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- 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 prettymuch anyone could make fun of the criticisms from his rivals about hisadmission 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
