Fact check from NYT on the Reagan comments

"At issue were remarks Mr. Obama made last week to The Reno Gazette-Journal. While he spoke positively of Reagan and described the Republicans as “the party of ideas,” he did not say that he admired Reagan.

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Mr. Obama told the newspaper. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

At the debate, Mr. Obama said that Mrs. Clinton had “provided much more fulsome praise” of Reagan in Tom Brokaw’s new book, “Boom!,” in which she is quoted as saying: “When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22truth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Amazingly - it is Adam Nagourney.

Block grants to states, ending welfare as we know it, china trade, nafta, privatizing much of government, deregulation, all Republican ideas that Bill Clinton implemented. I don't know why Obama didn't point it out.

I assume that Obama will gradually make those points. He has laid out a framework to show what the overriding patterns were.

I think his comments on the China trade bill and Peru one directed at Edwards were interesting as they really target Clinton. Obama seemed to be staking out the need for trade bills that include the worker and environmental clauses that Peru did. Edwards is now against all trade bills - which is likely too extreme a position. Obama is getting to the middle of Bill Clinton and the 2008 Edwards.

I assume that he will pick away at your list for the rest of the primary.

By the way - here's a link to an article on what happened in the 1980 Senate races, where many of the stars of the Democratic left lost. I had forgotten how depressing that night was, even beyond Reagan - but was with a guy who volunteered on the Culver campaign last weekend and he was spoke of that as backup to what Obama said. There was a huge sea change.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950490-3,00.html