Continuing the intersection of technology and politics, Carrie Sheffield reports on how the Earth Day Network is enlisting the help of Google to publicize an Earth Day effort to flood the congressional switchboard with a million phone calls asking members of Congress to pass environmental legislation:

"We're really excited about this because Congress keeps saying they don't hear from the American public on climate change," said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, which bills itself as an eco-activism group connecting some 17,000 organizations in 174 countries. "The [presidential] candidates are not being asked about climate change. Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity that we've ever faced."

This new Rasmussen Reports poll showing McCain with a lead, albeit "statistically insignificant," over both Barack (46% to 45%) Obama and Hillary Clinton (45% to 42%) in Democratically-leaning New Jersey, should stoke sentiment that Clinton's continued presence in the race is only helping McCain.

From Blue Jersey:

One notable result is that the percentage of people who view McCain favorably is 61, Obama 58, and Clinton 50. Obama has been improving, Clinton falling, and McCain remaining the same.

TPM's Erik Kleefeld notes how the polling runs counter to Clinton's perceived strengths:

It's interesting to note that Hillary Clinton has a home-region advantage here, but is actually performing behind Barack Obama against McCain — potentially putting a dent in the Clinton camp's argument about being more electable in Democratic base states.

Red State looks at more Rasmussen polls showing positive traction for McCain.

This article by Kenneth Vogel should only serve to reinforce notions about Obama from both the left and the right: He is intelligent, engaged, and at his core, pretty liberal:

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

Of course, having a "moderate image" is not necessarily incongruent with having more partisan stances on specific issues. Nonetheless, several conservative bloggers see the story as evidence Obama has "lied" about his past record. Commentary's Jennifer Rubin speculates on Obama's honesty:

It may be that he is not any more honest than she–just less experienced. Whether lying becomes one of his defining traits will depend on how frequently he gets caught and what penalty he pays.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey calls it "another misstatement about his past."

A few problems today with an otherwise pedestrian article by the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan on how John McCain's outreach to conservative bloggers resulted in a "respectful truce" with McCain's campaign. I agree with the article's thesis, but it has at least one notable flaw: proper identification of his blogger sources.

Buried near the bottom of the piece, Dinan notes how he was unable to get a response from either the Clinton or Obama campaigns on their web outreach efforts. Dinan instead dedicates the last four graphs of his story to Jerome Armstrong, the "godfather" of liberal blogs and curator of MyDD.com. Armstrong is given space to note his views that team Clinton has done a better job of reaching out to bloggers, and Dinan chimes in with a few negative quips about Obama's relationship with bloggers:

Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama's campaigns returned calls about their Web outreach, though Jerome Armstrong, a liberal blogger at MyDD.com, said Mr. McCain's regular outreach tops anything the two Democrats are doing, and he said it's an approach he would recommend to any candidate.

Mr. Armstrong said Mrs. Clinton is ahead of Mr. Obama in her outreach, inviting bloggers onto regular press briefing calls with traditional reporters. He also said her blogger, Peter Daou, pitches ideas to bloggers in the same way press secretaries pitch stories to reporters, and Mr. Daou produces blog clippings in the same way most campaigns produce clip books of newspaper articles.

As for Mr. Obama, he said the Illinois senator "didn't do enough to reach out to his potential allies in the blogosphere and integrate them into the campaign." Now, when he runs into trouble, they are slower to rally to his defense.

And last month, Mr. Obama told reporters on his campaign plane he doesn't read blogs — something they took note of.

What Dinan doesn't tell his readers is that Armstrong is a Clinton supporter and that his website recently was feuding with his co-author Markos Moulitsas' web home, DailyKos, over allegations that the Kossacks are too overtly pro-Obama. Armstrong knows his politics and certainly merits being called upon as a source. He also isn't so far biased as to be considered a Clinton mouthpiece, but his views have been called into some question by some progressive bloggers. This sort of thing can be found in a 30 second Google search and almost certainly merited a citation in the story.

Dinan also fails to identify Matt Lewis and Ed Morrissey as conservative bloggers. Armstrong, however, is identified  as "liberal." This may ultimately be a minor quibble, but I have to believe proper vetting and identification of Armstrong would have taken place if he were a political consultant or traditional media source.

