Bump and Update: Tancredo's out of the race and gives his support to Mitt Romney.

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Tom Tancredo Might Withdraw from Presidential Race

Update: Not so fast. His wife says he's first going to meet with other Republican candidates and will withdraw only if he can support one of them on immigration.

Jackie Tancredo said the situation has “changed hourly,” and on Wednesday night there still was a “slim” chance that her husband would continue his uphill battle, which now finds him near the bottom of the polls in Iowa and nationally.

Tancredo confirms an announcement is coming and says he wouldn't hold a presser without something important to say. Will it be just a withdrawal or a withdrawal and declaration of support for another candidate? Or, is it a stunt where he says he's staying in because all the other Republican candidates are too soft on immigration? Tomorrow, by the way, Tancredo turns 62.

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Last month I chronicled the adventures of FBI informant and Bernie Kerik pal Larry Ray. I ended the last post with,

A lingering question is, what did Rudy know about Ray and Bernie (not just Interstate and Bernie) and when did he know it?

The Washington Post addressed that question yesterday. Larry Ray, who is now in jail on a probation violation, contacted WaPo reporters and shared Berie's e-mails (pdfs), photos of himself and Gorbachev in Rudy's office when Rudy was Mayor, as well as other documents previously shared with the feds when he cooperated against Bernie.

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Katie Couric asked the major presidential candidates about whether marital infidelity should impact voters and when was the last time they lost their tempers and why.

The videos are here. I thought the temper one was very interesting....take a look. Who do you think was fudging and who told the truth? Which one was the most likeable? Or, put another way, which one would you feel most comfortable chatting with, say over dinner? And who would have you looking at your watch, counting down the minutes till you could leave?

I thought Obama, Giuliani, Biden and Hillary were the least genuine. I thought Edwards and Huckabee were the most affable and truthful. Romney started off in denial and then changed horses and ended up pretty likeable. Thompson was honest but very boring. McCain was genuine in that "your father's oldsmobile" kind of way. Richardson was a toss-up to me, I wanted to believe him, but his example was a stretch of the imagination.

Jane at Firedoglake asks whether Huckabee is fibbing about not having a gastric bypass.

I wondered the same thing months ago, but after reviewing all of his statements on his weight loss, concluded he didn't because he's been so vocal in his denials and it would be too easily uncovered if he were lying.

But, I do suspect he may have had a lapband wrapped around his stomach.

Last week, Matt Yglesias wrote what I found to be a silly post in which he argued:

I have to say that I find the idea that Hillary Clinton has been "vetted" and thus we can expect "no surprises" in terms of damaging campaign information to be pretty unconvincing. . . [T]his almost seems like a calculated effort to bait me in bringing up things I really don't want to bring up. . . . There's tawdry BS to be dragged up on everyone -- she's no exception and shouldn't be pretending that she is.

Ridiculous to believe that there has not been concerted efforts to bring up everything about the Clintons in the past two decades. And the Obama campaign makes a similarly silly argument (though I can see why they do politically), as Josh Marshall notes:

I really hope the Obama camp is kidding when they say Barack is the most scrutinized candidate in the race. If they're not, they're living in a fantasy world that makes me question whether they're up to the rigors of a national campaign.

Josh is right of course but I think it underplays a very important advantage Barack Obama has - he is a Media darling. Before Obama supporters complain, they should realize this is a VERY good thing. Obama is almost certain to get better coverage than the other two leading Dem candidates, Clinton and Edwards, in a general election campaign. This is no small thing. Furthermore, if when the GOP Swift boaters go on the attack, Obama's status with the Media will put him in a much better position to fend off those attacks than any Dem candidate I can remember. This, to me, is a very strong argument for supporting Obama for the nomination.

Paul Krugman points to a September Boston Globe article on Barack Obama's work on healthcare in the Illinois legislature. Krugman writes:

This story gives a lot of context to the debate over health reform now. Obama clearly sees himself playing the same role as president that he did as a state legislator — as a broker among groups, including the insurance industry, as someone who can find a compromise solution that’s acceptable to a wide range of opinion.

My thoughts: being president isn’t at all like being a state legislator, Illinois Republicans aren’t like the national Republican party, 2009 won’t be 2003, and the insurance industry’s opposition to national health reform — which must, if it is to mean anything, strike deep at the industry’s fundamental business — will be much harsher than its opposition to a basically quite mild state-level reform effort.

. . . My worries about Obama are that he doesn’t seem to understand this — that he thinks that in 2009, as president, he can broker a national health care reform the same way that as a state legislator, in 2003, he brokered a deal that mollified the insurance industry. That’s a recipe for getting nowhere.

Good points from Krugman.

Matt Bai writes:

Some Democrats, though, and especially those who are apt to call themselves “progressives,” offer a more complicated and less charitable explanation. In their view, Clinton failed to seize his moment and create a more enduring, more progressive legacy . . . because his centrist, “third way” political strategy, his strategy of “triangulating” to find some middle point in every argument, sapped the party of its core principles. . . .

