Caroline Kennedy was big, but I think the fact that Ted Kennedy endorsed him also is huge. Ted almost never endorses someone in the primary. The theme of Ted Kennedy’s speech at American University, and of Caroline Kennedy’s Times op-ed, is that Obama is John F. Kennedy’s political heir. It is pretty easy to see Ted’s attacks on 42 with lines like: we have to “to turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.” I was personally more moved by Caroline:

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

Toni Morrison has added her endorsement to Obama’s collection as well. The Nobel Prize-winning author and Princeton professor wrote a letter to Obama explaining her decision, saying that “in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.”

And, since it matters to me, “Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) will deliver the Democratic response to the State of the Union on Monday. And then Tuesday or Wednesday, she plans to endorse Barack Obama, numerous Democratic sources said.”

But as I will be the first to admit, the big question is whether Obama can have a large enough showing in NY, NJ and CA. If not none of this will matter.

I have decided to blog a little bit in the run up to Feb 5th and then see where we are. Gary is a pretty ardent Hillary Supporter, I am a pretty ardent Obama supporter. So, things might be interested.

I would like to start with a quotation from The Super Tuesday Strategy Guide by Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin:

Hillary Clinton: The proportional-delegate system doesn’t help the national front-runner because she can’t rack up a commanding delegate lead. So, for Clinton, Feb. 5 is about maximizing her advantage in states that already favor her. She owns the tristate delegate behemoth of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (468 delegates total). Plus, Arkansas (47) still remembers her as their First Lady before she became the country’s. She polls favorably—and Obama polls poorly—among Latinos, which means that Arizona and New Mexico (105 delegates total) are friendly states thanks to their 25 percent-plus Hispanic population, but Obama won’t cede those votes. The Latino-factor also helps her in California (441) where she already polls well, but she’ll need to spend considerable time there to fight back against Obama’s made-for-Hollywood life story.

States to tackle: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Massachusetts
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York

Barack Obama: Nationwide, Obama hopes to combat Hillary’s name-recognition with his own star power. Besides blitzing the national media, he’ll probably start with his home base, Illinois (185 delegates), and focus on states with caucuses like Kansas (41) and Minnesota (88), where he might repeat his Iowa victory, and open primaries in which Independents and Republicans can vote as well. Obama should also tackle purple states in which Democrats normally fare poorly, such as Colorado (71) and Missouri (88), to draw out Hillary-hating indies. Independents can also vote in the day’s biggest prize, California (441), although Hillary has an edge in Golden State polls. The other grand prize, New York (281), is also Clinton country, but Obama will likely try to foment an uprising in the Big Apple—a victory there would make for giddy headlines—and leave the boonies to Hillary.  

States to tackle: Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, California, New York
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Delaware  

John Edwards: Assuming John Edwards stays in the race through Feb. 5, he’ll have to find a way to play kingmaker with his delegates. That means concentrating on states where he can pull in at least 15 percent of the vote, which is the Democrats’ threshold to receive delegates. He should concentrate on the South to capture the white vote that Obama doesn’t grab and Clinton doesn’t compete for. He already has roots in Georgia and could do well in Alabama and Tennessee (248 delegates total). From there, he can look to his strong second-place finishes in 2004 for inspiration. Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah (164 delegates total) all leaned toward Edwards in 2004, and could do so again. There probably won’t be room for him in California or New York (722 delegates total), but squeezing any delegates out of those two would add a few jewels to the crown.

States to tackle: Alabama, California, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah
States to ignore: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, New York, New Jersey

The London terror plot and the Scotland car bomb attack of the past few days are clearly the “top stories” for the weekend, as the media plays on the fear of Americans and reminds us that terrorism is still a threat in the US. But that’s not all. Fox News and top Republican presidential candidates have reminded us what UK terror is “really” about: immigration.

The self-proclaimed “terrorism expert” Rudy Giuliani has already jumped on the UK incidents as an indication of the need for tighter national security in the US, including the obligatory pouring of even more resources into the patrol efforts on the US-Mexico border. One might recall the days when Giuliani enjoyed the contributions of undocumented immigrants in NYC, and prohibited police officers from questioning about immigration status.

This morning on Fox & Friends, a “fair and balanced” debate was held about the UK terror plot/attack. When a political analyst suggested that both Giuliani and Hillary Clinton could use these incidents to their political advantage, the other guest, a Newsday columnist, quickly responded that Hillary and her fellow proponents of “amnesty,” “multilingualism,” and “multiculturalism,” are essentially the reason why terror happens, a very misguided argument in my view.

At this point, the Republicans will do just about anything to conflate immigration with terrorism. Perhaps the most irrational of these arguments thus far has come from likely Republican candidate Fred Thompson, who has even found a way to bring a Latino group under the banner of “potential terrorists.”