Armstrong discusses his Clinton support to George Washington University students here:




* Disclaimer: I used to work at the Washington Times as a national political reporter and often wrote on the efforts of conservatives to play catch-up in the world of web 2.0.

There has been plenty of discussion in the blogosphere over the past week as to whether Hillary Clinton's continued presence in the Democratic primary is bad for the party. Part of that discussion is a debate over whether the discussion itself is being largely created and circulated by the media.

But today's story by Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal (the most discussed political story this morning in the blogs and generating more than 700 Diggs) shows that whether or not the media has pressured Clinton and her surrogates, a snowball effect is beginning to take shape:

Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama's side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up.

Describing the Clinton campaign as being caught in a Catch 22, the Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman says:

Her campaign, in various news reports, has made it clear that it seeks to raise Obama’s negatives so that by election time he is unelectable. But the only way to do that is in a way that elicits howls of protest from Obama supporters, hardens party divisions — and raises Clinton’s OWN negatives. A nomination achieved by politically dismembering Obama would be a hallow one. And if she won the general election, she’d likely take office a polarizing figure.

 
 NRO's Jim Geraghty adds:

Obama's picking up speed among the Superdelegates, but Hillary thinks they can nickel and dime their way to narrowing the gap among regular delegates.

Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey's endorsement of Barack Obama is getting plenty of attention both in the traditional media and on the blogs. Everyone is debating how much the first term senator's endorsement helps Obama move white, working class voters in the state to his side. I think the real benefit is that the media will be talking about this all day, adding to the growing perception that the race is over and Clinton needs to step aside.

Andrew Sullivan says:

Casey's another interesting one to put on the veep list. A pro-life Catholic from Pennsylvania.

I suppose Casey could help secure PA for Obama in the fall, but he also won his seat against a deeply flawed candidate in a terrible year for Republicans and was the beneficiary of nepotism to boot.

TNR's Eve Fairbanks adds:

Has there been any senatorial endorsement in this race that's really affected a primary's outcome? Senators tend not to have the kind of local support networks and political machines that mayors or governors can deploy on behalf of their choice. And in terms of Casey's star power throughout the state -- well, reviews of his first year in office in the Pennsylvania newspapers this winter tended to use words like "subdued," "low-key" (read: invisible), and "Senator who?"

Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling is introducing a bill called the Blogger Protection Act of 2008, which seeks to put a 2006 FEC decision into law, that allows bloggers to comment on federal candidates and issues without being subjected to campaign finance laws. Online fundraising efforts will still be subject to traditional regulations, but speech would not be regulated.

From the Hensarling release:

As you know, regulations can be changed without congressional action, and there's no telling what a future FEC might decide to do. Furthermore, the FEC is currently defunct because of the vacancies and a lack of quorum. Therefore, we shouldn't put the freedom of bloggers in the regulatory hands of the FEC. Congress should protect them in law. 

Steve Schmidt and Jill Hazelbaker of the McCain campaign’s communications shop held a blogger conference call this morning to discuss McCain's "Service to America" tour next week that will take him to spots that were influential in forming his political philosophy, including: McCain Field in Mississippi, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and stops in Jacksonville and Pensacola, Florida.

There wasn't a lot of news during the call, but Schmidt did announce that McCain will call for a large expansion of the Army and Marines. Hugh Hewitt followed up on that point, but Schmidt wasn't divulging any more specifics:

I asked if the Navy would be part of the call for an expanded military, and Schmidt demurred until the senator speaks next week.  It seems to me that a naval power needs more than the 280 ship Navy we are headed for. 

Schmidt also refused to directly answer a question about Barack Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his choice of Tony McPeak as a military adviser. Schmidt didn't mention Wright by name, but as Ed Morrissey notes, said some of the comments made by McPeak are "disturbing."


Jim Geraghty also has a round-up of the call's highlights.

