Upsets

Sweet, sweet news for a New York Giants fan who grew up with a father getting crushed by Giants losses on the couch every Sunday in the '60's. So the New England Patriots went 19-0 all season and were defeated in a tough but definitive fight, decided in the final moments, by a young upstart quarterback with talent and audacity.

Sound anything like a brand new leader going up against a known winner with a 40+ point poll advantage a year ago today?

Try dead-even?

Big news today for the Barack Obama campaign came in the very same space that Hillary Clinton filled yesterday at UCLA, only this time if was five women including his wife, Caroline Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey and their surprise guest, the movingly articulate First Lady of California (and a prime example of cross-party cooperation herself), Maria Shriver. Video here.

The movement is growing and includes self-described New York feminists unhappy with Sen. Clinton's record and plans on the Iraq War:

We base our judgment on her seven-year record as the Senator from New York. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she has carefully identified herself as a supporter of a strong, enlarged and proactive military. In 2002, she voted to authorize the "use of force" against Iraq, while voting against an amendment that would have mandated further diplomacy. In subsequent years, she expressed enthusiastic support for the war effort, objected to fixed timelines for the withdrawal of U.S troops and until last summer voted for the "unconditional funding" of the war.

Under pressure from the Democratic base, Senator Clinton has recently issued numerous statements about bringing the troops home "responsibly" But her actual plan would leave tens of thousands of Americans soldiers in Iraq over a period of many years. Her record of embracing military solutions and the foreign policy advisers she has selected make us doubt that she will end this calamitous war.

There's no doubt where the momentum is right now, what W's dad called, un-ironically, "The Big Mo." The only questions are whether the absentee ballots thwart certain victories and if there's some sort of momentum killing surprise on the way.

A number of people have sent me links to the "Yes We Can" video, so I've posted it below for anyone who's missed it as well as the historical record. But before playing that particular unofficial music video, here's an ad created and broadcast by the Clinton campaign, which by the end of March might turn into a metaphor for her candidacy itself:



Yep, the fear card. Maybe Karl Rove could freelance for the campaign, or whoever created Rudy's death-spiral ads.

The contrast with the user-created videos, like the one I posted the other night, inspired rather than fashioned by the Obama campaign, could not be starker:



I'm open. Somebody ping me when some fans set a Hillary Clinton (or John McCain) speech to music.