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CNN tried to pin Hillary down on Ted Kennedy's comments that Obama=JFK just like CNN=Politics. After Clinton was done paying her respects to Teddy she quickly moved on to downplay the role surrogates' have in campaigns. "This is about the two of us" she said, and then later added, "You evaluate the two of us because nobody else will be on the ballot." I believe she's talking about that husband of hers.
Wolf Blitzer, not content to have comments stay implicit, bounced a question to Barack Obama about Bill Clinton's tenure in office, and whether Democrats should remember them fondly. Obama, who called Bill out repeatedly a week or two ago, didn't take the bait. He didn't play the victim card, nor did he say Bill's presidential successes are overstated.
I stand corrected on that whole slobberknocker thing.
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Despite pulling out of the race this week, John Edwards' spirit is
very much with us. Both Obama and Clinton paid tribute to the fallen
candidate in their opening statements, keying in on his poverty work as
especially noble. Clinton gave Edwards a shout out during her original
statement on universal health care. Even CNN left a desk next to Obama,
presumably where Edwards would have sat if he was still with us.
But
this is utilitarian, not unconditional, love. Edwards is still a free
agent, which means it's Edwards-time all the time. Note that Rudy
Giuliani, who endorsed John McCain, didn't receive these testaments
last night at the GOP debate.
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At this point, the candidates probably dream about their health care policy points in their sleep. Obama nailed his health care response.
Obama managed to name drop Ted Kennedy, refer to his past insurance-expansion experience in Illinois, alluded to his commitment to transparency by showing some respect for C-SPAN, and dinging Clinton on her unwillingness to distance herself from special interests and lobbyists. Four key points delivered smoothly and in a concise answer.
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The Los Angeles Times' first question already tries to get the candidates to go after each other. Hillary is asked to detail the differences between Obama's policies and hers. Clinton answers the question, but she still manages to present a united Democratic front. That's important for a candidate who is thought to have helped create a schism in the Democratic party. Obama, meanwhile, takes a different tact. He details the differences between him and Clinton, bangs the Republicans, but then goes back to hit Clinton again on special interests, Iraq, and diplomacy. Obama may realize that because he's behind (but surging) in the polls, he's the one who has to go out of his way to make the distinctions.
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Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Seriously. He just said as much to the audience.
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Hello and welcome to a live-blog of the Democratic throwdown. If you aren't watching Lost, you'll be treated to a live-blog of the debate from inside the Kodak Theater. First impressions as the photo pool takes some pictures:
- The CNN set looks much comelier in person than it does on TV. They've also got some pretty fancy translucent-topped desks.
- Wolf Blitzer is personable off-camera. He incorporated Kazhakstan into one of his jokes to warm up a crowd.
- Ryan Seacrest is nowhere in sight. Nor is Oscar.
Stay tuned for more updates, hopefully of the political variety.
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LOS ANGELES—Barack Obama supposedly hosted an economic town hall meeting today, but it sure didn’t seem like it. While giving a short stump speech and taking questions from the audience, he mentioned the downturn in the economy only once. To be fair, he spoke at length about the struggling middle class—but those lines are leftovers from the prerecession era of the campaign. The times demand irrational exuberance.
The problem isn’t that Obama broke his promise to talk about the economy—I doubt most of the supporters there knew or cared. It’s that the economy is the issue Obama struggles with most, yet he’s not trying to convince voters he knows how to shoot the bears and bring on the bulls.
If Obama wants to win California, he has to take care of two weaknesses: Latinos and the economy. On the latter, the latest Rasmussen tracking poll says nearly half of California Democrats think the economy is the top issue, and Clinton leads by 15 percentage points among those voters.
Obama finally tackled the issue at the end, but only after an eighth-grader asked him, “What would you do as a president to help make the economy get better, not worse?” Obama responded, “OK, that’s a good last question.” Damn right it’s a good question. Obama answered by talking about mortgages, bankruptcy, and tax codes, and he did it pretty well. But he didn’t talk about the Fed, Wall St., or interest rates. Instead of speaking in nitty-gritty financial terms, he reverted to stump snippets on health care and energy independence. He needs to start acting more like Hillary.
This is a problem across the board. Obama doesn’t seem to like talking about details. At the event, he threw out more policies than the crowd knew what to do with—health care, affordable housing, early childhood education, veterans care, immigration reform. Obama didn’t remember to tell people that he thought he could pay for all of these lofty programs until 45 minutes into the event. “And by the way, all these promises I’m making, I’d pay for them,” he said. “Don’t think I’m just making these loud promises. We’ve talked about how we’re going to pay for these initiatives.” Did he tell us what those measures were? No—he moved on instead.
I take Obama at his word—that he has had those discussions. (Indeed, his Web site outlines some of his planned spending.) But he has to start incorporating that wonky talk in his events. Obama doesn’t seem to trust the voters’ capacity to hear high-minded fiscal details every now and then. But if there’s anything he can learn from Hillary, it’s her ability to spew statistics without notes.
Obama has to find a way to talk both details and big ideas, and it would be best if he could figure it out before tonight’s debate. During his answer on the economy, Obama was numbering each of his policy points before he went into why he thought they were good ideas. (Perhaps he’s organized after all.) Near the end of the question, he forgot whether he had already said two or three of his proposals, which led to an unintentionally telling moment. After collecting himself, Obama said, “I’m losing track. I’ve got so many good ideas.” Enough with the ideas, Barack. We want some deets.
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We just recycled an old Explainer on what happens to the delegates of candidates when they drop out:
On Wednesday, John Edwards surprised pundits by announcing he was dropping out
of the 2008 Democratic presidential race. So what happens to his 61
hard-earned delegates? In this article from the election season of
2004, Brendan I. Koerner answered a similar question about the end of
retired Gen. Wesley Clark's bid for the White House.
Read the rest here.
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Now that John Edwards has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race so that “history can blaze its path,” Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will have tonight's debate stage all to themselves. Naturally, the networks (and we) are hyping it as a mano-a-womano showdown, a duel to the death, a steel cage match of political acumen.
Here are a few things to look for:
Knives out. Ever since South Carolina, Obama has ratcheted up the anti-Hillary rhetoric. Without naming names, he told a crowd of 9,000 in Denver yesterday that this election is about “past versus future,” and that it’s time to end the “same do-anything, say-anything, divisive politics.” Clinton’s camp called the speech an “angry screed.” Today, they sent out an e-mail blast denouncing the Obama campaign’s “character attacks.” Look for Obama to cite Hillary’s “distortions” of his record, to play his Iraq vote trump card early and often, and to emphasize his new favorite dichotomy: “ready vs. right.” (Keep in mind he hasn’t tapped the real ‘90s dirt; the words “Whitewater,” “travelgate,” and “Lincoln bedroom” remind unuttered.) Expect Hillary to fire back on Rezko and Obama’s “present” votes, and probably to act hurt once or twice. At this point, Obama could benefit from getting a little steamed, when appropriate. But without an Edwards to bring everyone back to earth, the fuses won’t have much time to cool.
The Golden State pander. Expect to hear a lot about pathways to citizenship, jobs, and strong communities. Also prepare for a resurgence of the driver's license issue. Obama recently declared his support for licenses for illegal immigrants—a stance that will certainly help him among Latinos in California, but which could backfire badly in other states. Hillary officially opposes such licenses, but she’ll have trouble dinging Obama for it, since she famously wavered on the issue in a debate last fall. And hell, now that they’re in California, Obama might even praise Ronald Reagan for real this time.
Stimulate this. Exit polls show voters listing the economy as their top issue. Congress and the White House are approaching a showdown over a stimulus package. Obama and Hillary both have unveiled their own packages and are likely to spend tonight touting them. Obama’s emphasizes fast cash on hand and rebates for low- and middle-income seniors. Hillary’s includes a housing crisis plan that would freeze interest rates and impose a moratorium on some subprime mortgages. She also tosses in money for heating homes. Observers disagree on whose plan is better—as will the candidates.
The Anti-McCain. With John McCain leading the Republican pack, both candidates will try to prove that they’re the one who can beat him. Obama offered a preview of his argument in his Denver speech yesterday: “It's time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain ... is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; who agreed with him by voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like.” Hillary will argue that she has experience sustaining GOP attacks, whereas Obama’s still green.
Given all this, expect the most furious mid- and post-debate spin yet. After her “win” in Florida, Clinton will try to use her debate performance to build on that “momentum.” Obama’s team, meanwhile, will politely remind everyone of the delegate count.
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With the results from the Florida Republican primary
tallied, Trailhead reader Meghan Jensen has edged ahead with 26 points out of a
possible 41, making her the fifth person to lead in as many rounds of our Primary
Pool. Four other contestants are right at Meghan’s heels with 25 points.
Florida proved elusive,
with only four contestants predicting the first-, second-, and third-place
winners correctly when predictions were submitted the day of the Iowa caucuses. With only
one round of the pool remaining and eight Feb. 5 contests in play—New York,
California, and Missouri for both parties, Illinois for the Democrats and
Massachusetts for the Republicans—there are still 48 points available next
Tuesday, making this pool anyone’s for the taking.
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A quick eyeball of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s campaign schedule for Barack Obama makes the strategy pretty clear: National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, N.M.; Santa Fe Community College; gatherings in Los Angeles and Oakland. Maybe he’ll drop by a King Taco for good measure.
For months, Hillary Clinton has held a solid lead over Obama in California. Polls show Obama closing the gap—a Rasmussen poll put him within the margin of error. But it’s unclear if he’ll catch up by Feb. 5. Most people are chalking up Clinton’s success to her support among Latinos. She has the backing of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, among other Hispanic leaders; and she’s been courting Latinos, who could make up as much as 25 percent of the state’s Democratic electorate on Super Tuesday, much more aggressively than Obama. (Hispanic sentiment toward Obama seems to be largely based on unfamiliarity.
But with Kennedy on board, Obama is trying to alter the calculus in a week. He may not be able to pull off a win in Hispanic communities. But because of the way delegates are allocated, he doesn’t need to. Micro-electoral guru Ambinder explains why. Briefly, it’s because the state allocates many of its delegates proportionally by district. (California has 53 congressional districts. 241 delegates are given to the winners of the districts. Another 81 delegates go to whoever wins the state.) So say a district has four delegates at stake. Even if a candidate wins sixty percent of the vote in that district, he or she will still receive only two delegates. If there are an odd number of delegates, the most a candidate can win by is one.
So Kennedy doesn’t need to win over every Latino in California for Obama. Just enough to close the gap slightly. That way, as long as Hillary doesn’t rack up a bunch of lopsided wins, the delegate race will be incredibly tight. And given expectations, Obama can live with that.
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In the days before Super Tuesday, campaign strategy gets complicated.
Apparently Hillary’s plan, at least in part, is to make a bunch of really weird
videos.
The first is an ad called “Freefall,” the main visual
motif of which is a body hurtling through the sky. If Rudy Giuliani had done
it, people would be accusing him of exploiting 9/11 imagery. That might be a
stretch in Hillary’s case, but it’s still slightly discomfiting, even as a
metaphor for the economy.
The campaign has also posted a VH1 Behind the Music spoof called “Hillary and the Band,”
presumably aimed at college kids. The joke: Hillary was once in a band, but she
quit to run for president. The acting isn't bad, and it could have worked as
a straight-faced parody. But then they go and undermine the premise: “Okay. Maybe
Hillary doesn’t shred. But she will: Make
College Affordable. Fight
Global Warming. End the War.” As usual, it was fun until the message part.
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You know Barack Obama’s problem? He doesn’t appeal enough to young people.
Thank goodness, then, that he has the endorsement of Kal Penn, the actor now and forever known to the world as Kumar. As if the campaign hadn’t already secured the 18-24 male demographic by recruiting Scarlett Johansson to campaign for Obama. Now, by signing up Kumar—er, Penn—it's got that group in a stranglehold.
Penn is holding a series of rallies at Emerson College, Boston University, Boston College, and Tufts University before tonight’s Democratic debate, according to the campaign. It’s unclear what he’ll discuss, although presumably most questions will deal with Guantanamo Bay. Specifically, the upcoming Harold and Kumar 2: Escape From Guantanamo Bay. In the film, Harold and Kumar get arrested for smuggling a bong on a plane to Amsterdam and, suspected of terrorism, get sent to Gitmo. Given that Obama has called for the closing of Guantanamo, he and Ku—Penn—have a lot in common.
After his tour, Penn will return to teaching classes on film at the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, Penn teaches at Penn.
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Just because we didn’t live-blog doesn’t mean we didn’t
watch the debate. For what it’s worth, we’re adding our belated thoughts to the
cacophony
of instant
reaction. The executive summary: Nobody screwed up, only Romney helped himself.
John McCain: When
did John McCain become slightly senile? His prolonged spat with Mitt Romney
about Mitt’s non-support
of an Iraq
timetable made McCain look like a desperate slanderer. Considering he’s the
undisputed frontrunner, McCain’s whole strategy was nuts. As my Trailhead
colleague Mr. Beam pointed out, he's the senile grandfather you let prattle on
because its too sad to tell him to shut up. Another McCain highlight of the
night was watching him go out of his way to send some love to California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Word leaked that Ahnold is endorsing
Johnny Mac tomorrow, so there was no chance McCain was going to disagree
with him on fuel-efficiency
federalism. If Anderson Cooper had some stones, he would have asked McCain
whether the Governator was going to endorse him.
Mitt Romney: Mitt
was sharper than a Mormon steeple tonight. He offered something for all three
Reagan-coalition constituencies. The social conservatives got a gay-marriage
ban shout-out (an issue that has disappeared from this cycle). The national
security conservatives saw Romney mount an effective rebuttal to McCain’s
baseless withdrawal claims. In case fiscal conservatives didn’t already know
it, Romney knows what’s up
when it comes to the economy. When McCain attacked Romney’s record in Massachusetts, Romney
yanked stats out of his brain that only an economic cyborg can remember. With
Reagan’s Air Force One as your backdrop, pandering to the Reagan coalition is a
good idea—no matter how tacky that plane looked.
Mike Huckabee:
This was an ugly debate for the Huckster. What makes Huck such an effective
debater is his ability to use his quips as a gateway into important policy
points. Tonight Huck didn’t do that. His best Huckism was a long-winded stat
about sitting in traffic that didn’t fully connect to his policy point: that
fixing the nation’s infrastructure would stimulate the economy. Plus, he pulled
it off better at a fundraiser
earlier in the day. When Romney and McCain started bickering about Iraq timetables,
Huckabee might as well have been wearing a cloak of invisibility. When he
actually spoke, Huckabee complained about not getting a chance to speak—always
a faux pas.
Ron Paul: Poor
Paul. Cooper gave Dr.
No the silent treatment all night. At one point Cooper cut Paul off while he
was trying to answer two questions in one. Cooper promised Paul would get
another chance to speak “coming up in like two
minutes or two questions.” To be fair, Cooper honored his word, but then
cut him off again later in the evening. At one point Paul recoiled from being
cut off, arched an eyebrow, and cocked his head a bit as he stopped himself
from staring Cooper down. On a related note, I don’t remember the last time
Paul was off-message at a debate. Sure, he’s been reduced to a sideshow (fairly
or not), but at least it’s a consistent one.
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Should be interesting to see how much pickup this little story gets.
Apparently Mike Huckabee backers raised a reported $111,000 during a ministers’ conference hosted by Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, Texas. This could be problematic for two reasons. One is that televangelist Kenneth Copeland is currently under investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley and the Senate Finance Committee for, among other things, allegedly taking a $2 million gift from a ministers’ conference last year. The other is that Huckabee could be violating FEC regulations by raising money from or through a tax-exempt organization.
Both Huckabee’s people and Copeland’s say this is all above board, fair game, etc. The campaign released a statement saying it rented a room for “a separate event that was hosted by a private individual” unrelated to Copeland’s ministry. A Copeland spokesman told the AP that “[n]o offering was or has been taken for any political candidate by Kenneth Copeland Ministries or at a KCM event.”
But then there’s the whole guilt by association thing. Copeland says he’d rather die than open up the group’s accounting books to the Senate committee. The money, he says in one of his many unhinged rants, “belongs to God.” (The video is well worth your while.) According to Copeland, Huckabee's behind him all the way. Here’s his much-quoted account of what Huckabee told him when they spoke on the phone:
“Are you kidding me? Why should I stand with them [U.S. senators ] and not stand with you ? They only got 11 percent approval rating.” And then he said, then he said, “Kenneth Copeland, I will stand with you.” He said “You’re trying to get prosperity to the people, and they [the senators ] are trying to take it away from ‘ em.” He said “I will stand with you anytime anywhere on any issue.” That settled that right there. I said, “Yeah. That’s my man. That’s my man right there,” Copeland said.
A spokeswoman for Huckabee confirmed that the two men spoke on the phone, but has yet to confirm Copeland's account of their conversation, to us or to anyone else. The story is getting plenty of attention on the blogs. But I doubt it will gain real traction until a candidate *cough* Romney *cough* seizes on it.
Hey look, there's a debate tonight.
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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – Mike Huckabee rolled into Orange County
today for an event inside the gates of Bayview Estates—a development that bills
itself as a “Residential and Equestrian neighborhood.” Something tells me this
isn’t the target audience for Huckabee’s brand of populism. (Although he did get
his biggest round of applause when he started talking about the Fair Tax.) No signs of Mischa Barton
yet, but there were some other scenes that only a Huckabee fundraiser can
provide:
- A Huck
volunteer named Sharon
was put in charge of having the media sign-in. After one cameraman said
his correspondent had already written their names, Sharon responded with a wide smile: “Bless You.”
- Huckabee was asked about the youth vote
by an MTV News correspondent. Mind you that Newport
Beach is where that god-awful MTV show Newport Harbor is filmed. Unfortunately, I don’t think Huck watches much MTV, so he
didn’t quite note the irony.
- As
Huck shook hands and signed autographs, a greasy
guy in his mid-20s tried to impress a bronzed mid-20s gal by saying she
should go up to Huckabee and ask him to sign her breast, rock-star style.
He was kidding. I think.
- One of
the older women in the crowd had a red LED
ticker pinned to her shirt. Huckabee
2008 slowly crawled across her shirt on an endless loop. I should have
introduced her to the breast-autograph guy.
- Before
Huckabee gave his stump speech, one of his supporters went on stage to
offer an opening invocation. He asked Jesus to give Huckabee strength at
tonight’s debate, and he prayed that the American people would come to
their senses and support him.
- The
entire crowd pledged allegiance to the flag before Huckabee spoke. The
person-to-flag ratio in this estate is probably 5-to-1. I counted a few dozen lining the driveway alone.
In spite of—or maybe because of—all of this, Huckabee managed
to raise 100,000 dollars today. Upon hearing the news Huckabee
quipped, “Our campaign is so frugal, we could go a month on that. We probably
won’t but we could.” He's exactly right, if only because Huck will probably be out of the race in a
month.
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Just as Edwards ducks out, Ralph Nader appears ready to duck in. (Hard to see it as a coincidence when Nader had endorsed Edwards last month.) He launched an exploratory committee today with this call to arms:
Maybe the Democrats and Republicans will nominate Presidential candidates this year who will stand up against the war profiteers, the nuclear industry, the credit card industry, the corporate criminals, big oil, and the drug and health insurance industries.
We doubt it.
The site then proposes an offer. You give Nader $300, he'll give you "two DVD’s—Sicko and Unreasonable Man—and three books destined to become classics—Free Lunch, Gotcha Capitalism, and All The Shah’s Men." It's that simple!
The prospect of another Nader candidacy should surprise no one. (He ran again in 2004, after all.) But it's hard to see him taking a significant bite out of the Democratic vote this time around. In 2000, many Dems, disaffected with the Clinton White House, wanted to try a third way. In 2004, Kerry was so uninspiring that a Ficus tree could have launched a viable third party candidacy. But this year, Democrats are generally pleased with their options.
If Nader wants to put a dent in this election, he'll have to throw in more than a few DVDs. Maybe a Prius.
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The first time I saw John Edwards in person was a book signing at a Borders in Washington, D.C. He was promoting his new book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives. As he spoke about the themes of home and family and home and family, I was awed by the man’s arsenal of platitudes. He could say nothing as earnestly and convincingly as I’d ever seen anyone say anything. It was the perfect introduction to his presidential bid.
There are a lot of explanations for Edwards’ decision to drop out. His opponents’ celebrity, his obsessive focus on Iowa, the limited appeal of his one-note populism. But you can’t discount his unbearable phoniness. Even when I agreed with the message, I bristled at the brazen insincerity —or appearance thereof—of the messenger.
How did Edwards get pegged as the fake guy? A few ways. For one, he said the same thing over and over. Someone compared him to one of those dolls with a pull string that spits out one of 12 different phrases. You could ask him if two plus two equals four, and he would tell you that Washington is overrun by lobbyists and this race is personal for him. His campaign in Iowa was like a political Groundhog Day—every event was interchangeable with the last. Even when given an opportunity to open up and show the “real” Edwards, he declined. In the Las Vegas debate, his response to Tim Russert’s question about his greatest weakness—that “I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me”—smacked of self-pity.
Secondly, even when sincere, he sounded like someone trying really hard to sound sincere. Back in 2004, in his vice-presidential debate with Dick Cheney, Edwards praised the veep for “the fact that [Cheney and his wife are] willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing.” What theater. The moment was so clearly planned, so smarmily delivered, so thinly veiled, that even Cheney haters had to feel some sympathy. It was like if Hillary praised Obama in a debate for overcoming his coke habit. Cheney thanked Edwards for his thoughts and left it at that.
And third, Edwards got a phony rap because of the contrast with his 2004 persona. For people who got used to him as John Kerry’s cute puppy, the angry attack dog of 2008 felt like an act. In reality, things were more complicated, with Edwards reportedly pushing Kerry to be more aggressive. Kerry’s endorsement of Obama this month only reinforced perceptions that Edwards isn’t the man he was in 2004.
That’s not to say Edwards is somehow less genuine a human being. I’m told that when he goes off the record, it’s like talking to a different person. But the way he came across in public, or when filtered through news outlets, showed a man who repeated himself for fear of saying the wrong thing. He blamed the media for giving his rivals more attention, but never offered up anything but the same old shtick, which after a year of campaigning—let alone four—became tired.
Edwards added a lot to the Democratic field, and he will be missed. He challenged Hillary’s lobbyist ties more forcefully than Obama did. He took Obama to task for his “present” votes. He also exhibited refreshing maturity when Obama and Hillary put each other in choke holds, claiming to represent the “grown-up wing of the Democratic party.” Obama should take a page from his book (as long as it's not Home) and ramp up the intensity going into Super Tuesday. Edwards now has the power to influence the race in a major way. But he won't be remembered as the guy who transformed the 2008 election. He'll be the guy who was too slick by half.
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SAN DIEGO—A Univision satellite truck was waiting for me as I pulled up to a real-estate and loan office a dozen miles from the Mexican border. A sparse crowd—about 20 people—was schmoozing inside while the correspondent filmed a stand-up in Spanish next to a carefully-taped Hillary sign. The Univision crew was the only broadcast media outlet to show up (and one of only three journalists overall), but I got the sense that the Hillary camp didn’t care. The second Univision showed up, their goal had been accomplished.
The event was essentially a glorified phone bank, focusing specifically on Latino voters. In reality, the event wasn’t much of an event, nor was it all that Latino-focused. Volunteers showed up, they got to meet other Hillary-philes, and they called a bunch of laymen (who may or may not have been Latino) to convince them to vote for Hillary on Tsunami Tuesday. Dozens of these phone banks take place in the state every day (there are three in San Diego, alone). That Univision decided to package a story about such a non-event was a coup for the CCC (Clinton California Campaign) because the story will show that the Clinton campaign cares about the Latino community—and that they don’t take that support for granted.
All of this matters because Obama has a Latino problem and Clinton knows it. Clinton more than doubled Obama’s Latino support in Nevada and doubled his number in the maybe-meaningless Florida results. But Obama isn’t giving up. He’s airing aggressive Spanish-language ads here (as is Clinton), and some journalists bored with the Latinos-like-Clinton storyline are now suggesting Ted Kennedy’s endorsement will magically attract Latinos to Obama. We’re doubtful that’s true, but that’s another post for another time.
This minor phone bank may seem like an inconsequential effort to court Latino voters compared to thousand-person rallies—but it’s not. Because all of the candidates’ schedules are so accelerated, Clinton can’t personally spend time with Latino families like she might have done if California was an early primary state. Instead she—and the rest of the campaigns—have to entrust staffers and volunteers to carry the mantle and the message.
In the Feb. 5 states, more votes will be earned while the candidate isn’t in town than when he or she is. The candidates set the agenda nationally and then the grassroots follow-through locally. It’s a pointillistic approach: When viewed individually, the small events seem like inconsequential dots; but when you zoom out it’s clear that they’re all part of a larger painting. And when a Spanish-language TV station gives a Latino dot its close-up, it makes the overall message even more defined.
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This election cycle has seen its conventional wisdom
bonfires. Hillary’s inevitability: gone. Obama’s insurmountable lead in New Hampshire: gone.
McCain’s summer of death: long gone. But the most brazen assault on the most
conventional wisdom of all—Giuliani’s decision to neglect the early
states—has failed miserably.
There were moments when the gamble didn’t seem insane. At
one point, Rudy commanded a strong lead nationally and in Florida, which he called his “firewall.”
After Huckabee surged last minute and won Iowa, anything was possible. McCain’s win in
New Hampshire and Romney’s victory in Michigan didn’t exactly
discredit Giuliani’s strategy either. As Slate’s John Dickerson wrote at the time, “the GOP primary
is starting to look like a Pee Wee soccer tournament: Everyone gets a trophy!”
Of course Rudy would get his!
