edwards took the opportunity to riff on nuclear power more generally:

But I want to go to one other subject on which the three of us differ. And that is the issue of nuclear power.

I’ve heard Senator Obama say he’s open to the possibility of additional nuclear power plants. Senator Clinton said at a debate earlier, standing beside me, that she was agnostic on the subject.

I am not for it or agnostic. I am against building more nuclear power plants, because I do not think we have a safe way to dispose of the waste. I think they’re dangerous, they’re great terrorist targets and they’re extraordinarily expensive.

Barack Obama fell back on the technological argument, with a slight caveat:

Now, with respect to nuclear energy, what I have said is that if we could figure out a way to provide a cost-efficient, safe way to produce nuclear energy, and we knew how to store it effectively, then we should pursue it because what we don’t want is to produce more greenhouse gases. And I believe that climate change is one of the top priorities that the next president has to pursue.

Now, if we cannot solve those problem, then absolutely, John, we shouldn’t build more plants. But part of what I want to do is to create a menu of energy options, and let’s see where the science and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the American people take us.

Score another point for the panoply approach to green energy. Hillary Clinton essentially seconded the motion, without actually mentioning nuclear power by name ("let’s take away the giveaways that were given to gas and oil, put them to work on solar and wind and geothermal and biofuels and all the rest that we need for a new energy future").

So aside from Edwards' outright rejection, the Democrats too are mostly invested in the nuclear option as a potential green technology, provided it can be, well, "greened." But it wasn't Edwards who was taking a really bold stance, but Obama, who went beyond the need for finding alternative sources of clean energy and instead linked our energy needs to our consumption habits:

One thing that we haven’t talked as much about that we need to is reducing the consumption of energy. We are inefficient, and oftentimes during the presidential campaign, people have asked, what do we expect out of the American people in bringing about real change.

This is an example of where ordinary citizens have to make a change. We are going to have to make our buildings more efficient. We’re going to have to make our lighting more efficient. We’re going to have to make our appliances more efficient. That is actually the low-hanging fruit if we’re going to deal with climate change. That’s the thing that we can do most rapidly.

This could be interpreted either as a lecture or a demonstration of leadership. And while Obama has yet to truly prove he can live up to his rhetoric and lead, this example shows that he is willing to engage in some sense of personal responsibility and civic duty when it comes to energy consumption, rather than relying upon the easy punt afforded by technological solutions.

--Mori Dinauer

Over at TAP Online, Tom Schaller examines Bill Clinton's role as campaign surrogate:

Obama’s frustration derives from a painful truth: Bill Clinton is an electoral powerhouse, a surrogate nonpareil. And what makes him particularly impressive is that he is not only a certifiable celebrity, but one whose command over policy issues generally -- and his wife's platform specifically -- gives his stump appearances a substantiveness that few spouses can deliver. The compelling and impressive biographies of Michele Obama or Elizabeth Edwards notwithstanding, there simply has never been a spousal surrogate of Bill Clinton's caliber in the history of presidential politics.

Meanwhile, Kate Sheppard looks at Mike Huckabee's cultivation of government-loving Republicans':

His opponents and much of the Republican establishment have painted his populism and record as governor as weaknesses, but they might actually be the key to his success with conservative voters who recognize the value of government -- and not just when it comes to keeping gays from marrying and women from having abortions. It's not a big enough block to win Florida or the primary for Huckabee -- not yet at least -- but he has staked out an edge with the growing number of Republican voters who support investment in the public school system, government action on climate change, and tighter regulation of big business, departing in many ways from what has been the established norm in the party.

You know, sometimes The Onion is just so true to life. Andrew Sullivan continues to insist that he is the best arbiter of what is and isn't feminist. Today he slams Hillary for "betraying feminism." Sullivan is outraged over South Carolina radio advertisements in which Bill Clinton lauds his wife's ability to turn around the economy and yes, mentions his own record of doing so during the 1990s.

Let's be clear: The vast majority of politicians who benefit from family connections are white men. But railing against dynastic politics does not make you a feminist. As Kerry Howley wrote in the New York Times, dynasties often advance the key feminist goal of bringing women to political power -- women who through a family assist, are able to break the glass ceiling and benefit the less well-connected women who will follow.

That's not everyone's idea of progress, of course, and within feminism, there's a lively debate going on this year about how to balance the net good of female leadership among a host of other progressive concerns, including a real distaste for what a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton succession would mean for our democracy. But whatever one thinks about Hillary Clinton, her husband, and their record, her current campaign's relationship to feminism is a complex topic that isn't easy for anyone -- even those of us who spend most of our days thinking about such things -- to wrap our minds around. Sullivan's heated "betrayal" rhetoric sheds no light on this topic. And it's safe to say that Andrew Sullivan -- endorser of Ron Paul -- may not have the best handle on what it means to be a feminist.

--Dana Goldstein

Wow. This just, well, shows a complete disregard for the agreed-upon rules of the primary process. The campaign's statement:

I hear all the time from people in Florida and Michigan that they want their voices heard in selecting the Democratic nominee.

I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan. I know not all of my delegates will do so and I fully respect that decision. But I hope to be President of all 50 states and U.S. territories, and that we have all 50 states represented and counted at the Democratic convention.

I hope my fellow potential nominees will join me in this.

I will of course be following the no-campaigning pledge that I signed, and expect others will as well.

For context, read Sam Boyd's piece on how the delegate process works.

--Dana Goldstein

Noy Thrupkaew reviews Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days:

Anyone watching 4 Months ... will heave a sigh of relief that the film does not mug viewers for votes, nor does it read like a pile of field notes from an inscrutable land. 4 Months is staunchly non-polemical, its story inextricable from everyday details filmed with a stylized realism. The opening frames show little of what a more conventional film might depict in its establishing shots -- character, a distinct sense of place, a "beginning" to the story. But the scene's symbolic substance is made nearly too explicit through the fish tank and the disembodied hand holding a cigarette -- 4 Months traces the claustrophobia and alienation of relationships in a rotting system in a cinematic language as harsh as it is effective.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Posted at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

Update to my post from yesterday:This morning I received an e-mail from Wead, who advised me that his source, "usually reliable, called back to say 'yikes.'" Turns out Copeland pulled in only (only!) $111,000 in cash for Huckabee, with about a million in pledged donations. Wead has also updated his own post.

--Sarah Posner

My new piece (plugged three times on TAPPED, stardom will be mine!) on the main site points out that the campaign isn't going to be over any time soon, but it's worth examining the consequences of that argument in a bit more detail. Essentially, Clinton and Obama will enter February 5 with roughly the same number of delegates and, if Obama wins South Carolina, similar chances at winning most states (though I think Clinton will retain an advantage). But, no matter what happens, it seems likely that the two candidates will not differ in total delegates by more than 10 percent or so (see the article for more on why). That means that the leading candidate would need almost 80 percent of the remaining delegates to secure a victory without super delegates.

What does this mean? It means we'll have a lot more campaigning left after February 5. Neither candidate will be ready to concede and neither candidate will be clearly winning so the campaign will continue. Problem is, there are only about 500 more delegates assigned in February (compared with 1,688 on the 5th) and a further 500 in March. So the odds seem good the campaign will continue to be heated and angry for several more months. If it's neck and neck it could go all the way to the Puerto Rican primary on June 7th. This strikes me as very very bad because, while another week or two of angry deceptive and campaign spats is survivable, several months of them might not be.

I've taken a lot of heat in the comments on the Lightning Round for my concern over the outbreaks of name-calling, lies, and general nastiness between Clinton and Obama so I think it's worth explaining myself in a bit more detail. Defenders of the "it's no big deal" school of thought generally argue that we need to test our candidates in conditions as cruel and vicious as those they'll face running against Republicans. I don't disagree with this entirely, but I do think it's probably more trouble than its worth. Every smear Democrats use against each other instantly becomes acceptable in the eyes of the media when used by a Republican. Furthermore any attack will be recycled by Republicans in an "even liberal Hillary Clinton says Barack Obama is a flip-flopping France-lover" sort of way.

I'd feel differently if there was any actual substance to the criticisms but there isn't. To see why, think about whether either candidate really believes these attacks. Does Clinton really think Obama is a corrupt Chicago pol who secretly hates abortion and wants to cut social security and Medicare? No. Does Obama really think Clinton doesn't care about American workers or that her husband is secretly controlling her statements? No. But saying these kinds of things puts them in the public mind and once there it's impossible to get them out.

So far, of course, while the fighting has dominated political coverage, it hasn't fully penetrated to the general public and it may not before February 5. But, if the campaign continues after then as I think it is likely to do, it will become the dominant political news story until the convention and perhaps even after it. Democrats, who started the election cycle with every possible advantage, could emerge in the general election divided, bitter, broke, and angry. And that would be a lot worse than not fully battle-testing our nominees.

Of course, this may not happen. Clinton could emerge with a convincing lead (or Obama could, though this is less likely) which could be validated by larger wins in the next few states. The tone of the campaign could shift again. But, I worry, we haven't come to terms with just how different this primary campaign could be from the ones we've seen in the last two decades. Things could get much, much worse.

