A good sign that things are starting to heat up in the presidential race. Honestly I think most of the campaigns, up until now, have been doing a fairly decent job with keeping e-mails sparse but noticeable. I most often get messages from John McCain and they are usually pretty succinct and to the point (give us money, we are not in shambles, give us money).

I am using e-mail for a much different purpose than most of those who are probably subscribed. I skim the various fundraising messages to see if anything is new, it usually isn’t, then I delete. I rarely follow the links inside because I’ve already heard of whatever topic they are jumping on and I am not interested in giving money. So I am not the best judge of their effect.

With that said I have heard they are a good way to drive traffic to specific places and as action alerts for things happening in community sites I have to believe they are effective. I just personally see them as more junk in my inbox and now that we are getting close to the primaries I am sure I will be seeing plenty!

Just a reminder the Republican debate is on tonight at 9:00 on FOX News.

These photos are from the Associated Press taken by Jim Cole:

Update: Many reports are now coming in that these photos were taken AFTER the event ended. From nh2008blogspot says they were there and there was at least 75 people in the room before the photo was taken. They say the shot came AFTER students and faculty left for their 1:00pm class.

With that said let me add two thoughts.
1) 75 people is still not a lot of people.
2) I have regularly attended political-oriented speeches at colleges and aside from Michael Moore and big-named presidential candidates, students rarely attend. Which is sad and always counter to the message that young people are somehow amazingly engaged.

I and my family were able to talk to Arianna Huffington for awhile at a local college after she had just spoke to a crowd of about thirty people here in Upstate, NY awhile ago. Also though there were a hundred or more people to see Janet Reno in 2000 almost none of them were college students and most of them were angry locals who were mad about Ms. Reno “taking” their “guns away” and the Elian Gonzalez decision.

I almost feel bad for the guy, until of course I realize he doesn’t have to be doing this and is actually receiving a government paycheck to stand around at places like this and waste peoples time (yes big whopping editorial message there).

The Obama campaign is getting a little desperate. The latest polling of both North & South Carolina have Clinton at over 40% and Obama around 16%. So the campaign has done what campaigns always do when they are low in polls. They declare polls don’t matter and then point to other polls of different things to prove it.

The latest is the campaigns assertion that in 2004 Joe Lieberman was the leader in polls for the Democratic nomination. The Huffington Post finds the problem in that comparison.

But a review of national presidential polls from mid-September 2003 shows that history isn’t nearly as cut and dry as the Obama campaign portrays.

Among national polls taken in mid-September 2003, Lieberman led in just one: a Sept. 10-13 ABC News survey of all Democratic-leaning voters. Lieberman received 20 percent support versus 15 percent for Howard Dean and 14 percent for both Richard Gephardt and John Kerry. However, when the ABC News poll was limited to Democratic-leaning likely voters, Howard Dean held a slim lead with 20 percent, compared to 19 percent for Lieberman and Kerry.

A Newsweek poll taken Sept. 18-19, 2003 among “registered Democrats and independents who lean Democratic” found that both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore received far more support than any of the declared presidential candidates. Thirty-three percent said they preferred Clinton, while 28 percent backed Gore. Wesley Clark and Howard Dean both polled at 7 percent, and Joe Lieberman and John Kerry polled at 5 percent.

In other words, Lieberman was by no means the clear national frontrunner in mid-September 2003. The polling then was decidedly mixed, in contrast to Clinton’s current dominant lead in the Democratic primaries.

So not only was Lieberman not the clear frontrunner in the polling, Hillary Clinton who wasn’t running was winning polls then too.

MSNBC & CNN are now reporting Sen. Larry Craig’s spokesman has said he may reconsider his decision to step down from his seat in Idaho. Will this mean he would also seek re-election? More to come.

Update:

It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” said Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman, in Idaho’s capital.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign September 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate.” - CNN