The theory started to crack after Michigan,
when Giuliani’s numbers began sliding nationally and in Florida. By the time both Romney and McCain
snapped up two more trophies, Rudy was all but forgotten. His “slow and steady
wins the race” philosophy crumbled when it turned out he was actually just
slow.
So does this reaffirm the rule that you have to win Iowa or New
Hampshire to win the nomination? Or was this a
worthwhile gamble that didn’t pan out? I’d argue the former. If there was a
year to take the risk, it was this one—the chaotic nature of the contest
appeared to reward patience. And if there was a person who could pull it off,
it was Rudy. He had the national stature to survive without boosts from the
earliest states, and Florida
is big enough that a win there would have reset the game. All the pieces were
there. People are now saying that Rudy did poorly in Florida because
he spent so much time there. Either that or, much as we hate to admit it, the
conventional wisdom was correct.
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John McCain, welcome to the club. In the past, McCain has
been known as everything from maverick to fringe candidate to walking dead man.
(Last month, we used
the words “McCain” and “embalming fluid” in the same sentence.) He has appealed
to an unlikely combination of independents, national security buffs, war hawks,
and immigration moderates. The question was always whether he could assemble
anything resembling the coalition necessary to win the Republican nomination.
Tonight doesn’t seal the deal, but it’s the beginning of the
end. Momentum-wise, McCain will ride into the Feb. 5 states with a crown
already hovering somewhere near his head, if not sitting on it. That means more
free media (as if he needs it), more donations, more endorsements, and bigger
crowds—all the flakes that make up the ever-growing snowball. Delegate-wise,
he’s now the clear front-runner, with 89 pledged delegates to Romney’s 27.
Now McCain has to spend his capital wisely. He has shown he
can win without independents, seeing as this was a closed election. But the
results also prove McCain can compete on Romney’s turf. Exit polls showed him
towering over Romney among Hispanics—a fact he should exploit in California. Floridians
most concerned about the economy also preferred McCain over his rival—and he
should use that, too, in states hit hardest by the recent market swings. After Florida, Romney’s “base”
is starting to look a lot less stable.
There may even a death blow coming. Word has it Giuliani
will endorse McCain tomorrow. (In his remarks tonight, Rudy said everything you
need for a drop-out speech short of “I am dropping out.”) If so, that could
seal the deal for McCain. Granted, Giuliani supporters might have swung to the Arizona senator anyway.
But the endorsement adds symbolic heft to the reshuffling. And even if you tacked
only half of Giuliani’s 15 percent or so from tonight onto McCain’s, he would
have a punishing lead.
“Our victory might not have reached landslide proportions,”
McCain said in his speech tonight, “but it is sweet nonetheless.” If Florida is any indication, he'll taste it again. But he knows the price. "Tonight, my friends, we celebrate," he said. "Tomorrow, it's back to work."
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CNN has called it for Hillary. Her lead is decisive—49 to 29
in the latest tally, with a third of precincts reporting. The campaign
is celebrating the victory with a (now legal!) rally in Davie, Fl.
So on a scale of one to vacuum, how empty is her win?
From the Clinton perspective,
this is real--and big. More voters turned out in Florida
than the other primary states so far combined. They’ll say this slows Obama’s
mo’ and provides a more accurate snapshot of the country than South Carolina did. Obama’s people, meanwhile,
are adamant that Florida
shouldn’t matter. Hence this little zinger, sent out by the campaign: “Obama
and Clinton tie for delegates in Florida.
0 for Obama, 0 for Clinton.”
But here’s the problem. Florida represents something, however imprecisely. Say it merely indicates how one
segment of the country sees the two candidates sans campaigning. Even that could be a useful indicator. After all,
most Americans in Feb. 5 states won’t actually see the candidates in person.
They’ll decide based on TV and radio spots, watching speech excerpts on the
news, reading about their policies, and name recognition. And that’s exactly
what informed Democrats in Florida.
Granted, a lot can change in a week, even on a national scale. And of course
this produces no shift in delegates. But to say that the results mean nothing at all seems a little stubborn.
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Early exit polls (Disclaimer: DO NOT BELIEVE!) show a few interesting trends:
Fox News has McCain trouncing Giuliani among Hispanics, 50 to 26. Romney, meanwhile, trails at 16 percent. So much for those ads featuring his Spanish-speaking son Craig.
McCain also beats Romney among voters who listed the economy as the most important issue facing the country. (Nearly half of voters said it was, according to the AP.) McCain: 38. Romney: 34. Margin of error: +/- 4 percent. The economy is supposedly Romney’s biggest strength. That said, Romney is twice as popular as McCain among voters who list immigration as their top issue.
Florida is getting older, and McCain is benefiting. He beats Romney 40 to 31 among senior citizens. More than a third of voters in this primary are 65 or older, the AP reports.
About 43 percent of Republican voters said that Gov. Charlie Crist’s endorsement of McCain mattered to them. That sounds like a lot, given that most endorsements go completely unnoticed. Of those for whom it mattered, 51 percent voted for McCain, compared to 23 percent for Romney—naturally.
(h/t The Page)
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A few things to keep in mind as tonight's numbers roll in:
Winner takes all. Normally, most of Florida's 114 delegates are divided among the candidates who win each of the state’s 25 congressional districts, with the remainder allocated to the statewide winner. But this year, because the national party revoked half of Florida's delegates, all 57 delegates go to overall winner. That means whoever wins a plurality (McCain or Romney, most likely) will take a decisive lead in the overall delegate count.
Sorry, we’re closed. This is a closed primary, which means that independents—i.e., John McCain’s base—can’t vote. Instead, he’s counting on a mix of seniors, veterans, and Latinos to push him past Mitt Romney. Romney’s army of fiscal conservatives, on the other hand, will vote in full force. So, in a sense, a McCain win is bigger than a Romney win, since it proves he can succeed even without his moderate base.
Wait for it. Florida’s panhandle operates on Central Time instead of Eastern Time, so its polls close an hour later. That’s where a group McCain calls his “natural constituency”—i.e., veterans and military retirees—resides. Since it’s a tight race between Romney and McCain, networks probably won’t be able to call it until those numbers come in.
Who won where? Florida is a sort of microcosm of the national GOP. With vets in the panhandle, Hispanics in the south, and a mix of transplanted New Yorkers and retirees and independents in the mid-state Interstate 4 Corridor, there’s something in Florida’s electorate for everyone. So prepare for extrapolation, since whatever happens in Florida will inform how people handicap Super Tuesday. Did McCain do better than expected in Tampa, an area considered Reagan country? Maybe that means Romney is also toast in California. Did Giuliani fare better than expected among Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade? Perhaps that could boost him among Latinos elsewhere. Did Huckabee suck evangelical votes away from Romney across the state? Look for a possible repeat in Georgia.
There’s a lot happening here, so stay tuned.
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Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. Tonight, two candidates are in jeopardy. We pay our pre-mortem respects to Mr. Giuliani below. See Mike Huckabee’s Death Watch here.
It may not look like it, but Rudy waged a good campaign. He was a solid debater, energetic and dogged on the stump, and was on-message most of the time. But then things soured on two fronts:
- The message: When Rudy was living it up front-runner-style, life was good. His national polls were up in the 40s, the money was rolling in, and with Clinton leading nationally, name-recognition seemed to be the overriding narrative of this election. But once voters actually listened to what Giuliani was saying, the poll numbers sagged. If Rudy’s failure has told us anything, it’s that most Americans just aren’t afraid anymore. Giuliani spread the they’re-going-to-get-us gospel very successfully, but New Hampshire voters in particular just didn’t buy it. When that happened, Giuliani pulled out of New Hampshire—he had already pulled out of the rest—and went to Florida to try his luck there. It seems they don’t want a 9/11 candidate either.
- The primary calendar: Originally, Giuliani’s camp thought that the compressed schedule would help them lay low for a month and then reemerge with a head-start in Florida and a natural constituency in a handful of Feb. 5 states. But they waited one primary too long. In hindsight, Rudy Giuliani needed to win South Carolina just as badly as Fred Thompson did. The only problem: Rudy didn’t have a shot in hell, and he knew it. So he pushed his last stand back to Florida, where he could schmooze with Yankee fans and talk about NASCAR all day. But by the time today’s ballot rolled around, the party coalesced around two guys they don’t really like, but whom they like more than the pro-choice, baseball-polygamist, drag-king Giuliani.
Rudy has intimated that he’ll flee the scene after what’s probably going to be a bloody affair tonight. His aides say they’ll re-evaluate the campaign’s status Wednesday morning, but he’ll probably drop out to avoid embarrassment in the Northeast, where John McCain has eclipsed him recently. There isn’t much chance Rudy will stay in; run a regional Feb. 5 campaign in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; and wreak utter havoc. He’s buddies with McCain, who stuck up for him at the last debate, and wouldn’t want to do anything to help Mitt Romney win the nomination.
So, after tonight, Rudy’s campaign will probably become a mere memory from the 2008 election. This morning, while flying out of Washington, D.C., a newsstand in the airport was selling candidate-themed t-shirts. There was Rudy, staring at me with the White House behind him. I laughed as I realized that this t-shirt was as close as he was ever going to get.
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Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. See our pre-mortem death watch for Rudy Giuliani here.
Mike Huckabee does not have delusions of grandeur for Florida. The day after South Carolina, he said he might not have enough money or support to compete with Romney or McCain, so he hedged his bets. He flitted back and forth all week between Georgia and Tennessee, and he’ll watch tonight’s returns in the latter Missouri*. But don’t expect Huckabee to drop out after today, not when he can still do so much damage.
Huckabee won’t win, but he can drag Romney down with him. Huckabee joined the ranks of the walking dead after he lost South Carolina and his money dried up. But unlike Bill Richardson as he faded away, Huckabee actually has some bite left. If the race becomes a McCromney affair, only Mike Huckabee can stop evangelicals from gravitating toward Mitt. Lately, it seems he’s been auditioning for a role as McCain’s VP, and rightly so: If Johnny Mac wins Florida, it will be partly thanks to Huckabee.
With the opportunity to eat fried-squirrel at official White House dinners, don’t expect Huck to buck the trail quite yet. If he finishes third in Florida (he’s polling fourth), he can gush out a Huckabeeism about David (Huck) defeating Goliath (Rudy) that may get him some mileage. From there, he’ll stay in the South and try to siphon enough votes away from Romney to clear the path for McCain. Ironically, Huckabee is now playing the same role for Romney that Fred Thompson played for him in South Carolina. But if nominated, McCain would sooner make Huckabee the VP than Thompson. The old yet virile war hero and the young but inexperienced spark plug—it’s a match made in heaven, aside from that whole modifying-the-constitution-to-fit-God’s-will part.
*UPDATE 5:56 p.m. PST: Originally this post misstated that Huckabee was spending the night in Tennessee. He was in Missouri.
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Today’s Democratic Florida primary is a political inkblot test.
Given that no delegates are being awarded (for now), you can pretty much interpret the
“beauty contest” results however you want.
As a result, the propaganda battle between the Clinton and
Obama camps has reached fever pitch. Both sides have held conference calls
outlining their cases for why Florida’s
primary does or doesn’t matter. Here’s a quick rundown of their arguments:
Clinton: Florida is an important state that deserves
a role in the democratic process. I will do everything I can to seat its
delegates at the national convention.
Obama: Because Florida violated the
four-state pledge, the Democratic National Committee stripped the state’s
delegates. Florida is therefore meaningless.
Clinton: A record number of people are turning
out, both in absentee ballots and early voting tallies.
Obama: There’s a
controversial property tax ballot measure drawing people to the polls. Also,
the state has no delegates.
Clinton: Obama violated the four-state pledge
by running national TV ads that broadcast in Florida.
That shows he’s taking the race seriously.
Obama: Sorry, no
delegates.
Clinton: Even if we couldn’t campaign in the
state, there is tons of ground organization on both sides, suggesting that this
is a real contest with significant results.
Obama: No hay
delegatos. Comprende?
Clinton: Florida matters because I’m going to win.
Obama: Not any
delegates, you’re not.
Maybe it’s a little more substantive than that, but not
by much.
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The New Yorker devotes a quickie to Barack Obama’s poker skills. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama won over other politicians by starting a regular poker night. James McManus offers this analysis of his game:
Obama never played for high stakes. Only on a very bad night could a player drop two hundred dollars in these games, typical wins and losses being closer to twenty-five bucks. Link describes Obama as a “calculating” cardplayer, avoiding long-shot draws and patiently waiting for strong starting hands. “When Barack stayed in, you pretty much figured he’s got a good hand,” former Senator Larry Walsh once told a reporter, neglecting to note that maintaining that sort of rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff.
Remember the brave journalist who faced Obama on the basketball court? Some editorial board should invite him to a poker game.
P.S.: Obama should have revealed his passion for poker before Nevada. As we reported long ago, Vegas dealers were all for Hillary.
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In about eight minutes, Barack Obama will give a speech at a college gymnasium in El Dorado, Kan. As his campaign reminds us, “Obama’s grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, were Kansas natives. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born at the military base in Ft. Leavenworth while his grandfather served in the Army during World War II.”
This theme—his family—will probably be a recurring element of the Super Tuesday sprint. Reminding people of Obama’s (ahem) white side plays down his immigrant background and emphasizes that he’s just as American as they are. The military ancestry is just an added bonus.
Until now, this sort of homecoming moment has been staged most notably by John Edwards. Last week, Edwards held an event in his home town of Seneca, S.C. And his background—growing up the son of a poor mill worker—has been a staple of both his presidential campaigns.
For Obama, however, the hometown pander is new. And given his mixed-race heritage, it's likely to be more complicated. On the one hand, you could see it as an advantage: He can claim shared identity with blacks in South Carolina and whites in Kansas. But on the other, people might see it as an attempt to exploit his Kansas roots—a sort of retroactive carpetbagging—when he never really lived there. I'll be curious to see if he’s greeted as a favorite son—or as some guy whose grandparents happened to live there.
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As the Hispanic-heavy votes in Florida, California, Arizona, and New Mexico approach, Bill Richardson is suddenly the most popular guy around. Apparently he’s been fielding calls from the two leading candidates and their surrogates.
Richardson describes himself as “torn.” On the one hand, he served in the Clinton administration. On the other, Obama once bailed him out during a debate. The Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has the hilarious anecdote:
I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, "So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?" But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, "Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening." But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, "Katrina. Katrina." The question was on Katrina! So I said, "On Katrina, my policy ..." Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, "Obama, that was good of you to do that."
Now all Obama needs to whisper is, "Secretary of state. Secretary of state," and Richardson is his!
UPDATE 11:02 a.m.: Hillary will be announcing a "MAJOR ENDORSEMENT" in a 1 p.m. conference call. Could it be? Stay tuned.
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Obama has three
new ads launching in Arizona, Missouri, and North
Dakota, two of which feature Sen. Claire
McCaskill and Gov. Janet Napolitano.* (Both available here.)
The ads are timed to build support (and name recognition) for
Obama in these critical states in the week running up to Super Tuesday. Putting
Obama’s message in the mouths of surrogates whom voters will recognize isn’t a bad
idea, given that many people still think Obama is an anti-American
Muslim cousin
of Saddam.
But one directorial choice surprised me: Neither ad features
Barack Obama’s voice. Instead, they have McCaskill and Napolitano narrating
over images of the senator. Not an obvious move, given
what an aesthetic asset Obama’s smoke-enriched baritone can be.
That said, having a woman’s voice instead of Obama’s
might be deliberate. Obama won the women’s vote in South
Carolina and Iowa.
But Hillary’s appeal to that demographic, particularly white women, could be
one of the greatest obstacles facing Obama in big Midwestern and Southern
states. Being introduced to Obama by a female governor—rather than some
faceless male narrator—sets a different, potentially more appealing tone.
*Correction: This article originally identified Sen. McCaskill as a governor.
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Watching Ted Kennedy share a stage with his niece Caroline, his son Patrick, and Barack Obama, I couldn’t help but think, One of these things is not like the others.
No, not like that.
The theme of Ted Kennedy’s speech here at American University, and of Caroline Kennedy’s Times op-ed, is that Obama is John F. Kennedy’s political heir. The corollary to that, however, is that the family has no political heir who shares the Kennedy name. Sure, the most prominent living Kennedy children—Caroline, Patrick, Bobby Jr., Joseph P., Kathleen, Maria Shriver—have made major contributions to government and society. But none of them have become leaders on the scale of JFK, RFK, and even Teddy.
Seeing Ted praise Obama, it felt like a father deciding to give the family business to the adopted son rather than his natural son. And that’s the point: For all the talk about Obama inheriting the Kennedy legacy, this is not a dynasty. Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama therefore flies in the face of the dynastic succession of another Clinton presidency. Symbolically, it’s a repudiation of dynasties.
“The year I was born,” Obama said in his speech, “John F. Kennedy passed the torch to his youngest brother.” For Ted Kennedy, the living symbol of American dynasty, who essentially inherited his Massachusetts Senate seat from his brother, to now pass the torch to not only a non-Kennedy but a nonestablishment figure—that’s no small statement.
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The Obama literary cartel has spoken.
Not one to let Ted Kennedy hog all the attention, Toni Morrison has added her endorsement to Obama's collection as well. The Nobel Prize-winning author and Princeton professor wrote a letter to Obama explaining her decision, saying that "in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom." Read the full letter here.
I would be remiss not to point out the Oprah connection here. No fewer than four of Morrison's books have been selected for Oprah's Book Club: Sula, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song of Solomon. Not to mention that Oprah played the main character in the 1998 film version of Beloved. Who's Obama's next endorser, James Frey?
In terms of influence, Morrison is no Oprah. But as perhaps the second most prominent black woman to endorse Obama, her support might suggest to black women torn between choices that Oprah's fandom is no fluke.
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Another presidency just opened up. Gordon B. Hinckley, president and "prophet" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, died yesterday at the age of 97. We're always on the lookout for political omens, and this one can't be good for Mitt Romney.
That said, here's why it's only a matter of time before we have a Mormon president:
Mr. Hinckley is survived by his children, Kathleen Barnes Walker, Virginia Pearce, Jane Dudley, Richard Hinckley and Clark Hinckley; 25 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.
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Also worth noting about the Kennedy endorsements: This is at least the third prominent political family to be publicly split among the presidential candidates.
Jesse Jackson, who himself won the South Carolina primary in 1988, criticized Barack Obama back in September for “acting like he’s white.” He hasn’t endorsed Hillary, but he and the Clintons are longtime allies. Even so, his son, Jesse Jackson Jr. cut an ad for Obama in October encouraging African-Americans to vote for him. “Obama has a heart that beats for our community,” he said.
The Bushes, too, have undergone an election season rift. Jeb Bush Jr., son of the former Florida governor, endorsed Rudy Giuliani in October and has served as chairman of Young Professionals for Rudy in the state. Meanwhile, his brother, George P. Bush, backed Fred Thompson’s prospective campaign back in June, when Thompson was the party’s shining hope. Another George W. Bush nephew, Sam LeBlond, worked for Thompson, then quit in July. Former Gov. Jeb Bush has kept quiet so far, but he’s widely believed to support Mitt Romney.
Now comes the Kathleen/Kerry/Bobby Jr. vs. Caroline/Teddy feud. Granted, everyone has gone out of their way to “respect” the decision of their relatives. But those summer retreats to Hyannis Port could get a little awkward.
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Over the weekend, Barack Obama got two Kennedys (Kennedies?) for the price of one.
First, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, penned a gushing op-ed in the New York Times endorsing the senator from Illinois. Then on Sunday, the campaign announced that Sen. Ted Kennedy will be stumping for Obama this week.
Time's Mark Halperin offers some compelling reasons why this endorsement, unlike most, actually matters. (Kennedy commands respect among demographics Obama doesn’t—namely Hispanics, working-class Dems, and union households.)
I’ll add one more: This is a risk for Kennedy. As an all-round eminence gris with a gift for negotiating compromises, he would play a pivotal role in the relationship between a Democratic White House and the Senate. As chairman of the health, education, labor, and pensions committee, he sits at the center of any, well, health-care, education, or labor overhauls undertaken by a potential Clinton administration. Maintaining good relations is in his interest, and neutrality would have been a perfectly acceptable stance. That he rebuffed overtures from Bill Clinton makes the endorsement all the more a repudiation of his wife’s candidacy.
It doesn’t hurt that the endorsement comes after the most decisive primary win so far. Nor that Obama’s speech Saturday night drew JFK comparisons galore. Plus, don’t forget about superdelegates. Bill Clinton has reportedly been working the phones to woo party players who will have votes at the national convention in August. Kennedy no doubt has pull in this area, too. And if it comes down to a brokered convention—that hellish scenario you're secretly hoping for—Obama can use all the help he can get.
Naturally, Clinton's team greeted the news with news (sort of) of their own. On Sunday, the campaign fired off a competing statement from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and daughter of Bobby Kennedy, pointing out her own support for Clinton as well as that of her brother Bobby and her sister Kerry. But if there were a formula to measure respective Kennedy influence, it would probably looking something like:
Bobby Jr. + Kerry + Kathleen + Caroline = Teddy
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Here's a poster spotted in Barack Obama's Columbia, South Carolina HQ. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some sort of "hope" coinage novelty item before the election is over:
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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Barack Obama is angry. Oh, he’s in control, certainly, but you can tell he’s pissed.
After a week of increasingly bitter spats over race and underhanded campaign tactics, Obama’s victory speech sounded his usual themes -- unity, change, past vs. future. But he also went after Hillary Clinton in more aggressive terms than in other speeches.
At first, he could have been speaking about Republicans: “We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner.” But then it became increasingly clear to whom he was referring: “It’s the kind of partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea -- even if it’s one you never agreed with.”
It’s one thing to invoke an opponent’s attack in a stump speech. It’s another to broadcast it to the country after delivering the most thorough trouncing of the election season. (Other descriptors overheard in the press section: “stomping,” “burial,” “bludgeoning.”) The point was not just to celebrate his victory, but to remind everyone that he won despite the Clintons’ skeevy tactics.
He also echoed Hillary’s claim that Obama promotes “false hopes.” Obama loves to portray her as a nay-sayer, the well-intentioned but over-the-hill has-been who simply lacks imagination. Tonight, he rooted this criticism in terms of regular people: “I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day -- an envelope that had a money order for $3.01, along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.”
Obama has slammed Hillary before, most notably in Monday’s debate, when he said he was working as a community organizer while she was “sitting on the board of Wal-Mart.” The blow landed, but Hillary’s riposte -- a quip about Obama’s relationship with “slum landlord” Tony Rezko -- landed harder. (Notice how we’ve been reading about Rezko all week long, but not a peep about Wal-Mart.) Even when Obama appeared to score a point, Hillary was one step ahead.
During tonight’s speech, though, there was no Clinton around to interject. It was a reminder of how much better Obama is at speechifying than debating. No ums, no stutters, no lurching starts and stops. If debates had 30-minute time limits instead of 30 seconds, the man would be unstoppable.
At the same time, Obama scored a few tactical points. After declaring that the forces of division are “not the fault of any one campaign”-- translation: They are -- he railed against “the assumption that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate; whites can’t support the African-American candidate; blacks and Latinos can’t come together.” The line wasn’t just a cheesy invocation of unity. It also pre-emptively repudiated the notion that Obama won South Carolina because of blacks alone. That he drew 25 percent of the white vote will make his case fairly easy.
Even more so than usual, the coming days will be a battle of perception. Obama’s camp will argue that South Carolina matters but Florida doesn’t. Clinton’s team will argue the opposite. Obama will suggest that we’re witnessing a battle for delegates, seeing as he has more than anyone. Clinton will suggest it’s actually states that matter. Trench warfare isn’t Obama’s strength. Even when he has fought back against Hillary, it’s been on her turf. But tonight, as over the past several days, he has shown himself willing to engage her -- and able to win.
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If the presidential race were a sitcom, John Edwards would be the next-door neighbor who doesn’t take a hint. Nobody has the stones to tell him to stop stopping by, so he keeps on showing up with giddy smiles, predictable conversation topics, and a burning desire to be liked. Even though the main characters never seem to get annoyed with the neighbor, fans of the show tire of him quickly.
Earlier this week, it looked like Edwards might move out of the neighborhood. But that doesn’t seem to be in the script any longer. Edwards had only one goal coming in to tonight: get a delegate. And that’s pretty much all he did. Edwards didn’t add any momentum to his campaign, nor did he convince anybody else to vote for him after a dramatically short concession speech.
But honestly, it doesn’t matter how many delegates Edwards eventually gets. It just matters that he has some rationale to support his quixotic bid to become president. And as long as he’s still pulling in delegates, he can fight back against anybody that says he’s wasting his time. (Guilty as charged.)
If there’s anything Edwards can be proud of, it’s that he beat everybody else among white men, according to exit polls. Moving forward, Edwards would be wise to try to fill this void between Obama and Clinton, even if it means narrowing the scope of his candidacy. But at this point, his scope is narrow whether he realizes it or not. The only county he won in South Carolina was the one that includes his hometown, Seneca.
Now that we know Edwards is staying in the race, it’s time to play soothsayer for Feb. 5. The main question: Does Edwards siphon more of the white vote from Clinton or the change vote from Obama? Tonight, it was the former, but on Feb. 5 it could be the latter. In states with less of a black population, we could see a repeat of New Hampshire, where Edwards blocked Obama’s win. Either way, the longer Edwards hangs around the neighborhood, the more likely he outstays his welcome.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Didn't make it to Obama's victory speech? No problem! Just grab your ear buds, close your eyes, and tune into the sound of Obama campaigning. A quick glance at the sound engineer's computer reveals the following iTunes playlist compiled for Obama events:
City of Blinding Lights -- U2
Signed, Sealed, Delivered -- Stevie Wonder
Only in America -- Brooks and Dunn
(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher -- Jackie Wilson
I'll Take You There -- The Staples Singers
Move On Up -- Curtis Mayfield
There's Hope -- India Arie
Shining Star -- Earth, Wind, and Fire
Next week: Hillary's playlist!
