1. To the best I can gather, here is what most likely happened to set off CTV's reporting that the Obama campaign is fudging the truth about its NAFTA intentions. Someone from the Canadian consul general's office in Chicago got to talking with Dr. Austan Goolsbee, he the principle economic adviser to Sen. Obama, and NAFTA came up. Mr. Goolsbee may have warned him that the rhetoric about NAFTA might be amped up and that the policy follow through might not be as drastic as the volume of the rhetoric would indicate. By no means, though, does that mean that Obama isn't serious about renegotiating the labor and environmental provisions of NAFTA -- just that, Goolsbee may well have said, Obama recognizes that the normative case for NAFTA is not as one-sided as general campaign trail bromides make it out to be.
2. Slate's Chris Beam isn't quite sure where Obama election manager David Plouffe gets some of his numbers.
3. The Hotline's Jennifer Skalka on a sublime moment of silence precipitated by this question to assembled Clinton advisers: pray tell -- when, precisely, has Sen. Clinton been tested by a foreign policy crisis?
4. This is why John McCain's campaign may hire senior -- as well as junior -- staff -- and soonish: getting endorsed yesterday by John Hagee earned him lots of tsuris and a wasted news day, and forced this apology:
"Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not.
"I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society."
5. Barack Obama's response to "Children" is predictable but effective.
Inside Delegate Math: The Numbers
Using delegate projection software created by Matt Vogel, I ran a scenario yesterday showing how tough it will be for Hillary Clinton to catch up to Barack Obama's earned delegate lead.
Some of you have asked for my specific state-by-state projections.
So let's go state-by-state, again assuming that the full sanctions levied by the DNC are kept in place.
Ohio: Clinton wins by 4% and earns a net of 5 delegates Rhode Island: Clinton wins by 10% and earns a net of 3 delegates Texas: Obama wins by a net of 8% and earns a net of 15 delegates including those taken from the caucus portion of the contests Vermont: Obama wins handily and nets 3 delegates.
We can fiddle with the numbers a bit, but winning by an extra percent in Texas is worth more than winning by an extra percent in Ohio. If Clinton wins by 8 percentage points in Ohio, she picks up a net of about 11 delegates compared to Obama's 15 in Texas. Let's be nice to Clinton and assume that she manages to eek out a win in Texas, giving her 3 extra delegates. For the day, she'd net only 8 delegates under this scenario -- with Texas and Vermont having cancelled each other out.
Moving on to Wyoming, let's assume, generously, that Obama only wins by 55%. He picks up 2 delegates. Then comes Mississippi. Let's assume the split is 60/40, Obama -- he picks up 7 delegates, and so -- since March 4 -- he's back up 1.
Flash forward to Pennsylvania, and let's assume that Hillary Clinton manages to win 60% of the vote in the state. She'll earn 32 extra delegates -- her biggest net gain so far.
I'll give the next two states and a territory to Obama -- by six points only each -- Guam (+0 net), Indiana (+4 net) and North Carolina (+7 net). Hillary Clinton has a shot to win West Virginia, which votes on March 13, so let's assume she wins by 10 points, earning a net of two extra delegates. Momentum carries over into Kentucky, which she wins by 10 points and earns five extra delegates. She's not going to win Oregon, probably -- Obama picks up six delegates there.
The June 3 primaries of Montana and South Dakota are probably Obama's: let's assume he wins them by 10 points, earning a total of 3 net delegates.
The last contest is the Puerto Rico caucuses, which takes place on June 7. Let's give Hillary Clinton an 80 to 20 victory there, giving her a net of 33 earned delegates.
So -- under these most rosy of scenarios -- since March 4, she'll have earned 520 delegates to Barack Obama's 461, having reduced his earned delegate total by about 80 -- or -- by about 60 percent -- but he'll still have a lead of approximately 100 delegates in total... and be that much closer to 2025.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller Endorses Obama
Arguably, the man who knows more about the present threats to the United States than any other Democrats -- he is the chairman of senate intelligence committee and gets to see all the top secret / codeword stuff -- Sen. Jay. Rockefeller -- endorses Sen. Barack Obama.
“As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am all too aware that the threats we face are unconventional. They are sophisticated. They are constantly changing and adapting. And they are very serious. What matters most in the Oval Office is sound judgment and decisive action. It’s about getting it right on crucial national security questions the first time – and every time.
“The indisputable fact is Barack Obama was right about Iraq when many of us were wrong. It was a tough call and the single greatest national security question, and mistake, of our time. Today, we remain a country at war, and countless mistakes over the last six and a half years have made us less safe. The stakes have never been higher, and that is why we must take a stand.
If you're Hillary Clinton, this one stings.
Oh, El Rushbo.....
Sen. John McCain is spending the weekend at his ranch in Sedona, Arizona with members of his traveling press corps.
The festivities are on-the-record. Or so I am told by two members of the press.
Barack Obama doesn't have the warm and fuzzies for his press contingent and every casual encounter between him and them is painfully negotiated between, usually, the AP reporter and Robert Gibbs.
Aides/strategists/thinkers within Obama campaign have several theories about whether McCain's accessibility will benefit him in a two-person race. One theory holds that Obama's brand is sui generis; the darned press corps is so eager to unfairly parse his every word and bring him to down to earth; less is more.
There are some folks in the Obama campaign who want Obama to speak to the press more often and more casually. These folks have, so far, lost their arguments.
But that could change.
Making The Rounds Of The Bitter Conservative Blogs Today
(Yes, Sen. McCain really did say this..)
Obama Veepstakes
How irresponsible of me.
Ok, with that out of the way...
Let us first note that Barack Obama is not John Kerry and is endowed with entirely different political imperatives. Kerry chose Edwards, we've learned in retrospect, because of politics, not because he felt Edwards could be president from day one, or because he felt some kinship with the smooth-talkin' lawyer from Robbins. The choice of Edwards and the demands it placed on the ticket will undoubtedly influence Mr. Obama's decision.
James Johnson, who was Kerry's veepstakes czar, is a major fundraiser for Obama and an informal adviser, and no doubt will urge him to first, choose someone with whom he is personally comfortable and can trust. I believe, but I do not know for sure, that this will be Obama's first and most private criterion: can I trust this guy (gal?) implicitly?
CW says that the first rule is "Do no harm." But that ain't right. The first rule is: Do I like this person?
Obama's evident political void is national security and executive experience; his first, public criterion will most definitely be: can this person be commander in chief? Can they pass the "red phone" test? ... followed by ... Can this person run a government?
It stands to reason that the largest nest of potential veep prospects contains old white men. And here are, on the basis of nothing but educated guesses, some of the names I believe that Obama will think about, when he starts to think about his selections.
Sam Nunn -- His thinking on nuclear proliferation has already influenced Obama's; both favor unilateral disarmament now; Nunn has the right geographic bonafides; he knows the generals and Obama does not;
Tim Roemer -- a 9/11 commissioner and former congressman from Indiana, Roemer has endorsed Obama; he's pro-life
Lee Hamilton -- he's quietly become of Obama's top foreign policy advisers; as a 9/11 commissioner, he built consensus, often to the detriment, some have said, of harder-edged conclusions.
Evan Bayh -- He's endorsed Hillary Clinton, but he's been a passive surrogate and hasn't participated in any activity that would offend Obama's sensibilities. He's a veteran of the intelligence and armed services committees and remains very popular in Indiana, where he's remembered as a tax-cutting Dem governor.
Joe Biden -- no Democrat gets foreign policy better than Joe Biden; no Democrat would be, in theory, a better steward of relations on the Hill than Biden; he'd be a fantastic surrogate and there'd be virtually no downside to picking him.
Wild cards: Chuck Hagel, Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb,
The American Prospect, in its March issue, has a list of the Usual Suspects, starting with Jim Webb ("miliary credentials," "Virginia," "white working class,"), Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (though the Prospect notes that she sort of flubbed her SOTU reaction address), Ohio's Ted Strickland (ah, but he endorsed HRC), Sen. Ken Salazar (not gonna happen), Biden, Napolitano, Schweitzer and others on the "bench," including Govs. Vilsack, Richardson and Bayh.
Next week, maybe, I'll write one of these about Hillary Clinton....
An Alternate Theory About Texas
Texas Democratic activist Glenn Smith writes on MyDD:
The campaign in Texas is close. Delegates selected by popular vote out of the 31 Senate districts will probably be split more or less evenly. This is due in large part to the fact that 15 of those districts have 4 delegates to award. A candidate would have to get more than 62.5 percent of the vote in those districts to win a 3-to-1 split. The most likely outcome is a 2-2 split. In addition, Obama may have a slight advantage in that the districts with the largest number of delegates, Austin and inner city Houston and Dallas, are viewed as Obama strongholds. Still, just about every model shows an even split of primary vote delegates, no matter who wins or loses the popular vote. This is just because the vote will be close.
The Clinton campaign strategy is to justify taking the fight beyond Texas even if they fall further behind Obama in the national delegate count. To do that, they must cast doubt over the fate of the 67 delegates that will be chosen at the caucus level. Hence, their tough positioning in phone calls with Texas Democratic Party officials and others involved in the primary here.
In a few minutes, the Obama campaign will hold a conference call to discuss what they're calling the "Clinton lawsuit threat."
4 More Superdelegates For Obama
They are:
Brian Melendez, the chair of the Minnesota DFL
Donna Cassutt, the associate chair of the Minnesota DFL
Renee Pfenning, a DNC member from North Dakota
Rep. Yvonne Davis of Texas
Unless Obama Wins, He Loses
Huh?
To: Interested Parties
From: The Clinton Campaign
Date: Friday, February 29, 2008
RE: Obama Must-Wins
The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he's playing the part.
With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.
The Obama campaign and its allies are outspending us two to one in paid media and have sent more staff into the March 4 states. In fact, when all is totaled, Senator Obama and his allies have outspent Senator Clinton by a margin of $18.4 million to $9.2 million on advertising in the four states that are voting next Tuesday.
Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches.
If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem.
Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear:
Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.
Obama Reacts To "Red Phone"
According to CBS News's Maria Gavrilovic, who is on the trail with Obama:
"We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on peoples’ fears to scare up votes."
"Well it won’t work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is – what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer."
3:00 a.m: Roy Spence's Redux
Roy Spence, the Texas-based advertizing wizard brought aboard to soften Hillary Clinton's image after Super Tuesday, is the maestro behind Clinton's most audacious advertisement to date, a Clinton campaign official said this morning.
And Spence is very familiar with the genre. It was his "red phone" ad -- see it here -- that helped seed doubts about Gary Hart's credentials to be commander in chief.
Here's the original "Red phone" ad; it's become an archetype.
In 1984, Mondale beat Hart by more than 30 points in Texas.
More On The Clinton Campaign And The Texas "Lawsuit"
I asked Guy Cecil, the national political director for the Clinton campaign, where he ""forcefully raise[d] the prospect of a courtroom battle?" as suggested by the Houston Chroncile.
"Absolutely not. There was no threat, 'direct or veiled' to engage in litigation. We asked that the results of the call be put in writing," he said.
Mo Elliethee, a Clinton campaign spokesman, elaborated for me.
"The campaigns have been discussing primary night procedures and we asked for those procedures to be put in writing before we agree to them. It is standard operating procedure for our campaign - and we presume any campaign - to see what we are agreeing to in writing before we agree to it."
My guess is that the campaign is worried about what happens when the voting stops and the caucus starts and believes that the Texas Democratic Party isn't prepared to run the caucuses competently. Remember, Texas awards delegates in two parts; two thirds to the winners of 31 state senate district primaries, allocated proportionally; and then to the winners of a statewide caucus; only those voters who can prove they voted in the primaries can participate in the caucus.
The call where Cecil allegedly made his threats lasted ninety minutes long and featured participants from both campaigns. By singling Cecil's request to put the party's interpertation of its caucus rules on paper, the party might simply be trying to ward off potential challenges to its procedures on caucus night... or trying to embarass the Clinton campaign.
Clinton's "Red Phone"
Perhaps the most provocative ad Hillary Clinton has run this cycle. It's bound to evoke comparisons to LBJ's "Daisy" ad and Walter Mondale's "Red Phone" ads -- asking the essential question: if the White House phone rings at 3:00 am and there's a crisis brewing, who do you want on the other end of the line? Arguably, this is her best ... argument .. against Barack Obama, and yet it's taken her 13 months to make it so explicitly.
ANNCR: It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing.
Something's happening in the world.
Your vote will decide who answers that call.
Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders.knows the
military.someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
Who do you want answering the phone?
Hillary Clinton: I am Hillary Clinton and I approve this message.
The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened to sue over the party's complicated delegate selection process.
In a letter sent out late Thursday to both the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, Texas Democratic Party lawyer Chad Dunn warned a lawsuit could ruin the Democrats' effort to re-energize voters just as they are turning out in record numbers.
The Clinton campaign denies this up and down and the stories doesn't make clear why the state party was so convinced that the Clintons intended to file a suit. Nevertheless, watch for the headline alone to generate some unfavorable news coverage in TX today.
CTV Retracts....
Mark Kleiman on a day of dial downs, retractions, and walk-backs.
CTV now alleges a "conversation" between Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian consulate in Chicago.
February 28, 2008
How Many Delegates Does HRC Need To Win?
In order to win the nomination, how many earned delegates does Sen. Hillary Clinton have to win?
It's not an academic question. With a little spreadsheet math, we can figure it out.
We need to start with some assumptions.
First, let’s be generous and assume that all of the superdelegates Clinton currently claims will not switch to Obama.
Perhaps that’s an overly generous assumption given that two have done so over the past two days, but, again, we’re trying to illuminate a path to the nomination, not block one. Let’s assume that, all other things being equal, she’ll win half of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates – maybe 185 of 390. She’ll also win half of John Edward’s delegates.
Before we move to pledged delegates, we need to figure out whether Florida and Michigan delegations are credentials and what effect they’ll have on the nomination. At this point, it’s most likely that they will be segregated from the official nomination scenarios.
So – just for the moment – let us calculate the number of remaining 981 pledged delegates Hillary Clinton would need to earn in order to win the nomination without the help of Michigan and Florida.
Assuming that her currently total is 1275 – a nice amalgam of the various network and print delegate estimates, she needs at least 55.3% -- or about 542.
Let’s go to March 4. Let’s assume that Clinton wins Ohio by four points – 52 to 48, netting her roughly 5 extra delegates, and loses Texas 49 to 51, netting Obama three extra delegates, and loses Vermont, netting Obama three extra delegates, and winning Rhode Island by 6 points, netting herself an extra delegate. She ends that day with no additional delegates – she can blame Vermont.
Under the rosiest of scenarios, it’s hard to see her winning more than about 50 percent of the remaining earned delegates, even if she whips Obama in Pennsylvania and earns, say, 16 extra delegates, and drums him in Puerto Rico, where, even if she wins seventy percent of the delegates, she’s still, in essence, playing catch up.
If Clinton wins half of the remaining delegates – about 493 – and loses none – she still trails Obama by a net 50 or so earned delegates.
Now let’s run the scenario with Florida and Michigan’s delegates in play – the best iteration of that scenario, with both pledged and unpledged delegates seated and Clinton’s having earned fully 60% of or more of them. She’ll need at least 52.1% of remaining pledged delegates to surpass Obama.
Playing with the numbers a bit, here’s how she could – in theory – accomplish this.
If Florida and Michigan's delegations are seated fully to her advantage, and if she wins in Ohio by 65% and wins in Texas by 65%, and all other percentages hold, she can win the nomination.
HIllary Clinton As An Efficiently Priced Security
A theory, developed in conjunction with reader M.V., about why she's had trouble.
Clinton is like an efficiently priced security: the market -- i.e., the voting public -- already possessed an enormous amount of information about her.
Changing your support for a candidate is highly liquid, and that virtually everything that you could say or think about her has essentially been priced in. (Experience, Bill Clinton, strength, toughness, etc.)
Events push her numbers up or down but, at it's root, the overall national market puts her around 40%.
She has probably the least volatile polling track record in recent American history. (Try to find any other presidential candidate in the last three decades with as flat a national tracking number in the 12 months prior to the nomination being decided, or six months, or even three months.)
Second: It's also probably the first time in history of presidential primaries (of either party) that someone with the apparently unflinching support of 40% of voters from the outset couldn't move more than 1 in 6 of the remaining 60% to go on and win.
And these are Democrats!
Obama Outraises Clinton In February
Hillary Clinton's campaign will report raising approximately $35m in February, a record sum for the campaign.
But though Barack Obama's campaign is keeping mum, you can bet that somewhere in Chicago, David Plouffe is cracking a smile.
That's because the campaign is expected to announce having raised more than $50M this month, breaking all records and all expectations.
Fred Wertheimer Clarifies
A statement about his statement:
Democracy 21 did not say that Senator John McCain cannot withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system until the Federal Election Commission makes a decision in this case.
We said that the shut down of the FEC has “taken center stage” because there is no agency to make a legal determination of whether McCain can or cannot withdraw from the public financing system. That means that their will be no resolution of the legal question involved here until the agency is re-constituted to decide the legal issue, and if such an FEC decision is appealed, the case is decided by the courts.
The importance of the legal question, and the need for it to be resolved quickly, is what has shed light on the deadlock in the Senate over the confirmation of four pending nominees to serve as FEC commissioners – a deadlock caused by Senator Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow a simple up-or-down vote on each of the four pending nominees.
Democracy 21 did not take a position on whether McCain can or cannot legally withdraw from the system. That question, we said, raises “novel and complex” issues of both campaign finance and commercial banking law that will need to be decided by the FEC and potentially by the courts.
NAFTA Bluster? The Report That's Making Waves In Canada
A secret message from the Obama campaign to the Canadian government, cautioning against reading too much into Obama's rhetoric about rolling back NAFTA? It's the story of the day up north, but the Obama campaign today denies this up and down.
“The news reports on Obama's position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Senator Obama’s consistent position on trade. When Senator Obama says that he will forcefully act to make NAFTA a better deal for American workers, he means it. Both Canada and Mexico should know that, as president, Barack Obama will do what it takes to create and protect American jobs and strengthen the American economy -- that includes amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards. We are currently reaching out to the Canadian embassy to correct this inaccuracy."
Update: The Canadian embassy also denies the report.
Still -- international intrigue. Backchannel diplomacy. Secret envoys. It's all very... presidential...
Natural Born
Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (and the Democratic Party) won't make a fuss about whether John McCain was "natural born" and thus constitutionally eligible to serve as president... but nothing prevents some mischievous group... Democrats.com? MoveOn? Judicial Watch? someone else? ... from making a federal case out of it.
Barry Goldwater and George Romney would have been test cases... alas...
