Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson (husband of Valerie Plame Wilson) writes in Huffington Post that Obama has shown "hollow" judgment on foreign affairs and has an empty record.

Among the points Wilson makes on Obama's 2002 statement on the Iraq War is one already conceded by Obama: that had he been in the Senate in 2003 and privy to the NIE and other information that the Senators were, he doesn't know how he would have voted:

During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."

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ABC News runs with the headline today, Obama: Witness for the Defense? The article has no facts, and is based on the opinion of one lawyer -- a federal prosecutor who was part of the team that prosecuted former Ill. Gov. George Ryan in 2006. Since the Ryan case, he's left the Government and has been a defense lawyer for a total of one year.

He says,

Sen. Barack Obama could be called as a witness for his longtime friend and accused Illinois fixer Tony Rezko, according to Chicago lawyers following the case.

...."I think it's realistic that that could happen during the trial," said Zach Fardon, a former Chicago federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted former Illinois Gov. George Ryan on corruption charges.

His theory: [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Note, this post has been corrected.

The latest PPP Texas poll has Clinton ahead 50-44, due to huge Latino advantage for Clinton.

I'll be updating this post with other Texas polling. As blogged earlier, Zogby has Obama up 3. Ras has it 48-47 Obama. Public Strategies has a 46-46 tie.

The world's greatest pollster, SUSA has Obama's lead in Texas slipping from 50-46 to 49-48:

Obama's momentum now slowed, and possibly stalled, according to SurveyUSA's final pre-Primary poll. . . . Now, Obama leads by 6/10ths of 1 point, effectively tied, and completely consistent with either candidate winning tomorrow by a narrow margin.

By Big Tent Democrat

From Obama

From Clinton:

For those wondering, the Obama ad is not available on YouTube. More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

On a Media conference call, Clinton advisors were really touting the 3AM ad and arguing that it is working -- that voters are now focusing on the who is ready to be Commander in Chief question. One assumes they have polling that we do not.

In addition, they hammered the NAFTA question and the Obama advisor Goolsbee meeting with the Canadian consulate in Chicago. Howard Wolfson referred to it as NAFTA-Gate. In essence, Wolfson accused the Obama campaign of saying one thing in public in Ohio and something differently in private. Wolfson also stressed the dissembling from the Obama camp on the meeting. He pointed out that the Obama camp denied the meeting, then denied that even if there was a meeting, a discussion of NAFTA was denied. In essence, Wolfson is calling them dishonest. Me, I call them politicians and political operatives. That is what they ALL do.

By Big Tent Democrat

The new world's greatest pollster, Survey USA, has a new Ohio poll out showing Hillary Clinton extending her lead in Ohio from 6 to 10:

Hillary Clinton appears to stop the momentum of Barack Obama by converting voters focused on health care. . . . At the wire, it's Clinton 54%, Obama 44% . . . One week ago, Clinton led by 6. . . .

[T]he 16 minutes that Clinton spent arguing with Obama about health care at this week's NBC News debate appears to have paid off. Slightly more voters now name health care as the most important issue, and among those who do, Clinton today leads by 24 points, up from a 7-point lead last week.

By Big Tent Democrat

Why won't Paul Krugman just shut up about Obama? Does he not not know of the power of UNITY? Apparently not:

After their victory in the 2006 Congressional elections, it seemed a given that Democrats would try to make this year’s presidential campaign another referendum on Republican policies. After all, the public appears fed up not just with President Bush, but with his party. . . .

. . . But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2008 election. Unless Hillary Clinton wins big on Tuesday, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. And he’s not at all the kind of candidate one might have expected to emerge out of the backlash against Republican governance.

. . . Mr. Obama, instead of emphasizing the harm done by the other party’s rule, likes to blame both sides for our sorry political state. And in his speeches he promises not a rejection of Republicanism but an era of postpartisan unity.

Clearly, Krugman does not agree with Mark Schmitt on Obama's theory of change.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

I write this post so that we can remember that John Zogby is not much of a pollster. On Super Tuesday, Zogby predicted wins for Obama in New Jersey and California. Obama lost both states by double digits. He may have hit the dart board here. But there is little or no polling in a John Zogby poll.