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As of now, Barack Obama is headed toward a monster win in South Carolina, the likes of which we haven't seen since, uh, 11 days ago. Dozens of news cycles ago, Hillary Clinton beat "uncommitted" in Michigan with 55 percent of the vote and a 15-point margin of victory. But there was a huge caveat: Nobody campaigned there and no delegates were awarded. It was a meaningless victory.
Flashforward to tonight, when Obama currently holds a 17-point lead over Clinton in South Carolina with 54 percent support overall. The victory is real this time, with actual visits from the candidates, actual delegates awarded, and actual names on the ballot. If the current results hold, Obama will have beaten his named opponents by a larger margin than Clinton beat her unnamed foes. This is probably making Obama's people giddy. Now whenever Hillary Clinton brings up a Michigan win (which she's doing more and more often as she tries to seat Michigan delegates), they can remind everybody that her win there wasn't actually that convincing and pales in comparison to Obama's Herculean display down South. Obama, the thinking will go, shows up when the stakes are high, while Clinton shrunk away at the first sign of competition.
Perhaps most importantly, Obama's win tonight moves the campaign from the plurality to the majority. The threshold for an impressive win has jumped from 40 points to 50-plus points, even with three competitors in the race. Winning the plurality of voters is a puny accomplishment—after all, somebody had to do it. This mini-thesis gets blown up if Edwards drops out of the race, but that's looking less likely after he secured some delegates with tonight's respectable showing.
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Hillary Clinton just sent out an e-mail saying she called
Obama to congratulate him on his win. Then this:
“We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who
will make their voices heard in Florida and
the twenty-two states as well as American
Samoa who will vote on February 5th.”
Clinton has been talking
about Florida
as if it were any other primary. The reason: If people treat Florida
as a real contest—not just a beauty contest—they’ll have to treat her win in Michigan the same way.
It’s a smart move, if only because her declarations that Florida matters are self-fulfilling. If she
says it matters, and convinces people to show up and vote for her, then yes, it does
matter. And what can Obama say to rebut it? He can’t say Florida doesn’t matter. That would violate Rule No. 1 of primary campaigning: Don't insult a state until its primary is over. The best he can do
is emphasize the importance of delegates rather than states -- a flimsy-sounding case now, but one that will sound a lot more cogent if Super Tuesday doesn't produce a clear winner.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The immediate story, it seems, is Obama’s overwhelming 81 percent take among African-Americans, according to exit polls. Even among whites, he took 24 percent—less than both his opponents, but a big jump from Thursday’s McClatchy poll that put his support among whites at 10 percent. (And which has driven much of the hand-flapping over Obama’s supposed unelectability among whites.)
The narrative coming out of the Obama camp is two-fold: One: This isn’t a fluke. Spokesman David Axelrod, at the center of a press horde, argues that Obama can do well nationwide, even among whites. “Did you go to Iowa?” he asks a reporter. “What did you see?” The implicit answer: white people. “Yesterday, you guys said we weren’t gonna make 10 percent. That was the narrative.” And two: This win was hard-fought. Axelrod points out that Sen. Edwards “was a native son in this state. … This was a real butt-kicking, in the old-fashioned parlance.”
The Clinton camp will no doubt argue that Obama sank everything he had into the state. He spent the whole past week here; she hopped around a few Feb. 5 states. Hillary isn’t even in South Carolina tonight; she’s holding an event in Nashville. And, of course, implicit in everything will be the race factor.
But one exit poll result should hearten Obama fans (and, you know, non-racists):
Three in four voters said the country is ready to elect a black president and about as many said that about a woman. Somewhat more Clinton voters said the country is not ready to elect a black than Obama voters said the country wasn't ready to elect a female president.
Granted, many of the people who said America is ready for a black president had just voted for one. Plus, those numbers are likely to be much different in the white south. But given that much of the anxiety about electing a black president has come from the black community itself, these numbers indicate a change in attitude.
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The juicy bits from CNN's exit polls:
- Obama's victory margin over Clinton steadily declines as the voters get older. Obama beats Clinton by 45 percentage points among 18-29 year olds, 2 percentage points among voters 60 and older. Among blacks, though, Obama's numbers hold strong across all ages. Edwards' results get better as the voters get older, as well.
- 14 percent of all voters were nonblack 18-44 year olds; 33 percent were over the age of 45. The younger nonblack voters favored Obama. It seems Clinton continues to have problems connecting with youth, no matter their race.
- Nearly one-fifth of Clinton supporters think Obama is the Democrat who can best beat the Republican nominee. Only 4 percent of Obama voters think Clinton is best able to beat the GOP nominee.
- The male-female ratio in this primary is greater than any other this cycle: 61 percent of females voted, 39 percent of males. Obama led evenly across both sexes.
- Nearly six in 10 voters thought it was important that Bill Clinton was campaigning. Those voters were more likely to support Obama than Clinton.
- Edwards pulled down as much support among the white community as Clinton, and beat her among white males.
Our usual disclaimer applies. These are exit polls, not actual results.
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Wolf Blitzer just went over Mike Gravel's vote tally and nearly cringed as he read that Gravel hadn't received any of the roughly 1,400 votes cast thus far. So, what's our over-under for Gravel for this primary? 500 votes? More importantly, what will his demographic breakdown be? 95 percent white supporters?
UPDATE 10:12 p.m.: Gravel finished behind Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich, who dropped out of the race earlier this week. The final tally for Gravel: 239 precious votes.
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Within seconds of the polls closing, CNN projected Barack Obama won the South Carolina primaries—a "strong" victory, according to Wolf Blitzer. But this primary, more than most others, isn't about who won overall, but about the candidates' share of support among their core demographics.
The key number, courtesy of MSNBC's exit poll: Obama took home a quarter of the white vote in South Carolina. That's much better than polls were projecting near the tail-end of the campaigning there, and Obama's campaign can save face going forward to whiter states on Feb. 5.
The reason we're talking about this in the first place is because the Clintons racialized this primary. And if exit polls hold true, then they just had a giant egg cracked on their face. By subtly hinting at race in much of their messaging over the last week, they left the door open for Obama to fall flat if he only pulled in one out of every 10 white voters. But tonight Clinton didn't outstrip Obama among white voters by much—about 10 to 15 percentage points in exit polls—which means Obama is vindicated and the media will portray this race as a landslide, not as a landslide in the black community.
Going forward, Obama still has plenty of problems, his lack of support in Latino communities chief among them. But tonight, he finally found a way to do what he couldn't do all week: fight back against the Clintons' racial messaging. After a win in Iowa, one of the whitest early primary states, and a win in South Carolina, the blackest early primary state, perhaps it's time to think that Obama can overcome the Clinton-constructed racial divide.
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By Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin
Feb. 5, 2008, aka Super Tuesday, will be utter electoral chaos. On the Democratic side, 22 states hold their primaries, awarding a total of 1,681 pledged delegates, or 52 percent of all those awarded. (“Pledged” delegates don’t include the 796 “superdelegates”—members of Congress and other party leaders—who attend the national convention.) Republicans have 975 pledged delegates at stake—41 percent of the total number—in 21 states. So, with a little more than a week to go before the polls open, the candidates will have to allocate their resources carefully. Here’s a quick primer on what obstacles each candidate faces and how they should spend their time.
Note: Delegate counts below include both pledged delegates and superdelegates.
The Democrats
Unlike the Republicans, the Democratic National Committee awards all delegates on a proportional basis. That means Hillary and Obama are likely to pick up delegates in each of the 22 states. Edwards, meanwhile, is a wild card. He’ll only receive delegates in a state if he clears the 15 percent viability threshold. If that happens, look for the tight race between Hillary and Obama to get even tighter, since they’ll have trouble winning by huge margins. In which case, the contest is likely to extend well beyond Feb. 5.
Hillary Clinton: The proportional-delegate system doesn’t help the national front-runner because she can’t rack up a commanding delegate lead. So, for Clinton, Feb. 5 is about maximizing her advantage in states that already favor her. She owns the tristate delegate behemoth of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (468 delegates total). Plus, Arkansas (47) still remembers her as their First Lady before she became the country’s. She polls favorably—and Obama polls poorly—among Latinos, which means that Arizona and New Mexico (105 delegates total) are friendly states thanks to their 25 percent-plus Hispanic population, but Obama won’t cede those votes. The Latino-factor also helps her in California (441) where she already polls well, but she’ll need to spend considerable time there to fight back against Obama’s made-for-Hollywood life story.
States to tackle: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Massachusetts
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York
Barack Obama: Nationwide, Obama hopes to combat Hillary’s name-recognition with his own star power. Besides blitzing the national media, he’ll probably start with his home base, Illinois (185 delegates), and focus on states with caucuses like Kansas (41) and Minnesota (88), where he might repeat his Iowa victory, and open primaries in which Independents and Republicans can vote as well. Obama should also tackle purple states in which Democrats normally fare poorly, such as Colorado (71) and Missouri (88), to draw out Hillary-hating indies. Independents can also vote in the day’s biggest prize, California (441), although Hillary has an edge in Golden State polls. The other grand prize, New York (281), is also Clinton country, but Obama will likely try to foment an uprising in the Big Apple—a victory there would make for giddy headlines—and leave the boonies to Hillary.
States to tackle: Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, California, New York
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Delaware
John Edwards: Assuming John Edwards stays in the race through Feb. 5, he’ll have to find a way to play kingmaker with his delegates. That means concentrating on states where he can pull in at least 15 percent of the vote, which is the Democrats’ threshold to receive delegates. He should concentrate on the South to capture the white vote that Obama doesn’t grab and Clinton doesn’t compete for. He already has roots in Georgia and could do well in Alabama and Tennessee (248 delegates total). From there, he can look to his strong second-place finishes in 2004 for inspiration. Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah (164 delegates total) all leaned toward Edwards in 2004, and could do so again. There probably won’t be room for him in California or New York (722 delegates total), but squeezing any delegates out of those two would add a few jewels to the crown.
States to tackle: Alabama, California, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah
States to ignore: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, New York, New Jersey
The Republicans
For the GOP, Tsunami Tuesday’s influence depends on how many people are still in the race. If Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee stick around after Florida, both could run regional campaigns in the Northeast and South, respectively, that could keep the race muddled. But if it becomes a two-way race, the Republicans’ winner-take-all delegate rules mean that John McCain or Mitt Romney could hold a commanding, but not invincible, lead moving forward.
Rudy Giuliani: For Rudy, Feb. 5 is everything. He took a gamble by ignoring the earliest primaries and focusing on Florida. If he wins there, media coverage will carry through the Super Tuesday states and he’ll look like a genius. If he loses—which is likely—he enters the Big 2-5 without a single victory to his name and he’ll look like a fool. Either way, he should focus on big coastal primaries like California and New York (274 delegates total), where John McCain is putting up a fight. Nearby winner-take-all states like New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware (100 total) are also must-wins. He’ll likely pick up a few delegates in states that award them proportionally (Massachusetts, Illinois) and the caucuses (Colorado, Maine), but those contests are unpredictable. Keep in mind: An ailing economy hurts Rudy. As recession looms/hits, Romney’s perceived business acumen translates to electoral strength, while Giuliani’s national security chops lose relevance, especially against an energized McCain.
States to tackle: Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York
States to ignore: Arizona, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee
John McCain: McCain’s success on Feb. 5 relies heavily on his ability to get Republicans to trust him—which is what went wrong against George Bush in 2000. Polls show him competing with Giuliani in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey (183 delegates total), and Giuliani’s likely third-place finish in Florida on Tuesday should allow McCain to command the national security vote nationwide, including the Northeast. All three of those states have closed primaries, which means McCain won’t be allowed to rely on his usual trump card—Independents. There aren’t many open primary states, and many are down South (Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee—175 delegates total), which means McCain may have to tussle with a regional-minded Huckabee. Out West, McCain’s home state of Arizona (53) will back him, but he’ll have to contest Romney’s Reagan rhetoric in California (173). If he really wants to stick it to Romney, he can campaign in Massachusetts (43), where a Romney defeat would be embarrassing, if not devastating.
States to tackle: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York
States to ignore: Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, Utah
Mitt Romney: First thing first—Romney shouldn’t have to set foot in Utah (36 delegates), where the majority of the population is Mormon and he’s a local hero for saving the Olympics. If he runs on his fiscal record, he should compete well in industry-heavy Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and West Virginia (217 delegates total). His nobody-noticed win in the Wyoming caucuses implies he may have some success in other Great Plains states like Montana and North Dakota (51 total). Also, his Reagan-coalition message (and Reagan looks) could help him grab the biggest delegate prize, California (173 delegates), which would be a coup over McCain, who currently leads in the polls.
States to tackle: California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee
States to ignore: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Utah
Mike Huckabee: Huck hasn’t won a contest since Iowa, but he’s far from toast. Of the 21 states holding GOP elections on Super Tuesday, about half are Southern and Midwestern states with lots of religious conservatives—in other words, electoral goldmines for Huckabee. Oklahoma’s winner-take-all primary will likely furnish Huck with its 41 delegates, and Arkansas (34 delegates) belongs to him. But it’s the Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee (127 total), which award most or all of their delegates proportionally, that will constitute the bulk of his winnings. Whereas Giuliani needs a handful of big wins, Huckabee should shoot for a barrage of small victories. Problem is, he’s running low on money, which makes national retail campaigning difficult. Look for more cheeky Web videos and other free media gimmes.
States to tackle: Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia
States to ignore: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, New York
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COLUMBIA, S.C.—I arrive at the 10:45 p.m. Obama rally to discover they’ve closed the doors. No one is to be let in. Not even campaign staff. Fire marshal’s orders. Variations on this scene happen every few days. There’s always some fire code invoked, then quietly violated. You learn to talk your way in, find another entrance, or slip past the volunteer on door duty while she’s immersed in her BlackBerry.
But these guys look serious. A group of official-seeming men in blazers stand behind the plate glass doors, trying not to make eye contact with the horde of press people outside. A woman taps on the glass; they just shake their heads silently. When this A-Team leaves, the unfortunate job of bouncer falls to a secret service lug. He looks exactly like Herc from The Wire, gentle side and all. Just as he’s rounding the corner, almost out of sight, you can see the stone face crack a smile.
Meanwhile, it’s not getting any warmer outside. “There’s gotta be a formula,” says one reporter. “Forty degrees outside … however many journalists …they know exactly how long till we leave.”
Another journalist doubts the room has reached capacity. “Not even Bon Jovi could fill this thing up.”
“Is it like a club?” cracks a guy toting a camera. “Do you have to bring a girl to get in?”
Then, as often happens when you leave trail reporters alone, the campaign slogans start to come out. “What’s keeping us here is the audacity of hope,” someone points out. “Yes, the time for change has come,” responds another, shivering. “We certainly are outsiders,” observes a third.
Finally, a staffer comes to the door and tells us to go around to the front. There, chief strategist David Axelrod emerges with Stacey Brayboy, the South Carolina campaign director. They’ve come to apologize. “I’m sorry, it’s full,” Brayboy tells us. “There’s 2,500 people in there,” Axelrod says. “It’s inspiring. You guys are inspiring, too.” My heart would flutter if it weren't frozen solid.
As a consolation prize, Axelrod promises free tickets to the Saturday-night election rally—which most of us registered for days ago. A reporter wonders out loud if there’s a piece to be written about the event being full. “That’s news, right?” No one answers. I crack open my laptop.
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FLORENCE, S.C. – No matter how many “truces” the Clintons and Barack Obama call, no one seems willing to concede the last shot.
At tonight’s rally, Obama rattled off his usual litany of defensive parries. He said he never praised Ronald Reagan, but that he wanted to create “Obama Republicans,” just as there were Reagan Democrats. He joked about e-mails alleging he’s a Muslim. He recounted pledging allegiance to the flag since he was 4 years old. As in the past few weeks, he dedicated much of the speech to defense.
But then Obama unwrapped a new slam, fresh from the speechwriters’ pen, no more than a couple days old: “If you get the war wrong, and you get health care wrong, it’s not a question of being ready on Day One,” he said, borrowing Hillary's favorite line. “It’s a question of being right on Day One.”
Just goes to show that when it comes to unprovoked attacks, no one is innocent. What’s a truce when you’ve got a zinger like that?
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Did George Bush pass his bulge down to Mitt Romney? In 2004, Bush infamously had a giant, microphonelike bump on his back during a debate against John Kerry. Rumors were flying that Bush had a direct line to Karl Rove during the debate and that Rove was feeding him answers to the questions (even though Bush turned in a terrible performance). Last night, Bush’s Bulge begat a cousin: the Romney Whisper.
At last night’s debate, Tim Russert asked Romney if he would follow Reagan’s example on Social Security. Russert was careful not to tell Romney that Reagan raised taxes to help Social Security funds, so somebody else tried to tell Romney instead. After Russert finishes his question, a Lost-like whisper is heard that mutters, “Raise taxes.” Romney answered that he would not raise taxes, and then Russert giddily informed him that that’s not the case.
We asked MSNBC why the whisper came through, and MSNBC’s spokesman responded via e-mail.
We heard the same thing you heard. There was obviously an open mike which picked up the whisper, but we have no way of knowing who did the whispering.
So, who is the whisperer? Three schools of thought reign in the blogosphere:
- It was a Romney staffer trying to talk to Romney.
- It was a producer trying to talk to Russert.
- It was another candidate whispering the answer to himself or his neighbor.
But forget about what us bloggers think. Decide for yourself after watching the clip at Slate V.
With Alex Joseph.
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COLUMBIA, S.C.—Today, Hillary entered the belly of the beast. The beast being Barack Obama’s base; its belly being Benedict College, a historically black school that Obama has courted assiduously over the past year.
The student body is largely pro-Obama, and it figures: Obama has visited the school, as have his wife, Michelle; actress Tatiana Ali; and Diana Ross’ daughter on his behalf. Hillary brought out her own star power today, but somehow Charlie Rangel and David Dinkins don't have the same cachet here. (At the next event, in front of a mostly white audience, Rangel and Dinkins are absent.) When I ask a student why Obama commands so much support, he points to the skin on the back of his hand. But a lot of students were adamantly pro-Hillary, and many more are conflicted, as you could tell from the packed chapel.
Which is a useful reminder that this primary isn’t over. Sure, Obama has been canvassing the state for days. But Hillary is holding four events today; Bill is holding four as well. Obama is leading in the polls and among opinion-makers, but remember what happened in New Hampshire and Nevada. Sixty percent of South Carolina Democrats are black, but what if Obama’s grip on that demographic isn’t as strong as we thought?
And keep in mind: Even if Obama wins, he can still lose. (At least in the twisted, overreaching logic of post-election analysis.) For example: If he doesn’t take a decisive majority of African-Americans. If he doesn’t win one-quarter of whites. If his overall margin over Hillary is too narrow. In all of these instances, the postgame narrative won’t be Why did he win? but Why didn’t he win by more? That's why the Clintons are painting Obama's lead right now as extra-wide—so when he wins by five or six points, they can claim strategic victory.
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Big shocker here: After winning Michigan, Hillary thinks the delegates from that state and Florida should be counted. From a statement she just sent out:
I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan. I know not all of my delegates will do so and I fully respect that decision. But I hope to be President of all 50 states and U.S. territories, and that we have all 50 states represented and counted at the Democratic convention.
This is, of course, exactly what Floridians want to hear. The prospect that their votes might eventually count is likely to bring them to the polls. If the person fighting to get them counted is Hillary ... you see the logic. But after Hillary's camp made such a fuss over Obama allegedly campaigning in Florida, this move feels rather shameless.
That said, if one candidate emerges as the clear front-runner after Super Tuesday, it's hard to imagine the DNC barring Florida and Michigan delegates into the convention. The DNC would rather go back on their promise to strip delegates than make a scene. Then again, if the nomination comes down to a battle for delegates, then those two states could matter quite a bit. In which case, sucking up now could well pay off.
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The chatter among political types is a new McClatchy poll released yesterday showing Obama’s support among whites in South Carolina slipping from 20 percent to 10 percent in the past week.
The obvious interpretation would be, Obama has somehow alienated whites, who must be gravitating toward Clinton. If this were the case, it would bode poorly for Obama on Super Tuesday, where white voters will dominate.
But the numbers suggest a different take. Obama’s numbers dropped among whites, but Clinton’s, at 36 percent, aren’t particularly high. Rather, it’s John Edwards who wins the category, with 40 percent support, up from 28 percent. If Obama has lost white voters, it appears to be to Edwards, not to Clinton.
Indeed, South Carolina voters appear to be gravitating toward their “own.” Edwards leads among white men. Hillary’s the favorite among white women. Obama commands a majority among black men. And the tie-breaker—black women—goes to Obama as well.
Yes, perhaps Obama’s radio attack ads hurt him among whites. Perhaps Bill’s loose lips hurt Hillary among blacks. But the way it looks, everyone is just drifting into their respective comfort zones.
Disclaimer: There are many polls out there. This is just one of them.
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The holy grail of campaign opposition research is the perfect metaphor: an activity or hobby or object that captures a politician's character. For George W. Bush, the metaphor has been his ranch, allowing Hillary Clinton to describe his foreign policy as “cowboy diplomacy.” For John Kerry, the metaphor was his penchant for windsurfing, which critics highlighted to suggest that his positions drifted with the breeze.
With Mitt Romney, however, no perfect metaphor has emerged. He has no special passion for flipping pancakes, nor does he collect weather vanes, nor has he ever expressed an interest in robotics. What, then, can his opponents use to symbolize his foibles?
Meh, how about windsurfing again. Who cares that he doesn’t do it? (Or at least there aren’t any incriminating photographs.) Thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, John McCain’s new ad makes it look like Romney does, goofily pasting his face onto a windsurfer’s body. “Where does Mitt Romney stand?” a voiceover asks. “Whichever way the wind blows.”
Forget Swift Boating. John Kerry should reach across the aisle and speak out against windsurfing-ing.
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The candidates get to ask each other the questions—how cute. Yet not even Q&A sessions can spruce up this snoozer of a debate. Here's who asked whom what, and why:
Romney asks Giuliani about China: Look how far we've come since autumn, when Romney and Giuliani were at each other's throats. What's more important here is that Romney gave Giuliani a charity question rather than talking to McCain, which was a gutsy move because of its timidness. Romney had the chance to set the tone for the next five days by ribbing McCain on immigration, fiscal policy, or a lack of executive experience. But instead, Romney decided to trust the polls and shy away from his mean-guy image. Considering he didn't do that in Iowa or New Hampshire and ended up losing, it might be a good move.
McCain asks Huckabee about the fair tax: This is a strange choice. McCain could have asked Mitt about his flip-flopping (which he doesn't hesitate to do in a new Web ad), but instead he turns to Huckabee and makes him seem like an economic pariah. A fine gesture, but McCain isn't after Huck's supporters, and Huck's supporters don't want McCain as a second choice. His question should have been directed at Romney to chip away at his maybe-lead in the polls.
Paul asks McCain about the economy: If Paul was determined to ask McCain a question, why not ask him about the war in Iraq? Considering they are as far apart on this issue as Iraq and America are on the globe, it seemed strange to fall back on the economy.
Huck asks Romney about gun control: Finally, somebody puts the press on another candidate. Huck claims Romney isn't consistent about his support for an assault-weapons ban, and Romney answers smoothly. He leans on President Bush's own support of the ban to bolster his support of it and wiggles his way out of another potential flip-flop trap.
Giuliani asks Romney and McCain about the national catastrophe fund: Giuliani, realizing he's screwed unless he goes on the offensive, resorts to his bread-and-butter issue in Florida: hurricane defense. Giuliani has been advocating a national catastrophe fund that Floridians favor because it helps with hurricanes but that none of the other candidates likes because, as Romney put it, Iowans shouldn't have to subsidize insurance efforts in Florida. Giuliani gets points for making sure Florida residents know that he's the only guy who likes the fund, but looks like a bit of a tax-and-spender to a national audience that doesn't care about hurricane insurance. It's a sacrifice he's willing to make since at this point he's essentially running to be Florida's governor (like Romney ran to be Michigan's governor, Huck Iowa's governor, and McCain ran to be New Hampshire's senator).
Despite the brief glimpse into the candidates' strategies, this debate quirk fell flat. There was no dialogue or back-and-forth, which meant this was a glorified Q&A. At this point, five days before Florida, we don't need to baby the candidates with time limits and one-question, one-answer rules. They're adults; it's time to treat them as such.
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Has anybody else noticed that the majority of the debates have had awful sound quality? Tonight's is no different, with a constant, hollow echo sound whenever anybody speaks. It's especially bad when they go out into the audience. I may be wrong, but I don't remember this being an issue at the last Democratic debate on CNN, though it was an issue with the YouTube debates. You'd think that after more than a dozen of these things, they could have figured it out.
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Everybody seems to think that a faltering economy helps Mitt Romney because of Romney's Bain Capital past. Romney, reason says, made money himself, so he can make the country some money. That's all fine and good, but what about Ron Paul?
Paul, of course, has been trying to be the canary in economic coal mine for months now. When Brian Williams asked him whether the government has a role in stimulating the economy, Paul started his answer with solid conservative logic: Lower taxes, fix the dollar, and deregulate the hell out of everything. It sounded great until he started talking about those pesky foreign-policy views of his. Once Paul started saying the war in Iraq and the fight against terror are reasons for the potential recession, he lost the fiscal conservatives in the audience. While Paul doesn't need to hide his beliefs, he also doesn't need to include all of them in every one of his answers. If he keeps his anti-war, semi-isolationist foreign-policy views separate from his economic talk, his menu looks pretty good: an entree for fiscal conservatives and dessert for anti-war independents. But when he mixes them together, the dish starts to look unappetizing.
