This has been Obama's worst week in the campaign, yet (a) he still has not lost his national poll lead and (b) he actually gained ground in the delegate race, especially in Iowa.

14 more delegates on a non-election day is not a bad way to end the week! Obama need more bad weeks if this has been a bad one.

So called negatives are not significant and Obama campaign has become more assertive, Obama and Plouffe in particular with interviews, blogs, newspapers. I suspect they are beginning to make a strong push to end this asap.

WHO ARE YA KIDDIN’ OBAMA!!!? Trustworthy, Naïve, Poor Instincts – All the qualities of a good Chief Executive?!

All of these are quotes from the Chicago Tribune Story:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-obama-rezkomar15,0,2968927.story

His first big contributor

Asked if he ever thought Rezko would expect something from their relationship, Obama was emphatic: "No.

Obama said voters should view his Rezko dealings as "a mistake in not seeing the potential conflicts of interest." But he added that voters should also "see somebody who is not engaged in any wrongdoing . . . and who they can trust."

Obama said he asked his friend about them. Rezko assured him there was nothing wrong. "My instinct was to believe him," he said.

My Comments:

Either he is sincerely naïve and inexperienced and therefore not qualified to be a good chief executive OR he is just another politician caught trying to triangulate his way out of a mess. Get real. All those years and all that money and he never wanted any thing from you? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase!

Given how awful everything seemed 24 hours again, the favorable/unfavorable setting for the moment isn't as bad as I feared. A lot depends on how it filters out in the coming days -- but I'm back to thinking he has a shot.

What we need is a poll that distinguishes hard negatives from soft negatives. For example, I'm a hard negative on Clinton. Won't vote for her ever. I'm a soft negative on McCain. He could persuade me one way or another.

My guess is that this week's revelation moves some soft negatives for Obama to hard negatives. The question is how much and whether it shifts things in a way that matters. That there might be some new soft negatives won't matter so much -- they're reassurable -- Obama isn't an angry black man. And once they're reminded of it they should melt back toward him. What's changed is that his hard negatives are probably now more numerous and they know exactly what they'll be working with in the GE if it's Obama-McCain.

Folks, it is six weeks to PA, NC etc.

That's an eternity in politics.

I'm going to go out of a limb and say we will probably be talking about something else next week, let alone in 6 weeks or -- gasp -- 8 months!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bOOL3BYaIEQ

"Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole

world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too

arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the

hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into

plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war

anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore."

Martin Luther King Jr.
Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1967-08-16)

I saw on the Chris Mattews show this morning where one of the guests (I think he was a journalist from Time Magazine) said that John Edwards will endorse HRC either before PA or before the NC primary...

If it is true, then JE entire campaign message was a bag of lies...How can he talk about distancing from the status quo and then go an endorse Hillary, lol?

Oh well, his endorsement probably wont have that much of an impact. Too little too late for him.

Fox News is watching Obama
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/

When you never had a rational argument in the first place, thats when you start linking to Newsmax - get the fuck outta here.

"If the information is accurate, move beyond the short sightedness of the originator versus the truth."

Its still Newsmax, so its invalid. Nice try though.

illogical....you can be raised by any race and hate it.

the rezco story is not over as information is starting to come out with an email from OBAMA. it is not that this is all that big a deal but what it is defintively showing is that OBAMA's judgement is no where it should be. he has shown repeatedly he's naive, a liar or he was a bonehead to trust rezco and stay in wright's church. looks to me like that saturday night live skit about just how naive and gullable OBAMA is is starting to manifest itself in real life.

"looks to me like that saturday night live skit about just how naive and gullable OBAMA is is starting to manifest itself in real life."

That's only if you live on the planet of "wishfulthinkingutterdesperation"

RCP updated their popular vote numbers with estimates for when the caucus are put in. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

800,000 + for Obama

Can someone please explain something that has been troubling me about the campaign at the moment?

I understand that, the way it is looking, that neither candidate can get enough pledged delegates to win the nomination at this point. With the addition of the news out of Iowa today, it is exceedingly unlikely that Sen Clinton will catch up to Sen Obama in the pledged delegate count even if it goes full term and we accept the Florida result as is. Therefore, to a point, I understand the concept of the Clinton campaign for the Superdelegate vote at the convention. I get that. What I don't understand is why they continue down the track that they are...

This is what I don't get... It seems that they are going forward in this campaign on the assumption that Sen Obama will do or say something stupid or that something will be uncovered in his past that would ultimately show that he shouldn't be the party's candidate. Okay, I understand that. But why do they still need to be in the race and spending money to attack him and forcing him to spend money to defend himself for this to happen? She has plenty of pledged delegates to carry into the convention at this point. Even if she suspended her campaign now, she would still get some more pledged delegates between now and June just because she is on the ballot. In the mean time,with nothing better to cover, the media would start emphasizing the GOP attacks on Obama and his defense and his counter arguments. They also will spend a lot of time going over Sen Obama with a fine tooth comb looking for that proverbial 'dead girl or live boy' in his present or past.

