Obama Wants to be President of all 57 States

An amusing gaffe from Barack Obama: "Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it." Presumably, he meant to say ...

Indiana and North Carolina Postmortem

Barack Obama moved to within 200 delegates of securing the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, scoring a 56-42 blowout in North Carolina while narrowly losing, 49-51, in Indiana. Barring revelations that would make the Wright affair look insignificant in comparison, the race is all over but the shouting. Obama Wins the Night AP's Calvin Woodward: On the rebound, Barack Obama left Hillary Rodham ...

Clinton Wins Indiana, Obama Takes North Carolina

While there's still plenty of counting to be done, it looks like today's primaries went as expected: a comfortable Obama win in North Carolina and a solid Clinton win in Indiana. The only surprise, really, is the margin of the victories. Barack Obama swept to victory in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday but fell behind Hillary Rodham Clinton ...

Obama Losing Two-Front Race War

Andrew Sullivan fears that, whatever the outcome of tonight's primaries, the press will frame it as about race. [W]hat Obama has been subjected to is a classic pincer movement: the Clintons have attacked from the right, subtly and not-so-subtly framing Obama's candidacy as a racial one, and evoking Bill's own Bubba identity and Hillary's totally fabricated working class white credentials. And ...

Gasoline Tax Honesty

Bloomberg's Catherine Dodge wins line of the day honors for her lede, "Never before have two presidential campaigns staked so much on 18.4 cents." Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are closing out their marathon campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina tussling over Clinton's proposal to suspend the federal tax on each gallon of gasoline for the summer months, one of the ...

Indiana and North Carolina Primary Predictions (Updated)

Voters in Indiana and North Carolina go to the polls today having far more impact on the race than anyone would have thought possible four months ago. If Barack Obama wins both states, even narrowly, it will be difficult for Hillary Clinton to justify staying in the race. If Clinton wins both, it will be evident that recent ...

Obama, Clinton Appear at Dinner Honoring Racists

Yesterday, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner sponsored by the Indiana Democrats. As it turns out, this is merely one of many Jefferson-Jackson dinners attended by the candidates. I am shocked and outraged. As you may not be aware, the Jefferson-Jackson dinners are hosted to honor and celebrate the legacy of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, ...

“Windfall Profit” Tax

Both Matthew Yglesias and John Cole agree that the Obama/Clinton proposal to tax the "windfall profits" of the oil companies is a bad idea, and you'll get no argument from me. However, one thing that I did notice when I was doing a little google-fu on the issue is that there appears to be approximately 20 to 50 billion ...

Geese, Ganders, Etc.

Steve Chapman wonders if John McCain should be so quick to judge Barack Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, given McCain's own associations with G. Gordon Liddy.Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology—and who has never shown ...

Obama Joins in on Burdensome Transparency Act

Senator Obama has joined Senators Norm Coleman (R-Neb Minn) and Carl Levin (D-Mich) to introduce the "Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act".Today Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Chairman, Ranking Minority Member, and Member of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, introduced the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act to ...

Obama’s Poll Numbers Dropping; Clinton’s Too

A series of public opinion polls show Barack Obama's support dropping among Democrats, with Hillary Clinton the obvious beneficiary. While her numbers are static, or even dropping, she's now ahead of him in several head-to-head polls nationally and has opened up a big lead in Indiana. The RealClearPolitics average still shows a 1.6 percent Obama lead but that's entirely ...

If Wright Were White

Leonce Gaiter believes that ,"If Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his former disciple, Barack Obama were white, this would not be a story." He contends that, "White pastors have been spewing hateful bile and filth for generations. But it's white bile, and that makes all the difference." Ezra Klein disagrees slightly, arguing, "Americans recoil from the Chomskyite critique, and any ...

Poll: Bush a Liability for McCain

A new NBC/WSJ poll shows that being seen as too close to George W. Bush is bringing John McCain down. I'm pretty sure that Peter Hart and Neil Newhouse already knew that, since I did, but it's good to put a number on these things (43 percent, as it turns out). Other interesting findings: 36 percent have major concerns that ...

Limbaugh Issues ‘Operation Chaos’ Pause

For a variety of reasons, I haven't heard more than a few snippets of Rush Limbaugh's show in years. I haven't figured out yet whether his "Operation Chaos," where he's urging the Dittoheads to register as Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton, is a serious bit of agitprop or camp. Regardless, he's weighed the latest developments in the ...

Perspective

I cannot help but recommend John Cole's take on the whole Wright-Obama brouhaha.As to Wright himself, well, I have my own thoughts. First and foremost, I guess I am no longer the delicate fainting flower that most other bloggers and media commenters are these days. I spent several years in the early days of this blog being all sorts of ...