UPDATE: According to his DC office, Kendrick Meek was interviewed by Chris Jansing at 2PM eastern.  Anyone have footage of that or a transcript?  

Yesterday I broke the story over at MyDD and SecuringAmerica.com that there were reports that the comment about Jesse Jackson by former President Clinton was not in response to the question about why it would take two people to beat Barack Obama, but in response to something that was intentionally edited out of the tape.  Today, Kendrick Meek evidently said on MSNBC that he was there when the question was asked and said the other question had to do with asking President Clinton to talk about historical black candidates.  I do not have the transcript or video of Representative Meek yet, but his staff at the DC office confirmed that he was in SC with Bill, though they were not personally there with him and were unable to confirm the exact question themselves.

Hats off to the Obama team for a very strong win in South Carolina.  I credit their win to a strong GOTV effort and organization, especially of the African American community.  In the run-up to the primary I missed the stories hinting at the strength of that machine.  The first hint of that came from Jim Clyburn here.  I'm not saying the Congressman overtly told people to support Obama.  But in retrospect it seems that the Obama team must have benefitted from Clyburn's efforts whatever his intent was.  And Matt Stoller has a great follow-up description of that organizational strength that goes a long way toward explaining how Obama blew away the competition by outhustling them.

I don't think either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan had the biggest impact on the trajectory of the US.  I do think a lot of people have forgotten some of the good things about Bill's presidency.  There is much about the Clinton presidency that was innovative and influential.  And in spite of all the ugliness of the Lewinsky episode and the resultant perjury charges and the loss of his Arkansas law license, Bill Clinton still finished his second term with higher approval ratings that Ronald Reagan had at the end of his second term. (link)

During the debate Obama claimed that his previous support for single payer had been  mischaracterized.  Now Hillary Clinton has hit back with a youtube video of him doing exactly what he said he had not done:

Dr. King went to Democratic politicians for legislative support of his call for change.  One of the most insightful explanations you will find on that is the one from Bill Moyers here:

There is a lot of truthiness this primary season as supporters of our three top presidential contenders rush to judgment against their erstwhile political opponents.  Sometimes this is because they only have half the facts and fill in the rest with their preconceptions and sometimes they just don't remember the whole story and end up presenting only part of the facts when other contradictory facts are available.  This latter is the case in what one hears frequently these days: Other than being more of a warmonger, Hillary is the same as Bill Clinton and he was such a lousy president that he lost us our Democratic majority; and if we are going to build a bigger majority, the netroots and their allies have to fight to get control of the party back from the corporatist centrist triangulators who almost destroyed the Democratic brand.

I am constantly asking Obama supporters how they think he will be able to unite to the country.  I get few details.  So I did my own research to start the discussion. Based on what I read here, I think I have a good understanding about how Barack Obama intends to bring change.  

I learned a few things on Meet the Press today about what was going on when Hillary voted for the AUMF.  After watching this, I find it hard to believe that people think Hillary would have gotten us into war with Iraq if she had been president.  She would have used the threat of force to get the inspectors in but she would have let them finish the job.  That is exactly what the Bush administration promised her it would do.  Here are the points she made on Meet the Press today about her vote on the AUMF:

First, Let's look at the full quote from yesterday, which came in response to a specific question (link):

"I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."

I think Josh Marshall, at the link above, misses the point.  But he comes closer than a lot of people did yesterday.  I think her point is that in order for meaningful change to come about, you have to get some legislation passed.  I don't think she meant to say that Dr. King was all talk and no action.  I think she just meant to make that one above point.  

Here is why:

Despite the fact that John Edwards' main claim of success while in the Senate, The Patients' Bill of Rights, never actually was enacted, and the fact that Hillary has plenty of change to run on, Edwards still claims that she defends the status quo against change.  It is noteworthy that in spite of all the successful work Hillary has done in support of the Children's Defense Fund and a longstanding friendship, CDF Founder Marian Wright Edelman says Hillary is no friend in politics. (link)  

Are Edwards and Edelman being realistic?  Or does Hillary really have the record of change to back up her claims of being best able to bring change?    As I wrote here, my overall take on Hillary is that, though not perfect, the seeming duality of her personality is explained thusly: Her intention is to do as much good as she can given the circumstances she has to work with.