Wertheimer: McCain Can't Opt Out Until FEC Is Functioning
I think I might have missed the significance of Fred Wertheimer's statement about John McCain's tangle with the FEC.
The shut down of the Federal Election Commission has taken center stage because there is no functioning agency to deal with the issue of whether bank loans taken out by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and the collateral provided for those bank loans, means that Senator McCain cannot withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and is bound by its spending limits for the rest of his primary campaign.
So -- In Wertheimer's opinion, McCain can't opt out until the FEC decides whether he can?
The Full Obama Video: Caucus For Priorities
Here's the full video... of which 52 seconds became viral yesterday in conservative circles.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not, not, not running for president, according to an op-ed he's written for tomorrow's New York Times.
His shots aren't parting, though:
WATCHING the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates — smart, all of them — must know better. They must know we can’t fix our economy and create jobs by isolating America from global trade. They must know that we can’t fix our immigration problems with border security alone. They must know that we can’t fix our schools without holding teachers, principals and parents accountable for results. They must know that fighting global warming is not a costless challenge. And they must know that we can’t keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals unless we crack down on the black market for them. The vast majority of Americans know that all of this is true, but — politics being what it is — the candidates seem afraid to level with them.
Adelfa Callejo, Welcome To The Spotlight
From New York Daily News reporter Michael McAuliffe's pool report. He was with Sen. Clinton today for a round of satellite interviews.
She was asked by KTVT in Dallas about a Latina backer who said that black politicians never do anything for Hispanics. Her name is Adelfa Callejo. Apparently she’s 84.
[The question: "She recently told us that African-Americans never help Hispanics when they gain power and influence and that she would never vote for Sen. Obama, and now quoting here she said 'Obama’s problem is that he happens to be black.' How do you react to those comments?"]
The newscaster quoted her saying “Obama’s problem is that he happens to be black.”
Clinton: “Well obviously I want us judged on our merits. I believe strongly that the fact that we have an Aftrican Ameircan and a woman running for the Democratic nomination is historical and I’m very very proud of that . I want people thought to look beyond, look beyond race and gender, look at our records, look what we stand for, look what we’ve done and I think that;s what most voters are looking for.”
Q (paraphrase) Is this something you reject and denounce?
“People have every reason to express their opinions. I just don’t agree with that. I think that we should be looking at the individuals who are running.”
Q - Do you still want her support, though?
Clinton laughed and said, “You know This is a free country. People get to express their opinions. A lot of folks have said really unpleasant things about me over the course of this campaign. You can’ take any of that as anything other than an individual opinion.”
“I would urge all of my supporters and Sen. Obama’s supporters to stay focused on the two of us,. Don’t vote on race don’t vote on gender, vote on the qualifications each of us present for the presidency."
Q- But you criticized Obama for not rejecting the support form Farrakhan,
“I don’t see any comparison at all with what you’re referring to and I don’t know the facts of what you’re telling me over the TV. So I’m just going to repeat that I want people to judge us on the merits.”
Fred Wertheimer Weighs In
Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer weighs on, sort of, on Sen. McCain's dispute with the Federal Election Commission. His full response after the jump.
What Do McCain's Public Interest Group Allies Say About His Campaign Finance Claims?
I've wondered this, as have others. So far, there's been mostly radio silence, particularly from groups like the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, both with deep ties to McCain, both with deep roots with the campaign finance legislation reform community, both usually quick to the draw when lawmakers attempt to interpret election laws to their advantage.
Larry Gold has attempted an answer. He has the credentials, being a litigator of McConnell v. FEC before the Supreme Court. He is a critic of McCain's.
Like others, I have been awaiting with interest the analysis of these important matters from the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 (D21). CLC and D21 are ardent advocates and litigants on the ethical and legal behavior of candidates, political parties, unions, corporations and other private organizations with respect to politics and lobbying, they are often quoted by the media as objective and authoritative arbiters of such behavior, and they rely on their media relationships for their own fundraising and influence. Ordinarily, CLC and D21 would be outspoken about an imbroglio concerning a presumptive presidential nominee’s belated effort to withdraw from public financing at a time when the FEC is raising legitimate procedural and substantive questions about his doing so. And, ordinarily they would be quick to weigh in about potentially unethical contacts between a lawmaker and lobbyists and possible attempts to cover them up.
"[D]on’t CLC and D21 believe that Senator McCain is now trying to exploit a “loophole” in that system, isn’t he violating at least the “spirit” of the law, and doesn’t his current effort to withdraw from his public-funding commitment seek to “circumvent the rules”?"]
Regardless of whether McCain is doing something nefarious -- whether he's violating the spirit or letter or intent or a law, his assertions have raised the type of questions that the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 usually jump into in earnest. Indeed, both groups have been vocal in urging Barack Obama to abide by the pledge he made last year to enter into the public financing system for the general election provided his opponent did so.
A spokesperson at Democracy 21 said: "We have not put out any statements."
Dave Vance, at the Campaign Legal Center, acknowledged the perceptual pressure his organization faced. Its president, Trevor Potter, is McCain's general counsel. Mr. Potter has taken a leave of absence from the group, although he "might be talking to people on behalf of fundraising," Vance said. As for McCain, "he happens to be on the same page as us for reasons for political expediency right now."
I asked Vance whether the CLC would hesitate to take a shot at McCain if he violated any of the CLC's principles.
"No," he said.
In truth, the matter is complex and turns on fairly obscure points of law that the CLC and Democracy 21 usually wouldn't be expected to master, much less to advocate for. But it's no doubt a cautionary tale for them: their critics will be watching how they respond to McCain's every interaction with campaign finance.
Richardson Moves Toward An Endorsement, Likes Obama
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is being coy with his inner circle and hasn't told them who he'll endorse for president. But he's sure said a lot of nice things about Barack Obama.
And Richardson was irate, according to several sources (including the New York Times) when a "senior Clinton official" -- I'm told this was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- called him to pressure him into endorsing Hillary Clinton.
Audio Podcast
Not sure what to call it, but myself, Ross Douthat and Megan McArdle just sat down, turned on the tape recorder, and talked to each other about the news of the day: Obama, Clinton and the death of William F. Buckley, Jr. Listen here.
Rep. John Lewis Switches His Superdelegate Status To Barack Obama
Tennessee Republican Party Slams Barack "Hussein" Obama
On Monday, the Tennessee Republican Party dropped the H-bomb, adorning a press release with Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, and associated him the Muslim religion by running the 2006 photograph of the candidate wearing Somali tribal clothing.
Here's the first paragraph of the release:
The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.
Ostensibly, the press release was written to react to Louis Farrakhan's Sunday endorsement of Obama.
A Knoxville, TN newspaper reports that the Tennessee Republican Party stands by the release in its entirety on the grounds that it "has to inform the base" of Obama's background.
An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news media in TN is circling, though, ensuring that the story will remain alive for a while down there.
Update Part II: A "clarification" on the website now reads:
This release originally referenced a photo of Sen. Obama and incorrectly termed it to be “”Muslim” garb. It is, in fact, Somali tribal garb, hence, we have deleted the photo. Also, in order to diffuse attempts by Democrats and the Left to divert attention from the main point of this release - that Sen. Obama has surrounded himself with advisers and recieved endorsements from people who are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel - we have deleted the use of Barack Obama’s middle nam
Illegal Forward Pass....
At 4:58 in the p.m. yesterday, Sen. John McCain's hard-working headquarters deputy communications director, Brian Rogers, forwarded to the campaign press list the statement released by McCain's Senate office on Sen. Russ Feingold's Iraq withdrawal bill.
He was trying to be helpful.
But it turns out that Senate ethics rules frown on such forwarding of official Senate press releases from campaign e-mail addresses.
It's a minor thing... and totally inadvertent... but the commissar of Senate ethics has an extra obligation to be fully attentive to these rules, especially as the Democratic National Committee is not going to give McCain one mole of breathing room over the next six months.
Some Thoughts On WFB
He proved that, even in late 20th century, ideas matter and can change governments, minds and history; he produced the intellectual fertilizer that grew the conservative movement from Goldwater to Reagan; He was astonishingly gracious for a man of his position, intellectually honest to a fault; if you are a liberal you should acknowledge his contribution to at least the basic structure of politics. He came to oppose the Iraq war, he was noticably more sympathetic to gay people (and perhaps to civil unions) as he grew older; he believed that conservatism under George W. Bush had lost its way; he was humble enough to allow his magazine to prosper under editors who thought differently. His was a conservatism of doubt.
I’m devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut.
After year of illness, he died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.
As you might expect, we’ll have much more to say here and in NR in the coming days and weeks and months. For now: Thank you, Bill. God bless you, now with your dear Pat. Our deepest condolences to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. And our fervent prayer that we continue to do WFB’s life’s work justice.
Vine, vide, vice.
Here's Your Public Financing, McCain
"This is why Barack Obama is hedging from his pledge to accept public financing for the general election."
"So, he's changing his mind as the circumstances warrant?"
"Yep."
"Isn't that cynical?"
"Depends. He could argue that the collective action of 1,000,000 people voluntarily deciding to contribute money to his campaign is much more democratic than a government-imposed levy on the taxpayer."
"But wouldn't McCain be able to say that Obama is putting political expediency before principle here?"
"He could say that. But what's the principle? When Obama agreed -- and I do think he agreed -- to accept public financing if the Republican did, he had no idea that he would be able to fund his campaign from a donor base that was so broad as to essentially remove from the table the appearance of corruption or unfairness."
"But it's not fair to McCain."
"Exactly. Obama is orgnanically more exciting than McCain.""
"Hold on. There's a structural imbalance, too. Democats are raising much more money from the internet and have done so, ever since Howard Dean pioneered the phenominon in 2003."
"Well, actually, John McCain kind of pioneered this in 2000, when he raised $1,000,000 the week after winning the New Hampshire primary. But I concede the point. One of the biggest structural disadvantages the Republican Party faces over the next generation is that they haven't found an alternative source of revenue. The older generation of ideological and corporate donors are fading away. There is no replacement cohort."
"I still think Obama is fudging on a pledge."
"And McCain will certainly argue as much. But if Obama gets 1,000,000 people to contribute $100 dollars for the general election, McCain will be forced to someone construe that as a bad thing for democracy."
Rove: Don't "Hussein" Obama
No less an authority figure than Karl Rove has warned Republican operatives from demagoguing Barack Obama's middle name.
At a closed door meeting of GOP state executive directors in late January, Rove said the safest way to refer to Obama would be to use his honorific, "Sen. Obama."
"The context was, you're not going to stimatize this guy. You shouldn't underestimate him," one of the executive directors said. Rove said that the use of "Barack Hussein Obama" would perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party.
Rove also said that Republicans should refer to Hillary Clinton as "Sen. Clinton," rather than "Hillary."
Right wing figures are set to ignore Rove's advice. Rush Limbaugh used Obama's middle name more than a year ago, and Ann Coulter regularly uses the middle name, once calling him "President Hussein." So does Michael Savage, who once asked whether Obama was a "so-called friendly Muslim" or one more "radical."
Los Angeles Times Poll Shows Clinton Shedding Voters
Overall, the spread is Obama 48% and Clinton 42%.
Obama now runs even among women, even among those who didn't get a college degree and even among those aged 45 to 64. Clinton still runs strong among men and women over aged 65 and women who don't work. Obama wins married women by 11 points.
42% of Republicans say that Barack Obama would be the toughest candidate for John McCain to b beat in November.
The Times poll has McCain beating Clinton outside the margin of error (46% to 40%) and beating Obama by only 2 points.
So far as I can tell, the difference between the Times poll and other polls showing Obama beating McCain is that independents in the Times poll are more evenly split, where Obama, in the CBS/NYT poll, led among independents.
February 26, 2008
Vantage Point
On substance: Clinton. On style: Obama.
You cannot, said Chesterton, love a thing without wanting to fight for it. If Clinton was the underdog tonight, she kept the upper dog on the defensive for most of the night. Near the end, for example, when Clinton interrupted and badgered him into denouncing the Nation of Islam leader even more fulsomely.
Toward the end, Obama made three fairly significant hedges, the first of which being about the Russian President to be, Dimitry Medvevev. Although Clinton had trouble pronouncing his name -- Medvevev, it was clear that she knew it, and that she was at least cursorily familiar with the details of the election and the challenge it poses for the U.S. As NBC News’s hounds noted, Obama appeared to defer to her. If you were watching closely, you might have wondered whether Obama had received a briefing recently on Russia, rather than a recitation of the case against George W. Bush’s relationship with Putin.
Before that there were was his weird language about the endorsement by Louis Farrakhan. There are some things you just don’t do in American politics: calling Farrakhan “minister Farrakhan” is one of them. He’s been declared persona non grata by everyone in the mainstream of our politics. It seemed to take badgering by Clinton for Obama to reject it explicitly (although he did not embrace it and had distanced himself from it before). I don't think Obama's at fault here... I think the circumstances conspired against him... but it just didn't sound right...
And before that there was Obama’s hedging on public financing in the general election.
I suspect, though, that Clinton’s intemperate complaint about the NBC’s debate reflecting the Saturday Night Live parody will be what the morning shows dissect and dissect, and beyond that, there was really nothing else to commend to the new viewer. Ohioans concerned about NAFTA learned that Clinton changed her mind about the efficacy of the trade agreement and about her promise to threaten to pull out of the treaty unless Canada and Mexico renegotiate its terms; me too, said Obama. The two candidates fought to a draw over mandates; there doesn’t seem to be a truth there one can actually find. Obama had some strong moments, particularly, as usual, on Iraq. His two best lines: how Clinton was responsible for getting the country "into the ditch" that both of them were trying to get out of, and how she was ready from day one to "enable" Bush to take the country to war.
I hesitate to point out her body language, if only because I can easily read too much into it. But she seemed tense, remorseful, sad, at times… her neck seemed leaden; her voice had an edge that all to often crossed the boundary between assertive and plaintive.
Obama seemed more solicitous and upbeat. Even as he was defensive, he was passive-defensive; he was oh-so-cool; one e-mailer, recalling Twain, called him a Christian with four aces. He seemed to be listening to Hillary Stagg with one ear and to Hillary Clinton with the other.
Bottom line: did this, the 20th debate, change much? Probably not.
Democratic Debate Part III
Obama ends with a bit of a reverse "moment"...praises HRC...says she's a "magnificant" campaigner... taking away her chance to land a last-minute punch....saying he looks forward to working with her...."there's no doubt that Hillary Clinton would be a much better president than John McCain..."
HRC does know Medvevev's name but has trouble pronouncing it, while Obama brings it back to Bush...
Russert's "Gotcha question"... the name of the President-would-be is Dmitry Medvedev , btw.
Obama bashes National Journal, which judged him the most liberal Senator...
HRC notes that she rejected the support of a third party in NYC that was anti-Semitic...by way of contrast to Obama. "I was willing to take that stand..." Obama concedes the point.
Russert moves on to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.... Obama talks about wanting to rebuilding the relationship between the Jewish community and the black community....
Obama: "I have been very clear in my denunciation of minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments." It is "not support that I sought. We're not doing anything formal or informally with minister Farrakhan."
HRC: "The American people who support me are bankrolling your campaign."
Russert to HRC: "Why won't you release your tax return" so the Am people "can see who is bankrolling your campaign?"
Russert: "You may break out of public financing? You may break your word?"
On public financing: is Obama waffling? "Why won't won't you keep your word in writing?" Obama: "When I am the nominee, if I an the nominee, then I will sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that is fair for both sides..."....mentions McCain's maneuvering within the system so far... "What I want to point out more broadly is how we approached this campaign from the beginning..."
Obama: "There's nothing romantic or silly..." about getting the American people "activated" for change.
HRC: "I know it takes a fighter. It takes someone who will go toe-to-toe with the special interests...." Explainer her "celestial choirs" comments.... "The special interests are not going to give up without a fight."
What? They played the tape in error? Softball? "How did you take those remarks when she said them? Obama: "I would give her points for delivery."
HRC: after a commercial, NBC plays the "celestial choirs will be singing" riff that HRC went on over the weekend... Obama: "sounds good" ....
HRC goes after Obama for not holding hearings as a Foreign Relations subcommittee chair on Afghanistan....
Both candidates refuse to say whether they'd go back into Iraq if it "went to hell" after withdrawal....
Clinton Team Not Happy With Debate Questions....
A Clinton adviser: "This feels like it ****is**** SNL."
The 20th Democratic Debate: Part II
I have many friends at NBC News, but the questions to HRC seem tougher than the questions to Obama. For example: Brian Williams asked: "How were her comments about you unfair?"
Obama: "She was ready on day one...to give into George Bush."
The RNC is paying attention to Obama again.. four releases against him... none mentioning HRC.
HRC wraps Obama's Iraq speech in '02...with her "speeches, not action" theme
Russert: HRC, you pledged 200K new jobs for upstate New York..there's been a net loss of 37K jobs... notes that she pledges 5M new jobs...
Finally: Russert notices that Obama has been "ambivalent" about NAFTA. Obama says HRC's answer is right.
HRC seems to have an edge in her voice. The substance of her answers is sound. But emotions seem to be just under the surface... Maybe I'm reading too much into this.
HRC: "We will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate it. Let's be fair here, Tim. There are lots of parts of New York that have benefited. But the problem is in places like upstate New York, Youngstown, Toledo, it hasn't."
By the way: is tonight the first time Matt Drudge has been mentioned in any debate?
Obama accuses HRC of "shifting positions" on this.
HRC defends herself on NAFTA.... "I would hope again that we can get to a debate to what the real issues are and where we stand... we do need to fix NAFTA and it is not working.."
HRC: complains about getting the first question: .... "If anyone saw Saturday night live, maybe we should get Barack a pillow and ask if he is comfortable..." The audience hisses a little bit.... seems like she lost her temper.
The 20th Democratic Debate
Obama: "It has to do with how we are going to achieve universal health care." Says same experts that say there's a difference say that difference is very small...
HRC: "It would be as though Franklin Roosevelt said, let's make Social Security voluntary...at the point of employment, at the point of contact, we would have people signed up...it's like when you get a 401K at your employer..."... HRC getting passionate.. there's an edge in her voice
Has HRC ever answered the mandate question? How would she enforce it?
HRC: Re: Obama's Ohio mailings, "It’s almost as though the health insurance companies and the Republicans wrote it."
Haven't we heard this same debate about 14 times?
Obama: "Sen. Clinton has...constantly sent out negative attacks on us...e-mail, robocalls, fliers, television ads...and we haven't whined about it...because I understand that's the nature of these campaigns."
Obama: "I have endured repeated negative mailings..."
HRC: Asked about the Drudge picture... "I certainly know nothing about it.."
HRC: starts on health care.... calls for an "accurate" debate that's "based in facts." "My plan will cover everyone and it is affordable. ... Sen. Obama's plan does not cover everyone."
