Via Jerome Armstrong, Edwards rips Obama. Unfortunatrely thre story seems mangled up. Indeed it provides a quote for Obama which I wish he would have said, but I am pretty sure he did NOT:

"When the country was so sick of a blue state president, Carter, Reagan was able to tap into it by being 100% red-state," said Obama. "Reagan knew the electorate was so sick of a blue-state president and blue-state policies, they we're willing to go 100% red. Reagan didn't mince words. He ran on a 100% red-state message. When Reagan won with a 100% red state message, Reagan had a 100% red-state mandate. Reagan knew transformation was all about mandate. Reagan ran a clear red-issue campaign. He never reached out to blue. Reagan was able to bowl over any resistance in Congress because he had a clear 100% red-state mandate. When you have a 100% red-state mandate, no one is surprised by what you do. Reagan, therefore, was able to get all the changes he wanted. Reagan was for those reasons...transformational."

But Obama never said that, which is a shame. At least it would have shown he gets it. Unfortunately, as I wrote before, Obama is no Reagan.

Update: The Judge threw out the teachers' union lawsuit. Strip caucus voting will proceed. From the court docket available on PACER:

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS - Preliminary/Permanent Injunction Hearing held on 1/17/2008 before Judge James C. Mahan. ...Time of Hearing: 9:00 am.; Courtroom: 6A; Representations of counsel are heard. The court made its findings.denying 6 Motion for TRO.; granting 10 Motion to Intervene. Submission of Proposed Order obo defendants due by 1/24/2008. (Copies have been distributed pursuant to the NEF - DXO) (Entered: 01/17/2008)

The Las Vegas Review Journal reports:

U.S. District Judge James Mahan has ruled against the attempt by the teachers union to block at-large precincts on the Strip. Mahan said he did not want to set a precedent that could affect other caucuses across the country and that the Democratic Party had the right to set its own rules.

The Las Vegas Sun says no appeal is likely.

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Karl Rove has a preview of attacks we can expect Republicans to make against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, once either gets the Democratic nomination for President. On Obama:

“He got elected three years ago, and he [has] spent almost the entire time running for president,” Rove said.

Rove added that Obama has only passed one piece of legislation during his time in the U.S. Senate, and during his time in Illinois state Senate, Obama had “an unusual habit” of voting “present” instead of yes or no.

On Hillary:

On Clinton, Rove said the senator talks about fiscal responsibility but has introduced “$800 billion in new spending and the campaign is less than half over.”

Rove said that “the woman” wants to repeal all of Bush’s tax cuts, and that she can be targeted for voting against “troop funding” in the form of her votes against the Iraq war supplementals.

More...

Sometimes, you just can not control them, the campaign surrogates. Here is Obama supporter Rev. Joseph Lowery being offensive:

Just when you thought supporters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had gotten past this race thing. In an address to the Hungry Club at Butler Street YMCA in downtown Atlanta, the Rev. Joseph Lowery re-stoked the fires on Wednesday when he told the largely African-American audience that “a slave mentality” was fueling black doubts about Obama’s chances of capturing the White House. “The slavery mentality compels us to say, ‘We can’t win, we can’t do,’” said Lowery, an avid Obama supporter and a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Strong words, when you consider that they include people like U.S. Rep. John Lewis or former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

Oh I know, some will come tell me he was NOT talking about African American Clinton supporters, he REALLY wasn't. Suure. And Bob Johnson was not talking about Obama's drug use. Tell me another one. In any event, I feel confident that the Obama campaign had NOTHING to do with this. They are not stupid. The pitfalls of campaign surrogates and supporters is what is at work here. People should keep that in mind the next time some idiot Clinton supporter says something stupid and offensive.

In the new Pew poll, while still trailing Hillary Clinton nationally 46-31, BarackObama has made significant inroads among self described liberals, and African Americans. Ronald Reagan is not well loved by these groups. Obama's praise, and yes I understand it was not praise of his policies per se, could haunt him with these groups. Here are the numbers:

Obama went from 27-49 down among liberals to 35-37, up 10 while Hillary was down 12. Among African Americans, Obama went from up 47-45 to up 52-33, from up 2 to up 19.

I suspect you will be hearing the Clinton campaign bring up Obama's admiration for Reagan in an attempt to erode Obama's inroads with these two groups.

Taylor Marsh interviewed a culinary union worker today who complained her union is pressuring her to vote for Obama. (Podcast here.) Pamela of Democratic Daily has a similar post up.

Las Vegas Sun columnist John Ralston said the union began its "it's the union above all else” pitch right after it endorsed Obama.

The “It’s the union above all else” pitch began Wednesday when Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor announced the Obama endorsement. He praised all the candidates but made it clear that his members value union solidarity above all.

