Very interesting post by Jake Tapper over at ABC about the “private and friendly” conversation (that, apparently, was neither) between Barack Obama and Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor yesterday. Democrats will almost certainly add to their numbers in the Senate this November, which means they will no longer need Lieberman, the …

The first official, on the record call for a joint town hall came around May 10, from Mark McKinnon, McCain’s exiting media man, who said that the campaign was considering asking for them. “The town hall meeting is John’s best format,” McKinnon said. “He’s a natural campaigner up close with the public. That would test Obama’s …

David Brooks introduced a wonderful phrase Sunday, in the round table discussion at the end of ABC’s “This Week.” The conversation had turned to John McCain’s embarrassing flub last week, when he falsely said the U.S. had “drawn down” troop levels in Iraq to pre-surge levels. Afterwards, the McCain campaign tried to get …

Reports of Budge Sperling’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In a post yesterday about Rep. Tom Davis, I erroneously referred to “the late Budge Sperling”, who created and for years hosted the Sperling/Monitor newsmaker breakfasts that are a Washington institution. As David Cook of the Monitor kindly informed me this morning, Budge, …

You can hear a podcast excerpt of my interview with him here. (Thanks to TIME.com techno-wizard Caitlin Thompson for putting this together.)

One of the more remarkable ironies of this campaign season is how the newcomer to presidential politics managed to be the one who built the best campaign. No staff shakeups. No financial crises. No visible strife. Hillary Clinton and John McCain had done this before, but both managed to run their campaigns right off the road a time of …

Ends and beginnings bring out the best in political writers. Last night produced two pearls. Ron Fournier, the AP’s reigning master, comes through with this obit of the Clinton campaign. And Michael Powell gets his second person reporter voice into a narrative front page Obama profile in the New York Times. Both are worth the read.

At least, it looks that way, though as one Clinton associate notes: “It’s not done with Bill or Hillary Clinton until it’s done.” Sources have confirmed to me the news, first reported by ABC, that Hillary Clinton is likely to drop out of the race by the end of the week.

The decision comes after a day of conference calls with her …

It’s a regional thing. TIME’s incomparable Jackson Dykman laid it out in a series of fascinating maps. Techno-whiz* Feilding Cage made it all work for the web.

* The High Sheriff informs me the proper title is “interactive graphic designer.”

Patrick Ruffini, of the new group blog “Turning Right,” is one of the smartest GOP 2.0 bloggers I’ve read. He seems to be way ahead of the conservative curve when it comes to the intersection of politics and the internet and in calling foul on conventional wisdom. Knowing that, his analysis on just how wildly (“Wilder”?) inaccurate the …

In the competition among despairing Republicans to sound the loudest alarm about the party’s prospects in the fall elections, retiring Virginia congressman Tom Davis has his eye on the prize. There’s something about retiring that transforms some politicians into non-stop truth-telling machines. Davis, who ran the National Republican …

Obama team responds, sorta, to McCain’s proposed joint town halls:

“As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country. We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the

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She took at least a bit of Joe’s advice: “It has been an honor to contest these primaries with him. It is an honor to call him my friend. And let me be very clear, I know that Sen. Obama will be a good friend to Israel.”