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Campaigns toss around lots of numbers, many of which get published without any double-checking. And with delegates we’re usually not sticklers, since everyone has their own count. But one number being floated today struck us as just plain wrong.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said on a conference call today that if March 4 is a tie, Clinton would need to win 75 percent of the remaining pledged delegates. This seemed high to me, given all the monkeying around we’ve been doing with Slate’s delegate calculator.
After re-crunching the numbers, I’m pretty convinced their calculation is off. Check it out:
The campaign claims Obama currently leads by 162 pledged delegates. (That’s about right.) They point out that after March 4 there are another 611 pledged delegates up for grabs. So far, so good.
But if Clinton wins 75 percent of those 611 remaining delegates (giving her 458 delegates), that means Obama will win 25 percent (giving him 152 delegates). If you add that to Obama’s current lead of 162, he will have 314 delegates total. In other words, Clinton: 458. Obama: 314. She would have a lead of 144 pledged delegates. That’s a lot more than "catching up" (epecially when coupled with her current lead among superdelegates).
A little algebra* shows that if Clinton and Obama split the March 4 delegates, she would actually have to win about 63 percent of the remaining delegates to tie it up.
The number matters because it’s used to illustrate the Obama campaign’s claim that Hillary has no mathematical chance of catching up. To be fair, we agree with them that 63 percent is extremely difficult for her. But it’s hardly as daunting as 75 percent. Just wanted to clear that up.
Got a problem with our math? Let us know.
*OK, here goes: If x = percentage of delegates Obama wins after March 4, then the percentage Hillary wins is (1-x). y is the number of delegates each candidate will have won between now and the end of the primaries, including Obama’s current 162 delegate lead. So,
611(1-x) = y
611x + 162 = y
Solve for x, and you’ll find that x = 0.37, which means (1-x) = 0.63.
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At Tuesday's debate, Hillary Clinton unleashed the canned complaint of the week:
Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don't mind. I—you know, I'll be happy to field them, but I do find it curious, and if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow.
As Slate has discussed in various forums, this quote is very curious, to say the least. First of all, answering a question first isn't a disadvantage. You get to set the tone of the debate with your response and get to look like the smartest guy/gal in the room. Especially in the primaries, if you cover all the bases, your opponent is forced to mimic your every word and concede that you're right on the key points of the issue. First impressions matter.
So by no means do we buy Hillary's grievance that answering first is a problem. What we do buy partly, though, is that at the previous debate in Texas, she had to answer a disproportionate number of questions first.
Crunching the numbers using the New York Times' masterful debate analyzer, we've discovered a curious stat. At CNN's Campbell Brown-moderated debate in the Lone Star State, Clinton answered first 11 times, compare with four first responses from Obama. (The number is complicated partly because some questions were posed only for Clinton, some were directed at Clinton first, and some Clinton volunteered to answer first.) But still, 73 percent of the time, Clinton was the first to respond.
But that was the only debate where such disparities were in play. At the previous debate—a CNN affair in Los Angeles—Obama answered nine questions first, compared with Clinton's seven. (Note that in Clinton's original quote she said "in the last several debates.") At the MSNBC debate this week, Clinton and Obama had almost an even split by the end of the night, although Clinton did answer the first two topics.
So, yes, Clinton was sort of right to point out that she was answering too many questions first. But we're still not sure if that helps or hurts a candidate whose greatest strength used to be, and still is, her deft touch on the debate stage.
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The Obama campaign comes back on Hillary's "3 a.m." ad with their own takeoff, "Ringing."
It starts like Clinton’s, but quickly morphs: "When that call gets answered, shouldn’t the president be the one—the only one—who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start. … Who understood the REAL threat to America was al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan, not Iraq."
Nice twist, but the real story is the turnaround. That took what, 12 hours? I'm picturing David Axelrod barking into the phone, "Get me kids, cute kids! Asleep! With blue light!"
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Did someone from Barack Obama’s campaign call an official from the Canadian Embassy and tell them that the senator’s opposition to NAFTA is just “rhetoric,” as CTV reported? No, according to both the campaign and the embassy. But whether or not someone made the call, the real question is: Would it even have been necessary?
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe flatly denied the original story. But when more details emerged—economic adviser Austan Goolsbee may have placed the calls to a Canadian consulate in Chicago—the campaign stopped responding head-on. Today on a conference call, a reporter asked if Goolsbee had ever phoned a Canadian official in Chicago to discuss NAFTA. Plouffe reverted to the blanket denial that “the story is just not true. … Our guy and the Canadian ambassador denied this. It’s just not true.”
Fine, innocent until proven otherwise. But here’s the problem: Goolsbee didn’t need to make the call. Canada already knew that the candidates' new tough-on-NAFTA rhetoric was political, not permanent. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said as much. “If a future president actually did want to open up NAFTA, which I highly doubt, then Canada would obviously have some things we would want to discuss,” Harper said recently. From CTV:
But Harper also noted that assertions made in the heat of political campaigns should be taken with a grain of salt.
Indeed, the whole NAFTA pile-on has been conducted with a wink and a nod. When Tim Russert pressed Clinton during Tuesday’s debate, she said she would withdraw from NAFTA—unless we renegotiated it. Obama agreed. But “renegotiation” doesn’t mean “overhaul.” When asked for specifics, both candidates say they would impose labor and environmental standards. But they don’t say they would scrap the system that currently benefits farmers in Obama’s home state of Illinois and drives Ohio’s manufacturing jobs overseas. The promise on Obama’s Web site to “amend” NAFTA is hardly abolitionist: “Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.” For NAFTA haters, that’s weak consolation.
Whether or not Goolsbee placed a phone call, the reassurance is implicit: We’re not going to have a president who aggressively resists free trade and brings jobs back from overseas. (A subject on which McCain has been upfront.) They may well try to humanize the agreements and make them more palatable to American workers. But it’s difficult to see the candidates living up to their current rhetoric, and Canada is certainly OK with that.
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We were pretty much on board for “Yes We Can.” Nothing wrong with a little inspirational music to sweeten the policy memos.
Not so sure about this one, though. Is it just us, or are these Obama tribute videos getting creepier and creepier? (Also, way to give grist to the dolts crying fascism.)
Plus, a friend points out similarities to the now-ubiquitous “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck.” Both soulful declarations of love. Both examples of orgiastic celebrity self-worship. Both featuring Macy Gray!
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On a conference call chock-full of logical fallacies and non sequiturs, Howard Wolfson responds to Barack Obama's claim that Hillary's new "3 a.m." ad constitutes "fear-mongering":
I think it’s an insult to voters to say that a discussion about national security is fear-mongering. ...National security is an essential part of what the president does. ... It absolutely undersells the intelligence of the American people.
The real insult to people's intelligence is to equate the ad—what with its ominous narrator, shots of innocent children snuggling in their beds, and sounds of a ringing phone—with "a discussion about national security."
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Ah, expectations. With yet another Tuesday right around the corner, the campaigns are spinning like dreidels.
The Obama campaign is essentially arguing that Hillary is beaten on the board. On a conference call this morning, David Plouffe said that Clinton will “fail miserably” at closing the pledged delegate gap. He added that if there’s a tie in Ohio and Texas, Clinton would need to win 75 percent of pledged delegates from there on in order to close the gap. (Slate’s Delegate Calculator offers a much more conservative estimate of 62 percent or so.) It’s a notable shift in rhetoric: Before, Obama’s team claimed he was still the underdog. Now, they’re saying Hillary has no mathematical chance of winning. When confronted with a similar dilemma, Mike Huckabee said he “majored in miracles.” Clinton has not yet resorted to the supernatural.
She has, however, resorted to the highly implausible. Clinton’s camp is raising sky-high expectations for Obama. Their latest “memo” argues that given all the time Obama has spent in Ohio and Texas “meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and—of course—making speeches,” and considering all the money spent—$18.4 million to Clinton’s $9.2 million for advertising in the next four states—anything other than total victory constitutes failure: “If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem.”
