John McCain has picked up the endorsement of The State, the largest newspaper in South Carolina, which published an editorial today citing McCain's experience, war record, and steadfastness on the Iraq War.

"John McCain has shown more clearly than anyone on the American political scene today that he loves his country, and would never mislead or dishonor it," the editors say. "He is almost unique in his determination to do what is right, whatever the cost. And he usually has a clear vision of what’s right."

As for Mike Huckabee, whom many evangelicals are considering: "Gov. Huckabee is an exciting newcomer who shows a wonderful ability to connect with voters’ concerns, and Republicans could do far worse than to choose him. But his utter lack of knowledge of foreign affairs is unsettling."

The Nevada caucuses are a week away, and the state teachers' union has decided to throw a monkey-wrench into the legalities of the process. The Nevada State Education Association has filed suit against the state Democratic Party, on the grounds that the nine at-large caucus locations set up on the Las Vegas Strip make it too easy for workers there to caucus, while no similar accommodations have been made for other Nevadans.

Those workers, if they can come out and caucus, are expected to vote heavily for Barack Obama, who won the Culinary Workers Union endorsement this past Wednesday.

"This has been a fully transparent process," state Democratic party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer told the Las Vegas Sun. "These rules have been approved by the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns have been fully informed throughout this process, which started in May."

A new Rasmussen poll shows that there might just be some life left in Mitt Romney after all, giving him a narrow lead over John McCain in Michigan. Here are the numbers, compared to their last Michigan poll from early December:

Romney 26% (+6)
McCain 25% (+17)
Huckabee 17% (-4)
Thompson 9% (+0)
Paul 8% (+1)
Giuliani 6% (-13)

The Michigan primary is emerging as a real question mark for the GOP race — our Election Central Poll Tracker shows that one recent poll gives the lead to McCain, another to Huckabee, and this one to Romney.

Yesterday, as part of his racial damage control tour, Bill Clinton took a shot at Obama that he's frequently taken during the campaign, charging that the Illinois Senator's criticism of Hillary's support of the war is disingenuous in light of something Obama said back in 2004.

Bill pointed out that at the time, Obama said that he could not say how he would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate himself in the run-up to the invasion. Bill has repeatedly pointed to this quote to cast doubt on Obama's anti-war bona fides, and it's become part of the conversation of Campaign 2008.

Obama defended himself against this criticism a few days ago, recalling that at the time he didn't want to criticize the war votes of John Kerry and John Edwards in the middle of the 2004 presidential campaign. Obama accused the former president of cherry picking from his past quote:

He keeps on giving half the quote. I was always against the war...obviously I didn’t want to criticize them on the eve of their nomination. So I said, `Well, I don’t know what -- you know, I wasn’t in the Senate. I can’t say for certain what I would have done if I was there. I know that from where I stood the case was not made.’ He always leaves that out.

As it happens, Obama is right. Here is the actual Obama quote in question, from a New York Times article on July 26, 2004 (via Nexis):

In a recent interview, he declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time.

''But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,'' Mr. Obama said. ''What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.''

So, clearly, Obama was pointing to the fact that he wasn't in the Senate at the time as a way of tactfully avoiding criticizing his party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees. It's perfectly clear that Obama was in fact against the war at the time. His position then -- as now -- was that the case for war had not been made and that the invasion wasn't justified.

After threatening to drop his neutral stance in his state's Dem primary in reaction to recent comments by Hillary and Bill about race, South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn confirmed last night that he will remain neutral, after all:

On Friday evening, Mr. Clyburn, who is traveling overseas, issued a statement saying he intended to remain neutral in the early race. Mr. Clyburn, who aides said spoke with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, said he wanted to make sure all candidates had an equal opportunity.

“I encourage the candidates to be sensitive about the words they use,” Mr. Clyburn said “This is an historic race for America to have such strong, diverse candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.”

