The always pertinent Wall Street Journal opened up an eastern front in the Battle for the White House this morning, reporting that Barack Obama is cranking up a Vice Presidential search committee.  And whom, you might ask, is under consideration?  The WSJ list, though it seems much more like a “Roster of American Democrats” rather than VP shortlist, includes none other than our own United States Senator, Chris Dodd.

Having scratched his Presidential “itch”, Dodd has returned to life as a Senator, presiding over his fiefdom that is the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and otherwise enjoying his time in the House of Lords.  But according to the WSJ, Dodd could be quite a match for Obama.  Unfortunately, the WSJ also puts the ‘kiss of death’ on Dodd by equating him with Vice President Dick Cheney:

Sen. Dodd, who endorsed Sen. Obama shortly after withdrawing his own bid for the presidency in January, would bring experience to the ticket, similar to the way Washington stalwart Dick Cheney helped Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000.

The paper goes on to include the crass political angle, courtesy of the always-willing John Zogby: “If Obama is looking for the gravitas and the over-65 crowd, which he needs to cut into, then I think Chris Dodd is at the top of the list,” says pollster John Zogby.”  What an endorsement.

It’s still early in the Obama VP search committee - and its highly probable that all of this speculation, while fun, is simple drivel for politicos to chew over the long weekend.  But with Camp McCain assembling possible VPs for barbeque in Sedona, maybe Obama’s trip to the Wesleyan graduation will be followed by a swing over to East Haddam for some beer and grilled chicken.

As is being widely reported this morning, a trio of potential Vice Presidents are headed to Sedona, Arizona, this weekend, for a backyard BBQ with presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain.  Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will be settling down for beers (or water) and ribs with the GOP’s November warhorse.  The national media speculation is that betwixt smores and camp fire songs, the barbecue will actually be an informal Vice Presidential job interview.  With the Republican contest having been resolved for weeks now, the next necessary bit of process has been the VP search, and the Memorial Day Weekend cookout only stokes the flames.

Each of the three would bring different strengths (and weaknesses) to the GOP ticket.  Bay Stater Romney (Did you know he’s Mormon?) ran an aggressive campaign for the Republican nomination before quickly departing the race soon after Super Tuesday.  His well known strengths - business matters, economic issues, fundraising - seem to position the native Michigander (while Michigan and its 17 electoral votes currently poll dead even between McCain and Obama) -  as perhaps the strongest Vice Presidential candidate for the GOP.  The downside?  McCain really seemed to hate Romney during the primaries.

Much ink has been spilled to describe Louisiana’s new Governor, Bobby Jindal, as the ”rising star” of the Republican Party - and rightly so.  He’s a whiz kid, a Rhodes Scholar, a tireless worker who is trying to clean up Louisiana’s notorious corruption and, as is often described, a health care expert - all these adjectives collected at just 36 years old.  An Indian-American, Jindal would also bring some diversity to the ticket, and appeal to the tight-knit Indian-American community across the nation.  The major drawbacks highlighted for Jindal are his youth and that he’s been Governor for like ten minutes.

The tenor parts in this barbershop quartet will be sung by Florida Governor Charlie Crist.  He’s immensely popular in Florida (If for some reason you miss the significance of this, simply tune into HBO on Sunday at 9pm), he’s got a perpetual tan, and his surprising endorsement is widely cited as the key factor to McCain’s Sunshine State knockout blow to Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.  His presence on the ticket could free up McCain to spend crucial time in other battleground states (read: Ohio and Pennsylvania) instead of Florida.

It was also reported that popular Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was invited to attend the pow-wow, but his schedule prevented him from doing so.  Like our own Congressman Christopher Shays, Gov. Pawlenty endorsed McCain early and stuck with him, even through the very darkest days of the effort.  Look for Pawlenty to be a high profile presence across the nation for Sen. McCain.

With Awe Kooda bilaxpak Kuuxshish seeming to have the Democratic nomination in hand, McCain’s VP pick could be more important than ever as a divided electorate considers the future of the nation.

While the big media outlets are zooming from one story to the next during their 24 hours a day, nonstop coverage of the Presidential campaign, it has largely been left to others to actually report on events.  Online outfits have filled key portions of this market, with a handful of organizations exceeding all others when it comes to event coverage.  A prime example of this fact is the welcome coverage of ElectionJournal.org - whose detailed reporting on the moving events of Election Day have spread considerable light on a heretofore known but largely unseen aspect of the democratic process.

Many Republicans have already heard the stories about election day shenanigans across the nation in 2004 from campaign workers who were there - like Wisconsin, where busloads of Cheeseheads travelled from polling place to polling place, using the “voucher system” - wherein one local resident known to the polling place workers ‘vouches’ for the authenticity of a person’s residence without other proof, and being permitted to vote.  Also widely rumored were the activities of groups like ACORN, whose members allegedly falsified voter registration forms.  But no one ever saw any of this - it wasn’t on CNN, FOX, or MSNBC so it was written off by some folks as pure partisan BS and rumor-mongering. 

