Like just about everyone else who has spent any time with him, I was backing Joe Biden to be our next President of the United States. I still think that if he had the money of some of the other candidates in Iowa, he would have received enough votes to be barnstorming through New Hampshire right now. He was uniquely prepared to be the next President. But as you know, Joe gracefully bowed out of the Presidential race the night that the Iowa caucuses were over.

I am supporting Barack Obama to become our party’s nominee in 2008. All four of the remaining Democratic candidates would be great Presidents—nobody cared enough to ask me four years ago, but if they had I would have told them I was supporting John Edwards—but I think Senator Obama’s thoughtfulness, candor, charisma, and ability to bring people together will make him a great candidate and an even greater President. I thought his speech after the Iowa caucus results came in was the best I have seen a candidate give since Mario Cuomo’s speech to the Democratic Convention over 20 years ago.

My son Adam is making speeches now—he imperiously shuffles his Sesame Street cards around, announces that he is going to make a speech, clears his throat, yells out “Ladies and Gentlemen!”, and then starts proclaiming some nonsense about the Wiggles and waits for applause. But he sat with me and watched a tape of Senator Obama’s speech after the caucuses, and now he has occasionally changed his intro to “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Barack Obama!”. When Adam turns twelve and President Obama is finishing his second term in office, I am going to tell him that story—I am not sure what it says about our country or Barack Obama, but I am pretty sure that it is something good.

As the News Journal reports today (you can read it here), New Years Day marked the official start date for the new Delaware law restricting the use of credit in auto and homeowners insurance. It is not the law that I wanted when I stood with Margaret Rose Henry just three days after I took office in 2005 and announced our initiative, but it is a law that moves us from basically last in the country all the way up to being the fifth toughest state in the country when it comes to regulating credit scoring. I think that’s pretty significant.

Credit scoring is something I promised I would fight when I ran for Insurance Commissioner in 2004, and the proof is now in that I kept that promise—not just in a way that involved posturing, but in a way that required me to roll my sleeves up and get something done in a very divided General Assembly where the insurance industry used to always get its way. This is something that I will be talking about during my 2008 campaign for Lieutenant Governor: when I say during a campaign that I am going to fight for something, my record shows that you can take that to the bank.

Now that I am done chest thumping, I can tell you that the boys turned three years old on Saturday. Their official party is this weekend, but we celebrated last weekend by taking them to our favorite kids restaurant, Jose’s Border Café. I told the waitress it was their birthday. At dessert time, the Jose’s waiters came out singing, clapping, and bearing balloons, but Zach had basically blacked out from fatigue and Adam was horrified by the spectacle of it and cried.