MyDD diarist Izaradar, who belongs to a union, says union endorsements are more problematic in caucus than primary states:

What's the big deal, you might ask? The union leadership can't force a member to honor the endorsement of Senator Obama. If a member wants to vote for John Edwards, or Senator Clinton, they're free to do so. This is a democracy, right? The secret ballot protects our identity and our choice. Well, that's a problem.

This is an open caucus. Union members will be standing in the same room with other union members. Or maybe even their shop steward. Or their foreman. Or possibly even a union official. Everyone will know which candidate you're backing. And if you're a member of Culinary Workers Local 226, and you don't caucus for Senator Obama??? That could make for a long shift on Monday.

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It wasn't just the pollsters that blew New Hampshire. Eric Boehlert explains how the media did an equally dismal job.

After providing plentiful examples, Boehlert says:

In today's campaign coverage, what journalists think about unfolding events takes precedence over what voters think. Voters have become essentially secondary, props in the background that are occasionally queried for a color quote. And that's a big reason why the press missed the New Hampshire story -- that, and the fact that the press was so anxious to write Clinton off as "toast."

Read the whole thing. And keep it in mind as you read continuing mainstream media reporting on the presidential race.

This is bizarre. A medical coroner attributes Ike Turner's death to a cocaine overdose and finds that his long time cardiovascular disease and emphysema were contributing factors.

Ike Turner was 76 years old. His daughter said,

Turner's daughter, Mia, said she was surprised by the coroner's assessment. She said her father's emphysema was at such an advanced stage that he was on oxygen and extremely weak in the last days of his life.

"He just couldn't—he'd gone at the time of his death four or five days without doing anything, and if he'd done anything, it would have been so minimal," Mia Turner said. "He was too weak from the emphysema to do anything. He'd go in the studio for a couple of minutes and play a couple of bars and say he had to go lay down."

A Las Vegas judge doubled O.J. Simpson's bail today at a hearing on the motion to revoke his bond. (Background here.)

The judge also ordered that he put 15% down in cash, or $37.5k -- his friends are trying to raise the cash for him.

Update: He's on his way home to Florida.

If you thought Hillary Clinton doesn't have a sense of humor or takes herself too seriously, think again. Taking the role of flight attendant on "Hil Force One" from Las Vegas to Reno, she told the press corps on board:

"My name is Hillary and I am so pleased to have most of you on board," she said. "FAA regulations prohibit the use of any cell phones, Blackberries or wireless devices that may be used to transmit a negative story about me.

"In a few minutes, I am going to switch off the 'Fasten Your Seat Belt' sign. However, I've learned lately that things can get awfully bumpy when you least expect it — so you might want to keep those seat belts fastened.

"And in the event of an unexpected drop in poll numbers, this plane will be diverted to New Hampshire.

More...

Barack Obama has a very bad habit of denigrating the political battles of the past. A few days ago, Barney Frank wrote a terrific piece taking on Obama kneejerk swipes at the battles of the past. Here is a piece of it:

I think it is important to express my discomfort with a major theme of Senator Obama's campaign. I am referring to his denigration of "the Washington battles of the 1990's" and, usually implicitly but sometimes explicitly, of those who fought them.

. . . I cannot think of a cause that I cared deeply about then that I felt it appropriate to abandon as I aged, nor an important issue in which I had no interest then, but which now gets my attention.

This brings me to my particular concern with Senator Obama's vehement disassociation of himself and those he seeks to represent from "the fights of the nineties." I am very proud of many of the fights I engaged in in the nineties, as well as the eighties and before. Senator Obama also bemoans the "same bitter partisanship" of that period and appears to me to be again somewhat critical of those of us who he believes to have been engaged in it. . . .

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TPM's Greg Sargent has this video of Obama comparing his ability to make a transformational change to that which Ronald Reagan accomplished in 1980:

I will not take the easy political cheap shot here and take on Obama's point. Greg describes it well:

Obama is also making an argument about the readiness of the electorate for change, comparing today's desire for a new direction with the electorate's mood in 1980. In this context, Obama is presenting himself as a potentially transformational figure in opposition to Hillary, who, Obama has been arguing, is unequipped to tap into the public's mood due to her coming of age in the sixties and her involvement in the political battles of the 1990s.

Obama simply misunderstands how Reagan achieved that transformational change - to the detriment of the country I must add - he ran a partisan, ideological divisive campaign that excoriated Democratic values and trumpeted GOP values. He also race baited.

Obama is running a post-partisan, nonideological campaign that is bereft of defenses of Democratic values and ideas. He is running an anti-Reagan campaign. His argument is simply ahistorical. It is precisely BECAUSE he refuses to try and make this a transformational campaign, a campaign to fight for Dem values, to persuade the country that the Dems are right, that his campaign is a promise unfulfilled.

In short, Obama STILL does not get it.