A post-debate South Carolina Reuters-Zogby poll was released today. Obama is still ahead, but his lead has narrowed and Edwards has gained.

Obama's lead fell 3 points overnight to give him a 39 percent to 24 percent edge over Clinton in South Carolina, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday.

Edwards, a former senator from neighboring North Carolina, climbed four points to reach 19 percent -- within striking distance of Clinton and second place.

Obama's drop is among black voters -- and Hillary gained two points with them. Among white voters:

Edwards held a slight lead over Clinton among likely white voters at 35 percent to 32 percent. Obama had 19 percent.

Via Stoller:

[JACK WELCH]: I gotta ask you this. Part of the reason that there's so much excitement about your campaign is to leave some of the divisive politics behind, and you made a comment about Ronald Reagan and his Presidency and I can tell you that probably half of this country looks back on those years and there's a lot of, you know, admiration left for President Reagan. Even the Wall Street Journal, I don't know if you saw the editorial, seemed to commend you for that. Then in the debate the other night it looked like you couldn't run fast enough from those comments when you were debating Senator Clinton. How do you really feel about the Reagan years?

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In Monday's South Carolina debate, John McCain and who could beat him was a big topic. Both John Edwards and Barack Obama argued they could beat John McCain and Hillary Clinton could not. Sorry Barack, the polls do not support you:

Clinton 46
McCain 42

Obama 41
McCain 42

The interesting finding here is Obama simply does not have the type of solid support with DEMOCRATS that Clinton does. And he runs no better with Independents against McCain than does Clinton. The moral of the story? The Kumbaya Unity schtick is a BAD general election strategy. There is no reason for it. Obama needs to jettison it NOW. It hurts him in the primaries. And would hurt him in a general election against McCain.

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Now this is a silly story. Buuut, just for a moment imagine if Hillary Clinton had said this:

I was not aware that I had voted no," [Obama] said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he "intended to vote yes." . . . Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times. . . . "I pressed the wrong button on that," he said.

Does anyone doubt it would be the top news for the next couple of days? The Media's hatred of the Clintons is outrageous and the way the so called progressive blogs have rolled over on this is awful. Consider this headline in the NYTimes:

Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue

Actually he accused the MEDIA of stirring the race issue. Why? Because they ran to him with Obama supporter Dick Hartpootlian's outrageous and false smear accusing Bill Clinton of playing the race and gender card and comparing him to Lee Atwater. You know where that part of the story appears in the NYTimes story? Graf 19!! I kid you not. What a ridiculous piece of journalism.

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This is bad:

In an interview with CNN's Jessica Yellin, Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a supporter of Barack Obama, said some of Bill Clinton's recent remarks on the campaign trail were appeals based on race and gender. He said the comments were meant to "suppresses the vote, demoralize voters, and distort the record," and said they were "reminiscent of Lee Atwater."

Outrageous and false. And, from Obama's perspective, not helpful to his campaign. Consider this, the LAST thing Obama wants is for his big win next Saturday to be viewed as a race issue. Harpootlian feeds that narrative with his outrageous smear.

Obama himself strenuously denied that the Clinton campaign was playing race or gender games last week. Harpootlian does no one any favors with this outrageous smear. The Obama campaign should disavow them.

TPM is in full defend Obama mode but they misfired here - reminding us that Daniel Patrick Moynihan said the GOP was the party of ideas. If that is a comparison that is supposed to convince us of Obama's Democratic bona fides, then all I can say is you got to be kidding me. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was certainly not MY IDEA of the kind of Dem I would want. But I speak for me only there. Your mileage may vary.

TPM again distorts this critique of Obama. Here is the text of the ad:

VOICE-OVER: “Listen to Barack Obama last week talking about Republicans.

BARACK OBAMA: “The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years.”

VO: “Really? Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama’s talking about?”

BO: “The Republicans were the party of ideas.”

VO: Hillary Clinton thinks this election is about replacing disastrous Republican ideas with new ones, like jump-starting the economy. Putting an immediate freeze on foreclosures and mortgages. Cutting taxes for the middle class. And creating millions of new jobs. With the economy in crisis, we need a president with the ideas, the solutions that get our economy working for all of us. Hillary Clinton. Solutions for America.

TPM says Clinton implies Obama supported these GOP policies. TPM is wrong. The ad properly points out that Obama did not express any criticism of the GOP ideas. That is the problem. Obama's failure to speak out against these ideas. And this is not new. Obama has been a unity schtick candidate the entire campaign. The reason this ad works is precisely because Obama's has not been a partisan Dem campaign. Will he speak out now? Yes, because the Clintons are scoring points on him. That, my friends, is politics. TPM continues to distort this issue.

TPM argues that this is not testy:

"I am trying to make sure that his statements by him are answered. Don't you think that's important?" Obama shot back, while walking away. When Zeleny yelled a follow up question suggesting the Illinois senator had not answered the question, Obama fired back angrily, "Don't try cheap stunts like that."

That qualifies as testy. And the video does not change this conclusion.



Now the stupidity of all this is to even report on it. But excuse me, it was clearly a testy exchange.

Ezra Klein writes a post that to me simply distorts what the dispute was about regarding Barack Obama's statements about Ronald Reagan and Republican ideas. Ezra writes:

As Jake Tapper argues, there's really no dispute as to whether Hillary Clinton is distorting Barack Obama's statements on Reagan. She is.

Actually there is quite a dispute over this. I know I dispute it. I know Paul Krugman disputes it. And I know that in this dispute, the only people I see actually quoting what Obama said are people like me and Paul Krugman. Those who claim there is no dispute never actually cite what Obama said. That speaks volumes. Moreover, Ezra continues distorting the dispute when he writes:

A reader sent me the link to this four page Chicago Tribune article from April, 2007 about Barack Obama's first campaign for U.S. Senate.

It's quite an interesting read.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

I'll let you all take it from there.

The Washington Post reports on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's differing strategies for winning delegates on Tsunami Tuesday, February 5.

Hillary is targeting four big primary states, California, New York, New Jersey and Arkansas, while Obama is gearing up for the six caucusing states -- Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska and Idaho.

Another Obama strategy:

In New Jersey, one of his targets is independent voters. In Georgia and Alabama, he is seeking to replicate his South Carolina strategy by targeting African Americans.

It's not just about winning a state because there's delegates to be had even for coming in second. For example, [More...]

Nat Hentoff, writing in the Village Voice, has some constitutional questions for Barack Obama.

Once in a while, Obama makes a passing reference to our diminishing individual liberties, but hardly ever in his stump speeches. At an early-morning rally the day of the New Hampshire vote, he told some 300 students at the Dartmouth College gym: "My job this morning is to be so persuasive . . . that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack." One of the reasons to vote for him, he continued, was his pledge to end the Bush-Cheney era of "wiretaps without warrants."

He didn't add that Bush wants to make this spying on us permanent. And when he's not in front of a roomful of students with the television cameras on him, Obama hardly ever shows the urgent passion for restoring the Constitution that he exhibits on other issues. Hillary Clinton also invokes "change" as if it's a medicine to cure all ills, but she too largely ignores the incremental disappearance of the Bill of Rights—including the last rites for our guarantees of personal privacy.

Hentoff's questions for Obama:

So what are Obama's plans to restore the Constitution—especially regarding the activities of our domestic and international intelligence agencies? And in view of Bush's legacy with the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court, what would President Obama's criteria be for filling any vacancies during his time in office? It would help if he would tell us now which Supreme Court justices, past and present, he most respects, and why.

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