Jake Tapper at ABC wrote a post that "Fact-Checks" Obama's statement that he acknowledged during the surge debate that additional troops might reduce violence in Iraq. Tapper writes that he never said any such thing until later in 2007.

This has become an Obama meme -- that during the debate over the surge he acknowledged that more US troops would mean a temporary reduction in violence.

But is it true?

I asked the Obama campaign to provide me with any information of Sen. Obama saying the surge would reduce violence "during the course of this debate" over the surge.

The earliest quote they provided from Obama suggesting the surge might reduce violence came in March 2007  

However this is wrong. Obama said what he claims he did in Nov. 2006. Hop below the fold for the dirt and the video confirmation.

This is it. This is the framing to remember. This is the message that will galvanize the American people to stay focused on what's important to our mideast policy.

In fact, true success in Iraq -- victory in Iraq -- will not take place in a surrender ceremony where an enemy lays down their arms. True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future - a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge.

If the Democrats want a simple, powerful way to help America visualize what Obama vs. McCain means for the country, we need look no further than the contrast provided by the first 2 days as Presumptive Nominee of the party.

Obama's first two days as presumptive nominee of the Democrats were June 4 & 5.
McCain's first two days as presumptive nominee of the GOP were March 5 & 6.
Let's have a quick look at what each did on those two days, shall we?

According to Ben Smith over at Politico, the McCain campaign is pushing back on McCain's latest show of unawareness in Iraq:

On a McCain campaign conference call,  Senator Jon Kyl did not concede that McCain had made an error in saying "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels," instead accusing the Obama campaign and reporters of "trying to nitpick the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home."

"The surge troops will be home by the end of July," he said.

McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann hit the same talking point.

"To get into a debate about a verb tense rather than the real fundamental national security issues at stake is really a distraction," he said.

As Ben notes, this freedom from verb tense is a powerful new tool in the political world. hop below the fold to explore this subject in depth.

Having exhausted her avenues to close the pledged delegate gap, and with all signs pointing to the likelihood of no more than half-seatings for FL and MI, Hillary has only one avenue remaining to victory. She must have a superdelegate coup tsunami - a massive shift in her favor from the remaining Supers. Her only argument left, now brings us back to where we began this contest, inevitability.
Hop below the fold for the memo and a trip down memory lane.

My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but
tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

-- Kodos, Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror VII" (3:25 from the end)

This is the first of what I plan to make a recurring feature - (hopefully) effective talking points to address the issues of the moment. I am writing this because of what I see as a gap between the few talking points coming from the campaign itself, and the immensity of supporter advocates for the Democratic nominee. This often leads to really bad spin, and sometimes outright harmful spin. So this is just me doing my part - disagreements, corrections (this is supposed to be spin, not blatant lying) or refinements welcome.

Follow me below the fold and twirl into the future!

This is cross-posted (with slight changes) from TPM

poblano has built from scratch over the course of the primary season a model to predict outcomes of these contests and analyzed all sorts of possible factors. He eventually settled on the conclusion that just a handful of factors are necessary to completely predict results,  and  his model has been entirely horserace-blind. His results have been quite good. In fact he has routinely outperformed most polling organizations, and vastly outperformed the majority of bloggers who shape the web's CW and who are in turn shaped by it.
his last 3 predictions:
PA: Clinton by 7.4  - actual Clinton by 9.3
IN: Clinton by 2 - actual Clinton by 1.5
& NC: Obama by 17.2 - actual Obama by 14.8 (15.0 head-to-head)

There was a moment today when Hillary's campaign hit me in a new light, and this was the moment

We’re going to go right at OPEC, They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at. [snip] That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly.

At that moment it became clear that she was no longer a policy wonk. She was Peter Griffin, talking about What Really Grinds My Gears.

Many of you will disagree with what I have to say, however it's rapidly becoming clear that it's now time for Senator Obama to sever whatever ties or perceptions of ties exist between himself and Jeremiah Wright.
Let me be clear, his controversial positions are damaging enough, but they are far from the worst of it.
Rev. Wright is trying to attach himself to Senator Obama: to fuse his cause, his fortunes, his solutions, and his grievances with those of Obama.
I suggest you re-read that last sentence, for it contains the death of our hopes for a progressive president within it.

