Today's Rasmussen numbers are the best for Obama in a month. It appears that  he is getting a bounce a bit earlier than Kerry did in '04, but calendar changes preclude an actual apples to apples comparison.

Despite Rasmussen's faint praise over the bounce, I think we're beginning to see a Joe bounce. The numbers are ...

I did not. But that's cool. I'm going to Denver anyway to just be on the scene for history being made.
How about you?

Will there be any Kossacks on hand?

Great short piece from today's Boston Globe.

Obama's campaign is taking it to the street in a dozen states with field operatives going gas station to gas station reminding people that McCain is in the pocket of Big Oil.

But the real tickler is below

As you probably know by now, Howard Dean kicks off a Democratic Party Voter Registration Blitz across the South starting this week in --ironically-- Crawford, Texas.

This is a great opportunity to show all naysayers that Dr. Dean's 50 State Strategy was the right prescription for Democratic Party success.

Good Sunday morning, this weekend, I had to good fortune to watch on VH-1
Classic, the making of Aja, the classic Steely Dan album, and it made me realize how much I miss music.

The point of this diary is for all Dem candidates running statewide races in TX in 2008.

Don't just go to the metros and disregard West Texas.

Every person I have talked to who has looked at the Yes We Can U Tube video is swept away by it. It is powerful and can make a difference Tuesday.

You may have seen the AP stories this morning that said in all likelihood Super Tuesday will not result in presidential nominees, and in fact, it may take until the March 4 primary in Texas.

I couldn't believe the number of pundits that MSNBC had last night, they had
ten people who were doing nothing, but sharing their own personal biases.

By contrast, I was very wowed by CNN's map, and their linkage of ideological tendencies by geography on the map.

In short order, CNN was telling us it was going to come down to Dartmouth, whereas MSNBC had Tweety barking "if she loses, she loses--no matter how close".

John King's analysis on the maps was great.
Bill Schneider's analysis on the exit polls was excellent.
And Wolf Blitzer's referring to the website was very helpful, too.
In fact, they had the exit polls up on the website by 8 p.m. CST. and you could tell--if you looked--at the exit polls that Hillary would win.

MSNBC was all style and no substance, and I'm disappointed in Olbermann, he seems to have joined the Tweety bandwagon of bashing Hillary.

I'm not a historian, and I've done a bit of Googling, and it looks to me
like she's the first woman to have ever won a U.S. primary.

From last night's debate:
Was it just me or was it a little smarmy for Edwards to talk poetically about the patient's bill of rights as the crowning achievement of his senate tenure, and then we find out, in a very smart rebuttal by Hillary Clinton that it never passed?

In the past couple of days, there have been several diaries/stories about how Texas is turning from red to blue.
For Texans, this is very exciting. We have had many eras of populism in our past, although recent history has been darkened by the aftermath of DeLay's
cynical gerrymandering.

But, no more, we are 5 seats from reclaiming the Texas House.

And in fact, the biggest regret that most Democrats had in 2006 was a lack of candidates.

In 2008, it's looking better in the metro areas--Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and to a certain extent, El Paso.

This is a story that has been largely under the radar, but slowly but surely, Texas Democrats are taking back the state house-even after DeLay's dastardly gerrymandering.
Great story from the Burnt Orange Report today about Dan Barrett's victory in Ft. Worth.
www.burntorangereport.com

I saw it being streamed on Obama's website, which is ok, but . . .
my internet is not hot.

Many Democrats have written off Texas, just like other Southern, right-wing enclaves, such as Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.

But Texas has a history of progressives from Jim Hogg to Jim Hightower,
Ma Ferguson to Molly Ivins, Ann Richards to well, there is no parallel to Ann Richards.

Precinct by precinct, pockets of progressive thought popped up in unlikely places in 2006.

Dallas, for example, where the Dems swept the ballot.

If John Edwards and Barack Obama are sincere about bringing virtue and a more civilized
discourse to politics, then they should condemn the kind of Southern GOP venom that
erupted at John McCain's Hilton Head soiree yesterday.

It's not okay to call a presidential candidate, "a bitch".

It's beneath the dignity of the American people, and we all should be outraged.

If a Dem had allowed a slur to be thrown at a GOP candidate, they all would be disavowing
such a lack of integrity.

Where is the infamous backbone that Edwards refers to?

Oh, god, how I hate it when a tabloid story takes over cable network news.
How do we stop them from polluting the airwaves with the OJ Simpson garbage?

There's been a lot of disappointment and contempt with the Democrats in Congress not being able to end the war, and at them, for being ineffectual in getting Bush to clean up the justice department.

But there's a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans and always have been and always will be.