Thursday night!

* President Edwards prepares to resign the presidency tonight after admitting he had lied about the fathering of Rielle Hunter's baby during the third debate with John McCain. Vice President Barack Obama is expected to assume the presidency tomorrow morning.

* Paul Krugman, legendary futurist?

* Luck, math, and how to win at gambling.

* What's hot: potbellies!

* Multitask: the game. Note: you will hate this game.

* On the cinematography of Mad Men. Nice video to get you ready for the third season.

* Behold, NASA's secret plan to move the Earth.

Hence the group’s decision to try to save Earth. ‘All you have to do is strap a chemical rocket to an asteroid or comet and fire it at just the right time,’ added Laughlin. ‘It is basic rocket science.’

The plan has one or two worrying aspects, however. For a start, space engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The slightest miscalculation in orbit could fire it straight at Earth – with devastating consequences.

What could possibly go wrong? (Not a hoax. Via Occasional Fish.)

* Behold, the banned Family Guy episode.

* Nerdivore points out District 9 is getting great reviews.

* GLAAD flunks SyFy.

* And a physicist at Slate says The Time Traveler's Wife checks out.

Thursday again! How does this keep happening?

* Today is the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. MetaFilter remembers.

* Planetary #27 finally on its way. October.

* New Hampshire officially passes marriage equality. It looked for a while like nitpicking from the governor's office might actually kill this; very glad it didn't.

* Country first: Lindsey Graham admits he puts the Republican Party before the good of the nation.

* In the wake of Dr. George Tiller's assassination, a frequent Fox News guest has put photos and addresses for the last two late-term abortion providers in the country on the Web.

* Obama speaks in Cairo.

* E.J. Dionne on the corporate media's continued rightward slant. More from Steve Benen.

* The recession: a global view. It's important to remember how good America actually has it—and that the current level of hardship in the States is, relatively speaking, not even all that bad.

* Here comes heath care. Donkeylicious says Team Edwards has something to crow about here. Maybe, but the health-care justification for Edwards's (and later Hillary Clinton's) candidacy long past viability was always weak—the plan you campaign on is never the plan that gets passed.

* And sad news: Bill, killed. Early reports declare David Carradine a suicide.

Okay, a few more.

* Carteret Islands evacuated due to the islands' sinking against rising sea level.

* Advantage Canavan: Joe Trippi says there's no truth to the rumors that Edwards staffers had a secret plan to bring down the candidate.

* 90% of Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest has been destroyed.

* My Pitches for Political-Satire Skits Playing on President Obama’s Foibles Keep Getting Shot Down. At McSweeney's.

* Photographs by blind photographers.

* Life as a New Yorker writer, twittered. Read this version for chronological clarity.

* Raised by anthropologists: Profile of Ursula K. Le Guin.

* The fallacy of authorial intent: The director and writer of The Usual Suspects disagree on what happened in the film.

John Edwards's presidential staffers are apparently now pretending they would have sabotaged his doomed candidacy if it ever seemed like he might win. Of course they would have! Kudos to George Stephanopoulos for pretending to buy this story.

Late night links.

* Honeymoon destination for the stars Iceland accepts an IMF bailout, the first industrialized nation to receive one since the U.K. in 1976 (by some accounts) or South Korea in 1997 (by others).

* 270towin.com has your poll closing schedule for election night.

* Everyone is talking about tonight's revelation that the RNC has spent over $150,000 on clothing Sarah Palin and family. Why, that's almost 400 haircuts!

* John McCain has a rough day in Pennsylvania.



* But it's not all bad news for McCain—rumors abound of a leaked Obama internal poll showing Obama up by only two points.

Links!

* A metrical analysis of the presidential campaigns reveals Barack Obama will win, as his name is a trochee. (via Bookslut)

* I don't mean to brag, but I beat Al Giordano to this conclusion about the John Edwards adultery kerfuffle of 2008 by over two weeks.

* Researchers at DefCon in Vegas have demonstrated that they can make "high security" Medeco key-blanks out of the plastic used in credit-cards, and then whittle them into working keys by referring to low-resolution photos of original keys. Easily the best key-related story since the great Bic/bike lock story of Aught Four.

* Also at Boing Boing: 1984 and Brave New World as pulp novels.

* When Lois was too curvy and Superman too gay. Via io9.

* "Serenity: The Other Half." A Firefly comic.

* And The Big Picture blog has big pictures of yesterday's Olympic opening ceremony.

Ev'ning links.

* It is totally, 100% appropriate to have paid product placement on the morning news.

* Slouching towards idiocracy: the L.A. Times is shutting down its book section.