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And we're back at yet another of these powwows. Thus far co-moderator Tim Russert has tried to play Gotcha with McCain, Huckabee, and Romney, yet none has taken the bait. Russert seems consumed with trying to get the candidates to say they don't trust one another, but his craving for conflict just looks desperate. Didn't he learn from the Democratic debate on Monday? Less moderator involvement means more squabbling.
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SENECA, S.C.—There’s a traveling variety show traversing rural South Carolina right now, featuring Danny Glover of Angels in the Outfield, former Rep. Ben “Cooter” Jones of Dukes of Hazzard fame, Madeleine Stowe of Last of the Mohicans, and bluegrass superstars Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Oh, and some guy named John Edwards.
A big theme of Edwards’ campaign this week has been the media’s neglect. Against his “two glitzy opponents,” he gripes, his message of corporate greed and middle-class struggle doesn’t merit much attention. “When they take a good man like John Edwards … and remove him from the story, it is wrong!” Jones railed today. (Never mind that Edwards appeared on David Letterman's and Tyra Banks' shows this week.) So, he’s pulling out all the stops for what could be his last grass-roots bus tour.
At a community center here in Edwards’ hometown, Jones warms up the crowd with a good 20 minutes of jokes, political opinions, and Dukes of Hazzard anecdotes. Wearing a yellow hat with the words Cooter’s Garage in bright red, Jones reminds everyone that Edwards, unlike some people we won’t name, is no phony: “John Edwards is like that, 'cause he comes from y’all. That’s the way y’all are.”
What I'm seeing is identity politics taken to the extreme. Edwards isn’t just like these people. He is of them. Seneca is his. Never mind that Edwards has a jillion in the bank and a 28,000 square-foot house. This is a home game, with a crowd to match. As one supporter put it to me, “In Seneca, either you’re voting for Edwards, or you’re a Republican.”
Still, the senator fires off a few shots. He chides candidates (ahem) who “jet in, hold a political event, and jet out. … If they’re not willing to be here the week before the South Carolina primary, what are the chances they’ll be here after the South Carolina primary?” He derides the “bickering” that occurred at the Democratic debate Monday, joking that “I represent the grown-up wing of the Democratic party.”
But for all his fire, you can tell this is the beginning of the end. (Here’s that dastardly media bias creeping in.) Edwards will likely stick it out through Feb. 5. Heck, he might push into the summer. But retail politics is his specialty, and South Carolina ends the slew of primaries that can be won by shaking hands. From here on out, it’s a cocktail of momentum, advertising, and free media that decides the races. And Edwards is right that on that last count—not to mention the first two—his opponents have him beat.
As Edwards prepared to come onstage tonight, the room suddenly went quiet as Dr. Stanley sang his haunting a cappella rendition of “O Death” (the version made famous by the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack). “Ooooo Death, Ooooo Death,” he crooned, as if he staring down the reaper himself. “Won’t you spare me over for another year?” Not exactly the kind of ditty you want on the campaign trail.
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Another day means another bicker-thon between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. First, there was the Cat Fight Debate on Monday night. Then yesterday Clinton aired a nasty, barely not-false ad that questioned Obama’s Reagan’s comments (again). That ad mysteriously disappeared today, supposedly after running its full rotation (all of 24 hours). In response, Obama put up his own ad on South Carolina radio that says Clinton will “say anything and change nothing.” In a rare act of civility, Obama’s campaign took the ad down once they found out Clinton took hers down.
But wait, there’s more! I just received an e-mail from Clinton’s press office slugged, “WHO’S DISTORTING THE FACTS?” that lists Obama’s “kneecapping and distortion” over the past few months. The fibs-in-question range from Obama’s innocent mistakes to more nuanced policy disagreements.
That missive is ostensibly in response to Obama’s comments earlier today, when he all but called the Clintons liars at an event in South Carolina.
When you run an ad making assertions that everybody who looks at it says it is wrong, you know it is wrong and you still make it, it means you are not concerned about accuracy or the truth.
Let’s take a moment to note that despite all this Obama and Clinton refuse to call each other liars or even say that the other person is lying. It’s like they’re afraid to confirm the cardinal Washington stereotype—that politicians are all a bunch of damn, dirty liars. Remember, they’ve been casually tracking each other’s “errors” for months on their respective "Fact Hub" and "Fact Check" sites. But now we’re getting closer and closer to a slip of the l-word. In the mean time, they continue to restrain themselves from launching full accusations of deception, falsehoods, and fabrications.
There’s only way to settle this: Fox’s new show The Moment of Truth. It debuted last night, and it’s handcrafted for politicians. The premise: Contestants take a polygraph test offstage, answer 21 questions, and then answer the same questions on camera with their spouses and friends watching on. If they answer all 21 questions truthfully—whatever that means—they win money but piss off their spouses. If they lie, they lose the money and still piss off their spouses. This is made for the Clintons!
Unlikely, sure. But it’s the only solution. It takes a lie detector test to get the candidates to speak honestly about lying. And that’s a sad truth.
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His lawsuit against NBC was thrown out. His New Hampshire recount effort failed to uncover widespread anti-Kucinich ballot stuffing. So, Dennis Kucinich has dropped out.
Correction: He’s “transitioning out of the Democratic Presidential primary race,” according to a statement. But why does the person who rode out a long, painful 2004 race drop out so early this go-round? One theory: the wife. As one Slate-ster points out: “He didn’t have the wife last time. The wife is the person who tells you, ‘Honey, it’s time to drop out.’ ” Of course, if Fred Thompson weren’t married to Jeri, he probably never would have run in the first place.
Kucinich will be making a more detailed speech tomorrow, but chances are he’ll be spending his newfound free time fending off a challenge for his congressional seat from Cleveland city Councilman Joe Cimperman, who already produced an attack ad accusing Kucinich of being an absentee rep.
So, will the Cleveland Steamer be endorsing another candidate? In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kucinich said he has “zero intention of getting involved in the primaries.” (If he changes his mind, here's whom he should support.) Viggo Mortensen’s nod, on the other hand, is still available.
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GREENVILLE, S.C.—While Barack Obama and Clinton (both of them) butt heads in South Carolina, there’s a second, parallel campaign going on: the expectations game.
The rules are simple: If you think you’re going to win, argue that the election matters. If you fear you won’t win, tamp down expectations and argue that the race doesn’t matter anyway. The importance of an election is only as big as the likelihood of you winning it.
Here’s one quintessential salvo: a new e-mail sent out by the Obama camp claiming that Hillary is going “all out” in South Carolina. “The truth is Hillary Clinton’s campaign is pulling out all the stops to win in South Carolina,” writes Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “And it includes saying and doing just about anything to win.” The e-mail goes on to detail Clinton’s various surrogates, radio ads, and upcoming appearances in the state.
It’s as if to say, Look, she’s trying! Naturally, the Obama campaign wants credit for what most people expect to be a win in South Carolina. (Of course, that’s what they thought about New Hampshire and Nevada.) Plus, it’s impossible for Hillary to refute. She can’t say, “No, South Carolina isn’t important to me.”
What she can do—and what Clinton spokesman Jay Carson did when I mentioned the e-mail to him—is laugh. “Yesterday, they said we’re not campaigning here,” he said. “Now they say we’re going all out. They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth.”
The fact is, the battle in South Carolina has been vicious. Hillary filled the airwaves here with an ad accusing Obama of championing Republican ideas; Obama in return unveiled a new radio spot claiming that Clinton would “say anything” to get elected. The battle between Obama and the former president has been well-documented. Now Hillary herself has returned, kicking off a fresh swing with a speech on the economy at Furman University.
And with less than 48 hours before polls open, the theatrics won’t be letting up. At least that’s the expectation.
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This is the first entry in what may become a Trailhead series called "The Neglected" on primaries and caucuses nobody cares about.
If you thought the Iowa caucuses were undemocratic, then you obviously aren't a Louisiana Republican.
On Tuesday night, more than 10,000 Louisiana Republicans got together to talk about whom they wanted to be president. For some context: 4.3 million people (Republicans and Democrats) live in Louisiana, and it's safe to assume that at least half may be inclined to vote Republican. The 10,000-person caucus, therefore, encompasses well below 0.5 percent of the party. The low turnout can partly be blamed on Louisiana's paltry number of caucus sites. Its 11 sites pale in comparison with Iowa's 1,784 locations. (To be fair, Iowa is a larger, less dense state—but not 150 times larger.)
But here's the thing—their Tuesday night vote didn't actually select a nominee. The 10,000-plus people merely chose delegates for the state convention—and the winning delegate body didn't even represent a specific candidate. "Pro-life uncommitted" won the Louisiana state caucuses, which means every Republican besides Rudy Giuliani has a chance of getting those delegates because the delegates will remain uncommitted until the state convention later this year. At the state convention, a select number of delegates will be chosen to go to the national convention to represent Louisiana. They'll have to commit to a candidate before they do that.
There are further complications to this process, by the way. This year, delegates decided to make things even more confusing by running on more than one platform at once (this usually doesn't happen). So, for example, some of those pro-life uncommitted delegates also explicitly supported John McCain. Reason would suggest that if you were uncommitted, that means you wouldn't be allowed to commit to any of the candidates, but we obviously left rationality behind about three paragraphs ago. So, among the candidate-committed delegates, John McCain won the most votes, followed by Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.
We could go into what this says about their efforts in the state or what this says about their chances in other Southern states, but why bother? It should come as no surprise by now, but Louisiana's delegate landscape might be blown up in two weeks. In an act of democratic polygamy, the state has a primary on Feb. 9. The primary abides by a traditional statewide, one-person-one-vote system, which you may remember from such classic grade-school concepts as "American democracy" and "representative government."
But, alas, it's not actually that simple. If Louisiana Republicans throw more than 50 percent of their support behind one candidate in the primary, then whatever limited importance the caucuses had is drained even further. That's because if Louisiana rallies behind one candidate to give him a majority of the vote, 20 of the state's 47 national convention delegates automatically go to that candidate. That, obviously, limits the number of national delegates that can be selected from the caucus-created state delegate reservoir.
So, while we know what's happening in the bayou, it still remains a mystery (which should come as no surprise, considering this is Louisiana politics). There are even more complications involving provisional ballots and preliminary results, but we thought we'd be kind and spare you those details.
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SUMTER, S.C.—During his speech at the M.H. Newton Family Life Center on Wednesday, Obama rolled out his usual riff about how Bush and Cheney won’t be on the ballot in 2008: “No Cheney! No Bush!” he said. Someone in the audience took the bait: “No Hillary!” “We won’t go there just yet,” Obama said, smiling. “We’ll get to that.”
Indeed, Obama is not going there just yet. While Hillary blitzes the 22 states that vote on Feb. 5, Obama is doubling down on South Carolina, banking that a big win in the Palmetto State will build enough momentum to launch him, Rocketeer-like, into Super Tuesday.
The result is a battle between Obama’s regional focus and Clinton’s grand strategy. Obama and John Edwards chastise Hillary for failing to appear in South Carolina so far this week, while Clinton tries to portray Obama as a one-state wonder. Her campaign’s daily e-mail blast includes “YESTERDAY IN THE STATES,” a roundup of all the things they accomplished across the Super Tuesday map, as if Jan. 26 were already over.
Obama, for his part, has been calibrating his pitch to his largely black audience. And not just the voice. (Although he did take a moment to recognize a volunteer who likes to “speak up and let folks know what she’s thankin'.”) The Sumter event also had more audience participation than usual. “I wish I could take credit for all the big crowds,” Obama said. “Take it!” shouted a woman’s voice.
Obama went after Hillary without much hesitation. He denied her claims that Obama championed Republican ideas when he called them the “party of ideas.” (An accusation that’s central to a new Clinton radio spot.) He mocked her answer at the Las Vegas debate, when she cited impatience about getting things done as her weakness. He disputed her characterization of his tax plan as containing a “trillion dollar tax increase.”
Which all points to one thing: “They’re trying to bamboozle you,” he said. “It’s the same old okey-doke.” That phrasing surprised me. You don’t see "bamboozle" and "okey-doke" much outside the context of whites trying to deceive blacks. No doubt Obama was aware of the association. He was probably trying to connect with the crowd on a personal level. But he might have thought twice about the wording, given that the Clintons and their surrogates have accused him of injecting race into the campaign.
But at this event, Obama made no attempt to skirt the subject. “I’ve been hearing people say, He can’t do it. ... An African-American can’t do it, or he’s got a funny name.” It’s true, I’d heard three people say that on Wednesday alone—one driving a cab in Washington D.C., one calling into Rush Limbaugh’s talk show, and one at a Clinton event that evening.
Of course, it’s not this crowd—or even this state—that’s going to need convincing. If you believe the pessimists, it’s the rest of the country.
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As long as we’re dissecting telling Bill Clinton moments, here’s one
more. Heading out the door of a Charleston
bar and grill Wednesday, the former president heatedly responded
to reporters asking about race on the campaign trail:
"This is almost like once you accuse someone of racism
and bigotry the facts become irrelevant. Not one single solitary citizen asked
about any of this and they never do.” [More context here. Video here.]
Fast forward to Clinton’s
Kingstree event that evening, where an audience member asked a long question about Hillary and Obama and
race. “We know you sound polite when you talk about Obama,” he said. “But black
America
is voting for Obama because he’s black.” The man went on to claim that America isn’t
ready for a black president and that Obama would lose to a Republican in the
general election. “I’d love to see a black president,” he said, adding that he
thought Obama would do a good job. “But America, it still has racist
problems.”
The questioner said he's a minister from a nearby town but refused to give his name. When reporters pushed, a policeman who was escorting him--and inexplicably wearing a Department of Corrections uniform--waved them away.
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At the same Kingstree event, Bill Clinton called on a small girl and was thrown
a curved: “What do you do when you get married?”
Clinton
laughed, maybe a little nervously. “See the press people back there?” he said,
pointing to the back of the room. “They put me through the ringer this morning.”
“When you get married,
if you’re really lucky, then your husband or wife becomes your best friend,” he
said. “And you get to live with your best friend for life. Like, Hillary’s my
best friend.”
He continued: “The best moment of my life is I was in the hospital with my
wife when our daughter was born. ... The best thing about being married is having
kids. … Those are the two best things about being married.”
Bullet ... dodged.
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Kingstree, S.C. -- Speaking to a crowd at the Williamsburg County Recreation Center, Bill Clinton just now offered an olive branch:
“If [Barack Obama] wins this nomination, I’m going to do what I can to help him become president.”
The promise comes after a week of bitter exchanges between the former president and the Obama campaign. "After all the mean things they said about me, I can’t believe I’m saying this," Clinton said.
Clinton was responding to an audience member's question--well, more like a statement--about how "black America is voting for Obama" even though "America is not ready for a black president." "I hope you're wrong about that," Clinton said, adding that he thinks Hillary is the best candidate for reasons other than gender or race.
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“What does that feel like to be a minority, to be a white male?” Tyra Banks asked John Edwards on her show. Edwards laughed, “It feels like you have to fight for everything you get.”
It was a joke, but at the same time a great rhetorical twist. Now suddenly Edwards is the downtrodden minority, just in time to campaign in the heavily African-American areas of rural South Carolina.
Edwards has long played the underdog, describing his opponents as “celebrities” and reminding voters of his mill-town roots. But this is different: If he runs with the idea that he—not Hillary or Obama—is the anomaly in this race, maybe he can convince people that his would be the historic, plate-shifting presidency. Free campaign slogan: Make history; Vote for the white guy.
I actually wouldn't be surprised if the hey-look-I'm-a-minority joke surfaces on the Edwards trail in the coming days. It's a clever comment on the topsy-turvy nature of this race, and it gains Edwards no small bit of sympathy. But more importantly—and perhaps more insidiously—it reminds white Southerners that they do have the option to vote for a white male, and that it's OK to do so.
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The Clinton Machine has morphed into the Clinton Hydra. With five days left until South Carolina’s primary, Hillary Clinton spent Tuesday in Washington, D.C.; California; and Arizona while Bill campaigned for her in South Carolina. Meanwhile, Chelsea Clinton is leading an “Our Voice, Our Future” tour that looks to turn young adults into Hillary supporters.
Today, at a press conference in Washington, Clinton said, “I think on both sides, our surrogates are obviously out there advocating for each of us. But this is between us. This is who's on the ballot. This is who's presenting our case to the public.” Except it’s not. Bill is presenting her case to South Carolina’s public, and Chelsea is presenting it to the youngsters. That’s OK—surrogates are a necessary and reasonable facet of the campaign—but Clinton is only one of two or three principals. Mind you, she’s not necessarily the principal thanks to Bill’s eight-year tenure in the White House.
Obama is catching on to the Clintons’ strategy and has no recourse other than to complain about it. Obama’s wife isn’t a former president, and his daughters are still getting visits from the tooth fairy. At last night’s debate, Barack Obama let out a sliver of frustration when he sighed, “Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes,” in response to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s two-headed critique of his record.
Today, he continued to talk about it, telling CBN’s David Brody, “She said last night that Bill Clinton wasn’t the one running for president, but this is the next primary and he’s the one who’s staying behind.” He knows he’s powerless to stop it, so he has to hope voters will think it’s unfair that the Clintons are ganging up on him or that she’s neglecting South Carolina. It seems that Obama’s star power—which has created thousand-person rallies—does have its limitations: It doesn’t carry over to his family members.
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In The State’s endorsement of Barack Obama—a coup he most likely didn’t need, but a coup nonetheless—the editorial board’s most compelling argument isn’t for Obama but against Hillary. In it, they imagine another Clinton presidency almost as a futuristic dystopia:
The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare. That is not all Bill and Hillary’s fault—but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored. Hillary Clinton doesn’t pretend that it won’t happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons’ joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication.
It’s become a refrain of the Obama campaign that they don’t want to relive the battles of the 90s. But this acute sense of dread—a preemptive Clinton fatigue—resonates for Dems who want a clean break from the past two decades. (For young people who don't fully remember the Clinton years, the feeling is slightly different. They back Obama, I'm convinced, because of an identity politics rooted in age. They see Obama as their candidate—they can point to him and say, He's mine—whereas Hillary belongs to earlier generations.) Meanwhile, however much Hillary wants to turn over a new leaf, her GOP opponents are more than happy to mull over the old ones. And with November a ways off, that will make for a long and painful general election.
That’s not to say Obama wouldn’t emerge from a general election bruised and battered. But the prospect of nine months of recriminations—let alone four or eight years of it—is enough to drive at least one editorial board over to the O team.
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Trailhead reader Mark Lyons has taken the lead in the Primary
Pool contest, notching nine of the 12 possible points over the weekend to bring his total to
25 points out of a possible 33. Mark was one of eight contestants to guess the
first-, second-, and third-place winners in the South Carolina Republican
primary.
This week’s honorable mention goes to Quintus Jett, the only
contestant to correctly guess the results of the Nevada
Republican caucuses, in which Ron Paul finished second to Mitt Romney,
ahead of John McCain in third place.
Also, Trailhead owes an apology to Jeremy Naylor, whose
original submission was not included in our pool due to a formatting error. After
the Michigan
primaries, Naylor had earned 18 points, which put him in the lead over two contestants
who each had 17. Naylor now has 22 points.
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So Fred’s dead. Cut to frantic speculation about what’s next for him.
One idea, floated by a campaign adviser to the Examiner: Fred for vice president!
"Having somebody like Thompson on the ticket, it seems to me, could go a long way toward unifying and energizing the base," Galen told The Examiner.
Unifying, perhaps. “Energizing”—that’s probably taking it too far. Galen continues:
"I don't even know if he'd take it, although I'm not sure I've ever heard of anybody turning it down," he added. "He has said flat out he's not interested in becoming vice president, but that's what they all say."
Frankly, we’re going to take Thompson at his word on this one. If the man doesn’t want to be president, why would he want to be VP?
Another theory, floated by the Dickensianly named Chadwick Matlin: Fred dropped out because young Thompson doppelganger Javier Bardem snagged the nomination—for best supporting actor! Thompson knew he'd been eclipsed.
P.S. As usual, the Onion had the story first.
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Sometimes it feels unfair to take a person's small moment and blow it up to Cloverfield proportions. But when that person is Mitt Romney and the small moment is him trying to endear himself to black people, it’s impossible not to.
In the first moment, Romney poses with a group of young African-Americans and says, “Who let the dogs out? Who, who.” (A spokesperson says he was responding to someone saying, “Who let you out?”) Later, he approaches a baby wearing a necklace: “Hey buddy! How’s it going? What’s happening? You got some bling bling here!” Fox News has the video here.
On the one hand, it’s a cringe-worthy display. George Romney may have marched with Martin Luther King Jr., but judging from this video you'd guess that was the last time a Romney interacted with an African-American. But on the other hand, it’s sort of adorable. He’s like your out-of-touch grandparent who tries to win you over by proving he knows the “Bad Boys” theme song. In the current issue of the New Republic, Jonathan Chait describes how Romney’s cluelessness can be touching:
Romney has acquired the aura of an overbearing, upper-class phony. But I see him as more of an earnest dweeb, desperately, and unsuccessfully, trying to fit in with his new crowd. I can almost picture him coming home from the Republican debates, crying his eyes out that he wants to move back to Massachusetts because all the other candidates keep laughing at him. If this image leaves you unmoved, you're made of sterner stuff than me.
Same goes for the “bling” moment. As much as I want to call Romney out for tone-deaf pandering—can you imagine him saying that to a white baby in Utah?—that would be stating the obvious. If any other candidate had said it, like Giuliani, the remarks might have sounded downright offensive. But with Romney, it’s clear he just doesn’t know any better.
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The holidays have passed, but it’s never too late for politically themed Christmas carol YouTube videos.
This one comes from James Quill, who sings his tribute to Barack Obama to the tune of “The Little Drummer Boy.” Here are the lyrics, from his Web site (footnotes are his own):
Come, he calls me,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
A new democracy,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
He was born in Hawai'i,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
He's gonna beat Hillary**,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
Dreams from Kenya,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Schooled at Columbia,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Endorsed by Oprah!
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Audacious Hope-Ba-a-
-Rack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
He's no white zombie clone!
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
He'll bring the troops home!
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Gay muslim, I beg your pardon?
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
He knew since Kindergarten,
Ba-rack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
Barack O-ba-ma!
**Have you noticed that transcripts of Obama's speeches always spell it "gonna" instead of "going to"? Is this a new phenomenon, is this now acceptable in print?
And, as for this line, it can easily be updated to "Giuliani", "Huckabee", or "Romney."
That's about 50 times better than "Breakfast at Huckabee's."
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During tonight's cat fight, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton rehashed a slew of issues from months past. No reason to be embarrassed if you had no idea what they were talking about; we're here to help. Here's a primer on tonight's hot discussion topics so you can sound smart at work tomorrow.
- Tony Rezko (a.k.a. the "slum lord"): Rezko was a Chicago landlord, political fundraiser, and Obama friend. Rezko was indicted on corruption charges and his trial is set to begin on Feb. 25. Obama has said Rezko raised at least $60,000 for him throughout his entire political career, more than $10,000 of which was given to his senate campaign fund. (Obama donated those monies to charity once Rezko was indicted.) Rezko's corruption charges has led some to call him a slumlord.
Complicating things is Obama's pursuit of Rezko's advice on a housing deal while Rezko was under investigation by the feds. It was widely reported that Rezko was under investigation, and Obama has since admitted it was a "bone-headed mistake." Obama then purchased a housing lot that was adjacent to one Rezko's wife purchased on the same day. Furthermore, there are questions about whether Obama did legal work on Rezko's behalf. The campaign says no, but others say yes.
Recommended reading: Chicago Sun-Times (
x2),
ABC News,
Wikipedia article for Rezko.
- "Present" votes: Clinton and John Edwards both scolded Obama for his "present" votes in the Illinois state senate that allowed him to show up for a vote but not commit to an aye or nay. This was a minor problem for Obama before the Iowa caucuses, with both of his opponents saying it showed Obama lacked the courage to take a stand on tough issues. Some of Obama's present votes were on hot-button issues like abortion or sex-shops. Obama maintains that it's common practice in the Illinois senate. Recommended reading: New York Times, Chicago Tribune.
- Obama's "party of ideas" and Reagan comments: Before the Nevada caucuses, Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal's editorial board that he thought the Republican party was the "party of ideas" and that Reagan "changed the trajectory of America...in a way that Bill Clinton did not." Needless to say, that didn't sit well with other Democrats, and the comments have since been misquoted over and over again. Recommended reading: Reno Gazette-Journal (video), Associated Press, New York Times.
- Bill Clinton talks too much: Today Good Morning America ran an exclusive interview when Obama told Bill Clinton to stuff it. Essentially, Obama said he's ready to engage both Clintons and that he found Bill's campaign behavior "troubling." At the debate tonight, Obama said sometimes he can't tell which Clinton he's running against. Recommended reading: ABC News, Clinton's official "Fact Hub."
- Health care: Obama's plan doesn't have a mandate for adults, Clinton and Edwards' do. Clinton and Edwards say that means Obama's plan isn't universal, because it would leave 15 million people without insurance. Obama disagrees. Around and around we go. Recommended reading: Paul Krugman, Slate, FactCheck.org.
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From the department of inadvertent grammar mistakes, Time.com's The Page files a classic:
In CNN debate, Obama and Clinton let it all fly — invocation by Him of
her days as a corporate lawyer on the board of Wal-Mart, invocation by
Her of Obama’s ties to the indicted contributor Rezko.
We know Obama has a Messiah complex, but the capital 'h's go a bit too far.
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A few months back, the Republicans all made their cases by saying they
were the best candidates to beat Hillary. Now the Dems are talking the
same way about McCain.
“It’s becoming increasingly likely that John McCain is the Republican candidate,” John Edwards says. And he’s the best candidate to beat the Arizona senator: “I can go anywhere in America and compete against John McCain and win."
