Tomorrow`s contests are looking good for Obama but we`ve been led astray by polls many times during this election cycle so take these numbers with a grain of salt... Maryland: ARG: Obama 55% Clinton 37% (Today) Mason-Dixon: Obama 53% Clinton 35% (Feb. 10) Rasmussen: Obama 57% Clinton 31% (Feb. 9) SurveyUSA: Obama 52% Clinton 33% (Feb. 8) Virginia: SurveyUSA: Obama 60% Clinton [...]

By any reasonable measure today is a pretty important day in the Democratic presidential race. Generally called the ???Chesapeake Primary ??? Dems (and independents) will vote today in Virginia Maryland and the District of Columbia. Obama is considered the favorite in all three. But on the front page of the NYT today the story isn???t about today???s [...]

John McCain and Barack Obama have massive leads in our triple-Siamese primary. When you attach DC to Maryland and Virginia our dumb little city almost matters! Almost. [ ] The thing to remember about Democrats is that none of them can win unless they are named Clinton. Then all they do is win. So don`t vote for Obama. Then the Clintons won`t win. [ ] There might not be enough Bushes to endear WALNUTS ! to the GOP base but they`re giving it all they`ve got. [ ] For Huck a distant distant second place is just like winning. [ ] Paul Krugman wishes Barry Obama would go away so Hillary wouldn`t have to say such mean things to beat him. You`re destroying the party Barry. [ ] They might be able to grow a jawbone from your gut but Andy already has way more jawbone than the world needs. [ ] How do you win the vote of a 21-year-old superdelegate? Send your daughter to his place with a six pack of Bud and a phone call from Dad to wish him well. [ ]

Tomorrow voters in Virginia Maryland and DC will vote in what are collectively being dubbed the `Potomac Primary` or `Beltway Primary` or for the less creative the `Mid-Atlantic Primaries.` At any rate all indications are that front-runners John McCain and Barack Obama will win all three contests easily. report that McCain is looking to finally deliver a knockout blow to Mike Huckabee and is polling above 50 percent in both states while Huckabee is mired in the mid-20 percent range. A suggests McCain is beating Huckabee among evangelicals as well which is a bad omen for the Southern Baptist minister. On the Democratic side Obama leads Hillary Clinton by 15 to 20 points in most polls and does well across all demographics according to . In Maryland Obama edges Clinton among women and white voters two of her key constituencies. Obama also leads among women in Virginia. All of the polls have McCain and Obama winning Maryland and Virginia comfortably. Nobody`s talking about the District for whatever reason and isn`t even bothering to keep track of polling there. Given past trends though it would be a shocker if Obama didn`t win handily and one imagines Huckabee`s Southern charm will be lost on DC`s half dozen Republican primary voters. It may well be true that . It looks exceedingly unlikely though given the polls and the Demographics. I`m more confident in Obama`s polling than McCain`s given that the former is involved in a competitive race. As observed after Huckabee won several states over the weekend `Why give up a Saturday to vote for the guy who was already going to win? Given that there is a dedicated anti-McCain contingent in the party a position to which they are passionately attached it stands to reason that they would be the more motivated to go vote.` Still the margin is sufficiently strong that McCain should win.

