John McCain’s new campaign slogan.

8:32 PM - Obama is on a roll. So far the debate has been a wonky debate about policy. Hillary as usual is doing well, but Barack is doing just as well, and is showing he can hang with Hillary when it comes to policy details.

Both of them are scoring huge points taking shots at Republicans, and Obama just had a zinger about John McCain’s flip-flop on Bush’s tax cuts.

Hillary’s advantage is experience, but just listening to the debate they both look like they have the knowledge and experience to do the job. This blunts her best argument.

8:40 PM - Obama hits it out of the park, saying immigrants should not be used as scapegoats for black unemployment. The crowd loved it and this will win him points with Latino voters.

9:10 PM - Hillary scores some good points ragging on Bush. The questions have drifted away from policy.

9:31 PM - Obama is crushing her on the issue of the Iraq War, and he’s also demostrating he will be able to handle McCain on this issue. Hillary’s statements defending her vote border on the ridiculous. Wolf Blitzer hammered her and called her naive.

9:48 PM - It ends with a love-fest. I think Barack won this one.

Ted Kennedy was a guest on the most popular Spanish language radio show in LA campaigning for brack Obama. Read the story to see the magnitude of this support.

I won’t bother quoting entertainer Rush Limbaugh.

Instead, here’s a column by Mark Levin from the National Review.

Even worse than denying his own record, McCain is flatly lying about Romney’s position on Iraq. As has been discussed for nearly a week now, Romney did not support a specific date to withdraw our forces from Iraq. The evidence is irrefutable. And it’s also irrefutable that McCain is abusing the English language (Romney’s statements) the way Bill Clinton did in front of a grand jury. The problem is that once called on it by everyone from the New York Times to me, he obstinately refuses to admit the truth. So, last night, he lied about it again. This isn’t open to interpretation. But it does give us a window into who he is.

Of course, it’s one thing to overlook one or two issues where a candidate seeking the Republican nomination as a conservative might depart from conservative orthodoxy. But in McCain’s case, adherence is the exception to the rule — McCain-Feingold (restrictions on political speech), McCain-Kennedy (amnesty for illegal aliens), McCain-Kennedy-Edwards (trial lawyers’ bill of rights), McCain-Lieberman (global warming legislation), Gang of 14 (obstructing change to the filibuster rule for judicial nominations), the Bush tax cuts, and so forth. This is a record any liberal Democrat would proudly run on. Are we to overlook this record when selecting a Republican nominee to carry our message in the general election?

The national polls show a dead heat between McCain and Romney, so I’m not writing Romney off just yet.

Peretz asks a simple question - can friends of Israel–and Jews–trust Obama? His answer is yes.

Peretz is very influencial in the Jewish community, so this column will be very helpful to Obama.

Regarding the presidency, historian Robert Dalleck explains why judgement always trumps experience.

Looks like he’ll have enough money to compete on Super Tuesday.

Lincoln Chafee, former Republican Senator from Rhode Island, discusses the vote t authorize the Iraq War in his new book:

“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee…

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

Exactly. In my view Hillary’s war vote is a deal breaker. The fact that she stuck by that vote for years when it was obvious to everyone that the war was a tragic mistake only compounds her error.

I’m looking forward to seeing Chafee hit the talk shows and explain his disdain for Democrats who supported this war.

I wasn’t impressed with John McCain’s performance in tonight’s GOP debate. Just like he did on Meet the Press last week, McCain ducked questions and was presented with sevral contradictions in his explanations for his votes.

If he gets the nomination he will be tough to beat given his appeal to moderates and independents, but his appeal might fade if he keeps this up.

The national Gallup tracking poll now has Obama trailing Clinton by just 6 points.

Barack Obama has now cut the gap with Hillary Clinton to 6 percentage points among Democrats nationally in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking three-day average, and interviewing conducted Tuesday night shows the gap between the two candidates is within a few points. Obama’s position has been strengthening on a day-by-day basis. As recently as Jan. 18-20, Clinton led Obama by 20 points. Today’s Gallup Poll Daily tracking is based on interviews conducted Jan. 27-29, all after Obama’s overwhelming victory in South Carolina on Saturday. Two out of the three nights interviewing were conducted after the high-visibility endorsement of Obama by Sen. Edward Kennedy and his niece Caroline Kennedy.

UPDATE - Obama is also within six points in Massachusetts in the new Rasmussen poll. Last week he was down 37 points in a separate poll! Looks like the Kennedy endorsement made an impact.

Huge win for McCain. Bad news for Democrats.

