Back From South Carolina
Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2008 4:48 PM by Daily Nightly Editor
by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor
Good afternoon. I'm back in New York after covering the Democratic South Carolina primary in Columbia. We had a super welcome from the folks there, and I want to thank everyone who braved the chilly temperatures to join me during our TODAY Show broadcasts on Main Street the last two mornings.
Meantime, in the 1 1/2 hours I was in the air today, the political headlines were rapidly changing – with word Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama tomorrow in Washington. This will come on the heels of Caroline Kennedy's impassioned endorsement of Obama in a New York Times Op-Ed piece this morning.
Obama meantime, has little chance to bask in the afterglow of his South Carolina performance. Both he and Hillary Clinton will soon face their biggest test yet, when they compete in the twenty-four Super Tuesday primaries on February 5th. In addition to Lee Cowan's wrap-up of the Democratic race, NBC's Andrea Mitchell will join me tonight to talk about growing concern within the party about the role of Bill Clinton. Andrea says some of that concern can be described as anger, and she will come on tonight to tell us what she's hearing, and what the Clintons might do about it.
The temperature is rising in Florida, where John McCain is challenging Mitt Romney in the build-up to Tuesday's Republican primary. The punches and counter punches are getting sharper between the two over the War in Iraq and the economy. Ron Allen is covering that for us.
We'll be looking ahead to what promises to be another week to watch on Wall Street as the Fed is poised to cut interest rates for the second time in a week. Erin Burnett, from our financial news channel CNBC, will be with us to explain why this is happening, and what the potential down side of further interest cuts might be.
Still on the subject of the economy, despite all the headlines of hard times, there are parts of this country enjoying an economic boom, and we'll have the story of one of them
.
We've got all that, plus my test drive of the smallest car on the road, which has just gone on sale in America. Is the Smart Car a smart move?
Finally, a lot of you have written in to tell us my story about black voters in a Greenville, South Carolina barbershop last night, didn't add up. How could a 63-year-old man have voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960? Good catch. He couldn't have. The mistake, however, was not in what he told me, but in my question, when I said, "you voted for Kennedy, that would have been in 1960. What was South Carolina like?" When the gentleman and I were chatting before the cameras rolled, he spoke about how he supported Kennedy when he ran. In my question I clearly extrapolated his comments to mean he voted for Kennedy. While he didn't correct me, the fault is all mine. I sincerely hope my poor math didn't take away from an important conversation going on in that barbershop and other places across America about the role of race in politics. Thanks, as always, for keeping us honest. Your thoughts are always appreciated.
I hope you can join us for the Sunday edition of NBC Nightly News.