Clyburn released a statement last night that you can read after the jump. Despite Clyburn's neutrality, there is a very real backlash underway in the black community towards the Clintons for their recent remarks that could present a real problem for Hillary, and her campaign is working overtime to repair the damage.

Separately, in some good news for Obama, The New York Times reports that the New York primary is shaping up as the most competitive one in 15 years, a show of Obama's surprising strength in Hillary's home state.

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This is pretty interesting. Check out what an Obama spokesperson said to The Politico about the backlash that's brewing in the black community to Hillary's recent Martin Luther King assertion and Bill's "fairy-tale" comment:

“A cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements,” said Obama spokeswoman Candice Tolliver, who said that Clinton would have to decide whether she owed anyone an apology.

“There’s a groundswell of reaction to these comments — and not just these latest comments but really a pattern, or a series of comments that we’ve heard for several months,” she said. “Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation or is there something bigger behind all of this?”

What is this "pattern," this "something bigger," that the Obama spokesperson is suggesting might be lurking behind the Clinton comments? Anyone know what this is a reference to?

An anonymous Clinton adviser made an interesting comment to The Guardian, explaining the difference between Hillary supporters and Obama supporters.

"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary," the aide said. "If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

(ed.note: TPM Media Editor & Publisher Josh Marshall wrote the following about our efforts to accurately and soberly report on this rapidly escalating controversy over race and the Clinton and Obama campaigns.)

Hillary Clinton has a new ad in Nevada and South Carolina, using footage from her New Hampshire victory speech:

Ben Smith notes that the ad is "a radical departure from her ad campaign so far. Not a single policy point, no floating words 'til the end. And the tag line is new: 'It's about people.'"

In other words, this ad is meant to show off her human side, not the policy wonk — perhaps on the thinking that it worked really well in New Hampshire.

The new SurveyUSA poll of Florida shows John McCain jumping into the lead here in the aftermath of his New Hampshire comeback. Here are the numbers, compared to their last poll from early December:

McCain 27% (+16)
Giuliani 19% (-13)
Huckabee 17% (+1)
Romney 17% (+2)
Thompson 8% (-6)

With numbers like this, McCain has to be considered to have the inside track for the nomination.

Bill Clinton just appeared on Al Sharpton's radio show, and was asked about his statements in New Hampshire that the media was pushing a "fairy tale" about Obama's candidacy. Bill insisted that he did not mean Obama's candidacy itself was the fairy tale.

"I have given hundreds of speeches on Hillary's behalf in this campaign," Bill said. "I don't believe I've ever given a single one where I haven't applauded Senator Obama and his candidacy. It's not a fairy tale — he might win."

Instead, Bill said, the "fairy tale" is the idea that Obama has always opposed the war. "We went through 15 debates and the Obama campaign has made the argument that his relative lack of service in the Senate was not relevant because he had better judgment than the other Democrats on the Iraq War..." Bill said. "And I pointed out that he'd never been asked about his statements in 2004 that he didn't know how he'd have voted on the Iraq War, and that there was no significant difference between his position as President Bush's."

Bill then speculated on what Obama might have meant at the time — perhaps he only disagreed with the conduct of the war, or how best to deal with it now. "The point is, it disproves the argument that he was always against it, everyone else was wrong and he was right..." Bill said. "I said, that story is a fairy tale, and that doesn't have anything to do with my respect for him as a person or as a political figure in this campaign."

Obama has said during this campaign that he hedged on his answer about the Iraq War authorization vote because he did not want to openly disagree with John Kerry and John Edwards, as they were the party's ticket at the national convention where he was speaking, and both of whom had voted for the war and yet to repudiate it.

Mitt Romney has a new TV spot up in Michigan, talking about how he grew up in Michigan and how important it is for him that the state do well. The ad also shows pictures of Romney as a small child alongside his late father George, who served as governor of the state back in the 60s.

