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Like everyone else, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the primary results this evening. I made a list of questions I’ll be looking for answers for when I do my write-ups tonight and I thought I’d share it with you. Here are some of the things I’ll be looking for:

-How much of the working class white vote Obama carries
-How much of an impact Bill Clinton’s aggressive campaigning made for Hillary
-If any exit polls ask about the Reverend Wright controversy
-How much of an impact the gas tax debate had on voters
-How much the economy has increased as a number one voting issue, compared to Iraq
-If Obama talks like a “frontrunner” in his victory/concession speeches or if he looks like he’s just waiting for the clock to run out on all these primaries
-How Hillary modifies the “bar” in her speech—what is the new standard, the popular vote? Will she mention Michigan and Florida?
-Any hints superdelegates Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Edwards are getting closer to an endorsement
-Voter registration numbers

Those are just a few things going through my mind now---what are you guys thinking?

Journalists who pressed for details about "the abortion speech" or the "gay marriage speech" were told, repeatedly, that the speech was not about those issues at all, really, and would focus exclusively on McCain's longstanding convictions about judicial nominations and the appropriate power of judges. Ok, ok, that's fine, whatever they wanted to call it.

Well, the McCain campaign was right. There is no mention of abortion, or of same-sex marriage, or of most any particular question that the court has had to decide (two exceptions: the Kelo decision and Newdow.)

Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.

McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.

McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

"They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me," McCain said in his prepared speech.

Obama likes to talk up his image as someone who works with Republicans to get things done, McCain said. Yet Obama "went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee," McCain said.

Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Sen. Obama than it did the guy who can get things done. He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee. 

And just where did John Roberts fall short, by the Senator's measure?  Well, a justice of the court, as Senator Obama explained it -– and I quote -– should share "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy." 

These vague words attempt to justify judicial activism -– come to think of it, they sound like an activist judge wrote them. And whatever they mean exactly, somehow Sen. Obama's standards proved too lofty a standard for a nominee who was brilliant, fair-minded, and learned in the law, a nominee of clear rectitude who had proved more than the equal of any lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, and who today is respected by all as the Chief Justice of the United States. 

Somehow, by Sen. Obama's standard, even Judge Roberts didn't measure up. And neither did Justice Samuel Alito.  Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it –- and they see it only in each other.

I have my own standards of judicial ability, experience, philosophy, and temperament.  And Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito meet those standards in every respect.  They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me.

A few months ago, John McCain launched a very good web ad, featuring footage of Winston Churchill.  Today in Politico, Gary Bauer makes the case that at the ripe old age of 76, Winston Churchill,

"... resolved a series of international crises inherited from his predecessor. He squelched rebellions in Kenya and Malaya and helped topple a corrupt regime in Iran. He renewed his nation’s “special relationship” with the United States and alerted the world to Soviet imperialist expansion. All of which helped make Churchill, according to a 2001 survey of his countrymen, the Greatest Briton.

All of which, too, Churchill accomplished after the age of 76, four years older than John McCain will be come Inauguration."

The Times and MSNBC are joining forces for a new cable show. Today is the debut of The New York Times Special Primary Edition, a new political show hosted by John Harwood where Times-journos will handicap the election. From a Times memo, it appers these shows will appear as specials--that is, they won't run every week, but whenever MSNBC and the paper choose to do it.

ABC News reports this quote from Bill Clinton:

"I didn't come here to ask you to vote for my wife ... I came here to ask you to pray for her ..."