--Sam Boyd

It's no big shock, since Clinton is the Times' home state senator. The editorial focuses on her command of policy details and the experience she amassed as First Lady and Senator. It doesn't grapple with claims of Obama's greater appeal to Independents and Republicans in a general election, except to mention that Clinton did very will winning over upstate New York conservatives during her first run for the Senate. And it says Clinton's original support for the war is less important than her plan to bring the troops home. It also commends her for building strong relationships with the military. Key excerpt:

The sense of possibility, of a generational shift, rouses Mr. Obama’s audiences and not just through rhetorical flourishes. He shows voters that he understands how much they hunger for a break with the Bush years, for leadership and vision and true bipartisanship. We hunger for that, too. But we need more specifics to go with his amorphous promise of a new governing majority, a clearer sense of how he would govern.

The potential upside of a great Obama presidency is enticing, but this country faces huge problems, and will no doubt be facing more that we can’t foresee. The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president.

Onto McCain. Thankfully, the first sentence of the editorial doesn't pull any punches: "We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president." The piece goes on to praise McCain's stances on campaign finance reform, torture, and global warming, while criticizing his short-sighted view of the Iraq war and his pander to the right on reproductive rights and gay marriage. But the best part of this editorial is its panning of Rudy Giuliani, now an also-ran. Key excerpt:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

--Dana Goldstein

• Battles between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continued yesterday. Obama launched three web videos showcasing a former president of Chicago NOW who switched to his campaign from Clinton's. On the less honorable side, Obama has launched a new radio ad that's pretty shockingly brutal to Clinton as well as being more than a bit dishonest (though it is now coming down after the Obama camp received word the Clinton "new ideas" one is as well). The ad says, correctly, that she supported NAFTA but doesn't explain that his position on trade is fairly similar to hers. A long section in his book describes how he basically supported CAFTA, but voted against it to protest the lack of aid to displaced American workers. There are two basic courses Obama can take. He can hit Clinton as hard and as dishonestly as she has hit him, or he can try and use her attacks against her. He chose the latter, successfully, in the far milder spat between the campaigns back in December and November of last year (see Matt Ygelsias's longer take here).
• Meanwhile the Clinton campaign is attacking Obama for, shock! horror! supporting single-payer healthcare three years ago. I, for one, won't stand for that kind of thing.
• Attacks against Obama are starting to generate a backlash as they did last winter (kudos to the reporter for describing the Clinton "new ideas" attack as "discredited" -- now if only reporters would truth squad everyone, not just candidates they don't like). David Corn is skeptical the backlash will come soon enough or strong enough to affect February 5 voters. I agree, but as my new article points out, this almost certainly ain't gonna be over any time soon. Elite opinion will matter, especially if superdelegates are as important as I think they will be.
• Finally in our mudslinging roundup, Illinois political blogger ArchPundit rounds up all aspects of the Rezko story. Basically he's a guy who made money by cozying up to political figures and then extracting favors. Obama let him cozy up a little bit, but never gave any illegitimate favors.
• The Obama campaign's February 5 strategy is just another indication of how completely topsy-turvy this election is. He's apparently counting on heartland voters to reject Clinton as too polarizing and "coastal." Not exactly a wine-track aproach. It also reinforces the use-their-own-attacks-against-them theory instead of the hit-back-as-hard-as-you-can one. Greg Sargent has more here.
• The Clinton campaign is pushing back with a claim that Obama has been attacking her all along and a website called "Attack Timeline" that's pretty unconvincing.
• Dennis Kucinich announced today that he will hold a press conference tomorrow to discuss his "transitioning out of the Democratic Presidential primary race." The other day I transitioned out of the shower and it took me like 30 minutes. I recommend just getting out. This also must mark the first time a candidate leading in the polls has dropped out.
• Meanwhile, in Louisiana, an absurdly undemocratic Republican caucus gave a victory to ... Fred Thompson. Well, except that it was really "uncomitted pro-life." But most of the backers of that slate were Thompson supporters. So, yes, Thompson finally dropped out the day he actually won a state.
• Mitt Romney: economy-whisperer.
• I knew there was a reason McCain was using the Rocky theme, turns out he's got Stallone! I so want a Chuck Norris v. Rambo cage match now. Maybe Romney can snag JCVD?

--Sam Boyd

The Republican candidates are engaging in the final debate before the primary here on Tuesday, and of course the top of the hour is the economy, and the stimulus plan announced today. McCain, Romney, and Giuliani all registered support for the plan, but Huckabee says it isn't enough. "We'll probably end up borrowing this money from China" he says, since Americans will spend the cash on imported goods. "I have to wonder whose economy is being stimulated by this package."

What should we do instead? Build more highways from Maine to Florida, of course. "I believe it would do more to stimulate the economy." It would be build by American workers with American concrete, he says, and it would solve our traffic problems. "That's a long-term stimulus package" ... that would "keep fuel from being wasted" and parent's wouldn't "have to miss their kid's soccer games because they're stuck in traffic."

--Kate Sheppard

As Rudy's campaign crashes and burns here in Florida, he's been busy on the stump for a national catastrophic insurance fund, knowing it will appeal to voters here who are facing rising insurance costs in light of increases in the number and severity of storms and floods in recent years. Rudy's latest ads here trumpet him as the only candidate who supports such a fund, claiming "Only Rudy has a plan to lower insurance rates." Actually, McCain has said he is open to the idea of regional fund pools for coastal states, tougher regulation on insurers, and privatizing portions of FEMA in order to keep costs down, though he opposes a national fund, saying it's too expensive and taxpayers in other regions shouldn't have to absorb the costs. Romney has said he'd consider a fund, and Huckabee hasn't weighed in.

Such a fund is pretty widely supported here as a way to keep insurance costs down for homeowners, and it's a major priority for Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, whose endorsement all the candidates are coveting here. Rudy's clearly hoping this issue will set him apart from the others in a race that's very quickly passing him by, and that it might win him Crist's endorsement. But as McCain has pointed out, this plan is pretty ridiculous, since it's supposed to be the reason we have FEMA in the first place. Of course FEMA is in need of some reformation (though not the privatization McCain is calling for), but fixing the agency seems to make more sense than creating a multi-billion dollar new federal program.

More importantly though, maybe Rudy should spend some time talking about how he's going to protect Florida from these catastrophes in advance. In this coastal, oft-ravaged state, you'd think that climate change and its effects – stronger, more frequent storms and flooding -- would come up more often from the candidates on the stump, but only McCain and Huckabee ever even bring it up. Giuliani, meanwhile, says he recognizes it's a problem, but opposes measures to do anything about it.

--Kate Sheppard

Following the campaigns here in Florida, the fourth-most populous state in the union and a large state area-wise on top of that, one of the benefits Republican candidates are more likely to enjoy is becoming increasingly obvious: fruitful multiplication. Two of Mitt Romney's five sons, Tagg and Craig, have been traversing the state on his behalf and stopping at Rock the Vote events and meet and greets. At the Huckabee rally last night, his three children were pretty much running the show (including the alleged dog-hanger, who declined my request for an interview, unfortunately). Only one of McCain's seven kids has been involved with the campaign, but at least there's some possibility there when the younger kids grow up. On the Democratic side, Clinton has just Chelsea, and Obama has only two daughters, and they're a little young to be active in the campaign. More kids means more both more surrogates on the campaign trail, and free employees (which is pretty important in campaigns like Huckabee's where employees have been laid off recently). Of course, Rudy Giuliani is an exception to this rule, as he only has two kids, and they don't seem to like him very much. But one has to wonder whether liberals with presidential ambitions might want to rethink their breeding habits. Forget population control; we've got a presidency to win.

--Kate Sheppard

Matt Yglesias returns to the fold with an article on how the Democratic frontrunners should approach foreign policy:

Thanks to improving casualty statistics from Iraq and worsening numbers from our economy, recent months have seen the presidential campaign move toward an increasing focus on domestic issues. These same factors, however, make it all but inevitable that Republicans will run in 2008 on a strong national security message in an effort to counteract an economic situation that will almost certainly run in the Democrats' favor. And if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama hopes to prevail, they're going to have to come up with something better than what was on display during their brief foreign-policy tussle during Monday night's debate.

And Ezra asks why progressives don't have ambitious tax plans of their own:

Progressives have been so thoroughly bludgeoned on taxes that they've lost all appetite for engaging the issue. The Democrats running for president (with the exception of Mike Gravel who is, embarrassingly, a FairTax advocate) all have tax plans, but none do much beyond simplifying the filing system and offering the middle class some "tax relief." Both are potentially worthy goals, but they approach the discussion on firmly conservative terms: Taxes are too high, and they are too complicated.

--The Editors

UPDATE, 1/25/08: This morning I received an e-mail from Wead, who advised me that his source, "usually reliable, called back to say 'yikes.'" Turns out Copeland pulled in only (only!) $111,000 in cash for Huckabee, with about a million in pledged donations. Wead has also updated his own post.

In his new blog, former Bush family evangelical adviser Doug Wead reveals that last night, Mike Huckabee turned to televangelist and Grassley target Kenneth Copeland for some emergency fundraising, and Copeland delivered.