UPDATE 9:58: This turns out to be the closing theme. (If you don't count their filler about Martin Luther King, Jr.) Edwards says he can beat McCain because he doesn't accept money from lobbyists. Given that McCain is such a strong proponent of campaign finance reform, "I think it’s dangerous to send someone against him who presents a contrast to what he represents." In other words, Hillary has lobbyist donors and McCain will punish her for that.
Hillary says that in fact she is the best person to beat McCain because a general election match-up against him will be about national security. She says she's "better equipped" to handle international challenges than these two little boys.
Obama agrees that McCain would make national security the focus, but says that rather than out-gunning him, the Democratic nominee "has to be someone who can serve as a strong contrast to overcome politics of fear." What he doesn't say is that McCain has huge appeal to independents and even some Democrats. Against someone with such broad support, Obama's own appeal to indies and even some Republicans could carry weight.
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What could have been an incredibly awkward moment somehow isn’t. The question is for Obama: “Do you think Bill Clinton was our first black president?”
Obama handles it with poise: “I think that Bill Clinton did have—still has—an enormous affinity with the African-American community, and that’s well earned. Like John, what I’m inspired by is young men and women who grew up in the South when segregation was still taking place.”
But more importantly, he says, “I’d have to investigate Bill’s dancing abilities before I accurately judge whether or not he is in fact a brother.”
"I’m sure that can be arranged," Clinton replies, laughing.
Worth noting: It's no small feat to crack jokes about race that don't make the entire room uncomfortable.
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Furthering the widening gulf between the GOP and Democrats' celebrity endorsement pool, CNN shows us that Dave Chapelle is at the debate tonight. Something tells us he's not a Republican.
Maybe he gave up his Comedy Central show to get involved with politics. If so, we suggest he follows Parliament Funkadelic's example they laid out in their black-politics classic, "Chocolate City:"
And don't be surprised if Ali is in the White House
Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure
Richard Pryor, Minister of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady.
Might we suggest he take Richard Pryor's place? If he does, Clinton--George Clinton, that is--would be proud.
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After spending the first half shivving Obama in the back, Edwards tries to make a joke about Obama's vocal tic of repeating lines. It falls sort of flat. For a second, I worry it could become Edwards' second pink jacket moment. But Obama saves the moment with a zinger:
Obama: “Charlie [Rangel] is absolutely right that Americans should vote for what’s best for them, their children, and their country. … in the same way that Hillary would tell you women should vote for what’s best for them, their children, and their country.”
Edwards: Why don’t you say that a little more often.
Pause, nervous audience laughter.
Obama: … Same as John wants white males to vote for what’s best for …
Laughter.
Five minutes later, Obama makes a similar joke. In this race, he says, "You’ve got an African-American, a woman, and John." Edwards doesn't seem to be laughing this time.
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Remember everything you thought you knew about presidential debates? Guess what. It’s wrong.
In the second half of the CNN debate, Wolf Blitzer promises us, “Whatever rules are left, they're gonna be gone.”
You know what that means. Rearranging furniture. No time limits. And, hopefully, folding chairs.
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Obama is stuck in the middle in more ways than one.
Neither Clinton nor Edwards is buying his claim that his health care plan is superior to their proposals for universal coverage. Edwards compares Obama’s attitude toward health care to George W. Bush’s attitude toward Social Security—i.e. they have the choice to buy in or not to. Hillary claims his views toward health care have “evolved.”
Obama argues that his plan prioritizes affordability over universality. He’d rather lower the cost of health care than force a family who can’t afford it to buy it. And responding to Hillary’s accusation, he says, “What’s ‘evolved’ is your presentation of my positions—which has happened frequently over the course of this campaign."
Seriously, this debate is phenomenal. It has both policy minutae and petty name-calling!
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These two lines seem to sum up the current two-way Enemy at the Gates-style sniping duel:
Hillary tells Obama: “You never take responsibility for any vote.”
Obama counters: “It’s important that people aren’t willing to say anything just to get elected.”
No wonder Edwards is feeling left out. When he finally gets a chance to speak, he sets his sights on Obama, taking the senator to task for voting “present” more than 100 times as an Illinois state senator. Obama says it’s not fair to focus on a relative handful of his 4000 votes. Edwards responds, “It’s the same thing you’ve done to us. What’s fair is fair.”
Edwards has spent the last two weeks known as Obama’s unspoken ally against Hillary. Chances are he’s sick of the lapdog reputation.
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Obama and Clinton are getting as testy as we've ever seen over Obama's comments about Ronald Reagan. For the record, here's what he said: "I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas
for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in
the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."
Clinton at first said that Obama claimed Republicans were the party of "good" ideas, Obama rebutted, and then Clinton realized she was wrong, causing her to say that's how it came across. Empirically, Obama is right, but perception-wise, Clinton is. And in politics, it's usually the perceptions that matter.
UPDATE Jan. 22, 8:07 a.m.: At the debate, Clinton did not assert Obama said the GOP was the party of "good ideas," although she has in the past.
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The past four minutes have seen some of the biggest slams in the race so far.
The question was about fiscal responsibility, but the answers quickly devolved into an exchange over what Obama meant when he said Republicans were the party of ideas in recent decades.
First, Obama drobs the B-bomb, denouncing it when “President Clinton says I wasn’t opposed to war from the start or says it’s a ‘fairy tale’ that I opposed the war.” Hillary clarifies that she (and her husband) were talking about Obama’s actions (or lack thereof) on Iraq in the Senate.
Obama then lets this one loose: While I was a community organizer in Chicago, “you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart.” POW!
In her response, Clinton retaliates: I was working to help poor families “while you were representing your slumlord Rezko in his real estate.” BLAM!
The audience loves it: “Ooooooo.” You half expect them to start chanting, “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!”
Hillary smiles: “We’re just getting warmed up.”
UPDATE 8:38 p.m.: Forgot to include Obama's attack on the Clinton legacy itself: "These are the kinds of political games we are accustomed to."
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Wolf Blitzer promises that this debate will be “about the issues.” Is that a slam on MSNBC for last week?
In practice, that apparently means a loosey goosy debate format. In the first half, time limits are more guidelines than rules. In the second half, “no rules." In other words, you're done speaking with Wolf says so.
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Today's debate has a lot hanging over it: Today's market crash, major squabbles of the past week, plus the race issue, which gets extra emphasis seeing as it's MLK's birf. Speaking of which, how many people want to watch a debate on their day off? CNN's taking a ratings gamble with this one ...
Also, from local news of the weird: The same people who made last week's creepy Republican presidential Mt. Rushmore imitation have constructed their own Democratic version. See it here.
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You may have noticed our slight obsession with Nevada’s electoral wild card, the at-large precincts. These special caucuses, held in nine of the largest Las Vegas casinos, were supposed to give Obama an edge; people figured the culinary workers who worked there (and who endorsed him) would put down their spatulas and turn out for Obama in droves.
Well, consider this the latest death blow to the conventional wisdom. (A phrase that, after this election cycle, should probably be retired. It’s been that wrong.) Just look at the results from the casinos:
The Bellagio – Clinton: 58.06% Obama: 41.94%
Luxor – Clinton: 44.16% Obama: 55.84%
Mirage – Clinton: 53.62% Obama: 46.38%
Rio – Clinton: 64.29% Obama: 35.71%
Caesar’s Palace – Clinton: 48.48% Obama: 51.52%
Paris – Clinton: 68.85% Obama: 31.15%
Flamingo – Clinton: 51.02% Obama: 48.98%
Wynn – Clinton: 50.63% Obama: 49.37%
New York, New York – Clinton: 58.82% Obama: 41.18%
As you can see, Clinton won in seven of the nine at-large precincts. So much for Bill’s blubbering. And good thing that lawsuit failed, right?
So what happened? As usual, the explanation is as unsatisfying as the prediction. Here’s one possibility: The turnout at the casinos was much, much lower than expected. (Only about 160 people showed up to the Caesar’s Palace caucus; the Wynn, which was expected to draw 1,000 people, had less than 400.) And those who did turn out didn’t swing toward Obama any more than the rest of the state.
Ironically, this means the at-large precincts helped Hillary more than they helped Obama—and for the very reason the NSEA filed its lawsuit. The one scenario in which individuals at the casino caucuses would have disproportionate influence—super high statewide turnout, coupled with super low at-large turnout—turned out to be the case. But instead of helping Obama, as predicted, it gave Hillary a boost.
In other news, down is up, the sky is green, and a school of fish just cycled past my window.
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News outlets are projecting that John McCain has won the South Carolina primary—a win that once again makes him the front-runner in a still-crowded Republican field. And he has the civility of that crowded field to thank for his second victory.
In 2000, much was made about the dirty tricks played on McCain, but this time nobody messed with the senior nominee. As Jonathan Martin at Politico notes, his rivals didn't mention him by name and decided to attack one another rather than McCain (who has plenty of policy positions worth attacking, including immigration, tax cuts, and executive experience). By most accounts, the dirty tricks also decreased, with tamer windshield fliers and the normal inflammatory calls that were delivered in all states.
McCain's three-percentage-point win could have been stopped by a few attack ads here and there. At first, it seems strange McCain wasn't knocked around on TV. Mitt Romney already aired attack ads in New Hampshire, but his half-hearted efforts in the state over the past week meant Romney didn't want to spend the resources against McCain in a state he wasn't going to win. Fred Thompson had nothing to lose, but he and McCain are friends, and he didn't have the money to air many ads. And Mike Huckabee gave his infamous no-attack-ad press conference in Iowa, which meant he was out of the running. Huckabee even complimented McCain's civility in his concession speech.
Does this mean we'll see an outbreak of niceness on the campaign trail in Florida? Doubtful. Mitt Romney returns at full strength in the Sunshine State and Rudy Giuliani may surface as a desperate candidate as Jan. 29 draws nigh.
Before his campaign crashed over the summer, McCain was the for-sure front-runner, but he bobbled his chance at the nomination without any attack ads to aid his fall. History is unlikely to repeat itself this time.
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According to CNN's fancy map of South Carolina, Fred Thompson is sapping votes away from Mike Huckabee in the socially conservative north. If that's the case, Thompson probably has a smile on his face.
Thompson's distaste for Huckabee has been apparent throughout the campaign. Thompson often pushes back against Huckabee at debates and regularly sends emails critiquing Huckabee's stances on immigration and taxes. Persona-wise, Huckabee is everything Thompson isn't—charming, funny, and self-effacing. Most importantly, Huckabee possesses the star power that many Republicans hoped Thompson would have in the race. Huck is bizarro Fred.
Most importantly, Huckabee has stolen Thompson's base right out from under him. Thompson's from neighboring Tennessee, after all, so he was the guy supposed to be doing well in conservative South Carolina. Thompson was supposed to be the guy who grabbed the evangelical vote. Thompson was the guy people were supposed to coalesce around. Instead, the story became about Thompson's lassitude and Huckabee's quips.
Given all of this, it's not unreasonable to think that Thompson would stay in the race through Florida just to torment Huckabee. Despite a litany of shortcomings, Thompson still pulled in 15 percent in South Carolina tonight (with 72 percent precincts reporting), so he holds some sway. One would think he'd sap some of Huckabee's strength in Florida, as well. It may be Thompson's only chance to stay relevant.
In his speech tonight, Fred Thompson said his presidential campaign was never about him. He's right. Maybe it was always about Huck.
Photograph of Fred Thompson on Slate's home page by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.
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Fred Thompson, in his withdrawal way-out-of-first-place speech, finally looked and sounded presidential. But, alas, his time has finally come, whether or not he wants to realize it—and it's all Ronald Reagan's fault.
Thompson reached the most stirring line of his speech this evening when he said that the Reagan coalition was alive and well. If Thompson was right, he would have had more success in this primary race--therefore, he's totally wrong.
A quick primer on the Reagan Coalition: Three different conservative groups—foreign policy, economic, and social conservatives—all coalesced around one candidate to put him in office for eight years. But if any message has become apparent during this mad primary season, it's that there isn't a coalition anymore: It's every splinter group for itself.
Mike Huckabee courts social conservatives because of his hidden-crosses in political ads. Mitt Romney attracts economic conservatives because the only thing about his candidacy that stays constant is his business background. And John McCain courts foreign policy conservatives because of his Senate experience and military years. Note how those three men won the first three major contests. The coalition is dead. And it's questionable whether it will show up again in time for the general election.
If Thompson really thought the Reagan Coalition was going to get him elected, then he just wrote his own obituary.
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News is crossing the wire that Duncan Hunter is dropping out of the race. We hold a special spot in our heart for the wily California congressman, so here are a few posts to remember him by:
Duncan Hunter Gets Hacked - Relive Hunter's most dramatic moment, when Turkish nationalists messed with his web site.
The Hunter Who Cried Wolf - Dunc teases us and pretends to drop out, only to tell us he's in for the long haul. Looks like he changed his mind.
Just Give Up - Analyzing his barren, unkempt website.
It appears Fred Thompson may be joining him this evening. Thompson is in 4th in exit polls and early returns and John King on CNN says Thompson advisers think he'll pull out this evening. They can share tears in political heaven.
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Juicy bits from CNN's exit polls:
- Mike Huckabee and John McCain are in a tight race at the top.
- Young voters lean toward Huckabee, but seniors greatly favor McCain. This isn't surprising but could be a major factor if older voters turned out in greater numbers than the kiddies.
- Mitt Romney won the plurality of votes from Catholics who go to church weekly, which is good news for his campaign after his big Mormon speech a month or two ago. (Unsurprisingly, very religious voters of all denominations preferred Huckabee.)
- Only 9 percent of Catholics, who made up 14 percent of CNN's voter pool, voted for Huckabee. Thirty-nine percent voted for McCain.
- Forty-one percent of South Carolina voters thought McCain had the best chance of winning in November.
- Fifty-eight percent of voters, according to CNN's exit polls, were born-again Christians or evangelicals. They favor Huckabee 41 percent to McCain's 27 percent. Only 11 percent of non-born-agains and evangelicals voted for Huck.
- Huckabee won support among those who care most about immigration, McCain among those who care most about Iraq. Again, this follows the polling we saw before the primary.
- 25 percent of voters were veterans, and that group favored McCain. Huckabee and McCain were essentially tied among non-veterans.
We offer the usual disclaimer that exit polls are just polls, not results.
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Thanks to the caucuses' arcane viability rules, John Edwards appears to have finished with only 4 percent of the vote in Nevada, but that's probably not the case. Edwards actually has 4 percent of the delegates assigned, not 4 percent of the popular vote. Edwards probably ended up with 10-15 percent of the popular vote, but that doesn't matter. The number that gets broadcast all over the country is that nasty and brutish number four. The same thing happened to Bill Richardson and Joe Biden in Iowa.
Edwards' campaign has to figure out how to spin a 4-percent finish into momentum for South Carolina's native son primary. It won't be easy. Edwards doesn't have much traction in the polls, nor much money to counteract dead-man-walking talk. Plus, Obama continues to dominate the anti-lobby, Americans-want-change vote.
Here's what Edwards can try to do: make a last stand in South Carolina's primary on Jan. 26. This sounds like common sense, but Edwards doesn't seem to be paying attention to that these days. He just gave his I-finished-in-third-but-I'm-not-giving-up speech in Georgia, not South Carolina. Georgia votes Feb. 5, which is more than 2 weeks away. Plus, it has a large black population, a demographic in which Obama trounces Edwards. Edwards needs a good-news peg before then, and the only place to get it is South Carolina.
We know Edwards is comfortable talking about mills, his daddy, and that he grew up in the Palmetto State. Plus, he won there in 2004. Just because Obama and Clinton look like they have the black and establishment Democrat vote locked up, respectively, doesn't mean Edwards should stop fighting in South Carolina. After all, he's best at that.
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Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton's projected win in the Nevada caucuses is a big deal. Not because she won—polls had her in the lead going into the caucus--but because the culinary union failed.
After Barack Obama's win in Iowa and his defeat in New Hampshire, Nevada's culinary workers' union endorsed Barack Obama—a move that pundits, aides, and staffers all said greatly boosted Obama's chances and maybe even guaranteed a win. But something seems to have gone wrong.
Latinos make up a large but undetermined portion of the culinary union, yet they favored Clinton over Obama 2.5 to 1, a loss that is foreboding for Obama as he moves forward and may have doomed him in Nevada. Moreover, Obama lost to Clinton in Clark County, where a large majority of Nevadans live and where the union has especially large sway because of its epicenter in Las Vegas. Even the controversial at-large caucus sites couldn't help Obama beat Clinton. Clinton's camp said that the at-large sites may give Obama a 5-point jump in the results, but it doesn't seem that ended up happening. If it did, then Obama has even bigger problems than he thought.
Clinton may have Harry Reid's son to thank for overcoming the union's power. Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid endorsed Clinton early on and seems to have delivered enough establishment support to sap the union's strength. With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Clark County chose Clinton over Obama 54 percent to 44 percent.
One last tidbit: Clinton had more than twice the number of Nevada unions supporting her as either Obama or John Edwards. They weren't as large as Obama's, but union members may have fallen in line with the leadership's wishes more resolutely. Exit polls show that she was tied with Obama among union members.
Obama struggled to grab union support in the early primary states, so the culinary union was thought to be a major breakthrough. Instead, it may have just allowed him to save face.
Photograph of Hillary Clinton on Slate's home page by Elise Amendola/AP Photo.
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If the entrance polls are suggestive of real votes in Nevada, Barack Obama has a big problem on his hands. Ms. Clinton, meanwhile, has reason to celebrate and wonder why all the hoopla over unions and caucus sites was necesasry. According to CNN:
- Seventy-two percent of voters surveyed were older than 45, and they favored Clinton over Obama.
- More female voters than male. Both genders favored Clinton over Obama, but women especially so (52 percent to 30 percent).
- Sixty-five percent of voters say this week's debate in Nevada played into their decision, and Clinton leads among those voters by considerable margins.
- Eighty-three percent of voters were Democrats, 52 percent of whom chose Clinton and 33 percent of whom chose Obama.
- The silver lining for Obama is the 12 percent of voters who said they were supporting John Edwards. Reason follows that they would go to Obama as a second-choice candidate, not Hillary, because of the two candidates' change messages.
We must caution that these are entrance polls, so they aren't the most reliable metric in the race.
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Meanwhile, in Ron Paul land, some supporters are in a tizzy that Fox News didn't show Ron Paul in second or third as the results came in earlier today. They've got a point, but there's a bigger question here about how the race changes if Paul finishes in second. As of now, Paul and John McCain are fighting for second, and CNN's entrance polls show Paul pulling in more votes than McCain.
As we've already discussed, Paul and Romney were the only two candidates campaigning in the state in recent weeks, so Paul should be expected to finish second. But he may not get there. As of now, McCain is widening his lead on Paul for second. The good news is that the three- or four-point bump from Iowa's and New Hampshire's results could confirm that Paul's libertarian message can do better out West than it can in the rest of the country.
But this probably won't matter much for Paul's momentum going forward. Paul already has a ton of money, so he doesn't need any of the added funds a solid finish will bring in. Plus, he's trailing badly in South Carolina and Florida, so any momentum out of Nevada would be lost very quickly.
In many ways, Nevada is an ideal state for Paul, yet his percentage of support still couldn't break into the teens*. This may be the closest look we'll get at Paul's ceiling as a Republican, and it doesn't seem to be all that high.
UPDATE 6:27 p.m.: Paul now leads McCain with nearly all precincts reporting.
*UPDATE Jan. 20, 7:06 p.m.: Paul broke into the teens, netting 13 percent.
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In a caucus that nobody cared about, Mitt Romney is the predicted winner of the Republican contest in Nevada today. Yay for Mitt.
Romney and Ron Paul were the only two candidates who paid any attention to Nevada, which lost its importance when South Carolina Republicans scheduled their own primary for today. Leading up to Romney's win, the GOP candidates were given a choice. They could either make a statement down South or out West. All of them chose South Carolina, including Romney.
But after a heavy ad presence and campaign schedule, Romney couldn't find traction in South Carolina, so he decided to pull out and switch focus to Nevada, where CNN reports 25 percent of cacus-goers were Mormons.
So, not to be rude, but Mitt's win means very little. But Romney's campaign won't paint it that way. Here's a guide to some possible narratives that Romney's camp will spin, and why they're all hogwash.
- Expected spin: Nevada win bodes well for California! Spinback: When Nevada originally entered the hallowed early primary-state club, the parties thought Nevada could be the bellwether for the rest of the region. That meant it was going to take California's delegate-rich temperature and give the Nevada winner a head start to win in Reagan-land. But because only Paul and Romney paid attention, Nevada's result won't carry much sway in California, where all the remaining Republicans will compete.
- Expected spin: We're the delegate leader! Spinback: Romney is now guaranteed to be the delegate leader, regardless of what happens in South Carolina. But only Romney's campaign will think that's important. Of Romney's three wins, only one has come in a contested state (Michigan), while the other two have been in states the rest of the field has left alone (Wyoming and Nevada). Romney has yet to prove he can win when it counts and ran away from South Carolina when the going gets tough. He has to earn his delegates to have a delegate lead carry any import. Plus, even though the campaign is becoming less and less about momentum as Super Tuesday approaches, South Carolina's winner is going to be the real newsmaker today.
- Expected spin: Even evangelicals likes us! Spinback: CNN is reporting that outside of Romney's near-unanimous Mormon support, he also beat Mike Huckabee among evangelicals. Perhaps, but Huckabee never went to Nevada nor did he have any ads running, so Romney was essentially competing against Huckabee's media persona.
Photograph of Mitt Romney on Slate's home page by LM Otero/AP.
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Our last
death watch paid tribute to two fallen Democrats, and we’ve seen one more
leave the political landscape since. Soon they’ll have a Republican to keep
them company in the political afterlife. Here’s our concession-rankings as Nevadans
and South Carolina’s
Republicans go to the polls Saturday:
Dead on arrival
Fred Thompson –
After a disastrous campaign, it will be sad to see him go. Thompson is like the
sleepy uncle at Thanksgiving who doesn’t say much, but it doesn’t matter
because everybody likes talking about his personality quirks anyway. Thompson
is an unwavering fourth-placer in South
Carolina, and anything but a close second or a win
there means he’s done. Fred, I channel Sarah McLaughlin’s classic when I say, I will remember you—Doo
be dah dum dum.
Walking
dead:
John Edwards – He’s gearing up for another third-place finish in Nevada, a
state where his pro-union rhetoric could have done him some good if he had more
momentum coming out of the early primary states. Instead, Obama has the union
momentum and Clinton
leads in the polls. But Edwards’
denial will not waver. There’s an embarrassment waiting in South Carolina—and it’s
at the polls, not the mills.
The enigmas
Ron Paul – He’s campaigned hard in Nevada,
where his campaign thinks his libertarian message might finally resonate with
voters for a strong third-place finish, with support in the mid-teens. But the
longer this race draws on and the more often Paul finishes with 8-9 percent of
support, the more likely he’ll stay for the long haul and hope the other candidates’
withdrawals will somehow send him support. A fine idea in principle—he’s got
the money—but none of the other Republicans’ message mesh with his, so it’s
unlikely GOP voters will jump on the bandwagon.
Dennis Kucinich – Since our last death watch he’s
asked for a recount in New Hampshire, was beaten by a
nameless, faceless aggregation of candidates in Michigan, filed a lawsuit
that ended
up in the Nevada supreme court. Yet, the peace warrior soldiers on.
Mike Gravel – Mike, we miss the days of Rock.
Duncan Hunter – Somehow, there’s always at least one
more piece of Hunter news for every death watch.
Healthy.
For now.
John McCain and Mike Huckabee – Conventional wisdom says both of these
candidates could be wounded by a poor showing. But they pull their support from
such different bases that a vote against one isn’t necessarily a vote for the
other. That’s why even when one of these guys falls, the
other is likely to pick him up. It’s like a GOP buddy cop movie, without the
homoerotic tension.
Not going anywhere
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – At this point, it seems likely that
Clinton and Obama are in the race past Feb. 5, when most votes will have
voted. With Edwards sticking around, neither candidate will probably be able to
grab the overwhelming majority of delegates that will force the other out.
Rudy Giuliani – The question for Rudy: Has the press become bored by his Florida and Feb. 5
theatrics? Or will they flock to the mayor once they’re in the same state as
him again? We think the latter, but it won’t mean much if Florida residents don’t reward Giuliani for
his loyalty and non-stop campaigning in the state.
Mitt Romney – A win in Nevada would make
him the Delegate King going into Florida.
But kings risk uprisings unless they hammer down on their rivals, something
Romney (and every other former-frontrunner in the party) hasn’t figured out how
to do yet.
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In the same way that Hillary's waterworks dominated the last news cycle before the New Hampshire primary, it looks like Obama's comments about Ronald Reagan are dominating the pre-Nevada airwaves.
Both Hillary and Bill went all out today criticizing Obama for his suggestion that Reagan "changed the
trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way
that Bill Clinton did not" during an interview with the Reno Journal-Gazette Monday. Obama also recently called the Republican party the "party of ideas" for the past fifteen years.
"I don't think it's a better idea to privatize Social Security," Hillary told an audience in Las Vegas. "I don't
think it's a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don't
think it's a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug
companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing
prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don't think it's a better
idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt."
For Bill Clinton, of course, the attack was more personal. Not only did Obama call him out by name -- he basically said Bill was a lesser leader than Reagan. The former president's reply was blunt: "I can't imagine any Democrat seeking the presidency would say they
were the party of new ideas for the last 15 years. But it sounded good
in Reno I guess."
Obama's defenders say he wasn't praising Reagan's policies, but rather Reagan's crossover appeal. "What Reagan did is he created Reagan Democrats," said Rep. Robert Wexler during a campaign conference call today. "What Obama is creating is Obama Republicans and Obama independents."
