memeorandum: Rice and Abbas Say Talks to Resume (New York Times)

9:30 PM ET, March 5, 2008

Top Items:

DNC Lays Out Choice For Florida And Michigan: Rules, Re-Vote — Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today. — Instead, he put the state parties on notice …

Discussion: Sister Toldjah, Blue Crab Boulevard and Below The Beltway

Frank James / Baltimore Sun:

Fla. and Mich. guvs: Seat our delegates — Forget the fact that the state legislatures in both Michigan and Florida were forewarned that if they moved up their states' primary dates their states would be penalized by the Democratic and Republican National Committees.

Discussion: TPM Election Central, Marc Ambinder, The Politico, BobKrumm.com, Below The Beltway and Donklephant

Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:

CHILL OUT....The hot topic of conversation right now is the proposition that a long, drawn-out Democratic primary runs the risk of destroying the party and putting John McCain in the White House. So for the good of the country, Hillary should withdraw. — Now, this might be true.

Discussion: TalkLeft, Matthew Yglesias, CNN, The Newshoggers, Brendan Nyhan, The American Mind, Megan McArdle, The New Republic, Blogometer, The Daily Dish, The Corner, Lawyers, Guns and Money, JustOneMinute and democracyarsenal.org

Ross Douthat:

'68 or '96? — The problem facing the Democrats isn't exactly the one raised by Kevin Drum and debated here and here and here - the problem of 1968, that is, in which a long and nasty intra-party battle fatally weakens the eventual Democratic nominee going into the general election.

Discussion: American Spectator

Satyam / Think Progress:

Bush: McCain ‘Is Not Going To Change’ My Foreign Policy — At the White House today, President Bush threw his support behind Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). In a press conference after a private lunch, a reporter asked the duo how McCain would “make the case that you're going to provide the change that the voters seem to want.”

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report, Big Brass Blog, Daily Kos, MoJoBlog, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Seminal, Middle Earth Journal and The Newshoggers

Amanda / Think Progress:
Bush tap dances while waiting for McCain.

Discussion: The Trail, The Swamp, MSNBC, Shakespeare's Sister and Firedoglake

Hillary Clinton / CNN:

Obama camp: What's Clinton hiding' — (CNN) - Barack Obama's campaign took fresh aim at Hillary Clinton Wednesday for refusing to release her tax returns, asking in a memo circulated to reporters, “What does Clinton have to hide?” — “In the face of her unwillingness to release her tax returns …

Discussion: The Newshoggers, Riehl World View, The Page, Redstate and PoliGazette

Greg Sargent / TPM Election Central:

Obama Camp, Getting Down To Business, Slams Hillary On Tax Returns — Obama campaign advisers are already making good on promises to confront Hillary much more aggressively on new fronts, hammering her on a conference call over her failure to release her tax returns.

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blogs, Spin Cycle, TalkLeft, The Carpetbagger Report and The Politico

Gallup:

Gallup Daily: Clinton 48%, Obama 44% — Based on polling conducted March 2-4, 2008 — PRINCETON, NJ — Hillary Clinton has moved ahead of Barack Obama in national Democratic nomination preferences, 48% to 44%, in polling conducted Sunday through Tuesday.

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Open Left, Hot Air, Say Anything, MyDD, Below The Beltway, The Strata-Sphere, New York Times, TPM Election Central and Donklephant

David Weigel / Reason Magazine:

It's Rush Wot Won It — In the days running up to these last primaries, Rush Limbaugh told his national audience of conservatives to vote in the Democratic race. … It turned into a pretty hot meme in Texas, and on Monday, while Rush was out, guest host Mark Davis scored an interview with Bill Clinton.

Discussion: Outside The Beltway, The Impolitic, Wake up America, Matthew Yglesias, The Daily Dish, Minnesota Monitor and Houston Chronicle

Tom Bevan / Real Clear Politics:
Was It Rush? — I've been doing a number of radio interview …

Discussion: Hot Air, The Radio Equalizer, Washington Post, Power Line, alicublog, Don Surber and Below The Beltway

Media Matters for America:

Olbermann to Matthews: “[E]specially you” should “[d]istance yourself as far as you can from” the word “bitch” — During MSNBC's March 5 coverage of the March 4 Democratic presidential primaries and caucus, NBC News anchor Brian Williams and MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann discussed …

Discussion: Crooks and Liars and Eschaton

Sam Stein / The Huffington Post:

Rep. Ellison: Clinton Trying To Reap Benefit Of Obama-Muslim Smear — The Clinton campaign flatly denies any hand in the Obama-is-a-Muslim smear campaign that has bubbled beneath the media surface, but it is more than willing to take advantage of it, says the lone Muslim member of congress.

Discussion: MoJoBlog

Carrie Budoff Brown / The Politico:

Obama: ‘Premature’ to talk joint ticket — Speaking to reporters on his plane before leaving San Antonio for Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama hinted at taking a tougher line against Clinton in the coming weeks, telling reporters that she must back up her experience argument with details, my colleague Carrie Budoff Brown reports.

Discussion: TalkLeft, The Page, Political Machine, Roger L. Simon, The Carpetbagger Report, Hot Air, Preemptive Karma, Spin Cycle, TownHall Blog and The Debatable Land

WCBS-TV:
Clinton Hints At Sharing Ticket With Obama

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report, The Politico, Donklephant, The Opinionator, Buck Naked Politics, Boston Globe, Taylor Marsh, culturekitchen, Wake up America, Left in the West, Macsmind, Vodkapundit, Vox Popoli and Connecting.the.Dots

Kos / Daily Kos:

Clinton campaign making Obama “blacker” — Or maybe more Muslim? The sordid details are in this diary by Troutnut, but it can be distilled down to this: — As you can see, the campaign ad has darkened Obama's skin tone, while stretching the video horizontally to give Obama a wider nose.

Discussion: Little Green Footballs, NewsBusters.org, RIGHTWINGSPARKLE and AMERICAblog

Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Netroots Shift — You can sense a change in the left-liberal blogosphere.

Discussion: Whiskey Fire

Amanda / Think Progress:

Bush May Fire CentCom Chief Adm. Fallon, Replace With Commander More ‘Pliable’ To War With Iran — Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon “one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today.” Fallon opposed the “surge” in Iraq and has consistently battled …

Discussion: Swampland and Hullabaloo

Brad / Sadly, No!:

Thanks for publishing this moron, WaPo — Ugh. Charlotte Allen's chat over at the WaPo is bloody painful: … In other words: sure, more women are graduating from law school and medical school, but they'll only comprise the stupid doctors and lawyers. — In other news …

Discussion: War and Piece, Think Progress, Shakespeare's Sister, The XX Factor, The Huffington Post, Lawyers, Guns and Money and American Street

Atrios / Eschaton:

Nasty — Sadly, I agree with Chris that this is going to get nastier. The campaigns and candidates themselves may not get nasty, but I get the sense that supporters of the various candidates are getting angrier at the other camp. Sure a lot of this is just relatively harmless virtual …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Open Left and TalkLeft

ABCNEWS:

Rezko In Debt $50 Million; How Did He Afford Obama Lot? — Court Transcript Says Rezko Depends on Family Handouts of $7,500 a Month — Accused Illinois fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko is in debt by $50 million and relies on “family” handouts of $7,500 a month to pay monthly costs …

Discussion: Hot Air and NO QUARTER