Huckabee's campaign is floundering, Wead contends, because Huckabee failed to perform the essential leg work of meeting with influential evangelical leaders early in his campaign, even before he announced his candidacy, and, to paraphrase, by refusing to suck up to them. Wead, who described the outreach strategy he developed for both Bushes in detail to me in several interviews last year for God's Profits, contends that Huckabee may have delivered a self-inflicted wound to his campaign by declining overtures from prominent evangelicals. Being snubbed, he suggests of this strange-but-true look inside the evangelical movement, led some of these leaders to sign on to other campaigns.

Wead also points out the fascinating division between Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, and notes that Huckabee's efforts to reach out to Pentecostals and charismatics (which I reported on here and here) helped him with Pentecostal and charismatic voters but hurt him with Southern Baptists in South Carolina. Pentecostals will vote for a Southern Baptist, but not the other way around, so some Southern Baptists apparently don't like Huckabee's claim to be a "Bapti-costal."

Copeland was one of the leaders who did embrace Huckabee, and it appears that he may have more fundraising clout than Chuck Norris:

A few months ago, the Mike Huckabee campaign finally started the work of touching base with evangelical leaders of influence. Among others, they met with Ken Copeland, one of the nation’s top televangelists. Last night the Governor called his friend in the middle of a conference and Copeland, carefully observing all the laws governing non profits, as a private citizen, re-convened a private meeting, turned to his friends and raised a few million dollars for Huckabee. One wonders what would have happened if this had all been done two years ago, if the campaign had reached out to the leaders of influence before anyone was watching? How much money would have poured in on its own after Iowa?

The Huckabee campaign isn't dead yet, says Wead. He can still win the nomination if he can woo the entire evangelical vote. But, Wead concludes, too many of them might have already crossed over to Romney or McCain. Meanwhile, don't any of these Republicans question campaign fundraising for a presidential candidate by someone who is being investigated by a Republican Senator for his own fundraising?

--Sarah Posner

TAPPED's own, Sam Boyd, author of the Lightning Round, and recent renouncer of Huck-a-puns, has written the definitive explainer on delegates at the upcoming Democratic National Convention:

Brokered conventions (where no candidate arrives with a majority of the delegates) are predicted every four years, and every four years they don't actually happen. However, it does seem likely this year that we'll, at the very least, see a closer result than any since 1980 or even 1968. We might not even know who will win until the convention gets underway. Edwards could act as a king-maker by throwing his delegates to Clinton or Obama and putting him or her over the top (his delegates would not be required to follow his instructions, but they will likely be personally loyal to him). Or, unelected superdelegates could throw the nomination to a candidate who comes in second in pledged delegates. Even if the result is known at the start of the convention, it might not be determined until June or July.

Despite the importance of the convention, the actual rules that cover delegate selection and behavior are obscure even to seasoned political watchers. While some of the rules are too complicated to get into even here (there are, for instance, actually three different ways pledged delegates are selected), what follows is a brief overview of the Democratic convention process: where the delegates come from, how they will be assigned, and what the process will look like from now until August.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

According to the NYT, Canada has suspended transfers of prisoners to Afghan authorities after becoming concerned about the treatment of such prisoners in Afghan custody. The policy of turning prisoners over straight to the Afghans was instituted in 2005, and replaced a policy under which prisoners were turned over to the U.S. military. It's unclear to whom Canadian prisoners will now be turned over. This policy change could potentially involve a significant number of detainees, as Canada's participation in the Afghan operation remains quite large.

-- Robert Farley

Via Yorkshire Ranter, the Russians seem to be staging what amounts to a massive exercise in the Atlantic, involving not only the Air Force (Tu-95 and Tu-160 heavy strategic bombers) but also the Navy (including the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov). This is on the heels of a big Russian bomber incursions into the North Sea in October and December. The British Royal Air Force seems particularly touchy about this kind of thing, as it falls to the RAF to monitor and escort the Russian patrols as they approach NATO territory.

While this is going on, Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations seem to be going down the tubes. The tensions stem from the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko a couple of years ago, and have extended to dueling expulsions by the two governments. In July the British kicked four Russian diplomats out of London, and last week the Russians succeeded in driving a British cultural organization out of St. Petersburg.

Domestic political considerations are driving some of the tension. Much of the Russian military activity is undoubtedly spurred by the desire to look tough on foreigners in an election year, although organizational retrenchment probably accounts for the rest. In the U.K., the Royal Navy has been happy to play up the Russian "threat," as it gives the organization a claim on scarce defense resources at a time in which its surface and submarine fleets are aging and, some would argue, without purpose.

-- Robert Farley

We had a great session at the New America Foundation yesterday, featuring the economic advisors to all the presidential candidates, or, I should say, economic advisors to all the Democrats plus John McCain. (Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were supposed to send people, but didn't.)

My main impression from the event was that everything has suddenly changed, more abruptly than we realize, and we are looking at a recession election. And, not that there's anything good about a recession, but it can open the door to some new ideas. For the last 15 years or so, we've been paralyzed by prosperity, coasting along in Thomas Friedman's world, in which we are constantly told that we can't really risk changing anything for fear that it might jeopardize the benefits of globalization.

Now it's blowing up all by itself, and we have a chance to start talking about how to put it back together, in ways that go well beyond a stimulus package. How do we give people real economic security? How do we help people become homeowners, without making homeownership a trap, as it has been for many victims of the sub-prime crisis? How do we restart economic growth based on real investment in education, broadband, and infrastructure, rather than asset bubbles? And in a recession,

Ezra's article about health care in 1994, among many other merits, reminds us how much that perceived opportunity was created by the recession of 1991-92. And that while the Clinton White House dithered and delayed, the recession ended and the moment was lost.

This is also a chance for the campaigns to, in effect, hit the reset button on their domestic and economic policies. And that's particularly an opportunity for the Obama campaign, to deemphasize some of his relatively timid domestic initiatives, such as his grab-bag of tax credits and put forward something more, um, audacious. Austan Goolsbee, representing the Obama campaign, made a good case not only for the Obama stimulus package (validated by it's top-of-the-class grade from Ruth Marcus in the Post today) but for the idea that Obama's programs to encourage savings are simple and rooted in testable behavioral-economics; for example, that it's more effective to create a default retirement savings option, forcing people to make an active choice not to save, than to layer on yet more special tax credits. (I wish they would make the same argument for their health plan: Automatic enrollment in the public plan would go a long, long way to alleviating the need for an individual mandate, and while I think that's a feature of the plan, Obama never makes that case.)

Representing Clinton, former Treasury official Gary Gensler was as relentlessly on-message as a press secretary, with a very conservative-sounding emphasis on incentives for business. Leo Hindery, a former telecom executive representing the Edwards campaign was speaking almost an entirely different language, and seemed to best capture the sense of new possibility, and made a great case that talking about "the sub-prime crisis" put the responsibility on the poorest people, people who were taken advantage of, rather than lenders and investors.

The McCain campaign, represented by Kevin Hassett, at least showed up, but seems to be setting up a high-stakes gamble: The fundamental economic problem, according to Hassett, is the long-term budget deficit, there's no need for stimulus ("the financial thing is going to work itself out...government policy won't have much to do with it"), and the tax cuts we need have to be permanent rather than temporary -- and not merely, permanent, but also retroactive! If the problem is long-term spending, and the only solution is long-term tax cuts, either you have some huge spending cuts in mind, or you're counting on the Laffer Curve to do a lot of work. But then, in Professor Hassett's Econ 101, the Laffer Curve seems to be all you learn. 

If McCain persists in that position and the crisis deepens, he will seem even more out of touch than George H.W. Bush in 1992. More likely, though, if he gets past the Club for Growth conservatives to win the nomination, McCain will be able to adopt yet another persona, super-stimulus-man, and the gullible press will happily forget that he ever held any other position.

-- Mark Schmitt

Bill Clinton did three events yesterday, and at the first, in Charleston, he got into a widely-reported tussle with reporters pressing him over whether he’s been too rough and too public in his comments about Barack Obama. I missed that event, but caught him at the second stop, in rural Kingstree. You can bet the advance and Secret Service were not going to letting any members of the media get close to him after the speech and long Q&A session he did. I slowly worked my way up to the rope line after the event was over and while Clinton was shaking hands and standing for photos, but at least three Clinton people gave me finger-across-the-neck signal and mouthed “no questions.”

One interesting moment came toward the end of the question-and-answer period, however, when a young girl, probably no more than seven or eight, asked the president, “What happens when you get married?” Everyone reflexively burst into laughter, and Clinton pointed to the back of the room.

“You see all the press back there,” he began. “They put me through the wringer this morning. And everything I said then is about to pale to what I say now.

“First of all, when you get married, if you’re really lucky—if you are really lucky—then your husband or wife is your best friend, and you get to live with your best friend for the rest of your life. And Hillary is my best friend.

“And if you’re even luckier, you get to have kids like you. The best moment of my life was that I was in the hospital with my wife when my daughter was born. The best thing about being married is having kids.”

--Tom Schaller

In this fascinating Michael Brendan Dougherty piece on Mike Huckabee in the American Conservative, Daugherty maintains that Huckabee could emerge as a new evangelical leader less beholden to that establishment than Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and the now-deceased Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy. They allowed themselves to be played by the establishment, whereas Huckabee, the piece suggests, is not afraid to stand up to it.