In a video posted over at Think Progress, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer tells Fox News that John McCain's talk about being more cooperative with foreign governments is really all about a "hidden agenda" to make the United Nations irrelevant. Does that really qualify as a conspiracy theory, or simply an assumed truth? After all, the U.N. has stood against most U.S. military ventures in recent times under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with the notable exceptions being the war in Afghanistan and the first Gulf War. Combine that with the diminished authority of NATO since the end of the Cold War and it makes sense for a candidate like McCain, who is not opposed to military interventionism to propose the creation of a league of democracies.

If Mike Bloomberg doesn't end up as Barack Obama's vice presidential candidate, he should certainly be appointed minister of propaganda by any future commander-in-chief. The man knows how to generate endless media excitement while doing virtually nothing. While there was no evidence of any actual grassroots enthusiasm for a Bloomberg presidential run, the national press remained taken with the notion until Bloomberg officially said he would not run last month.

And now, Marc Ambinder reports that the Obama campaign asked Bloomberg to introduce him before Obama's economic speech today in NYC and that Bloomberg accepted. That simple, careful introduction has ignited speculation on both the left and right blogosphere over what a Bloomberg vice presidential run would mean. In short, both sides largely agree it would be more meaningful than an independent Bloomberg presidential run.

More than 1,000 Diggs of the new NBC/WSJ poll showing Hillary Clinton's negative polling numbers rising, while Barack Obama appears largely unhurt by reports of past racially-charged statements made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. From Chuck Todd:

Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.

Chris Cillizza declares:

The data suggests that Obama has passed his first major crisis -- not, perhaps, with flying colors, but passed it nonetheless.

However, the poll still reveals some potentially unsettling numbers from Obama's recent speech on race:

[T]he numbers did show that 55 percent of all voters were disturbed by Wright's statements and 32 percent of those who saw Obama's speech on race were "dissatisfied with (the) explanation of association with Reverend Wright."

Steve Benen addresses talk that the poll oversampled African-American voters:

Just as an aside, there’s been talk that the poll intentionally “oversampled African-Americans,” which in turn makes the results less reliable. In this case, that interpretation appears mistaken: “What I think he means is this: In order to get a statistically reliable subset of African-American voters, they over-sampled this category. (Remember, African-Americans account for only about 13% of the US population. So that subset of a regular poll doesn’t really have a large enough sample to ensure a low margin of error.) They then re-weighted these results to come up with topline (everybody put together) numbers that adjusted for that oversampling.”

Brian Stelter, who used to blog for TVNewser.com was hired by The New York Times last year as a media reporter. As part of his new beat, Stelter has a good piece today documenting the way younger media consumers are digesting their news. Social networking sites like Facebook and viral video clearinghouses like YouTube have become not just convenient, but exceedingly popular destinations for campaign videos that are too long for TV:

A December survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked broadly at how media were being consumed this campaign. In the most striking finding, half of respondents over the age of 50 and 39 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds reported watching local television news regularly for campaign news, while only 25 percent of people under 30 said they did.

Fully two-thirds of Web users under 30 say they use social networking sites, while fewer than 20 percent of older users do.

In related news, TechPresident reports that nearly 4 million people have watched Obama's Philadelphia speech on race online.

Both conservative and liberal bloggers are having a field day with Hillary Clinton's false claim to have dodged sniper fire during a mid-90's visit to Bosnia in her former capacity as first lady. Aside from the many accusations that Clinton is simply a "fabulist," many other bloggers are dissecting just how much this will damage her already longshot chances at winning the nomination.

Steve Benen wonders why Clinton would push the issue in the first place:

To reiterate a point I raised over the weekend, this is a classic unforced error. This may seem excessive, but without any exaggerations at all, Clinton already has more foreign policy experience than five of the last six presidents (including her husband). She simply doesn’t need to embellish at all — her background is already sufficient for a credible presidential campaign.

Daily Kos raises questions about Clinton's potential competency as commander-in-chief:

If Hillary Clinton lied about snipers in Bosnia because of sleep deprivation (doubtful, given it's a lie she's said at least four times), then what will she do when she gets that call at 3 a.m.?

And on the right, the assessments aren't any less forgiving.

Michelle Malkin:

This is how a Clinton—take your pick: Hillary, Bill, or Chelsea–makes it through the day. Better living through self-delusion.

