The Left Anchor

The Wall Street Journal
Icelanders flatly rejected a deal to return to the UK and Holland 3,900 million (U.S. $ 5,300 million) lost in the collapse of an Internet bank in the country, complicating the efforts of the island to access international financing needed to normalize relations with the rest of the country.
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I’ve made no secret of my distaste for Hillary Clinton’s two senior advisers, Mark Penn and Harold Ickes. Neither of them ever had a good bead on what this race was going to be about (despite Penn’s reputation as a great pollster) and both of them contributed rhetoric to the race that could only serve to damage their candidate. And even though we’re still a few days away from March 4, the finger pointing inside the campaign has begun to escalate as senior staffers each try to shift blame to one another for their candidate’s flailing campaign. The New York Observer has a piece out today with a straight-forward title: Ickes: Blame Penn.
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Time published a piece this week which takes a look at Obama’s grassroots operation in Ohio. Obama’s ground game has been a key element of his startlingly large margins of victory. I wrote some more about this here after a Wall Street Journal article last month which examined his ground game in South Carolina. The author of the piece noted how Obama was skirting around the typical avenues to organizing because Clinton had all the establishment endorsements. The article was published pre-South Carolina, and at the time, there was still some question at just how influential those establishment leaders in the black community would prove to be. This answer was “not very,” and Obama rode on to an overwhelming victory.
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I stay up nights waiting to be able to put up a really nice pro-Clinton story. But they just don’t seem to come around that often. Today, sadly, is no exception. The New York Times is reporting that Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a man known for his tireless efforts in the pursuit of civil rights, is pulling his support from Clinton and going to Obama.

“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”
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Just in January. Haven’t seen Clinton’s numbers. I’m sure they’re formidable as well.

Ah, poor Rudy Giuliani. America’s Mayor. The tough-talking city boy with an out-sized ego and malnourished intellect. Tied for third with Mike Huckabee in Florida. Florida, he would tell us so often, will change everything. Now he trails the front runners there, John McCain and Mitt Romney, by 15 points.
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Barack Obama is up 55-27 over Hillary Clinton with 93% of precincts reporting. A few of the counties with only a few precincts reported — Chester, Hampton & Richland counties, most notably — contain far high numbers of black citizens than the counties which have reported their votes, and far higher concentrations of blacks than the overall state average. Hampton and Chester are both about 45-50% black, so Obama will probably edge up a couple more points before it’s over.
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