* It hasn't been a very good week for John McCain. Having successfully goaded Obama into making a tremendously successful overseas trip that has managed to erase any lingering justification for McCain's own candidacy, he's now reduced to bitter rants that even a Villager like Joe Klein characterizes as scurrilous and desperate:

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

* I hadn't heard very much crowing from early Obamaniacs on the internets, and I'm glad of that, but the netroots should really be breathing sighs of relief that they didn't get their way about John Edwards:

The National Enquirer spent months chasing John Edwards and digging into his relationship with Rielle Hunter before busting him spending the night in a hotel with the woman and the former Democratic presidential candidate's alleged love child.

* And The Edge of the American West remembers the Detroit riots, 41 years ago today.

I have just a few Obama remainders from the last few days.

* First up, another edition of Veepwatch!, this one making a pretty strong claim for an Obama/Edwards ticket. I'm almost convinced—but the reality is that no one in an age of late-night comics is going to take the VP slot twice. The always-a-bridesmaid jokes write themselves, and as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail sagely reminds us in the comments to the Washington Montly post, Hunter S. Thompson was right when he said Americans hate voting for losers.

I really think we can believe Edwards when he says he doesn't want the job.

* VeepWatch! Jr.: The New York Review of Books reviews Jim Webb's A Time to Fight. Since I wrote about The Virginia Strategem earlier in the week I've been reminded that Virginia's Lt. Governor is a Republican, which all but takes Kaine out of the running and raises Webb's stock considerably, despite the unfortunate two-Senators aspect. Does anyone out there know what would happen if Webb steps down from the Senate to run for vice president? Does Kaine appoint, or is there a special election?

* Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services? The Shadow Cabinet grows...

* Speaking of kos, he's already made his first major self-inflicted wound of the general election season. Nearly made it 48 hours. Well done.

* Bob Dylan gushes over Barack Obama. So does George Lucas.

* Al Giordano at The Field gushes over the way Obama has already taken control of things at the DNC.

* And at TNR, the view from Africa.

Olbermann had a "Special Comment" tonight on Clinton's assassination gaffe:



For what it's worth I think Olbermann's outrage is pretty well-founded. I'm obviously no fan of the Clintons, but it's bad enough to continue her quixotic campaign secretly hoping that something horrible happens to Obama so she gets to be the nominee after all—far worse to actually say it and remove all doubt. This was a Freudian slip, not an incitement to violence, and it certainly wasn't anything she ever intended to say—but it unnecessarily invokes the grim specter of assassination that many Obama supporters have felt haunted by since Iowa. As she is the person who currently stands to most directly gain from such a disaster, her bringing it up seems, at best, unseemly. At best.

This may blow over, or she may have to soon end her campaign over this. We'll have to wait and see what the media does with it over the weekend. Her non-apology apology certainly didn't help.

In other primary news, The Field reports a surge of California superdelegates shifting to Obama—note this happened before the gaffe—as well as the tantalizing possibility that I may soon be forced to take back all the nasty things I've said about John Edwards.

And kos has the polling that suggests John McCain's viability as a candidate against Obama may have been significantly overrated.

As everyone with a TV already knows, at long last Edwards has endorsed Obama, the latest signal that the Democratic primary is over. I don't have much else to say about this, except to say that it's a moment I've been expecting a long, long, long, while. I'm glad Edwards finally got off the pot, though if this wasn't a deliberate post-W.V. strategy I'm amazed it took him this long to finally do it, and I have to say I've lost almost all of the respect I once had for Edwards in the meantime.

Still, there's a definitely Kennedy vibe from the pictures in this MyDD thread, and I must admit, it fills me with something a little bit like hope...







I guess what I'm saying is, give him Attorney General, I won't stand in the way.

A few predictions for Mini-Super Tuesday and after.

1) Obama will take Vermont handily and Texas comparatively narrowly. He'll lose Ohio by about the same margin as he won Texas, maybe a little more, and he'll lose Rhode Island by a little less than his margin of victory in Vermont.

2) Having beautifully managed the expectations game, again, Clinton will successfully spin this functional tie into a big victory. The long-awaited Obama media backlash will begin in earnest: Why can't Obama seal the deal?

2a) As usual, nobody will remember that she was ahead by huge margins in all these states just a few weeks ago; or that everybody, including her own campaign, has said she needs to win both states by big margins to even have a chance at the nomination; or that with these sorts of slim margins there's really no way for her to ever catch up in the delegate count.

3) Pennsylvania will be declared by acclimation to be the final really final Judgment Day.

3a) Accordingly, the now-expected chorus that Clinton drop out won't actually materialize. Gore in particular will remain silent. Edwards may misread Mini-Super Tuesday as "the turning of the tide" for Hillary and decide to endorse her, thereby destroying his last shred of credibility for all time. Richardson may finally endorse Obama now that it can't actually do Obama any good, but I think he'll probably continue to be a chicken.