With lines like this, the ad might have actually been effective if he were running for governor: "We need new leaders with the experience and energy to turn us around. Let's invest in the future with new technology and innovation and unleash the power of Michigan."

This has already gotten some attention, but we wanted to flag it anyway. Today's Times has a good piece on the backlash that's growing towards Mike Bloomberg's suggestions that he may run or may not run for President.

We wanted to point you towards this priceless quote from Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman, who is a Hillary supporter:

“I think it is becoming a very old story very fast. Mike Bloomberg has failed to make a case that he represents an independent movement, as opposed to a former Democratic liberal, former Republican, former Bush-backer running a campaign of opportunism.”

This really is the point. Bloomberg, who has criticized all the candidates for lacking policy specifics, has simply not said a darn thing that lets us place him in an ideological or policy sense. He is for "bipartisanship" in all its platitudinous glory, without telling us what policy ends he thinks should be accomplished with that bipartisanship.

Which raises another point: Bloomberg's condemnation of "partisanship" needs to be seen as an electoral strategy, rather than a governmental one. That's what he used to get around the Democratic Party in New York, and it's what he would use to get around the parties should he run for President. As Zimmerman says, this is all about opportunism, pure and simple.

John McCain has a new ad up in Michigan, touting the endorsements of both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, the biggest newspapers in the state.

The endorsements stress two key McCain themes — that not only is he best candidate for the office of president, but he's the most electable Republican, too.

A new SurveyUSA poll has some bad news for Rudy Giuliani and his big-state strategy: He's only three points ahead of John McCain in his home state of New York:

Giuliani 32%
McCain 29%
Huckabee 12%
Romney 7%
Thompson 6%

New York's Republican primary is winner-take-all — so if McCain rides his momentum and gets a plurality here, Rudy won't get any of the state's roughly 100 elected delegates.

John Edwards has a new ad in South Carolina, pitching his populist message. The ad shows Edwards speaking a to a multi-racial crowd, talking about his own working-class background:

"I'm running for president because of 54 years of my life," Edwards says, "I have believed to my soul that the men and women who worked in that mill with my father were worth every bit as much as the man who owned that mill."

Check out this little nugget from the campaign trail in Nevada, as per the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Clinton implied that Obama's career has mostly been spent running for office rather than governing.

"He was a part-time state senator for a few years, and then he came to the Senate and immediately started running for president," she said. "And that's his prerogative. That's his right. But I think it is important to compare and contrast our records."

I haven't heard the "part time" line before. It suggests that Hillary is going to keep going with her "experience" frame, and that the sharp elbows are still out, even though Hillary isn't perceived to be behind right now.

If people were expecting the Democratic race to get down and dirty — keeping in mind those pre-New Hampshire reports that Hillary's backers would set up a 527 to go after Obama — that might not be the plan, after all. The New York Sun reports that the Hillary camp is likely to scrap plans for negative ads, at least until Super Tuesday

"I would be very wary of being the first to draw blood," said John Lapp, a Dem ad maker who is not affiliated with any of the campaigns. "You have such an advantage doing the response, being able to call the other person negative, and then you go ahead and lower the boom."

Barack Obama has picked up the endorsement of a major female politician, and one that could be useful in the Nevada caucuses at that. The Arizona Republic reports that Gov. Janet Napolitano — herself a former U.S. Attorney during Bill Clinton's administration — will endorse Obama at a campaign event tonight in Las Vegas.

The endorsement could be of some benefit out in Western states, where Napolitano is a popular governor and can advance the argument that he is the more electable candidate. The endorsement could also help Obama build some support with women voters in Arizona's February 5 primary.

A big development in the South Carolina Dem primary: Rep. James Clyburn is suggesting that he may drop his neutral stance, largely out of dismay over the now-notorious comments made by Hillary about Martin Luther King. The Times reports:

Mr. Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a power in state Democratic politics, put himself on the sidelines more than a year ago to help secure an early primary for South Carolina, saying he wanted to encourage all candidates to take part. But he said recent remarks by the Clintons that he saw as distorting civil rights history could change his mind.