HRC: "This is a contest campaign. I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Obama, but we have differences."
Yay -- a Clinton video montage!
An Insult, Then An Apology
To make it clear.... it wasn't just that Bill Cunningham used Barack HUSSEIN Obama's middle name over and over and over again when introducing John McCain today in Cincinnati...
"Well my friends now we have a hack, Chicago-style Daley politician who is picturing himself as change. When he gets done with you, all you’re going to have in your pocket is change..."
McCain was aghast; his apology was abject, according to CBS's Dante Higgins.
I regret any comments that may be made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans. We just have strong philosophical differences. And so I want to disassociate myself from any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them.I have never met Mr. Cunningham but I will certainly make sure that nothing like that happens ever again."
An Obama spokesman later responded in kind: "We appreciate Senator McCain’s remarks. It is a sign that if there is a McCain-Obama general election, it can be intensely competitive but the candidates will attempt to keep it respectful and focused on issues."
True that.
But the incident -- I'll call it an incident to give it a sinister cast -- deserves to be put in some context. Some conservative talk radio hosts and activists like to use Obama's middle name in order to highlight his... foreignness? otherness? crypto-Islamist-ness? -- something... fairly regularly. Because "Hussein" happens to be a very common name in what the Brits call Asia, and it happens to be the family name of the Iraqi leader who, well, you know..., it has acquired the motive force of a direct, ethnically-tinged insult. Today, McCain has disassociated himself from all of that.
Going forward, McCain has vowed to better vet those who will introduce him. That will be hard. The White House has an entire department of folks whose job it is to make sure that no one who appears with the President will embarrass him.
These days, the GOP has a complex relationship with race, and the Republican whose job it is to beat the first black nominee of a major party with a middle of Hussein has a particularly sensitive mission.
Obama V. The Press
Ah, the burbling of complaints about Obama's accessibility to his traveling press corps. The Politico compares the Obama '08 press strategy to the Bush '00 press strategy.
But there are some important differences.
For one thing, the Bush press corps in 2000 liked their candidate personally and the Gore press corps -- at least, in the popular recounting -- found Gore aloof and unaccessible. In 2008, the McCain press corps, largely because of access, enjoys the company of Sen. McCain, and it's fair to say that some reporters covering Obama find him aloof and not especially interesting to interact with. It's a weird duality: Obama gets the best coverage of any candidate, anywhere, ever, and yet...
The Bush "strategy" worked in 2000 in part because of the nature of the differences between the experiences of the two press corps.
Also, neither Gore nor Bush predicated their campaigns on a new conception of politics; one that eschewed the stagecraft and predictable soundbites of the past. Obama's does.
But in fairness to the Obama campaign, whatever they've been doing... has sort of...worked.
(Though: is it really true that the press can't circulate at Obama events? Why's that?)
McCain Veep Watch
Ex-Rep. Rob Portman endorses him today....
Pondering Clinton's Place
The “HRC can come back” bandwagon is rolling through town, and I spent a long time yesterday contemplating whether to jump on board. But the platform on which her supporters stand right now seems more tenuous by the day.
It is very difficult, from the standpoint of politics, of delegate mathematics, and of the news media, to envision a scenario where Hillary Clinton not only recovers her momentum but actually finds a way to obtain a delegate lead -- just about the only way she can possibly convince the party that she deserves time to make her case for the nomination.
At best, there are shots at an extreme angle, the sort of devil-may-do existentialities that are common to all endeavors -- Obama could call Clinton a cuss word on stage, etc. Something like this might happen; we’ve seen a heck of a lot of black swans this cycle. But there’s no way to plan for it, and the more obvious it becomes that you’re just in it to wait for one, the less viable you really are.
The delegate math works against her; that is obvious and evident every time you look at it. Recouping 100 earned delegates from Obama will be next to impossible unless she sweeps the remaining contests and earns more than 60% of the vote in each of them. Even then, she may have a deficit, depending on who’s counting. (If Puerto Rican Democrats follow their own rules, all the delegates will not magically accrue to a single candidate.)
There is a distinction between super delegates and earned delegates, even if their vote counts the same.
Based on conversations with neutral super delegates and a brief perusal of history, it seems extremely unlikely that the mass of undecided super delegates are willing to play a Gary Hart-quashing role they did in 1984. The reason why many of them remain undecided today is that they are afraid to cross the Clintons so long as there’s a tiny chance that the Clintons might win.
The Clinton campaign has been accused of moving the goal posts every time they fail to reach a previously promised threshold, but the goal posts, right now, are at the back of the stadium. They can’t be moved any further back without bringing the whole thing down. It’s unlikely that the news media, more pro-Obama than anti-Hillary, would give any credence to another attempt to push the contest into April. And, come to think it, there’s no energy left on the Clinton campaign to do, either.
Advisers figure that a loss in Texas is as likely as a win in Ohio; a large number of staffers appear to be willing to quit en masse next Wednesday if there’s a split decision and Clinton gives notice that she intends to fight for another month.
And what of Clinton herself? To borrow my favorite Christian heresy metaphor, many in the political world are Manicheans when it comes to her motives. Either she is entirely evil and devious or she is totally pure and misunderstand. Her actions to date suggest that she is more aware of her surroundings that people give her credit for. She does not seem to want to hurt the party; she does not want to jeopardize Obama in November -- yes, yes, I know, 2012 and all that, but she also knows that the truth is, her political career would not be over if she were to concede the nomination gracefully, only that part of it that has depended, for better or worse, on her husband.
This is not to say that the only logical course of action would be for her to quit. It's just that, as she answers questions during tonight's debate, she may, once again, have two different audiences in mind.
February 25, 2008
CBS/NYT Poll: Obama Leading Clinton Nationally By Double Digits
(He's also beating McCain, nationally, 50 to 38%, among registered voters.)
Nearly 60% of all Democrats surveyed say that Obama is in a better position to beat McCain than Clinton. More Democrats think Clinton has made it clear what she'd do as president than Obama, but the margin is small: 65% to 57%. On balance, Democrats seem to like and trust Clinton. They just like and trust Obama more.
McCain's biggest opening: 56% think that Obama needs more seasoning, while 73% acknowledge that McCain is ready to be commander in chief from day 1. Just under half of Americans think Obama is ready to handle a national crisis.
Will the economy matter to independents? 66% of registered voters are very or somewhat confident they think Obama would make the right choices on the economy. But 58% say the same thing about McCain.
On Iraq -- almost an equal number believe that McCain and Obama would both make the right decisions on Iraq.
McCain's trump card is national security, not Iraq. Nearly 50% believe they he'd be a very effective commander in chief.
Incidentally, Obama is getting his margin from the enthusiasm among Democrats and a 10 point lead among independents. McCain has more consolidating of the base to do.
Where's The Beef?
Hillary Clinton, in her remarks on foreign policy today at George Washington University, still hesitates to make an affirmative case that Barack Obama is singularly unqualified to be president of the United States and would not be ready to be commander in chief from day one. The language in here is starker than the language she's used before, but the argument is basically the same.
BTW: Clinton was endorsed today by Maj. Gen. (ret). Anthony Taguba, he of Taguba Report fame -- or infame, to Rumsfeld. -- a 34 year veteran of the Army.
Talking Points: Photograph Appearing on Drudge Report
This morning, the Drudge Report claimed that the Clinton campaign was supposedly circulating a photo of Barack Obama wearing traditional Somali clothing. Below is Q&A on this issue and an excerpt from an interview that Obama supporter, Gov. Janet Napolitano, gave to CNN this afternoon.
Q: In the campaign’s official statement today Maggie Williams does not directly respond to whether the Clinton campaign circulated this picture. Do you know whether anyone in your camp circulated this picture
A: No. I was not aware of it, the campaign didn’t sanction it and did not know anything about it.
Q: Have you asked all of the campaign staff about this?
A: We have over 700 people on this campaign and I’m not in a position to know what each one of them may or may not have done.
Have you actually seen the email the campaign is supposedly circulating? If you do see it, let me know.
For now, all we know is that the Drudge Report mentions an e-mail, but you haven’t seen it and to date, it’s not clear whether this e-mail even exists.
Q: Are you going to make any effort to question the staff about whether anybody actually sent out an e-mail like that?
A: I’m not in the position to ask 700 people to come in and answer questions about it. To put this as clearly and simply as I can: I was not aware of it, the campaign didn’t sanction it and did not know anything about it.
WOLF BLITZER: Have you seen that photo circulating on the web now with Obama dressed in sort of Kenyan, Muslim garb that's been circulating? The Clinton campaign is not saying - there it is behind you if you want to take a look, you see it right there. What do you think of this development? Sort of, I guess the implication being to reinforce the notion that he is, at least on his father's side, there's some Muslim ancestry.
GOV. JANET NAPOLITANO: Oh, I think it's irrelevant to the issues of the campaign. I know there's some back and forth today; the Clinton campaign says they have nothing to do with it. I take them at their word. We need to move on. The people of the United States, the people out in Arizona aren't interested in a photo. What they're interested in is a president who will lead; who will help them deal with the economy, with health care, with foreign policy, and by the way with a new vision for the war in Iraq.
New CNN Poll Of Texas: Obama Slim Lead
CNN's latest poll sampled 761 Democrats in Texas and gives Barack Obama a 50% to 46% lead over Hillary Clinton.... the margin of error is +/- 3.5%.
More On The Photo: The Ohio Connection
Reader J.K. writes:
FYI: Columbus (as you know the largest city in Ohio) is home to the second-largest collection of Somali ex-pats in the nation (Minneapolis is first). Columbus' Somali population is in the tens of thousands, and most estimates range from 30,000 to 45,000. As with any large influx of ethnically and nationally distinct people into a largely culturally homogenous area, assimilation efforts have been tough going. From my experience, there is definitely an underlying tension (among white and African Americans alike) regarding Somalis here in Columbus. I'm not necessarily suggesting that this was part of the calculus in pushing the image (indeed, we still don't know for sure who pushed it or why they did), but it is something to think about.
And a well-respected superdelegate is angry:
Are we now in a place in which every thing that someone does that is Obama related is viewed through a prism of racism? I I suppose that it's too much to think that maybe someone just does something stupid. What if there were a picture of HRC in a burka? Would it be sexist to circulate it? Would the press even suggest that it was -- or would it attack the Clinton campaign if it suggested it was sexist? Everyone really needs to take a big, deep breath here and get real about what things mean and what they don't mean. Or better still, why does the Obama campaign - a campaign whose candidate considers himself "post-racial" immediately play the race card? I'd like to see someone in the press ask that question.
The Iraq War, Mr. McCain said, will be over "soon."
He continued: "...the war for all intents and purposes, although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis. ... "
The full context:
“And by the way, that reminds me of this hundred year thing. I was
asked in a town hall meeting back in Florida, how long would we have a
presence in Iraq? My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for
all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years
and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us,
and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have
with the Iraqis. ... "
Meanwhile, VoteVets.org has a new ad; they'd bought small 00 only on DC cable... so the ad is designed to influence the influencers.
The Photo, Cont. Cont.
I asked Tracy Sefl, the Clinton adviser who was outed a few months back as an informal conduit between the Clinton campaign and Matt Drudge, whether she had anything to do with the photo's journey to Drudge's e-mail inbox.
"No," she said.
Clinton: Obama Is To Foreign Policy As Bush Was To Foreign Policy
Said Hillary Clinton today:
“We’ve seen the tragic results of having a president who didn’t have neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security. We can’t let that happen again.”
SEIU Pours Money Into Texas and Ohio To Help Obama
According to independent expenditure notices filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Service Employees International Union plans to spend more than $700,000 over the next week to help Barack Obama in Texas and Ohio.
Additionally, the union's powerful local 1199, based in New York, will spend nearly $200,000 more to pay the salaries of SEIU members who will volunteer on Obama's behalf.
Local 1199's federal PAC is spending $75,000 to pay salaries and per diems of its members who're working for Obama in Texas. 1199 is sending $106,600 worth of employees to Ohio.
The SEIU's Committee on Political Education (COPE) filed notice yesterday that it would spent approximately $300,000 on door-to-door canvassing and $400,000 on direct mail in Ohio.
On Friday, the union's federal political action fund gave notice it would spend $200,000 on phone banking and $50,000 on voter persuasion.
HRC's Giving Her Major Foreign Policy Speech Right Now...
And no cable network is covering it.
As I type, MSNBC is showing Mike Huckabee's appearance on Saturday Night Live...ABC News Now is in a commercial...CNN is on weather, and Fox News is covering the DNC's complaint against John McCain. (To MSNBC's credit, they dipped into the speech for about 20 seconds.)
A few weeks ago, any speech deemed by the campaign as "major" would have been broadcast in its entirety.
Is today's Clinton dis a sign that television producers have given up on her campaign?
Romney For Congress
Ask any Romney campaign staffer to name the Romney brother who did the best job stumping for his father and they are likely to say, "First, let's go off the record, because they were all great," but then they were likely to whisper "Josh Romney."
And now, Romney's exploring a bid to run against Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT).
Tina Fey For HRC
From Saturday Night Live this weekend (and sure to be removed by YouTube in a hurry).
In truth, this did strike me as a campaign commercial for Clinton....
The Latest Clinton Campaign Statement On "The Photo"
"There are 700 people in our organization. We can’t be sure that it didn’t come from us. It is not the intent of the campaign to release this picture to tarnish Senator Obama in any way, but if someone in the campaign thinks the Obama camp gets treated differently by the media, well, they’re right."
Maggie Williams Statement
Maybe, reader TV, I owe you an apology.
This statement by Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams does not include a denial that said photograph was distributed by the campaign, which, perhaps, one can justify under the assumption that Williams doesn't have access to the e-mail records of all 700 of her employees.
To the contrary: she argues that the photograph is not offensive and that its publication and the Drudge/Plouffe reactions to it are distractions from "serious" issues.
If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely. This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry. We will not be distracted.”
OK -- so someone (connected to the Clinton campaign?) circulated the photo because they wanted to show everyone how cool Obama looked in it... and the Obama campaign, for questioning the motive of the person who distributed it, is being offensive?
The Photo, Con't.
Reader CT has done some sleuthing and finds two recent uses of the photo, one on Sunniblog.com on Feb 11, and the other in the National Examiner tabloid.
It's unclear who is circulating the photo, what the photo means, why only Matt Drudge would receive it, why anything would assume that eve "stressed" Clinton staffers would do such a thing, and why, absent any proof that such a photo was circulating, Obama's campaign would formally react.
(Clinton campaign aides denied circulating the photo, although they worry that, if someone on the campaign -- 700 people now -- did so without authorization, they will be in a pickle.
We're at the stage of the campaign where both campaigns lose perspective and are willing to believe the absolute worst about each other on the basis of an assertion. And that Manichean perspective then cause said campaign to imputing the absolute worst motivations to their opponents. That's not how human beings work, but such psychological blind spots can be forgiven, I guess.
(Quick: Clinton staffers: name five GOOD things about Obama. Obama staffers: name five GOOD things about Clinton.) Spending eight months locked in mortal combat will do that.
Anyway, the Clinton campaign believes that the Obama campaign is cynically exploiting the Drudge fetish that news producers have in order to step on her big foreign policy speech today, and the Obama campaign believes that the Clinton campaign is actually sending out a funny-looking photo of Obama.
Such charges are aided and abetted by stories like this one, which uncritically accepts the premise of the photo and its origin.
Could some dumb Clinton ally have sent the photo to Matt Drudge? Sure. Does that mean the campaign authorized its sending? Why would Matt Drudge be the recipient of such an oppo dump -- whatever the oppo dumb was supposed to signify.
Incidentally, an Obama campaign aide who would know said the campaign did not sent the e-mail to Drudge.
CLINTON STAFFERS CIRCULATE 'DRESSED' OBAMA
Mon Feb 25 2008 06:51:00 ET
With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a "dressed" Barack Obama.
The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya.
The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.
"Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
In December, the campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Two Ohio Polls Show Clinton With Lead
The Ohio Poll, conducted by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati, has Clinton leading 47 to 39 (with seven percent for John Edwards.) (The MoE is +/- 4.3%.)
As far as the timing, don’t attach too much significance to the Drudge posting. We heard a second-hand report from a lobbyist about Senator McCain and Vicki Iseman more than a year ago. Early last year we began making careful, quiet inquiries into the matter. Last fall, we learned more about some of the conversations around the campaign concerning Ms. Iseman, and we kept reporting.
According to the Times' David Kirkpatrick, somebody -- Rutenberg? -- first picked up on rumors about Sen. John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman "more than a year ago." And the first reporting on the article began "early last year."
Why is that significant? Because many -- including the Times's own David Brooks and Ms. Iseman's lobbying firm -- seem to blame McCain aide John Weaver for instigating the story.
But more than a year ago, Mr. Weaver was firmly ensconced as McCain's chief strategist. It beggers belief to think that he would someone be involved in tipping off a Times reporter.
Note also that Kirkpatrick says the first tip -- from a "second hand" report -- came from a lobbyist. Most likely, this lobbyist was not friendly to Mr. McCain.
I'm as curious as the next reporter about the identity of the original and confirming sources. Kirkpatrick's words lend some credence to my theory that at least one of them was a prominent lobbyist who was part of the team in 2000 and had some reason to disfavor McCain.
Obama's Snatching Up The Superdelegates
Per the Nation, Sen. Russ Feingold says he's very likely to vote for Obama at the convention.
Since Wisconsin, Obama has gained the support of 10 superdelegates by my counting: 2 DNC members from New Jersey, two congressmen from Wisconsin, Jason Rae, four supers from Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Rep Chet Edwards and Lloyd Doggett of Texas.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, if I recall correctly, has picked up two.
A Wrinkle: Did McCain Meet With Bud Paxson?
Check out this transcript from a deposition McCain gave five years ago, as reported by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff:
"....the campaign's insistence that McCain himself never talked to Paxson about the issue seems hard to square with the contents of his testimony in the McCain-Feingold case.
Abrams, for example, at one point cited the somewhat technical contents of one of his letters to the FCC and then asked the witness, "where did you get information of that sort, Senator McCain?"
McCain replied: "I was briefed by my staff."
Abrams then followed up: "Do you know were they got the information?"
"No," McCain replied. "But I would add, I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue."
"You were?"
"Yes."
Abrams then asked McCain: "Can you tell us what you said and what he said about it?"
McCain: "That he had applied to purchase this station and that he wanted to purchase it. And that there had been a numerous year delay with the FCC reaching a decision. And he wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I said, 'I would be glad to write a letter asking them to act, but I will not write a letter, I cannot write a letter asking them to approve or deny, because then that would be an interference in their activities. I think everybody is entitled to a decision. But I can't ask for a favorable disposition for you'."