While most of our coverage here specifically concerns the intersection of blogging and politics, there is the occasional non-political blogging story that merits attention. In this case, the story of Philadelphia's Jesse McPherson, who recently had his Xbox 360, TV and laptop stolen. Adding insult to injury, after purchasing a new Xbox, McPherson received a threatening message through the Xbox server from the alleged thief demanding a ransom for the safe return of his stolen goods. After the authorities failed to offer the 26-year-old engineer much assistance, he submitted his case to the news aggregator Digg:

Jesse was shocked to find over 7000 users had launched the event to the top digg's main page. After a barrage of threatening messages to the admitted thief's account from random Xbox Live users and dialog with the brave thief's own mother (His mommy got involved? Ultimate bad-ass!), Jesse's Xbox 360 console was returned in working condition (the Powerbook was also returned on a separate occasion).

Strange and unexpected things can happen in presidential campaigns, particularly when it comes to a candidate's perceived strengths. In the past two weeks we've seen John McCain's foreign policy knowledge challenged, Hillary Clinton's experience called into question and Barack Obama's Christian background turned into a potential liability.

And now, we have liberal bloggers bemoaning the positive treatment John McCain receives from the media. Specifically, this Neal Gabler op-ed in the New York Times today, which suggests the media is unnaturally fond of McCain because of his "postmodern" ironic detachment. Seeing a Republican candidate for president favored by the media is sort of like seeing a Democrat endorsed by the NRA. Of course, McCain is not the first Republican presidential candidate to be treated favorably by the press. George W. Bush seemed to have it easier than Al Gore in 2000, and Ronald Reagan was nothing if not a master of image control. If you're a supporter of Hillary Clinton, you may have a legitimate argument to be made that she has been treated less fairly than the other candidates. But Barack Obama has received the most favorable coverage of any candidate running. And while the press certainly seemed to be rooting for McCain to win the Republican primary, we have yet to see how he'll be viewed when running against a Democrat. What should be really interesting is watching the national press corps forced to choose sides in an Obama/McCain matchup.

Would 28% of Clinton supporters and 19% of Obama supporters defect to John McCain if their first-choice candidate doesn't win the Democratic nomination? Those are the numbers in today's Gallup poll. However, even Gallup cautions against taking their own numbers too seriously:

It is unknown how many Democrats would actually carry through and vote for a Republican next fall if their preferred candidate does not become the Democratic nominee. The Democratic campaign is in the heat of battle at the moment, but by November, there will have been several months of attempts to build party unity around the eventual nominee -- and a focus on reasons why the Republican nominee needs to be defeated.

Additionally, some threat of deserting the party always takes place as party nomination battles are waged, and this threat can dissipate.

So, what the poll seems to be actually illustrating is something anyone following the campaign is already acutely aware of: the longer the Democratic nomination fight continues, the greater the animosity between the Clinton/Obama camps. Rather than actual defections to the Republican side, Democrats are likely more concerned with eroding enthusiasm as the nomination fight becomes more contentious.

Most conservative blogs are happy with the poll numbers, but also not taking them too seriously.

Just One Minute's Tom Maguire puts it this way:

It is easier for elderly and working class whites to defect to the war hero than it is for blacks and hipsters to defect to the old white guy.

While Real Clear Politics' Heather Wilhelm notes the assumption that most conservatives are expected to vote for McCain even if he wasn't their first choice.

Ankle Biting Pundits author Patrick Hynes retains the McCain campaign as a client. So, any endorsement of his client's candidacy has to be viewed through that prism. Nonetheless, Hynes suggests that while Iraq remains an unpopular issue with much of the public, McCain is still seen as the most viable commander-in-chief because his stance is clear on the war, as opposed to his opponents:

[E]ven if they disagree with his position on Iraq: His position is clear and coherent. The Democrats’, especially Sen. Obama’s, isn’t. Americans will abide a competent leader with whom they disagree. They will not abide a politician whose position on a transcendent issue is a confused jumble at best.

CQ Politics' Rachel Kapochunas looks into the controversy surrounding Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek's decision to not endorse their fellow Florida Democrats challenging three incumbent Republican lawmakers. While Schultz and Meek are sitting out because of their ties to the three GOP members:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi , Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen , Majority Whip James E. Clyburn and Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel sent letters to the three Democratic candidates affirming their support.

