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(Via New York Magazine.)

If the Democratic presidential race were a poker game, by now you’d have to suspect that Barack Obama’s campaign is dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rarely a day goes by when it doesn’t slap another ace down on the table. The aces in this (possibly strained) metaphor are endorsements, and it often seems as if the Obama operation has an inexhaustible supply at its disposal. In the past week alone, it has announced the support of congressmen from North Carolina and Indiana; the Utah state party chair; the Oklahoma state party’s chief fundraiser; 25 South Dakota state legislators; the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers; and, not least, The Boss. Some of these endorsers are super-delegates, and thus of no small consequence to the outcome of the race. Others are simply window-dressing, deployed to create a sense of ineluctable momentum in Obama’s direction. But none have the particular resonance of the endorsement that’s coming — unbeknownst to the campaign — a little later today.

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(Via RealClearPolitics.)

For 40 of his 65 years, ever since he first registered, Martin Greenblatt has been voting Republican in this Philadelphia suburb. Through much of the past winter, the retired teacher considered himself a supporter of Rudy Giuliani. But when the former New York mayor quit the race without a single primary victory, Greenblatt made a radical decision.

He reregistered as a Democrat so he could vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in next Tuesday’s primary. His vote will be counted along with thousands of others to be cast in the Philadelphia suburbs, traditionally the votes that anoint the winner in Pennsylvania contests.

In a day of interviewing outside the library in this Montgomery County community just before Wednesday’s Democratic TV debate in Philadelphia, Greenblatt’s story was just one of many describing the strange journeys they have taken to their current positions — and the disquiet some of them feel about the votes they are about to cast.

While Clinton had more supporters in these interviews than Obama (or Republican John McCain), it is obvious that all the campaign time the candidates have lavished on Pennsylvania since Ohio and Texas voted for Clinton and McCain on March 4 has fueled more doubts than enthusiasm.

Greenblatt is typical. Asked about McCain, this longtime Republican said, “I don’t like his (Iraq) war policy. I supported the war at the beginning, but I’m increasingly disillusioned with it. McCain just seems to want to keep it going.”

Obama has little appeal to Greenblatt. “He hasn’t had the experience,” Greenblatt said, in a comment I heard many times from other voters. “Two years in the Senate, and one of them he spent running for president. And I’m not happy with Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright,” Obama’s controversial pastor.

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(Via USATODAY.com.)

Democrats in Congress are seeking to attach tens of billions of dollars in domestic spending to President Bush’s latest $108 billion war funding request, setting up a political battle that could put U.S. troops and their families in the middle.

Plans to add money for such things as transportation, unemployment insurance, aid to states, food stamps, public housing and veterans’ benefits has prompted veto threats from the White House.

Bush’s budget director, Jim Nussle, said Tuesday that only a month remains before the Pentagon would threaten to furlough thousands of civilian employees. The Pentagon made a similar threat in December before Congress appropriated $70 billion for the wars.

“They’re trying to figure out how to put everything onto this,” Nussle said in an interview. In testimony prepared for the Senate Appropriations Committee today, he calls the war funding measure “the last big money train out of town before the election.” That could be the case if Congress doesn’t pass any of its regular appropriations bills on time.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have not decided which items to seek as part of the war funding request and are hoping to reach agreement with the White House on some of it. Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the items being reviewed would be “quick ways to stimulate the economy.”

Full story here.

(Via Politico.com.)

He stands behind her, guarded and on the lookout. His head is turning left, then right, then left again, the way one watches a tennis match.

Philippe Reines could be mistaken for a Secret Service agent for Chelsea Clinton, the former first daughter who is anxious to regain that title. Now, as a crowd surrounds the youngest Clinton at a Marshall University campaign stop, Reines is on the lookout for hangers-on, swooning frat boys and, mostly, looming trouble in the form of microphones, cameras and notepads.

When sharp-elbowed television reporters manage to slip through the crowd and face Clinton, he reaches out his arm to shield the 28-year-old surrogate, points to the side of the room like a stone-faced traffic cop and tells the reporters, “I’ll talk to you over there.” Far from Chelsea.

Since Clinton doesn’t speak to reporters, Reines is her voice. When inquiring minds approach Clinton to say hello, she has been known to say, “Have you met Philippe?”

“If I wasn’t paid to talk to reporters, I wouldn’t, either,” said Reines, who has become the surrogate’s surrogate in the face of growing criticism that the campaign is protecting her like a child. “Chelsea smartly knows that if she gives an inch of her privacy, she loses a foot.”

Lately, college students in Chelsea’s audiences have been testing her limits with questions about her father, former President Bill Clinton, and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. At first, Chelsea bristled at the comments. Now, she is prepared with a brief response.

Reines has been there for every awkward moment, helping keep the bubble surrounding Chelsea from popping. As Hillary Rodham Clinton’s longtime press-secretary-turned-senior-adviser, he is more than used to the tabloid headlines, the mobs of photographers who constantly chase the senator and the game of defense he must play to challenge the scrutiny.

“I think it’s like being a hockey goalie,” Reines said. “You’re deflecting the puck with your stick, your face mask, your knees — whatever works.