4) The race will finally come to an end on April 22nd after Obama wins Pennsylvania, most likely by double digits.

Noam Scheiber at TNR writes about "the redemption of Ted Kennedy"—as if anyone who was seriously paying attention to this race could have ever denied the big effect Kennedy had and continues to have—as well as echoing the consensus here that John Edwards has plainly missed his moment:

Now that pretty much every last Edwards supporter has decamped for Obama, does anyone think Edwards is getting them back for Hillary? Does anyone think Obama would feel indebted if Edwards were to come his way?

Meanwhile, at TPM, I see that Rudy Giuliani's campaign managed has given his official seal of approval to the Clinton strategy:

“Clearly, she has had success in larger states and there are a whole bunch of delegates at stake on March 4,” Mr. DuHaime said. “They are not trying to figure out who can win the most states; they are trying to figure out who can win the most delegates.”

John Marshall rightly calls it a kiss of death.

The big news tonight is Maine, which is coming in unexpectedly strong for Obama. With 44% now 59% of the precincts reporting, it's Obama 57, Clinton 42.

...the numbers haven't been updated in nearly an hour, but the AP has called Maine for Obama. 5-0! Onward to Tuesday. Here's the Baltimore Sun endorsement.


... Obama 58, Clinton 41, now with 70% in. Another blowout.

--

Here's a neat Google map of the results that have already come in and their intensity of support either way.

As I mentioned earlier today, this was Clinton's best chance for a win before March, so this is very bad news for her.

There are a few other interesting stories tonight, as well. First is the news that Clinton's campaign manager has resigned. (More here.) There's also more buzz surrounding Edwards—Clinton met with him in Chapel Hill today and Obama is meeting with him tomorrow. (More.) Personally, I think Edwards waited too long and that now his endorsement won't have much impact; still, I'll be glad for Obama to have it. Anxiety over mandates or no, I see no way that Edwards can endorse Clinton and retain any credibility at all, so I really don't think he will.

Meanwhile, Obama has just won a Grammy award over former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Case Western Reserve Purple Monkey Dishwasher E. coli University Graduation Speaker '02 Maya Angelou. And Alan Alda. Next up, an Oscar, and after that a Nobel Peace Prize can't be far behind.

Given the track record of my previous baseless Al Gore speculation—he'll run; he'll declare after he wins the Nobel; he'll endorse Obama early; he'll endorse Obama before Super Tuesday; he'll endorse Obama soon after Super Tuesday—it may be of interest that I've come to a new conclusion to explain what Al Gore's doing. I think the Obama camp has decided that the value of a Gore endorsement in any particular contest, especially from this point on, is relatively marginal—so better to hold him in reserve in case it becomes necessary to fight over superdelegates, at which time he can emerge as a previously uncommitted elder statesman throwing his weight behind the people's choice.

(Again, given my track record on this point, I guess we can now expect a Gore endorsement of Hillary Clinton later in the week. But this is what I think must be going on.)

I have no clue what the thinking is with Edwards. Does the Obama camp think that he is best saved for use as a surrogate in Ohio, Texas, or Pennsylvania? Could Edwards really be genuinely conflicted over which of Obama or Clinton better serves the poverty-centered politics he describes as the cause of his life? I find the latter hypothesis rather hard to accept.

Obama's up in Connecticut and tied in Alabama (good news!), but it's looking increasingly likely that my optimistic predictions regarding Richardson, Edwards, and Gore may not actually come to pass (bad news!). Still hoping...

I don't usually do this, but let me throw out a random political prediction about something I've seen a lot of people talking about today: I think John Edwards will endorse Barack Obama for president this week, probably on Friday.

Rationale: There's no other reason for Edwards to randomly drop out out of nowhere unless he's decided that his presence in the race hands the election to Clinton. Pulling out today of all days seems calculated to rob Clinton of any mojo she might have received from the Florida non-victory; I've also read that he notified Obama yesterday and Clinton only this morning.

Given all this, why not endorse? As noted in the earlier post, Obama seems happy about something. Two days of speculation prime the pump, and then Edwards pulls the trigger on Friday after the debate, guaranteeing Obama positive press all weekend and on the Sunday news shows.

(His non-presence at the debate, and the delayed endorsement, are also both good news for Obama, as together they take the "They're ganging up on me!" sympathy card off the table.)

As I saw noted on another thread, somewhere or another on the internets, the Obama homepage doesn't list any scheduled events between now and February 2. Thursday's the debate; what's he doing Friday?

Contra Shankar, I also don't think the Richardson endorsement is all that unlikely—though I wouldn't bet on it.

The last person standing is Al Gore, who I still think endorses Obama by Super Tuesday—if I'm right, it'll be leaked Sunday and made official Monday.