“We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics,” said Mr. Clyburn, who was shaped by his searing experiences as a youth in the segregated South and his own activism in those days.

The thing is, though, that there's some disagreement about what Hillary actually said or meant. This is not at all to defend Hillary's comments -- they were clumsy and inartful, and she later backtracked. And in many ways an endorsement of Obama by Clyburn would make sense on its own terms. It just seems surprising that Clyburn would be basing his re-evaluation of Hillary based almost entirely on this one remark.

Rudy has a new ad out running on Fox News — where it premiered during a break in last night's debate — and in Florida, where he's making a push as part of his big-state strategy. In the ad, Rudy promises historic tax cuts:

"On his first day in office," the announcer promises, "Rudy Giuliani will send Congress the largest tax cut in American history."

• Last night's debate might have been held in South Carolina, but it was just as much a fight for the votes in Michigan, Mitt Romney's native state and the sight of the next Republican primary. Romney condemned McCain: "I know that there are some people who think, as Senator McCain did — he said, you know, some jobs have left Michigan that are never coming back. I disagree. I’m going to fight for every single job. Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country."

• McCain responded that he was simply telling the truth — implying that Romney doesn't. "One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth," he said. "And sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear along with things that they do want to hear." Jobs have gone away that aren't coming back, McCain said, but the government can help the citizens through job training and re-education programs.

• One of the most bizarre moments in this debate, or any other debate for that matter, came when Brit Hume pressed the candidates on whether they agreed with the "passive" response of the Navy ships that were confronted by Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz — the ships threatened to fire on the Iranians if they did not desist in their approach, rather than immediately fire as Hume would prefer.

• The candidates all stood by the decisions of the captains on those ships, despite Hume's repeated urging that they be stronger. Among the top-tier candidates, only McCain came even close to criticizing Hume, calling it "a bit presumptuous" to judge the captains, who trained for a very long time to reach their positions and are trusted to make those judgments.

• Ron Paul took a harder line, comparing this incident to the Gulf of Tonkin and lambasting hawks who want to start a war over it. "Of course we want caution. But I'm worried about the policy of why we're looking for a justification, now there are no weapons, actually people are looking around a for an excuse to bomb Iran. I mean, we're already, with our CIA, being involved in trying to overthrow that government, and we don't need another war. And this incident should not be thrown out of proportion to the point where we're getting ready to attack Iran over this."

• Mitt Romney then fired at Paul with what was likely a pre-rehearsed applause line: "I think Congressman Paul should not be reading as many Ahmadinejad's press releases."

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On the same day that Barack Obama scored the endorsement of John Kerry, he's set to get the support of a decidedly non-establishment Democrat: Ned Lamont.

Lamont has revealed on his Web site that he'll be backing the Illiniois Senator.

Lamont's backing is a decent get for Obama, for several reasons. It could open up more Web fundraising channels to him. And since Lamont has become a national figure among Dem primary voters for his successful primary challenge to Lieberman, Obama can argue the endorsement shows he's the one mounting a true challenge to the Dem establishment.

Here's Lamont making the case himself in a vid he just posted on his site:

From The New York Times's description of the Kerry-Obama endorsement event in South Carolina today:

When the two men embraced, beneath magnolia trees at a sun-splashed rally that drew a sea of people here, it brought the relationship of the men full circle.

Getting hot in here...

TPM Reader HS, who sent this one in, says that this shows that the "feminizing Obama" process is well underway.

I don't know about that, but I will say that the description does call to mind all those pics of Kerry and Edwards embracing that were all over Drudge after Edwards was announced as Veep candidate in 2004.

Separately, speaking of lame media coverage, The Politico's editors published a big mea culpa today about the failures of themselves and the rest of the political media in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary. Our take on it is here.