Read and decide for yourself:

A short while back Chris Matthews, yet again, implied that the liberal left all hate Hillary Clinton because of her AUMF vote, and Congressman Joe Sestak was on speaking for Hillary.  The retired admiral rightly pointed out at the time that it's a lot easier to say what you would have done if you weren't actually in office at the time.  Recently Obama himself had to face questioning on this very point from Tim Russert on Meet the Press.  Here is the quote Russert used:

In July of `04, Barack Obama, "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports.  What would I have done?  I don't know," in terms of how you would have voted on the war.  And then this:  "There's not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush's position at this stage." That was July of `04.  And this:  "I think" there's "some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war."

Dear Hillary,

I know you must be disappointed at the loss in Iowa.  But you finished in a virtual tie for second In Iowa, something that would not have been possible if you had not had a good ground game and so many dedicated volunteers.  Your work in Iowa helped contribute to a record caucus for Democrats, some 236,000 participants in the Democratic caucus alone.  As you noted afterward, this participation bodes well for the Democratic party in November 2008 and you helped make it happen.

According to the stats that are being tossed about you did better among those over 65, married women and those voters who preferred experience.  Unfortunately you did not do as well among any other groups, especially among younger voters and those wanting change.  

Here are my suggestions about where to go from here:

I do believe that Barack Obama could unite the country.  And so could Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and most of the others in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.  But I don't believe the way Barack is going about it is the right way.  For starters, one has to accept the fact that Al Gore won more of the popular vote than any other Democratic presidential candidate ever up to that point.  Not the highest percentage, but the highest total number of voters.  And then one has to accept that for the most part Gore offered a continuation of the policies implemented by Bill Clinton.  That's because Bill offered the right policies at the right time to win elections.

Having said that, the Clinton years were certainly not perfect from a progressive standpoint.  Ross Perot turned out to be right about NAFTA; Don't Ask Don't Tell was barely half a loaf; And we lost control of the Congress in Clinton's first term.  That latter had a lot to do with Democratic Congressional scandals that were not Bill's fault, something the younger among us may have forgotten.

In the ugliness of the Democratic presidential primary season it is a good thing when we find something we can all agree on.  As we approach the primaries we also come to the end of the fundraising quarter. And I think we can all agree that supporting Eric Massa is a good thing.  Here are 10 good reasons to support him:

1.  He is running in a pro-Republican gerrymandered district that is currently represented by a Bush Rubber Stamp. (link, link)

2.  He came close to winning that district in 2006, among the top 15 districts that Democrats narrowly lost. (link)

Though it is a convenient supposed "smackdown" for those opposed to Senator Clinton, the "Hillary is a corporate stooge" meme has a whole lot less basis in fact than most of them realize.  Cribbing from the Left Coaster (here, here and here), let me quote the conclusion reached there about Senator Clinton's record:

I want to begin by saying that after what happened four years ago in Iowa, with Kerry being laughed off in December and then winning Iowa, and then New Hampshire, and from there winning the nomination, after that I am hesitant to predict anything with respect to the primaries.  That being said, a recent ARG poll showed Hillary with an unbelievable lead in Iowa.  Discussion revealed that while the ARG is consistently pro-Clinton and thus should be taken with a shaker or so of salt, the trendlines in the ARG polls did actually seem to indicate an uptick for Senator Clinton. Via Josh Marshall, the internals of the more recent LA Times poll seem to confirm that uptick:

The main goal of a recent NYT piece, which had a lot of unattributed quotes, seems to have been to show that Hillary’s experience during the Clinton presidency was less than impressive and certainly not what she and Bill have recently claimed.   And though the piece disproves at least part of its own thesis by listing impressive achievements of Senator Clinton during her White House years, it also seems intentionally written to omit  certain facts and obscure or deny certain other demonstrable truths from that time period.  

There is no doubt that health care is the biggest policy issue, especially for working Americans. Gerald McEntee of AFSCME told congress that it is the number one issue for his union. (link)  And Andy Stern of SEIU had similar observations in his recent support of the California Health Care Plan over at the Huffington Post. (link)
Most of us on the left would prefer a single payer health care plan.  But that looks unlikely since none of the major contenders for the Democratic nomination are calling for single payer at this moment in time.  Though disappointing, this is probably realistic inasmuch as the main Republican insistence on the issue has been that they want to be able to choose.  Their opposition to single payer plans would no doubt doom such plans to failure in both the Senate and the House.