Edwards out! Holy smokes; I didn't see this coming at all. It's tough to say who this benefits, either nationally or on a state-by-state basis—but given the way Edwards has generally acted and what he claims to deeply believe my guess is that he wouldn't have done this before Super Tuesday unless it would benefit Obama. (Attorney General Edwards, don'tcha know.)

More links soon, once I see how people are getting a handle on this...

UPDATE: No endorsement at the moment, apparently, but it's hard to imagine that sticking until Tuesday. Given the way he's run his campaign and especially his statements after New Hampshire, a Hillary endorsement would completely undercut his entire persona—I don't see that happening. But an Obama endorsement seems likely, especially after the now-incredibly-crucial debate on Thursday. What better way to guarantee a lot of free, positive press on Sunday? (Besides Al, of course.)

The Obama statement, already out, throws fuel on that purely speculative fire.

UPDATE 2: Check out also this statement from the Obama campaign last night, honing his rhetoric about building a working majority into a stark, one-on-one comparison with Clinton over who can beat John McCain:

It’s time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like; and who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed.

We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that’s exactly what I will do. Talking tough and tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment, and courage, and clear plans. It’s not enough to say you’ll be ready from Day One – you have to be right from Day One.

UPDATE 3: Obama last night on Nightline:

Asked if he's looking for a deal with Edwards,

Obama: "I have spoken to John Edwards."

Moran: "About that?"

Obama: "No. Just generally about the campaign. I don't want to go into the details of the conversation we've had. But look, John's running a terrific campaign. He's still competitive in a number of states coming up on Super Tuesday. I think his attitude, like the rest of us, is he's going after as many delegates as he can get."

Moran: "But that sounds like a non-denial denial. Did you tell you'd like his endorsement?"

Obama: "That I can say unequivocally. I'd like Hillary Clinton's endorsement. Then we can start concentrating on the endorsement."

The cable networks call it for Barack literally ten seconds after the polls close. More later, including a handful of pictures from today—for now feast on the results, including exit polls that hint at a huge victory for Obama and trouble for Clinton as the race goes on...

Be back soon.

UPDATED: Just jumping back online to say that everything tonight cuts against the race narrative the Clintons have spent the last three weeks building. Marc Ambinder notes that not only was Obama "close enough" in the white vote, but it also appears that he and Edwards Clinton tied for white males. Meanwhile turnout was apparently massive, with many new voters. This is all very, very good. I don't know how the Clintons right the ship this week, though I imagine whatever they attempt will be disgraceful.

UPDATE 2: Thank God Edwards hasn't left the race yet.

UPDATE 3: As Shankar pointed out regarding the already-infamous Jesse Jackson remark in the comments, the Clintons have basically decided to just come out and admit their plan:

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

I was talking about this earlier today, and I really think that the race-baiting strategy is at the point where it now begins to boomerang on them. Here's why: very few people in America want to be racist. Race-baiting in politics can be effective when it's subtle and deniable; be too blatant about it, though, and you begin to incentivize voters to vote for Obama just to prove they (and the country) aren't racist after all. If the Clintons weren't already past that point, I think they blew by it tonight.

The margin of victory is hovering around 2-to-1, by the way; at 95% reporting it's 55 to 26. The delegate margin may be even higher. This is another unbelievably historic night.

UPDATE 4: Here's the text of the victory speech, another home run. Here's YouTube:

After badly blowing the public relations battle in both New Hampshire and Nevada, Obama's people seem to have finally caught on to how to play the expectations game. Beyond merely trying to set expectations low, I have to think the potential Edwards surge I blogged earlier has something to do with the Clinton camp's renewed under-the-radar efforts in South Carolina—they absolutely don't want a third-place finish going into Super Tuesday.

Zogby's daily tracking poll has Edwards spiking sharply in South Carolina—probably partly on the strength of a very good performance in Monday's debate—with indications that he could even finish ahead of Clinton on Saturday.

Edwards, meanwhile, has had his second good day since the Monday night CNN debate, in which he delivered a strong performance. He hit 19% support on Tuesday alone and then 27% support on Wednesday alone. And, on Wednesday alone, he pulled ahead of Clinton overall. He has pulled ahead among whites.

This result would throw a major monkeywrench into the Clinton plan to spin away what is likely to be a big victory margin for Obama in South Carolina by claiming he only won the state on the strength on the black vote.

I welcome this greatly.

It's been a bad week for the Clinton campaign overall, I think, with way too many stories about Bill, and Obama finally just coming out and saying what everybody already knows:

Hillary Clinton. She’ll say anything, and change nothing. It’s time to turn the page.

Meanwhile, as one of my commenters noticed last night, The Onion reports that Bill has decided to go ahead and run himself.