Update: Here's the ad.

Ouch.

Paul Krugman says an Obama ad attacking Hillary on gas tax relief misrepresents what he said.

I did not say that the Clinton proposal would increase oil industry profits. If the ad implies that I did, it should be retracted.

....I was very clear when I wrote about the Clinton proposal that while I didn’t think it was good policy, it was not the same as McCain’s, and relatively harmless. If the Obama people are suggesting otherwise, they’re being deliberately dishonest.

Krugman's original column is here. It attacks only McCain's plan which is not the same as Hillary's.

More...

A new AP-Ipsos national poll has just been released. Hillary has some serious momentum happening.

Clinton (47%) Overtakes Obama (40%) Nationally On Eve of Indiana And North Carolina Primaries ; Poll Shows Clinton Campaign Picking Up Steam With Democrats Nationally

47% say that if the 2008 Democratic presidential primary or caucus was being held in their state today, they would choose Clinton, while 40% would vote for Barack Obama.

These results are in contrast to a poll conducted by Ipsos from April 23rd to April 27th and released last week which showed that Obama had a forty-six percent to forty-three percent lead over Clinton on this same question.

Hillary's greatest support is coming from women with high school education or less and low income voters. The margin of error is 3.1%.

Thanks to all who contributed to our TL Appreciation Days. We've had a great response and we thank every one of you. We'll bump it a few times until early afternoon tomorrow and then it will fade into the archives.

Here's an open thread for you. What haven't we covered? What more do you have to say?

Somerby reminds us today of Richard Cohen's classic example of double standards:

[RICHARD] COHEN (2/5/08): [. . . [I]n 2005, [Clinton] co-sponsored a bill that would make flag-burning illegal. . . . I was not alone in suggesting that on the flag issue, Clinton was readying herself for a presidential race and trying to blunt her image as a harridan of the political left.

. . . Look, I know what Obama was doing when he refused to confront his minister about the latter's embrace of Louis Farrakhan. . . . He will not get my Profiles in Courage award for this, but the rest of his record overwhelms this one chintzy act. Not so with Clinton. In the first place, you don't get to pander with the First Amendment. It is just too important, too central, not merely an amendment but a commandment: Thou Shalt Not Abridge Speech.

In his column the next week, the following correction:

COHEN (2/12/08): My Feb. 5 column was critical of Hillary Clinton for supporting a bill to make flag burning illegal. I have since learned from a reader that Barack Obama also supported that bill.

Heh. That is a classic.

Hillary:

• 2:30 p.m., Appearance in Merrillville, IN.
• 7:30 p.m., Rally in New Albany, IN.
• 9:45 p.m., Rally in Evansville, IN.

Here's Obama

• 7:30 p.m., Rally in Indianapolis, IN.
• 9:15 p.m., Appearance in Gary, IN. (Spouse)
• Time N/A, Appearance in Evansville, IN.

More...

A new Insider Advantage poll from North Carolina was released this afternoon. It was taken yesterday and shows Hillary and Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat: Obama 48%, Hillary 45%. Undecided: 7%.

Actual poll results are here.

InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery: “Really interesting dynamics at play here. Clinton has increased her lead among white voters to 58% - very close to the 60% plus level needed to pull off a victory. She now leads among those who say they are Democrats but has started to trail among Unaffiliated voters, who are allowed to participate in Tuesday’s election. Additionally, African-American voters are not quite as solid with Obama as they have been, at least based on previous exit polls. Clinton has remained in the upper teens (17%) of African-American support in our recent surveys. African-American turnout will be the key to this race. Our poll is based on a turnout model of 35% African-American vote. Anything under that number could give Clinton a shocking upset. But Indiana has become a true horserace that should concern the Clinton camp."

The Insider Advantage Indiana poll is out. It's Hillary 48, Obama 44, with a 4 point margin of error. Actual results are here (pdf.)

Obama’s problem in Indiana is as clear as black and white, literally. It appears he will pull in his customary 80%-plus of African-Americans, but blacks make up only about 10% of all voters in the Indiana Democratic Primary. Meanwhile, Clinton is leading 54% to 41% among whites.

Spoiler alert: Stop here if you don't want to know what's on Hillary's top ten list of things she loves about America that will air on the David Letterman show tonight.

If you want to know some of them, keep reading below the fold:

Obama: politics of change, hope and unity? Check out his new ad attacking Hillary Clinton airing today on television called "Hometown."

He accuses Hillary of taking the low road on the economy. Shorter version: Meet the new boss, he's the same as the ones he's trying to replace.

Text of ad below:

The final SUSA NC poll is out, Obama by 5, 50-45.

The crosstabs. Key findings - Clinton wins whites 62-32 (64% of the vote). Obama wins African Americans 85-12 (32% of the vote).

From the ABC story:

According to SurveyUSA's 8th and final tracking poll, conducted exclusively for ABC11 Eyewitness News, on the final day of the fiercely fought campaign, Senator Barack Obama holds on with 50% of the vote to Senator Hillary Clinton's 45% of those polled.

. . . In Charlotte and Western NC, there is the slightest momentum for Clinton. In the Research Triangle, in Southern NC and in Coastal NC, there is slight offsetting momentum to Obama. The net is a wash. If Obama wins, it will be entirely from the 19% of voters who describe themselves as liberal. Clinton leads by 9 among conservatives and leads by 8 among moderates.

. . . 1 in 4 of SurveyUSA's likely voters say they have already voted. Among those who say they have already voted, Obama leads by 16 points. Among those who say they will vote on Primary Day, Obama and Clinton are effectively tied.

Update: The new SUSA poll out today confirms that delegate-wise, North Carolina is pretty meaningless:

There is no foreseeable outcome in North Carolina, regardless of which candidate wins the popular vote, where one candidate collects significantly more convention delegates than the other.

Therefore, the exact final vote totals have much more symbolic importance than real importance.

***

Congressional Quarterly (CQ Politics) says even if Obama wins North Carolina, he is likely only to gain 3 more delegates than Hillary at the District level. Of North Carolina's 134 delegates to the national convention, 77 are district delegates.

Despite Obama's eight-point advantage in recent North Carolina polls, CQ Politics forecasts a gain of only three district-level delegates in tomorrow's primary.

More...

I was never good at math, but it seems Ezra Klein is worse. Ezra gets it completely wrong on the popular vote:

[Clinton]'s far behind in the popular vote. If you add Florida, where neither campaigned, she's still 300,000 votes behind. If you cheat and add Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, and you give him the "uncommitted" voters (as some Clintonites have suggested), she's still 188,000 votes behind. If you do all of that, and then Clinton wins every remaining contest by 10 points, according to Rick Hertzberg's calculations, she'll still be 160,000 votes behind.

(Emphasis supplied.) So Ezra's "math" says that if Clinton wins the last 10 contests by 10 points she only makes up 28,000 votes? Say what? But it gets worse.