A new 527 called Victims Voice — set up by one Arkansas Republican, Keith Emis, with the assistance of his new financial backers — is running a truly ferocious new attack ad in South Carolina against Mike Huckabee.

The ad cuts straight to the point in informing viewers of Huck's role in the Wayne Dumond case, and features the mother of one of Dumond's victims blaming Huckabee for her daughter being raped and murdered:

Emis told Election Central that the ad will run tonight on Fox News, during the blocks of time both before and after tonight's Republican debate, and that he has made purchases for other airings of the ad, as well. Emis declined to discuss who his donors were and declined to specify the size of the buy.

Bill Richardson has formally dropped out of the presidential race, at a news conference in Santa Fe.

Below I noted that in the wake of John Kerry's Obama endorsement some Hillary advisers were hoping to secure the support of Kerry's co-Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy -- something that would take the air out of comparisons between Obama and JFK.

Looks like it might not happen, though. The Huffington Post called up Kennedy's office and got this:

"Senator Kennedy has no plans to get involved at this time," Melissa Wagone, a spokesperson for the Senator, told the Huffington Post. "He has very strong relationships with many of these candidates personally, and has a lot of respect for them."

A bit of wiggle room, but it looks unlikely.

Late Update: I should have been clearer and said that the more likely thing to happen is that he'll come out and pick someone when he/she looks like a foregone conclusion.

John Kerry endorses Obama in South Carolina, says the Illinois Senator has the capacity to "speak out so loudly that Washington has absolutely no choice but to listen."

Kerry also gets off a pretty good joke that's also a poignant reference to his own eloquence deficit, saying: "I was proud to help introduce Barack to the nation when I asked him to speak to our national convention in 2004. Obviously Barack did all the heavy lifting."

A big Hillary Clinton supporter and statewide official in New York might have just given the Hillary campaign a real headache. During an appearance yesterday on talk radio — at almost the same time as Obama co-chair Jesse Jackson Jr. questioned Hillary's tears — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo used some words with a very troublesome racial history, apparently in reference to Barack Obama.

"It's not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can't buy your way into it," Cuomo said, according to Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin. He then added, "You can't shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room."

According to Joan Houston Hall's Dictionary of American Regional English, the phrase "shuck and jive" means, "To be deceptive or evasive; to tell tall tales or lies; to fool around. esp freq among Black speakers," and "stalling or obfuscating, especially to avoid having to admit that you did not know something or were trying to divert someone's attention."

(Via Ben Smith)

Late Update: Ben Smith hears directly from Cuomo on this and adds this:

Though the report I link refers specifically to New Hampshire, Cuomo called to play the tape of the interview, in which he says nice things about Obama, and in which the quote above is describing both Iowa and New Hampshire -- meaning it's not a direct reference to Clinton's primary victory, or attempt to explain it.

"Barack Obama is a beautiful symbol. He's a powerful speaker. He's a charismatic figure. And what he has to say is important for the Democrats," Cuomo says in the interview, with the New York Post's Fred Dicker.

"It was never about Obama in the first place," Cuomo told me of the use of the phrase, which he said he was using "as a synonym for 'bob and weave.'"

Late Late Update: The Albany Times Union blog, which originally broke this story, adds this update that would appear to suggest that there's less here than meets the eye:

We’ve been getting calls from the Cuomo people on this who want to point out, correctly, that the AG was not referring to Barack Obama when he used the phrase “shuck and jive,” but to what politicians in general do with the media. Cuomo’s point was when candidates meet a substantial proportion of primary voters or caucus goers in person, such as in NH or Iowa, there is a certain genuineness that can be avoided in a big-state media-heavy campaign.

John Kerry's former running mate releases a statement on Kerry's endorsement of Obama:

“Our country and our Party are stronger because of John’s service, and I respect his decision. When we were running against each other and on the same ticket, John and I agreed on many issues. I continue to believe that this election is about the future, not the past, and that the country needs a President who will fight aggressively to end the status quo and change the Washington system and to give voice to all of those whose voices are ignored in the corridors of power.”