David Brooks wrote a glowing piece on Barack Obama. The piece was an obvious swipe at Paul Krugman's evaluation of Obama. Some, like Matt Yglesias saw Krugman as engaging in payback, demonstrating that they have not been reading Krugman at all on this issue). Here is part of what Brooks wrote:

[Obama] has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. . . . But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. . . . This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

A post-politics "Third Way" has been Obama's message. His message is the most like the 1992 message of Bill Clinton. The question is is that the right one for this political climate? Are Democrats, are progressives, is the country, where they were in 1992? On Hardball yesterday, John Edwards said:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Harry Truman [and Hillary Clinton] said they were going to bring healthcare to the people, what was wrong with them? JOHN EDWARDS: First of all, they were living in a different environment . . . If you look at what is happening to healthcare today as opposed to when Senator Clinton was addressing it, the health care system has gotten much worse. . . . I think we are in a place where the American People are ripe for change. We just need a leader who will stand up.

So the question is do we want and need the Clinton Third Way political approach of the 90s?

Digby spotlights this nonsense from Fox Dem Bob Beckel:

Fox political analyst Bob Beckel mourned last night that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s endorsement of John McCain is “the price…us Democrats pay for MoveOn.org and others who drove Joe Lieberman out of the party,” said Beckel. “They campaigned against him actively and raised money against him and he was beaten in the Democratic primary. … Now we’re paying the price and all I can say is ‘a pox on their house."

The pox of course is on the Fox Dem house, and its leading practictioner of mendacity and petty vindictiveness, via Kagro, Joe Lieberman:

Lieberman: "I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man [Ned Lamont] and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that."

Of course Lieberman was not telling the truth. And we knew he was not. But Beckel's theory is, in many ways, more condemning of Lieberman than we are. Beckel is saying Lieberman is endorsing McCain for President out of spite. Beckel also seems to share Lieberman's delusion that Lieberman's endorsement actually matters. As Lieberman himself said, no Democrat wanted his endorsement. It is unclear whether anyone except McCain even asked for it. No poxes there Mr. Beckel.

Bump and Update: It's a done deal. Lieberman has endorsed John McCain for President.

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Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reports Sen. Joe Lieberman will endorse John McCain for President in New Hampshire tomorrow.

This is not surprising to me -- it's just two of your father's Oldsmobiles sticking together. MSNBC asked in January whether a McCain-Lieberman ticket was not a possibility.

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Aside from 9/11, there's nothing Rudy Giuliani touts more than his crime record. Now, even that is being exposed. Former U.S. District Court Judge John Martin, who was Rudy's predecessor as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has an op-ed in today's New York Times, The Office I Left Giuliani.

What set Martin off was Rudy's defense of his judgment regarding Bernie Kerik on Meet the Press, saying it had to weighed against his other accomplishments. Rudy said:

“How can I not have pretty good judgment about the people who work for me and not been able to turn around the United States attorney’s office?”

Martin responds:

But Mr. Giuliani’s claim to have turned around the Manhattan United States attorney’s office is not only untrue, it is an insult to the outstanding men and women who have served in that office over the last 50 years.

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Sunday, Hillary Clinton launched her Hill-a-Copter tour which will take her to 99 Iowa counties by Thursday. A reporter from the Boston Globe is accompanying the tour.

Tomorrow, she will be on all six morning shows: ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today, CBS' Early Show, Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends, MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's American Morning.

Her latest endorsements: Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey and Maine Governor John Baldacci. The other governors supporting her are New York's Eliot Spitzer, New Jersey's Jon Corzine, Ohio's Ted Strickland, Maryland's Martin O'Malley, Arkansas' Mike Beebe and Michigan's Jennifer Granholm.

Obama's getting help from a long-time friend, Mike Jordan, an insurance agent from Chicago who goes to Iowa every weekend to stump for the candidate. At an Iowa town hall meeting, Obama addressed how he'd create a better educated workforce. He also "pledged to bring troops home within 16 months of taking office." At a news conference just before the town hall meeting in Saturday, Obama focused on toy safety.

Joe Biden told a group in Iowa they don't want a candidate without foreign policy experience. [More...]

John Edwards makes the cover of Newsweek and is the subject of a five page article. He's also on several of the Sunday morning shows today.

He's still fighting hard in Iowa, touting his willingness to fight for Democrats.

I think if my party, the Democratic Party, if we're not willing to fight for, stand up and show some backbone on behalf of the poor, the homeless, the disabled, the disenfranchised, we have no soul," the former North Carolina senator said. "What are we going to stand for?"

While the press has focused on Hillary and Obama, Edwards is very much still in the Iowa race.

Edwards, who finished a surprising second in the caucuses four years ago, is seeking to energize his supporters, whom his advisers says are experienced in the often intimidating task of going to a caucus and publicly declaring their preferences.

He also was the first candidate to get establish a presence in all of Iowa's 99 counties. [More...]