Rudy just raved about the Chinese ability to get 40 nuclear power plants built. They know how to handle protest.

He admired the French too. Quelle scandale!

Romney just spoke of the health plan set up in "our state" without naming that state.

Huckabee maintains that what he really meant by Bush's "arrogance" and "bunker mentality" was "not enough troops" against "Islamofascism," and declares to Romney, “I supported the president and the war before you did.”

This isn't going to work:

"Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizes rival Barack Obama's record on abortion rights in a mailing sent to New Hampshire voters.

The mailer says that seven times during his time in the Illinois state Senate, Obama declined to take a position on abortion bills, while Clinton has been a defender of abortion rights.

During his eight years in the legislature, Obama cast a number of votes on abortion and received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive, a vote that especially riled abortion opponents."

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I first met Hillary Clinton 16 years ago in a food court in a mall in Derry, New Hampshire. Then, both of us had significantly more hair (hers kept back in a signature headband; mine actually covering my head). Then, it was her husband battling to get his presidential campaign off the ropes, and he was the center of attention.

They came to the mall that day to work the crowd. Everyone was following Bill; me and my fellow college students (one of whom is now John Edwards’ pollster) decided to ask the then-mostly unknown First Lady of Arkansas to join us for lunch. She did, and I honestly don’t remember much of what was said (I do remember that she ate a chicken salad baguette from Au Bon Pain), but I have a cool photograph to prove it happened.

That is a long way of saying that Hillary Clinton has been campaigning in New Hampshire for a long time. And as tonight’s Democratic debate looms, she is on the defensive with three days left to what may be the Clintons last campaign in the Granite State. Some early polls show that her lead is holding. But Obama has momentum, and is setting the agenda and tone of the race.

So the question on everyone’s mind here is: what can Hillary Clinton do to stop Barack Obama?

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I think I've been depressed since 11/22/1963.

Of course, I was a kid then but I don't think I've ever gotten over JFK's assassination. (Last year I went to Dallas for the first time ever and I visted Dealey Plaza the way a Catholic visits the garden of Gethesamne.

Forgive the irreverence and don't think I don't know that JFK was far from perfect.

But the fact is that until 11/22/63, it was possible to believe that this country is, in JFK's words, the "last, best hope of mankind."

I haven't believed that since. I now understand that America has done plenty of evil, more than most countries.

But America is my country and I'd rather believe in it, than not.

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One of the interesting statistics from the Iowa caucuses is how union members voted. They gave most of their votes to Obama, with Clinton coming in second and Edwards, third. Obama, who has less organized labor support than any of the top three candidates, captured the imagination of union households just as he captured the imagination of other Iowans.

Whether he can continue this trend could be key to his winning the nomination. It's something to watch as the primaries continue, but it's also something for the unions to consider.

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--The American economy is looking very dicey. The Fed will lower rates, but assets are deflating across the whole economy, led downward by housing stock. The only immediate cure for asset deflation is currency inflation. This Fed would be bold enough to apply it. But that medicine has many nasty side-effects, especially for seniors and low wage-earners.

--The government-enabled madness of Wall Street over-leveraging has collapsed, and the fall into prudence will discourage investing for many months. This Administration is incapable of assessing, much less coping with, its gross failure to do even the mild regulation that might have helped avert the calamity.

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While Concord High School looks brand new (or at least recently renovated), the gym reminds me of the gym from Back to the Future: old flannel banners line the walls, lots of iron supports criss-cross the ceiling, golden wooden bleachers flank the sides. It was a slice of Americana, and today, the second stop of the Obama campaign’s New Hampshire return.

Four years ago, I was in a different gym in some town in New Hampshire whose name escapes me to see that year’s Iowa winner, John Kerry. Then as in now, the place was packed. Then as in now, the elite of the media elite were there (Bob Schieffer, EJ Dionne, Ron Brownstein, Maureen Dowd – who bummed a stick of Orbit off of me -- Al Hunt, Rick Hertzberg, to name a few). Then as in now, everyone went to see the conquering Midwest hero.

But the differences were stark.

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A few hours after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, I happened to see an interview with a group of Pakistani university students who were part of a stunned mass of grieving people on the streets of Karachi. They all looked and sounded secular, educated and western. The reporter asked them about Bhutto's death, prospects for democracy in Pakistan, and what they thought about the United States.

They had varying opinions, arguing among themselves and cutting each other off until one young woman brought up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Of course," she said, "we all feel such rage against the United States because of what is going on in Gaza. This is something all Pakistanis feel." The others nodded vigorously in agreement.