Abrams a few moments later asked: "Did you speak to the company's lobbyist about these matters?"
McCain: "I don't recall if it was Mr. Paxson or the company's lobbyist or both."
Abrams: "But you did speak to him?"
McCain: "I'm sure I spoke with him, yes."
The McCain campaign responded to Isikoff that when McCain says "Paxson" here, he means someone on Paxson's staff...not Paxson directly.
Let's suppose there is a contradiction, though. What, precisely, do we learn from it? Does it matter whether McCain spoke personally to Paxson? In other words -- what would McCain gave from prevaricating about meeting Paxson personally? My guess -- and this is a guess -- is that McCain just doesn't remember today every single person he spoke with five years ago.
HRC: Seat Michigan And Florida Delegates
Texas Monthly's Evan Smith interviewed HRC today and they had an extended exchange about Florida and Michigan.
Smith: "... The talk is that you agreed not to seat the delegation."
HRC: "That’s not the case at all. I signed an agreement not to campaign in Michigan and Florida. Now, the DNC made the determination that they would not seat the delegates, but I was not party to that. I think it’s important for the DNC to ask itself, Is this really in the best interest of our eventual nominee? We do not want to be disenfranchising Michigan and Florida. We have to try to carry both of those states. I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are. Therefore, the people of those two states disregarded adamantly the DNC’s decision that they would not seat the delegates. They came out and voted. If they had been influenced by the DNC, despite the fact that there was very little campaigning, if any, they would have stayed home. But they wanted their voices heard. More than 2 million people came out. I mean, it was record turnout for a primary. Florida, in particular, is sensitive to being disenfranchised because of what happened to them in the last elections. I have said that I would ask my delegates to vote to seat."
Smith: "So your intention is to press this issue?"
HRC: "Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It’s in large measure because both the voters and elected officials in Michigan and Florida feel so strongly about this. Senator Bill Nelson, of Florida, early on in the process actually sued because he thinks it’s absurd on its face that 1.7 million Democrats who eventually voted would basically be disregarded, and I agree with him about that."
Reader J.L points out, though, that the "driver" of the votes that day might have been the state property tax amendment, which drew 500K more votes than the presidential primary combined.
Your Thoughts: Clinton's Woudda Done It Strategy
I asked:
Imagine it's October of 2007 you're sitting in a soundproof conference room with Patti Solis Doyle, Mandy Grunwald, Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson. They've told you that they think Barack Obama will be a big threat to Hillary Clinton. They've asked you to develop a strategy to defeat him. What's that strategy?
Your best answers included:
Could Clinton have gotten Chelsea to do campaign stops in Iowa and emphasize youth issues (student loans, national service), and won Iowa, then rolled? Seems plausible.
Plan B is to bank the wins in CA and AZ on early votes, and then stop campaigning there in person. Spend more time in competitive territory: CO, CT, AL, maybe even GA. If she had picked up another 50 delegates there, she could have made the case the she would cruise to the nomination.
In addition, if it's still a contested nomination after South Carolina, Clinton should have started running negative ads about Obama's health care plan not covering everybody. Obama could kick up dust, but it's pretty clear it doesn't cover everyone.
and
Since you've invented a time machine here I suggest setting the dial for 2000 and have Hillary run for the Senate in Illinois, her home state, instead of New York. Senator Clinton (D-Il) means no Senator Obama (D-Il).
and
...
4. Speak at Dodd's first filibuster over FISA in support of the filibuster.
5. Dont vote for Kyl-Lieberman. Its a nothing bill with no teeth or impact, but it looks bad. As soon as I heard she voted for it, I knew it was huge mistake.
6. Dont hire Patti Solis Doyle. Hire James Carville. Dont hire Mark Penn. Hire Paul Begala. Get Mandy Grunwald on TV as your principle spokesperson.
and
Steal Obama's message early, it will become yours.
and
It should be noted that electability was never Hillary's strongsuit (and it became much more of an Achilles heel with the McCain nomination), but casting the economy rather than the general election as the principle variable as to whether change can take hold would have forced Obama to spend more time arguing "I am going to do what you guys did," rather than "I am going to accomplish all you failed to accomplish."
Obama Campaign On "The Moment"
The Obama campaign is not happy that everyone is talking about "The Moment" from last night's debate and is trying today to recenter the narrative. Here's a memo they just put out, and do note the focus on John McCain....
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Obama Campaign
RE: “The Moment” from the debate
DA: February 22, 2008
There has been a lot of discussion this morning about what “the moment” in the debate was. In our view, the moment that most clearly demonstrated the difficulty Hillary Clinton would have drawing a clear contrast with John McCain in a general election was when she, quizzically, attacked him for supporting the war in Iraq. Clinton also voted for the war. See the exchange below:
KING: Senator Clinton, as you know, I think your number was about $342 million. You say they're worthy projects, as Senator Obama did, for your state and that's part of your job, to get money for worthy projects back in your state. Senator McCain, as you know, is proud of going around the country saying he's never asked for an earmark and he will never ask for an earmark. On the specific issue of pork barrel spending, fiscal accountability by the government at a time when many Americans frankly think, whether it is the House or the Senate, that you all waste money on things that aren't important to them, don't affect their daily lives, does he have a better case to make to the American people that, "I have done this my entire career; I will do it as president," on the issue of on the issue of wasteful pork barrel spending?
CLINTON: Well, no, not at all. Because he supported the wasteful tax cuts of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, with the billions of dollars... that have been spent, and wants it to continue…
The question is: how can Senator Clinton attack Senator McCain for authorizing the war, when she cast the very same vote?
When it comes to the key issues facing the American people, Obama is the one Democrat in this race who can give voters the clearest choice in this election. Obama opposed the war in Iraq, Clinton supported it. Obama has been clear on torture, Clinton has not. Obama opposed a bankruptcy bill harmful to middle class families, Clinton supported one – yet later said she was glad it hadn’t become law. Obama opposed bad trade agreements, Clinton supported NAFTA and trade with China.
And on issue after issue – from bad trade deals to the war in Iraq – Clinton and McCain were on the same side.
The American people deserve a clear choice in this election and Barack Obama, on issue after issue against McCain, offers the opportunity to choose change we can believe in versus a third term of George Bush’s policies.
White House Joins The Times Bashing Parade
Spokesman Scott Stanzel during a gaggle:
I think a lot of people here in this building with experience in a couple campaigns have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of a campaign, about -- seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention, maybe a weekly basis after that, The New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee. And that is something that the Republican nominee has faced in the past, and probably will face in this campaign. And sometimes they make incredible leaps to try to drop those bombshells on the Republican nominees. So that is something that we're aware of, and that, unfortunately is a fact of life.
Rallying around the flag...
Obama On Track To Raise Record $$ This Month
Barack Obama is on track to raise more than 50M this month, if outside projections and outside advisers to the campaign are correct.
His campaign officially admits that they'll raise more than $36M. Beyond that, they're keeping mum. Only a few key aides know the true projected total and they're not talking to me or others in the press.
But outside advisers, and one Republican math whiz, are reading the body language as best they can.
Patrick Ruffini notes that Obama "had tallied about 256,000 donors for the year as of the end of January." These donors contributed an average of $140 each for a total of $36M.
Now, he notes, "Obama’s public donor count stands at 583,525, meaning about 327,000 people donated in February. With the same average, that would give Obama just over $46 million in 21 days."
And Ruffini has created an embedded crowdsourced spreadsheet that tracks every bit of public data about Obama's fundraising. From those calculations, he gets at least $60M for the quarter.
Outside campaign advisers said that they believed the campaign would raise at least $50M, based on conversations they've had with the cryptkeepers.
How much will Hillary Clinton raise? Between $25M and $30M, according to advisers.
How McCain Weathered The Storm
It is not often that campaign staffers feel good after a day of relentless media focus on the question of whether your boss had an extramarital affair. And yet, behind the veneer of self-confidence, of the political imperative to project a calm upper lip, the campaign’s senior advisers and aides are in a much better place tonight than they were last night.
The campaign responded quickly and deftly to the accusations and provided a model of sorts for how to weather an accusatory, highly provocative front-page, above-the-fold investigative piece in the world’s most influential newspaper.
First, they had facts. Within two hours of the story being published to the Times’s website, McCain’s campaign distributed a 1,200 point-by-point rebuttal of some of the story’s claims. Spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker issued a statement slamming the Times for its “gutter” politics.
Wisely, they deliberately decided to keep McCain from reading the article. That way, when a reporter serving as the pooler for his evening fundraiser threw him a question, he was able to say, quite honestly, that he hadn’t read it yet. The message: nothing to be concerned about. To prevent reporters from claiming that McCain was trying to hide from them, the campaign scheduled a news conference for 9:00 am the next morning -- after the morning shows, on which, incidentally, high-powered McCain surrogates repeatedly denounced the story and the New York Times.
During his press conference, McCain was the picture of solitude. Cindy McCain’s smile wasn’t forced. “No,” he did not have an affair. Never did he “violate the public trust.” He would allow only that he was “disappointed” with the Times. McCain did allow his affect to become the story. That allowed his staff to attack the story with furor. And they did -- in lengthy sessions with McCain’s traveling press corps, in personal conversations with top reporters, in outreach calls and e-mails to bloggers and surrogates and donors.
To be sure, the story was met with fairly widespread condemnation, and the media decided to give McCain the benefit of the doubt. What the story proved -- that some staffers were worried about a lobbyist’s braggadocio -- was not what it implied, and it was very easy for critics to turn widen that wrinkle into a credibility gap.
Republicans worried about McCain’s ability to run a competent general election campaign should be mollified. Facing the worst crisis of his candidacy since…well, July, McCain and his aides weathered the storm.
Hillary's Closing
I've avoided commenting on the ubiquitous YouTube comparisons to similar evocations from John Edwards and Bill Clinton for one reason: the charges of plagiarism in this context are just silly, as they were, quite frankly, when the Clinton campaign made them about Barack Obama.
The news value of the comments come from their common origin, actually. They're generally uttered when the subject recognizes the existential reality that they are mortal and that they could lose whatever contest is ahead of them.
It's kind of the opposite of saying: "I'm going to Disney Land!"
Laura Bush: 'Whatever happens will be fine' [El Paso Times, 5/19/00]
NBA Star Shaquille O'Neal: ‘We'll be fine, no matter what happens.’ [AP, 10/8/03]
Actress Lindsay Lohan: ‘No matter what happens, we're going to be fine.’ [AP, 4/19/07]
Former Redskin Dexter Manley: 'Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Washington Post, 7/26/98]
Former Redskin Gus Frerotte: 'I look forward to whatever happens. We're going to be fine.' [Washington Times, 12/22/98]
Notre Dame football player Tom Zbikowski: 'Whatever happens, we're going to be fine back there.' [Notre Dame football player Tom Zbikowski, 4/22/07]
Angels GM Bill Stoneman: 'Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Los Angeles Times, 2/22/03]
Former Giant Christian Peter: 'And whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Asbury Park Press, 1/29/01]
Chicago Cub Larry Rothschild: 'I'm not worried about that. Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [St. Petersburg Times, 4/1/01]
This was the night where we all learned that Hillary Clinton understands the moment in history we are in, and that she is smart enough and gracious enough to realize that her party is more important than personal vanity, that there are things she just cannot say about Obama because it would hurt him in the fall, and that more likely than not, she will not win the nomination.
Make no mistake: she still thinks she can win.
But her final answer sent a message to her party: this won't be decided by superdelegates. If Obama beats me in Texas and Ohio, the last thing I'm going to do is stand in the way of his nomination.
It was a moment of pure vulnerability, arguably her finest of the campaign.
Clinton Campaign Touts Final Answer
From spokesman Howard Wolfson:
"What we saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States. Her strength, her life experience, her compassion. She's tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice."
First Take: The Debate Belongs To Obama, But The Best (And) Last Moment Belongs To Hillary
Talk about a final answer.
"She was blessed" to "give others the same opportunities that I take for granted. That's why I get up in the morning. That's what motivates me for this campaign. No matter what happens in this contest, and I am honored to be here with Barack Obama... whatever happens, we're going to be fine. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people."
Almost wistful ... acknowledging reality... but forcefully asserting her humanity ... extremely, seemingly, genuine.
And at the right time... at the end... earning one of the only standing ovations in the 40-plus hours of debates.
If this moment makes the debate for her, she will have pulled out in the end.
It was Obama's debate for most of the night. HRC needed him to stumble; he did not.
Both Obama and Clinton were under the weather, and they seemed subdued. Some new ground was broken. Clinton promised to sign a pathway to legalization for immigrants within 100 days of her inauguration, which goes farther than what she’s said before. That may make news in Texas. Both had strong answers on Cuba, but hers was better than his in terms of the general election.
At this stage, though, the debates are mostly about moments, and Obama had the second-best I think, when he rebutted Clinton’s assertion that Democrats needed to “get real” about his candidacy.
Obama’s answers were well plotted -- a veggies-to-desert pivot, first recounting empathetic encounters with hurting citizens and then saying that Washington as currently constituted couldn’t solve that problem.
Clinton’s reference to looking at YouTubes of Obama’s allegedly lifted speeches seemed a little forced. She was loudly booed when she defended her campaign’s plagiarism allegations and let go with a line that seemed far too cute for the moment.
Clinton gave strong answers on health care and on local issues, and regularly referred to local issues. She had a strong response to questions about John McCain and earmarking late in the debate. Her final answer was humble and endearing. She ended stronger than she started.
The puzzler of the night, to me, is why Clinton refused to answer a simple question that she clearly has an answer to: And that is: Is Barack Obama ready to be commander in chief? Clearly -- the answer, for Clinton, is “yes.” It’s her best argument against him. But twice she avoided it and instead recapitulated her own resume.
At this point, she has nothing to lose by making that argument. The fact that she did not suggests to me that she is thinking, already, about life as a Senator from New York supporting Barack Obama and did not want to give John McCain the soundbite that could doom Obama’s candidacy. I don’t think she’s conceded the nomination in her mind, but I do think she had two temporal audiences in mind when she answered: Democrats now and the nation in the fall.
Question For the RNC: Why No Hillary Releases?
Says comm. director Danny Diaz:
"What we do is a reflection of political reality."
The Dem Debate IV
HRC gets a standing ovation....
HRC's empathetic answer at the end of the debate is very, very strong...
she was "blessed" to "give others the same opportunities that I take for granted. That's why I get up in the morning. That's what motivates me for this campaign. No matter what happens in this contest, and I am honored to be here with Barack Obama... whatever happens, we're going to be fine. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people."
almost wistful, though...
Yet another RNC release; " Obama Has No Credibility Speaking To Troop Funding/Preparedness"
Obama: "I wouldn't be running if i didn't think I was prepared to be commander in chief."
HRC: "I believe I am ready from day one..."
HRC gets back to the Commander in Chief question. She sketches her own resume but does not answer the question of whether she thinks Obama is qualified to be commander in chief.
Yes, health care is important, but if HRC is right about mandates, then they'll show up in Obama's bill at some point. The Dem Congress will enforce that. So why argue about it so much in the debate?
I bet HRC is being gracious...she doesn't want to hurt Obama in the general by saying that and giving it as a gift to Obama.
HRC refuses to say that Obama isn't ready to be commander in chief. "It's up to the American people," she says. No it's not... if HRC believes it, as she clearly does, why not say it? It's arguably her best argument, and instead, she's getting into the weeds on health care. I assume this is a deliberate strategy predicated on the idea that direct confrontation hurts her.
Clinton campaign sends e-mail accusing Obama of plagiarizing... tonight:
Barack Obama was just asked about his habit of borrowing from other people’s speeches. It looks like he did it again tonight. Tonight, Sen. Obama said: “In Youngstown, Ohio, I talked to workers who have seen their plants shipped overseas due to consequences of poor deals it's like NAFTA that have literally seen equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China.” [CNN Univision Debate, 2/21/08] John Kerry in 2004: “What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job?” [Kerry Remarks, Democratic Convention, 7/29/04]
Where the RNC releases about Clinton? Have they shelved the file already?
Clinton: "If this candidacy is going to be about words, I think they're have to be their words... lifting whole passages ... ts not change you can believe in its change you can Xerox
Obama: "these speeches... I gotta admit, some of them are pretty good."
Obama "first, it's not a lot of speeches." "Deval is a national co-chairman of my campaign and suggested an argument that I share. Words are important. Words matter. ... the notion that I had plagiarized that is someone who..gave me the line and suggested that I use it I think is silly."
Obama links "gridlock" to "families who are suffering."
Obama: "Sen. Clinton as of late has said, let's get real. The implication is that the people who have been voting for me...are somehow delusional...[laughs] and the 20 million people who've been paying to 19 debates...every major newspaper here in the state of Texas...somehow the thinking is that somehow they're being duped. I think they see the reality of what's going on in Washington very seriously."
By the way: Mr. Watson is the very popular former mayor of the city they're debating in.
Obama: "I think actions do speak louder than words, which is why over 20 years of my public service, I have acted a lot..."
HRC mentions poor ol' State Sen. Kirk Watson.... and says "actions speak louder than words."
HRC: campaign so far "very positive, mostly civil" -- but "there are differences between us." I "do offer solutions. That's what I believe in. That's what I've done. That's what I offer to voters because it's part of my life."
The Dem Debate Part II
Obama campaign sends around e-mail questioning whether HRC flip-flopped on new immigration promise.
NEWS: HRC says she'll introduce pathway to legalization within 100 days of her presidency; it's easy for Dems to talk about this now ....
Will the RNC attack HRC and Obama on immigration now that McCain is the presumed nominee?
Clinton says she might consider a pause in immigration raids until problem is solve...
Clinton campaign sends link to this video where Obama allegedly contradicts the answer he gave tonight on normalization with Cuba. http://youtube.com/watch?v=cZ3SVok9g34
Obama: Obama always has a predicate for his answers; he answers policy questions and then asks: "How can we get it done?" That's a very deft way of returning to his message time and again.
RNC sends e-mail: " Obama's Stance On Cuba Is Completely Inconsistent & Incoherent"
Obama says he wants the POTUS to take "a more active role in diplomacy" -- a "privilege that has to be earned" should not be how foreign leaders view a meeting with POTUS.
HRC wants to open diplomatic relations with Iran? Says there's a difference between her stance and Obama's on how quickly a leader should meet with a leader, but it's hard to see how. She would "use bipartisan diplomacy" to "represent me and our country." Gets loud cheers for her answer on sending a positive message to the rest of the world.
The Dem Debate: Part I
Campbell Brown says Obama's position today is different from a few years ago. Obama says it's not.