Liberal bloggers have professed a previously undocumented fondness for the McClatchy Company's Washington bureau every since Bill Moyers' PBS special last year documenting that the news organization provided skeptical investigative reporting that was largely ignored during the run up to the war in Iraq.

Today, McClatchy offers evidence that the cease-fire between U.S. forces and Muqtada al Sadr is coming to an end. McClatchy's headlines places the word "success" in scare quotes when referencing the surge of U.S. forces. That's arguably responsible journalism, but also arguably seeking to editorialize against something that has to some extent become accepted as fact, even by many war opponents. But the larger question of intellectual consistency is: can anti-war bloggers herald a downturn in Iraqi security when they have previously rejected out of hand any evidence of the surge's possible success?

Lots of blogger discussion today concerning David Brooks' unscientific assertion that Hillary Clinton now has only a five percent chance of winning the Democratic Party's nomination:

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

TNR's Michael Crowley:

I think it's quite possible that Hillary simply doesn't think Obama is electable. (See Bill and "all that other stuff.") Now that may be a delusion. But if you believed it to be true, you would soldier ahead. She also does have quite a lot of passionate supporters cheering her on, and is roughly tied with Obama in national polls; that's not easy to ignore.

Ann Althouse rightly calls out the hypocrisy of Brooks' assertion that a continued Clinton campaign is the "audacity of hopelessness:

How is what's she's doing any different from what every other candidate does as long as there's a chance? To say it's "selfish" or "narcissistic" to think you're special is to criticize everyone who has what it takes to campaign for the presidency.

Ed Morrissey adds:

Beyond that, the Hillary-must-quit contingent seem to forget one thing: she’s still winning states, and people still want to vote for her. Obama hasn’t won the nomination, nor will he win it in the primaries. Why should she quit under those circumstances? By all indications, Hillary will likely win almost all of the upcoming contests, with just North Carolina as a potential exception.

And though I didn't get around to linking it yesterday, Marc Ambinder's fisking of the VandeHei/Allen piece on Clinton's fatalistic campaign is well worth reading.

Fun fact: Amidst the Florida recount debacle after the 2000 election, Hillary Clinton advocated abandoning the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote.

Fast forward 8 years: Clinton campaign surrogate Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana showed up on yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition" offering the assertion that Hillary Clinton is actually leading the Democratic primary because the states she's won carry the most electoral college votes (Clinton's 219 to Obama's 202, respectively).

Reason's Dave Weigel also notes the electoral college double standard.

The conservative Hot Air takes apart Bayh's logic:

Bayh’s point is stupid, not only because many of the big states where she beat Obama will go blue in November no matter who the nominee is but because, as Jay Cost notes, Democratic primary voters aren’t the same as general election voters.

While MyDD's Todd Beeton says the Clinton camp should use a different line of argument to make their case:

A far more compelling argument to superdelegates, I would think, is to constantly remind them about Michigan and Florida. Not because they're "two of the big four" necessarily but rather because had they moved to legal dates they would have represented two additional early Clinton wins, likely big ones, and the mere fact that Obama would have had to compete there would have meant fewer resources for him to expend in other states.

From the "McCain Girls," it's "Raining McCain." Still desperately trying to figure out if the humor here is intentional or not.

Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz co-chairs the DCCC's Red to Blue program, but is in hot water with the netroots for refusing to endorse fellow Florida Democrats running against Republican incumbents Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart. Wasserman Schultz says she's not comfortable going against members from her state delegation, but bloggers are pointing out that challenging Republican incumbents is precisely her job.

Bloggers are especially upset by this Washington Post story where Wasserman Schultz and DCCC Executive Director Brian Wolff dismiss their frustrations, with Wolff describing the controversy as "much ado about nothing."

Fellow Florida Democrat Kendrick Meek is also refusing to endorse the challenging Democrats.

Many bloggers are now calling on Wasserman Schultz to resign her leadership position with the DCCC.

Over at the Huffington Post, Washington Note blogger Steve Clemons has a post listing the phone numbers and email for Wasserman Schultz's campaign office, DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen's campaign email and phone number and the main phone number for the DCCC.