In short: Obama says Clinton has no chance. Clinton says Obama needs a blowout. Both claims are fairly over-the-top. But at least Obama’s has the benefit of being vaguely rooted in science. Plus, they can both finally agree on something: Obama is ahead.
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It’s well-known that Barack Obama’s success has depended largely on independent and Republican voters. The corollary to that, however, has been less thoroughly reported: Obama is losing among Democrats.
Over at the Perfect World, Cal Lanier crunches the numbers and finds that Obama, despite being ahead among pledged delegates, has fewer total votes among people who identify themselves as Democrats. (He has 7,392,809 votes; Clinton has 8,229,063.) That gives Clinton as lead with 52 percent of Democrats. Lanier also breaks the numbers down by race and points out that Obama has won white Democrats in only two states: New Mexico and Illinois.
The numbers are hardly perfect. They rely on CNN and MSNBC exit polls, which are inherently rough. (Extrapolating those percentages to estimate exact numbers of voters is going to compound margins of error.) And because caucuses report delegates, not individual turnout, those stats are going to be a little murky, too. I'd also dispute their inclusion of Florida and Michigan in the count. But Clinton’s lead is still large enough to be significant.
It helps you understand why the party gives so much power to its 796 superdelegates. If they didn’t, independents and Republicans could essentially hijack their election. It also makes you wonder whether Clinton should start citing this number, if she maintains her lead through the convention in August. Even if Obama leads in the popular vote and among pledged delegates, it might disturb party gray beards to learn that the nominee has essentially been chosen by outsiders.
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Today, on a conference call with the campaign’s finance committee, Clinton heavyweights were celebrating an impressive fundraising month. The campaign raised $35 million over the past 28 days, which is a Clinton record. Thirty-four million of it can be spent on primaries, which means they’re finding new donors and getting old, small-dollar donors to give again. Good news all around. Armed with this cash, Clinton’s ebullient aides said they were competing at full capacity in March 4 states. The only thing that could stop them: the media.
According to the Clinton campaign, if Hillary loses, it’s because the press is pro-Obama. For weeks they’ve been murmuring that the loves Obama so much that they may as well have that “Yes, We Can” video as their iPod’s background. Then, after SNL played mouthpiece, Clinton made her highest-profile complaint against the media yet—and it fell flat on its face.
On today’s call, Harold Ickes acknowledged that Clinton has lost nearly a dozen primaries and caucuses in a row, but he didn’t let it deter his optimism. “The press in the main has given Sentor Obama a pass. They have not scrutinized him closely,” he said. He added that he expected the media to start hunting around Obama’s record now that he’s the front-runner and that once they do, Clinton could start to make effective attacks on Obama’s record. He didn’t say whether that would happen by March 4.
Here’s the thing—we haven’t seen press stories about Obama’s seedy past because there aren’t many more to be found. And the ones that have emerged haven’t stuck. We had the Rezko affair, the cavorting with “terrorists” imbroglio, and the completely false Obama-attended-a-madrassa flap. But that’s pretty much it. Part of the reason why Obama is running for president now is precisely because he doesn’t have enough skeletons in the closet to have his presidential hopes fractured.
A lot of the alleged anti-Clinton reporting is really just fact. Case in point: Today’s fundraising call. Clinton raised a record $35 million—but that’s still 1 million short of the overall record Obama sent last month. Moreover, Obama is set to blast that number out of the water with a $50-plus million total sometime this week. This extends to reporting on polls—where she’s hemorrhaging support nationwide—and superdelegate defections—where there’s a slow but steady trickle toward Obama. Simply put, nearly all of the horse-race metrics favor Obama. Thanks to the two candidates’ similar platforms, this has become a horse-race election rather than an issue-based vote. That means Clinton gets shafted.
And in a horse-race election, complaining doesn’t work. You can only make the media feel guilty so often before they turn on you all over again. It leads to cable-news host blow-ups and New York Times columnists’ scorn. As Obama said at the debate, it makes her look like she’s whining—and voters (who include the press) don’t like whiners.
Clinton’s folk will probably think I have proved their point by writing these paragraphs. If that’s the case, then Clinton really will lose on Tuesday. But not because of opinions, but because of facts.
Pissed off? Think I’m proving the Clinton’s point? Vent at my inbox* or in the Fray.
*UPDATE Feb. 29 7:30 a.m.: Originally I linked to the wrong email. My apologies if you incurred the wrath of the mailer daemon.
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Slate intern Alex Joseph sends in this dispatch on Ralph Nader's press conference in Washington, D.C.:
Roughly two dozen reporters gathered at the National Press Club today to find out who will be Ralph Nader’s running mate in his fourth consecutive bid for the presidency. Nader has been in the race only a week, but judging from the attitude in the room, he has already overstayed his welcome.
Nader acknowledged his history with the reporters who showed up. When someone pressed him for specifics during a question, Nader laughingly reminded them that they of all people know he can give specifics. He even condemned Washington Post writer Dana Milbank by name for his negative columns (all but guaranteeing another one), while Milbank sat in the back of the room smiling. It felt like an awkward college reunion, where a group of old classmates gathered grudgingly to reminisce on the good ol’ days.
The most interesting (a relative term) aspect of Nader’s press conference was his new running mate, Matt Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a young, articulate politician who made a name for himself by earning 47 percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate in San Francisco’s 2003 mayoral race. After graduating from Stanford Law in 1990, Gonzalez became a public defender. In 2000, he was elected to San Francisco’s board of supervisors. While Nader harped on how corporations run Washington, Gonzalez laid out three different priorities: election reform, poverty relief, and a quick withdrawal from Iraq.
Nader seemed to recognize Gonzalez’s appeal, at times deferring to him. At one point, Gonzalez tapped Nader on the shoulder while he was speaking, quietly insisting that Nader step aside and allow him to follow up. This may have been Nader’s best decision all afternoon: allowing a fresh face to engage a press corps that’s become increasingly tired of the perennial candidate.
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The oddly fickle (and spookily accurate) political-futures markets have made some bizarre predictions. Anyone betting against Ron Paul or Al Gore to become president stood to make a lot of money. There was also a big Giuliani-for-VP upswing last week, for no apparent reason.
In the same tradition, a friend points out that today around noon, the Bill Richardson for Vice President stock doubled on InTrade—and it’s unclear why. Buzz about a potential Richardson endorsement has been building for the past week. If Richardson endorses Obama and Obama does better than expected among Texas Latinos, the New Mexico governor could plausibly take some credit.
But nothing particularly game-changing has happened today—has it? Maybe some insider knowledge has leaked to traders but not to the rest of us? (Shouldn’t insider trading be against the rules, anyway?)
Who knows, maybe Richardson himself just bought up a bunch of shares and plans to endorse.
Check out Slate's "Political Futures" page here.
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The subject of John McCain’s place of birth—he was born on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone, where his parents were stationed in 1936—is back on the table now that he’s got the GOP nomination locked down.
The “debate,” if you can call it that, turns on the question of what the founders meant when they wrote in the Constitution that any American president must be a “natural born citizen.” Some people believe it would be absurd for Americans born abroad to military parents to be ineligible for the presidency. But others … well, today's New York Times piece doesn’t quote a single person opposed to the idea. Which suggests to me that McCain won’t have much of a problem. (It's unclear who would have standing to sue, other than Obama himself.)
But that doesn’t mean Republicans shouldn’t clear this up once and for all. Lawmakers advanced legislation in 2004 that would make it legal for children born abroad to American citizens to run for president, but it never passed. With McCain’s candidacy at stake (or at least at hand), now would be the time to revisit the issue.
The reason, of course, is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ever since he was elected governor of California, supporters have pushed for a constitutional amendment that would allow him to run for president. Petitions have circulated. Even former President George H.W. Bush said with respect to the governor’s presidential hopes, “don’t bet against Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Republicans could use the relatively simple issue of McCain’s eligibility to nudge discussion toward a larger overhaul, which could one day clear the way for Schwarzenegger.