Obama: "The starting point for our policy in Cuba should be the liberty for the Cuban people." (Sounds the same as what HRC thinks.) But he says "it's important for the United States to talk to its friends...[as well as] its enemy."
Clinton: "would be ready to reach out and work with a new Cuban government so long as it demonstrated that it truly was ready to change that direction" (she means democracy.) "There has to be evidence" that "the changes are real." She "would not meet with" Raul Castro "until there was evidence that change was happening."
We're 15 minutes into a 90 minute debate and there's only been one question.
Obama: Ok, a segue into his campaign message: good ideas go to die in DC.
Obama: A much broader intro, but light on the whiffy-piffy stuff and heavy on the "I feel your pain" stuff. Mentions his "detailed proposals" for dealing with problems.
HRC: the campaign is about "you" -- and about your material concerns.
HRC's voice seems hoarse; Obama has a cold. Campaigning is hard.
Hillary Clinton opens with her ties to Texas; she lived there; she learned from Barbara Jordan and Ann Richards. Lots of crowd applause. Serves to remind Texans that HRC has some roots in the state.
ABC/Post Poll: Dead Heat In Texas
A new ABC News / Washington Post poll out tonight puts Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a dead heat in Texas and Clinton clinging to a single-digit lead in Ohio.
The numbers are 48-47 Clinton in Texas, and 50-43 Clinton in Ohio. Between a quarter and a third of the vote
Says ABC's analysis:
"In Texas, Clinton’s being kept competitive by support from Hispanics; she needs them to turn out in more-than-usual numbers, as they did in California, which she won Feb. 5. In Ohio she’s benefiting from a greater number of Democratic Party regulars than in Texas, fewer college-educated or higher-income voters, and support from union households. In both states, senior citizens are crucial to Clinton’s side; independents and younger voters, to Obama’s. And he’s taken a lead over Clinton on electability, a point he may try to drive home, along with his mantle of “change,” in the days ahead."
Obama Wins Change To Win... With A But
The Change to Win coalition of unions backed Barack Obama today. It's mostly symbolic in that most of the member unions already endorsed him.
The "but" is that two unions -- the Laborers and the Carptenters -- are staying neutral.
Writes Laborers President Terrence O'Sullivan in a statement:
"Senator Obama has proven himself to be a champion for working people and the membership of our union, as has Senator Hillary Clinton. We abstained from the vote in order to continue with our union’s endorsement process."
Fox News Poll: McCain's GOP Apprvl. At 73%
About ten to twenty points less than the respective approval ratings of Democrats within their own party, but not bad for a guy allegedly hated by most of his party.
** Clinton and Obama are tied nationally at 44, a slight uptick for her. (Gallup's national tracking also has the race tied, again showing a slight uptick for Clinton.)
** In a general election matchup, McCain beats Clinton by three on the strength of independents and because only 77% of Democrats in the sample say they'd vote for Clinton, compared to the 89% of Republicans who say they'd vote for McCain.
** Obama beats McCain by three points on the strength of independents.
** 63% of Dems want Obama on the ticket if HRC wins; 54% of Dems want HRC on the ticket if Obama wins.
The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.
The Drudge item didn't derail the investigation, however. By late December, the reporters had submitted several pages of written questions to Bennett for comment, and completed a draft of the piece before the New Year. But to their growing frustration, Keller ordered rounds of changes and additional reporting. According to Times sources, Baquet remained an advocate for his reporters and pushed the piece to be published, but sources say Keller wanted a more nuanced story looking less at personal matters and more at questions of Iseman's lobbying and McCain's legislative record. (The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.)
It was at about that time, amidst flurries of rumors swirling about the looming Times investigation, that the Times' McCain beat reporter, Marc Santora, abruptly left the campaign trail after covering the senator for four and a half months, frustrated by the McCain rumors. A rising star at the paper, Santora had been working grueling hours, joining the 2008 election coverage straight from a reporting assignment in Baghdad. As the campaign headed to South Carolina, the site of McCain's defeat in 2000, Santora emailed the Times deputy Washington editor, Richard Stevenson, to vent about how the rumors were dogging him on the campaign trail, and left the McCain beat on January 10. "The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in this thing," Santora told me. "I was exhausted, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I thought the best thing for me to do was take a break."
Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an email to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."
RNC Raises Money Off The Times Story, But Doesn't Mention McCain
Kind of weird:
Here's the text of an RNC e-mail solicitation. It excoriates the lib-ber-al media for trying to "do whatever it takes to put Senator Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the White House." Sins are unspecified, but the context is clear.
Dear Friend,
The New York Times has proven once again that the liberal mainstream media will do whatever it takes to put Senator Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the White House.
From the beginning of Campaign 2008, liberal media pundits have fawned over the Democrat presidential candidates while ignoring their lack of substance on the issues. You can be certain that as the campaign heats up they will continue to mislead voters with their anti-Republican agenda.
Republicans must fight back against the mainstream media's clear liberal bias -- and we need your help to do it.
Please make an urgent secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $25 to help the RNC get our responsible message of lower taxes, a strong national defense, and limited government past the liberal media filter and directly to the voters.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Best Wishes,
Robert M. "Mike" Duncan
Chairman, Republican National Committee
Watch For It: Major Nat'l Poll Shows Texas Tied
At 5pm...
"Associates" = "Lobbyists"?
Here is the most explosive graph from the Times story:
In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.
"Associates" -- that's an umbrella term for friends, family members, aides and the like. But if the Times really had former paid campaign staffers -- aides -- making these allegations, it would have attributed them to "aides."
Who might associates be? Who might disillusioned associates be?
How about Washington lobbyists who (a) may have known Vicki Iseman personally, (b) supported McCain in 2000, (b) would have been of significant enough stature to known McCain personally, and (c) either endorsed another candidate in 2008 or refused to endorse McCain?
The tip for this story originated in November, according to the New Republic -- in other words, during the height of the primary season when McCain was beginning to make a comeback in New Hampshire.
A Contradiction Between McCain's Account And Weavers?
During his presser this a.m., did McCain contradict John Weaver's account of Weaver's meeting with lobbyist Vicki Iseman?
Not really.
Here's the Times:
Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.
“Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”
Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.
McCain simply said he was not "aware" of Weaver's having met with Iseman -- "I don’t know anything about it", not that McCain knew for a fact that it did not happen.
This is plausible.
Still, the fact that Weaver met with Iseman at all in the midst of a busy campaign season suggests that very senior McCain aides did indeed worry about the appearance of her relationship with McCain.
After all, they were working for a guy who was supposed to pay attention to the appearance of a conflict of interest. In his autobiography, Worth the Fighting, McCain wrote of his Keating 5 days:
Learning from my unhappy experience, I have refrained from ever intervening in the regulatory decisions of the federal government if such intervention could be construed, rightly or wrongly, as done solely or primarily for the benefit of a major financial supporter of my campaign.
On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. On the timing, our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready.
"'Ready' means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats.
"This story was no exception. It was a long time in the works. It reached my desk late Tuesday afternoon. After a final edit and a routine check by our lawyers, we published it
John Weaver, On The Record
Former McCain strategist John Weaver e-mails:
"The New York Times knew about my meeting with Ms. Iseman and asked me about it and why it occurred. I informed the Times, in a written reply, that Ms. Iseman's comments about having strong ties to John's committee staff, personal staff and to him I felt were harmful and not true. And so I informed her and asked to to stop and desist. The moment I answered the inquiry from the New York Times I sent that answer also to Mark, Steve and Charlie. All of this happened in December. I've wanted John McCain to be president since I first approached him in 1997. I do so today. I love John McCain and I believe the country badly needs him."
Note that on MSNBC this a.m, McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said that "[n]obody on the McCain campaign believes that John Weaver was the source on this."
(McCain said as much at his press conference this morning.)
Behind McCain's Counterattack
The McCain campaign's rapid response to the Times story has been deft.
(1) Don't hide -- John and Cindy McCain answered any and every question from the press, in a single setting, less than 24 hours after the story broke. They appeared calm and collected; the symbolism of the two together was reassuring.
(1a) -- Don't let the candidate respond immediately. Last night, McCain was asked by a reporter for comment. He smiled and said he hadn't read it yet... that gives the impression that he wasn't worried about it enough to read it immediately.
(2) Find an enemy -- this one's easy: the New York Times -- the "liberal" New York Times, according to McCain adviser Charlie Black. Use phases like "Jason Blair" and "Judith Miller."
(3) Shame reporters -- imply that it's shameful for reporters to ask questions about the romantic angle... imply that they're engaging in gutter politics when they do so.
(4) High-powered surrogates -- they blanketed the morning shows for McCain, and they'll be everywhere else this afternoon.
(5) Detailed rebuttals -- not even to the whole article, mind you -- but any sort of word-expensive response like the 1200 word essay the campaign released last night -- is likely to foster the impression that the campaign has facts on its side, too.
Conservatives Coalescing Around McCain
The Times story may have succeeded in accomplishing what politics itself could not: unifying the conservative base around McCain by way of their visceral disgust with the New York Times and its lib-ber-ral politics.
Check out this sampling of reactions from conservatives.
The story is not the story. The story is the Drive By media turning on its favorite maverick and trying to take him out. The media picked the GOP's candidate, the NYT endorsed him while they sat on this story, and is now, with utter predictability, trying to destroy him.”
Stay tuned...
A Scenario Develops: Blame Weaver
The cognoscenti seems to have arrived at the belief that the New York Times story was planted by or somehow originated from former McCain chief strategist John Weaver, who left the campaign in June after a dispute with McCain over the direction of the campaign. (Tucker Carlson on MSNBC called Weaver "sinister.")
Weaver did speak for the story, and he, apparently, was the only former McCain aide to do so on the record. Ergo, he's a suspect; channeling our armchair psychoanalysts, he somehow wants to get back at his boss.
This is highly unlikely.
First, the Times began to report the story before Weaver left the campaign.
Second, having had many conversations with Weaver before and after his break with McCain, it's clear to me that he retains enormous affection for his former boss; his primary emotion is one of sadness and not vindictiveness. I could be reading Weaver wrong, but I don't think I am.
A Brief Dems Update
In Pennsylvania, a Franklin and Marshal College poll gives Hillary Clinton a 12 point lead.
The youngest automatic delegate in the party, Jason Rae, endorses Obama...
Obama wins his 11th in a row: the Democrats' Abroad primary.
February 20, 2008
McCain Campaign Responds To Times Story
Communications director Jill Hazelbaker:
"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."
McCain/Lobbyist Story In The New York Times Finally Drops
There's lots of fairly well-reported innuendo about a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman and a well-written recapitulation of the case against McCain as a good judge of optics... ... but nothing to suggest that McCain compromised his political principles. That said, the interest will be intense because the story was so heavily anticipated. And the wink-wink-nod-nod assertion that McCain allegedly acknowledged unspecified "improprieties" to some aides is bound to be the part of this that kicks for a while.
Key graphs:
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.
A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.
In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.
Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.
Not Larry Sabato
A prominent pro-HRC blogger is urging her to do the Gore thing... and consider dropping out.
The Daily Five:It's All On You
1. Bill Clinton, in Beaumont, Texas today:
"You probably like it that it has come down to Texas and Ohio. If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee, if you don't then I don’t think she can. It's all on you."
2. The Change to Win coalition plans a Thursday a.m conference call to consider a presidential endorsement, according to birthday boy Chris "The Fix" Cillizza.
3. John McCain said today that President Bush should veto legislation that would limit the CIA's interrogation techniques to those specified in the Army Field Manuel. But... no torture.
On Tuesday night, after an important and historic victory in the Wisconsin Presidential Primary by Senator Barack Obama, I appeared on the MSNBC post-election program. “Hardball” host Chris Matthews (who is, it turns out, as ferocious as they say), began grilling me on Senator Obama’s legislative record.
And my mind went blank. I expected to be asked about the primary that night, or the big one coming up in Texas on March 4, or just about anything else in the news. When the subject changed so emphatically, I reached for information that millions of my fellow Obama supporters could recite by heart, and I couldn’t summon it.
My most unfortunate gaffe is not, in any way, a comment on Senator Obama, his substantial record, or the great opportunity we all share to elect him President of the United States.
Had I not lost my mind, here are the accomplishments I would have mentioned:
* Senator Obama’s fight for universal children’s health care in Illinois.
* His success bringing Republicans and Democrats together (a huge selling point for me in general) on bills such as the one in Illinois requiring police interrogations and confessions to be videotaped.
* His leadership on ethics reform in Washington (the bill that lobbyists and special interests are complaining about right now has his name on it).
* His bill to make the federal budget far more transparent and accessible to Americans via the Internet – we could use that openness in Texas.
* And his vital work with Republicans to lock down nuclear weapons around the world.
Of course, it would have helped to remember all of this last night. I encourage anyone who wants to know more (especially Mr. Matthews) to log onto texas.barackobama.com.
The American Leadership Project is a committee of Americans who have come together to shine a backlight on issues that matter most to our nation's middle class and do it in a positive way.
These are positive ads that serve to raise awareness about these issues at a critical time in our nation's history and in places where they are paying the most attention. Right now that's Ohio and Texas.
Sen. Clinton is a champion of these issues. ALP supports her positions and we say so in the ads.
"If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession."
Ben Smith has the first ad broadcast by the pro-HRC American Leadership Project in Ohio:
The key line: "If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession."
Teamsters Plan To Endorse Obama
The 1.4 million-member Teamsters union will endorse Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy today, Democrats briefed on the decision said.
A Teamsters official confirmed the endorsement.
Nothing says tough, or evokes "gruff," more than the Teamsters.
Obama and Hillary Clinton have been courting the union and its colorful bull of a president, James Hoffa for more than a year. Among labor unions in the United States, the Teamsters are third in size to the Service Employees, who endorsed Obama last week and the National Education Association, which is neutral.
The Teamsters have a storied, occasionally controversial history and are capable of putting large numbers of boots on the ground for their preferred candidates.
The Teamsters were waiting until after Wisconsin's primary before announcing its choice. After briefly flirting with Pres. George W. Bush, the union returned into the Democratic fold when it became clear that Bush and the White House intended to use exploit the PR benefits from the union's outreach without supporting any of their key initiatives.
"I am not in a position to confirm anything at this point," an Obama spokesman said this morning.
Note: in 1998, the Clintons supported former Teamsters Pres. Ron Carey in his failing re-election bid; he lost to Mr. Hoffa, who has since insisted that he has reconciled with the Clintons.
Other large unions remaining neutral, so far, are the United Auto Workers and the Communications Workers of America.
Boilermakers Union Endorses Obama
The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers has 65,000 members, and today, their executive council endorsed Barack Obama.
Two New Jersey Superdelegates Switch From Clinton To Obama
They are Donald Norcross, who was uncommitted, and State Sen. Dana Redd, a former Clinton supporter.
HRC Campaign: Obama Is Frontrunner
Hillary Clinton's campaign concedes that Barack Obama is the party's frontrunner.
In a conference call with reporters late this morning, senior adviser Harold Ickes gave a lecture on delegate mathmetmatics from the Clinton perspective, acknowledging that Clinton trails Obama by (at least) 75 delegates. Clinton would do well in many of the remaining sixteen delegate selection contests, Ickes said, but "both candidates will need a number of automatic delegates to clinch the nomination." Ickes argued that since Obama would need nearly as many superdelegates to win the nomination as Clinton does now, it's disingenous for him to argue that the nomination ought to be decided by the pledged delegate count alone.
Apropos of not much, Ickes added "We think Mr. Obama is the frontrunner."
Unstated was the expectation that Clinton's victories in the future should be interpreted through that lens.
The New Normal: McCain and Obama Clash Over Pakistan
An exchange of charges this morning between John McCain and a senior adviser to Barack Obama marks the first time the two frontrunner campaigns have conversed about foreign policy. Welcome to the new normal: presidential politics without Hillary Clinton.
McCain began last last night, implying that Obama's policies amounted to "no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed philosophy that trusts in government more than the people." This morning, he called Obama "naive" for saying he'd bomb "our ally in Pakistan."
The Obama campaign offered Susan Rice, a senior adviser to Obama on foreign affairs and a leading Clinton administration fopo official, to rebut. "Barack Obama had the vision to see that The Bush-McCain approach of putting all of our eggs in Musharraf’s basket was flawed," she said. And McCain's "approach to foreign policy is very much a continuation of the flawed Bush policy. He really is in many respects just four more years of George Bush."
“This is becoming more apparent every day. My good friend Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones from Ohio represented me on one of the TV programs in the last day or two— some of you may have seen her. And she was on against someone representing my opponent and for the first time, actually, the host, asked the representative of my opponent to name one accomplishment.
“That is all we’re asking. We’re asking to compare our records. We’re asking to compare our years of service. We’re asking to compare our ideas, our solutions.
“Because it’s not just about my opponent and myself, this election is about you. It’s about what you can expect, what your dreams will be, what your futures hold. Right now too many people are struggling, working the day shift and the night shift, trying to get by without health insurance, just one paycheck away from actually losing their homes. They cannot afford four more years of a president who just doesn’t see or hear them. They need a president ready on Day One to be the Commander in Chief of the United States military.”
Lesson: Prepare Your Surrogates.
Pro-Clinton 527 Prepares For Ohio, PA and Texas
Allies of Hillary Clinton plan an expensive, stealth campaign to buttress her standing in the must-win states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.
They're canvassing Clinton donors for pledges of up to $100,000 in the hope of raising at least $10M by the end of next week. The money will be placed in the account of a political committee organized under section 527 of the tax code.
A Democrat who was briefed on the project said that Pennsylvania attorney William A. K. Titelman is leading the effort to solicit money. Titleman, who raised money for Gov. Bill Richardson's presidential campaign, has not contributed money to Clinton. He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
By law, the 527 cannot coordinate its activities with the Clinton campaign, although at least one major Clinton donor with direct ties to the campaign said last night that the effort was an open secret among donors.
(Update: Per ABC's Jake Tapper, the group is calling itself the "American Leadership Project" and is staffed by several veterans of the Clinton White House.)
A Clinton spokesman said he knew nothing about the 527.
Two Democrats said that the 527 plans to run television ads and send pro-Clinton literature in all three states. One of the Democrats said that the ads will also include contrast messages against Obama.
Plans for the 527 were conceived in late January, when Clinton's campaign was nearly broke. Since Feb. 5, she has raised nearly $20M, but still faces a resource disadvantage. Obama's aides said they're approaching their goal of raising money from 500,000 new donors since Jan. 1 and project a total haul of more than $35M for February.
Perhaps as early as today, a consortium of Service Employees union locals will disclose its own plans for mobilization in Ohio and Pennsylvania on behalf of Barack Obama, an irony that will not be lost on those covering the race closely: a similar SEIU compact in Iowa ran ads praising John Edwards and drew strong protests from Obama's campaign.