"If the popular vote is the metric that should decide the nomination and not the pledged delegates as you, Bill, Terry McAuliffe, and Harold Ickes say - then why did none of you ever show the slightest bit of interest in changing the process when you all were in a position to write and advocate for those rules?"
Or more briefly:
"Are the four of you going to push to change the nomination to popular vote-based after the election?"

Today's daily Gallup polling passed a milestone that has not been breached in months, and yet I did not see Gallup comment on it. The poll showed Obama holding pretty much the same lead he has been throughout the week.
link

PRINCETON, NJ -- For the third consecutive day, Barack Obama holds a significant advantage over Hillary Clinton in national Democratic preferences for the Democratic presidential nomination, now 51% to 41%.

Hillary's number was slightly down from yesterday, from 43% to 41%. Just a small dip, just noise in the day-to-day results. Gallup did not comment on it, however this is the milestone.

I've grown to love these pool reports, and read them religiously. They are tiny slices of the day to day personal interactions between the candidates and their supporters. They showcase moments of authenticity, and capture the (sometimes puzzling) hopes that people have for America. Here's a great one from Missoula, MT.

LINK

Obama's speech was as subtle and complex and fiercely insightful as the subject matter required, but that means the difficulty is how America is going to internalize the message.
Based on the news headlines (as noted by Ben Smith) most of America will miss the message:

CNN: Obama: Constitution stained by 'sin of slavery'
ABC: Obama: Pastor Has Distorted View, But He Is Family to Me
FOX: Obama Condemns Pastor, But Won't 'Disown Him'
MSNBC: Obama: Racial anger is 'real'
CBS: Obama Urges End To "Racial Stalemate"

Only CBS got it nearly right, so allow me in my own way to boil down the speech into an essential message that his supporters should embrace going forward.

Since we have 6 weeks until the next contest, people will - perhaps out of sheer boredom - slice and dice the results coming out of our state tonight. To that end, let me add another tidbit for each side to stretch and twist into a talking point to explain their performance. The major state universities, as well as most high schools are all on spring break this week.

"She doesn't have standing to question my position"
Said today in WY

He said this in the context of Iraq, but I love it as a general response to the entire kitchen sink that Hillary has been throwing.

She doesn't have the standing to question my transparency. (when she can't release white house documents)
She doesn't have the standing to question my fundraisers. (when she can't release her tax returns)
She doesn't have the standing to question my Iraq policy. (when she voted for war)
She doesn't have the standing to question my Commander in Chief abilities.  (when she has never been commanded nor chiefed anything bigger than the East Wing)
She doesn't have the standing to question my foreign policy. (when her foreign policy of refusal to negotiate is in lockstep with the failed Bush Policies of the last 8 years.)

Had it happened on a single evening it would have been the largest story of the primary season, but instead it's been only mentioned in passing. Since Super Tuesday, in addition to the 11 contests in a row that Obama was declared the winner in, he quietly won huge in the state of Superdelegatia.
And I mean huge. California huge. New York huge.

Thus far in the contest, much has been said about how Obama has focused on the delegate game. His campaign's "delegate guy", Jeff Berman gets consulted by the media late in the primary evenings for a prediction of the final score. Clinton, meanwhile has apparently played the game as though it were winner take all, looking for the big victories in NY, CA, MA, etc. I've never even heard mention of a dedicated "delegate guy" (or gal) on the Clinton side. I do not, however think this was a bad strategy for Clinton going in, her claim of undeniable front-runner-ness makes going for the flashy large states a very sensible strategy. Even as late as super-tuesday, the early feelings were that trading Obama's small-state jabs for her big-state uppercuts had won her the evening. Only a count of approximate delegates in the wee hours of the morning revealed otherwise.

First diary, be gentle with me.
The most effective debate moments happen not when arguing over policy, even when the differences are substantive and the arguments are factual (policy debates are best carried out in lengthy written form anyway), but when a candidate is confronted with a perceived weakness, and forced to respond to it.
Some of the memorable debate moments fall into this category:
Reagan, on his age - "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience."
Bentson vs. Quayle on his experience - "You're no Jack Kennedy"
Mondale vs. Gary Hart on his substance - "Where's the beef?"
And more recently
Guilliani on abortion getting his microphone knocked out by lightning
Hillary Clinton on likeability - "That hurt my feelings"