President [Barack] Obama's staking his reelection hopes on rebuilding America's middle class. He wants higher taxes on the wealthy, tougher rules on Wall Street, and everyone else to get a fair shot to succeed. Republicans can cry "class warfare" if they want, but as the president put it today, it's about this country's welfare.

I have never heard a president in bad times running against - let's face it, that's what he's doing here - running against bad times, when he's the presiding officer.

[Barack] Obama believes you can hold enemy combatants, unlawful enemy combatants at Gitmo without a criminal trial because this is law of war detention.

The old rule in Massachusetts politics is shape of the field determines the winner. If you have got a whole bunch of hawks, all the way from [Mike] Huckabee all the way across to [Chris]Christie, that covers the spectrum on every other issue, all hawks, all hawks, and one guy out there saying, not me, Jimmy Carter won that way back in `76. I know it`s 1,000 years ago.

I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

How much he was shaped by being in the hospital so much as a kid. Because he was sick, he was a reader, and because he was a reader, Kennedy had heroes. Because he had heroes, he went into politics. [Kennedy liked Sir Walter Scott, King Arthur's knights, and biographies of political leaders.] If he hadn't been sick, he might have been like everybody else in the family, a jock.

I don't sense an [Barack] Obama party. I think politics is transactional for him.