TRAILMIX: Another Night for Barack on the Blogs

By: Emily Vaughan After his string of 10 victories -- hello Wisconsin and Hawaii -- Obama is looking ahead to November, positioning his campaign against not only Clinton, but also McCain, says Jonathan Weisman at washingtonpost.com's The Trail. By lumping both into the category of "Washington establishment," Obama is able to attack his Republican adversary while still drawing Republicans into his ranks.

Warm-up speakers are supposed to say the things that are too controversial or confrontational for a candidate to say him- or herself, says John M. Broder at The New York Times' The Caucus. Hillary Clinton's warm-up speaker R. Thomas Buffenbarger, international president of the Machinists union, did just that after her Wisconsin and Hawaii losses, calling Barack Obama the "silver tongued warrior with a microphone." Buffenbarger message: Obama is just talk.

Chris Cillizza at his The Fix at washingtonpost.com observes: "The economy again trumped health care and the war in Iraq as the most pressing issue on the minds of Democratic voters. Among Republicans in Wisconsin, the economy, too, was the leading issue. And, as was the case in other recent votes, a near-majority of those who participated in the Wisconsin GOP primary said that the most important factor for them was picking a candidate who shared their values."

Texas and Ohio may be the big March 4 primaries, but Vermont also votes, and Obama hasn't forgotten this. While the Burlington Free Press reported that Clinton was opening an office with three staff members, Obama's office of seven has already been up and running out of four storefronts and television ads, says Don Frederick at the L.A. Times' Top of the Ticket.

Obama said if he was the Democratic nominee, he would run a publicly funded general election campaign like his primary campaign has been, but only if the Republicans agreed to as well. In a USA Today article, Obama defended this old promise, something John McCain has also pledged, but not Clinton, says Jill Lawrence at USA Today's On Politics.

The three remaining candidates are all too leinent on immigration for some Americans, so some immigration hard-liners are pushing for another candidate: CNN host Lou Dobbs. They re-launched a Dobbs for president Web site this week, and have already pledged more than $500,000 to the host's campaign as well as designed a platform based on his show, should be decide to run, says Whitney Blair Wyckoff at the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp.

Bill Clinton isn't the only would-be first spouse making headlines anymore.
Michelle Obama made news yesterday when she said this election was "the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." Cindy McCain shot back, insisting that she has been and always will be proud of her country, says Sasha Issenberg at the Boston Globe's Political Intelligence.

There has been more talk about what McCain will do with his Senate seat, especially in recent weeks after politically ambitious Arizona Republican Rep. John Shadegg announced he would not see re-election for his House seat, says Ben Pershing at washingtonpost.com's Capitol Briefing. Precedent is
mixed: While Bob Dole vacated his seat in the 1996 election, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman did not in their respective presidential and vice presidential runs. Clinton and Obama will have to face this dilemma too, but at 72, "this election appears likely to be McCain's last hurrah," Pershing says.