The prospect of President Schwarzenegger has so far been limited to the fictional realm. (Update 6:39 p.m.: How could we forget Demolition Man?) But—and yes, this counts as a crackpot theory—imagine a scenario in which Barack Obama wins the presidency, and the Republicans are scrambling for a challenger in 2012. Romney is still around, but people remember that he lost in 2008 despite being the best-funded of the bunch. Giuliani could make a comeback, but he won’t have any more governing experience in four years than he does now. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, is the complete package: He enjoys wild popularity, he can compete with Obama for moderates, he could take California, he’s married to a Kennedy, and he has a life story that, like Obama’s, is the American dream. He would be the GOP’s answer to Obama.
But none of this would matter unless Republicans started pushing to tweak the Constitution—and soon. The problem is, GOP leaders don’t want to raise doubts about McCain’s eligibility, no matter how minor, so it’s unlikely they’ll go out of their way to bring it up. They’ll just have to wait till after the election.
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There are two kinds of insults. The first type doesn’t let the insulter deny that he is, in fact, hurling an insult. When Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle, “You're no Jack Kennedy,” that was a deliberate, nonrefundable dis. When Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot,” there was no mistaking her words—the shock value was the point.
The second kind, however, gives the insult-thrower deniability. It lets you throw up your hands and say, “Who, me?” One example was the way Barack Obama would thank John McCain for his “half-century of service,” to remind people of McCain’s age while guising it as a compliment.
The whole “Barack Hussein Obama” meme falls into the latter category, too. First, talk radio host Bill Cunningham repeatedly called the senator by his full name—a move John McCain quickly criticized. Now, the Tennessee Republican Party is defending its decision to use the same formulation in party literature. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel:
[Tennessee GOP Chairman Robin] Smith said today that McCain's comments do not change the state party's stance and the state GOP will continue to use Obama's middle name. That's no different than saying "Hillary Rodham Clinton" or "Richard Milhouse Nixon," she said.
It wouldn’t be the first time full names have been used for effect. Critics of George Herbert Walker Bush delighted in using his full name to emphasize his WASPiness. Same with enemies of J. Danforth Quayle, whose upper-crust name conjures images of argyle sweaters and croquet matches. (The modern equivalent would have to be 50 Cent, whose rivals took pleasure in calling him by his real name, Curtis, which he later embraced as the title of his third album.)
But “Hussein” is different, for obvious reasons. In the Tennessee GOP case, as with Cunningham, they’re using it to provoke associations with Saddam Hussein or, less explicitly, that whole scary part of the world east of Israel. The What did I do? deniability claim makes it all the more insidious. But it raises a question: Will it become taboo among Democrats to call Obama by his full name? And if so, isn’t that a problem? Among presidents, it’s common practice to use all three names—JFK, LBJ, William Jefferson Clinton. If Obama wins the presidency, would that be suddenly off limits, as if to utter his full name is to demean the man and the office?
Not for long, I imagine. An equal and opposite backlash would probably emerge to keep the PC outrage in check. Can we just please use his name without being called racist? would be the rallying cry. Perhaps Obama would have to give a speech about his name, like Romney addressed his Mormonism. But that’s a long way off and in a hypothetical universe. Until then, Obama could become the first presidential nominee whose name is itself a slur.
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The night before Super Tuesday Hillary Clinton bought airtime on the Hallmark Channel to have "a national town hall." Emboldened by her mediocre success across the country the next day, she's bought another hour of airtime on Monday night, hours before polls officially open in Texas, except this time she'll be on Fox Sports Net Southwest. On March 5, when we need to understand why Clinton lost the male vote, we'll know where to turn.
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A comedian has apparently infiltrated Barack Obama's Fact Check page:
Former President Bill Clinton said today: There's a
one-minute ad on in Texas telling you how terrible things were in the 90s. [NBC,
2/27/08 LINK]
FACT: No such ad exists. [reality,
2/27/08] [Emphasis added]
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It’s fitting that a crazy, mucked-up Democratic primary season like this one comes down to the craziest, muckiest contest of all: Texas. The Lone Star State has never played a large role in a presidential primary—even Bill Clinton himself has said it’s all riding on March 4—so now campaign strategists and pundits alike are scrambling to master the state’s oddball system. (Hillary says the complex rules have “grown men crying” in the campaign.) In case you don’t spend your days and nights immersed in precinct-by-precinct analyses and delegate allocation procedures (PDF), here’s a quick primer on how it will all go down:
The Primary: Texas has 228 delegates in total, but only 126 of them are allocated like a regular primary. These pledged delegates are distributed among the state’s 31 senatorial districts—not, mind you, by congressional district. (This system has been in place for at least 20 years, so don’t think it’s the result of recent gerrymandering.) Each district gets between three and eight delegates, which it allocates proportionally based on the tally within that district.
But here’s the catch: Districts don’t receive delegates based on population or even registered Democrats. Delegates are allocated based on how many Democrats voted in the 2004 presidential election and the 2006 gubernatorial election. (A state party spokesman says the system is designed to “reward” participation.) For example, the state’s 14th District, which includes Austin, receives eight delegates—the most of any district—because of its high turnout in previous races. At the same time, the 27th and 28th Districts, located on the southern border and West Texas, respectively, get only three delegates each because of low past turnout.
So, who does this system benefit? Conventional wisdom says Obama. In previous elections, urban areas with high numbers of African-Americans and college students—Obama’s base—have turned out in droves. By contrast, rural areas with large white and Latino populations—groups that have favored Clinton—have participated less. (Hispanics leaned Republican in 2004, given Bush’s stance on immigration reform.) As a result, Obama’s ballot-happy constituencies start with a built-in advantage—their votes simply weigh more. As party leaders will remind you, however, that means nothing unless he can get them to turn out again. Plus, there’s always:
The Caucus: Starting at 7:15 p.m., right after polls close, Texas voters can show up to a district convention, also known as a caucus. This works a lot like other caucuses: Voters have to show up, stand in the same room, and be counted. (Unlike Iowa, however, there is no 15 percent threshold.) The main difference is that caucus-goers need to have voted in the primary earlier that day. So in a sense, caucus-goers get to vote twice. (And since fewer people turn out for caucuses than for primaries, a caucus vote has significantly more clout than a primary vote.) The state then allocates 67 delegates—one-third of total pledged delegates—based on who wins each district’s caucus.
Again, Obama seems to benefit from the system. He has so far won every caucus state except Nevada (and maybe New Mexico). Theories abound as to why he fares so well in caucuses—possible factors include having a better field organization plus supporters with more free time and energy. If voters want to participate in the Texas caucuses, they’ll have to show up for two separate events, which won’t be easy for working parents. (As a result, many voters will probably show up late in the day—something to keep in mind when analyzing early results.) Both campaigns have strong ground organizations in Texas, but when logistics have been an issue in the past, Obama has typically fared better.
Superdelegates: Texas also has 35 superdelegates, composed of party leaders and elected officials. Among these, Clinton still leads Obama, 13-7, according to Politico’s superdelegate counter. But 14 are still undecided, and Obama has been picking them up at a faster rate recently.
Early voting: Texas voters began casting early ballots on Feb. 19, and the numbers broke records from the start. More than 360,000 people have already voted, with some counties reporting 10 times the participation they had at this time four years ago. Early voting is expected to be a major part of the results—nearly 40 percent of voters in 2006 voted early. So far, turnout seems to be just as high in Clinton-friendly counties (Hidalgo, Galveston) as in those that should favor Obama (Travis, Williamson).
Further reading: The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal on what Texas’ arcane system means for Clinton, the New York Times on how both campaigns are managing it, Slate’s "Election Scorecard" on the latest Texas polls, and Burnt Orange Report with an insanely fine-grained district-by-district analysis.
Trailhead thanks professor Bruce Buchanan of the University of Texas.