Thompson spoke about undocumented immigration through the Mexican border at a campaign stop last week, strangely focusing on Cuban exiles as cause for alarm, despite the fact that Cubans who arrive in the United States, under the law, are not undocumented. He said,

“If they’re coming from Cuba, where else are they coming from? And I don’t imagine they’re coming here to bring greetings from Castro. We’re living in the era of the suitcase bomb. We can’t be talking seriously about national security while that’s going on.” (Watch here.)

Who is next? Under this view, Venezuelan immigrants would surely be viewed in the same way. What about Chinese immigrants? Or will migrants from any left-learning, Islamic or otherwise “enemy nation” be viewed as spies and terrorists before they are treated as refugees?

The assumption that Cuban exiles are coming to attack the United States, rather than to flee Castro’s rule is actually counterproductive to the Republican ideology regarding Cuba, which first generation Cuban Americans overwhelmingly support.

Hillary smartly condemned his comments. Let’s hope Miami does as well. Although Cuban Americans have a history of rejecting new arrivals from the island, let alone from elsewhere in Latin America, hopefully they will recognize the systematic efforts by Republicans to bring a “criminal” and now even “terrorist” association with being a Latino immigrant in the United States.

Although Hillary Clinton is “a frontrunner in early polling,” but that “won’t be enough to capture an early endorsement from either of the two umbrella organizations representing most labor unions.” Labor officials “say it may benefit them to delay an endorsement to maximize their ability to influence issues the candidates talk about.” Obama and Edwards officials have “indicated they’ll be happy if most labor unions withhold institutional endorsements because that would prevent Clinton from developing a runaway lead.”

Political Wire has this story coming in from Stuart Rothenberg:

Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who narrowly lost a 2002 Senate race against Republican John Sununu, has reversed her earlier decision against running next year and, after a heavy recruiting effort by many Democrats, including Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, appears to be leaning toward a re-match with Sununu. Insiders stress that Shaheen has not made a final decision, but they agree that the betting at the Harvard Institute of Politics, where she is the director, and in savvy political circles in New Hampshire, is that she is now likely to enter the Senate race. In Nebraska, former Senator (and former Governor) Bob Kerrey also appears to be inching toward entering the state’s Senate contest, assuming that incumbent Senator Chuck Hagel (R) decides not to seek reelection. Kerrey would not challenge Hagel if the Republican decides to seek another term, which many think is not likely.

Kerrey of course is a former rockstar in the Democratic Party, and a rival of Bill Clinton in 1992 for the nomination. He is immensely popular in the state, and if Hagel steps down he would most likely win the election. However, all polling seems to indicate that if Hagel remains the seat will be safe for Republicans.

New Hampshire is an entirely different story with Sununu being one of the last federally elected Republicans in the region. 2006 was the start of a New England realignment and with Shaheen running, the vulnerable Senator could definitely fall. In the last time the two faced off Sununu won by only 18,817 votes in a solidly Republican aligning year.

This is huge, over from Black Box Voting Forums. A test election held in Florida allowed hackers to completley change the election requiring only the same kind of access needed by volunteer poll workers all over the country

.Finnish security expert Harri Hursti, together with Black Box Voting, demonstrated that Diebold made misrepresentations to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the “memory card” (the credit-card-sized ballot box used by computerized voting machines. A test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday with a total of eight ballots. Six ballots voted “no” on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted “yes” indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked. At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A “zero report” was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes. The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied “ender card” was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine. Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6 However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1

Time to dump these machines.

I just wanted to follow up on Gary’s post from this morning. With no references, I think that both primary fields are going to be very crowded in 2008. For the democrats I think Clark, Vilsack, Clinton, Warner (Gov of Virginia), Richardson, Biden and Edwards are all possibilities. For the Republicans I think Geroge Allen, Frist, Santorum, Romney, McCain, Cheney, Giuliani and Pataki are all likely. Clearly both fields would include a lot of people I do not know and I could be wrong on any individual candidate. However, there are no clear frontrunners and I predict a fun primary season.

Also, to follow up on the ID post earlier, Slate had a good article worth reading today.

At a recent lecture regarding the Nixon scandal and the Iraq War, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward speculated that Dick Cheney might run for the Republican nomination. He did so in response to an audience question, Woodward points out that:

“He would be 67 if he ran and was elected. Reagan was 69. Republicans always like the old warhorse. … Nixon was 68,” said Woodward, best known for exposing the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. “Both parties like to nominate vice presidents. … Cheney would do it, and I think it’s highly likely, so stay tuned.”

I admit it’d be interesting to see in what direction Cheney goes, would he embrace the Christian right as the current President has been taking to, or instead retreat to tactics used by Reagan and Bush I, mainly using them for elections only.

I personally believe it’s worth watching, amid all the talk of people like Santorum, Frist, and McCain running, people are largely discounting the Vice President, and underestimation is almost always a mistake.