Richardson

Conventional wisdom about the presidential primaries has completely changed in the last three months. All of the DC insiders thought that Clinton and McCain would clean up in the money and march all the way to the nomination for their parties. Nothing could be further from the truth. The DC punditocracy are changing their rankings and pondering a wide open race.

The Hotline rankings for the Democrats are out and there is no leader. They have Obama and Clinton tied, with Edwards just a hair behind.

There is no Democratic front-runner. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all have a plausible claim on the nomination.

The usual metrics are all jumbled. Clinton leads the money race, leads in New Hampshire, and tops the national polls. Obama leads in South Carolina, in media love, and in enthusiasm. Edwards has the tightest message, the best organization in Iowa, and the lead in Iowa.

The Washington Post focuses on the money race, which is only one of the factors that Hotline takes into account.

I am outside at my neighborhood cafe, hopped up on ice tea with free refills and wireless. It is that time again. Enjoy the linky goodness.

We are getting a second wave of coverage on campaign contributions today. California was Obama's biggest donor state. Clinton pulled in more here overall $5.1M to Obama's $4.2.

Speaking of donations and locations...the NYT has been having fun with datamashups. They have combined a pretty map with candidate donations. You can see where in the country they are raising the most money from. Its fun to play around with and has a zip code lookup.

Bill Clinton charmed Carla Marinucci at a recent fundraising event in SF.

Tommy Thompson sure put his foot in his mouth today, saying that Jews have a 'tradition' of 'earning money'. Think Progress has the video, Atrios the snark.

A CNN national poll shows the race tightening up in both parties. Clinton and Guilani have lost ground since last month's poll. Speaking of national polls, Chris Bowers thinks they are inflating Clinton's lead.

McCain is having a little trouble with his pronouns and taxes. Hotline has the goods.

The Obama needs substance meme is spreading. I have been contributing to that admittedly, though others have the same issue.

The LADN has a decent profile of Richardson this weekend, titled Richardson walks tightrope as top Latino candidate".

It was a relatively quiet day today on the presidential front. The biggest story was on foreign policy, more specifically the Iraq war.

The big winner (at least on the blogs) from the MoveOn Iraq Townhall was Richardson, who came out strongly for pulling all troops out of Iraq. Edwards stepped up and mostly agreed with that stance today. Bowers explains the difference between Richardson, Edwards and Clinton.

Obama and McCain are going back and forth on the Iraq War. McCain tried to attach himself to one of Obama's statements and he was having none of that.

Edwards is going on a rural tour next week, but not coming to Cali.

Clinton is getting kudos for her defense of the Rutgers basketball team, with a message on her website and email to her list.

On a related note, I recently signed up for emails from Clinton, Obama and Richardson using the forms on their website header (I was already on Edwards and Dodd's list). Not one sent me a welcome message and a request to take some sort of action or collect more information. Come on now people, you should know better. The first 24 hours is your best chance to really form a relationship with your new subscribers. They really should have an auto email system for the newbies. The only email I have gotten from them was Clinton's on Rutgers. Nothing from Obama or Richardson yet.

I enjoy putting these together and hopefully our fabulous readers find them useful. Here are the highlights from the press and blogs that I have found today.

• MoveOn is hosting its Virtual Town Hall meeting tonight on Iraq tonight. Over 6,000 questions were submitted by members and tere were over half a million votes to determine which ones should be asked. You can find a party here. After 8pm PST there will be a highlight posted here.

• The LAT has a good profile of Richardson today. The best line by far is a quote from the Gov. "I'm perfectly content to be the only candidate in the second tier." I dunno what Dodd, Biden etc would have to say about that.
• Speaking of Richardson, the American delegation to North Korea had a breakthrough in negotiations today.
• The Fix has a roundup off all of the contenders' comments on Imus.
• MissLaura talks crowd size over at Daily Kos. The Democrats are packing houses, Republicans, not so much.
• Maviglio argues that since Giuliani and Clinton will easily win New York, that it increases the importance of California.
• The NCTimes previews the CDP Convention, where all of the leading Democratic contenders will be speaking. I will be there reporting directly from the conference.
• This Politico story republished by CBS is worth a read. They cover the tweaking by the candidates, in the wake of the fundraising reporting.

Bill Richardson like Obama has not fleshed out his health care policy in any great detail. There is an executive summary on his website, but little substance behind it beyond the basic outline.

• Working families and small businesses will be able to purchase coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan.
• Americans 55 and older will be able to purchase coverage through Medicare. Seniors and persons with disabilities will also receive all of their care through Medicare, rather than multiple, uncoordinated, inadequate programs, as they do now.
• Lower-income Americans will obtain affordable coverage through expanded Medicaid and State Child Health Insurance (SCHIP) programs.
• Veterans will get access to the high-quality care they deserve, when they need it, without bureaucratic hassles.

Richardson also wants to pass an advance refundable tax credit to help people obtain coverage through the FEHB or Medicare. He would demand all employees to "do their fair share to contribute to a healthy and covered workforce". It is a nice statement for sure, but has not details as to what their "fair share" would entail. Richardson would require all Americans to obtain coverage after his other reforms are in place.

Time for a tour of the most interesting news articles on the Presidential race today.

• LAT says Clinton and McCain have lost their front-runner status. They of course base most of their analysis on the fundraising totals, which is only one measure of success at this stage of the game. The article really is a vehicle to talk about how engaged and active the Democratic activists are this early in the game.
• Every major newspaper needs at least one article on how the candidates are using social networking sites to engage the youngins. The SDUT takes its turn.
• Bloomberg cover's Edwards' wooing of labor. Edwards put a lot of time and effort into attracting the support of unions since his 2004 primary loss. We will see how much it pays off for him as endorsements are made later on.
• New York has officially joined California on Feb 5th. This obviously helps both Clinton and Giuliani, though New Yorkers definately have a different perspective on Rudy than the rest of the country.

  I think journalists need to decide on its nickname. Is it Super-Duper Tuesday or Tsunami Tuesday? I like the latter personally.

• Guess where Richardson spent his Easter? If you said North Korea you would be correct. He is there with an American delegation negotiating the return of the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War.
• Edwards likes California's ReadyReturn so much that he wants to see it become a national program. He is calling for the IRS to use data it already collects to complete 50 million tax returns for people.
• Obama will be on Letterman tonight. Oh and Hill is sending Bill for some CaliCash next weekend.