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Take a deep breath—all of the Democratic debates are over; 20 up, 20 down, and assuming there aren't any more debates going forward, that's the last time we'll see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the same room for a while. Strangely, that’s both a relief and a disappointment. Outside of actual primaries, no other event offered more potential for narrative-changing storylines. But debates also invited us media folk to inject too much punditry into the news cycle about moments the general public doesn’t actually care about.
Important distinctions were voiced at Tuesday’s debate, but not all of them were immediately familiar. With all of the arguing over NAFTA, leaked photographs, and media bias, who has the time to follow the endorsements from the Nation of Islam? Here’s a summary and some recommended reading on a few topics that are likely to carry the post-debate news agenda:
Louis Farrakhan: Earlier this week, the leader of the Nation of Islam all but endorsed Obama. But it’s an endorsement no candidate wanted—Farrakhan has insulted Judaism and crafted CIA conspiracy theories in the past. The endorsement is especially messy for Obama, who has long struggled to convince the Jewish community that he’s a supporter of Israel. That’s not to mention the complications it could bring by furthering rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Obama has long said he does not approve of Farrkhan’s comments and reiterated that he did not solicit his endorsement at the debate. Also of note: Obama’s church leader, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, once said Farrakhan “epitomized greatness.” This gets worse for Obama with every extra second of airtime. He can’t denounce—or reject—Farrakhan enough. Recommended reading: Belief Net, PBS, Southern Poverty Law Center.
Dimitry Medvedev: The 42-year-old Russian deputy prime minister will almost surely become the country’s president this weekend, but it may not mean much. Vladimir Putin is stepping down from the presidency but assuming the role of prime minister, and will probably have the same amount of power as he did when he was president. There are some hints that Medvedev could be friendlier to democracy than Putin, but it’s still unclear how their power-sharing dynamic will operate. Clinton was asked to name Russia’s soon-to-be premier at the debate, and managed a garbled version of Medvedev that sounded like she had taken one too many shots of former-Soviet vodka with John McCain. But we doubt Obama could have done much better—he looked to her as the question was asked, suggesting he wanted her to take the lead. As attention oscillates between Russia and China in foreign policy circles, both candidates’ lack of knowledge was unimpressive, to say the least. Fun fact: Medvedev loves Black Sabbath. Maybe he’ll invite Ozzy to the Kremlin. Recommended reading: Economist, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Slate.
Money, money, money: Both candidates got snagged by fiscal transparency during the debate. First, Tim Russert checked in on Obama's original pledge that he'd take public funds if his opponent did. John McCain has suggested he might take public financing, which has forced Obama to show his hand—and it's a different one than it used to be. Obama wouldn't say whether he was willing to commit to public funds at the debate, saying he'd sit down with McCain and hash out something fair to both of them. Russert also returned to another favorite subject—Clinton family transparency. After Hillary Clinton admitted she loaned herself $5 million, there were calls for her to make her and Bill's tax returns public, so voters could see where the money came from. Hillary said she'll do it—just not any time soon. Both candidates wriggled out of Russert's questions, but not before both issues' profiles were raised another notch. Recommended reading: New York Times, Trailhead, Telegraph.
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Both candidates pull punches at the end. Brian Williams poses the question: Is there a fundamental question the other must answer to voters?
Obama takes the opportunity to return Hillary’s praise from last debate—“she would be worthy as a nominee”—and declines to point out any of her shortcomings.
Clinton likewise discusses her own struggle to improve people’s lives, citing her efforts on universal health care, and earns applause with her assertion that her nomination would be a “sea change” for America.
Both safe answers. But both candidates knew better than to take the bait and go after each other. Not the note you want to end on in what could be the last debate of the primary.
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Obama’s old stammer is coming back. When Russert brings up Obama’s promise to accept public funds during the general election, Obama denies that’s what he said.
“Tim, I’m not yet the nominee. When I’m the nominee—if I’m the nominee,” I’ll sit down and figure out whether to take public funds.
He stammers again when trying to qualify his denunciation of Louis Farrakhan’s expression of support for him. “I can’t say to someone that I think he can’t say that I’m a good guy,” Obama says. He denounces Farrakhan’s remarks about Jews, but seems uncomfortable insulting Farrakhan on national television.
Clinton sees an opening and tries to nail him on it. There’s a difference, Clinton says, between “denouncing” Farrakhan and “rejecting” his support. (As Clinton rejected donations from the Independence Party in New York.) But, in fact, she gives him an opening here to poke fun at her parsing. If Hillary thinks there’s a difference between reject and denounce, Obama says, and she wants him to do both, then he will “reject and denounce” Farrakhan’s remarks. Laughs, applause, commercial break.
Now that is a reversal.
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A hawk-eyed reader observes: Are Obama and Russert wearing the same tie?
If so, does it mean Russert has Obamamania?
Maybe SNL was right!
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The Iraq exchange is pretty boilerplate, with Hillary saying that Obama’s opposition to the war in 2003 wasn’t all that impressive, that he has since said he didn’t know how he would have voted on the war authorization, and that they have voted identically on the war in the Senate.
So, devil’s advocate here: If they have voted exactly the same on Iraq, why does it matter that she has more “experience”?
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Tim Russert pulls a Tim Russert and tries to corner Hillary on NAFTA, asking if she’ll terminate the agreement in the first six months of her presidency. She wriggles around a little bit and basically says that, no, she wouldn’t pull out of it, but she would use the threat of pulling out as leverage to renegotiate it.
Obama, in a nutshell: What she said. But I never said I liked it!
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Clinton lands a good answer on job creation. Russert mentions a promise she made in 2000 that New York would gain 200,000 jobs. The state ended up losing 30,000 jobs. Now she’s promising to create 5 million jobs across the country. How can we believe her this time? Russert asks.
Without missing a beat, Clinton responds: “In 2000, I thought Al Gore was going to be president."
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Clinton gets snippy at the moderators for, she claims, always asking her to answer questions first: “We should ask Barack Obama if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.” Wowza!
It's a nice play on the media-hates-Hillary narrative, although you wonder how many people picked up on it.
So she doesn't like the order of the questioning. “But I’m happy to answer it,” she says. Smile.
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The first question is about intraparty tribal warfare, but we’re already talking about the nuances of health-care plans! What’s going on?
The foundation of Clinton’s argument is that by not pursuing universal health care, Obama undermines a foundational Democratic value. Clinton points out, as she has before, that Obama’s plan doesn’t offer universal health care but does require a mandate for children. Why not expand it to everyone?
Obama is forced to defend a difficult nuance: He says he wants universal care, but his plan doesn’t provide it. “Every expert has said that anyone who wants health care under my plan will be able to obtain it,” he says.
Also important: Did Obama just say “Massatusetts”? Twice?
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Welcome to Cleveland. Introductory observations:
- Has this campaign made Brian Williams go gray?
- They’re all sitting around the same table. Are Russert and Obama playing footsie?
- A friend in the room (who has been reading way too many blogs) characterizes Hillary’s posture as “cat-like, poised to pounce.” Gone is the Star Trek uniform, replaced by a jacket that looks like a well-tailored welcome mat.
On with the show!
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In response to a New York Times article alleging that morale is low in Hillaryland, the campaign submitted a letter to the Times signed by 503 supporters and staffers, reassuring the world that they “are working tirelessly each and every day and night, because we believe in Hillary.” In other words, morale is high. (Read the full letter here.)
The Times refused to print the letter, calling it a “press release.”
Not to pile on here, but put yourself in the shoes of a disaffected Clinton staffer (assuming they exist). A letter is circulating the campaign office. Lots of people are signing it. You can be darn well sure your colleagues will be scanning the list of signatories. Would anyone in his right mind not put his name at the bottom?
Seems to me that, while I know many Clinton staffers are committed to the campaign, this is just a thinly disguised—and highly public—loyalty oath.
