Alex Koppelman will be taking over War Room.

I want to thank Salon for giving me the freedom to do what I've been doing here. More important, I want to thank you, the readers, for making the work feel so worthwhile. I'll miss our dialogue -- even the frank exchanges -- and I wish you all the best.

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Here's how she answered:

"Certainly seven years ago -- well, seven years ago, right before September 11th, I think that people would say that the country certainly felt better off. There's been -- once we were confronted with terrorists who would fly jumbo jets into buildings and kill thousands of our citizens in an instant, it created a sense of fear and nervousness about our security. And that's why the president decided to take on the terrorists head on and go on the offense.

"And we have done that around the world. We have been successful so far in preventing another attack on our country. But it's not for their lack of trying. And that's another reason why the president -- tonight you'll hear him call on Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization. They have until Friday to do that, and the president sees no reason why they shouldn't be able to get that done."

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We've read the memo, and we're still not sure.

The "path to the nomination" seems to be as much of a hope as it is a plan. The Edwards campaign says an "online fundraising boom" has left it on "solid financial footing," but it understates Edwards' delegate deficit by focusing only on the delegates won in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and by ignoring the super-delegates who have already aligned themselves with a candidate. By the Edwards campaign's way of counting, Barack Obama leads the delegate count with 63, followed by Hillary Clinton at 48 and Edwards at 26. By CNN's tally, Clinton has 230, Obama has 152 and Edwards has just 61.

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Although Kennedy called Clinton a "friend" and said she has been "at the forefront on issues ranging from healthcare to the rights of women around the world," he also made a number of not-so-veiled stabs at the Clintons. Kennedy said that Obama refuses to be "trapped in the patterns of the past," that he "cares passionately about the causes he believes in without demonizing those who hold a different view," that he's "tough-minded" but "also has an uncommon capacity to appeal to the better angels of our nature."

While Bill Clinton has argued that Obama's record on Iraq is far more mixed than Obama has suggested, Kennedy said that the voters know "the truth" about the matter. Kennedy stole one of the Clinton campaign's lines -- ready to lead on "Day 1" -- and applied it to Obama. And then, equating Obama with his late brother, Kennedy reminded the overflow crowd at American University that another former Democratic president -- Harry Truman -- once urged John F. Kennedy to "be patient" about seeking the White House.

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Our reality this morning: After standing outdoors for more than two hours in a line that stretched along several blocks -- and eventually getting within 20 feet of the entrance doors -- we were told that the roughly 6,000-seat Bender Auditorium at American University was completely full. At least several thousand people were in line behind us.

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As the Huffington Post's Sam Stein notes, McCain "did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting."

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Oh, and Mr. President? Jackson never had Ted Kennedy's endorsement, either.

Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama this morning during a rally at American University in Washington, and this one's got to hurt. As the Washington Post reports, Hillary Clinton sought Kennedy's endorsement for months, and her husband appealed to Kennedy "in recent days to at least remain neutral."

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The State is using words like "good," "strong" and "heavy" to describe turnout, which would be a dramatic change from last week's Republican primary, where bad weather and a lack of enthusiasm put a lid on the percentage of eligible voters who actually voted. The New York Times reports that turnout appears high today in both predominately white and predominately black precincts.

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Call it Phase II of the Clinton campaign's "Hey, Look Over There" strategy. As you'll recall, the DNC stripped Florida of its delegates to the Democratic National Convention when the state scheduled its primary earlier than the party wanted. That turned Tuesday's Florida primary into the same sort of meaningless affair the Michigan primary was -- at least until Clinton issued a statement Friday in which she said that she'd fight to have delegates from both states seated at the convention after all.

Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all vowed not to campaign in Florida. But in Wolfson's message today, he implies that Obama and Obama alone is blowing off the Sunshine State. "Despite efforts by the Obama campaign to ignore Floridians," Wolfson writes, "their voices will be heard loud and clear across the country, as the last state to vote before Super Tuesday on February 5th."

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The Washington Post, explaining that the "recent focus on has stirred considerable angst" in Barack Obama's "inner circle," notes that an MSNBC-McClatchy Newspaper poll out this week showed a wide racial divide among South Carolina Democrats. Among African-American voters, the poll had Obama at 59 percent, followed by Hillary Clinton at 25 percent and John Edwards at 4 percent. Among white voters, Edwards led with 40 percent, followed by Clinton at 36 percent and Obama at 10 percent.

