Chuck moves Oregon and New Jersey from “lean Obama” to “likely Obama” and moves Iowa from “toss-up” to “leans Obama.”
I’d say that’s about right. The Oregon and Iowa adjustments speak to Obama’s strength in the Upper Mississippi River Valley — or “the ‘region’ of Illinois,” as Chuck puts it — and in the Pacific [...]

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I’m heading to Chicago in a few hours and will be knockin back Old Styles in Wrigleyville before the sun goes down, so I don’t have time to write individual posts about each of these stories. But if I did, I would, cause they’re all pretty damn good:
GEOGRAPHY: Joel Kotkin explains why despite gas [...]

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Legend has it Richard Nixon would ask “Will it play in Peoria?” when he was determining if something had national appeal. Well, it looks like John McCain played pretty well in Peoria tonight.
Illinois Republican Electoral Map (New York Times)

On a more serious note, I wrote in my Huffington Post column that downstate Illinois [...]

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NBC Political Director/my former boss Chuck Todd reports that the Obama people say they are “preforming ahead of pace” in Georgia and Illinois where they’ve claimed 170+ delegates, and the Clinton camp is pleased with the results in Arkansas and Massachusetts.

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Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.
And check out my rundown of Southern states here.
For the first time in modern American political history, there will be a nationwide primary on Tuesday, February 5. Many of 23 states that moved their primaries to earlier dates did so with the hopes of getting the kind of attention [...]

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Salon’s Edward McClelland has an excellent column about the demographics of Illinois and of Chicago in particular. His piece focuses specifically on Chicago’s “unique history of launching the careers of powerful black politicians” and explains why it’s no coincide that Barack Obama calls the city home.
The column is so compelling because it relies on [...]

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