Daily Kos has a similar posting with the contact information

Howard Kurtz takes a look at BlogTalkRadio, a slowly emerging vehicle for bloggers, or anyone really, who wants to launch their own free talk radio program over the internet:

A year and a half after New Jersey businessman Alan Levy launched the venture, BlogTalkRadio is averaging 2.4 million listeners each month for programs that range from politics to the paranormal, along with sports, finance, food, religion and romance. The Pentagon recently started two shows on the network.

The question is whether this is a flash in the pan that appeals mainly to geeks and those with a need to talk to someone -- anyone -- or whether, like blogs, online radio could explode in popularity.

In a new email sent to Hillary Clinton supporters, Bill Clinton emphasizes the campaign's need to overcome Barack Obama's significant fundraising lead. In what may be a sign of the Clinton camp's financial woes, the former president is asking supporters to contribute as little as $5 (emphasis theirs):

Despite the spirited support from Hillary's best supporters, including you, we are still being outraised and outspent by the Obama campaign. He outspent us by more than $10 million in February alone. Let's close the gap so Hillary can win in Pennsylvania, keep on winning, and be our next president.

Any donation, even as little as $5, can make a difference in this campaign. If you haven't given online yet, now is the time.

The Newshoggers blog attempts to shoot down the notion that Hillary Clinton is staying in the Democratic primary in the hopes that Barack Obama will lose the general election to John McCain, thus setting up a Clinton rerun in 2012:

So the traditional response to a single iteration jackpot, single winner, complete losers game is to go all in for as long as one has the resources to play in the hopes that something shakes the right way for you just as the jackpot is declared.  The odds suck, but bad odds are better than zero odds.  So I don't think Clinton is playing for 2012 as that scenario does not make a whole lot of sense, she is playing for now with a good strategy given a horrendous prospect of success.

Not likely, but that doesn't stop Kara Swisher from offering up some anecdotal evidence suggesting a comparatively larger growth trend for the liberal website:

According to data from Nielsen Online, for example, the Huffington Post’s traffic–as measured by monthly unique visitors in the U.S., at home and work–has more than tripled since February of 2007, when it had about 1.1 million unique visitors; by February of 2008, unique visitors had risen to 3.7 million.

In that same month, the Drudge Report had 3.4 million (it had 2.75 million in February of 2007).

Has the New York Times made John McCain its new Augusta storyline? Not long after getting into trouble with conservatives and other media outlets for a McCain story heavy on scandal but short on facts, the paper is back with a piece recounting McCain's alleged flirtations with twice leaving the Republican Party: back in 2001, and again, in 2004, when he reportedly discussed becoming John Kerry's running mate.

Again, the problem here seems to be that no new headway is made on the narrative. All of the facts and alleged maneuvers have been previously reported. But it does at least serve to create discussion on the progressive blogs, which may gin up traffic for the NYT website and generate cable news chatter.

Matthew Yglesias calls the piece a "service," but one paragraph concedes:

I think it's pretty clear that McCain's been less-than-totally honest about this stuff, but beyond that, what's the point? I'm not really sure what the point is, myself.

Most conservative bloggers are dismissing the story, or ignoring it altogether. Hugh Hewitt, who initially opposed McCain's candidacy, says:

What's amusing about this is that the New York Times thinks this matters to Republicans.  John McCain is the GOP nominee, so all that matters is that both the Democrats and their entire party are committed to defeat in Iraq and retreat in the broader war.  How much simpler can this choice be?

The Democratic National Committee is also up with a "McCain versus McCain" site focusing on perceived contradictions in McCain's record.

Via Think Progress, "Fox News Sunday," moderator Chris Wallace was on "Fox and Friends" this morning and objected to what he called "two hours of Obama bashing," after the morning hosts repeatedly played video of Obama's now infamous "typical white person" interview without playing the quote in full context. Wallace:

Hey listen, I love you guys but I want to take you to task if I may, respectfully, for a moment. I have been watching the show since 6:00 this morning when I got up, and it seems to me that two hours of Obama bashing on this typical white person remark is somewhat excessive and frankly I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say.