ElectionJournal.org and other similar groups change the dynamic.  Their coverage of the “street level” campaign as it plays out on election days across the nation has been instructive.  They are using all of the modern tools - Twitter, YouTube, Flickr - to track the election as it happens.

The EJ team is in Kentucky this week, where they have already found a voter registered on the 41st floor of a building that isn’t 41 stories tall, voters turned away from a polling place, illegal electioneering inside a polling place, and they are hot on the trail of widespread lies being spread.  Keep checking in with the EJ correspondents throughout the day.

After wall-to-wall media drooling over twice-failed Presidential candidate John Edwards’ endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is “reflecting” on four years of his Presidency this morning in Columbus, Ohio.

The McCain campaign is rolling out the full court press for this one, complete with splashy web ad, cleverly dubbed “2013″.

Many of the headlines are already picking up on McCain’s comments related to Iraq, in which he predicts “most” of the American military presence in Iraq will return home, and take a far lesser role in that country.

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

McCain took aim at one of his favorite targets, partisanship in Washington, for a key section of the speech:

For too long, now, Washington has been consumed by a hyper-partisanship that treats every serious challenge facing us as an opportunity to trade insults; disparage each other’s motives; and fight about the next election. For all the problems we face, if you ask Americans what frustrates them most about Washington, they will tell you they don’t think we’re capable of serving the public interest before our personal and partisan ambitions; that we fight for ourselves and not for them. Americans are sick of it, and they have every right to be. They are sick of the politics of selfishness, stalemate and delay.

Of all the ideas floated by McCain today, one of the most interesting was in the practices McCain hopes to employ. McCain seems intent on showing not only the policy differences with the current administration, but also the style differences that will change the way the Presidency “feels” to most Americans.

I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.

McCain is gearing up for a summer of speeches, outlining his vision for the nation’s next four years. The grand finale speech of the summer will be his Sept. 4th address to the Republican National Convention upon acceptance of the GOP nomination for President.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton and IL Sen. Barack Obama split the differenence last night in the North Carolina & Indiana primaries, with Sen. Obama drawing a huge 56%-42% victory in the Tarheel State and Clinton squeaking to victory in the Hoosier State, 51%-49%.

Clinton was defiant in her speech to supporters last night, pledging to fight on to West Virginia and Kentucky, and pressing for the inclusion of Florida and Michigan in the delegate counts.  But as numerous pundits have noted, Clinton fundraising has slacked in recent weeks as many donors grow skeptical of her chances.  Word comes today that the Senator has made another loan to her campaign of $6.4 million dollars - on top of a previous $5 million loan earlier in the year.  The Clintons are on the ropes.

This is not the case for Sen. Barack Obama - the self-described ”skinny African-American with a funny name”.  With the tough Pennsylvania defeat now behind him, a better than expected win in North Carolina, and a surprisingly good Indiana showing, the media has covered Obama as though he had clinched the nomination - this despite the fact that the spread in delegate counts between the two candidates is almost the same as it was pre-Pennsylvania.  Nonetheless, the Big Mo’, as they say, is clearly with the Obama campaign and the decisive superdelegates are getting the messages.

This past Saturday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean used the Democratic Radio Address to smear the good name of presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain.  It was just the latest effort in the DNC’s desperate attempt to characterize a McCain Presidency as “Bush’s Third Term”.  And over the last month, they’ve been shameless.  They attacked Sen. McCain for his now infamous “100 years” comment, an attack that the nonpartisan factcheck.org called, “a rank falsehood”.  On Friday of last week, the DNC launched another whopper at McCain, claiming that the Arizonan had labelled the current economic situation as a “pyschological” problem - a wild distortion of McCain’s statement. 

Regular observation of this melodrama would lead one to correctly surmise that the folks at the Democratic National Committee are either exceedingly dumb or very desperate.  This sentiment was seemingly endorsed by none other than Senator Barack Obama today when Obama himself dispelled the “McCain = Bush’s Third Term” bleating.  In Pennsylvania, he was quoted as saying, “And all three of us would be better than George Bush.”

While a refreshing - if momentary - dismissal of Chairman Dean’s attacks, it seems the ‘out of context statements used as smears’ strategy is far from dead.  Using the Democratic National Committee standard, one could just as easily besmirch whatever is left of Chairman Dean’s integrity.  One could write in big, flashy type: Howard Dean Hates Christians, Saying: “… I think they are incredibly unfair, biased and hate mongering.”  Now, the quote itself is a Howard Dean quote from Mary Ann Akers ‘The Sleuth’ blog at the Washington Post, March 20, 2008.  To normal people, it matters that the sentence before it properly characterized the comment - referencing the fact that Dean generally doesn’t do interviews on “far right networks”.  But taking the thing out of context, it can take on whatever smear you want.  It is a patently ridiculous standard, and one that shames the Democratic Party every time they open their mouth.