Its worth pointing out again that a Kerry endorsement of Edwards was just never in the cards, since the two were at odds during the 2004 race and Edwards publicly criticized the Kerry campaign's handling of the race after it was all over.

Mitt Romney has a new radio ad up in Michigan, featuring Congressman Pete Hoekstra and his wife Diane. The Hoekstras tell voters in a friendly, folksy manner about Romney's conservative stances on abortion, gay marriage, and reducing federal spending — and they of course play up Romney's roots in the state, dubbing his policy stances "Michigan values."

Interestingly, the ad does not discuss illegal immigration, which has previously been Romney's biggest wedge issue against John McCain.

The ad is available after the jump.

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This morning's Rasmussen poll in South Carolina, conducted yesterday, does not show a post-New Hampshire bounce for Hillary Clinton. Instead, Barack Obama leads by the same margin as he did in the Rasmussen poll conducted on Sunday:

Obama 42% (+0)
Clinton 30% (+0)
Edwards 15% (+1)

A new Rasmussen poll in South Carolina shows John McCain enjoying a post-New Hampshire bounce, grabbing a narrow lead over Mike Huckabee. Here are the numbers, compared to the poll conducted this past Sunday:

McCain 27% (+7)
Huckabee 24% (-4)
Romney 16% (+1)
Thompson 12% (+1)
Giuliani 6% (-4)
Paul 5% (+1)

Hillary Clinton's campaign announced some big endorsements today, one from retired Army General and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark, the other from Michigan U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.

"Never before have so many Americans had our well-being so closely tied to world events," Clark said in a statement on his PAC's Web site. "Our economic and national security has become more complicated than ever before, and we deserve a leader who draws on wisdom, compassion, intelligence and moral courage — in short, we need Hillary Clinton."

"Hillary Clinton has the experience required to walk into the Oval Office on day one and start delivering the type of change our country needs," Stabenow said in a Clinton campaign press release. "She understands the challenges facing our working families, and she has fought her entire life to make sure they have the tools they need to achieve the American Dream."

John Kerry will endorse Barack Obama, the Associated Press is reporting, quoting an unnamed source.

Late Update: Kerry and Obama will be making an appearance together today in Charleston, South Carolina, MSNBC reports. --gs

Late Update: The Obama campaign has just confirmed Kerry's endorsement to me. --gs

Late Update: The cable nets are already portraying this as a "major blow" to John Edwards. But this is just silly. No one expected Kerry to endorse Edwards -- the two fell out in a big way after Edwards publicly questioned Kerry's handling of the 2004 race.

In particular, Edwards claimed that he had wanted to hit back harder against the Swift Boat Vets attacks. A Kerry endorsement of Edwards just wasn't going to happen. --gs

Late Update: Now that Kerry has backed Obama, the next big endorsement question looming over the campaigns is this. --gs

Late Update: Edwards responds.

Rudy Giuliani has a new ad in Florida, a state that is central to his big-state strategy — which practically no observers think can succeed — asking voters to ignore what the pundits have to say about who's actually winning, and instead think about the issues:

"The media loves process. Talking heads love chatter," the announcer says. "But Florida has a chance to turn down the noise. And show the world that leadership is what really matters."

A new poll of Michigan by Republican firm Strategic Vision gives John McCain the lead with 29%. Behind are native son Mitt Romney at 20%, Mike Huckabee with 18%, Rudy Giuliani at 13%, and Fred Thompson and Ron Paul at 5% each.

The poll was conducted January 4-6, before McCain's win in New Hampshire. McCain also has the advantage of having won the Michigan primary in 2000.

The Associated Press is reporting that Bill Richardson is dropping out of the race for president, and will make his announcement tomorrow. In yesterday's New Hampshire primary, Richardson only won 5% of the vote.