Update 8:26 p.m.: A friend sagely points out: They could get 503 staffers to sign this, but not one swearing they didn't leak the Obama photo? Also, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said they had "over 700 people on staff." Does that mean 197 people don't believe Hillary "will make the best President of the United States"?
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Mike Huckabee, who wants you to know he’s still in the race, has challenged John McCain to a debate.
Here's something for them to debate. Be it resolved that:
994 (McCain's current delegate count) + 88 (Ohio) + 140 (Texas) + 20 (Rhode Island) + 17 (Vermont) > 1,191 (the number of delegates necessary to win the nomination)
Similarly:
239 (Huckabee’s current delegate count) + 88 (Ohio) + 140 (Texas) + 20 (Rhode Island) + 17 (Vermont) + 39 (Mississippi) + 9 (Virgin Islands) + 74 (Pennsylvania) + 57 (Indiana) + 69 (North Carolina) + 20 (Hawaii) + 45 (Kentucky) + 30 (Oregon) + 32 (Idaho) + 32 (New Mexico) + 27 (South Dakota) + 33 (Nebraska) < 1,191
Miracles, indeed.
Delegate numbers lifted from CNN and the New York Times.
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Part three of the Clinton vs. Obama debate-a-thon airs tonight (9 p.m., MSNBC), and it’s being billed as the last, final, ultimate one-on-one showdown ever, forever … until Hillary steamrolls Obama in Ohio, and we do it all over again. But the past week has not been kind to Clinton, what with Obama closing the gap in Texas, both sides breaking even in the NAFTA debate, and her “major” foreign-policy speech getting eclipsed by the dress mess. But the debate stage is still her turf, making the drama behind tonight’s face-off slightly less contrived than usual. Here are a few things to look for as you struggle to avoid clicking over to American Idol:
Which Hillary? Clinton has been positively schizophrenic recently, sounding defeated at one moment, angrily brandishing oppo mailers the next, and offering stately disquisitions on foreign affairs for good measure. Which Hillary will we see tonight? If recent history is any indicator, all three! She will probably go easy on the canned lines, however: Last week’s “Xerox” quip bombed, and her policy-based attacks have been more effective, anyway.
The new front-runner. Obama turned in a solid performance at last Thursday’s debate, arguing Hillary to a draw. But a flubbed answer or ill-advised put-down can undo everything. Look for Obama to stick with last week’s formula: shrug off attacks as petty, beat back Clinton’s “experience” case, and insist that inspiration is more important than bullet points.
Negative Nancies. Over the weekend, Hillary held up an Obama mailer attacking her health-care plan and record on NAFTA and challenged him to “meet me in Ohio.” Well, here they are. In most debates, the candidates leave their harshest words at the door. But this could be Clinton’s last chance to ding Obama for resorting to negative attacks while claiming to represent a new kind of politics. Obama has plenty of ammo in that clip, too, the Wajir photo being the freshest (if not the most incriminating) example.
Trade pandering. Nowhere are the negative effects of NAFTA more palpable than Ohio, where manufacturing jobs have dropped steeply. As a result, Obama and Clinton have spent recent weeks flogging each other over trade, each claiming that the other has said positive things about NAFTA. Both are sort of right, which makes the argument as close to a stalemate as can be—and therefore likely to generate plenty of heat. The Tim Russert Quote Machine will no doubt be in top form. As for Ohio-targeting, Clinton can relax slightly. She retains a lead in Ohio polls, where demographics—more rural whites, fewer urban blacks—skew to her benefit.
Network tensions: When MSNBC’s David Shuster suggested that the Clinton campaign was “pimping out” Chelsea Clinton, the campaign threatened to boycott all future NBC debates. They later reneged (for a campaign that’s pushing for more debates, it doesn’t make sense to skip one), but residual tensions could flare up, especially if they bring up the media’s treatment of the candidates.
Check back at 9 p.m. for a live blog of the debate. And maybe a little American Idol.
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That was fast. In a mere four hours, an insult was hurled, an apology offered, and an acceptance announced. That could well be a record for presidential campaigns.
At an event in Cincinnati, talk-radio host Bill Cunningham gave a speech endorsing John McCain in which he referred three times to “Barack Hussein Obama.”
Before the story could make the rounds, McCain’s people said they “do not agree” with Cunningham’s statement. “I never met Mr. Cunningham,” McCain said, “but I will make sure nothing like that ever happens again.”
Obama’s camp was equally quick with an acceptance. “We appreciate Senator McCain’s remarks,” said spokesman Bill Burton in a statement. “It is a sign that if there is a McCain-Obama general election, it can be intensely competitive but the candidates will attempt to keep it respectful and focused on issues.”
How very … sane. Compare that with the serial drama that followed the remarks of Bill Shaheen, Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign co-chair, when he brought up Obama’s past drug use in an interview. (The Clinton campaign took responsibility for the remarks and accepted Shaheen’s resignation, but only after the story dominated the news cycle—and after Mark Penn repeated the word cocaine a couple more times.) Something similar happened when BET founder Bob Johnson alluded to Obama's drug use. Johnson then claimed he had been talking about Obama’s community organizing—an absurd statement that only deepened the insult. Finally, Johnson apologized for real, but the damage had been done. Obama ended up scoring points (and raising cash) because of the flap.
This time around, McCain was smart to clear the air quickly, seeing as umbrage is the new black. Had he dawdled, Obama could easily have turned this into another “Wajir dress” incident, denouncing his opponent’s skeevy tactics and simultaneously raking in the moolah. Instead, Obama let McCain off the hook. Perhaps he figured it was too early for a roll in the mud—there will be plenty of time for that. Or, more likely, he realized it would come off as a stunt, à la Hillary’s “Meet me in Ohio.” You can only cry umbrage so many times before people run out of sympathy.
If this precedent is any sign, perhaps a McCain-Obama matchup would be fairly tame. John McCain experienced dirty campaign tactics firsthand in 2000, when charges that he fathered a black child helped end his candidacy in South Carolina. Likewise, the persistence of e-mails calling Obama a Muslim and questioning his patriotism have made Obama’s campaign sensitive to and disdainful of slurs. Both candidates paint themselves as reformers who want to change the tone (Obama) and means (McCain) of campaigning. Here’s their chance.
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It’s probably too late for this publication—we who brought you the Encyclopedia Baracktannica—to start condemning others for abusive permutations of Barack Obama’s name. There is one word, however, that you will never find in our Encyclopedia, no matter how many editions it goes through: Omentum.
Long before this word got tossed around the blogosphere and casually dropped on Sunday morning shows, it referred to “[a] sheet of fat … attached to the bottom edge of the stomach,” as defined on MedicineNet.com. This was first brought to our attention by alert reader Dr. James Peykanu of Morgantown, W.Va., an Obama supporter who implored us not to associate the word with his candidate. Peykanu describes the omentum in detail:
The Omentum (there are two, the greater and lesser) is a big membrane in the belly that serves as the root by which the blood to the intestines flows. Incidentally, in most people, it is HEAVILY impregnated with fat and is a pretty disgusting thing to look at or surgically manipulate, no matter how great a function the thing serves (it is very useful in walling off infections, for example).
Sadly, the best picture we can find features Oprah—an Obama supporter—holding one under the headline “The Biology of Blubber.”
Perhaps Obama’s detractors should latch onto the analogy. As Oprah tells us, “A healthy omentum, like the one Oprah's holding, should be ‘lacy, like stockings. …The omentum, you'll notice, is transparent and thin.’”
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With a debate in Ohio tomorrow and a primary there a week from now, the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been struggling to distance themselves from NAFTA—and to portray the other as NAFTA’s best friend. But the fact is, both candidates have said good things about the free-trade agreement in the past, and both now condemn it. They should really save themselves the oxygen and declare a truce.