Whatever Obama's intentions, he should have seen this coming. For Dems, praising Ronald Reagan is as anathema as insulting Him is for Republicans. You just don't do it. Unless, of course, you're campaigning on a message of bipartisan cooperation and long-view political landscape shifting. In that case, you just might take the risk of praising Reagan. Sure, it could hurt you in the short term, but down the road it might help Democrats appropriate Reagan's legacy in the same way both parties have tried to appropriate Lincoln's. In the end, that could be a much more devastating blow to Republicans than shying away from Reagan. Maybe that's what he was thinking. Or maybe he just wanted to make Bill mad.
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As the prospect of more presidential dropouts looms, there’s been a lot of discussion about how the delegate count works. And with both primary races exceptionally close, a candidate's delegate count will soon start to matter more than his or her "momentum." A peek into Slate’s “Explainer” archives reveals quite a few useful, if slightly outdated, morsels:
And for people just tuning in:
Over the coming weeks, we'll be parsing through more delegate math, primary logistics, and other sexy topics. Feel free to send questions!
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You know what they say: If you can’t beat them, steal their taglines.
A new Web ad from John McCain, “Trust Huckabee,” takes its name from a third-party campaign that for the past month has been blanketing early states with push-polls praising Huckabee and slamming his rivals.
But instead of hitting back, McCain twists the meaning of “Trust Huckabee” to reflect well on himself—and, interestingly, on Huckabee. The spot features clips of Huckabee praising McCain (which he does often): “Sen. McCain, no matter what anyone may say, is a genuine conservative. … John McCain is a hero in this country, he’s a hero to me. … [He’s] pro-life … strong for our country’s defense and security.”
It’s a bizarre tactic, but it’s effective for several reasons. First, it fits with McCain’s current martyr complex. He claims he’s being attacked from all sides, but he’s of course determined to stay positive. Second, it uses Huckabee’s words. How can the “Trust Huckabee” folks complain about McCain when their own candidate likes him so much? Third, it makes McCain look like the front-runner. As South Carolina approaches, polls put him neck-and-neck with Huckabee. But by refusing to go negative, McCain comes off as confident. At the same time, it makes Huckabee look rather magnanimous as well. (In this way, it’s reminiscent of Biden’s “Joe Is Right” ad, which collected examples of his rivals praising him.)
And lastly, the ad doesn’t just not burn a bridge—it fortifies one. For McCain, Huckabee is an obvious vice presidential choice. Where McCain lacks conservative cred—on gay marriage, for instance—Huckabee would add some needed orthodoxy. Among Southerners to whom McCain's immigration stance is repellent, Huckabee's fence-building vision might have some appeal. Plus, a McCain-Huckabee ticket could practically charm its way into the White House.
An alternative explanation for McCain's pacifism is that he doesn't see Huckabee as a threat. Under this rationale, McCain would ramp up the attacks if Huckabee took South Carolina and surged in the national polls. But seeing as both men have essentially renounced negative campaigning, a tactical change like that would reek of hypocrisy. Chances are they'll extend the love-in as long as possible.
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Earlier today, a Nevada district judge rejected the lawsuit trying to shut down the “at-large” caucuses that will take place in Vegas hotels this Saturday.
(Quick background: The suit was filed by the Nevada State Education Association, whose leadership includes some prominent Hillary supporters. The Obama campaign questioned the timing of the suit, given that most people expected to participate in the at-large caucuses are culinary workers whose union endorsed Obama last week. More here.)
Hillary’s camp responded to today’s decision: “Make no mistake—the current system that inhibits some shift workers from being able to participate, while allowing others to do so, would seem to benefit other campaigns. More importantly it is unfair.”
But is it? Lots of observers have tried to parse through what, exactly, these at-large caucuses mean for the election. Some say that at-large caucus-goers there will have 10 times the influence of anyone else. Others, Bill Clinton included, say it’s five times the influence. Or do they have more influence at all?
To answer these questions, I had Bill Buck from the Nevada Democratic Party walk me through the math.
According to Buck, the notion that at-large caucus-goers will have more power than statewide caucus-goers is wrong, except in the example advanced in the lawsuit, which assumes extremely high turnout in the regular precincts and almost no one showing up in the at-large precincts.
The perceived disparity arises because of how delegates are allocated. Statewide, precincts are given one delegate for every 50 registered Democrats. So, no matter how many people turn out, the number of Democratic delegates statewide will be about 10,000.
In the at-large precincts, the number of delegates allotted depends on turnout: If turnout is lower than 400, divide the number of people who show up by five to get the number of delegates. If 401 to 600 show up, divide it by eight. If 601 to 800 show up, divide it by 10. And so on, until you get to more than 4,000 people, in which case you divide by 50. No matter what, the number of delegates will hover around 80, with a maximum of 93.
Presuming only 400 people show up to an at-large caucus—an extremely low turnout, Buck says—then that precinct will get 80 delegates, or one delegate for every five people.
Statewide, meanwhile, say 70,000 people turn out—a high estimate, but very possible, given that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire turned out in such high numbers. Remember that there are about 10,000 delegates to be allotted statewide (not including at-large precincts). That means there would be about one delegate for every six or seven caucus-goers.
Even in this extreme case of high turnout statewide and low turnout in at-large caucuses, the disparity between the caucus-goers’ influence—5-to-1 as opposed to 7-to-1—isn’t huge. In all likelihood, the reality will be somewhere in between. Either way, the at-large caucus system doesn't seem to merit the alarmist response it's received. (That said, it's true that the at-large caucuses could give Obama a 5 percent or 6 percent advantage in delegates if turnout there is overwhelmingly pro-Obama.)
So, why does Bill Clinton say that at-large caucus-goers would have five times as much influence as others? My guess is he’s comparing the 5-to-1 ratio (calculated above) with the 50-to-1 ratio among other precincts. But this doesn’t take into account the fact that not all registered Democrats turn out for caucuses. In fact, very few do. (Some Iowa estimates predicted 17 percent turnout among eligible caucus-goers.) That means that while there's only one delegate per 50 registered Democratic voters, the ratio of delegates to actual caucus-goers will be much higher.
Better at math than me? All feedback welcome.
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In a rare occurrence, I visited Duncan Hunter's Web site today to see if it still hadn't been updated in months. Surprisingly, it had. By a hacker.
In the scrolling news marquee, a team of hackers who go by the handles clientcode, undertaker, and theghost left a message for all of Hunter's American fans: "Kiss You Babyyy yeahhh (:"
Is that the best they could come up with? How about, "Duncan Hunter is a one-delegate farce," "Duncan Hunter supports an Iraq war that's killed hundreds of thousands of people," or "Duncan Hunter, you're a God-fearing slimeball. Drop out of the race." If you're going to hack the man's site, at least do it with a little panache.
This isn't the first time Hunter's site has been hacked, according to campaign manager Roy Tyler. He told me that a few days ago, Turkish hackers got into the site and left a message in Arabic that blasted Hunter for his pro-Iraq record. It was also hacked about a year ago. Tyler said the campaign expected to be a hacker target, so they took extra security precautions, but to no avail. When I called, Tyler said the campaign was unaware of the latest hack, but I later found out his tech team was already on it, and it was fixed it a few minutes later.
Trailhead found people on the Internet bragging about the hack that occurred earlier this week. A hacker congregation site, Turk-h.org, seems to suggest that someone going by "ayyildiz" attacked the site because of "politik sebepler" or "political causes" (according to a Turkish-English translation done by a friend). But it looks like different hackers (clientcode, undertaker, and theghost) got into the site this time. If my very uneducated assumptions are correct, it looks like ayyildiz is a prolific hacker, defacing over a thousand sites according to his profile on turk-h.org. The names "clientcode" and "undertaker" also appear frequently on various hacker forums.
But of all the sites on the Internet, ayyildiz picked Hunter's to defame. He now joins the illustrious ranks of topsexxxlinks.com and turtle-pictures.de. But look on the brightside, at least somebody somebody cares about Hunter's political beliefs.
With Chris Wilson.
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At times during Sen. Patrick Leahy's endorsement of Barack Obama today, he sounded like he was endorsing Hillary Clinton. Leahy focused much of his praise on Obama's ability to restore America's reputation around the world, which is a usual talking point for Obama endorsers. But one of Leahy's lines evoked Clinton's brand of change as much as Obama's. From the press release:
Barack Obama represents the America we once were and want to be again. ... Barack Obama will be a President who once again believes, "Yes, we can."
Note Leahy's word choice here. We're not creating a new America, we're returning to the America we used to be, presumably before President Bush took office. Obama won't be a new kind of president, he'll be the kind of president we used to have, like, say, back in the Clinton years. That sounds pretty similar to the kind of change Hillary Clinton markets.
As much as Obama needs support from the Senate establishment, he also runs the risk of dooming his change message. The always snappy and candid Leahy is a great pick-up for Obama, but his mind-set seems to be stuck in the '90s, which would be fine if Obama weren't running against the ‘90s' first lady.
But there's a trade-off. Leahy also has the political savvy to offer one-liners that eloquently encompass entire candidacies. From the conference call:
We need a president who can reintroduce America to the world and also reintroduce America to ourselves.
A "reintroduction to ourselves" is about as Obama-esque as it gets.
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Should Mike Huckabee really be talking about eating fried
squirrels when his son once faced allegations for hanging a dog?
You don’t want PETA on your case, Mike. They make the Club
for Growth look like amateurs.
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With the results from Michigan tallied, Trailhead reader Audrey Provenzano has caught up with front-runner Larry Krajeski to tie for the lead with 17 of a possible 21 points in our Primary Pool. Provenzano was one of 14 contestants to correctly predict the top three Republican finishers in the Michigan primary in the correct order.
“I knew he had a lot of family ties there,” Provenzano says of Romney’s win in Michigan. But make no mistake: Romney's success has not changed her opinion of the former Massachusetts governor. “He’s a complete schmuck and I really dislike him. The only thing consistent about him is his egotism and ambition.”
Provenzano, an Obama supporter and Wellesley graduate (like Hillary Clinton) who is now in medical school at Yale, predicts that Mike Huckabee’s make-or-break moment will be in South Carolina. While she now expects that McCain will win the state—though she originally chose Huckabee—she says the former Arkansas governor needs a strong second-place finish to propel him through Super Duper Tuesday on Feb. 5.
As for the Nevada caucus this Saturday, Provenzano predicts Obama will win the state, followed by Clinton and then Edwards. But as she says, “Nevada is kind of dicey. No one knows what will happen.”
While many readers have 16 points, the honorable mention goes to Paul Stenbjorn, the only entrant who has a perfect record in the Republican primary. Stenbjorn currently has 15 points.
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We knew the Clintons would make him do it. BET founder Bob Johnson finally sent Barack Obama an apology for his comments alluding to Obama’s past drug use. According to someone familiar with the matter, the media got its hands on the letter before the campaign even received it:
Dear Barack,
I'm writing to apologize to you and your family personally for the un-called-for comments I made at a recent Clinton event. In my zeal to support Senator Clinton, I made some very inappropriate remarks for which I am truly sorry. I hope that you will accept this apology. Good luck on the campaign trail.
Warm regards,
Bob Johnson
Slate staff writer and friend of the blog Tim Noah sends along an earlier draft he came across while digging through Johnson's trash on an unrelated assignment:
Dear Sidney Barack,
I'm writing to apologize to you and your family personally for the un-called-for comments I made at a recent Clinton event--you know, the ones I made about your drug use, as documented in YOUR OWN DAMN BOOK. In my zeal to support Senator Clinton, I made some very inappropriate remarks about your ingestion of WEED and BLOW for which I am truly sorry. I hope that you will accept this apology. Good luck on the campaign trail, and good luck staying clean and sober.
One day at a time, baby,
Bob Johnson
P.S. Now, shouldn't Johnson also apologize for his mendacious claim that he was talking about Obama's days as a community organizer? Because if that's actually what he was referring to, why should he need to apologize in the first place?
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Lynn Sweet makes a scene over Barack “transparency” Obama not releasing more info in his public schedule:
Last week, after I and some other reporters raised a fuss, the Obama campaign decided to disclose events held in places they deemed "public" and let a pool reporter in to cover. That is laudable. But not enough. For example, today Obama is going to Pacific Palisades--near Los Angeles--for a high dollar elite donor fund-raising event, and the campaign did not deem it worth to put on his "public schedule."
As Sweet has pointed out before, Obama has no problems announcing low-dollar events—it’s the big bucks shindigs that don’t quite fit his man-of-the-people image. In everybody’s favorite formulation: If he won’t disclose his fund-raising events, how can we expect him to disclose his shady White House dealings?
Raising a fuss is what Sweet does best. The first time I saw her, she was berating a Hillary advance person at a sheet metal factory in Las Vegas for refusing to hold a press availability. It was marvelous. The other journalists shrank while Sweet chewed out the staffer. It was like good reporter/bad reporter. (Other, better accounts of this moment here and here.) There was no avail in the end, but not for lack of badgering.
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From a Ron Paul press release titled, “Ron Paul Campaign Statement on Beating
Giuliani and Thompson… Again”:
“After beating Rudy Giuliani in
Michigan, and Fred Thompson in New Hampshire, Ron Paul has now bested both ‘national frontrunners’ in
Michigan, and in the three races held thus far Paul has received over 30,000
votes more than either of the candidates.” [emphasis
added]
Little did we realize, Paul is Thompson's biggest
supporter.
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In a conference call this afternoon, Hillary addressed the Michigan exit poll result that showed “Uncommitted” beating her among African-Americans, nearly 70 percent to 26 percent.
Asked whether this could hurt her in South Carolina and beyond, she replied, “No, I’m committed to running a broad-based campaign,” and said she’s “thrilled that we have people contesting for the nomination of the Democratic Party that represent the historical progress that America has been so noted for.” The campaign’s official response points out that Obama supporters organized on behalf of “Uncommitted,” despite his pledge not to campaign in Michigan.
All fair and true. But neither answer addresses the disparity between the overall results—Hillary beat Uncommitted handily, 55 percent to 40 percent—and the results among blacks. No matter how much behind-the-scenes, pro-Uncommitted antics were going on, it’s clear that that campaign penetrated among African-Americans much more than it did among the rest of the population.
The Obama campaign likewise played down the results in a memo: “[T]he results of the primary tonight have no bearing on the Democratic nomination contest.” Which is, of course, the right move given that Hillary beat Obama in head-to-head match-ups, 46 percent to 35 percent. But no doubt some people on Team Obama saw the exit poll results and smiled.
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Somebody should tell John McCain that it isn't 2007 anymore. McCain's campaign announced today that they're recycling a Woodstock-themed ad that first ran in New Hampshire last October. Predictably, it's terribly outdated.
Here's the basic gist of the ad, which pulls footage from a Fox News debate: McCain says Hillary wanted to earmark $1 million for a Woodstock concert museum; McCain makes a poignant quip about not going to Woodstock because he was "tied up" at the time; roll footage of McCain on a bed as a POW; standing ovation; McCain says sinister earmarkers like Clinton shouldn't be president; John McCain approves this message.
Here's the problem: The ad comes from a long-ago epoch when Hillary Clinton was the inevitable Democratic nominee, Fred Thompson was still a major player, and McCain still symbolized a failed candidacy more than a rejuvenated war hero.
The election has matured quite a bit since then, even if the level of discourse hasn't. Originally, the ad used Clinton as a prop to show that John McCain isn't afraid of the Clinton machine. But that's not the situation on the ground anymore. Now that Obama short-circuited Hillary, the Republicans have to run against all Democrats, not just Clinton.
Considering how old the ad is, there must be a reason why McCain is recycling it. A working theory: The segment touches on the economy (wasted government spending) while still hyping McCain's national security credentials. For McCain, who doesn't like to pander on economic issues, hyping his commitment to curtailing pork-barrel projects is the smartest way to address the growing economic concern in the country.
The original ad didn't stay on the air very long in New Hampshire. Fox News sent a cease-and-desist letter to McCain's camp saying it doesn't allow debate footage in political advertisements. That prompted McCain to redo the ad and release a different version. The new South Carolina ad is an exact replica of the first Woodstock ad, just without the Fox News logo onscreen. This seems like a curious and not-so-kosher way to get around the cease and desist issue.
The McCain campaign and Fox News haven't returned requests for comment.
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It’s no secret that union endorsements are more powerful in states with caucuses than in those with primaries. Without the privacy of the voting booth, you’re much less likely to flout your union’s preference. But that’s exactly what Bill Clinton is asking Nevadans to do.
The former president told an audience in Sparks, Nev., yesterday that he had spoken with members of the Culinary Workers union who said they would ignore the union's endorsement and caucus for Hillary. “They think they're better than you are at identifying and physically getting people to their caucus sites,” he said. “And I bet they're wrong.”
The Clintons have made their disdain for caucuses plenty clear. “You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard,” Hillary said last week after Obama won Iowa and the Culinary endorsement. “That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time—they're disenfranchised.”
But then, when it became clear that otherwise-disenfranchised culinary workers would likely dominate the at-large precincts set up in Vegas hotels, the Clintons opposed that, too. The Nevada State Education Association, whose leadership largely supports Clinton, filed a suit protesting (legitimately, it seems) that the at-large precincts give caucus-goers disproportionate influence. Bill agreed with the complaint: “I think the rules oughta be the same for everybody.” Of course, there was no objection to the process before Obama won the union's backing.
This argument—that caucuses are inherently unfair and undemocratic—has merit. It doesn't allow everyone to vote. It weights some votes more than others. There's no secret ballot. But somehow these points only come up in the statements of the losing (or handicapped to lose) party. Watch them resurface if Hillary doesn’t win Nevada. If she does … well, then maybe the system isn’t so bad after all.
UPDATE 4:22 p.m.: The Culinary Workers union weighs in on Bill's statements. “I think if we had endorsed Hillary Clinton, they probably wouldn’t be saying
that,” spokesman Chris Bohner tells me. “I think they would be urging members to follow
the union leadership.”
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If you were watching last night's Democratic debate closely, you probably noticed that Dennis Kucinich was not there.
That's because, in the hours leading up to the debate, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that NBC did not have to allow Kucinich to participate. The decision overruled a district court judge's order that the network include Kucinich.
Ultimately, the high court decided that the lower court didn't have the power to force NBC's hand. Here's an excerpt from the decision:
In other words, Kucinich should have complained to the FCC, not a local court. A footnote later explains that the lower court's attempt to exercise prior restraint on NBC is a violation of the First Amendment and therefore unconstitutional.
With respect to Kucinich's second claim—that NBC violated its contract by going back on its initial invitation—the Supreme Court decides thusly: "We conclude that the district court manifestly abused its discretion in determining that a contract existed between the parties." A contract by definition requires "an offer an acceptance, a meeting of the minds, and consideration. Here, the element of consideration is absent." That's basically a fancy way of saying they never made a deal.
The decision isn't just a rebuke of Kucnich's complaint. It seems to rather harshly criticize the thinking of Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson. (The court "manifestly abused its discretion.") In retrospect, his musings about "fairness" and opposing viewpoints turn out to be as flimsy as they sounded at the time.
Kucinich is still getting his platform, albeit a smaller one. This morning, he appeared on the radio show Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, where they replayed the audio from last night's debate, pausing it to allow Kucinich to answer the questions as well. You can listen and read the transcript here.
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The decision to let the candidates ask each other questions—risky, by cable-network standards—was probably the best part of the debate.
For one, it led to some of the most substantive exchanges of the night: Edwards asked Obama about lobbyist money. Obama asked Edwards about the question of residual troops in Iraq. And Hillary asked Obama whether he would co-sponsor legislation to require congressional approval for pacts with the Iraqi government.
The format also reveals a lot about the candidates. They’re judged for not just their answers, but their questions, too. It brings out the subtlety in their thinking, exposes when their thinking lacks subtlety, and shows how they perceive their opponents’ weaknesses. Plus, that’s a president’s job—to ask questions of people who know more than they do. So sometimes it's more useful to know what questions your president will ask than what answers he or she will pretend to have.
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Barack Obama had a great pivot when asked why blacks disproportionately drop out of the education system. Within the first sentence, Obama had made his answer not just about blacks but about Latinos, too. All of a sudden, Obama is talking about all minorities, not just his minority.
On the line is whether Obama can use his own status as a nonwhite man to court nonwhite voters, rather than using his African-American background to court black voters.
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Obama gets the first (and probably the last) sincere laugh of the the night.
A moderator asks: Is there a history of Hispanics not voting for black candidates?
"Not in Illinois," says Obama. "They voted for me."
It gets laughs, but it also serves a purpose: Reminding Latino voters that it's OK to vote for him.
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John Edwards answers each question as if he'd been asked, Sen. Edwards, can you please recite a few of your talking points on Subject X for us?
Brian Williams asks, "What’s the problem with English as an official language?" Edwards takes a few minutes to weave in and out of immigration reform specifics—penalties, pathway to citizenship, education—and finally, after Williams reminds him what the question was, manages to squeeze out this answer: "I think that [learning English] should be a requirement for being an American citizen."
Now that wasn't so hard, was it?
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All three candidates agree to enforce the law that cuts off federal funding for schools that don't offer ROTC programs. In their answers, Obama and Clinton take a few minutes to praise soldiers serving in Iraq. Edwards turns his answer toward veterans' benefits. Seeing a missed opportunity, Obama and Clinton both butt in and follow up with 30 seconds on veterans.
A friend points out: Watch Russert bring this back in two years when the candidates realize they would be forcing schools to violate their own nondiscrimination policies. (The subtext to the whole question is that many schools oppose Don't Ask, Don't Tell.) If so, he has just introduced a brilliant new questioning tactic: the future gotcha!
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A look inside CNN's exit polls:
GOP
- Of the 13 percent of voters who were 18 to 24 years old, Ron Paul pulled in 21 percent support, third-highest. Probably a testament to how low youth turnout was and how Paul supporters will turn out no matter the weather or stakes.
- Very religious voters (visit church more than once a week) went for Huckabee, the regular churchgoers went for Romney, and those who never go to church went for McCain.
- Romney did not dominate the economic pessimists as expected. Those who thought the national economy was good went overwhelmingly toward Romney. But among those who thought it was "not good" or "poor" McCain and Romney were tied for support.
Democrats
- Young voters (18-39) favored "Uncommitted" over Clinton. But that age subset made up only 32 percent of the vote. Older voters liked Hillary better, so she was the overall winner. This doesn't bode well for Hillary's youth-outreach efforts, although Michigan hasn't seen Clinton firsthand.
- The more years of education people had, the more likely they were to vote Uncommitted. That may say more about Uncommitted-outreach efforts than anything else. Similarly, the margin between Clinton and Uncommitted narrowed among richer voters, although she still won in every income bracket.
- White women: 70 percent of support for Clinton. Nonwhite women: 65 percent support for Uncommitted.
Also of note, the gender breakdown in the two parties is inverse: 56 percent of Democratic voters were female, 44 percent male. For the GOP: 56 percent male, 44 percent female.
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Here comes the good part. (Fingers crossed.)
NBC has decided to let the candidates ask each other two questions--wait, says Brian Williams, make that one question. (So this is why they didn't let Kucinich in—it would have taken too long.) Sounds like a gotcha opportunity. A better idea: Let each candidate ask the moderators a question!
John Edwards asks Obama whether he thinks lobbyists expect favors in return for their money. Obama starts by clarifying that he doesn't take money from special interests, then elaborates on how he's committed to reducing lobbyists' influence in Washington.
Hillary asks Obama if he'll co-sponsor legislation to say that any action with the Iraqi government has to be ratified by Congress. (Kind of like this bill.) He says yes! Or at least he sounds vaguely positive about the idea. Finally, something we can all agree on.
Obama uses his question to ask Edwards about the details of pulling troops out of Iraq. This format is refreshing, no?
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We've moved on from the Awkward, Useless Questions segment to the Economy segment.
All the candidates talk about how they'd cut down on foreign ownership. Edwards points to how this trend hurts the middle class more than the wealthiest. Hillary says she'd cut down on home foreclosures by freezing interest rates. Obama ties our dependence on foreign ownership to energy policy.
Only Hillary tailors her answer to the audience. She talks about how home foreclosures and bankruptcy laws are "black and brown issues" that affect minorities disproportionately. In Las Vegas, which is one of the home-foreclosure capitals of the United States, these answers resonate.
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A number hidden at the bottom of the returns: Fred Thompson is beating Rudy Giuliani in Michigan by nearly 3,000 votes. This matters not because Thompson is beating Giuliani, but because Giuliani is losing to Thompson.
Rudy Giuliani used to be a peculiar kind of national frontrunner—a guy who performed poorly in the early-primary states but who did well nationally because of name recognition. Part of Giuliani's problem was that the more he campaigned and advertised in states, the less that people wanted to vote for him. For a while, Rudy was better off staying in the national headlines but off the campaign trail.
Well, it's clear that that's not possible any more. Giuliani stayed as far away from Michigan as possible, and he's paying the price. (Due to his own strategy, his headlines have been insulated inside of Florida.) But that's not Giuliani's problem. The real issue is that Thompson has done the same, and he's still beating Giuliani.
Even if Giuliani comes back to recapture momentum after a win in Florida, the Michigan result calls into question the strength of his candidacy. Without momentum, he's worse than Fred Thompson. With momentum, can he be much better?
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John Edwards: "For 54 years, I’ve been fighting with every fiber of my
body."
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The shallowness—it just don't stop. The first 20 minutes are consumed entirely with crappy questions.
- Sen. Obama, you won the women's vote in Iowa; Hillary won it in N.H. Is that because you said, "You're likable enough, Hillary"?
- Obama, do you believe race is an issue when people go into the privacy of a voting booth?
- Sen. Edwards, what is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?
Edwards does his best to not answer this question, so they ask it again.
Even someone in the audience agrees: "You two are only asking race-based questions!" he shouts. Everyone pauses awkwardly. Was that Dennis Kucinich??
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Kudos to Mitt Romney, who started his victory speech at the same time John McCain was giving his second-place speech. Fox decided to switch over to Mitt, effectively muting McCain.
