"I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama." - Top John McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon on February 13, explaining why he would leave the Republican's campaign if Obama became the Democratic nominee.

Respected Democratic political scientist John B. Judis has an article in The New Republic which seems to say that Barack Obama surely cannot win the presidency against John McCain -- especially after his San Francisco comments.

To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry...

Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous final speech in Memphis, Tennessee. The one in which he stood on the mountaintop at end of his life's journey, looked back to valley of what had been and surveyed what was yet to come.

Behind was a life...

BOSTON - Some 15 long, acrimonious months into the historic 2008 presidential race, and you'd think most Democrats would only come together to celebrate the end of a campaign.

But on Sunday, a group came together at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for a conference commemorating the passing...

It isn't news until it hits the New York Times. This morning, I read Barack Obama is a plagiarist -- ripping off Deval Patrick, of all people!

I found it amusing: not because of the accusation, but because of a role reversal in who was plagiarizing who.

My perspective on...

Gloria Steinem has an op-ed in today's New York Times, explaining why a female version of Barack Obama would never make it in the eyes of the American public.

But Steinem, a Clinton supporter, makes a big slip that the Times failed to catch.

What worries me is that...

Roughly 52 percent of Dem caucusgoers picked "can bring about needed change" as the most important personal quality of a nominee.

One of the key gripes some Democrats have against the Clinton's politics is that they take on a softer form of their opponent's message in hopes of neutralizing it....

Last night in the HRC/LOGO Forum, John Edwards was asked about the alleged "I'm not comfortable around those people" statement recalled in Bob Shrum's No Excuses, widely reported as it was one of the main teasers during the book's promotion.

But why wasn't Hillary Clinton asked about Shrum's contention...

Hats off to New Jersey Assemblyman and candidate for State Senate, Bill Baroni. Not only has this Republican won in a Democratic-majority legislative district and been touted as the future of New Jersey's embattled GOP, but he's gotten himself a healthier lifestyle -- and an ad campaign.

Via Political Wire, North Carolina's House is expected to pass a bill to assign Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than the winner-take-all system, which is in place everywhere except for Maine and Nebraska. The bill almost guarantees that the 2008 Democratic nominee peels off reliably Republican...

From Jerome Armstrong's diary, 'Hillary's race to lose':

In Obama latest, he sent me an email titled, "What a movement looks like?" His campaign probably didn't notice the slip, but it's an obvious truth--that adding that "?" in the title. Maybe, he thinks, he's in one... maybe not... who can...

In Washington and New Hampshire, state governments have recently decided to bring same sex couples one step closer to equal recognition under the law, through domestic partnerships and civil unions (hopefully). But take heed: in the two months since civil unions were enacted here in New Jersey,...

"Her timing speaks for itself," Alabama Congressman Artur Davis said of Hillary Clinton, after she apparently followed Barack Obama down to Selma last week. Clinton accepted her speaking engagement in the city shortly after Obama had publicized he would attend a commemoration of the Bloody Sunday march, and Davis...

I was 18 when I picked up a secondhand paperback copy of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Robert Kennedy and His Times. It was given to me by a professor cleaning out her office -- a spare copy she had from a class about great American biographies. Its slightly cracked spine said...

People for the American Way has obtained a strategy memo from the Alliance For Marriage (AFM), a rightwing organization intent on cultivating a "fifty state strategy" against marriage equality. AFM says they're fighting an "historic struggle" to beat back the "acceleration" of marriage equality on the state level by...

For the better part of this decade, Americans have been falling all over themselves for books on the Founders. The New York Times took note of the best-selling trend in the summer of '04. They quoted historian H. W. Brands as saying, ''When the country is divided along cultural,...

BOSTON -- In honor of President's Day, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum gathered a panel of former presidential speechwriters to discuss what it's like to write for the chief executive. There was Nixon's Ray Price, Bush 41's Chriss Winston, and Clinton's Ted Widmer. But the big...

Al Franken launched his announcement video yesterday, and it's great. He even incorporated one of the best parts of his book, The Truth (with jokes). No, not the hilarious Rumsfeld-overuses-rhetorical-questions routine, but when he talks about his wife's family, government, and progressives' promise to America.

The story goes...

Over at Blue Jersey, we've just learned that tomorrow, Senators Chris Dodd and Bob Menendez will introduce legislation banning torture. The bill, titled The Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007, will restore habeus corpus rights, ban torture and uphold the Geneva Conventions.

You may recall...

It was late spring of 1966, and three intellectual giants of the Kennedy adminstration, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Richard Goodwin, and the late John Kenneth Galbraith discussed the Vietnam war over lunch in New York. Goodwin made the most salient remarks about the current state of debate, as Schlesinger recalls in...