It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this will have on the Latino vote in next Saturday's Nevada caucuses, and also whether Richardson will endorse any of the three remaining major candidates.

In order to better understand last night's Democratic primary, you really need to check out this map of the results made by Nicholas Beaudrot:

(Click picture to enlarge.)

The towns that went for Hillary Clinton are in shades of green, while Barack Obama's towns are in shades of purple. Beaudrot's interpretation is that Obama put together a "'Bill Bradley Plus Coalition': wealthy liberals, young voters, people of color, and as many middle class ($50,000-$100,000) voters as you can get."

Of course, Bill Bradley also lost the New Hampshire primary when he ran. And in Obama's case, there weren't any minority voters in sufficient numbers who could have given him that extra push over the top.

A new poll of Michigan from Democratic firm The Rossman Group finds a close three-way race on the Republican side, with Mike Huckabee at 23%, Mitt Romney 21%, and John McCain 18%. Further back are Rudy Giuliani at 8%, Fred Thompson with 4%, and Ron Paul at 3%.

On the Democratic side, where neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards will be on the ballot due to the disputes between the state and national parties, the results are Hillary Clinton 48% to "Uncommitted" with 28%.

The poll was conducted January 6-7.

Mitt Romney's back is clearly against the wall after his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he's become more choosy about where he's spending his money. The campaign is now pulling their ads in South Carolina and Florida.

Instead, Romney will be focusing all those resources on next week's primary in Michigan, the state where Romney was born and raised, and where his late father was governor. "We feel the best strategy is to focus our paid messaging in Michigan," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden told the Associated Press.

Mitt Romney's campaign has put out a new memo/press release in the wake of his second-place loss in New Hampshire, making the case that he's not licked yet and in fact has "a clear path to victory going forward." Notably, the release points out John McCain's weaker performance among core Republicans, arguing that this will catch up to him in later, more exclusively-Republican contests:

Note that Gov. Romney actually beat John McCain among Republicans yesterday (35%-34%) and most of the upcoming primaries and caucuses attract an electorate far more Republican than New Hampshire's. Yesterday's results also show that most independents will choose the Democratic ballot in open primary states.

The full release is available after the jump.

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One particular pollster, New Hampshire-based American Research Group, has perhaps the most interesting explanation for how they got their state's Democratic result wrong. ARG put up a statement up on their site, saying the following:

While we missed the final number that Clinton would make in New Hampshire, our polling was one of only two daily polls that showed Clinton regaining support following her drop in New Hampshire the day after the Iowa Democratic caucus. Clinton was moving up in the final days and hours before the primary, and our polls and the Rasmussen polls were the only daily polls to catch Clinton's rebound.

...

Our polls missed the final Clinton number, but we did not miss the strong swing back among women reacting favorably to Clinton that started after the debate and continued with her comments in Portsmouth. We did not have a polling problem, we just ran out of time.

It is true, actually that ARG showed Hillary closing the gap. Their second-to-last poll had her down by 11 points — while the final one had her down by 9. Keep in mind that these were not composites of samples over three days, as in the case of John Zogby, but were instead conducted over 24-hour periods.

Congratulations, ARG.

Mike Huckabee has a new TV spot up in Michigan, pitching himself as the working-class conservative who understands the average Michigan voter's problems:

Conspicuously, Huckabee uses the line that many have taken to be a shot at Michigan's native son Mitt Romney, who is relying heavily on this state for his comeback: "I'm Mike Huckabee, and I approved this message, because I believe most Americans want their next president to remind them of the guy they work with — not the guy who laid them off."

The Tears are now officially an issue in Campaign 2008.

Obama's national campaign co-chair, Jesse Jackson, Jr., just went on MSNBC and appeared to question Hillary's tears, which he called "tears that melted the Granite State," adding that those tears "moved voters."

He also suggested that Hillary was crying about "her appearance."

Take a look...

Here's one key quote:

...there were tears t