To hear Obama tell it, Clinton’s original sin lies in her husband’s administration, under which NAFTA passed. Obama also cites a quote from Hillary in 2004, when she said, “I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America.” An Obama mailer distributed in Ohio claimed that Clinton had said NAFTA was a “boon” to the economy, but it turns out that was Newsday’s characterization of Clinton’s stance—not her own word. (Even Newsday says Obama's comments are a misrepresentation.) Her real position seems to be ambivalence—understandably, given that NAFTA has benefited many and hurt many others—but Obama has been quick to exploit it.
Clinton has similar dirt on Obama. During his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama attended an event in rural Shirley, Ill., where he spoke to 100 members of the Illinois Farm Bureau—a group that had decidedly benefited from NAFTA, since it opened up markets for the farmers' grain. According to an account of the event by the Decatur Herald & Review, “Obama said the United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO and NAFTA.” The Associate Press confirms this account. So far, so bad.
But the Herald piece goes on: “He said, at the same time, there must be recognition that the global economy has shifted, and the United States is no longer the dominant economy. ‘We have competition in world trade,’ Obama said. ‘When China devalues its currency 40 percent, we need to bring a complaint before the WTO just as other nations complain about us. If we are to be competitive over the long term, we need free trade but also fair trade.’ ”
In other words, Obama’s main point was that the country has to be more aggressive about protecting American interests. If anything, the first part about the United States benefiting enormously was a hedge—a statement meant to lessen the blow of what he was about to say. That doesn’t mean he didn’t say it. It just means it was part of a larger point that the United States can’t rely on free markets to solve all its problems.
Obama boasts about speaking truth to people who don’t want to hear it. He prides himself on lecturing automakers about fuel-efficiency standards, telling leaders in the Cuban community that we should relax travel restrictions, and talking up merit-based pay in front of teachers. But the Shirley, Ill., instance seems more complicated. He clearly couldn’t say, “NAFTA sucks,” but he seems to err on the side of accommodating farmers—and then says something different to workers losing their manufacturing jobs.
In the world of political campaigns, there are no gray zones. You’re either for a policy or against it. Nuance reads as evasion. Adjustment reads as flip-flopping. Given this, both Clinton and Obama would benefit from dropping the NAFTA issue. Both candidates have complex positions rooted in ambivalence. Neither one’s opposition research is much stronger than the other’s. They can spend the next week bloodying each other with allegations about past statements, but it’s not an argument either person is going to win. There’s plenty worth debating about the future —Obama’s protectionist “Patriot Employers” plan, for example, or the creation of “green collar” jobs. But quibbling over ancient NAFTA statements isn’t benefiting anyone. Save yourselves the trouble. Declare a truce.
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Back in December, TV Guide published a roundup of the presidential candidates’ favorite TV shows. (Clinton: The Ed Sullivan Show; Edwards: Boston Legal, Obama: The Wire.) Noting a few oversights, we did some digging and figured out that Mike Gravel watched the History Channel and Ron Paul only watches the news.
Now that Ralph Nader has entered the 2008 race, it’s time to update the list. According to Nader’s Facebook page (Supporters: 127), the activist’s favorite TV show is Star Trek. (The lack of specificity and his age suggest that he prefers the original series, as opposed to a later incarnation.) Perhaps he and Hillary Clinton can finally agree on something.
Also, notice that his favorite movies include Gandhi but NOT An Unreasonable Man. So modest!
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On a conference call with Clinton advisers just now, a reporter asks
why the campaign is using harsh words against Barack Obama, given that previous negative
attacks haven’t played well with voters. Communications Director Howard Wolfson weighs in:
“Every time the Obama campaign has attacked Sen. Clinton, her
veracity, her credibility, the press has largely applauded him. When we
have attempted to make contrasts with Sen. Obama, we have been criticized. … I
reject the notion that Sen. Clinton has [been the one making negative attacks.]
… I think [Obama’s] entire campaign against Sen. Clinton has been negative. He
has called her the status quo, he has called her divisive, he has said she’d do
or say anything to get elected. … Is it negative to debate a health care plan?
I don’t think so.”
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Over the past week, we’ve seen a bunch of Hillary Clintons. At the debate in Austin on Thursday, we saw Comtemplative Hillary, who spun an anecdote about wounded soldiers into a reflection about the big picture of this campaign. Then on Saturday, we saw Defiant Hillary, who declared, “Shame on you, Barack Obama,” for a mailing she said mischaracterized her health-care plan. Today at George Washington University, we saw Serious, Trusted Leader Hillary, flanked by military endorsers including Wesley Clark, a throwback to the confident inevitability of her pre-Iowa days.
The Clinton campaign hyped it as a major foreign policy speech, but there was nothing new, policywise. She still wants to pull troops out of Iraq within her first year (though she stressed that “withdrawing troops is not easy” and will take time). She still wants to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil and international lenders. She still says she won’t sit down with leaders of Cuba and Iran without preconditions.
But unlike pre-Iowa, Clinton peppers her speeches with Obama digs. “The American people don’t have to guess whether I know the issues,” she said, “or need a foreign policy instruction manual, or need to rely on advisers to guide me on global affairs.” Later: “I will not broadcast threats against Pakistan just to demonstrate I am tough enough for the job.” Also: “I will not be penciling leaders of [Iran, North Korea, Syria, and others] into the presidential calendar, until we have evaluated their motivations.”
Even at this late hour, “experience” is still the campaign’s main argument against Obama: We will arrive in the White House knowing what to do; he will not. The Barack Obama painted by Clinton is impulsive (willing to rattle sabers at Pakistan one moment) and naive (willing to break bread with dictators at the next).
But the contrast feels forced. Both candidates want to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within the first year or so of their presidency. Both decry military action as anything but a last resort. Both want to boost America’s energy independence and reduce reliance on foreign creditors. Perceptions of the surge have changed over the past year, but Clinton and Obama still agree that staying in Iraq isn't worth the resources. The only real foreign policy contrast is whether they would talk to rogue leaders without preconditions—a decision that, while important, is hardly a fateful fork in the road. Given all that, Clinton’s argument still boils down to I’ve been around longer than he has. Meanwhile, Obama's rebuttal is still If only that helped her make good decisions.
This campaign has seen its ups, downs, twists, turns, and stunning reversals. But in terms of foreign policy, we're still where we were last year.
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In case you were growing tired of fights over NAFTA, lofty rhetoric, and debates, the Democrats have a new spat du jour for you. Today, the Drudge Report posted a big, fat headline that howled, “Clinton staffers circulate ‘dressed’ Obama.” Accompanying the headline was a picture of Obama on a diplomatic trip to Kenya in 2006, wearing some type of traditional dress of the area—complete with a turban-looking headdress.
The picture was taken while Obama was in Wajir, a rural desert area in the northeast of Kenya. I spoke with Mark Bellamy, a former ambassador to Kenya and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told me that Wajir is a pastoral town of about 5,000 people—almost all of whom are Muslim. Bellamy—who hasn’t declared his preference in the presidential race—didn’t recognize the “outfit” but said it wasn’t Islamic garb. He thought it was probably some sort of traditional Somali-Kenyan dress and that the people hosting Obama offered it to him as a sign of hospitality. “Wherever I travel I get dressed up in same way,” he said, “out of consideration for the hosts.”
Obama’s campaign is offering a similar line. On a conference call, retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration said Obama was just being polite by trying on the garment. They compared it to when you open up gifts at Christmas—even if you don’t like that ugly sweater, you still try it on so your aunt smiles. As a friend pointed out, responding with that logic allows Obama’s campaign not only to push back against the Manchurian-Muslim rumors but also remind voters that Obama’s a Christian and he gets crappy Christmas gifts like the rest of the country.
The conference call wasn’t the only action between the two campaigns. First, the Obama campaign sent around a press release at 9:29 a.m. from campaign manager David Plouffe, in which he said the photo is “exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world.”
Then, at 10:54 a.m., Clinton’s campaign manager, Maggie Williams, pierced the quiet with her own release. “Enough,” she wrote. “If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.” She goes on to say Obama is trying to “distract from the serious issues.” Note that they never refuted Drudge’s piece. (More detail on that piece of the story is trickling in.)
