On the Senate race in Massachusetts:

If you are for [Democratic candidate Martha] Coakley you have to be encouraged by one thing. The panic that the Democrats are in now I think will help them. And the fact that the race is now nationalized and highlighted might help them.
If you are looking for an upside on this from her point of view — the Democrat in the race — it’s that Scott Brown may be peaking or surfacing too early. He’s the classic insurgent. Remember, there is a 3-1 registration [advantage for] Democrats. But in this election cycle in this year, the intensity among the Republicans is at least 3-1. So what you [Brown] want is a race that is a quiet, off-off year election in which your seething Republican constituency comes out on a cold day.
[But] it’s no longer a race in the boondocks. This is a national race. You have John Kerry writing a fundraising letter for the Democrat. You’ve got Kennedy’s widow speaking out on behalf of the Democrat. President Clinton will be parachuted in. You have high-level operatives from Washington shipped up there. So there is going to be a national media push. If anything, there might be a slight increase in intensity in the otherwise lethargic Democrats who might show up on Election Day.

On Coakley’s comments about terrorists being out of Afghanistan:

Well, if you interpret her meaning as al-Qaeda terrorists are out, well, it’s a slight exaggeration. There are few hundred still in Afghanistan. It’s not an outrageously wrong statement. al-Qaeda really used to be in Afghanistan, it’s in now Pakistan.
But if it [her statement] applies to all terrorists, obviously, it’s wrong.
I would give her the benefit of the doubt here. I think she spoke with an indeterminate antecedent, if you like. I suspect she meant al-Qaeda.