Dougherty documents that, for example, conservatives sneer at Huckabee's populism, such as when Dick Armey said he was more John Edwards-esque than John Edwards. (Hardly, but anyway.) Take note here: when liberals do what Dougherty does, conservatives accuse them of engaging in "class warfare." (Horrors! How dare anyone suggest there's a gross inequality of wealth and privilege in America!) But, Dougherty maintains, there's a class war going on between the GOP establishment and working class evangelicals, and Huckabee has harnessed the working class evangelical resentment at those elites who have only played lip service to their concerns:

Joe Carter, an activist at the Family Research Council, took a leave of absence to spend a month acting as Huckabee’s rapid-response man. He . . . highlights the barely disguised class conflict in the GOP: “The establishment Republicans don’t want some hillbilly preacher to be president.” To Carter and others, the conservative establishment’s contempt for Huckabee feels familiar. It mirrors the liberal establishment’s disdain for conservatives generally. And so just as Beltway conservatives have taught middle America to resent the liberal elites, so Huckabee and his supporters have leveraged evangelical discontent at those who tell them to “sit down and take what the party gives you.”

It's hard to believe that a Huckabee supporter is acting like the liberals invented class warfare -- after all, isn't Huckabee saying that it's the Republican Party that's beholden to Wall Street? But in any case, can we finally, finally, say that it's the Republicans who are engaging in class warfare -- with their own?

--Sarah Posner

For many of us who closely watch the politics of reproductive health, it's been upsetting to see the issue become a wedge in this primary. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have 100 percent pro-choice voting records. But for months now, Clinton has been attacking Obama for seven "present" votes he cast in the Illinois State Senate on legislation that would have rolled back reproductive rights. The state's Planned Parenthood says it encouraged Obama to vote "present" -- over his own objections -- in order to preserve a pro-choice seat in the legislature. But that explanation hasn't stopped the Clinton campaign from hammering the "Obama is wobbly on choice" message home with a New Hampshire mailer, multiple press releases, and a conference call with journalists.

Obama has been using surrogates to respond, first with a New Hampshire robocall recorded by Wendy Frosh, board chair of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and now with web videos featuring Lorna Brett Howard, the former president of Chicago NOW and a current board member of New York NARAL. Howard is also a philanthropist with a history of supporting Democratic women running for office. Up until three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was one of them; Howard even hosted a Clinton fundraiser in her Manhattan home. But now Howard says she is supporting Obama because of her disgust with Clinton's attacks on his pro-choice record.

The Obama campaign has released three videos featuring Howard: In the first, she explains why she switched teams. In the second, she reiterates that Obama is "100 percent pro-choice" and "100 percent honest;" she's clearly implying that Clinton is not honest. In the third, Howard discusses Obama's support for the pro-choice organizations that successfully mobilized to fight the South Dakota abortion ban in 2006. "Sen. Obama was the only U.S. senator to help in this effort," Howard says. "He wrote a letter, he raised money. Every pro-choice senator was asked and Sen. Obama was the only one to step up to the plate."

Needless to say, plenty of activists who were engaged in the South Dakoka fight do support Clinton, and believe she's the most committed, long-standing reproductive rights advocate in the field. It's good to see Obama defending himself against Clinton's unfair charge that he isn't committed to choice. But a pissing match over which candidate is the most pro-choice remains unseemly, as it obscures the Democratic field's unity on this important issue.

--Dana Goldstein

John McCain hosted an economic roundtable yesterday in Orlando with prominent Florida business leaders to discuss his plan to cut taxes, federal spending and regulation in order to change the economic tide in the country. The economy is clearly the top subject on the mind of voters here with less than a week to go before the primary, and McCain's talk focused in large part on his pledge to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

It's a curious move from a senator who just a few years ago was a leading critic of the cuts. From his April 11, 2004 appearance on Meet the Press:

I voted against the tax cuts because of the disproportionate amount that went to the wealthiest Americans. I would clearly support not extending those tax cuts in order to help address the deficit.

I'm pretty sure nothing about those tax cuts has changed in the past four years, so perhaps it's the "Maverick" who has rotated his stance in order to better his chance of winning the Republican nomination. And as the economy seems to shape the race here more and more with each passing day, it'll be interesting to see what the candidates come out with next.

--Kate Sheppard

• The most interesting story I've read today is this one from the Wall Street Journal about the ground game in South Carolina. The Obama campaign has eschewed the traditional strategy of paying local pastors to turn out the vote and instead built a new network from scratch. Clinton, meanwhile is going the traditional route. Only in this campaign would a black candidate's campaign for black voters be run by two white Midwesterners while a white candidate's be dominated by traditional black leadership. The parallel to Huckabee's circumvention of traditional evangelical leaders is pretty interesting.
• This article should help put the lie to the Clinton campaign's attempt to convince the political world that she's not competing in South Carolina.
• ABC News, on the other hand, wrote a really egregious story that made it sound like Obama flipped out when Roger Zeleny asked if Bill Clinton was "getting into his head." It's a dumb question and Obama pretty much said that. He did not, however, "fir[e] back angrily" at Zeleny as the piece by ABC's Sunlen Miller claimed. Greg Sargent has more, including the video, here.
• On the plus side for ABC News blogs, Jake Tapper does what I wish more reporters would do and calls an untruth an untruth. In this case it's Clinton's new ad that claims Obama said Republicans had better ideas.
• Tapper also has a good piece pointing out that Obama's statements about outside groups are pretty damn embarrassing now that outside groups are campaigning for him in California. He has criticized them, but given how hard he was on Edwards for the exact same thing there's really nothing he can do to avoid hypocrisy. It's an attack he never should have made and it's come back to bite him in the ass.
• Speaking of attacks, Paul Waldman has a good piece on the main site about how Clinton's strategy mimics that of many Republicans. What's more, I think they enjoy it. Bill recently said "I kinda like seeing Barack and Hillary fight" and Hillary famously said that confrontational campaigning is the "fun part."
• And remember New Hampshire? Turns out the recount there has resulted in a massive swing of... 35 votes with 75 percent of the ballots recounted.
• While we're all worrying about scandals and smears, those wacky English people are talking about the voting records of our candidates. Imagine that.
• While the Democrats are well-funded, many Republicans are running into financial trouble as Mori Dinauer writes below. Huckabee and Giuliani are running out of cash and McCain might not be far behind. Moreover, while they may be able to survive through Florida, only Romney can afford a real national ad campaign (he can just write a check).More money, no mo' problems? Mitt money, no problems? There's a joke there, I know it.
• And who does Fred Thompson's final snooze benefit? Maybe Romney, maybe nobody, according to Florida's top politicos.
• The New York Times explains that a pretty ridiculous number of primary voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. Also see this classic piece from Chris Hayes.
• I was an early Huckabee pun-maker and an avowed pun-lover, but it has to stop. First there was "Huckaboom" which actually is funny because it sounds like his name, but now we're just combining the first half of his name with any word. The joke is Huckabusted. It's Huckabover. It's Huckaboring. It's Huckabeendone. Time to give it a Huckarest.
  

--Sam Boyd

In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Mike Huckabee compared America to Nazi Germany. He first implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning:

... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because we are the somebodies. And we're to do the something and if we don't, who will? And if we don't act now, when will it happen, and will it be too late? You leave this conference with this haunting question, and pray that no one would ever ask of you or of me, why didn't somebody do something.

You read that right. Huckabee thinks if the "seculars" are allowed to rule America, our country could suffer the same fate as Nazi Germany. A resounding insult all around from this "Christian leader."

Read more in this week's FundamentaList.

--Sarah Posner

Following on A.J.'s post about the gossamer threads upon which the surgeniks continue to hang their claims of victory, Spencer Ackerman has an article on the ironclad ties that bind us to our new Iraqi Sunni "allies":

One of the signature achievements of the surge, according to General David Petraeus and the White House, has been the creation of so-called "Concerned Local Citizens" groups—that is, bands of tribal fighters, mostly Sunni and including many former insurgents, who have agreed to take U.S. cash (and in some cases weaponry) if they pledge to fight al-Qaeda. The groups, also known as Awakening Councils, currently stand at 80,000 fighters, 80 percent of which are Sunni. They’re outside the chain of command of the regular Iraqi security forces. And the U.S. military, for months, has relied on the councils for information, including targeting information, about who the U.S. should go after in the name of fighting al-Qaeda.

But many of these groups consist of former insurgents. Many have an agenda that isn’t the U.S.’s. How does the U.S. really know that these groups are truly targeting al-Qaeda, instead of manipulating the U.S. military?

According to Rear Admiral Greg Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Iraq, it’s simple. Trust.

That's touching. Interestingly, in most contexts, paying an armed gang not to attack you is called "extortion." In Iraq, it's called "the plan."

As Andrew Bacevich noted in his latest demolition of surge propaganda, while the surge has failed to achieve any of the political goals set out for it in Iraq, it has, at least as far as its proponents are concerned, achieved the arguably more important political goals set out for it here in the U.S.:

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke.

I don't think the word "admirable" belongs anywhere near a strategy in which young men and women are required to die in order to save the legacies and reputations of the cranks who got us into this mess in the first place. I can think of a few other, better words.