Clinton Campaign's Delegate Hub
Here's the latest effort from the Clinton communications shop: a website dedicated to promulgating the campaign's message on delegates, namely that with or without Florida and Michigan, there's a path for Clinton's nomination provided the "automatic" delegates -- the superdelegates -- exercise their independent judgment.
Trail-Gating: Some Lingering Primary Night Questions
A guest post from the Hotline's Nora McAlvanah
WI has one of boldest and most comprehensive health care plans in all of the US. Last June, the state Senate passed “Healthy Wisconsin” which would have made Wisconsin the first state to guarantee quality and affordable health care for all of its residents.
According to exit polls, the number one issue for voters was, unsurprisingly, the economy, followed by health care. We wonder how many of these health care voters picked Clinton--meaning they genuinely bought her argument that her plan is more universal than Obama's. And if they picked Obama, is this an indication of him making inroads into her most sacred of bases?
On a less serious note: Those CNN Analysts sitting behind their Dell notebooks? Is “The Best Political Team on Television” really taking advantage of technology or product placement?
Does anyone have actual footage of HI Sen. Daniel Inouye voting yesterday? Just saying, the guy misses a lot of votes.
Clinton was speaking at Chaney high school, not Cheney high school, in OH last night when the cable networks cut away from her 7 minutes into her speech to carry Obama’s victory speech. Can someone help her find the nearest undisclosed bunker?
February 19, 2008
Networks Interrupt Clinton For Obama
That's got to hurt.
McCain On Obama
From his Wisconsin victory speech:
"I will fight every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent and empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed philosophy that trusts in government more than the people."
Obama Leads In Wisconsin
So now that the polls in Wisconsin are closed, I can say that the exit polls are suggesting that Barack Obama will win, big.
But the networks aren't able to call this yet.
The exit polls suggest that Obama won men by nearly 25 points and tied among women. Independents chose Obama, while Democrats were split in their choice. Obama won among those with college degrees; Clinton and Obama tied among those without college degrees. Obama won strongly among wealthier voters and the candidates split among those earning less than $50K. Late deciders went for Obama.
Clinton Plans Major Contrast Speech
The Clinton campaign just sent out these excerpts of what it's billing a "major" speech Hillary Clinton plans to read in Youngstown, Ohio tonight and in New York tomorrow.
…Tonight, I want to talk about the choice you have in this election – and why that choice matters….
…This election is not about me or my opponent. It’s about you. Your lives, your dreams, your future.
Right now, too many people are struggling. Working the day shift, the night shift, trying to get by without health care, just one paycheck away from losing their homes. They cannot afford four more years of a president who just doesn’t see or hear them.
They need a president ready on day one to be commander in chief. Ready to manage our economy. And ready to beat the Republicans this November.
I will be that president.
This is the choice we face:
One of us is ready to be commander in chief in a dangerous world…
…One of us has a plan to provide health care for every single American – no one left out….
…Finally, one of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past. And one of us is ready to do it again.
The contrast between me and our likely opponent couldn’t be more stark. John McCain is willing to continue the war in Iraq for 100 years – I will start bringing troops home in 60 days. He admits he doesn’t understand the economy -- I have a plan to turn our economy around and create five million new jobs. He wants eight years more of the same – I’ll deliver 21st century solutions to move this country forward again.
Both Senator Obama and I would make history. But only one of us is ready on day one to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans. Only one of us has spent 35 years being a doer, a fighter and a champion for those who need a voice. That is what I would bring to the White House. That is the choice in this election.
…It’s about picking a president who relies not just on words – but on work, hard work, to get America back to work. Someone who’s not just in the speeches business – but will get America back in the solutions business…
Wisconsin Exit Polls: A Less Affluent, Less Well-Educated, Economically Sensitive Electorate
Info from our trusty pals at CBS News: this electorate is very white; only four in ten have a "college degree." They're "less affluent" than Dems in other states. The percentage of late deciders is declining: only 27% made up their minds within the last seven days.
-- Issue number one is, of course, the economy, followed by health care... adding the economy and health care brings you to nearly 70% of the electorate.
-- Change trumps experience, 52 to 24.
-- Very few first time voters -- only 17%.
-- 27% of the electorate were independent
-- Clinton was seen as the most unfair attacker;
-- Obama (55%) was seen as the candidate most like to improve relations with the res tof the world.
-- Clinton and Obama are seen as equally qualified to be commander in chief (50% and 48%), while Obama draws 60% or more on the questions of who best can unite the country and beat the Republicans.
Myths And Facts About The Delegates
Myth: The Democratic primary process is supposed to be democratic.
Fact: With its mix of caucuses and primaries, proportional allocation and at-large bonus delegates, its racial and gender quotas, and its layer of superdelegates, the process is anything but democratic.
And that's the point of it, actually.
In cameral terms, the superdelegates are the Senate; the other delegates are the House. The supers exist to preserve the power of the party itself by taming the passions of the pledged delegates
Since the McGovern-Frasier reforms, the Democratic Party has cautiously backed away from the principle of deference to the majority and toward the countervailing principle of protecting the rights of the minority (who were, in many cases, ethnic minorities).
The nomination process is designed to ensure that the majority does not prevail without a fight in the event that the minority of the party objects. The downside risk is obvious: in the event that there is no consensus, there is no objective way to determine who the nominee should be.
Myth: The DNC never intended to disenfranchise Florida and Michigan.
Fact: The intent and spirit of the DNC's rules are clear: states that violated the party's calendar rules would be punished; that punishment entails a dimunution of their ability to influence the party's nominee.
If Michigan and Florida's delegations are seated as is, the party will lose whatever legitimacy it is has to set and enforce rules.
Myth: Superdelegates ought to reflect the preferences of the primary and caucus voters.
Fact: Usually, they do. This cycle, if one candidate has an appreciable delegate lead and a popular vote lead, the superdelegates will probably fall in line.
But it's hard to argue that they have a moral obligation to serve as an amplifier. Indeed, if superdelegates aren't supposed to take their own preferences into account, decisions, then what's their purpose? (The party could find other ways to make sure that important elected officials and activists have convention floor seats.)
Granted, as Obama adviser David Wilhelm told reporters this morning, it would be hard to concieve of a scenario wherein the superdelegates completely disregard the expressed will of the pledged delegates.
Myth: Pledged delegates should be immune from pressure by the candidates.
It depends.
They're pledged delegates, not promised delegates, for the same reason why the rules themselves are so convoluted: the party rules are designed to ensure that the nominee is arrived at by consensus among factions. Lobbying them is unseemly, but it is allowed. (The unnamed Clinton adviser who told the Politico that "the rules will be going out the window.” was not doing his or her campaign a favor. The Clinton campaign denies that they intend to lobby Obama's pledged delegates.
Myth:
The person who accrues the most number of earned delegates deserves the nomination.
Not necessarily. Again -- superdelegates have a say because the rules are designed to give them a say. Not an echo -- a say. And in a scenario where one candidate recieves the majority of
Obama Camp Raising Specter of 1968
(The original post attributed these remarks to David Axelrod. That's wrong.)
There's a new talking point this week from Team Obama about the unpalatable prospects of a brokered convention: 2008 will be just like 1968, but worse.
The link above takes you to a remark from the lips of Obama ally Doug Wilder:
Bob, I think it would be a mistake because you pointed out the first convention you went to was 1968. You know what a mess that was. If the majority of the American people who are participating in these processes, either through caucuses or through primaries, have a majority of those votes going for either of the candidates, and if the super delegates intervene and get in the way of it and say, oh, no, we're going to determine what's best, there will be chaos at the convention. It does nothing to help the Democrats. And if you think 1968 was bad, you watch; in 2008, it will be worse.”
Talk about pine tar on the bat. When most Americans and Democrats think about the '68 convention, the specifics of the deal to nominate the establishment candidate, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, aren't what comes to mind. . Instead, the mind's eye pictures images of Chicago police officers hitting delegates with baseball bats, of Dan Rather getting punched in the face, of violence, social decay and a political party that could not escape the influence of (or the protests of) radicals.
Historians of political culture point to the convention as a breaking point. It's when the fissures that would almost destroy the party in the 70s were first exposed.
Remember the context: before the convention, MLK had been assassinated. Ditto, RFK. The energy in the party came from identity politics activists and from college students who had organized for Eugene McCarthy.
Is 2008 really like 1968? Elect Obama (McCarthy) or watch the riots in the streets?
Certainly, if the "establishment," whatever it is, somehow contrives to nominate Hillary Clinton over Obama, there will be protests. But there will probably not be any blood. Or violence.
And given the silence of the superdelegates so far, a scenario whereby Obama's having recieved the majority of both earned delegates and the popular vote results in an annointment of Hillary Clinton is a big stretch.
What To Watch For In Wisconsin
1. The weather. As I type, the Weather Channel says it's 3 degrees and feels like -12.
2. The Flake Rate: will it be higher among seniors than among millennials?
3. Madison: Will Madison provide the margin of victory for Obama? Remember: Wisconsin allows same-day registration.
4. Working class women. The suburbs of Milwaukee. Sheboygan. Green Bay.
If Hillary Clinton beats expectations, I'll credit the socioeconomic status cleavages among Democrats, but look for Obama's campaign to say that her "negative" direct mail is responsible. Here are two representative screen grabs:
Clinton Campaign Claims 4,000 Precinct Captains In Texas
On a conference call today, aides to Hillary Clinton offered a look into the Clinton campaign's field organization in Texas.
The campaign has 20 offices open with 4,000 precinct captains recruited.
Clinton's Texas state director, Ace Smith, said that the campaign "intends to beat Obama" among young voters in the state, just as they did in California.
Smith predicted the campaign would win both the "primary" portion of the Texas vote and the "caucus" portion because all caucus goers are required to have voted in the primaries.
Unwilling to be caught flat-footed, Clinton has full staffs in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont, and as of today, has working field organizations in Pennsylvania and Wyoming.
Clinton campaign communications director said that the campaign's online fundraising "absolutely exploded" in February, raising $15 million online in 15 days.
Clinton Campaign Says It Will Not Lobby Pledged Delegates
Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign spokesman, e-mails in response to Roger Simon's column this morning suggesting that Clinton's campaign would begin to lobby pledged delegates:
We have not, are not and will not pursue the pledged delegates of Barack Obama. It's now time for the Obama campaign to be clear about their intentions.
.
Obama's campaign is having a conference call right now to denounce the Clintonian intention as revealed by the Simon column -- which, again, the Clinton campaign completely denies.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe acknowledged that party rules allow delegates to change their minds. But "what we're focused on is winning pledged delegates," he said. And the Clinton comments "amount to a pattern" of "trying to find an alternative route" to the nomination.
Clinton Fails To Submit An Entire Delegate Slate In Pennsylvania
Even with a Gov. Ed Rendell-ordered extension, it appears as if Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania campaign still fell about 10 people short of filing a full delegate slate with the state party.
If every delegate matters, though, then every delegate matters, and Obama has a full slate of supporters waiting to go to the convention for him. Clinton does not.
This is more evidence that the Clinton campaign simply did not envision a delegate hunt until it was much too late.
Watch for Kirk Wagar and Co. to send this article to the Hillraisers...
Obama Up
A surprise Clinton win in Wisconsin would surely bollox this up, but Barack Obama now has a seven point lead in Gallup's national tracking, having gained among women, Hispanics and self-identified Democrats. He is also gaining appreciably in the West.
When Plagiarism Isn't Plagiarism
Our political conversation is not subject to a copyright, thank goodness, and the controversy over whether Barack Obama borrowed a phrase or two from his friend, the governor of Massachusetts, is silly. (It was silly and unfair to Joe Biden in 1988, too. History, and John Sasso, have wronged Mr. Biden here.)
Using the standard that finds an objection in what Obama did, every politician owes residuals to the corps of political pollsters who created the library of platitudinous phrases that so often comprise the average stump speech. "In the end, it's about the children." "This election is about the future, not the past."
The best speakers tend to appropriate and expand; Obama's speeches pay tribute to the entire Kennedy family (and to the Sorensenian/Shrumian influences on their rhetoric); to Martin Luther King and to Barbara Jordan, ("Are we to be one people bound together by common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor; or will we become a divided nation?"), to Calvinist preachers; to Jesse Jackson, to Cicero and Aristotle.
Nonetheless, Obama's speeches are more original, more authorial, more persuasive than any of his competitors.
The Clinton campaign seems to have a different motive. Obama, as Howard Fineman had said, occasionally seems to be "caught up in his own words" -- forgetting his mortality and ascending, briefly, to the heights of messiahdom . His appeal in such instances is very narrow.
By pointing the laser at Obama's words, and by pointing out how they aren't perfectly original, they are making an argument about the distinction between rhetoric and government. A benefit accrues to Clinton when the political conversation turns to whether Obama is real or not; that raises about questions about the substance of an Obama presidency, something the media has begun to, however gingerly, obsess over. (Does Obama privilege "style" over "substance," Matt Lauer asked this morning in his Today cold open.)
Having essentially conceded the argument that Obama is more inspirational than Clinton is, Clinton is asking, here, what, in the end, does inspiration (which is ephemeral and borrowable) have to do with solving problems?
Clinton might well (but would never) make the point that Deval Patrick's gubernatorial tenure has not been a smooth ride on I-93.
Castro Steps Down
In a weird way, this story would have been even bigger had it happened ten years ago, much less twenty years ago.
Castro evokes LBJ:
I will not aspire to neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to neither will I accept — the position of President of the Council of State and Commander in chief,
Anointed successor / bro Raul is said to have close ties to Russian's foreign intelligence service. He and Fidel also seem to disagree.
This means that B. Obama can now plausibly claim to have an excuse not to meet with Fidel Castro when he becomes president (and the requisite diplomatic throat phlegm has cleared).
February 15, 2008
Off The Grid # 6: Campaign Manager Of the Cycle
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
And the nominees for campaign manager of the cycle are....
Rick Davis, McCain campaign, Part Deux
Beth Myers, Romney campaign
David Plouffe, Obama campaign
Chip Saltzman, Huckabee campaign
Who ran the best campaign and why? By best, I don't necessarily mean "the winningest."
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
Off The Grid #5: Wither The Netroots
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
Friday AM question: When will the conservative rightroots get its act together? Did the Democratic netroots influence the presidential race this cycle at all?
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
February 14, 2008
Off The Grid # 4: McCain In The White House
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
Thursday PM question: How will President McCain handle abortion, gay rights, and other sensitive cultural debates as president? Will be bridge differences? Will he demagogue? Will he be a warrior of the right?
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
Off The Grid # 3: Obama Veepstakes
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
Thursday AM question: Who should Obama ask to join his ticket (assuming he gets a ticket) and why?
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
February 13, 2008
Off The Grid # 2: An Anti-Obama Strategy
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
Wednesday PM question: Imagine its October of 2007 you're sitting in a soundproof conference room with Patti Solis Doyle, Mandy Grunwald, Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson. They've told you that they think Barack Obama will be a big threat to Hillary Clinton in the fall. They've asked you to develop a strategy to defeat him. What's that strategy?
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
Off The Grid # 1
I'm off the grid for the rest of the week. Twice a day, I'm posing questions to which I do not know the answer. I will read through your submissions and post the best answers when I return.
Wednesday AM question: The 2008 primary calendar. Good, bad? What's an ideal calendar from your perspective?
This blog has been nominated for a Golden Dot in the category of "Best Political Blog." I humbly seek your vote, being the candidate of, well, typos and just darn good political dope. Please vote here.
February 12, 2008
Marc Ambinder On Twitter
Off The Grid
Beginning... now... I'll be off the grid for a few days.
I'll be posting occasionally,though...
and do watch the site tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday for a series of questions I want you all to answer.
2025
So that's the magic number for Democrats.
It DOES NOT include the Florida or Michigan delegates, which the NAACP is urging the party to seat.
If Florida and Michigan were to be seated, 2025 would change... probably to about 2055.
And note: changes in the number of superdelegates may impact the number of delegates needed to nominate. (Note the passing of Rep. Tom Lantos of CA yesterday).. But as of right now, a 2025 is a majority of the new total of 4048 total delegates.
So 2025 it remains.
A Way Out Of The Superdelegate Mess
From reader Martin Johnson:
Barring a dramatic change in the campaign narrative (possible, but
unlikely) the primary/caucus system won't resolve the nomination. The
superdelegates will make the decision, which will hurt the Democratic
party for two reasons:
1.) The longer the campaign runs, the more likely it is that the
candidates will attack each other, hurting the eventual victor in the
general election. (Particularly a problem because any attack
Obama/Clinton make will then be legitimized so it can be turned against
them in the general election.)
2.) Given the fact that many of the superdelegates owe their political
fortunes to the Clinton's, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which
Obama comes out the victor without major bloodletting. And if Clinton
gets the nomination as a result, it will further damage her general
nomination prospects.
What's the solution? A superdelegate straw poll.
The DNC (or a similar group with some political weight) could require
all superdelegates to vote on an agreed upon date (a few days after
Wisconsin, which has traditionally served to decide nominations, might
be best). While their votes would be non-binding (it could even be
secret if necessary), it would give Democrats a sense of where the party
stands, and will probably make one candidate or the other a real
front-runner, with a 100-200 delegate advantage.
After that vote, the subsequent primaries (Texas/Ohio, Pennsylvania if
necessary) could choose to either accept or reject the momentum produced
by the superdelegate straw poll. So, if the superdelegates break for one
candidate, the other candidate could use those primaries to reject their
vote, and, if necessary, there could be a follow-up poll after March 4
to reassess. Pennsylvania could serve as another referendum, but by that
point one of the two could probably put together enough committed
superdelegates to secure the nomination.
Of course, this isn't entirely democratic, but it seems more so than the
alternative, and given that the superdelegates do represent the
leadership of the Democratic party (particularly those that are elected
officials themselves) this seems to be the way to get to a nominee more
quickly without officially changing any of the rules. Even if Clinton
pulls ahead after the vote because of her institutional advantages,
having at least a few major states (particularly the swing states
Pennsylvania and Ohio) weigh on the decision would go a long way toward
legitimizing it.
What do you think?
Conservatives For Obama
An e-mail:
-----Original Message-----
From: [REDACTED E-MAIL OF FRIEND WHO HAS A SENIOR POSITION AT A PROMINENT CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK]
Sent: Tue 2/12/2008 1:16 PM
To: Ambinder, Marc
Subject: for what its worth
I have heard no less than five [CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK] staffers say they voted for Obama today. Personally I think their calculus is all wrong and I plan to vote for Hillary later today.
I don’t think anyone in this building will vote for Obama in the general, but I would take it as a sign that conservatives are less than motivated by the name at the top of their ticket.
