Krugman Jumps the Shark.

“Why, then, is there so much venom out there? I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody.” He’s been teetering on the brink for awhile now. (Not for nothing did TNR deem his last anti-Obama column the “least surprising NYT column ever.”) But NYT columnist Paul Krugman finally, irrevocably jumps the shark with his column this morning, which blames the “cult of personality” around Obama for all the venom in the Democratic race at the moment, and claims Obama is turning the Democratic party into “Nixonland.” Um, yeah.

First off, it doesn’t seem like Krugman gets out around the blogosphere much, since every political board you can find out there is strewn with Clinton supporters saying wildly intemperate things. (I’m sure he’s suffering from a selection bias — given that he’s invariably writing anti-Obama pieces, he probably gets a lot more prObama hate mail.) Second, there’ no mention at all of any of the shadier tactics employed by the Clinton campaign over the course of the past few months, of course (and he cherry-picks rather drastically when it comes to discussion of the race card.) No, the problem for Krugman resides only in Obama cultists and a vast media conspiracy. Right.

When it comes to economics, Krugman is usually a sound thinker, even if I do think he has a tendency to belittle the progressive position on matters of political economy. (The title of his recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal, makes it plain.) But, when he strays off the economics reservation to dabble in history or politics, hoo boy. This column, frankly, is partisan hackery of the first order.

Education: The Real Cleave?

“Generally speaking, the more education a Democrat has, the less likely he or she is to support Hillary Clinton, and the more likely to support Barack Obama.” For all the talk of age, race, gender, and class divergences, some analysts at Gallup see a different dynamic at work in the Obama-Clinton race: education. “In short, education is a highly significant predictor of Democrats’ vote choices…Gender, too, is a predictor, but is essentially overwhelmed by the impact of education.”

In fact, a worthy regression analysis of poll data over at dKos pushes the point further: “It is educational attainment, rather than income level, that appears to be the driving force behind Obama’s ‘upscale’ support. In fact, there is some weak evidence that Obama actually does a bit better in states with lower median household incomes, once we control for educational attainment (but, the effect was not quite statistically significant enough to make the final cut). Trust me — I looked and looked for this one, analyzing variables such as household income, per capita income, home values, home ownership, unemployment rates, and union membership. The idea that Clinton does better with working class voters seems to be a myth; she does better with voters without college degrees, but not working class voters per se. To the extent any such effects exist, they appear to point in the opposite direction of the conventional wisdom.” (Speaking of which, there are number of CW-defying findings in this regression analysis, and it’s worth a look-see.) Update: Poblano has more.

Update 2: The WP parses more data and finds the same education cleave. “In each of the states where the Post subscribed to exit polls (and voters were asked about their level of education), Clinton did better among non-college than college-educated white voters. She also outpaced Obama among non-college whites in all 14 of these states, but beat him by more than a single percentage point among college graduates in only five.“

Crook: An Easy Call.

“Republicans, of course, are bound to dislike his liberalism – but what is there for Democrats to think about? Why are they even having this conversation? They have been waiting an awfully long time for a politician like Mr Obama. If, having come so close, they still manage to nominate Mrs Clinton, I think it is a choice they will regret for years and maybe decades.” In the Financial Times, Clive Crook sees the Democratic choice for Obama as a no-brainer.

The Fall Girl.

In another sign that the Clinton campaign may actually be reeling more than it lets on after Super Tuesday‘s failed knockout, Patty Solis Doyle is out as campaign manager, to be replaced by longtime Clinton aide Maggie Williams. This shake-up isn’t a huge surprise, as it’s been telegraphed ever since Iowa. Still, given that the campaign is already looking shaky and is desperate for good news at the moment, the timing is not ideal for the Clintons.

The Maine Event.

Wow. Make that 5-for-5. Senator Obama wins the Maine caucus going away. (Final tally: 59%-40%.) I have to say, I didn’t see this one coming — I expected Sen. Obama to lose close. Either Obama’s starting to pick up real momentum, the Clinton campaign is just terrible at caucuses (which doesn’t speak well of Sen. Clinton’s ability to “manage the bureaucracy”), or everyone severely misunderestimated the impact of the King endorsement.

Well, at any rate, good job by Team Obama in Maine, and hopefully the completed weekend sweep bodes well for Tuesday’s big Chesapeake/Beltway primary: Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Sen. Obama is favored in all, but, of course, nothing’s certain, and the margins matter. (By the way, New Hampshire and Massachusetts? Not to rub it in, but the Pine Tree State just made y’all look kinda silly.)

Insult to Injury.

It’s been that kind of weekend for the Clintons. Barack Obama defeats Bill Clinton at the Grammys. But don’t feel too bad for the former prez: “Though Clinton and Carter lost, they both have won the category before (Clinton, twice). And Hillary Rodham Clinton took home a Grammy in 1996 for her audio version of the book, ‘It Takes A Village.’“

Saturday Sweep.