I raced down to College Park to hit the first of two rallies Barack Obama is holding here in Maryland today. This one's at the Comcast Center and well let's just say it seats 18 000 and this place is full. I've actually never seen anything like this as far as political events go. I was a bit lost wandering the arena before I found the press entrance and was up in the nosebleed sections and got a view of the place from the top and it was pretty breathtaking; you expect this from a U2 concert. By the way more than 2 hours after "doors opened" they're still letting people in the guards shouting to people "Come on you can still make it Yes you can!" Pretty funny. The lead-up to Obama's speech is over the fold. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - Obama entered to a thunderous roar of the crowd as you might expect. This crowd is so excited faces beaming. Obama had to tell everyone they could sit down and relax. He's giving his stump speech. The crowd really reacted when he said "Change doesn't happen from the top down it happens from the bottom up." "I am here to report one year after launching this unlikely journey my bet has paid off and my faith in the American people has paid off." "What I'm most excited about the crowds we get is the young people who keep turning out." Place goes nuts. "The pundits said 'oh Howard Dean did that but they never vote.'" He then talked about how college students came out in droves for him in Iowa and the place roared. His line about George Bush not being on the ballot got a huge response too. I don't think I've ever seen Obama this comfortable at one of these rallies. He's improvising and the crowd is right there with him. Update [2008-2-11 13:25:5 by Todd Beeton]: "Americans want their values restored. I share this passion to have our American values back but I can't do it myself. If the American people aren't ready for change change isn't going to happen. If you're ready for change..." "...then we can stop the special interests from influencing Washington..." "...then we can stop talking about the 47 million uninsured and start doing something about it..." "...then we can restore some equality back into our economy...If you work in this country you should not be poor." The place interrupted him with a chant of "Obama! Obama!" "...then we can give every single child in this country a world-class education.. Every child counts they are all our children..." Update [2008-2-11 13:34:58 by Todd Beeton]: "...then we can have a common-sense energy policy...We're going to cap emissions and we're going to charge polluters for the pollution they send into the atmosphere...We're going to raise emission standards to 40MPG..." "...then we can have a foreign policy that says there's no contradiction between being safe and being smart..." "In 2002 I spoke out against the war and in 2009 I will end it. It is time for the Iraqis to stand up and stabilize their country we can not have an endless occupation of Iraq." He's sounding a lot stronger on the war than he usually does actually. So far he hasn't touched Hillary. Wonder if he's going to go later in the speech. "We're going to lead on bringing an end to the genocide in Darfur..." got a huge reaction from the crowd it's interesting it always does particularly with students. "...We can do these things if you believe." Update [2008-2-11 13:39:47 by Todd Beeton]: OK here he's going after Hillary with his "we can't keep sending the same people to Washington expecting the same result." He's saying that Hillary talks about being tough against Republicans. "I may be skinny but I'm tough too. I'm looking forward to mixing it up with John McCain...He wants to perpetuate the failed Bush economic policies...he wants to continue a 100-year long war in Iraq. I look forward to having that argument with Republicans. Not only that I think I can get some Republican votes. They call them 'Obamicans.'...Everyone get on the change express." Update [2008-2-11 13:47:21 by Todd Beeton]: The thing about Obama lately is that he's not so much giving a speech as he is having a conversation with the people in the stands. He's wrapping up: "And I'm talking particularly to the young people in the audience this is our moment this is our time. If you stand with me if you vote for me tomorrow we will not only win Maryland we will win the Democratic nomination we will win the general election we will together go forward and change this country and change the world." Place goes nuts. He was definitely on today. A very very confident candidate. As you enter they're handing out slips of paper with locations of canvass starting places for precinct walking going on all day tomorrow with instructions to text them with which shift people can make. The head of the Maryland chapter of Students For Barack Obama then spoke he tried his hand at "Fired Up! Ready to Go?" with mixed success. The whole place is doing the wave right now it's gone around three times without petering out. Impressive. The Attorney General of Maryland Douglas Gansler is speaking right now pumping up the crowd talking about people who've hailed from Maryland including Frederick Douglass and Thurogood Marshall. He went on: "This is the state that tomorrow will put the nail in the coffin when we win this state. This is the state that will elect President Obama." Umm nice choice of words. Now he's making an electability argument for Obama saying polls show him doing best against John McCain. Everyone's a pundit. The place is now chanting "Yes We Can!" Ha Gansler just announced there's one more speaker before Obama and the place started booing totally turned on the guy. Obama coming up next... Update [2008-2-11 13:17:28 by Todd Beeton]: Obama was introduced by a student who said "In Barack Obama I've found a candidate I'm actually excited by. He's not the lesser of two evils. Tags: ( )