You can watch the full video on Think Progress' website.

MoveOn.org, who has endorsed Obama, is also circulating a petition for what they consider unfair attacks against Obama:

FOX is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Real news organizations must reject FOX's smears of Barack Obama, not parrot them and distract Americans from the pressing issues of the day." The more signatures we deliver, the bigger the impact—so please tell your friends.

Soren Dayton, a member of John McCain's online communications political shop, has been suspended for circulating a fiery YouTube video on Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright through his Twitter account.

I reported earlier on Ezra Klein's Twitter mishap.

Dayton, like Klein, is a talented writer and contributor in DC's blogging scene. It's unfortunate to see any young voice in the political debate taking the fall for participating in a medium that is still in the embryonic stages of being understood by political campaigns. Bloggers, writers and independent voices shouldn't have to operate in a climate of fear. Then again, when you work for a political campaign, it's probably always best to play it as safe as possible.

Blog P.I. has more thoughts on Dayton, etc.

Powerline's John Hinderaker catches this interview Barack Obama interview from earlier today in which he is asked about how his white grandmother feels with Obama now being "so close to the presidency." First, Obama, mentions how proud his grandmother is, but goes on to say:

"She is a typical white person. Who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's, uh, been bred into our experiences that don't go away. And that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it and what makes me optimistic is that you see each generation feeling a little less like that."

This leaves Hinderaker to say of Obama that "maybe, in a time of stress, his inexperience is beginning to show," adding:

Think about it: can you imagine any Presidential candidate, in any context, describing anyone as a "typical black person?" Or a "typical Asian person?" Worse, what Obama said was that the "typical white person" views others of different races with fear and suspicion. Obama appears to be digging himself in deeper and deeper.

Starting at around 4pm today, CQ Politics is moving floors here in the larger Congressional Quarterly mothership. That means I'll be out of pocket for the next few hours until the new desk (my third in less than four months on the job!) is set up. 

In a smart and detailed post, Chris Bowers explains how Obama can rebound from his recent drop in the polls, but still thinks his overall prospects aren't likely to completely bounce back:

Now, this isn't the first time Obama has taken a hit, and it is entirely possible that this current downturn is yet another in a series of entirely temporary negative stretches for his campaign. However, in this particular case, I think it is more likely that Obama has suffered some lasting electoral damage.

Obama supporters are also taking some criticism from Paul Starr at the American Prospect blog, Tapped, who argues that by not allowing a re-vote in Michigan, Obama supporters may be actually hurting their candidate in the long run:

[T]he burden for the failure falls clearly on Senator Obama’s supporters, who, perhaps understandably, didn’t want to risk the psychological impact of a defeat in Michigan at the end of the primary season.

But having prevented any new vote in Michigan, Obama's campaign may well have given up any moral claim to oppose seating of the delegates elected in January.

Meanwhile, conservatives continue to salivate over Obama's recent drop in the polls in prospective match-ups against both Clinton and John McCain. Over at Red State, Erik Erickson theorizes that Democratic superdelegates will turn on Obama if they don't see an end to the drop in his poll numbers after the Jeremiah Wright story:

[B]ecause of the Clintons effective deployment of the race card within the Democratic Primary, super delegates are getting nervous. They know they were put in place to avoid the party going far left. And they are worried that Obama, the unknown quantity, could be painted as far left by the GOP. The Democrats want to win this year, and, at the end of the day, they'd rather go with the known quantity with a history of winning.

Pollsters and news outlets are looking at how the Jeremiah Wright controversy has hurt Barack Obama, and helped Hillary Clinton, in Pennsylvania. Some blogs, like Talking Points Memo, are also picking up on a new poll showing Clinton with a 16 pont edge in the state.

But Pat Dollard says the Obama campaign plans to keep campaigning in Pennsylvania, even if the results have favored them so far. The logic being that if Obama can keep the final results relatively close, Clinton will not be able to put a dent in Obama's 100 delegate edge:

For now, however, the plan is to still compete heavily in Pennsylvania, according to an Obama advisor. In past contests, the more Obama has campaigned throughout a state, the more he narrows Clinton’s lead. But recent polling shows that the opposite has been the case in Pennsylvania, so far. Pennsylvania is also a closed primary, which negates Obama’s advantage with independents.