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We interrupt the news from Iowa to bring you the following message: there’s bad news on the economic home front in the form of today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job growth stalled in December and the unemployment rate ticked up sharply. I’m afraid to say that we have an answer to the question as to when the overall economic headwinds will blow a chill on the labor market.

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It's jolly that we have a clear winner in Iowa, small as its caucuses are and arcane as their rules are. Let's consider the caucuses, for a moment, a big focus group, and (almost) leave it at that.

It's even jollier that, as the Republicans touch up the corner they've painted themselves into, the Democratic winner seems bent on pitching a big tent, knows what organizing is for and what money is for, and can lilt in preacherly cadences and talk "coming together" while showing many signs of knowing that corporate and Pentagon power will have to be confronted. Inspiration is not nothing for a transformative politics. It is very far from nothing.

So let's say, for the sake of argument, that we accept that when Obama talks about coming together, he hasn't forgotten that the "conservative" movement that bulldozed its way to collective disaster with George W. Bush has to be defeated--ringingly, enduringly defeated.

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Now that the Iowa caucuses have confirmed his position as a top tier candidate for the Republican nomination, Mike Huckabee's frighteningly slim knowledge of foreign policy actually matters. If they know anything about his views at all, most Americans have probably heard about his statement on the Don Imus radio show that "I may not know anyting about foreign policy, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night." It was a decent joke, and a good way to deflect attention from the real issue.

But the time for joking about Huckabee's lack of foreign policy expertise has passed. What does he actually think about Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and other hot button foreign policy issues? The answers are more complicated than you might expect.

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While I am still personally undecided in my own vote between Edwards and Obama, I do have to say last night's caucus showed that Obama could deliver on the promise of his organizing skills, turning his online and student forces into an effective army on caucus night that Dean notably failed to do four years ago.

As I wrote in June in Obama as Movement Builder?

Obama is working to engage a lot of folks in movement building who are not the "low hanging" fruit of available activists, including the netroots.

The payoff from those organizational skills were obvious last night but the deeper significance could be a realignment of a whole range of voters into the progressive column, not just in November but over time.

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Yes, we are an Obama family, and for those who need or want to know:

Nate Hundt, field organizer in Algona, Iowa, reports that his area delivered 50% of its delegates to Obama, 25% to Edwards, 25% to Clinton.

Betsy Hundt, his mother, spent the last few days knocking on doors, making calls, baking cookies, and perhaps doing some laundry.

Best friend Alex K is present, working, and well accounted for.

A family affair.

Just for those who wanted or needed to know.

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No doubt Chris Matthews thinks he's giving voice to his robust internationalism, his ecumenical spirit, and his understanding of how intently the wider world turns its lonely eyes to Iowa, when he touts tonight's putative Democratic winner, a "son of Kenya" with "Third World" cred, as "Barack Hussain Obama." I can't know what's in his heart, let alone his mind, but could it be that the rise of this man plain weirds him out?

Do we hear him, or anyone speak, of Michael Dale Huckabee, John Sidney McCain, or Willard Mitt Romney?

Iowa winnows the field; New Hampshire tests front-runners.

That is the conclusion of Northeastern’s William Mayer after studying the history of the two contests, and this year is no different.

The Obama victory is big news, but everyone needs to take a deep breath. Not every year is 2004, where John Kerry’s victory in Iowa led to him quickly running the table.

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From the Los Angeles Times:

"After nearly seven years in the White House, President Bush has named 294 judges to the federal courts, giving Republican appointees a solid majority of the seats, including a 60%-to-40% edge over Democrats on the influential U.S. appeals courts."

What's more, by and large these appointees are movement conservatives. The Bush Administration has done a far better job being politically astute and ideological in its nominations to the judiciary than any Administration since Johnson.

At the same time the Chief Justice is leading an effort to increase substantially the pay of judges. The non-transparent thinking is that ideologically fervent judges can apply their philosophy to cases, as opposed to teaching in law schools. But in law schools they are paid a lot more. So the Chief Justice wants to even out the incentives.

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After thoroughly embarrassing myself four years ago by predicting a Dean-Clark footrace for the Democratic nomination, I have decided not to take up Andrew’s call for predictions.

But like all elections, what you predict is based on the classic choice – future vs. past. And the question any prognosticator must ask themself today is: Will turnout for the Iowa Caucuses conform to the trends we have seen for three decades or does this year’s contest represent a break from business-as-usual?

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Honest to god, I have no idea what's going to happen today. On either side.

But maybe you all have some wisdom (or just idle speculation) you'd like to share.

This, my friends, is a Prediction Thread!

