Obama plans primary-eve event in Boston
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff
LOS ANGELES -- Senator Barack Obama will come to Boston on Monday to woo voters ahead of the critical Super Tuesday primary, the Obama campaign confirmed this evening.
The details of the event have not been finalized, but the plan is to hold an evening rally, a campaign spokesman said. He said he did not yet know who would be joining the Illinois lawmaker.
Obama scored a plum endorsement earlier this week, when Senator Edward M. Kennedy threw his support behind the man he said would carry on the ideals and goals of his late brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The slain president's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, also endorsed Obama, and appears in a recent TV ad praising Obama as the candidate who "makes us believe in ourselves again.'' Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, has also endorsed Obama.
Massachusetts is a key battleground in the Democratic presidential nominating fight; 22 states will hold Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses on Tuesday. While it is mathematically impossible for either Obama or Senator Hillary Clinton of New York to secure enough delegates on Tuesday to win the nomination outright, a big win by either candidate could provide important momentum in the race.
Clinton has a healthy lead in Massachusetts in recent polls, and drew a crowd of an estimated 5,000 in Springfield this week. But Obama supporters hope the Kennedy endorsement -- along with the institutional credibility and expert advice the senator brings -- can help Obama pick up support in the Bay State.
On Friday, Representative Bill Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat who endorsed Obama over foreign policy matters, will be campaigning for the Illinois senator in Massachusetts with Tony Lake, a former Clinton administration official who is now advising Obama on foreign policy.
Senator John F. Kerry, Representative Michael Capuano of Somerville, and Governor Deval Patrick also endorsed Obama, while Clinton earned early endorsements from Representatives Barney Frank of Newton, Stephen Lynch of Boston, Richard Neal of Springfield, and James McGovern of Worcester.
We love Obama in MA. He came out for Deval and won him the election. Dem's in MA owe it to Obama to back him.
I am pretty confident that once the people of Massachusetts move beyond name recognition and start looking at what's at stake in this coming election, the "so called" lead held by Sen Clinton will evaporate. This is our moment. The US and the whole world need a different kind of leader to bring us back to believing in ourselves again. Barack Obama is the man of the moment. This is his time and ours. We can't look back.
Yes we can.
Obama!
Whipee! Getting an endorsement from a Kennedy is like getting your teeth pulled. They were our Royal Family but that is long gone after the BEST brothers passed.
Obama and Clinton maybe neck and neck but believe me that Obama has not given anyone his ideas on how he is going to Manage this country. He's very good at talking out of both sides. Yes, Hillary may not be much better but at least when she opens her mouth it comes straight out and not out of both sides.
Obama says he turned away because he was asked a question.
LIAR
Clinton's "healthy lead" looks a little sickly this morning. Rasmussen is out with a new poll that pegs the race at 43-37 in favor of Clinton, as of Monday night. Now, Rasmussen has some house effects that tend to produce relatively tight results, compared to other polls. But a bounce was expected after the Kennedy endorsement and South Carolina rout, and these numbers are in line with the far-more-credible Gallup nationwide tracking poll, which had the national lead at six as of yesterday.
There's also a methodologically-flawed WNEC poll out this morning that found Hillary leading 41-15. In general, I'd take any live survey with multiple callbacks over a Rasmussen robo-poll, but not this time. Among other issues: The data is now 5-11 days old (they called from Jan 20-26, before SC or Kennedy), a poll in the field for six days picks up an awful lot of noise, it undersampled young and minority voters, its margin in the Dem primary was +/-8%, and it vastly oversampled women. But even with all of those cautions, the poll is good for something - it helps us time the moment of the Obama surge. Before his South Carolina triumph, he was dead in the water in the Bay State. After winning an outright majority and inheriting the Kennedy mantle, the race is tight enough to go down to the wire. That's interesting.
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