Clinton supporters have repeatedly defended their candidate by stating any Republican attacks on Obama will be much worse than anything the Clinton has been or will say. They are correct. However, that being the case, why not let the Republicans do it? Since she already has enough pledged delegates to win a convention if the supers vote in consensus against a hypothetically tainted Obama in August (Assuming something that will inevitably emerge, which seems to be their assumption), why continue the forced of spending millions of dollars by both candidates that could be used toward the general campaign and electing democrats in general toward trying to prove something that the Republicans plus the media scrutiny plus maybe a self assist with a some strategic intra-party oppo-research would end up coming up with in the next five months anyway? What good does it do for anybody but the opposition party?

authentic or inauthentic? / fact or fiction?--- these are the questions

TNR: THE SPINE
Marty Peretz
March 16, 2008

"I Don't Recall Mrs. Clinton's Engagement."

I knew that Hillary's shpiel about her experience in this and her experience in that was fake. Take, for example, her evidence for being an old foreign policy hand: she had been to 80 different foreign countries while her poor hubby was (alone) in the White House. This seemed to me to be a hyped-up version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. How gullible does she think the American public is?

But there was one area in public policy about which I was prepared to take her at her word, and that was health policy. es, we know she did screw up in her first dip into those tempestuous waters. But, my God, she was intense about medical care, and she was intense about it every opportunity she had. And especially about coverage of children. Well, it turns out, she was hyping this, too. But she was -- how do I say this? -- lying.

The front page of Friday's Boston Globe has a measured headline: "Clinton role in health program disputed." But the article by Susan Milligan is devastating. The piece begins, "Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children's health insurance, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue." Wow. This is a big lie.

"In 1997," she said in Iowa in one of her typical "me, me, me" claims," I joined forces with members of Congress and we passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program." The opposite was true. The Clinton White House was against the legislation, which was proposed by Orrin G. Hatch and Ted Kennedy. And what about Hillary? When asked, Ted half-shrugged and then said, "Facts are stubborn things." John McDonough, a Democratic health care specialist then and now, said, "I don't recall Mrs. Clinton's engagement."

benniefly:

What good does it do for anybody but the opposition party?

You make a nice argument.
But here is what I think you are missing:

McCain has zero chance to beat Barack. Z-E-R-O.
Oh I know, the polls are showing them about even right now, but the debate hasn't even begun. The Iraq war is untenable. McCain believes it is winnable. The vast majority of Americans want it to end. In other words: Once Barack squares off against McCain one-on-one and pounds him to death with Iraq, the old boy is doomed. Every bomb going off in Iraq between now and November will prove Barack's point. The fact that $4000 a second is pouring into Iraq will also prove Barack's point.

However the Republicans can win that argument running against Clinton. She is an Iraq war enabler. As such, she is caught between "I raq and a hard place."

That's what is going on now: The McClintons and McCains are joining up to beat Obama at the only moment in time he can be beat: In the primary!

What does Billary have to gain my such an alliance? A chance at the presidency. And you how bad she wants that. So bad... it is bloody scary.

That's why you see the "custard heads" out in such numbers upthread. This is there last chance to bring Barack down by claiming he must be held responsible for his preacher's words. This is it for them. It is all or nothing. That's why you see the blitzkrieg of posts from them. And why one can't separate out Hannity's flying monkeys from Clinton's dinoaurs.

Of course they are going to lose.
But hey... since when did dinosaurs, or for that matter flying monkeys, ever sense that their time had come?

My prediction: The custard heads will melt away by Wednesday. They are not getting traction. That is obvious.

The new and greatly improved...

100 REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON

This ones safe enough for the grandparents - and apparently I don't come off as a loon.

!!!HELP SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Huffington post says Dems in FLA tossing around splitting election 50/50
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-levitt/florida-suggests-half-vot_b_91752.html

Two points:

1. After that post that indicated that clinton only got 49% of the vote, I am on board with a 50/50 split. I thought it wasn't fair because she got 55% or a little more. 50/50 is totally fair.

2. Off topic, but no thread. Dems should find out how much it costs the american taxpayer for these mccain photo-ops in Iraq. It's got to cost in the millions for him to play politics on the dime of the american taxpayer and the lives of american soldiers. Some kind of hit ad should be put together with him strolling in the marketplace that was shut down and his other antics. Grand total $__ million on the taxpayer's dime. So much for mr. cut out the pork and reduce spending. Also, the rnc should be picking up the tab, not the taxpayer.

Oh my... in addition to posting about the conservative Chicago Trib's exoneration of Obama in the Rezko matter, Kos put up a nice graph of HRC supporter Norman Hsu vs. Obama supporter Rezko:

Norman Hsu Tony Rezko
Job Apparel Sales Developer

Real Job Mover, shaker Fixer

Donations $850,000 $250,000

Whoops Fugitive in 1992 Alleged
fraud case pay-to-player who
extorted cash for
access

Status In jail facing on trial
federal charges after
being caught fleeing
on Amtrak train

Uh, Hillary Hatebots, you sure you want to keep pushing this line of attack?

Vowing once again that I'll support HRC in the fall if she's the nominee--the goal is to elect a Democrat, not to tear one apart.

Man, if Obama keeps having awful weeks like this until Penn, he'll be up by 10 in the polls and have a 200+ delegate lead.

Let the press keep pushing the story about how much influence Obama's Christian pastor has on him. Because in our new post SNL reality, they are going to try and tear him down anyhow. And I can't think of a better negative story about him than one that includes the words "trinity", "pastor", "Christian", and "church."

Maybe they'll start running negative stories about his African father because they'll also have to include the words "WWII", "veteran", and "Kansas."