Chris Dodd sent a gracious note tonight saying he is out of the race — but his advocacy for the good things in politics and policy will continue. I salute and thank him.

I went to my final caucus training session last night, and in just a few hours will be heading down to my precinct’s caucus site for the start of the caucuses.

photo credit: Washington Post.

I went out to see Chris Dodd at his final campaign rally for the Iowa Caucuses this morning.

John Zogby just sent out his latest daily tracking poll, and the headline is that Clinton and Romney are slipping and Ron Paul is gaining. Between 30 December and 2 January — on the Dem Side — Hillary Clinton garnered 24%, Obama 31%, Edwards 27%, Richardson 7%, Biden 5%, Dodd 1%, Kucinich 0-1%, Dems 5%….

Ted Widmer — one of the most insightful historians of early American political history and Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation — has written a piece that whether one agrees or not with it provides much rich detail on…

This is an interesting and worthwhile story to post on the eve of the Iowa Caucus. Two weeks ago, David Leonhardt wrote a piece on John Edwards’ economic policy that implied that it ran a bit thin since only one significant economist had signed on — and that was UT Austin’s James K.

Although Steve Clemons knows I am an Obama supporter I did not coordinate or clear this post with the Obama campaign. For better or worse these views are mine and mine alone.

Matt Stoller (pictured above in the funky hat) sends in this interesting blog post after meeting Mitt Romney, who commended George W. Bush for getting America off oil — and then lamenting that oil had hit $100/barrel today. Stoller snaps a pic of TIME‘s Joe Klein who may also report the gaffe.

Queen Elizabeth II has started a trend in YouTube holiday greetings from world leaders. Now Prime Minister of Japan Yasuo Fukuda has offered his (click image above).