National City Corp, Ohio's largest bank, announced today that it will eliminate 900 jobs in the weeks ahead. The company now expects to make only half as many home loans as it once projected and is responding accordingly.

Although all eyes are now on the Iowa caucuses, this is an interesting development in the state that settled the 2004 general election and may well settle the 2008 one. How will all those voters affected by the subprime meltdown -- laid-off bank employees, foreclosed-on families, frustrated home sellers, reeling stock owners, and so on -- respond in the voting booth? Who should they blame, and who will they? These are interesting questions to think about with the start of the new year.

I have yet to see a public comment from either Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or President Bush about the murder of U.S. AID official John Granville in Sudan. US Agency for International Development Henrietta Fore did release this statement -- but Granville's death deserves more extensive attention from our leaders.

I've also done a cursory search of news wires and blogs and have seen no public comment from any of the Democratic or Republican contenders about this death. Nothing from Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, Paul, or any of the rest. If I'm wrong, I would be happy to post any links from commentary made by the candidates.

According to reports, Granville was helping to "distribute 450,000 radios equipped with generator cranks and solar panels, which work in places with no electricity."

Granville served for two years in Cameroon for the Peace Corps and had been in Africa for the last ten years. He represents the kind of person on the front line of American soft power that we can and should feel proud of.

But thus far, there is mostly silence from official quarters and candidates about his work, his life, and his murder. This is a dangerous world -- but while I think that soldiers who fight and fall and/or are injured or maimed should receive their country's support and salute (even though they are on a mission today that they should not be on in Iraq), it is just as important -- perhaps even more so -- to pay tribute to those diplomats, foreign service personnel, USIA, and US AID officials who also pay the ultimate price on behalf of not only their country but for the important causes and people abroad they were serving.

But why the silence?

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Bill Clinton may have run a dandy domestic policy during his first term, but his foreign policy was a bust. Somalia and Rwanda were two of his worst moments. The appointments of Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense and James Woolsey as Director of CIA, in retrospect, were busts. And then there was the debacle of National Security Adviser Tony Lake (who so happens to be Obama’s foreign policy guru) who reprised the role of Nero and fiddled while Rwanda was consumed in an inferno of ethnic cleansing.

Barack Obama may be scoring some debating points when he quotes Bill Clinton defending himself against charges that he lacked experience to run for President (e.g., “The same old experience is not relevant: You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience,“) But the question of experience in organizing and managing a foreign policy team is relevant. Can we afford the learning curve of foreign policy naif like Obama? History tells us no. (For more on the Hillary vs. Bill re Rwanda please read this AFP article.)

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Well, tonight's the night. Not just the last night of 2007 but also the day when the first annual Golden Dukes were announced. Haven't heard who won yet? See the results in today's episode of TPMtv or see find out who won here.

"a serious, respected conservative intellectual" - that is the description of Bill Kristol provided by the NYT editorial page editor.

Intellectual? That implies some familiarity with ideas -- real ideas, not slogans from the RNC.

Respected? By whom. It's hard to imagine.

Serious? If by that we mean, wrong about everything important in America, then he's serious.

I just don't understand what the Times is thinking.

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That’s a reasonable question for voters to ask as they go to the polls in the Democratic primaries over the next month or two. The next president will almost certainly face a weak economy in 2009, if not an actual recession, which means that their economic agenda should be front and center in voters’ minds.

The candidates have been sufficiently vague on economic issues that it is not always easy to draw clear distinctions between the paths that they will likely pursue based on their public pronouncements. When you can’t determine policy from public statements, it is sometimes best to determine policy by public figures.

In the case of Senators Clinton and Obama, the prospect that former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin would have substantial influence on their administrations should cause concern for serious progressives. This is an especially big problem with a recession looming on the horizon.

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Will Hillary Clinton really keep stroking the most anti-Castro crazed elder generation of Miami's Cuban-American community? Or will she look at the demographic and polling data that show that most Cuban-Americans want a new course in US-Cuba relations, particularly with regard to travel to and from Cuba for Cuban-American families?

Some near Hillary Clinton tell me that given Fidel Castro's recent hint that he is moving from the front line of Cuba's political machine to a row further back (or up) in order to make way for a new generation of leaders, she is considering a full-scale policy review of her stated US-Cuba policy (i.e., potentially changing her position away from embracing the Bush administration's direction in US-Cuba relations).

This would be good -- but the bottom line is that we are forced to guess about what she might do and don't have certainty about what she will do.

Will Barack Obama tilt more towards campaign advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's vision of tough-minded calculation of how to re-sculpt America's place in the world or will he tilt more towards the priorities of his other campaign advisor Anthony Lake?

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