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And we're off!
Brian Williams cites a bunch of recent comments about Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama's unmentionable teenage activities. "How did we get here?" he asks. He might as well have asked, Who can give me the biggest platitude?
Hillary: Neither race nor gender should be part of this campaign. (But notice: Hillary's wearing pink; Obama's wearing blue. Gender politics live!)
Obama: John and Hillary have been committed to racial equality. We need to come together.
Edwards: I grew up in the South during segregation.
Segue to Tim Russert pulling out a satchel full of documents. For all the time candidates spent the past day trying to "move on" and set race and gender aside, the moderators seem determined to drag everyone back. Which is, of course, sort of their job.
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It seems home is where the votes are. Mitt Romney has won in Michigan, and we owe him at least a moment so he can bask in his gold-medal glory ...
Now, with that out of the way, let's begin the dissection. A lot of the story line coming out of Romney's win will be determined by the demographics of his support. If a bunch of senior-citizens braved the snow to vote for him, then they probably voted for him because of George Romney's gubernatorial stint. But, if young and middle class voters went for Romney, then he can position himself as the recession-friendly candidate as the country goes the way of Michigan down a dark economic rabbit hole.
The other issue at play for Romney: Can he rightfully call himself the front-runner? He's got more delegates than anybody else and looks strong going into Nevada, where he'll compete while everybody else is gallivanting around South Carolina. From there, he'll be one of two or three challengers to Giuliani in Florida (Romney, McCain, and Huckabee if he wins South Carolina).
The impact on McCain will be muted if the exit polls hold true and independents decided to stay home. McCain is counting on independents to power him through the primaries and the general election, and it's a reasonable expectation given all of the "unification" rhetoric flying around the electoral cycle right now. So, if independents didn't come out to mark the ballot, McCain's camp can't be that shocked by the results. It doesn't look good from the outside-looking-in, but the actual, hard data probably won't show any surprises for McCain.
Huckabee? Fox is trying to spin it as a damaging blow, pre-South Carolina, but we're skeptical. He'll reboot his news cycle with the first Huckism he utters on the trail in South Carolina, and off we'll go again—chasing a new narrative. He's already tried to change the subject by saying he was outspent "50 to one" in Michigan. Sounds like he's taking a page out of John Edwards' book.
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As results trickle in, the early precincts suggest Hillary Clinton is holding off the great, shadowy threat that goes by "Uncommitted." But does it even matter? Regardless of what happened tonight, Clinton is immune from bad or good press. If she obliterated the uncommitted vote, opponents can say she won on name-recognition alone. If she lost to uncommitted, she can rebut that it's because she pledged not to campaign in the state.
Plus, all of the soundbites coming out of the debate are going to drown out any story lines coming out of Michigan for the Democrats.
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Of the many story lines to pay attention to this evening: Who gets more votes, Mike Gravel or Duncan Hunter? As of now, Bill Kristol and company on Fox News tell me that Gravel has seven more votes (51 to 44) with 2 percent of precincts reporting.
Can Hunter stun the Alaskan and roar from behind? Remember, he's already got a delegate. Gravel better watch out.
UPDATE 8:41 p.m.: Hunter pulls ahead!!! By 11 votes!!! He has 10 percentage points more than Gravel. Three percent of precincts reporting. Stay tuned for regular updates.
UPDATE 8:45 p.m.: They're tied!!! But Gravel has one more percentage point's worth of precincts reporting, so Hunter actually has the edge.
UPDATE 9:18 p.m.: Hunter is up by over 100 events. I'm going out on a limb and calling this race. Hunter will win (more votes than Gravel). You heard it here first.
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Michigan exit polls are just beginning to trickle out, so there are a lot of reasons to take this Fox News report with a grain of salt. But it does contain one potentially meaningful tidbit. Among African-Americans, Hillary won an estimated 25 percent of the vote. Uncommitted: 69 percent.
Hillary will of course end up taking the cake. But it's not quite as tasty when you slice it like that. Going into Nevada and especially South Carolina, the fact that the majority of blacks preferred "Uncommitted"—if that turns out to be the case in the final tally—doesn't bode well.
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Perhaps wolverines do hibernate after all. Reports out of Michigan today suggest people didn't feel like plowing through inches of snow to vote in a primary that doesn’t matter for Democrats and sort of matters for Republicans (mainly if Romney loses). So, with two and a half hours to go before the returns come in, it’s worth a quick look at who wins and who loses because of the 20 percent turnout that’s expected.
WINNERS
Democrats: If the Democratic National Committee is smart, it will harp on the low turnout numbers. They can spin the lack of interest in Michigan and say it proves that the record activity we saw in New Hampshire and Iowa was really due to the excitement around the Democratic race. In reality, the snow was probably just as big of a factor, but you can’t freeze spin.
Mitt Romney: Bear with my series assumptions: If there are fewer voters, that means the exit polls encompass more of the sample. That means the exit polls are probably going to be more accurate. That means that the early pro-Romney reports—heavy Republican presence at the Republican primary, and the economy is most important—are likely to hold true. Also, older voters are usually more reliable than younger voters, which means that low turnout could encompass a lot of seniors who still know Papa Romney, former governor of Michigan.
LOSERS
Carl Levin: Levin’s boneheaded plan to make Michigan matter in the electoral cycle by moving its primary earlier blew up in his face once the Democrats pulled out. Today’s low turnout is only a nasty reminder of how ill-fated his ploy was from the get-go.
Markos Moulitsas: Because he wears an L on his forehead all the time. That, and the Democrats for Romney thing probably fell on its face if nobody went to the polls.
The loser: Whoever loses the primary—Romney or McCain—won’t be able to blame the result on low turnout. Unused ballots mean that all candidates failed to motivate their supporters enough to go out and vote for them come frozen hell or high water. But the winner won’t have to worry about this—a win is a win. Only the loser will have to explain why he couldn’t beat Mother Nature.
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Here's a sentence that affirms our continued fascination with the New York Sun, particularly its style guide:
A number of opinion surveys put Messrs. McCain and Romney in a dead heat, with Michael Huckabee trailing in third place.
Indeed, he seems to be having some trouble in this state against Willard Romney. Freddie Thompson, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. At least he can beat Ronald Paul.
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Listen to Barack Obama's new Spanish-language video (short version here; longer version here). Seriously, just listen. The church bells, the drums, the cheesy mid-'90s synth track. Something tells me this style wouldn't quite fly in a New Hampshire spot.
The ad, which airs in Nevada before Saturday's caucus, tweaks Obama's message slightly for an increased Hispanic demographic. (Nevada is about 24 percent Latino, according to the 2006 U.S. Census.) In it, Obama emphasizes his mixed background and international upbringing. He is, after all, a migrant, if not an immigrant.
Then there's the coda, which sounds slightly less goofy than if Newt Gingrich said it: "Soy Barack Obama, y apruebo este mensaje."
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So the Nevada Supreme Court has ordered a hearing for 1:30 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. ET) to address NBC's appeal. It will last 30 minutes, after which we'll know whether or not Dennis Kucinich will have his chance to speak truth to Brian Williams. (See the court's oral argument order here.)
If he doesn't get to participate, Kucinich will find a way to broadcast his answers to the debate questions live to his Web site. “That’s his Plan B,” said spokeswoman Sharon Manitta.
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Back in November, as the Democratic presidential candidates assembled for their first Vegas debate, we imagined which candidates would be which hotels along the Strip. Now, as they return to Sin City for tonight's debate, the comparisons are more useful than ever, if slightly outdated:
Hillary Clinton—Wynn Las Vegas. Polished, buffed to a shine, extremely well-financed.
Barack Obama—Luxor. Massive, covered in lights, hugely popular ... but still just another hotel.
Mitt Romney—Planet Hollywood. Used to be called Aladdin, changed its name and theme in 2007.
Rudy Giuliani—New York-New York. Uh, New York.
John Edwards—Excalibur. Family-friendly, a little cheesy, looks like something out of King Arthur.
John McCain—Plaza Hotel and Casino. Old, broke (rooms go for $34).
Mike Huckabee—Hard Rock Hotel. Relatively new, musical, surprisingly fun.
Mike Gravel—Treasure Island. Loud, silly, largely ignored.
Joe Biden—The Flamingo. Showy, colorful, still around somehow.
Sam Brownback—Frontier Hotel. Recently imploded.
Dennis Kucinich—Tropicana: One of the smaller hotels, stands next to Hooters ...
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Finally, Dennis Kucinich's What about me? debate theatrics are paying off.
Initially, NBC said it would include him in tonight’s Las Vegas debate. Last week the network disinvited him, saying it was “redoing” the inclusion criteria. Kucinich promptly sued NBC (read the complaint here), and a Nevada judge ruled yesterday that NBC must include Kucinich or the debate would be called off.
NBC is now appealing the decision to the Nevada Supreme Court (read the petition here). “We disagree with the judge’s ruling, and we’re appealing,” NBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. There is currently no hearing scheduled, but hey, they’ve still got what, seven hours?
The question is, does Kunichich have a legal right to participate in debates? If so, what law requires a TV network to include him? In his complaint, Kucinich argues that his exclusion
undermines the purpose of the Federal Communications Act and is a blatant violation of the Act because of the media’s obligation to … ‘operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance.’ NBC revised its criteria to specifically exclude the diverse and anti-war voice of Kucinich and his grass-roots supporters. This specific exclusion is further highlighted by the fact that NBC has not provided Kucinich with any revised criteria.
But are networks even required to give inclusion criteria? If anything, it seems like more of a courtesy. Even when the Democratic National Committee sponsors a debate—it has held six so far this cycle—it lets the networks decide which candidates to include.
Here was the district judge's rationale for siding with Kucinich, as reported by the AP:
Thompson called it a matter of fairness and said Nevada voters will benefit by hearing from more than just top contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Pretty nebulous, no? That sounds more like a personal judgment than a legal basis.
Eric Easton, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, told me he was skeptical about the FCA “public interest” clause Kucinich invoked: “That clause in the FCA is so huge and so unfocused that it’s a justification for anything.”
But unless NBC's appeal goes through today, Kucinich will have to be included. The congressman has already flown out to Las Vegas, according to a spokeswoman.
UPDATE 6:20 p.m.: Fraysters rightly point out that Kucinich also claims NBC breached its contract with him when they rescinded his invitation. NBC's response, in its filing today: "If such an unprecedented theory is adopted here, it would mean that
news organizations would be forbidden from making timely decisions
about who or what to feature in their programming based on daily
developments in news for fear that a previously invited guest could
assert a breach of contract claim." We'll leave the specifics of Nevada contact law to the experts--or to the court, which should have a ruling soon.
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After offering an unconvincing explanation for his remarks about Barack Obama's cocaine use, BET founder Bob Johnson must have decided that a bit more damage control was in order. He sat down with the Washington Post and explained what he meant when he compared Obama to Sidney Poitier's character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner:
"What has happened, in my opinion, is that what we have created is the quote-unquote 'perfect candidate' that's like in the movies, that has absolutely no blemishes," a vision that is unrealistic, said Johnson, who started Black Entertainment Television and has been a friend of the Clintons for two decades.
He said Obama has avoided talking about race, a tactic that Johnson said made him acceptable to the largely white electorate of Iowa. Obama won the state's Democratic caucuses on Jan. 3. "White America is saying, 'He's safe for us, he should be safe for you guys,' " Johnson said, referring to blacks. "We're letting other people pick our leaders."
It's quotes like this that illuminate the thin line Obama is walking. On the one hand, by not addressing race, he gets accused by Johnson of being too "safe," of selling out to secure the white vote. On the other, if he did talk more about race, he would be accused of playing the "race card" in order to attract black voters. It would come off as pandering. And that's when Clinton's black supporters—Johnson, Andrew Young, Charlie Rangel—would really pile on. (In fact, Rangel just did, calling Obama's remarks about Martin Luther King Jr. "absolutely stupid.") He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, and especially damned if he tries to do both.
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The lawsuit filed
by a Nevada
teachers’ union on Friday to keep Vegas Strip workers (the place, not the
profession) from caucusing in their workplaces is making a lot of people look
and sound crazy. But hey, that’s a caucus.
The main reason for the rage: The lawsuit is transparently
political. The Nevada State Education Association hasn’t endorsed a
candidate yet, but many of its leaders openly support Hillary Clinton. Now that the
Culinary Workers union has endorsed Barack Obama, the nine new “At-Large”
precincts set up in Vegas hotels—where a vast number of culinary workers will
likely turn out—threaten Clinton’s
prospects. The plaintiffs claim that these caucus-goers would have
disproportionate influence compared to Nevadans who caucus in their home
districts. But seeing as they never complained about this fact until the Culinary
Workers endorsed Obama, their last-minute objection looks suspect.
Obama practically turned it into a civil rights issue:
“Are we going to let a bunch of lawyers try to prevent us from bringing about
change in America?”
A group of Nevada
teachers agreed
with him, firing off an angry letter to their own union asking it to drop the
suit.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton weighed
in in the name of fairness: “I think the rules ought to be the same for
everyone. I question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and limit
to a certain kind of workers.”
But even if the lawsuit is political, that doesn’t mean it’s
wrong. The plaintiffs’ main contention—that voters in at-large precincts will
have more influence than other Nevadans—may well be accurate. All Nevada precincts
allocate one delegate per 50 registered voters; the at-large precincts would
likely allocate more than that, according to the lawsuit (PDF here).
But then again, caucus math is arbitrary in the first place. Who came up with the
15 percent viability requirement? Why hold the caucus at 11 a.m., instead of
after dinner? Why not create at-large precincts all over the state, not just on the Strip?
The whole system is so random that this deviation from sanity seems no more
offensive than any of the others. And seeing as this is Nevada's maiden voyage with the caucus system, there's no precedent. Bon voyage!
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John Edwards is in denial. Sure, a new poll shows he may have a chance at doing well in Nevada this Saturday, but that pesky viability threshold of 15 percent will likely get in his way. His poll numbers in South Carolina are stuck in the mid-teens, and even a win in Nevada is unlikely to propel him very far. Plus, Edwards' spending is capped because he took public money to fund his campaign.
In the face of these daunting odds, is he quitting? Hell, no. He's soldiering on so he can help the American middle class rise up. After New Hampshire, he even said that he's in through the convention. Edwards' denial is only the first step in his five stages of grief. Here's what to expect as Edwards wills his candidacy on through his electoral grief.
- Denial -Today Edwards' campaign had a conference call with reporters where staffers repeatedly said that two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) don't decide an election. The only problem: For him, they do. When you spend four years shaking Iowans' hands, it's a slap in the face if they turn their backs when it counts most. Also, on the denial front: a leaked memo (PDF) that says "Clinton is too corporate to offer voters real change" and "Obama is too weak to stand up to Republicans." Edwards blames the media and the "celebrity candidates' " wallets for his second- and third-place finishes. Estimated time span: Present - South Carolina's primary, Jan. 26.
- Anger - Edwards has been campaigning with a fiery rage from the get-go, so his tone will only get harsher during this stage. Expect flailing attacks at Obama and Clinton in an attempt to weaken them in time for the Feb. 5 states. Because Edwards doesn't have as much money as Obama and Clinton, he'll have to make headlines by any means possible. In November, Edwards semi-famously said his attacks against Clinton were milquetoast, not mudslinging. This time, he may drag Clinton and Obama into the mud pit with him, critically injuring the party in the process. Estimated time span: Jan. 27 - Super, Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.
- Bargaining - Assuming Edwards comes up short on Feb. 5, he'll try to stay relevant not by winning, but by negotiating. Because the Democrats award their delegates proportionately in each state, Edwards will certainly have some leverage that he can dangle in front of Obama and Clinton. Plus, an Edwards endorsement would mean a great deal if the nominee isn't sorted out after Super Tuesday. Obama is the most likely target for a bargain, which would probably entail Obama beefing up his middle-class/anti-lobbyist message in exchange for immunity from Edwards' scorn. Think of it as an implicit endorsement. Estimated time span: Feb. 5 - mid-March.
- Depression - With the nomination securely in somebody else's hands, Edwards will probably fade from the political scene for a bit. He may not have officially dropped out of the race, but that doesn't mean he's in it, either. Symptoms include: decreased campaign schedule, monotonous stump speeches, and skipped primaries. Estimated time span: March - July.
- Acceptance - At some point, Edwards will have to face the music, and it won't be played by Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. There are only so many ways to crunch the delegate numbers and so many "Mill" ads you can run before you have to bow to defeat. This election, Edwards won't be the VP, but maybe somebody will offer him a new Secretary of Change Cabinet position. Something tells me he'll accept that.
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“I’m very aware that most of you came to see Chuck,” Mike Huckabee told a crowd last week in Rochester, N.H. A group of boys who did not appear to be of voting age confirmed this: “We love you, Chuck!”
Back when Huckabee first announced that Norris would be doing some fund raising for him, America laughed. At, not with. If anything, Norris’ involvement confirmed Huckabee’s candidacy as a fringy three-ring circus. Then Norris appeared in a TV spot. Then he started traveling with Huckabee. Then, when Huckabee won Iowa, there was Norris, peering over the governor’s shoulder during his victory speech.
But now Norris has become a defining face in Mike Huckabee’s campaign, so much that today’s announcement—“Mike Huckabee’s Band To Play and Martial Artists to Join Forces During Jan. 20th Online Texas Fundraiser Hosted by Chuck Norris”—feels utterly ordinary. Just another barbecue/political fund-raiser/rock concert/ninja demonstration.
Watching Norris speak in New Hampshire, I wanted to pinch myself. I am actually writing down words coming out of Chuck Norris’ mouth. It feels silly until you realize that what he says is no sillier than the ideas expressed by Huckabee’s other endorsers. (One possible exception: Norris’ anecdote about throwing an American soldier in Iraq into a sleeper hold and accidentally suffocating him.) Norris tries not to overshadow Huckabee, but he can’t resist talking about the time he sky-dived with George Bush Sr. Or the several times he visited Iraq. When Norris is working the crowd, it’s easy to forget that Huckabee is the main act.
Once you consider that Jesse “the Body” Ventura got elected governor of Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger is being credited as a transformational figure in the Republican party, it’s not a leap to imagine Norris seeking—and holding—elected office. He’s ex-Air Force. He served in South Korea between ’58 and ‘62, where he became a black belt in Tang Soo Do. He founded a program for at-risk children. He has become a semiregular Fox News commentator, where his conservative ideas are taken as seriously as anyone’s. Elections have been won with a lot less.
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An interview with Barack Obama in the Las Vegas Sun reveals yet another tidbit about the Illinois senator's Wire fandom:
Obama told the Sun his favorite character is Omar, a stick-up artist who steals from drug dealers and then gives the loot to poor people in the neighborhood.
“That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”
TNR's Michael Crowley calls this moment "A small but telling example of why, on a superficial level, the media falls for Obama." Agreed, but keep in mind that Obama isn't staying current with Season 5, which in our book is sort of like missing the NIE on Iran.
P.S.: Remember, The Wire is popular among more than just liberal media types.
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This weekend’s big flap was a coy statement made by BET founder Bob Johnson that seems to refer—scratch that, unmistakably refers—to Barack Obama’s admitted drug use. Here’s his quote:
And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book – when they have been involved. [Video here.]
The Obama campaign came out swinging. “I don't see why this is so much different from what Billy Shaheen did in New Hampshire,” David Axelrod said, referring to Shaheen’s suggestion the GOP rivals would use Obama’s past drug use against him.
Then came Johnson’s explanation: "My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect.”
That this explanation is ludicrous on its face shouldn't take much convincing. It makes no sense that Johnson would use that kind of wink-nudge innuendo to refer to Obama’s community organizing. But that’s not the worst part. The biggest scandal is that the Clinton campaign tacitly endorses his excuse. Not only did they release Johnson’s explanatory statement, now Bill Clinton has said in a radio interview that “we have to take [Johnson] at his word.” He's right—he has to take Johnson at his word, seeing as Johnson's word is now the campaign's word. But that doesn't mean we have to.
So, why doesn't Johnson just admit he was referring to coke, apologize, and be done with it? The answer is that Johnson is different from Shaheen. As race issues take center stage in the run-up to the South Carolina primary, the Clinton campaign can use all the help from African-American endorsers it can get. (Obama's rise has caused considerable strife among the old guard, many of whom are still waffling between the two senators.) Cutting off Johnson for his remarks would kill a valuable campaign asset: an influential black man testifying against Obama.
It's just sad that Johnson's original point—that to impugn the Clintons' dedication to the black community is insulting—became an insult itself: An insult to our intelligence.
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From a press release sent out by the Clinton camp:
*** MEDIA
ADVISORY***
Hillary Clinton To Attend SEIU 32 BJ Event Honoring the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Monday
When you see the words "Clinton" and "BJ
event" in the same sentence, you don't expect it to be a King day celebration. That union must get this a lot.
Special thanks to Daniel Gross for his eagle eye.
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Hillary Clinton proposed a $70 billion* economic stimulus package today that would help families facing foreclosures, subsidize home heating, and create jobs in the energy sector.
No shocker there. Economic issues are taking center stage as the Nevada caucus and Michigan and South Carolina primaries loom. Nevada has been hit with a huge number of home foreclosures. Michigan is suffering an economic crisis, with a third of Detroiters living below the poverty line. South Carolina’s unemployment rate, like Michigan’s, exceeds the national average.
But here’s the way Politico described her strategy:
The plan is part of the senator’s appeal to voters who need a president, as opposed to the more upscale Democrats where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has won substantial support.
Seeing as John Kerry just endorsed Obama, it’s worth asking: Is Clinton trying to make Obama look like Kerry? Not the progressive war hero Kerry of Democratic lore, but the effete, “French-looking”, Heinz fortune-funneling Kerry painted by his Republican opponents.
Obama isn’t a Massachusetts liberal and he didn’t marry into money. But he has begun to attract the same “upscale” accusations that plagued Kerry. On the trail, John Edwards pointedly declares he isn’t running for “academic” reasons, implying that some people are. In Hillary’s new youth outreach video, one questioner says all her “law school friends” are voting for Obama. In the New Hampshire primary, Obama did better among Democratic voters who make over $50,000; Hillary did better with the under $50,000 set. He’s the “wine track” candidate, Hillary is the “beer track” candidate.
A union-powered victory in Nevada could do a lot to counter this perception. Obama might also consider coming out equally strongly on the housing and jobs fronts in the coming weeks. But if that doesn’t work, the curse of Kerry could haunt him as the crucial Feb. 5 vote approaches.
*UPDATE: Correction, 3:27 p.m.: OK, OK, we asked for it. This item originally referred to Hillary Clinton’s economic stimulus package as a $70 program.
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When all is said and done, Michigan Democrats may have more viable choices on the ballot than most other voters. Originally, Michigan residents thought that they would only be able to vote for Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel at their primary on Jan. 15. Then came word that anti-Hillary Michigan residents were launching a renegade campaign to get people to vote for “uncommitted”—a post-modern rebellion if there ever was one. Now Michigan Dems are being given yet another option: Vote for Mitt Romney.
Markos Moulitsas—the Daily Kos guy—thinks that the Demcorats are damned if they do and damned if they don’t in the choice between uncommitted and Clinton. So instead, he’s rallying Democrats behind Mitt Romney, hoping that Mitt’s presence will help create more inner strife in the GOP.
As we see it, Michigan Democrats have four options, and each has its pros and cons.
- Vote for Hillary – Pros: If you like Hillary, there’s the chance you can float her above the 60 percent mark, which is necessary to help her avoid derision from the press. Cons: How boring—especially when so many other devious options exist.
- Vote for uncommitted – Pros: Support the Obama-Edwards axis of change; be an ironic cog in the movement founded upon apathy; screw with Hillary’s head. Cons: Unless you really hate Hillary, it’s a wasted vote; may prove even her own party hates her, which won’t help general-election unity.
- Vote for Romney – Pros: Kos’ ego doesn’t need to get any bigger, but he’s right—a vote for Romney messes with Republicans’ heads and weakens the party; if there’s any candidate whom self-aware Democrats should vote for, it’s Romney; a Democrat-fueled Romney win in Michigan is worth it just to see the spin. Cons: It splits the uncommitted coalition up, which will make for a quieter and harder-to-track rebuke of Clinton.
- Vote for Dennis Kucinich. – Pros: It’s better than not voting at all; the guy is due for a karmic boost. Cons: Voting for Romney or uncommitted does more mischief; you might as well shred your ballot—it has the same effect in the overall scheme of things.
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Word on the pollster street is that Hillary’s New Hampshire victory owed to larger turnout than expected among women and, in part, lower turnout than expected among young people. The legions of fresh-faced youth who crowned Obama in Iowa decided to sleep in this time. New Hampshire voters also credit her willingness to answer questions at her rallies.
Now she's combining those two strategies. A new video, “Ask Hillary” (not to be confused with “Ask John” or “Ask Mitt Anything”), shows the New York senator answering questions asked by young people using the Ask Hillary Facebook tool. We also see lots of Chelsea and other women in their twenties—a connection Obama can't match.
The video lets Hillary hit her usual talking points while also showcasing her appeal to people other than retirees. The last question is about how to persuade friends who love Obama to vote for Hillary. She responds, “There’s a big difference between talking and doing, rhetoric and reality. … I have the experience that will make that change real.”
This is the message that, in a mere five days, helped her win New Hampshire (along with her Diner Sob, of course). But now she's not just the change candidate; she's also the youth candidate. Maybe she and Obama would make good running mates after all.
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Even if he gets wept out of the race, Barack Obama has made "change" the political buzzword of the cycle. Even President Bush wants in on the action. NBC News' David Gregory asked Bush, "Do you see this message of change as anything other than a rejection of your presidency?" Bush's response:
Oh, listen, if you're running for office, you can't run for office and not say, "I'm an agent of change." That's just American politics. If I were running for office at this point I'd be saying, "Vote for me, I'm -- I'm gonna be an agent of change."