--Matthew Duss

The Hill has a report out today on John McCain's financial burden heading into Florida. In short, to compete effectively with the more liquid Mitt Romney, he'll need to take time off from campaigning to engage in no less than seven fundraisers around the country. Besides being an expensive state to run ads in, Florida has also taken on the status of "must-win" for the Republican field. Rudy Giuliani, who has looked like an also-ran (if that) for weeks now, has staked his entire nomination strategy on big states like Florida. And even though he has financial problems of his own, Giuliani is likely to use whatever remains of his war chest to soak Florida in advertisements to augment his near-residential status in the Sunshine State in a Hail-Mary effort to resurrect his campaign. Romney, as the article notes, is more than capable of simply funding his own ad buys to hopefully expand his delegate lead.

Put all of this together and McCain's media-designated status as the Republican front-runner hinges heavily on stopping Romney in Florida. Giuliani doesn't currently pose a big threat to the Romney-McCain showdown -- in recent polls, he has ranked 3rd or 4th, sometimes distantly -- and Mike Huckabee's campaign is in a similar situation to Giuliani's. Taken together, they raise the total price of admission, suggesting that money could be the decisive factor on January 29th. And from that point of view, the advantage is clearly Romney's. With our very own Kate Sheppard on the ground in Florida, however, we should have a clearer picture in the coming days.

--Mori Dinauer

Only one Democratic congressperson representing an early primary state has yet to step into the fray of presidential politics: South Carolina's John M. Spratt Jr, the subject of a short Politico piece today. Reporter David Paul Kuhn offers up a few possible explanations for Spratt's reticence. First elected in 1982, Spratt is a conservative Democrat on many social issues, and a deficit hawk. He's also the only white member of his state's Democratic delegation. With so much buzz over the racial implications of Saturday's South Carolina primary (Will Edwards and Clinton split the "white vote?" Will a victory for Obama be discounted if most of his support comes from the African American community?), it's understandable that Spratt would want to avoid getting too involved.

But a quick look at Spratt's congressional website shows he's also a locally-minded politician, with press releases touting legislation that increased disaster relief for farmers in the Southeast, named a local Civil War battlefield part of the National Park System, and cracked down on Internet predators. And despite a 100 percent pro-union voting record, Spratt is well to the right of all three Democratic front-runners; he supports a border fence, for example, as well as restrictions on second and third term abortions. He's been consistently wary of removing troops from Iraq. In short, Spratt's particular brand of Democratic politics doesn't make for an easy alliance with any of the presidential candidates.

Politico's Kuhn, the author of a book arguing that the interests of Southern white male voters should be taken more seriously by the Democratic party, would probably say that Spratt's odd-man-out status signals a major problem within the party, a forfeiting of important social conservative votes. South Carolina hasn't voted for a Democrat presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. Indeed, they've been handing Democrats large margins of defeat ever since. But considering the moral imperative of the Democratic party being an outspoken proponent of women's rights and civil rights, the question is, as always, whether states like South Carolina are really where Democrats should focus their energies beyond primary season, instead of looking toward the Rocky Mountain West, or even to newly purple Virginia.

--Dana Goldstein

In light of the anniversary of Roe, you'll be thrilled to know that William Saletan has an exciting idea for advancing the abortion debate. The solution is: everyone should just concede that William Saletan is right about everything!

To pro-choicers: Talk about abortion the way you've been talking about teen sex, embracing an ideal number of zero. To pro-lifers: Accept that the best way to advance toward zero is through voluntary prevention.

In a new moralistic twist, however, pro-choicers are supposed not only to claim that the ideal number of abortions is zero, but that the ideal amount of teen sex sex is zero! The former is at least narrowly true; I guess it would be nice if the number of abortions was zero in the sense that it would be nice if the number of appendectomies was zero. But in the real world unwanted pregnancies will happen just as burst appendixes will happen, so talking about an ideal abortion rate of 0% can do nothing expect undermine the case for keeping it safe and legal. Why I'm supposed to be outraged that 17 year-olds are having sex, on the other hand, is beyond me, and Saletan doesn't help by providing, say, an argument for this position apart from citing Nancy Keenan's unfounded assertions. I might agree that the ideal rate of teen pregnancy -- and, for that matter, unwanted pregnancy -- is zero, and while we're at it I'll take three ponies and the next four winning Powerball tickets.

For bonus wankery, Saletan praises what was perhaps last year's most disingenuous argument for forced pregnancy:

Last year, in a New York Times op-ed, journalist Melinda Henneberger (now a Slate contributor) argued that public sentiment against abortion was hurting Democrats. "Most people differentiate between a fetus in the early weeks of development and at nearly full term," she wrote, citing the party's defense of partial-birth abortions.

--Scott Lemieux

This has got to be embarrassing for the Washington Post. Or it would be, if their editorial board had the capacity for shame. Three days ago, WaPo ran a big Sunday op-ed on Iraq by three of the biggest supporters -- Michael O'Hanlon, Fred Kagan, and Gen. Jack Keane -- of the "surge," a piece whose opening sentence touted the success of the troop buildup by citing the recent de-Baathification law as "an important step toward political reconciliation." Today, however, a front page WaPo story reports what many of us said from the beginning: the law is not an indication of political compromise, but rather a misleadingly-named Shia effort to further sideline an already outraged Sunni populace.

The article reports, "Approved by parliament this month under pressure from U.S. officials, the law was heralded by President Bush and Iraqi leaders as a way to soothe the deep anger of many ex-Baathists -- primarily Sunnis but also many Shiites such as Awadi -- toward the Shiite-led government." Except that, of course, it did nothing of the kind: "More than a dozen Iraqi lawmakers, U.S. officials and former Baathists here and in exile expressed concern in interviews that the law could set off a new purge of ex-Baathists, the opposite of U.S. hopes for the legislation." Oops! One prominent Sunni politician even described it as "bait," saying the law is set up so ex-Baathists have to go to a specific location to register, where, he says, they're likely to be killed.

Observers like Kagan, Keene, and O'Hanlon have demonstrated again and again that they don't understand Iraq. They may understand the military, but when it comes to the vital political issues involved, they either don't have a clue or they're dissembling on the prime journalistic real estate of the leading news outlet in our nation's capital. Either way, it's disgraceful.

--AJ Rossmiller

If Democrats adhered to an 11th Commandment, would Hillary Clinton would be guilty of violating it in her recent attacks on Barack Obama? Paul Waldman argues that it is the target of the Clintons' attacks that arouses progressives' unease:

Let's step back from these particular disputes and look at the big picture. We shouldn't forget that this has always been one of the things that partisan Democrats liked about the Clintons. They took hits, and hit right back. No matter how bleak things looked, no matter how much it seemed that Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr was going to defeat them, they never gave up and never stopped fighting. They weren't afraid to get their hands dirty, and they did what it took to win.

The difference is that in the past, Republicans were the target, and now it's not just a fellow Democrat but one about whom nearly all Democrats have good feelings, even those supporting other candidates. The Obama campaign obviously decided that the steady stream of falsehoods from both Bill and Hillary was having an effect, or they wouldn't have tried to staunch the flow by calling attention to it.

Read and consider the ethical dilemma here.

--The Editors

I'm preparing to head to Florida this morning, where I'll be covering the upcoming primaries for the next week. Since the DNC pulled Florida's delegates and the Democratic candidates have agreed not to campaign there, I'll be spending most of my time following the Republicans as the nation learns whether Giuliani's firewall is the best crazy plan ever, or if McCain's rise is unstoppable at this point.

Not that Florida isn't shaping up to be an interesting place for the Dems as well. The latest argument between Clinton and Obama has been over whether the latter is violating their early-state pledge with his recent purchase of a national ad spot on CNN and MSNBC. "The ads are a clear and blatant violation of the early-state pledge," said the Clinton camp in a press release. "The Obama campaign knows this, but has chosen to violate the pledge regardless." But the Obama campaign has countered by pointing out an intractable problem for not just Obama, but all the Dems: the two networks say it's impossible to exclude Florida from a national ad campaign.

At this point, the only financially and politically expedient way to win this primary will be an all-out national campaign, which might mean that both Obama and Clinton have no choice but to violate the pledge not to campaign in Florida. It'll be interesting to see whose ads turn up there, and of course hear what folks in Florida are thinking about the delegate situation. More from Florida coming soon.

--Kate Sheppard

There are many differences between the first and second Bush administrations, but none more revealing than the fact that we've gone from Bush 41 "thousand points of light" to Bush 43's "thousand lies on point."

OK, Bush-the-Younger and company came up 65 short, but 935 rounds up close enough to 1,000 ... and surely some of the lies just never made it into the public record. I say we give them the benefit of the doubt on this score. They earned it.

--Tom Schaller

In his Hillary Clinton hatred, calling Richard Nixon Clinton's "mentor." Why, wasn't it less than two weeks ago that Sullivan promised "a new tone" when it came to his treatment of the Clintons? "I'm going to try a little harder to be a little more temperate," he swore.

A temperate blogger might note that in one of her first jobs after law school, Hillary Clinton worked for the House Commission on the Judiciary securing Nixon's impeachment.