Other polls show Clinton leading in Ohio and slight Obama lead in Texas. Let's count the votes.

Update [2008-3-3 9:35:19 by Big Tent Democrat]: The UC Ohio Poll has Clinton up 9 in Ohio.

More updates below:

By Big Tent Democrat

I have written on this before, but this new AP story sheds further light on Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee's meeting with the Canadian consulate in Chicago:

Barack Obama's senior economic policy adviser said Sunday that Canadian government officials wrote an inaccurate portrayal of his private discussion on the campaign's trade policy in a memo obtained by The Associated Press. The memo is the first documentation to emerge publicly out of the meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and officials with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, but Goolsbee said it misinterprets what he told them. The memo was written by Joseph DeMora, who works for the consulate and attended the meeting.

Goolsbee disputed a section that read: "Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

This is a memo about a meeting that the Obama camp said never occurred, and if it did occur, the Obama camp said NAFTA was not discussed. Now it appears, the Obama camp accepts the meeting DID occur and NAFTA WAS discussed, but not in the way portrayed in the meeting. Riiiight. Thank Gawd for the Obama Rules. Hope they hold if he is the nominee. Imagine what the coverage would be like if this was a Clinton economic advisor.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

The Obama-favoring site TPM points to this NYTimes article titled "Obama Backers Urge Clinton To Exit If She Loses." TPM turned this headline into "Clinton under pressure to drop out if she does not win big in Texas and Ohio." But with Josh Marshall doing his best Ann Althouse imitations, that kind of misleading spin is not surprising.

But I want to make a different point. The last group of folks who should be pressuring Hillary to drop out is the Obama camp. It will be counterproductive AND unseemly. It would be more likely to get Clinton's back up to hear these calls from the likes of Dick Durbin and John Kerry, fierce Obama supporters. They are not likely to be taken at their word that their concern is "the good of the Party" as opposed to Obama's candidacy.

More . . .

A Cleveland Plain Dealer poll conducted by Mason Dixon of registered Democratic voters who plan to vote in the primary, has Hillary Clinton ahead of Barack Obama, 47% to 43%, with 90% of voters decided on their choice. (Actual poll results are here (pdf.) The margin of error is 4%. There are some geographic and issues differences that may be worth noting.

On NAFTA:

Voters surveyed said they see little difference between the candidates' positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which many Democratic voters blame for the loss of jobs in Ohio and which has been a central theme of both campaigns.

On health care, those surveyed prefer Hillary's plan to Obama's, 33% to 18%. Then there's the geographic difference, which may be significant:

The Plain Dealer poll shows that Clinton's biggest lead is among voters in southeast Ohio, a poor region of the state whose voters supported Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. She leads Obama there, 55 percent to 32 percent; Obama's biggest lead is in the southwest, where he is up 52 percent to 36 percent.

It's not just that Bill Clinton won those areas in 1992 and 1996. It's that John Kerry and Al Gore didn't, and even though they blasted Bush in the northern parts of Ohio, they lost the state because of the southeastern rural vote. And, as Ohio goes, so tends to go the country in November: No Republican since Abe Lincoln has won the presidency without winning Ohio. On the Democratic side, in the last century, only FDR and JFK won the presidency without winning Ohio. (FDR lost Ohio most likely because the Republican VP candidate was from the state.)

More...

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

Expectations game?

Unlike Clinton, who has been barnstorming Ohio, Obama had only two events in the state on Sunday and was spending the night in hometown Chicago. He heads to Texas on Monday for a final day of campaigning before awaiting returns on Tuesday in San Antonio.

His aides said privately that they felt they had a good shot at a win in Texas, but were less certain about Ohio, where they braced for a possible loss.

This is consistent with the polling we have seen. I think it feels like the lay of the land. It is going to come down to Texas whether the race ends Tuesday night.

BTW, why the mystery on how much Obama raised in February? Makes me think that it was not the monster numbers implied.