Let’s take a moment to review: Obama’s campaign thinks Clinton is trying to be divisive by encouraging the Obama-is-a-Muslim myth. Clinton’s campaign thinks the Obama campaign is being divisive because it thinks Clinton’s campaign is being divisive. We love these spats as much as the next blogger, but Clinton’s stance is flimsy at best. While Obama cries foul, he also gets to show everybody that he is experienced enough to have gone on a diplomatic mission to a foreign country. Plus, he gets a high-profile platform to say he isn’t a Muslim. Clinton, meanwhile, is forced to play traditional-clothing catch-up while covering-up her staffers’ foolishness.
This episode is reminiscent of two others that happened earlier in the campaign. First, in June 2007, the Clintons disclosed a liquidation of their investments in India to avoid a conflict of interest during the campaign. In response, Obama staffers mass-mailed news outlets an analysis of the financial deal with the headline: “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab).” Clinton got the better of that spat, and Obama apologized while faulting his staff. Maybe Obama can offer Clinton some advice on the perils of running an organization with hundreds of employees.
But the more fitting precedent was set by other Hillary Clinton staffers earlier in the campaign. In December, the campaign asked two of its employees to resign after they proliferated rumors that Obama was a Muslim. If the campaign is consistent, we should see Clinton undress another staffer’s career in a few days.
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It’s been more than a year since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced their exploratory committees. Ever since, Democrats across the country have been dragged through 19 debates, $200 million-plus in fundraising, and 40 primaries and caucuses. After tens of thousands of handshakes, thousands of stump speeches, and hundreds of meet-and-greets, Democrats are tired. They want one candidate—and that candidate is going to be Barack Obama.
We don’t have to look any further than Texas and Ohio to see the exhaustion firsthand. Rasmussen polls had him down by 16 points in Texas eight days ago (post-Potomac, pre-Wisconsin). Now he trails by only three points. The newest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Texans like Clinton more than Obama on the issues that matter most—health care and the economy. Yet he’s in a statistical tie with her overall. Why? Because 47 percent of the state’s Democrats believe he has the best chance of getting elected president in November—thirty-six percent say that’s the case for Clinton. In Ohio, there’s an even larger disparity between whom Ohioans favor—Clinton—and whom they think can win in NovemberObama.
For all of the talk about the primary fight going all the way to the election, it was probably never possible—especially not once a Republican nominee was selected. The two electorates originally treated the candidates as they would shiny toys—with wide-eyed attention, which then faded to boredom. But once the Republicans decided on their favorite (not so new) toy, the Democrats realized playtime was over. Electability was bound to rule the decision-making once the GOP forced the Dems’ hand, and Obama effectively spun his head-to-head poll numbers into momentum. Remember momentum? It used to be that useless, easily derided metric because it was so unreliable while both races were unsettled. Now it’s likely to decide the nomination.
John McCain was more or less confirmed as the nominee on Feb. 7, the day Mitt Romney dropped out of the race. Since then, Obama hasn’t lost a single contest. That’s partly coincidence—he was always going to do well in Louisiana and Midwest caucuses—and partly Clinton’s post-Feb. 5 ineptitude in not organizing her ground game appropriately. But there was one other factor: Democrats realized they were SOL if they didn’t unite around one candidate to stop McCain. Over the last two weeks, Barack Obama was that guy because he had more votes, more delegates, and more money.
Which brings us to today—on the verge of Texas and Ohio. At this point, Obama’s momentum leads to Clinton supporters’ resignation. Texas and Ohio Democrats could prolong this battle, but they’re tired of not knowing who the nominee will be. The Democrats want what the Republicans already have—a candidate they can call their own. If that means some Democrats have to go to bed with their second-best, then so be it.
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Cuba’s national newspaper, Granma, posts a recent column written by Fidel Castro, in which he weighs in on the current crop of presidential candidates. (See here for the original.)
Most of it reads like nonsense—could be the translation, but probably not. Still, here are a couple of choice excerpts:
At this moment, I turn to the adversary. I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States. One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter. It was as if I were a Pulitzer Prize winner questioning them on CNN about the most delicate political (even personal) issues from Las Vegas, a city ruled by the logic of the roulette and a place any candidate for the presidency needs to visit. [Does this mean the Vegas debate was broadcast in Cuba?] …
Bush Sr. chooses McCain as his candidate, while Bush Jr., in an African country -- yesterday, the origin of man; today, a martyr continent -- where nobody knows what he's doing there, said that my message was the start of the road to liberty in Cuba, in other words, the annexation decreed by his government in a voluminous and huge book. …
I had thought about not writing a reflection for at least 10 days, but I didn't have the right to keep silent for such a long time. We have to open ideological fire on them. …
Perhaps the next president should sit down with Castro on the precondition that he get an editor.
(h/t The Caucus)
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We first observed Hillary Clinton’s uncanny resemblance to a Star Trek character at last night’s debate. But Slate’s John Swansburg was the one who nailed it: She’s The Next Generation’s Tasha Yar. Behold:
Update 5:44 p.m.: Don't forget, Hillary isn't the only candidate with a celebrity doppelganger.
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From the crossroads of cultural and political commentary (his sofa), Slate associate editor John Swansburg fires off this analysis:
Did the New York Times host an impromptu screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off yesterday? A little matinee to take everyone's mind off the Iseman firestorm?
Stephen Holden's review today of Charlie Bartlett makes an extended comparison between Anton Yelchin's Bartlett and Matthew Broderick's Bueller. It seems like a stretch—Charlie Bartlett is about a kid who achieves high-school popularity by dealing psychotropic drugs. Bueller achieved popularity by cutting class and making his keyboard approximate barfing sounds. Having not seen Charlie Bartlett, however, I'll give Holden the benefit of the doubt.
But what was Alessandra Stanley thinking? Reviewing last night's Democratic debate in a “TV Watch” column for the Times, Stanley wrote that "Mrs. Clinton looked like the Jennifer Grey character struggling to show up her favored brother in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Huh? Ferris Bueller is a classic, but it's a 22-year-old classic. Has Stanley not seen anything in the last two decades, the most recent chunk of which she’s spent covering TV, that would have made for a slightly more au courant comparison?
Of course, my colleague Chris Beam compared Clinton last night to a character from Star Trek: The Next Generation, an equally second-term Reagan analogy. But, in Chris's defense, Clinton really was doing her best Tasha Yar last night.
So why Jennifer Grey in Bueller? It's not a particularly memorable performance, though I suppose the comparison isn't inapt—Jeannie Bueller is very jealous of what she sees as her brother's undeserved popularity. And Stanley's comparison did keep me reading to see whether there would be another I Love the 80s gem. I was holding out hope that she might compare Obama to Deon Richmond, who played Rudy Huxtable's smug yet lovable friend Kenny on The Cosby Show. No such luck.
Trailhead readers: What tertiary characters from 1980s popular culture were you reminded of during the debate last night? Am I the only one who thinks about Rick Astley whenever I see John King? Something about the hair.
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So Round 1 goes to McCain. The Arizona senator’s campaign has successfully turned a story about his alleged inappropriate ties to a lobbyist into a debate about the journalistic integrity of the New York Times. If anything, the Times piece appears to have helped him: It gave the fractured Republican coalition a common enemy against which to consolidate itself.
But it’s hard to see this as benefiting McCain in the long run. Here’s why.
Whatever the story’s flaws, it broke the ice in what is bound to be a yearlong examination of McCain’s complicated (that’s generous) relationship with lobbyists—romantic or otherwise—despite being an anti-lobbyist crusader. Even if he didn’t give Vicki Iseman the sexytime, the lobbyists who work on his staff, the private jets, the letters written to regulators—they all represent conflicts of interest that will dog him. Plus, the piece may not have introduced evidence of new wrongdoing, but it certainly reminded people of the old.