Let me start by saying that I believe that deep down both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want single payer healthcare. Believing single payer to be unachievable at this moment they've both offered alternatives Hillary going the mandate route which requires everyone to buy in to a healthcare plan in order not only to make sure everyone is insured but also in order to lower costs for all; Barack Obama has decided to mandate healthcare for children but not adults instead relying on people's sense of personal responsibility to buy in once costs are low enough. This is how Obama used to describe the difference he had on the issue with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (whose plan was also a mandate plan) in his stump speech (paraphrase): My opponents think the government should force you to buy healthcare. I believe that the reason people don't have healthcare isn't that they don't want it it's that they can't afford it. The line would often get a big cheer but I haven't heard it lately. In the wake of John Edwards's departure from the race Hillary has been hitting Barack harder on the fact that her plan offers universal healthcare while his by definition does not. So Obama has changed his rhetoric on the stump now throwing the term "universal" around with abandon when describing his healthcare plan as he did both the other night at the Virginia Democratic Party Jefferson Jackson dinner and at today's University of Maryland rally. What's worse he used fear mongering to attack Hillary's plan saying flat out "she's going to go after your wages " referring to the tricky enforcement of a mandate healthcare system. This is extremely problematic for one thing because Democrats using right-wing scare tactics on healthcare against other Democrats will as Paul Krugman has pointed out set back the universal healthcare cause. I mean look at this Q and A from the from his website: Q: I don't want the government telling me what doctors to see or what treatments to get. Will the Obama plan force these kinds of decisions on me? A: Senator Obama agrees with you. His plan will not tell you which doctors to see or what treatments to get. Under the Obama plan...no government bureaucrat will second-guess decisions about your care." "Government bureaucrat" as villain? Are you kidding me who wrote this Karl Rove? But there's another problem that Obama's supporters will have a problem coming to terms with which is that it's simply intellectually dishonest. Obama doesn't inherently have a problem with mandates. What he conveniently leaves out from his criticism of Clinton's plan is that he thinks mandates are perfectly fine for children. From : Mandatory Coverage of Children: Obama will require that all children have health care coverage. Obama will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage including allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents' plans. Whose wages will he be going after to enforce that I wonder? But just on a basic logic level if you don't either cover everyone through a government system or require buy-in through a mandate system how in the world can you call your plan "universal?" Well if you're being honest you can't and Obama knows it which is why there's no mention of the term "universal" anywhere on his website. Really . He talks about "health care for all" and "available to all" because in his perfect world costs will be low enough and the uninsured will be compelled to buy in but honestly there's a whole population of young healthy and not necessarily poor people out there who don't have healthcare by choice; they're not dis-incentivized by the cost necessarily it's that they're healthy and don't need healthcare...until they do. I applaud Obama's efforts to make healthcare more affordable to those who can't afford it but without mandating that people buy healthcare insurance you can't guarantee they'll take advantage of the lower costs and you certainly can't credibly call your plan universal. Unless Senator Obama actually proposes a universal healthcare plan I'd ask him to stop referring to it as such in his speeches (and in .) As puts it: But as I??ve tried to explain in previous columns there really is a big difference between the candidates?? approaches. And new research just released confirms what I??ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage ?? a key progressive goal ?? and falling far short. Tags: ( )

: — Tuesday's Chesapeake primary seems likely to continue propelling Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in opposite directions. — Obama has hearty leads and distinct demographic advantages in each of the three contests: Washington D.C. Maryland and Virginia.

Hillary Clinton / : — WHITE MARSH Maryland (CNN) — Hillary Clinton on Monday explained away Barack Obama's clean sweep of the weekend's caucuses and primaries as a product of a caucus system that favors “activists” and in the case of the Louisiana primary an energized African-American community.

From tonight's Nelson Report: POLITICS...having really done well over the weekend Barack Obama is now very clearly 'on a roll'. And as the Washington State vote on Saturday and Maine Caucuses showed Sunday he's able to bring along the white vote quite comfortably even in territory previously considered very friendly to Hillary Clinton. So tomorrow even in conservative Virginia Obama is seen as having a very strong chance at another 'sweep' as he should win as predicted in heavily-Democratic Maryland and Washington DC...a primary trifecta which has been called among other things The Beltway and The Chesapeake [Bay] primaries.

I'm pretty excited about tomorrow's Maryland primary. I've never cast a meaningful vote in my life: grad school in New York postdoc in California 8 years in Massachusetts... not exactly the most hotly contested states in American politics. I'll be...

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