Tom Brokaw Saved MSNBC From ItselfAccording to the former NBC News anchor, it was his idea to tone down Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, and also he who saved the network’s relationship with the McCain campaign.
One Superdelegate Wavers, America Holds Its BreathThere are nearly 800 superdelegates voting in the Democratic primary, and literally hundreds of them are still undecided. There’s a lot of time before they’ll have to decide, too. So the fact that one of them has possibly switched his position shouldn’t really be a big deal, right? Ha! Don’t be ridiculous. We know by now that everything in this campaign is a big deal. So when word broke last night that Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) either defected or is considering defecting, from the Clinton camp to the Obama camp, we knew there was a pundit tizzy in the making. Lewis is a well-known civil-rights leader and possibly Clinton’s most prominent African-American supporter. Just the fact that this is happening may be a sign that some of those early Clinton backers, especially African-Americans, are having a change of heart. Or it may just mean that one dude changed his mind. Luckily for you, there are plenty of people to decide what it means, so you don’t have to.
• Jeff Zeleny and Patrick Healy report that Representative Lewis said he could “‘never, ever do anything to reverse the action’ of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.” Even if he hasn’t officially endorses yet, they write he could do so within days. [NYT]
• Mark Halperin thinks that if Representative Lewis defects to Obama, Clinton’s odds of winning the nomination will be cut in half. [Page/Time]
intel
Tonight: Blogging the Super Tuesday ResultsIn honor of the orgy of voting that is going on all over the country today, Daily Intel is staying up late tonight. Really late. Starting at 8:30 p.m., New York columnist Kurt Andersen is going to be live-blogging the primary results. Then, later in the evening, Chris Smith will take a look at voting in our home state and what it means, and John Heilemann will analyze the national results on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the table. So tonight, when you get home from the gym, after your friends have arrived to watch the results and you’ve ordered pizza and uncorked that magnum of Cavit Pinot Grigio that someone random dragged over, go ahead and log on to Nymag.com. After all, as the hours go on, even Lou Dobbs’s voice starts to pound against your eardrums like a Q-tip during a hangover (you know, like Chris Matthews’s voice does every day). We’ll be quietly examining what today’s voting means for the candidates and, more importantly, what it means for you.
P.S.: Last night, we were at the Met watching Carmen, and we totally spotted MSNBC’s Chuck Todd out of the office, on a date. Slacker!