--Dana Goldstein

I'm in South Carolina now, following John Edwards the next couple of days, trying to figure out what the story is with his presidential campaign and where he goes from here. He won the Palmetto State four years ago, but now trails both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Though one can surely argue that Hillary's candidacy initially and indelibly defined this primary, and that Obama's late fall 2007 surge redefined it, Edwards' impact cannot be overstated because he forced both of his competitors to deal with him: Hillary had to take account for votes that she and Edwards cast that came to be viewed as too accomodating of the center-right; and Obama had to incorporate, if not appropriate, Edwards' calls for transformative changes in how we conduct our national politics.

And say this much, too, for Edwards: In the final days here, he is staying true to his campaign's themes and target demographics, campaigning today and tomorrow in Bennettsville, Lancaster, Seneca and Greenwood. None of these small, rural communities are vote-rich destinations, yet they epitomize the places and kinds of people that Edwards has focused upon from the start of this campaign.

If he goes down to stinging defeat here in South Carolina on Saturday, he will go down swinging.

--Tom Schaller

• I didn't see all of last night's debate (just when you're sure debates are boring...), but watching the first few minutes (the whole thing is available on YouTube) it was akin to what I imagine it is like to watch your parents get a divorce -- shocking, deeply uncomfortable and sad. A Democratic Party that demands that its leaders engage in vicious untruthful attacks against each other to prove their "toughness" reveals just how deeply dysfunctional it is after years of abuse from the right. It'd be one thing if there some real differences between them, but does anyone really think Obama actually believes Reagan was good for the country, that he really was consciously aiding a slumlord, or that he is secretly anti-choice? Mostly the debate was Obama defending himself, but his return shots were equally cheap. I mean Clinton served on the board of Wal-Mart? That's all you've got? I'd rather watch people club baby seals than see another debate like this one.
• Meanwhile, in conservative land, Fred Thompson drops out. But how can you tell? (badum-ching!) He will most likely not endorse.
• Edwards and Clinton had a private talk after the SC debate.
• How will the tanking market affect the presidential campaign? I dunno. A lot of folks seem to think it hurts McCain, but, though I'd love for that to be true, I'm skeptical since the media seem likely to transform him into a Nobel Laureate by November if he gets the nomination. And when has economic incoherence translated to bad press for a Republican anyway? Sure, there's 1992 but I think that was just the general condition of the economy rather than any particular lack of policy acumen on Bush's part.
• Jonathan Alter has a good piece on Obama and Bill Clinton.
• And in one of the more brilliantly nasty bits of campaign rhetoric I can remember Clinton is now continually describing Obama as "frustrated." Ugh.

--Sam Boyd

K-Lo declares that the real reason people say they aren't ready for a female president is... bad Lifetime movie portrayals of female presidents.

Because we all know that sexism has nothing to do with it. Nah, it's because people don't want life to imitate crappy TV dramas.

--Ann Friedman

Maybe I'm forgetting something, but relative to the quality of films this year I would be surprised if this isn't the best selection of best picture nominees of my lifetime. Granted, it's marred by Schnabel relegated to a Best Director nomination while Atonement takes Diving Bell's rightful place in what I assume (although I haven't seen Atonement yet, so maybe even it's good) to be the Middlebrow Doorstop spot (although having only one is pretty amazing in itself.) Still, There Will Be Blood and No Country are both excellent-to-exceptional films, Juno very good, and while the enjoyable Michael Clayton is overmatched in this heat (and I would have preferred Lumet/Before the Devil) it's certainly better than most recent Best Picture winners (Crash, Shakespeare in Love, Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, I Can't Believe There is Soulessness and Homophobia In American Suburbia! American Beauty, ugh.) It's an unusually strong collection of pictures. I wonder how it happened?

--Scott Lemieux

We've got two great articles up today -- Ezra Klein offers his definitive take on health care reform:

Today's reformers have one thing yesterday's didn't: The lessons of 1994. And the degree to which they've learnt them -- which increasingly appears considerable -- may decide whether the next president finally succeeds where so many others have failed.

And Spencer Ackerman looks ahead to the next presidential race:

Indeed, General David Petraeus can basically write his next round of orders. But wherever he goes, his next important campaign probably won't be on any battlefield. It'll be political. For the past year, the GOP has laid the groundwork to enlist Petraeus as its standard-bearer in the fairly likely event that the party loses in November to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You read it here first. Plant your lawn signs now. Petraeus 2012: Surging to the White House.

--The Editors

Hillary Clinton tries to one-up Barack Obama and John Edwards today by releasing not only a statement on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but a full "agenda for women's reproductive health care." Broadly speaking, it covers the same issues of access to abortion and contraception that all three front-runners agree upon. But the language really gets into the weeds on restoring Title X family planning funding, repealing parts of the Deficit Reduction Act that made birth control more expensive for poor women and college students, and requiring all hospitals to offer rape victims emergency contraception. There's no "re-framing" here, something Clinton was (in)famous for doing in the past, with her "abortion is a tragedy" statement of 2005. Like Obama, Clinton has detailed plans on childcare and family sick leave. But unlike her opponent, she isn't explicitly linking that platform to her support for access to abortion and contraception.

In her plan, Clinton mentions three important reproductive health care issues that didn't make it into Obama or Edwards' statements today: The need for comprehensive sexuality education in American schools; the disastrous effects of the Bush administration's Global Gag Rule, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from supporting family planning programs that even mention abortion or contraception; and the need for better reproductive health care services for women stationed at American military bases, including access to Plan B. In 2006, there were 3,000 reports of sexual assault against women in our military.

--Dana Goldstein

Proving to the world that he is not too lazy to withdraw from the race, Fred Thompson dropped out of the Republican race today after falling from second place nationally when he announced his candidacy in September to fifth place. From his announcement to the press this afternoon:

Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.

It's not quite clear where the about 7 percent of voters in Florida who have been backing him will go, but I talked to a McCain campaign leader in the state this afternoon who reported that Thompson's people have been volunteering to put their efforts behind him for the next week.

--Kate Sheppard

The point being that for some number of women, particularly those of Clinton's generation in New York (of whom I know a few), her success is inseparable from the particular tragedy of women in New York politics. Starting in the 1970s, New York was the birthplace of successful women running for office independently. The bench was deep: There was Abzug; there was Liz Holtzman, who took down the chair of the House Judiciary Committee in a primary in 1972 and went on to make her own mark in that committee's hearings on the Nixon impeachment; there was Carol Bellamy, a skillful politician who won the then-powerful position of City Council President in 1977; there was Geraldine Ferraro, elected to Congress in 1978. One could probably add the names of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, and Ruth Messinger, who became Manhattan borough president a little later. New York has sent 22 women to Congress, second only to California's 31.

From this talent pool, surely senators, governors and mayors would emerge. That was the hope. And then what followed was disappointment compounded by disappointment:

• Abzug lost the 1976 nomination to the U.S. Senate by 10,000 votes, largely because the New York Times endorsed the then-neoconservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a move so controversial that the editorial page editor, John Oakes, overruled by the publisher, his cousin Arthur Sulzberger, was forced to convert his endorsement of Abzug to a short letter to the editor (himself).
• Abzug toned down her style and missed the runoff in the 1977 mayoral primary, one of the greatest yet nastiest political campaigns in history, a tale told well in Jonathan Mahler's Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning.
• Holtzman won the 1980 Democratic Senate primary, but the ailing incumbent Republican Jacob Javits, having lost his party's primary to Al D'Amato, insisted on staying in the race on the Liberal Party line and took 11% of the vote, costing Holtzman victory by a tiny margin.
• Ferraro reached the pinnacle, a place on a national ticket in 1984, but her selection (which briefly boosted the Mondale-Ferraro ticket to parity in the polls), was overshadowed by controversy about her husband's finances.
• In the 1992 Senate primary, for the chance to take on a weakened D'Amato, Holtzman and Ferraro effectively destroyed each other with personal attacks, letting Robert Abrams win the primary and lose the general election. Bitterness over that race carried over into Holtzman's 1993 race for reelection as New York City Controller, which she lost.
• Bellamy's political career fizzled with a defeat in the 1985 mayoral primary, just as Messinger's did in 1997.

After 25 years of potential and this series of debacles , no woman had yet claimed one of the brass rings of New York politics -- senator, governor, mayor. Until Hillary Clinton. So whether she has an "inner Bella" or not (and I'm not sure whether that's such a good thing to have), she did achieve what Abzug and her cohort never could, twice.

For those who missed it at the time, I wrote an article last year for the anniversary of Roe that sums up some of the most important points that supporters of reproductive freedom need to make as clearly and as often as possible. Most importantly, the real question of abortion policy is whether poor women will have the same access to safe abortions that the wives and daughters of the male Republican and media elites who want the issue "sent back to the states" (except for all of the federal regulations they also inevitably support) will have under any legal regime. The "centrist" compromise beloved by so many op-ed writers just gets to the pre-Roe era through regulations that make it increasingly difficult for poor women to obtain safe abortions and for abortion clinics to operate rather than through more explicit bans. It's indefensible. It's also always worth pointing out that abortion criminalization is a very ineffective way of protecting fetal life but a very effective means of insuring that more women get maimed or killed.

And since this is an election year, keep in mind that the guy who wrote that despite lacking "reliable data" we could safely assume that women are too dumb to consider the consequences of their actions is considered the moderate among the Court's conservatives.  We're one Republican administration away from Antonin Scalia becoming the median vote on the Supreme Court.