The criticism of John McCain's foreign policy knowledge, or lack thereof, was escalated to a new level today. Talking Points Memo curator Josh Marshall offers an editorial making the bold argument that the one remaining candidate with actual military experience is the least qualified to serve as commander-in-chief:

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

While liberals would almost certainly reject this comparison, their new attack line against McCain comes from one of Karl Rove's own strategies: attack an opposing candidate on his or her perceived greatest strength. Republicans have used that to great effect against Democratic veterans like John Kerry and Max Cleland. It's not that surprising that Democrats are getting comfortable attacking McCain on his foreign policy credentials. But it's still unclear whether the public at large will agree with that criticism. But so long as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama leave the more direct attacks to people like Marshall, there's a better chance of the attack line succeeding or at least helping to solidify Democratic voters, many of whom are not instinctively comfortable going after McCain on military issues.

To have your name, or story, mentioned on Rush Limbaugh's radio show is sort of like having it mentioned on the Drudge Report. If you're a conservative, you've likely produced something that aligns with their political leanings. If you're a liberal, it's probably because you've said something they found to be outrageous.

Nation correspondent Ari Melber was on C-SPAN earlier this week discussing what he believes was a dishonest, and potentially illegal, effort by Limbaugh ("Operation Rush,") to get Republicans to crossover in the Ohio Democratic primary to vote for Hillary Clinton. Word got back to Limbaugh, and he went after Melber during yesterday's broadcast.

In politics, one of the problems with professing an expertise in anything, is that a simple misstatement or gaffe will be flipped into a sign of incompetence by your opponents. That's the case today, where liberal bloggers are all over John McCain's misstatement during a press conference in Jordan that Iran is training al Qaeda operatives and sending them back into Iraq. As was widely reported, McCain was corrected by Joe Lieberman, who is traveling with him on a foreign policy tour of the region.

Daily Kos diarist Smintheus says:

This isn't just a minor slip. This betrays a profound lack of foreign policy expertise, a shallowness so extreme that if the remark had been made by Barack Obama, say, it would have called into question his viability as a presidential candidate.

But some conservative bloggers and publications like The Weekly Standard are saying McCain was right the first time. Pointing to the 9/11 Commission report as evidence, Powerline's John Hinderaker adds:

It is the AP (and other media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times) that fails to understand the relationship between Iran and Sunni terrorists, not John McCain. The AP's statement that there is "no evidence that al-Qaida has benefited from Iranian assistance" is flatly wrong, and shows a breathtaking level of ignorance.

Edward Wasserman writes in the Miami Herald about online commenting etiquette. I do think he'd have a bit more credibility writing about the internet if he weren't still using a Hotmail account, but I guess it's not quite as bad as AOL:

In this case, the extreme license given individuals to vent, dissemble, excoriate and indulge their hates verbally, winds up destroying the expressive freedom that other people, less bold and less opinionated, need. Venturing an opinion, even a sound one, just isn't worth the risk. The overall result is a less expansive, less robust sphere of expression -- and sound, worthwhile thoughts aren't shared.

Jonathan Martin talks to GOP strategists who say the Jeremiah Wright story has now created an opening for the GOP to effectively take down Barack Obama, something they admittedly struggled with until this point. Of course, getting strategists from one party to criticize another party's candidate isn't tough work, but the sentiment is resonating in the conservative blogosphere, especially with a new Reuters poll showing McCain leading both Obama and Clinton and outside the margin or error.

Michael Goldfarb:

Obama has been fatally wounded, and yet the Democratic party superdelegates, who exist solely to prevent such a catastrophe in a close primary battle, can do nothing about it. If they hand the nomination to Clinton, the party loses the black vote, and Clinton cannot win without those votes.

Fatally wounded? That's fatally wounded logic when we're still more than seven months away from the election. Obama may prove to be an Achilles, but he could also show a sustained ability to fight back from adversity.

Reason's David Weigel makes a similar point to one I've previously made here about the lack of depth to the "Obama isn't a patriot" meme. However