News Digest, 2/5/08: Today is Super Tuesday

The national polls show that no one is quite sure what the balance of today's vote will be on the Democratic side, while pundits portend that it is all over but the crying for the GOP and that McCain is their guy. Are you ready for Super Tuesday?

Speaking of those polls, does it seem to you like suddenly there were way more than four or five polls to keep track of? That's for good reason. Suddenly, polling from over 20 states became directly relevant to everyone's life. You'll hear plenty about them today, and what's more is that you'll hear plenty about them if any of them end up being violently wrong. That's a real possibility in states where things are close due to the chronological disparity between when polls are conducted and what they say during the span of time during which early voting is conducted.

What is almost assured of being a huge story after today's festivities is whether the delegates in Michigan and Florida will count. There is a stirring among current civil rights leaders in favor of seating those delegates, and they have been letting their feelings be known.

In more on the Democratic side, yesterday was mostly full of campaigning without a great deal of new stories. Of note was the release of Senator Clinton's January fundraising totals by Terry McAuliffe during an interview on MSNBC, which he said was $13 million or so. That's a big revelation relative to Obama's finance totals, which he reported last week to be some $32 million.

The other big reveal was a strategy reveal from David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. He has started to dampen expectations a little in response to stories about some serious upward trending in the polls for his guy. The idea, I'm guessing, is to try and prevent the media from forecasting massive upsets for Obama in case he merely performs well rather than extraordinarily well. The message is that it won't be decided today, and that this is about delegates, and if they come within a hundred delegates of Clinton, they will feel like they had a good day.

On the GOP side, Romney suffered a little for taking credit for an economic renaissance in Massachusetts, which may not have played out exactly as he's been describing it. McCain stretched his legs and started walking around in the shoes of the front-runner, and the media began discussing how he became the nominee before Super Tuesday even happened. Apparently, it is because of his personality. Or something.

Speaking of McCain, an interesting (albeit small) work about Perry's endorsement of Giuliani and then McCain and how the conservative base is likely to react in the long term inspired some interesting discussion about Republican voters as rational actors. If you're into that sort of thing, you can get into it here.

Chris Bell spent some time in a recent column examining the modern flip-flop in politics and how politicians sometimes change their minds for valid reasons, and sometimes snap to for political expediency. I also took a brief peek under the hood of Bush's budget proposal and determined that cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in favor of permanent tax welfare for the wealthy shows the priorities of the GOP.

Stay with us throughout the day for updates, opinion, news and analysis, and thanks for reading.