The New York Times says Obama's strategists "worry" that all the discussion about race has "driven whites away from his candidacy." "If the trend materializes in the voting," the Times says, "his ability to transcend race could come into question and pose complications in the more than 20 states that vote on Feb. 5."

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As "gotcha" moments go, it wasn't much of one.

Someone in Clinton's line of work -- the wife of a governor, a first lady, a senator, a presidential candidate -- poses for photographs with thousands and thousands of people, most of whom she has never met before and will probably never meet again. Unless there's other evidence of a relationship -- as there was, say, when Time obtained a photograph of Jack Abramoff with George W. Bush -- it's pretty unfair to read anything into a single, undated, context-free grip 'n' grin. As Clinton explained -- and we've got no reason to doubt her -- "I don't know the man, I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door, I don't have a 17-year relationship with him. There's a big difference between standing somewhere taking a picture with someone you don't know and haven't seen since, and having a relationship."

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Most of the Democratic presidential candidates pulled their names off the ballot in Michigan, but Hillary Clinton didn't. And now that she has won in Michigan -- she beat "uncommitted" by 15 percentage points -- she says she's going to fight to have the delegates from both Michigan and Florida seated at the convention.

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So says South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn.

On MSNBC Friday morning, Joe Scarborough noted that race has taken "center stage" in the run-up to the South Carolina primary, then asked Clyburn: "Do you think the scars of what's been said over the past week will continue, or do you think we can move beyond this?"

Clyburn's response: "Well, I hope we can get beyond that. But, you know, Joe -- I don't want to sound disingenuous here -- but, you know, we were doing well with this whole issue. Coming out of New Hampshire, [Barack] Obama had the support of both of the congresspeople from New Hampshire, both of whom are white, one male, one female.

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At Thursday night's GOP presidential debate in Florida, Tim Russert turned to Sen. John McCain and said: "You have said repeatedly, quote, 'I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.' Is it a problem for your campaign that the economy is now the most important issue, one that by your own acknowledgment you're not well versed on?"

McCain's response: "Actually, I don't know where you got that quote from."

Well, Senator, maybe he got it here, where you told the Wall Street Journal: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

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In the Democratic race, the Times' editorial board says the experience Clinton brings trumps the excitement Barack Obama offers. "The potential upside of a great Obama presidency is enticing, but this country faces huge problems, and will no doubt be facing more that we can't foresee," the Times says. "The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president."

The Times' editorial board is more enthusiastic about Clinton than it is about the campaign she is running. "As strongly as we back her candidacy," the Times says, "we urge Mrs. Clinton to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign. It is not good for the country, the Democratic Party or for Mrs. Clinton, who is often tagged as divisive, in part because of bitter feeling about her husband's administration and the so-called permanent campaign." The Times warns that "Bill Clinton's overheated comments are feeding those resentments, and could do long-term damage to [his wife's] candidacy if he continues this way."

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So what's left to do before Saturday's primary? Set the expectations and pre-spin the results -- and both the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign are already doing both.

In an "interested parties" memo distributed today, the Obama campaign made the point that Clinton's campaign has gone "all out to win in South Carolina." The memo lists predictions of victory in South Carolina from the Clinton campaign, TV ads purchased in South Carolina by the Clinton campaign, consultants hired in South Carolina by the Clinton campaign and appearances in South Carolina by Bill and Hillary Clinton. The point: Deny the Clinton campaign the ability to spin away a loss Saturday by claiming that it never really tried to win in South Carolina anyway.

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"If we could find the cave he is in, I promise you -- he would be brought to justice or wherever he's hiding," Bush tells Fox. "I will have left behind a mechanism -- and a structure for the next president to better protect America."

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"I've been paying attention to ... the Democrat debate the last couple of days," McCain said. "And I've got to tell you, I am absolutely astonished that Sen. Clinton, a leading candidate on the Democrat side, says she wants to surrender in Iraq, she wants to wave the white flag. After all the sacrifice we've made in this surge, which everybody knows is succeeding, she wants to surrender and bring the troops home, and set a date for withdrawal ... If we do what she wants to do, al-Qaida will defeat us, and al-Qaida will tell the world that they've defeated the United States of America. I have never, never in American history heard of a leading candidate for president of the United States that wants to surrender to the enemy."

Is that a fair characterization of Clinton's remarks? Here's what Clinton actually said at Monday night's debate:

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