The Dish

With almost comic timing, he endorses Huckabee. Do these people not see how absurd it is that they represent in any way the message of the Gospels?

Couldn’t agree more:

Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It’s not one big primary, it’s a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she’s funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn’t have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he’s played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.

A reader writes:

For what it’s worth, my theory about the strategy behind the tears in New Hampshire, moist eyes in New Haven, and the whole act of appearing cash-strapped after Super Tuesday is not that these acts themselves will inspire sympathy among voters. Rather, her campaign is trying to bait the media into pronouncing Hillary "over" and THAT will inspire a backlash among voters who feel that Hillary is being treated unfairly.

The media took the bait in New Hampshire, but not in New Haven, and I think they swallowed the $5 million loan story as well.

And I did too, dammit.

Why are people expecting him to win there? The demographics are decidedly Clintonian:

Maine’s white Democrats are disproportionately ethnic and working-class—demographic groups critical to Clinton’s triumphs in New Jersey and Massachusetts. They’ve tended to dominate Democratic primaries, as well. In 1996, former governor and congressman Joe Brennan ran for the Senate—fresh off not one but two losing campaigns for governor (1990 and 1994). It was clear that he had no chance of victory if he were nominated, but he prevailed anyway, thanks to overwhelming backing from older voters and French-American voters in the Lewiston-Auburn area. (Brennan then lost in the fall to Susan Collins.) Six years later, the reformist state senator who had lost to Brennan, Sean Faircloth, ran for the seat vacated by Baldacci; despite attracting the endorsement of the 2nd district’s most famous resident, Stephen King, Faircloth lost the primary to Mike Michaud, a pro-life Democrat and former millworker. Michaud endorsed John Edwards for President; he hasn’t made a new endorsement. (The state’s other congressman, Tom Allen, is running for the Senate, and has said he will remain neutral in the primary.)

The Republicans should be worried if this is the future of campaign fundraising. Ezra Klein elaborates:

I don’t actually think Barack Obama’s remarkable advantage in small-donor fundraising is all that inexplicable. As a Dean Campaign alumn, I’m contractually required to believe that raising tens of millions from small donors is an internet-based phenomenon … Obama’s site gets way more traffic than Clinton’s (and both get way more traffic than McCain’s — he’s that little mustard colored line near the base of the graph). And with way more web traffic comes a way larger e-mail list, and with a way larger e-mail list comes more donors who eventually succumb to a fundraising appeal and donate $20, and when they do that, it becomes far more likely that they’ll do it again, as now they’re invested in the campaign. Add in that a pretty high percentage of Obama’s voters are fervent backers, rather than soft supporters, and you have a recipe for some impressive fundraising.

Matt adds:

Obama beating Clinton this badly is pretty much expected — it falls out from the differing demographics of their bases with Obama doing better among younger people, better educated people, and wealthier people, all webbier groups. John McCain’s pathetic performance seems noteworthy — is he just exclusively the candidate of the elderly?

Harnessing the energy of you: 

Scientists have created a three-and-a-half pound knee brace that converts the power of your leg muscles into the energy for your electronics. By using the same principle that charges hybrid cars, the team of physiologists and robotics specialists say that their device can generate five watts of power without requiring additional human effort.

Abe Greenwald thinks not:

John McCain has said many times (including, once, to me) that he’s looking for a strong national security vice president. He’d have an impossible time defending his choice of the man who didn’t know of the existence of the NIE on Iran. The compulsion to over-strategize in speculating about the McCain campaign has grown directly out of the Limbaugh-right’s insistence that McCain is embattled within the party. And in a national election, few evangelicals are going to pull the lever for Hillary or Obama over him. But if, after running almost entirely on national security, he hitched himself to a foreign policy ignoramus like Huckabee, he may first face detractors en masse.

A sentence to savor:

Voter discontent with Iraq (which has been abating of late) aside, people like a Commander-in-Chief who acts like a Commander-in-Chief, not one who will have tea with Hugo Chavez.

I’m a fan of Patrick’s, but really. Iraq aside? And talking to hostile foreign leaders is not always a sign of weakness. Did Reagan become a liberal when he talked with Gorbachev?