McCain And The Service
To the Secret Service (technically to the WHCA), President Bush is Trailblazer, Laura Bush is Tempo, HRC is Evergreen, Bill Clinton is Eagle, Dick Cheney is Angler, and Barack Obama is Renegade.
John McCain respects the Service but has said he is wary of their presence. On the trail, he sometimes has security around him, and those tough veteran buddies and his big burly advance guys provide a nice circle of protection..
But the United States Secret Service has not yet been authorized by the Department of Homeland Security to provide him with a detail, according to a Secret Service spokesman.
Opening up a can of worms here, but when they do, what should his code name be?
Sen. Obama voted to strip it (so, he voted for no immunity).
Sen. McCain voted not to strip the amendment (voted for immunity).
Sen. Clinton did not vote.
As Harris writes:
But Clinton's non-vote is most interesting. She was never considered fully onboard with the anti-immunity crowd, represented most vocally in the Senate by Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). Presumably, this hands Obama an arrow to fire at his rival, who has criticized the former Illinois state senator for his record of "present" votes.
Update: Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines e-mails: "Senator Clinton was unable to vote earlier, but she has made her strong opposition to this legislation crystal clear."
Yes, there are plenty of wealthy, educated liberals in Wisconsin.
But there are plenty of lunch pail, blue collar ...actually, they really are Democrats, too. So Wisconsin is a state where Sen. Clinton could do better than expected.
Dispatch From The District Of Columbia
From the Atlantic's Joshua Green:
I made a point of arriving early at my Washington, D.C., polling precinct
this morning, at 7:45, expecting parking problems and lines around the
block. Parking wasn't hard and there was only a bit of commotion. But as I
got closer it became clear that the commotion wasn't Obamamania--it was
mainly moms and dads dropping their kids off at the elementary school across
the street. Lesson: don't believe the rapturous crowds you see on TV are
everywhere. Inside, the place was barren. The number of voters I counted
(12) barely outnumbered the precinct workers. The whole thing seemed oddly
anticlimactic. (But as a DC voter I'm accustomed to that.) I'd assumed that
yuppie Northwest DC would be a hotbed of furious liberal civic-mindedness,
but some reporting (actually, walking down the hall to talk to this guy
revealed that Ward 3, where I live, is one of only two white-majority precincts, and therefore considered Hillary territory, insofar as such a thing exists in DC. That'd explain the robo-calls. Not sure what it bodes, if anything, for the candidates.
.
Golden Dot
I've been nominated for a Golden Dot Award in the category of Best Political Blog. It's like the Oscars, only without the prestige, the red carpet, the statues, the swag, the parties, the pretty people and Gil Gates.
But it'd be nice to win. So please, if you're so inclined, vote for me.
Obama Adds 32 Net Delegates After Tonight?
The Constituent Dynamics poll of the Potomac Primary is out today. Thomas Riehle of RT Strategies used automated interviews with more than 14,000 residents of the Chesapeake's region to project the delegate allocation we'll see after tonight's primaries.
In Maryland, Obama wins every congressional district, most of them by double digit margins, and winds up with a delegate edge of 6 to 18, with 12 being the more likely figure.
In Virginia, Obama will have an edge of between 7 and 20 delegates in this projection (with 13 being the most likely figure), and in DC, an edge of between 3 and 11 delegates.
Riehle projects that Obama will see his net delegate totals increase by about 32 tonight.
Obama's Circle Of Support
Brendan Nyhan has written the best summary of all the regression posts that have been circulating.
Nyhan pulls at some of the conventional threads we've noticed, like Clinton's strength among regular Democrats and Obama's prowess in states where liberal Democrats have the time and income level to caucus.
But he notices others that we've missed, namely that Obama did better in core Democratic counties in Missouri and California than Hillary Clinton did (although Clinton won a majority of the counties, generally -- it's not clear whose support better exemplifies a distributed appeal.)
Also: Obama seems to do better among white voters in states with larger black populations. The data doesn't explain why, but I would suspect that extrinsic factors are responsible, including the degree to which Clinton contests or does not contest a state.
February 11, 2008
The DNC v. John McCain
A preview of how they'll run against him in the fall.
Shadegg Retires
Forgive the intrusion of some non-presidential news, but the retirement of Rep. John Shadegg -- by my count the 26th Republican to call it quits this cycle -- reminds us of one of the foundational principles of politics today, which is that all signs point to an enormous lack of energy among rank-and-file Republicans and the likelihood that the next president will govern with the Democrats having enlarged their majorities in the House and Senate. Just last week, two Republicans on the appropriations committee announced their retirements, too. That doesn't happen if you're confident about regaining a majority in November.
Shadegg's seat isn't in danger -- he routinely gets 60% of the vote -- but in retiring, conservatives lose of their more innovative members. Shadegg intends to run for John McCain's Senate seat.
Pro-Huckabee Robocalls In Virginia
Reader A. writes in about a robocall she received late last week:
It asked if I was going to vote in the VA primary (yes), if I considered
myself a Republican (no), if I considered myself an independent (yes), if
it would affect my vote if I knew Huckabee had the endorsement of some
sort of machinists' union (no), if I considered myself pro-life (no), if
it would affect my vote to know that Romney changed his position multiple
times on abortion (no -- and why are they still asking about Romney?), if
it would affect my vote to know that McCain supports testing on unborn
babies (no -- and what?), if it would affect my vote to know that Huckabee
is the strongest candidate on life (no), and then a series of similar
questions on illegal immigration (first negative info on Romney, then on
McCain, then positive info on Huckabee). It was an odd call, since my
answers didn't seem to affect the script.
And I'm voting Obama anyway.
Puerto Rico Votes
I think Michael Barone is on to something: Puerto Rico's June 7 primary and its 63 delegates could be the last minute boost of adrenaline that Hillary Clinton's campaign needs.
At the same time, I'm not as easily convinced that the vote will be rigged so as to avoid allocating the delegates proportionally. The DNC is paying close attention to the rules, and the media will as well, and if the delegates are awarded as the result of internal politics, the victory won't mean much. On the other hand, delegates are delegates, no matter how they are won.
By the way: PR votes by caucus.
Obama's On The Air In Wisconsin
With his ad, "Mother."
Obama campaigns in Wisconsin Tuesday night and Wednesday.
Says the narrator: "Think you know which candidate for president wants to outlaw abortion and overturn Roe V. Wade?"
Al Gore Will Have To Endorse At Some Point...
He is, after all, a superdelegate.
So all this talk of him brokering a deal between Obama and Clinton has a sliver of reality to it.
Just saying...
And Gary Bauer
too...
Texas's Unique Primaucus
Texas is the most un-primary of primaries there is.
For one thing, there aren't any delegates awarded to the winner of the state -- no statewide bonus delegates, nothing. For another, a third of the delegates will be chosen through a complicated caucus system.
And instead of proportional allocation by congressional district, the rest of the delegates will be proportionally allocated by state senate districts. George W. Bush's '04 performance really changes the math. That's because the number of delegates allocated in those districts are based on how well (or poorly) John Kerry did, as well as the performance of the last Democratic gubernatorial candidate (who himself had votes taken away by a liberal third party challenger.)
The delegate-rich districts are the most heavily liberal state senate districts. According to this calculation, they're in Austin and in two of the most concentrated African American parts of the state. Advantage: Obama.
Clinton will get plenty of support from Latino voters, but they tend to be more spread out and thus will see their votes somewhat diluted in the 31 separate primaries. In order to "win" -- both enough delegates and statewide, you need to organize what amounts to caucus-like campaigns in each of these districts.
The white vote in Texas will probably split, with Obama taking men and Clinton taking women. Though Latinos make up a slightly larger share of the electorate than African Americans, they tend to vote in lower proportions.
The process has two steps. First, folks vote. 126 delegates will be accorded proportionally via state senate district. Then, when polls close, they caucus in more than 1,000 precincts.
At the caucus, attendees chose the identity of the delegate and the presidential candidate that the delegate is supposed to represent. These delegates are sent to a "senatorial convention" a few weeks later, during which the final math is worked out and the actual delegate slate for the convention is chosen.
67 delegates will be chosen this way.
Suffice it to say: whatever you call Texas's system -- a hybrid, a primacaucus, whatever -- do not assume that, because it's a big state and the media calls it a primary, the math favors Hillary Clinton.
RSC Chair Hensarling Endorses McCain
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, an influential conclave of conservative lawmakers, endorses Sen. John McCain in a statement this a.m.
"As the elected Chairman of the Republican Study Committee – the conservative movement in the House – I did not endorse a primary candidate. I feel now, and sincerely hope that my fellow conservatives will agree, that the primary is all but over whether we like it or not – no disrespect to Governor Huckabee.
"I can and will enthusiastically support Senator McCain as our Republican nominee for President. I call upon my fellow conservatives to do the same. I believe that he has earned our party's nomination, fair and square.
"I know John McCain. I have worked with John McCain. I have had some profound differences with him on important issues. Yet, I also respect John McCain and know that on some key issues that are extremely important to our cause, he is right on.
Since Iowa, parts of Hillary Clinton's campaign leadership have been in a state of suspended animation. One by one, the benchmarks the campaign has set for itself -- money, a Feb. 5 knock out, a lead in the popular vote, a superdelegate advantage -- have fallen to a superior effort by Barack Obama's campaign. Clinton aides, junior level to senior level, are exhausted.
Strategically, it is clear that Clinton campaign did not envision an elongated contest until fairly recently, even though senior adviser Harold Ickes had set out a memo laying out various delegate scenarios in December. Obama's campaign, by contrast, had for months projected a fight for delegates.
A lack of money is the main reason why the Clinton campaign failed to organize well enough in smaller caucus states like Minnesota, Colorado and Maine. It's not that the demographics of these states were favorable -- certainly they were not -- but donors, allies and the press have wondered by the campaign was simply not competitive enough to keep Obama's vote totals -- and thus his delegate totals -- in a standard orbit. This mistake has given Obama many extra delegates and with that, the argument that he has won more delegates than she was.
Clinton herself was not informed that the campaign was in dire financial straits until after Iowa, one adviser said. For two days, Bill Clinton camped out in the campaign's Ballston, VA headquarters and poured through the numbers with Williams and other aides. Aides and advisers say that Clinton's decision to lend herself money was not made by consulting members of the senior staff and was relayed to them after-the-fact.
The relationship between Maggie Williams and Patti Solis Doyle has been described as close but acrimonious, akin to two longtime friends who have the same goal in mind but argue about how to get there. They have argued in private, and increasingly, in public settings.
Two sources said that Williams last week threatened to leave the campaign -- she had only been on a 30-day consignment -- unless the chain of command was clarified -- what one person privy to the threat called "a mutiny."
Though Solis Doyle had been telling friends she intended to transition out of her role, they assumed that she would wait until after the potentially decisive contests of March 3rd. She told one she looked forward to assuming what's known in the campaign as a "white boy" boy -- a tongue in cheek reference to Bill Clinton advisers who have no line responsibility but plenty of opinions.
It's not clear whether staffers hired by Solis Doyle will follow her. After all, there are only three weeks left until the unquestionably decisive contests of Ohio and Texas, both must-wins.
Democratic Delegate Update
As of Sunday night:
Obama: 1,134
Clinton: 1,131
Superdelegates
Clinton: 211
Obama: 137
February 10, 2008
Patti Solis Doyle Steps Down As Clinton Campaign Manager
A sudden switching of quarterbacks in the middle of the playoffs is not what any campaign needs; there's no question that Patti Solis Doyle's resignation will produce a spate of negative stories that no campaign likes to handle.
Was Solis Doyle, who has served in Hillaryland since 1992, shown the door? Or did she decide to leave?
Hillary Clinton's inner circle tends to make decisions based collaboratively, and interviews with campaign advisers and aides suggest that the departure was both a needed turning of the page and a recognition by Solis Doyle that she could best serve her family, and Clinton, by taking a different role.
"In part, this was Patti's choice. She knew that when things start to get funky, you have to make, for appearance sake, some changes," a senior campaign adviser who was briefed on the decision and who is close to Solis Doyle said.
Importantly, aides stressed that Solis Doyle will begin to travel with Clinton, arguably giving her even greater access to the candidate's ear. She plans to spend time helping Clinton in Texas, where she has close ties, and will appear as a surrogate on Clinton's behalf.
One campaign adviser, asserting that Clinton still has enormous confidence in Solis Doyle, noted that Clinton has gone out of her way to praise Solis Doyle in campaign conference calls since Iowa.
In way, though, the departure was anti-climactic. Solis Doyle, whose serve to Clinton began in 1992, had survived three separate coup attempts, the latest one being shortly after Iowa, when Clinton considered asking Williams to assume the title of "campaign coordinator." Twice, advisers to Bill Clinton have tried to oust her -- one in January, before the campaign officially began, and once in April, after Barack Obama raised more money than the vaunted Clinton machine.
The chief complaints were several. One was that Solis Doyle's insistence that Clinton not begin to run for president until the she formally decided to run had put her at a tremendous fundraising disadvantage. Another was that Solis Doyle, a native of Chicago, did not fully anticipate the threat that Barack Obama would pose and therefore did not come up with a strategy to contain his candidate. A third was that Solis Doyle was not adept at managing what amounted to a 500 person corporation. A fourth was that, in managing the corporation, the care and feeding of important Democrats -- the large universe of Clinton advisers outside the campaign -- fell by the wayside.
Clinton heard these complaints -- some of them having merit, others not -- and stuck by Solis Doyle. Solis had as many admirers, including much of the senior staff she hired, including communications director Howard Wolfson, chief field planner Karen Hicks, and deputy campaign manager Mike Henry among them.
Campaign advisers said that Doyle, who had spent 18-hour days in Iowa for a month, took the loss in Iowa personally. She was visibly unhappy and did not show up at the campaign's headquarters in Virginia the day after the defeat. Since then, Williams has been a larger and larger presence, even working from Solis Doyle's office when Solis Doyle was absent.
Williams participated in Solis Doyle's wedding and is said to be as close to Clinton as Solis Doyle is -- the type of staffer who can channel Clinton's voice and not be questioned by subordinates.
A second friend of Solis Doyle said that the two "had been working toward this transition."
People familiar with the decision cited as a factor that Solis Doyle has very young children and did not expect the active phase of the primary campaign to last this long, and that she had always anticipated transitioning to a different role in the spring. She was dead tired and missed her family.
Advisers admit to some tensions between Solis Doyle and the larger circle of advisers who Hillary Clinton consulted with after Iowa, including advisers to Bill Clinton who began to take a more prominent role.
The final decision, aides said, was made early this morning.
The timing is unusual. After Tuesday, Clinton will essentially be tied with Barack Obama, delegate-wise. She's just come off her biggest fundraising week ever. Clinton is thought to have an edge in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Answering questions about a campaign shake-up, even if it wasn't a shake-up, is not what the campaign wanted to be doing right now.
An Obama Memo: Sweep
Wouldn't say that Maine was an upset per se, but I did suspect that it would be closer than it turned out to be.
As I do more reporting on PSD -- that's Patti Solis Doyle's resignation, I see that the Associated Press has called the state of Maine for Barack Obama.
Patti Solis Doyle's Letter
Over a year ago Hillary launched her campaign for President.
Her announcement began a historic effort that has inspired millions and brought hundreds of thousands to their feet all across this nation.
I have been proud to manage this campaign, and prouder still to call Hillary my friend for more than sixteen years. I know that she will make a great President.
This has already been the longest Presidential campaign in the history of our nation, and one that has required enormous sacrifices from all of us and our families.
During the last month I have been working closely with my longtime friend, Maggie Williams.
This week Maggie will begin to assume the duties of campaign manager. I will serve as a senior adviser to Hillary and the campaign and travel with Hillary from time to time on the road. Maggie is a remarkable person and I am confident that she will do a fabulous job.
Although I will continue to see you all at headquarters, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank each of you for your dedication, excellence, and passion over the last year.
You are the best campaign staff in the history of Presidential politics and I am grateful to each of you for your hard work and friendship.
Maine Caucuses
Don't automatically assume that Barack Obama will win these caucuses, despite his edge in smaller contests.
Maine has been bombarded with news about Clinton's victory in New Hampshire, and the "Baldacci Machine" -- Gov. John Baldacci -- is in her corner.
Bush On Obama
On Fox News...
WALLACE: Do you think there's a rush to judgment about Barack Obama. Do you think voters know enough about him?
BUSH: I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad. I think I commented that in a press conference when I was asked about that.
WALLACE: I hope not. But so you don't think that we know enough about him or what he stands...
BUSH: It doesn't seem like it to me, but this campaign is plenty of time for candidates to get defined. He is yet his party's nominee.
WALLACE: So why do you think he's gotten this far if people don't know what he stands for?
BUSH: You're the pundit. I'm just a simple president.
Responds Obama spokesman Bill Burton:
“Of course President Bush would attack the one candidate in this race who opposed his disastrous war in Iraq from the start. But Barack Obama doesn't need any foreign policy advice from the architect of the worst foreign policy decision in a generation."
February 9, 2008
Also, Louisiana
So -- Obama has now won 10 caucuses and nine primaries. Clinton's won 9 primaries and 2 caucuses.
The Obama campaign estimates that Obama's current pledged delegate lead is 72 after tonight.
Also: since we're counting, Obama has raised money from 350,000 people since the beginning of the year.
Clinton Finds A Donor Base
According to the Clinton campaign, 100,000 of Hillary Clinton's enthusiastic donors have contributed more than $10M since Feb 5.
Now these numbers are looked at with suspicion by Obama allies. They can't possibly see how Clinton could generate some of the same enthusiasm that Obama does -- they can't stand comparisons of his donors to hers.
But unless the Clinton campaign is just flat out lying, which I will stipulate is most likely not the case, something is going on here that we can't fully appreciate or understand just it.
Obama Wins Washington State, Nebraska Caucuses By Wide Margins
There is something to be said about a caucus. It is small, undemocratic series of gathering where the loudest voices often prevail. It is also somewhat embarrassing that one of the two major candidates has refused to participate in them, in effect ceding their delegates to Barack Obama. Indeed, the Clinton campaign brags about how little it did:
The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads. The Obama campaign has spent $300,000 more in Louisiana on television ads, $190,000 more in Nebraska and $175,000 more in Nebraska.
(Ordinarily, this would be a firing offense -- how dare they let a state go uncontested?)
Yes, the strategic imperative to conserve resources for the larger states may turn out to be the categorical imperative. Though Clinton can't win the small states (unless she controls the machine -- think Nevada), Obama cannot win the states where the majority of Democrats reside. (New Jersey, remember, didn't turn out to be that close.)