During his tenure as mayor of New York, I was a huge fan of Giuliani. Liberals hated him, and there were certainly areas where he deserved criticism, but I was amazed by the positive changes in New York City.

Everything changed after 9/11. Sure, Giuliani exhibited grace under pressure, but the idea that his perfomance translated to real foreign experience was always ridiculous. The Giuliani image was just as hyped up as the fear being peddled by the Bush Administration.

Giuliani bought into the hype. He campaigned hard for George Bush in 2004, going so far as to make the most idiotic comparison in political history when he compared George Bush to Winston Churchill. At that point it became obvious to me that Giuliani either had no clue about what was right for America or he was just another cynical and self-interested politician who was latching on to the popular cause of the day.

Many are blaming his strange strategy regarding the primaries for his loss. Obviously, it was a dumb strategy, but the real problem was Giuliani and his positions. His support for the failed Bush policies and his non-stop references to 9/11 just didn’t cut it with an electorate that had been fooled twice by Bush. The revelations of his bizarre personal life didn’t help as well.

He’s a social liberal who was running in a party that catered to the religious right. He claimed he would appoint “strict-constructionist” judges, though he was never able to explain how this was consistent with his own positions. I never agree with the religious right, but I respect those in that camp who refused to support Giuliani. He wasn’t one of them and they didn’t believe his B.S.

Rudy was a flawed candidate, and I’m not surprised his support collapsed once the GOP voters took a closer look.

The New York Times profile of Howard Wolfson rings true now that we’ve seen the deplorable campaign being run by the Clintons.

In many ways, Mr. Wolfson’s bare-knuckle brand of politics is reminiscent of the tactics of Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser — and a man whose skills Mr. Wolfson admits to admiring. While other Democrats tend to run campaigns that largely focus on issues, Mr. Wolfson is more than willing to make an opponent’s character the central theme of a race.

Is this the genius who decided to run an ad in South Carolina basically saying Barack Obama supported Reagan’s agenda just becuase Obama said Reagan had a transformative presidency?

This kind of crap will continue to dominate our politics until the voters finally reject candidates like Hillary Clinton to hire hatchet men like Wolfson.

Barack Obama has raised over $5 million online since his win in South Carolina. This will enable him to air ads in all the February 5th states.

The Clintons only care about winning, and they’ve been more than happy to use race in the past. Hitchens nails it.

They’re giving him way too much material to work with. George Will has had nothing but contempt for the Clintons for years, but now they seem to be determined to prove him right.

Then, last week, came the radio ad that even South Carolinians, who are not squeamish about bite-and-gouge politics, thought was one brick over a load, and that the Clintons withdrew. It was the one that said Obama endorsed Republican ideas (because he said Republicans had some ideas). The Clinton campaign also accused Obama of praising Ronald Reagan (because Obama noted the stark fact that Reagan had changed the country’s trajectory more than some other recent presidents — hello, Bill — had done).

The actions of Bill and Hillary Clinton in South Carolina should go down as one of the most pathetic political performances in history. He threw away what was left of his reputation, and she may have thrown away her chance at the presidency.

This is quite a story:

In his command of the US political stage over the past year, Barack Obama has inspired many a comparison to John F Kennedy. Both young senators brought a lofty message, an appealing young family and a movie-star aura to the presidential race. But the two men forged a less known link - before Obama was even born.

The bond began with Kenyan labour leader Tom Mboya, an advocate for African nationalism who helped his country gain independence in 1963. In the late 1950s, Mboya was seeking support for a scholarship program that would send Kenyan students to US colleges - similar to other exchanges the US backed in developing nations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mboya appealed to the state department. When that trail went cold, he turned to then-senator Kennedy. Kennedy, who chaired the senate subcommittee on Africa, arranged a $100,000 grant through his family’s foundation to help Mboya keep the program running.

Baghdad has less violence than before, but things are heating up in Mosul. Five American soldiers were killed recently, and ABC News is reporting that the city of $2 million has become “insurgent central” in Iraq - al-Qaeda’s base of money and foreign fighters.

The surge has reduce violence in areas where we have concentrated more troops. Still, there is no way our army can keep the entire country safe.

The President of New York’s chapter of NOW is not happy with Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama.

Here’s one of her past statements:

Psychological Gang Bang of Hillary is Proof We Need a Woman President

Between 2000 and 2006, earmarks exloded in the federal budget, as the Republican Congress and President Bush made a mockery of their small-government claims. Now that the Democrats are running Congress, Bush has suddenly found religion on earmarks.

This is just cynical politics.