--Scott Lemieux

John Edwards has just emailed out his statement on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It's much shorter than Obama's. Here's what Edwards had to say:

Roe v. Wade was an important step on the road to full equality, opportunity and dignity for women. On the 35th anniversary, it is important to reflect how far we’ve come as a nation, but more importantly how far we still have to go.

I strongly support a woman’s right to privacy and reproductive choices. That right has been under attack though -- by President Bush and his anti-choice agenda and by the Supreme Court, which has been moving the right-wing's agenda faster than we've seen in decades. The hard right turn of the Supreme Court is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake - starting with a woman's right to choose.

As President, I will guarantee the right to choose and ensure that women can make choices in their lives with dignity and can participate in our society fully, as equals.

The two statements have a lot in common: They both talk about the Supreme Court's piecemeal handicapping of Roe, promise to reverse the trend, and situate reproductive rights within a greater struggle for gender equality.

The difference is that Obama's statement focuses more on establishing strong pro-choice credentials, probably in response to the Clinton campaign's rather unfair attack against his Illinois State Senate voting record. Obama also reiterates a promise he's made before: to pass the Freedom of Choice Act if he becomes President, which would allow for federally-funded abortions for low-income women and would supersede anti-choice Supreme Court decisions. Edwards and Clinton are also on record as supporting the Freedom of Choice Act.

And lastly, as Obama did in his appearance before Planned Parenthood last summer, he links reproductive rights to better work-family balance policies, such as paid family care leave and universal child care. In other words, he frames abortion rights as just one part of a parenting agenda, one that recognizes the right not to parent, but also aims to support parenting women. And that, of course, comes from the wonderful Karen Kornbluh.

--Dana Goldstein

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and I'll be updating the blog all day with relevant news and commentary. So far, Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate to send out a press release on the anniversary; check it out after the jump. Here's hoping the other candidates follow suit later today.

In the meantime, check out my New Republic piece on how John McCain won South Carolina in part by pandering big time to some of the most extreme elements of the anti-choice right. And McCain used the story of his daughter Bridget's adoption to do it. She's the same daughter who was slurred as "illegitimate" by the anti-McCain robocalls of 2000.

CHICAGO, IL- Senator Barack Obama today released the following statement on the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.

"Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it’s never been more important to protect a woman’s right to choose. Last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women’s health. With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a women’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election.

"Throughout my career, I’ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

"When South Dakota passed a law banning all abortions in a direct effort to have Roe overruled, I was the only candidate for President to raise money to help the citizens of South Dakota repeal that law. When anti-choice protesters blocked the opening of an Illinois Planned Parenthood clinic in a community where affordable health care is in short supply, I was the only candidate for President who spoke out against it. And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president.

"Moreover, I believe in and have supported common-sense solutions like increasing access to affordable birth control to help prevent unintended pregnancies. In the Illinois state Senate, when Congress failed to require insurance plans to cover FDA-approved contraceptives, I made sure those contraceptives were covered for women in Illinois. In the U.S. Senate, I've worked with Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on a bill that would make birth control more affordable for low-income and college women, and introduced the Senate version of Representative Hilda Solis’ bill to reduce unintended pregnancies in communities of color. As President, I will improve access to affordable health care and work to ensure that our teens are getting the information and services they need to stay safe and healthy.

"But we also know that Roe v. Wade is about more than a woman’s right to choose; it’s about equality. It’s about whether our daughters are going to have the same opportunities as our sons. And so to truly honor that decision, we need to update the social contract so that women can free themselves, and their children, from violent relationships; so that a mom can stay home with a sick child without getting a pink slip; so that she can go to work knowing that there’s affordable, quality childcare for her children; and so that the American dream is within reach for every family in this country. This anniversary reminds us that it’s not enough to protect the gains of the past – we have to build a future that’s filled with hope and possibility for all Americans."

--Dana Goldstein

Howard Wolfson's claim that Obama is asserting a "right wing talking point" by pointing out that Bill Clinton has been lying about things -- among them, claims that Obama uses right-wing talking points -- is absurd on many levels. Of course one should be offended at the suggestion that a true progressive would never criticize Bill Clinton. And as Steve Benen points out, all the Democratic candidates have all been guilty of borrowing right-wing talking points this primary season, so throwing that around as a means of criticism is almost laughable at this point. But perhaps the most offensive element is that Bill Clinton himself has been known to recycle Republican talking points to his advantage, like his 1993 complaint to Rolling Stone that he couldn't get "one damn bit of credit from the knee-jerk liberal press." But of course, if someone like Obama were to point this out about the former president, I guess that would make it a right-wing talking point.

--Kate Sheppard

This week’s ad analysis comes at a time when both the Republican and Democratic races are tighter than anyone thought they would be. By now it was supposed to be all but decided, the fields whittled down and one candidate poised to put his or her opponents away for good. But much to the pleasure of political junkies everywhere, both races are truly up in the air. So let’s see what delicious new morsels the candidates are sending our way. We’ll start with Barack Obama:

It might seem a little late to be running a one-minute biography ad of the kind most campaigns usually begin with, but the Obama campaign seems to have surmised (probably correctly) that plenty of voters still aren’t all that familiar with him. And for Obama, his identity is his message. Even though some of the images and interviews in this ad have been used in previous spots, there are some subtle alterations in the arguments being made. Obama is now “fighting,” and his organizing work in Chicago is described as “working to rebuild an area torn apart by plant closings.” This situates that part of his history in an economic context, and closer to the ground than it had been described before – he’s “tak[ing] all of the talent and devot[ing] it to making people’s lives better,” as his law professor Laurence Tribe describes it.

We also get mentions of specific issues -- taxes, health care, arms control, ethics reform -- to show Obama’s efforts at unification are not just inspirational but instrumental, enabling him to achieve practical goals. “This is a man who knows how to get things done,” testifies Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, one of Obama’s recent high-profile endorsers. The ad begins and ends with clips from Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, attempting to keep hold of the idea of Obama as inspiring and address Hillary Clinton’s criticism that in effect, Obama is nothing more than a purveyor of pretty rhetoric.

Clinton has also changed the form of her message. Here’s her newest ad:

This ad is called “Voices,” but it might as well be called “Lullaby.” Clinton spent the last eight years clearing the hurdle any woman faces in politics, establishing that she is tough and strong enough to be president. With that established, she successfully demonstrated her softer side, and in doing so probably saved her campaign in New Hampshire. This ad has her speaking softly and slowly, as though she were reading the voters a bedtime story. Drift off to sleep, America -- your tribune might not quite feel your pain, but she hears your voice.

On to the Republicans. You might find it hard to believe that Mitt Romney, who embraced immigrant-bashing with the fervor of the converted, would actually be airing an ad in Spanish. But this is Florida, where there are plenty of Cubans. In the world according to the GOP, Cubans are good immigrants -- it’s just the Mexicans they don’t like. There may not be much distinctive about the ad, other than what appears to my untrained ears to be Craig Romney’s reasonably well-accented Spanish. (Is there anything those Romney boys can’t do?) But it’s worth the price of admission just to hear Mitt say, “Soy Mitt Romney, y apruebo este mensaje.”

(This reminds me that George W. Bush was once described as speaking Spanish “poorly, but with great confidence.” If there’s a more pithy description of the man and his presidency, I haven’t heard it.)

As important as the candidate’s identity is to Barack Obama’s campaign, for no candidate is personal history more central than for John McCain, whose message consists of, “I was a prisoner of war, and I’m running for president. Did I mention I was a prisoner of war?” Before anyone gets mad, let me make clear that McCain showed great courage during his long ordeal in the Hanoi Hilton, and he has every right to use his history for political advantage as much as he pleases. But he certainly does use it. Let’s watch:

Here we see McCain as a prisoner of war, a couple of throw-away images of him in the present day, then him with Saint Reagan, then back to Vietnam-era McCain, posing with his plane and upon his return to U.S. soil after being released. Though it comes after the narrator says “One man stands up to the special interests,” the bit of bellicosity McCain offers -- “Stand up. We’re Americans, we’re Americans and we’ll never surrender. They will” -- was actually in reference to terrorists, as most viewers will no doubt understand. Now that Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy has curdled like a bowl of milk left sitting in the noonday sun, those looking for the most war-hungry candidate with the most simplistic beliefs about foreign policy need look no further than John McCain.

Finally, we have Rudy. As an indication of what a crack squad he’s got lining all his ducks up in a row, his campaign doesn’t even own rudygiuliani.com. But they do turn out ads with high production values:

It turns out that Rudy Giuliani is no mere politician, but some kind of super-hero who evidently has traveled through time to save us in our hour of peril. That would be the only explanation for this ad’s use of fake-distressed film suggesting an old newsreel, combined with black-and-white imagery indicating that Rudy took down some mobsters from the 1930s, maybe Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. “When corruption ruled, he challenged it. When welfare failed, he changed it. When crime thrived, he fought it. When government broke, he fixed it.” Indeed, and when dinner arrived, he ate it. When hair mussed, he combed it.

Rudy’s ability to bend the space-time continuum to his will is also indicated by the comical line, “When the world wavered, and history hesitated, he never did.” There will be no wavering or hesitating when Rudy is president, mortals. Turn over the keys to the Oval Office, and you will need fear the Legion of Doom no more.