John McCain's advisers are probably thinking: woe unto the Democratic nominee who refuses to organize; woe unto the Democratic nominee who appeals to activists perfectly and regular Democrats kinda sorta.
February 8, 2008
Gore Still On The Sidelines
Every so often, about three or days, a Democratic consultant or activist e-mails or calls with a tip about Al Gore's imminent endorsement of Barack Obama.
The noise level of the chatter has increased, but really, outside of Gore's inner inner circle -- and that is a circle of about three people, none of whom has any inclination to step on their boss -- no one is qualified to say one way or another.
Gore hasn't ruled anything out, and it's certainly the case that he's been lobbied by Clinton allies to keep his carbon neutral powder dry, and lobbied by Obama allies to wade in.
My best guess, based on reporting and just a hunch, is that Gore will not endorse a candidate in the primaries. It's no secret that he has some issues with the Clinton family, and it's very easy to link his liberated post-White House persona with Barack Obama's campaign mien, but beyond these two givens, we forget that Gore has very little to gain from making an endorsement, and the downside risk of doing so, even if his candidate were to win, are fairly large.
Gore is the king; he is the senior statesman of his party; he does not need to be a kingmaker. He will almost certainly play a preeminent policy role in the next Democratic administration, possibly as some UN commissar of climate change. He also knows he might have to work with a President McCain as well.
Some other McCain veepstakes names....
Submitted by readers:
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK)
Ex-Rep. Rob Portman
Ex-Rep. John Kasich
Sen. KBH (R-TX)
Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC)
Ex-Gov. John Engler (R-MI)
Fred Smith (Fedex CEO, war hero)
Rudy Giuliani
Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)
Obama Memo: I'm Electable, Baby
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Hillary Clinton has always used her general election viability as a trump card against Barack Obama (think: "I'm tested, I'm ready.") But Obama's campaign is pointing to new polling data to shoot the moon.
If they can get voters in the larger primary states to think they're as viable (if not more viable) than Clinton is, she loses a core argument of her candidacy.
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Obama Communications
RE: The Candidate Who Can Win: Barack Obama is beating Hillary Clinton with Independent voters and can beat John McCain in November
DA: February 8, 2007
On the day that John McCain became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, a Time poll confirmed what voters and polls have consistently demonstrated in the last few weeks – Barack Obama is the candidate best suited to win Independents, play well in Red States, and beat John McCain in November.
In all six of the most recent general election head-to-head match-ups, Obama does better than Hillary Clinton against McCain by an average of more than five points. In four out of the six, Clinton loses to McCain.
From Time Magazine: The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for Time, is that "independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator." Independents, added Schulman, "are a key battleground." [Time, 2/7/08]
The truth of this statement is reflected in the results from the contests we’ve had so far. In critical swing states that Democrats need to carry in November, Obama has beaten Hillary Clinton among Independent voters by crushing margins. In Missouri, he won them by 37 points (67-30). In New Mexico, he’s winning them by 39 points (63-24). In Arizona and New Hampshire, he won them by 10 points (47-37, 41-31).
On Super Tuesday, in six red states that had primaries or caucuses for both Republicans and Democrats, Obama won and got more votes than the top two Republicans combined. These states – Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and South Carolina – account for a total of 53 Electoral College votes. In Idaho and Kansas, where there was no Republican primary, Obama won at least a three-to-one victory over Clinton. Obama has shown such a strong appeal with Independents that even John McCain’s Texas media consultant Mark McKinnon recently confirmed that he would not work against Obama if he is the nominee.
On NPR today, President Bush’s chief political strategist Matthew Dowd said, “The other thing that I think John McCain has going for him is if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination I know there’s a lot of conservatives out there that said they wouldn’t vote or would vote for her but I think she’s the most unifying force for John McCain out there right now, not himself.” He went on to say later in the interview, “I think if you gave the strategists and people around John McCain some truth serum and asked them to say who they want to run against, in a minute they’d say Senator Hillary Clinton. They think that she’s polarizing; she’d motivate and unite the base of the Republican Party. She’s not a generational difference and a change of a figure, she’s a bit of throwback to the past, like to a degree he is. Against Senator Obama it’s a much more difficult task. It would be a generational campaign, the new versus the older. Somebody that had a distinct stand on Iraq versus his stand on Iraq. I think Senator Obama is a much more difficult race and there is not any vitriol from the conservative and the Republican base against Senator Obama. They don’t sort of dislike him to there core like they do Hillary Clinton. I think they would much prefer, the McCain folks, race against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama because it’s hard to compose a strategy against a new guy like Barack.” [NPR, 2/8/08]
Most recent head-to-head match-ups:
Time (Feb 1-4)
Obama 48 (+7)
McCain 41
Clinton 46 (+0)
McCain 46
CNN/Opinion Research (Feb 1-3)
Obama 52 (+8)
McCain 44
Clinton 50 (+3)
McCain 47
Cook Political Report/RT Strategies Poll (Jan 31-Feb 2)
Obama 45 (+2)
McCain 43
Clinton 41 (-4)
McCain 45
ABC/Washington Post (Jan 31 – Feb 1)
Obama 49 (+3)
McCain 46
Clinton 46 (-3)
McCain 49
Fox News (Jan 30-31)
Obama 44 (+1)
McCain 43
Clinton 44 (-1)
McCain 45
Rasmussen (2/04-2/07)
Obama: 47 (+5)
McCain: 42
Clinton: 43 (-3)
McCain: 46
NEA Stays On Sidelines, For Now
The National Education Association's executive board and PAC officials are in Washington this week, but NEA president Reg Weaver told me yesterday that he's not prepared to recommend a presidential endorsement.
Why? "They're not talking about education."
The NEA has hundreds of thousands of members in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, and its members tend to be very helpful on election day. Usually, the NEA sends more delegates to the Democratic National Convention than any other interest group.
Weaver said he wants to hear more from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton about No Child Left Behind, about infrastructure investments in schools, about many other topics he hasn't heard them speak about before he tenders a recommendation.
So for now, the NEA is on the sidelines.
McCain Veepstakes
Just to be irritating, here's a list of potential vice presidents for John McCain. Some of the names are based on informed speculation about who McCain likes and what he wants to see in a ticket-mate; others are just guesses.
Are they in any particular order? Maybe...
1. Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN)
2. Gov. John Huntsman (R-UT)
3. Sen. John Thune (R-SD)
4. Ex-Sen. Fred Thompson
5. Ex-Sen. George Allen
6. Gov. Bobby Jindall (R-LA)
7. Mike Huckabee
8. Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL)
9. Mitt Romney
Who else?
A Response On Superdelegates
There have been lots of comments about reader Chuck Thies's superdelegate scenario.
Here's one additional comment that represents most of them from reader/Obama fan Ryan C.:
It's premised on a false assumption: that superdelegates will make their choice without regard to the overall state of the pledged delegate race.
Given that roughly 58% of the superdelegates are 'undecided' they clearly are watching the race. See also this:
Super Delegates. Most super delegates are, in fact, waiting to see which way the wind blows before solidifying their endorsements. As long as there is a candidate with a clear edge in both pledged delegates and voter support during the nomination contests, in all likelihood the super delegates will back that candidate. While, as both pledged delegate totals and dueling popularity metrics show, we have not arrived at that point, odds are that we will arrive at that point by June 4th, the day after the nominating contests come to an end. It does not have to be a large advantage, just as long as it is a clear advantage
To the point: If Obama builds up a lead of 100 delegates between now and March 4th, and then manages a practical tie or even wins either OH or TX, they'll come down on his side.
February 7, 2008
Romney's Graceful Exit
Mitt Romney's decision to stand aside and acknowledge Sen. John McCain as the likely Republican nominee will serve the former Massachusetts governor well in his future endeavors.
He will be well-positioned to run for office -- national or state -- anytime he wants. He is certainly an automatic leading candidate for the nomination in 2012, should Republicans fail to capture the White House in November.
McCain was gracious to Romney in his speech today, but some of his advisers understand that something substantive has to come from Romney's concession.
What follows is not a postmortem or an obit... just some thoughts.
Romney's fellow candidates did not like him. They saw him as an upstart who synthesized his conservatism in order to cater to the Republican base. Romney changed his mind on many positions; some of these were acknowledged and others weren't. Many of the position changes were suspiciously recent. Though, Romney was always more conservative, personally, than his opponents gave him credit for, he was struck with the curse of being found to lack credibility from the start.
He was more comfortable running as a social conservative than as a social liberal, but he never found the right way to voice his optimism, and his stump speeches often reflected pessimism, not optimism: America under attack from all corners.
Romney found his voice too late; had he run principally as an anti-Washington reformer, he would have found a niche in this race. For many, he was the default candidate, though. It's never good to be a default candidate.
He also messed up on immigration. Instead of finding a way to bridge the differences between the nativists and the intergrationalists in the party, he alienated both, at least initially. The majority of Republicans are neither nativists nor integrationalists. No candidate, actually, has found a way to finesse this. And if Republicans don't finesse this, they're dead as a party for a few cycles.
Romney was hurt by his religion. Some Republican voters in Iowa and other states were bigots. , as were secular liberals and Democrats who enjoyed a good Mormon joke or two. That's a fact of life.
Beth Myers ran a fantastic campaign, arguably the best of any campaign this cycle. The campaign's organizational successes were the envy of their opponents. Most of Romney's money was put to good use, all other things being equal.
Was the early emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire a mistake? In retrospect, who knows? But I think it was the best strategy available to a candidate with Romney's strengths and weaknesses.
I'll have more thoughts tomorrow. Meanwhile, tell me your thoughts about Romney's campaign and its legacy, and I'll actually read them and post some of the more interesting ones.
Clinton Campaign Becomes Transparent, Briefly
Every so often, the Clinton campaign opens the door to its inner sanctum every so briefly, allowing reporters a glance at the thinking. The transparency is deliberate and selective. Today, reporters were invited to listen to the authentic, weekly conference call with major donors. (Reporters were not invited to listen to the same call the week after Barack Obama won South Carolina).
A hoarse-voiced Terry McAullife started things off by announcing that the campaign had raised 7.5M online since the beginning of the month and 6.4 million in the last 30 hours. "That has surprised me, and I'm the ultimate optimist," he said.
And, then "Hillary stepped up to the plate," he said, referring to her self-loan of $5M last month.
"By the way, all of our staff are going one hundred percent paid," he said, in reference to news reports that the senior staff had volunteered to work for free.
Chief strategist Mark Penn briefed the donors on the Feb 5 results, noting that Clinton wound up winning Massachusetts and New Jersey by double digit margins. He said he estimated that the campaign had approximately 53% of the delegates it needs to win the nomination. (With Florida and Michigan factored in, the number would rise only slightly -- to 54%.) Penn conceded that there'd be "bumps int he road over the next week or two" --- he's referring to the Potomac primary next week and the Louisiana Democratic caucus (although Clinton today won the endorsement of Sen. Blanche Lincoln). But "we have double digit leads in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania."
Finance chief Jonathan Mantz next updated the donors on dates for upcoming fundraisers -- by my count, he listed at least a dozen high-dollar events scheduled for the next three weeks.
Then questions -- and perhaps because the donors knew that reporters were listening, they were softballs.
New York biggie Alan Patricoff said that Clinton's self-contribution "really showed people that she was prepared to go to the line," and that he'd had several donors call him and mention the same thing.
Former Amb. Ed Romero, who until a few weeks ago was finance chair for Gov. Bill Richardson's campaign, said, that he, too, "had a call from one of my guys who said, "if she's in, I'm in."
Another donor asked for more events with Chelsea, which prompted Penn to note that Clinton won the votes of the youngest demographic -- 18 to 29 year olds -- in California and Massachusetts.
Dallas's Debbie Branson, a former president of the state trial bar, implored the campaign to send Clinton down to Texas pronto. "Y'all need to get to Texas... Texans are not afraid of a strong, independent woman... we need you to get here."
That's Saul, Folks
Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis was chosen by organizers here to speak following John McCain in part because they wanted to remind McCain and his supporters of the energy of the conservative movement., Anuzis is gracious, but note the implicit warning in his remarks:
I think that when historians look back on this election campaign, they may pinpoint one week last September as a turning point. That was the week John McCain visited Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina on his “No Surrender Tour.” What a great message. No backing down. No matter the odds. No matter the viciousness of the enemy. No matter the efforts of some in Washington to legislate defeat.
And I give Senator McCain credit – this is a man who risked his life for our country in Vietnam and put his political life on the line over Iraq and the War on Terror. This is a man who says what he believes and believes what he says and will not back down.
For him, surrender is not an option.
This fall, that’s the message we need to take to the American people.
No surrender to our enemies!
No surrender to defending the dignity of every human life!
No surrender on securing the border!
No surrender on conservative judges!
No surrender on slashing pork-barrel spending!
And no surrender on cutting taxes.
To the candidates who run with this message and this philosophy, I make this promise from the conservative grass roots of the Republican Party: “We’ve got your back.”
Let me cut right to the chase. Electing the next Republican president won’t be simply about moving moderates into the Republican column. It will be about moving conservatives of every stripe – or no stripe at all – to vote for our nominee.
Why McCain Wasn't Booed Too Loudly...
(a) Mitt Romney's supporters have largely left; thanks to McCain dep. pol. dir John Yob, McCain supporters arrived early and took their seats in the ballroom here, thus ensuring huge cheers.
(b) CPAC attendees were encouraged to be polite by organizers, although there was NO specific injunction against booing, according to CPAC spokesman Ian Walters.
McCain Welcomes Romney Supporters
Sen. John McCain told his CPAC audience that he talked to Ex-MA Gov Mitt Romney on the telephone earlier today and agreed to sit down with him at some point TBD.
"To the millions of you who supported Gov. Romney, I congratulate you and I welcome you to join my campaign. It will be a campaign based on conservative principles in times of consequence."
McCain Humbles Himself At CPAC
From the end of his speech -- according to a prepared text, McCain:
We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won't continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.
I began by assuring you that we share a conception of liberty that is the bedrock of our beliefs as conservatives. As you know, I was deprived of liberty for a time in my life, and while my love of liberty is no greater than yours, you can be confident that mine is the equal of any American's. It is a deep and unwavering love. My life experiences in service to our country inform my political judgments. They are at the core of my convictions. I am pro-life and an advocate for the Rights of Man everywhere in the world because of them, because I know that to be denied liberty is an offense to nature and nature's Creator. I will never waver in that conviction, I promise you. I know in this country our liberty will not be seized in a political revolution or by a totalitarian government. But, rather, as Burke warned, it can be "nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." I am alert to that risk and will defend against it, and ta ke comfort from the knowledge that I will be encouraged in that defense by my fellow conservatives.
You have heard me say before that for all my reputation as a maverick, I have only found true happiness in serving a cause greater than my self-interest. For me, that cause has always been our country, and the ideals that have made us great. I have been her imperfect servant for many years, and I have made many mistakes. You can attest to that, but need not. For I know them well myself. But I love her deeply and I will never, never tire of the honor of serving her. I cannot do that without your counsel and support. And I am grateful, very grateful, that you have given me this opportunity to ask for it.
And Sen. Tom Harkin tells reporters that Hillary Clinton's campaign is "running on fumes" and that "there are real dark clouds on the horizon."
McCain Will Arrive At CPAC With George Allen
According to a campaign adviser, Sen. John McCain plans to arrive for his CPAC speech with Ex-VA Sen. George Allen.
Romney Doesn't Get To Keep His Delegates
Rules differ by state, but consider: by suspending his campaign, Romney's delegates in Michigan revert to unpleged. Already, Mike Huckabee's campaign is trying to find ways to contact them and convert them.
Crowd Stunned As Romney Drops
Hundreds of Romney supporters packed into a basement ballroom here did not see it coming.
"Now, I disagree with John McCain on many issues," he said, drawing a chorus of anticipatory boos -- they thought Romney was going to start to attack McCain. "But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to he successful in Iraq."
A beat.
And then:
"I must now stand aside, for our party and our country," Romney said. "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win."
Romney supporters began to boo. Others shouted, "No!" At least one woman shouted, loudly, "Why?"
"And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," he said.
More crowd noise: "No!" and "Oh no"
"This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters... many of you right here in this room... have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America. This has never been about me."
The crowd: "Come on! No!"
Romney: "I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and our country."
"We love you Mitt," one woman yelled.
Romney received a standing ovation upon exiting. His supports filed out of the ballroom, fumbling for their cell phones. I saw one woman crying.
Booo.... Scatterde for our party and our country
We love u mitt
AP has Excerpts of Romney's Drop Out Speech
''If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or (Barack) Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,'' Romney planned to say in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference.
''This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters ... many of you right here in this room ... have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming president. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.''
The Crowd At CPAC
They're completely unaware that Romney is suspending his campaign.
Laura Ingraham is introducing WMR now...
Romney's Staff Unaware
Here at CPAC, several members of Romney's staff and one major fundraiser said they had not heard about their candidate's plan to suspend his campaign.
Volunteers continued to pass out red "Change" signs with Romney's logo on them.
Romney Will Suspend Campaign
Mitt Romney will suspend his presidential campaign in his imminent speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, today.
Suspending the campaign allows him to lay claim to his delegates and use them as leverage to enact concessions from the eventual nominee.
More...
Supers
I tend to think that Barack Obama will have an edge in persuading superdelegates to come his way...on the thought that if those supers were really thinking about voting for Clinton, they would have cast their lot with them already.
But reader Chuck Thies has a different, and more persuasive scenario:
He writes:
Tere are apx. 299 Super Delegates committed to date.
CNN* has it at 193 HRC, 106 BHO.
NYT** has it at HRC 202, BHO 96.
For the sake of argument, we'll use the CNN numbers that favor Oprama.
There are apx. 842 Supers.
541 remain uncommitted. Making up a 90 point deficit with 543 votes on the table is tough.
BHO will have to win 316 to 226 just to tie.
AND...
According to ABC News*** on Dec. 28 HRC had 158, BHO 89. The CNN count today is HRC 193, BHO 106. That means in the same amount of time HRC gained 35, BHO 17.
During January when BHO had "The MO," HRC beat him 2-to-1 on Super pick ups.
Hillary Clinton’s top campaign operatives today continued their efforts to line up future debates with Barack Obama, sending a letter to the Obama camp, saying: "We hope Senator Obama will join Senator Clinton for a debate a week beginning this weekend.” The Clinton camp notified the press about the letter early this morning, which they said campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle will be sending to Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe.
For their part, the Obama camp objected to the challenge, or at least the manner in which it was posed. “Their tactic is underscored by their admission that they sent their reporters before they actually sent it to us,” said Obama spokesperson Bill Burton. “We’re going to debate but it’s not going to be dictated by the Clinton campaign. We’ll have details on our schedule, including debates, soon” (NORA McALVANAH).