Considering he's already president, Doesn't he have the power to change whatever he wants?
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CNN's caption for its investigative report says it all: "Who will be the kisser-in-chief?"
Unsurprisingly, they don't do the reporting to answer the question. Which, in this case, is fine by us.
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Mike Huckabee just channelled Jed Bartlet during an answer about his suggestion in a sermon that wives should submit themselves to their husbands. Huckabee clarified the Biblical quote he was referring to: "As wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves."
There's a West Wing episode where President Bartlet hears a pastor quote the first half of the same passage. Later, speaking with the First Lady, he points out the second half. So either Huckabee knows the Bible really well, or he's a closet Aaron Sorkin fan.
(In the meantime, anyone got a YouTube link? Lemme know.)
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In response to a question on foreign policy, Rudy Giuliani goes waaay out of his way to squeeze in this canned line: “The kind of change Democrats are talking about is taking the change out of your pocket.”
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Chris Wallace asks Romney whether the primary results in New Hampshire suggest the people value experience over his message of “change.”
His response could have come out of a certain Democratic senator’s mouth. Paraphrased: If you stick with the same people, I’m convinced you’re going to see same results. If you send the same people back to Washington to sit in different chairs, nothing happens.”
McCain then rebuts charges that he’s a Washington insider: “Ask Jack Abramoff if I’m an insider in Washington. You’d probably have to go during visiting hours because he’s in prison.”
Correction, Jan. 14, 2008: This item originally misspelled Jack Abramoff’s name.
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McCain conflates trading with Arab nations with trading with al-Qaida. "I don’t want to trade with al-Qaida, all they want to trade is burqas," he says, smiling smugly. "I don’t want to travel with them, all they want is one-way tickets."
That's almost as good as Thompson's remark about the Iranian boats: "One more step and they would have been introduced to the virgins they were looking forward to seeing."
That's great, first we had the Hillary debate. Now we get the racism debate! Welcome to South Carolina.
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Carl Cameron tries to play Ron Paul off against his crazy 9/11 conspiracy theorist supporters. Will Paul tell them to renounce their beliefs?, Cameron asks.
He might as well have asked a cat to bark. Paul, good libertarian that he is, refuses to denounce them. He says he doesn’t agree, but that they’re entitled to their own opinions. “So please can I participate in the current debate?” Big applause.
Paul must know he's being kept around as something of a side show. It's the least he can do to request legitimate policy questions.
UPDATE 9:41 p.m.: Moments later, Paul gets laughed out of the room for railing against a "rush to judgment" surrounding the faceoff with Iranian boats, which he compares to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Mitt Romney gets in a pretty devastating slam: "I think Congressman Paul should not be reading as many of Ahmadinejad’s press releases." Paul looks like he might cry.
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We’re not in New Hampshire anymore.
Thompson butts in on a question about the Reagan coalition so he can rattle off a litany of attacks on Huckabee. He thinks we have an “arrogant foreign policy,” says Thompson. “He thinks Guantanamo should be closed” and the prisoners brought into the American court system. “He has the endorsement of the NEA.” “He said he’d sign a bill to ban smoking nationwide.” And so on. He makes Huckabee sound so reasonable!
South Carolina is make-or-break for Thompson. And with Huckabee's popularity among southern Baptists posing a major threat, Thompson has to pull out all the stops.
When he’s done, he gets the first burst of applause of the night. Could that be the sound of Thompson bouncing?
Update 11:33 a.m.: Yes, we changed the headline. Sorry!
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Finally, Rudy Giuliani gives a less-than-absolutist answer on the question of whether tax cuts raise revenues. “The reality is some tax cuts lead to revenues, some tax cuts don’t lead to revenues,” he says. That’s a big change from his previous stark statements.
“Let me give you an example,” he says. "If you cut the corporate tax from 35 percent to 30 percent," that will stimulate the economy and raise revenue. “Our corporate tax is second highest in the world.” He doesn't give examples of tax cuts that wouldn't raise revenue, but at least he acknowledges their existence.
The most important thing, he says, is to “guard against overtaxing, overspending, overregulating, and oversuing.”
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After blocking Ron Paul from Sunday's debate, FOX News adjusted the cutoff standards to be either a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire primary or to have at least five percent in national polls. The first criterion allows Paul in. The second admits Thompson. Sounds like the result of some backroom negotiations, especially after the Internet practically exploded at Paul's exclusion.
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Check back here starting at 9 p.m. for live updates on tonight's Republican debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
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Ever since Michigan violated Democratic Party rules by moving its primary up to Jan. 15, thereby getting its delegates stripped, people have been calling the race a “beauty contest.” And considering that the only Democrats still on the ballot are Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel, it’s not hard to guess who’s the fairest of them all.
But a new campaign to get voters to check “Uncommitted” on the ballot could prevent an otherwise inevitable Clinton victory. Ben Smith has the promo video here.
A group pushing this move, Detroiters for Uncommitted Voters, suggests that an “Uncommitted” vote is a vote for Obama. But really, it’s a vote against Hillary. And that’s why it has the potential to hurt her so badly—it might attract people who currently support Edwards and Richardson as well.
But no matter what happens, she’s sort of screwed. If she does win a decisive victory, it will look hollow (and maybe even vaguely Stalinist, given that she’s the only viable candidate on the ballot), considering her main opponent is a nameless, faceless concept. People can say the movement never gained traction. If she loses to “Uncommitted,” or even wins by only a small margin, it will humiliate her campaign. If she can't even win against "Uncommitted," how can she expect to beat Obama? the thinking will go. According to a pollster for the Detroit News, “anything less than 60 percent in Michigan would be a black eye for Clinton.”
Who knows where that cutoff comes from, but that’s the point: No matter what the result, anyone can spin it against her. Perhaps staying on the ballot was not the wisest choice.
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Finally, a glimpse into Bill Richardson's mind. From an email Richardson wrote to his supporters announcing his withdrawal today:
It was my hope that all of you would first hear this news from me and
not a news organization. But unfortunately, as with too many things in
our world today, it's the ending of something that garners the most
intense interest and speculation. (emphasis added)
So that's why he wanted to end the war so badly.
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Earlier this week, we pointed out how all the top Democrats are talking about how "personal" this race is. “For me and Elizabeth, this is personal,” says John Edwards—not "academic" or "political" like his opponents. Hillary and Obama made similar statements.
Now the meme has made its way across the aisle. In today's New York Times, Mitt Romney adopts the phrase as his own: "I care about Michigan. For me, it's personal. It's personal for me because it's where I was born and raised."
By the end of this race, will there be no one left running for vague, distant, non-personal reasons?
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Obama supporters and Clinton conspiracy theorists, relax. John Kerry is endorsing Barack Obama, but it’s not the kiss of death everybody thinks. Sure, it recalls Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean in 2004, but as Chris Cillizza notes, this is a different ballgame. Nor is Kerry a Hillary Clinton plant intended to ruin Obama’s change momentum. Most likely, this will end up being a very quiet, behind-the-scenes partnership in the long run.
It’s hard to remember, but think back to Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. We haven’t heard anything from Mr. 700 Club since. Giuliani needed Robertson to prove that his message jived with evangelicals, and then he needed Robertson to shut up.
Kerry isn’t as big of a liability, but he is the dour face of the Democratic base that Obama is trying to transcend. (Plus, Kerry did have that nasty soldiers-are-dumb moment in 2006.) For Obama, Kerry is a gateway to the Democratic establishment that can make his change message even more legitimate and a key resource in the fund-raising battle with Hillary Clinton.
If Edwards continues to fade, the Democratic race will be a one-on-one showdown where money will play an even more important role than it did in small, retail-politics states. The candidates will be holding more rallies and fewer house parties since they need to hit multiple states before Feb. 5. That means ads are their most important surrogates—and that means money is their most important asset.
The real worry for Obama fans is not the curse; it’s that Kerry didn’t even think the endorsement was a boon to Obama back in December. According to the New York Times, Kerry had made his support for Obama known to the campaign before Iowa’s caucuses, but everybody decided to hold off on a public announcement until after New Hampshire. Maybe they were worried about the curse, or maybe they were worried about Kerry weighing Obama’s hope message down. Either way, I doubt we’ll be hearing from Kerry too often.
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Ron Paul’s fifth-place showing in the New Hampshire primary disappointed his supporters, who saw the Granite State as his last best chance to penetrate the first tier of GOP candidates.
But Paul doesn’t appear to be slowing down. The $20 million he raised in the fourth quarter should carry him at least through the Feb. 5 states. And the grassroots money fountain shows no signs of drying up. “If I said I needed 50 million dollars, they’d probably do it,” he told me after a speech in Nashua earlier this week.
I asked whether there’s been any tension between the official campaign and what supporters call the “real” campaign of online supporters. “There will always be,” he said, but on the other hand it’s better, since “they don’t have to wait for marching orders.” Paul talks about the campaign as if it’s not really up to him whether
or not he stays in the race—and that’s a good thing. “We don’t have any
choice but to keep it going,” he said.
Paul also laid to rest (again) any notions of an independent candidacy. “Short of an absolute no, I’ve said the same thing: I have no plans, no intention to run.” Getting on the ballot would be hard enough, he said, let alone negotiating some states’ “sore loser” laws, which prevent candidates who have run in the primary from running again in the general.
But his attitude doesn’t sound like the usual maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t coyness. He actually seems open to all possibilities—he just can’t think of any circumstance that would make him want to run as a third party candidate: “I can’t conceive of anything that would change my mind.”
If he got out of the race, I asked, would he throw his weight (and fundraising acumen) behind another candidate? No, he said, because his supporters are non-transferrable: “People have asked me, ‘What’s your technique? Where do you get your lists?’ … They don’t understand this is spontaneous. If I endorsed someone I’d lose all credibility and we wouldn’t get any money anyway.”
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While MSNBC shoved campaign narratives down my throat last night, I heard very little about the fabled change vs. experience debate. The story line that was all the rage in Iowa and the days after had suddenly evaporated from the collective consciousness of the punditry. For some reason, nobody thought to mention what Hillary Clinton's strong early returns might mean: that New Hampshire voters might have chosen experience over change.
Granted, this storyline is as exhausted as John Edwards on a 36-hour campaign marathon, but it's still the defining tension of this election (on both sides). The stats coming out of the exit polls show more people care about change than experience for the Democrats (as we've discussed before). But the interesting bits are one level deeper:
- Of the 54 percent who chose change, 55 percent supported Obama, 28 percent Hillary, 14 percent Edwards.
- Of the 19 percent who chose experience, 71 percent supported Hillary, 16 percent Richardson, 5 percent Obama.
Note the drastic difference in support among experience-minded voters. That suggests that not only is Obama's experience message not getting through, but voters may not even think he has any experience in the first place. Still, in the above breakdown, Obama comes out on top since so many more voters care about change.
Obama's camp should be much more concerned with this datum:
- Among the 16 percent of voters who cared most that the candidate "cares about people," Clinton beats Obama two to one. Edwards polls nearly as well as Clinton, much better than Obama.
This can be interpreted in two ways—both of them bad for Obama. First, New Hampshire voters might have thought Obama was full of it: All hope and no compassion. Or, and this is worse news for Obama, his middle-class message may not be getting through. Since Edwards mini-surge in Iowa, Obama has made it a point to remind voters that he shops at Target to prove his working-class bonafides. Yet Clinton trounces him here.
Given that Obama can't break through Clinton's blockade on experience and that she already has some advocates in his "change" territory, Obama's poor returns on the "care" metric aren't good. With the change vs. experience battle looking more and more like a war of attrition, both candidates would be wise to focus on other fronts.
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Bill Clinton's now-famous "fairy tale" tirade, in which he accuses Barack Obama of being inexperienced and getting a free pass from the media, has drawn a fair amount of scorn from the Obama campaign and other Democrats, including Donna Brazile. But chances are this is just the beginning.
If the growing tension between the two camps is any indication, Bill's rant previews what could become a bloody fight for the nomination. And when that fight is over, one team is bound to leave embittered.
If Hillary wins, Obama's supporters will feel like they settled needlessly for a compromise candidate. And it won't be like Dean supporters settling for Kerry. Unlike Dean, Obama won Iowa and still has a legitimate shot at the nomination. A loss to Hillary in February would be all the more devastating given that he was an actual player. If Obama wins, Bill's remarks this week (and others likely to come) will haunt the party throughout the general. If the last Democratic president of the United States—still beloved within the party—doesn't think Obama is prepared for the job, how can Democrats rally behind him?
Add the netroots and other Democrats who don't think Obama is far left enough, and you're pretty far from the "united" "coalition" Obama has been pitching to voters.
Not that the Republican side will be any less messy. Each candidate has something for conservatives fiscal and social to fuss over: Romney's checkered Massachusetts past, Huckabee's FairTax claptrap, Giuliani's personal life, McCain's apostasy on immigration and campaign finance. That's why, as we've said before, none of them is electable.
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We dare news editors nationwide to run an image from this shameful photo-op. But all images must be captioned with Clinton's propaganda line: "Building on momentum of last night's win, Clinton NYC office bustling with enthusiasm."
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I know last night taught us (for the 12,348th time) not to trust exit polls. But there's a curious anomaly in last night's exit poll results that deserves a look. Here's how many New Hampshire voters of different ages said they supported Clinton and Obama:
18-24—Clinton: 22 %, Obama: 60 %
25-29—Clinton: 37 %, Obama: 35 %
30-39—Clinton: 36 %, Obama: 43 %
40-49—Clinton: 44 %, Obama: 33 %
50-64—Clinton: 39 %, Obama: 30 %
65 and up—Clinton: 48 %, Obama: 32 %
Obama carries the youngest demographic easily, given his emphasis on getting out the youth vote and his message of change and generational turnover. He performs well in the relatively young 30-39 bracket, as well. It's the 25-29 group that's so bizarre. What swung them toward Clinton, the "safe" candidate? Quarter-life crises? Newborn children? Identifying with Chelsea, who is 27?
It's like a mini-generation of realistic, pragmatic-minded youth in between two swaths of idealists. That or, more likely, exit polls aren't worth jack.
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The Trailhead Primary Pool has a new frontrunner after New Hampshire, which counted for twice as much as Iowa for correct
guesses. Larry Krajeski, the executive director of the non-profit Catskill Mountain Housing Development Corporation
in central New York,
has 16 of a possible 18 points, including a 1.000 batting average for the
Republicans.
Krajeski, who used to live in Massachusetts,
says he picked McCain to win New Hampshire
because he thinks the Arizona senator fits in
well in New England. “If I met him on the
street, I might think he was from New
Hampshire,” he says. “He’s that flinty, Yankee type.”
Clinton
will do well on Super-Duper Tuesday, he predicted, powering her through to the
nomination. He’s less optimistic about the other New Yorker running for
president.
“I don’t have much faith in our other native son, Rudy
Giuliani,” he said, predicting that the former New York City mayor could become merely “a
footnote in the history of bad campaigns.”
Besides Krajeski, only one other contestant, Paul Stenbjorn,
correctly guessed the top three Republicans in both states. Four
contestants—Carl Hetler, Craig Stuart, Marco Forehand and Laura Marschel—predicted
the top three Democrats for both states in the correct order.
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If there’s anything to be gleaned from the last 24 hours, it’s this: Never doubt the pundits’ inability to predict something in the future; never underestimate their ability to explain something in the past.
Now that it’s over, a zillion theories are circulating as to how Hillary bent time-space to win last night’s primary. We have one or two. Kaus has four. Mark Halperin has a thousand more.
But I’m wondering how/if this is going to change the way media report these things. In the Obama media room yesterday, everyone was drifting around in a What happened? daze. Everything we knew was wrong. All the indicators—even the reliable ones—pointed to an Obama victory. That’s why, whatever explanation the thinkers settle on, it’s still going to be colored by the upending of reality that occured last night. What says the data informing the explanation are any more accurate than those informing the prediction?
Sure, there’s compelling statistical evidence that Hillary’s debate performance and her moment of vulnerability boosted turnout among women voters. (Fifty-seven percent of Democratic voters were women; Hillary beat Obama among that demographic by 12 percent.) And in my experience, the anecdotal evidence confirms this: I’ve been told by various women over the past day that if I didn’t have a Y chromosome, I’d understand.
But if any pundit had factored women's emotional response into their pre-election predictions, they would have been laughed out of the room. The counterarguments would have been: Voters aren’t stupid enough to take her weeping seriously. Her debate performance wasn't that great. Obama’s Iowa mo’ is too strong. Clinton hasn’t had enough time to mount an effective counterattack. The counterattacks she has launched just look desperate. And last but not least, the polls are unanimous in favor of Obama.
There’s no small amount of hostility toward the media for botching New Hampshire. But let’s keep in mind that any prediction based on the explanations currently circulating would have been, in the pre-election climate, a crackpot theory. And, irony of ironies, for all the accusations that the press was conspiring against Hillary, consider this: If it’s true she surged because of her tears, then she has the media to thank.
Update 2:24 p.m.: Irony overload: Remember the woman who asked the question that made Hillary cry? She voted for Obama.
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A change in the way New Hampshire determines the order of the candidates’ names on ballots may have significantly deterred Barack Obama’s prospects in the state, according to a body of research suggesting that candidates whose names appear first have an advantage.
Until this year, New Hampshire rotated the order of the candidates from precinct to precinct. An analysis of recent primary elections in New Hampshire by Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick, an expert in polling methodology, found that candidates averaged 3 percent better than their overall performance if their names were listed first among the leading candidates. A 2003 paper by a pair of political scientists titled “First Guys Finish First” found similar effects in the 1998 New York primary elections for state offices.
The new law dictates that New Hampshire now set its ballot order by publicly drawing a random letter of the alphabet to determine where the state will begin listing names alphabetically. (For example, drawing an E would have meant that, among major candidates, John Edwards’ name would be listed first, while Chris Dodd would be last.) This year Z was drawn, effectively starting back at the beginning and listing Joseph Biden first, even though he was no longer in the race. The system applies to every ballot in the state uniformly.
This method might appear to be equally unfair for everyone, except that candidates’ surnames are not equally distributed throughout the alphabet. On the Democratic side, for example, the major candidates where heavily skewed toward the front of the alphabet. The abecedarian lineup of Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards meant that the latter three had only a 1-in-26 chance of being first—that is, only if the letter of their last name was drawn (since their last names were adjacent to each other in the alphabet). With Biden out of the race, the advantage effectively fell to Clinton.
Clinton’s gain was Obama’s loss. As the last candidate alphabetically (not counting the various fringe candidates who were on the ballot), Obama faced a large probability of being last. There are 11 letters after O in the alphabet, all of which would result in Clinton being first among viable candidates still in the race once the alphabet cycled back to the beginning. Add three for the odds of drawing an A, B, or C, and Clinton had a 14-in-26 shot at being first. (That’s 54 percent.)
One might scoff at the idea that this really matters, but Krosnick insists that the data is there to support it. When I spoke with him last night at about 11 p.m. ET, he said that, had the previous rotation of names been in effect, “my guess is this race would be too close to call.”
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Now that Hillary won despite (because of?) her emotional moment yesterday, it seems an okay time to point out that last night, TBS ran the Sex in the City episode about ... women crying at work!
The scene: Samantha and her three best friends are sitting at dinner discusing the workplace (rough transcript):
[Unknown]: Emotional is just code for, "I don't want to hire this woman."
Miranda: Exactly. They're that way at my firm, too. Think you're gonna cry over
a legal brief.
[Unknown]: Have you cried over a brief?
Miranda: Yes, but only in the privacy of my office.
Charlotte: I cried once at the gallery, once, in
10 years... and from that day on it was, ''Careful, don't make Charlotte cry.''
Samantha: I have never cried at work.
Carrie: I fake cried to my editor when I missed a deadline. I told him I was
having a bad time at home, but really...I was having a good time in the Hamptons.
[Unknown]: That makes the rest of us look bad.
Carrie: Boo hoo. it was 80 degrees and sunny.
[Unknown]: A guy gets angry in a meeting, he's a pistol, a woman, she's emotional.
At the end of the episode, Samantha gets turned down for a job, accuses the guy who didn't hire her of being sexist, and leaves in a huff telling herself "Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry." He then chases after her and changes his mind: "That took balls," he says. Hence the episode's title, "Belles of the Balls."
Coincidence? That, or Hillary has friends in high places ... like TBS.
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It's been at least 45 minutes since MSNBC announced Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire, and it still doesn't make any sense.
The narrative has not changed since Iowa. Barack Obama had the message "Americans" believed in. His crowd sizes were huge in New Hampshire. Pollsters were enamored with his numbers. Obama and Clinton's debate performances were both praised, but the mainstream media didn't think the momentum shifted.
All of this matters because those are the metrics that affect public opinion. And public opinion affects how voters vote. Or so we thought.
So, what the hell happened? Well, something triggered New Hampshire voters that didn't trigger the media nor the pollsters. There's nothing else we can think of outside of The Diner Sob. These may be the most famous tears that never fell from an eye. There's just nothing else that explains this drastic, 15-point shift besides Clinton's moment of vulnerability. (Obama was favored by 10 points coming into tonight).
Or it may be even simpler. New Hampshire voters just decided to flip the bird at Iowa. In the process, what they really did was say eff you to the media, the pollsters, and conventional wisdom. I pondered whether this might happen a couple of weeks ago, but I based my prediction on the assumption Clinton would win Iowa and New Hampshire would support Obama out of stubbornness. At this point, I probably shouldn't be surprised I had it all wrong.
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NASHUA -- The energy is at a 10 here during Obama's concession speech, but you can tell that if he'd won, it would go up to 11.
His message is what you'd expect: pride for what's been achieved, despite falling short of victory. "No one would have imagined we would accomplish what we did tonight in New Hampshire," he says. A chant builds: "We want change!"
He congratulates Hillary on her victory, but still works a slight dig in there: America wants politicians "who can disagree without being disagreeable," he says. And then a reference to her claim that Obama raises "false hopes": "There has never been anything false about wanting hope."
Here in the press filing room, the sound is gone from the feed broadcasting Hillary's victory speech. "Sound!" people are yelling. The muting almost feels deliberate. What better move than to keep a roomful of reporters from watching the speech? Finally, they turn it up.
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Judging by this morning’s headlines, just about everyone was confident that Barack Obama was going to win the New Hampshire primary by a comfortable margin. “Clinton Braces for Second Loss; Union, Senators May Back Obama,” the Wall Street Journal declared on today’s front page. At 8:07 p.m., FOXNews.com reported that its exit polls showed Obama ahead by five points, 39 percent to Clinton’s 34 percent.
But now Clinton leads. This sort of jarring of our expectations conjures up past examples of black candidates who have polled significantly higher than their white opponents, only to confront a very different reality when the votes are counted. Pollsters know this as the “Bradley Effect,” christened for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man who narrowly lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to a white opponent even though Bradley led in the polls. (It’s sometimes also referred to as the “Wilder Effect,” after Douglas Wilder, who had been polling at 10 points ahead of Marshall Coleman in the 1989 governor’s race, beat Coleman by less than a point.) Harold Ford Jr., who lost his bid for a Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006, also polled better than he performed.
One theory is that voters contacted by pollsters are more likely to say they support a black candidate running against a white candidate out of desire to seem progressive. Social psychologists called this “social desirability” – the urge to act in ways that one believes his or her environment finds appropriate.
In a February 2007 article, the Pew Research Center noted that this effect was decidedly less pronounced in 2006. While black candidates lost four of five statewide races against white opponents, the polling tended to reflect this. “Taken together,” it states, “the accuracy of the polling in these five biracial elections suggests that the problems that bedeviled polling in the 1980s and early 1990s may no longer be so serious.”
If Clinton sustains her lead, however, all future polls between her and Obama will be suspect.
Update 11:35 p.m.: Jon Krosnick, a Stanford social psychologist and polling
methodology expert, points out that evidence for the Bradley Effect is largely
anecdotal. There is, however, a large body of research on the effect of the
gender and race of an interviewer, both in person and over the phone, and
Krosnick points out another scenario:
“People are startlingly good at detecting the race of a
person over the phone,” Krosnick told me. An interviewer who is perceived to be black by the respondent can subconsciously
influence an undecided voter in favor of a black candidate—something Krosnick
describes as a “priming of positive images.” But the same could apply to on-the-fence
voters who have some reservations about supporting a female candidate, but are subtly influenced by a capable female interviewer. (The same might hold true in
the negative, but people are much more likely to hang up on incompetent
interviewers before the interview is complete.)
“You can make up the story either way,” Krosnick says. But he
was doubtful that this sort of effect was responsible on its own for the differential
between Obama’s lead in the polls and Clinton’s victory tonight: “I just don’t
see how you get the discrepancy.”
If the Bradley Effect becomes an issue moving forward in the Democratic race, look for the pollsters to fall back on their blanket defense: The polls were correct, but the voters changed without telling anybody.
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Always count on Fred Thompson to put a positive spin on things. Especially election losses. This statement just went out:
Tonight's results, with no clear frontrunner, prove the GOP nomination is wide open. The next battlefield is South Carolina, where voters are far more conservative than in New Hampshire and deeply concerned about illegal immigration in America. Fred Thompson is uniquely positioned for victory in the Southern states. He is the only true conservative with a plan to end illegal immigration and protect our sovereignty.
He's right until the third sentence. Sure, the race is as wide open as ever. Romney has failed to snag either of his
make-or-break states. But that doesn't mean Thompson is the one who benefits so much as Giuliani does. While we've all been drooling over Huckabee and McCain, Rudy has been hiding in the grass, getting a big head start on the Feb. 5 states. Unless McCain makes a clean sweep of the other early states, Giuliani has as good a chance as anyone to take the nomination. Thompson, on the other hand, is still third in South Carolina, his best state, and he doesn't poll in the top four nationwide. He might be "uniquely positioned," but it's not for victory.