Writing on the Wall? [Raymond Hernandez and Robert Pear, The New York Times]: "In a reversal from past election cycles, Democratic candidates for president are outpacing Republicans in donations from the health care industry, even as the leading Democrats in the field offer proposals that have caused deep anxiety in some of its sectors."
Preach, Brother [Sridhar Pappu, Washington Post]: "The Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois--hoping his campaign can recapture some of that old-time religious fervor--launched a three-city gospel concert series over the weekend across the state, in North Charleston, Greenwood and Columbia [South Carolina].
Restraint = Success? [Thomas Beaumont, Des Moines Register]: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has seized on the increasingly pointed debate about U.S. policy toward Iran to suggest that restraint should be the preferred diplomatic tool. 'Typically, we have made our biggest blunders when we overreached militarily,' the Illinois senator said in a Des Moines Register interview. 'And we have had our greatest foreign policy successes ... where we showed restraint.'"
The Press as Winnower [Jim Kuhnhenn, AP]: "Within the first five months of the presidential contest, the media effectively had reduced the field to five candidates, even though there were 17 mainstream Democrats and Republicans, a study of political coverage found. But the tone of the coverage for the top two front-runners--Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani--hardly was friendly. Nearly four out of 10 stories were negative, more than three out of 10 were neutral and only the rest were positive."
Sunshine Blues [Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times]: "It was every host's worst nightmare: a big, lavish party and not a single invited A-lister showed up.
The Florida Democratic Party's annual convention here got snubbed by
all but the longest shot among the eight Democratic presidential
contenders because of a feud between the state party and the Democratic
National Committee over the Florida Legislature's decision to move up
the state primary from March to Jan. 29."
--Josh Patashnik