--Paul Waldman

At the Women's Media Center Web site, Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom examine the presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton against the backdrop of the passionately lived career of Bella Abzug, the late congresswoman and world-renowned women's rights leader. (Levine and Thom recently published a delightful oral history of Abzug's life as a public figure.)

They posit that somewhere within the psyche of the highly scripted and carefully calculating presidential candidate may still lurk the firebrand who delivered a famously controversial speech to her graduating class at Wellesley, who championed children's rights, who took a huge risk with her plan for a national healthcare system. In the end, they leave open their question of whether or not Hillary possesses an "Inner Bella," with an implied hope that she does.

Among the interesting tidbits in their commentary is the role that Abzug played in advising the then-first lady in her preparation to address the U.N.'s 4th World Conference on Women, which took place in 1995 in Beijing.

Thinking about Abzug in the midst of this presidential race offers more than a little food for thought. Though identified in the public mind these days largely with the women's movement, Abzug was a player in nearly all of the constituencies of the liberal coalition -- the civil rights and labor communities, especially. There's one woman nobody dared to suggest wasn't tough enough.

--Adele M. Stan

A few links:

Rick Perlstein explains what conservatives just don't get about the Civil Rights leader.

Nubian Waves discusses why this is a holiday about beliefs and actions.

And Afro-Netizen looks at King's influence on electoral politics.

--Ann Friedman

Liberals and Democrats, on the other hand, often spoke in a language of government programs, as if the name and material benefits of a government program are sufficient justification.

So when Barack Obama says that, "Republicans were the party of ideas for the last 10 or 15 years" and that Reagan changed the ideological landscape in ways that Nixon or Clinton did not,

and Rep. Barney Frank responds with indignation, listing,

Medicaid, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Community Development Block Grants

I think the point is proved. A federal funding stream, like Community Development Block Grants, is not an idea. (Even as a funding stream, it's not much to be proud of, scattering benefits to poor and well-off communities alike.)

Liberals don't lack ideas. The problem is that we forget that policies and programs are means to implement ideas, to achieve certain principles. Unless you can articulate the goal itself (and I'm not even sure what the principle of CDBG is, other than, every city and town should have a little more money), you can't construct a winning politics.

-- Mark Schmitt

Just what the Middle East needs, more high-tech weapons floating around:

The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a kit that, when added to the back end of a 500- or 2,000-pound "dumb" bomb, turns it into a lethal, all-weather "smart" weapon. The bomb can hit within four feet of a target when launched from a fighter aircraft more than 10 miles away.

The kits and bombs are a prominent part of the $20 billion U.S. arms package for Persian Gulf states that has been in the works since last summer. President Bush discussed the package with Arab leaders during his recent trip to the Gulf.

[...]

[The Congressional Research Service] notes that "significant arms sales, prolonged military training programs, material pre-positioning and basing arrangements, joint exercises and direct military interventions have characterized U.S. policy toward the Gulf region."

In short, without much public debate, the Bush administration has expanded previous multilateral cooperation with Gulf states on defense, including "discussion on securing key sites, in spite of historic sensitivities regarding sovereignty and foreign participation in the regional energy industry," the CRS report says.

I commented on the arms deal last August, noting that it represents a clear admission of failure of President Bush's Iraq-centric Middle East security strategy. It also represents an abandonment of Bush's program of democracy promotion for a return to a policy of supporting the Arab authoritarians we know, in an effort to contain the numerous, and not yet fully comprehended, bad effects of the Iraq war.

--Matthew Duss

Paul Starr evaluates the presidential race:

Until recently, like most liberals, I was convinced that 2008 was going to be a Democratic year. While Republicans have been listless and divided, Democrats have been passionate and enthusiastic about their candidates for president. An unpopular war, a sinking economy, a general sense of conservative exhaustion: All pointed toward a Democratic triumph in November. A lot of conservatives had come to grudgingly agree and were preparing to spend four years in political rehab.

But after the first rounds of caucuses and primaries, the prospects don't look so rosy for the Democrats or so bleak for the Republicans. The presidential race now looks like a toss-up -- perhaps even with a Republican edge.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

I've got a new piece up over at ourfuture.org on Bush's statement of "principles" on President Bush's tax-cut stimulus plan ('cause that's what it stimulates, not the economy):

This brings us to the last and worst part of Bush's speech, his call to extend his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. He claims that uncertainty over future tax burdens is hurting businesses and individuals. Except that the primary beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts were the wealthiest people in society, the exact people who have enough money to weather small variations in their income without much effect.

This is another example of the point I made in my earlier post. Conservative leaders care more about giving money to rich people and businesses than they do about actually helping the economy. And that makes sense for them because for the most part they are fairly well of or identify with those who are. Well-off people, after all, aren't hurt in a visceral way when the economy is doing poorly. They'd rather pocket a tax cut and call it a day than actually try and stimulate the economy.

So what would a good package look like? It wouldn't cut taxes on businesses or the well-off. It would include help for people who can't say afloat in the current economic storm. It would include increases in food stamps and a cut in the payroll tax. It might also include boosts to unemployment and other direct aid to the poor and unemployed.

Also, the site now has a working RSS feed and feeds for individual bloggers are coming. Even if it does publish me, it's a good source of substantive commentary and well worth checking out.

--Sam Boyd

• We're in the calm before the storm again, but there's some news coming out of Nevada. UNITE-HERE is running a brutal ad attacking Hillary Clinton for a supporter's attempt to close caucuses on the Vegas strip (as Kate wrote earlier). The Edwards and Clinton campaigns are attacking Obama for condemning outside ads run on behalf of John Edwards and then benefiting from outside help himself. His campaign manager counters that those ads were run by a group run by a close Edwards associate while UNITE-HERE isn't tied to the Obama campaign. Listen to the (Spanish language) ad here.
• Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, brother of Clinton supporter and tough-guy Rahm Emanuel, has a piece on the Huffington Post questioning Hillary Clinton's 35-years-of-experience claim. Yikes, hate to think what their next family reunion will be like.
• Obama is pretty funny when he wants to be, but pretty much anyone could make fun of the criticisms from his rivals about his admission that he sometimes has a messy desk. I thought this ad was meant to be a joke.
• Bill Clinton recently said that the caucuses on the Vegas strip would make the votes of the people attending them count five times as much as those of other people in the state. Sounds pretty bad. Turns out it's not ... what's the word? True, at least under any reasonable set of assumptions about turnout on Saturday.
• Greg Sargent weighs in again on Edwards and the media.

• Clinton goes after Obama over his comments on Reagan. Ezra had a good defense of them yesterday, while Rick Perlstein has a great critique of Obama's take on Reagan's legacy (full disclosure: I work for him at my other gig). Ezra's right, I think, that Obama wants to be a transformational president in a way Reagan actually was, but we shouldn't forget Rick's point about the realities of Reagan's leadership. Clinton, though, is lying about what Obama said. He didn't say Republicans had "better" ideas over the last 10-15 years. He said at some points their ideas challenged the conventional wisdom more. I don't think that's true either, but Clinton should criticize him for what he actually said.
• Dennis Kucinich is asking the Supreme Court to bar the Texas Democratic Party from requiring him to sign a loyalty oath pledging to support the Democratic nominee in order to be on the primary ballot. The judge responsible for deciding if his emergency application is taken up? Scalia.
• Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the John-McCain-crucified-on-a-cross-of-lies theme which I bought into a bit a few days ago is a complete fiction. Kudos to the Politico and reporter Jonathan Martin for an awesome story.
• Speaking of lies, Ezra is completely right that the media reacts to Mitt Romney's lies completely out of proportion to how they react to those of other Republicans. If John McCain had said what Romney said about lobbyists nobody would give a damn.
• Elsewhere in South Carolina (or Pander-Fest 2008 as Steve Benen dubs it) Huckabee is engaging in some very selective applications of federalism. See, it makes sense for the federal government to ban abortion (sometimes), but not for it to do anything about the Confederate flag flying above state capitals.
• Anna Marie Cox discovers that McCain doesn't understand the metrics about success in Iraq that he's touting as evidence he was right all along. Joe Klein, meanwhile, pens a column which, after deciding that McCain's problem in the campaign is that he's just too gosh darn honest on the economy (he very much isn't), calls his stance on Iraq "admirable" before pointing out that it's completely wrong. How exactly does that work?
• In case Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan didn't convince you, don't pay any attention to those South Carolina polls. A full half of GOP voters haven't decided who they're going to vote for yet or could change their mind (20 and 30 percent respectively).
• Noam Scheiber writes the piece on why Romney has the best shot of winning that'd I'd been meaning to write, only better. The only things I'd add are that Romney has the potential to vastly outspend his rivals in the February 5th states where voters are just starting to consider their choices and that Romney has a much more delegate-centered aproach to the nomination race--see for example his campaign's focus on Nevada.
• Finally, while politics may have become more divided and partisan over the last seven years (not necessarily a bad thing) voters have become much more engaged, excited about the candidates, and happy with the issues the candidates are discussing. See that and more here.

--Sam Boyd

I haven't finished reading Jeffrey Goldberg's new article on "the next phase of Middle East history," but this anecdote is worth sharing:

Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurd­istan to an audience that included Norman Podhoretz, the vicariously martial neoconservative who