In the Caribbean, South, Midwest, and West, Senator Obama goes four for four, winning Nebraska (68% to 32%), Washington (68% to 31%), Louisiana (56% to 37%), and the Virgin Islands (90% to 8%) handily. Now, that’s a good day’s work. (As you can see from the picture, Maine is next…which looks to lean Clinton at the moment. We’ll know more tomorrow.)

Obama’s Constitutional Experience.

“Katyal, who has been called in by both senators, described what sounded like a typical establishment vs. insurgency split between the two. Clinton ‘comes at it a bit more from a top-down perspective,’ he said, ‘as in, “elites are likely to know what the right answer is.” She’ll likely talk to the Nobel Prize winner, but maybe not be as likely to talk to the people on the ground affected by the policies./ Obama, on the other hand, talked to Katyal for two hours when the Military Commissions Act, which sought to limit the Guantanamo detainees’ right to bring appeals in federal court, was being debated in the Senate. He wanted to know how the proposed law would play out directly for the detainees, and Katyal was representing Salim Ahmed Hamdan before the Supreme Court.“

Slate‘s Emily Bazelon examines how Obama’s years as a con law professor influence his judicial thinking. “Obama’s immersion makes the law professors in his inner circle giddy. In addition to the sweet relief of a candidate who has promised not to keep marching to the drummer of executive power, and who wants to protect rather than diminish the right to privacy, the Obama lawyer team loves their man because he goes toe to toe with them. As Harvard law professor Martha Minow puts it, ‘He has at his fingertips the whole historical context of the moments in which our Constitution has been stretched, or has been in jeopardy, and when presidents have tried to bring it back. This isn’t an afterthought for him: “Oh, I’ll go consult my lawyers.”‘” This probably goes a way toward explaining why Obama has the backing of so many anti-Gitmo lawyers.

The Mitt Comes Off | The Reign of McCain.

“I must now stand aside, for our party and our country. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.” With an eye to 2012, Governor Mitt Romney is out, meaning the GOP nominee is now, for all intent and purposes, John McCain.

So, now part of the question for our party becomes, which Democrat is more likely to beat McCain? I’m betting you can guess my answer. As Nicholas Kristof notes: “When pollsters offer voters hypothetical matchups, Mr. Obama does better than Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain. For example, a Cook Political Report poll of registered voters released this week found Mr. McCain beats Mrs. Clinton, 45 percent to 41 percent. But Mr. Obama beats Mr. McCain, 45 percent to 43 percent. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found similar results.“

See also David Broder: “In either scenario, women break for the Democratic candidate. McCain leads Clinton by 13 points among men, but only runs even with Obama. Party lines are sharp, and the battle for independents would be close. Currently, independents give McCain a 12-point lead over Clinton but favor Obama by 6 points over the Republican.“

Update: Another TIME poll agrees: “Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain’s 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each…The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that ‘independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton. But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator.” Independents, added Schulman, ‘are a key battleground.’“

The Clinton Money Crunch.

“We are very frustrated because we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to say that the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us. For example, they say you couldn’t stop me from spending all the money I’ve saved over the last five years on Hillary’s campaign if I wanted to, even though it would clearly violate the spirit of campaign finance reform.”

So said Bill Clinton only a little over a month ago. But, as per the norm with the Clinton campaign, things have now changed: Word leaks out that Senator Clinton is not only planning to self-finance her candidacy with personal “loans” (a la Mitt Romney), but that she already gave her campaign $5 million out-of-pocket last month. (Indeed, money’s gotten so tight around the Clinton camp that, according to Time‘s Mark Halperin, senior staff are now going without pay.)

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama is on pace for another $30 million month and has room to grow, mainly because he’s relying on a wider pool of small donors rather than (as per Senator Clinton) a smaller pool of maxed-out donors and an army of lobbyists. (Which reminds me, Senator Obama accepts donations here.)

I for one doubt Sen. Clinton’s campaign will really run out of cheddar. If anything, the campaign probably put the story out there so as to encourage their supporters to donate in the same fashion as Obama’s have. Still, this Clinton cash crunch further indicates how much of their election strategy was predicated on a Super Tuesday knockout punch. Having swung and missed, the Clinton camp is now nearing broke, and seriously hurting.

More to the point, even notwithstanding the inherent shadiness of self-financing, which no less than Bill Clinton attested to above, this move puts President Clinton’s penchant for troubling deals — such as his recent venture in Kazakhstan — right in the thick of things. Hard to ignore in any event, now this story comes front and center. If the Clintons are breaking into their private stash to get Senator Clinton elected, where did the money come from?