And if it ever comes out that McCain and Iseman did have an affair, McCain is unequivocally sunk. His denials have been so swift and so strong that no apology would repair the damage.
So yes, McCain came out on top. But now the flood gates are open, and November is a long way off.
Also: Is John McCain telling the truth? See what other people think using Slate V's MediaCurves analysis of McCain's press conference on Thursday.
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For all the speculation that Hillary Clinton was going to strap herself with explosives and fling herself at Barack Obama last night (figuratively, figuratively), the whole affair was pretty tame. But there was one notable exception, and it fell so flat—and here’s some more wild speculation, but bear with—it might well have killed high-caliber negative attacks for good in this primary.
It came when Campbell Brown raised the issue of similarities between Obama’s words and Deval Patrick’s. Obama said that notion that he plagiarized from one of his national co-chairs is “silly” before drifting from the topic: “What I’ve been talking about in these speeches—and I gotta admit, some of them are pretty good. What I’ve been talking about is not just hope and not just inspiration, it’s a $4,000 tuition credit every year in exchange for national service so that college becomes affordable,” etc. The line was somewhat canned, but it also turned a question about attacks in the direction of substance.
In her response, Hillary veered back to plagiarism: “I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, they should be your own words. Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change what you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”
Even as she’s saying it, you can tell it’s going to sag. “Come on, that’s not what happened,” Obama says without looking up. It had echoes of Obama’s “You’re likeable enough” moment in New Hampshire, only this time, it was Hillary being unduly petty. The audience boos. That is the sound of the last week backfiring. (Watch the whole thing here.)
Going into Wisconsin’s primary, Clinton ratcheted up the “contrast” with ads charging Obama with skipping debates because he’s scared, as well as the plagiarism accusations. The Wisconsin vote, in which Obama won the majority of people who had made up their minds in the previous week, proved just how ineffective the attacks had been. Something about the charges wasn’t sticking. But the Clinton camp apparently hadn’t learned its lesson. During the debate, Hillary does conspicuously decline to attack Obama in a few places. Twice, when asked whether he could be commander in chief, she demurs. But the Xerox line—so plodding, so preplanned, so poorly timed (Obama was coming off an elegant flourish about words vs. deeds)—will survive the night.
The debate has not changed the master narrative for the coming weeks. In Texas and Ohio, Hillary is still facing her Alamo; Obama is still catching up in the polls. If anything, last night was a draw, and a draw favors Obama. But if it does change anything, it should give the Clinton camp pause about the negative tactics. Not for any moral reason but for a pragmatic one: It doesn’t work. If Clinton wants to take the high road back to the Senate, she will drop the cheap shots in the coming weeks. Maybe the two key states will reward her for it.
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Neither candidate exactly answers the last question, “What moment tested you?”
Obama takes the opportunity to recite his entire biography.
Hillary, however, pivots in a way that evokes, of all things, her Diner Sob. Only this time, she sets herself up: “People often ask me, ‘How do you do it? How do you keep going?’ ” That’s the exact same question asked by Marianne Pernold Young at the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth, N.H., on the eve of the primary. Clinton then goes into a colorful anecdote about a medical center filled with people injured in Iraq. She doesn’t exactly tear up, but it’s a deliberately emotional moment. (We see Chelsea looking teary afterward.)
At the very end, she borrows a line that John Edwards used toward the end of his campaign. "We're going to be fine," she said, referring to herself and Obama. (Edwards always said it about himself and Elizabeth.) "I just hope we can say the same thing about the American people."
On CNN, David Gergen just called this her best television moment since New Hampshire. I know he’s supposed to be CW incarnate, but please, please don't let this be the narrative coming out of this debate. The moment was strong and no doubt genuinely emotional. Howard Wolfson just sent out an e-mail calling it "the moment she retook the reins of this race." But my interpretation was the opposite. She seemed oddly resigned. As some have already speculated, maybe she wants to go out classy. Hers was a very high-road tone. No doubt she's still in this race, but she could well have one eye on the general, in which any harsh words she utters now could be used to undermine Obama.
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Obama wins the award for best regional pander. While discussing progress made by the surge, he points out that “the First Cavalry out of Fort Hood played an enormous role” in reducing violence. That must be worth five well-chosen Spanish phrases!
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Both candidates stampede the moderators after the commercial break by forcing a continued discussion of health care.
Obama cites the Massachusetts plan as an example of mandates gone bad. “They have exempted 20 percent of the uninsured, since they’ve concluded they can’t afford it,” he says. “Now they’re worse off than they were.” Is Deval Patrick listening?
Clinton points out that Obama's plan has a mandate that forces parents to insure their children at risk of penalty, which he acknowledges. It gets at the crux of their disagreement: Why create a mandate for children but not for adults?
She also saves her strongest point for the end: "We would not have Social Security if everyone did not have to participate."
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John King: Are you saying your opponent is all hat and no cattle?
Hillary goes for it! After a polite intro, she all but name drops Kirk Watson, who couldn’t name a single Obamaccomplishment.
Obama's response is one you couldn't have seen him giving 10 debates ago. He's come a long way. He starts by rattling off a list of things he has done: “The strongest ethics reform since Watergate,” health care, vets, criminal justice system. He continues: “Senator Clinton of late has said, 'Let’s get real.' The implication is that people involved in my campaign are somehow delusional.” Clinton is grinning so wide it looks painful.
Then comes Obama’s money line, roughly paraphrased: “The reason this campaign has done so well is people understand it’s not just a matter of putting forward policy positions. If we can’t inspire the American people to get involved in their government, to go beyond racial, political, and regional divisions, we will continue to see gridlock in Washington.” Campbell Brown tries to interrupt the applause, fails, and tries again.
When the moderator follows up with a question about lifting Deval Patrick’s lines, Obama dismisses the attack as “silly season in politics.”
Hillary fires back: “It’s not change you can believe in. It’s change you can Xerox.”
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Hillary nails the border fence question. Yes, I voted for a border fence in the context of comprehensive immigration reform. But no, I don’t agree with how the Bush administration is going about it. Her proposal recommends erecting a fence “where appropriate”—i.e., where border communities are OK with it—while deploying technology and more personnel in other places.
Obama seconds Hillary but adds that we have to pass the Dream Act, which would give high-school students a path to citizenship if they go to college.
So much agreement! What happened to this being the contrast debate? Obama might as well turn to Hillary and start giving her a backrub. Hopefully they’re saving the questions about race and patriotism for the second half.
Also: Gotta love Jorge Ramos starting to ask a question en Espanol. I was hoping he'd keep going. Or that Obama would bust out a few palabras after Hillary admitted to not knowing a foreign language.
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Obama looks like a Roman senator. Hillary looks like a guest star in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Update 8:35 p.m.: A friend corrects me. More like Chronicles of Riddick.
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WAS OBAMA JUST PEEKING AT HILLARY’S NOTES?
The clock reads 8:29—look it up later.
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The main difference between Clinton and Obama on the subject of policy regarding Cuba is that Clinton would make Cuba take the first step toward compromise, whereas Obama would be willing to have the United States do so.
“I would not meet with [Raúl Castro] until there was evidence that change was happening,” Clinton says. Without that evidence, she says, she couldn’t be assured that the diplomatic overtures would go anywhere.
Obama reiterates his previous statements that he “would meet without preconditions, although Senator Clinton is right that there has to be preparation,” such as the “opening up of human rights, release of political prisoners,” and greater freedom of the press. But he is willing to make concessions without preconditions. That means loosening restrictions on remittances and travel.
It’s hard to know which of these approaches will appeal more to Texas Latinos. Clinton’s hard line will no doubt appeal to the anti-Castro camp, but Obama’s willingness to compromise on remittances affects families from other countries as well.
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I like how people stop applauding the second CNN’s John King enters. They start again when they realize it sounds rude.
Applause is high when Hillary enters. They reach another decibel when Obama comes into view. The two candidates stand around for a few minutes taking photos with “local officials.” Couldn’t they have done this before the clock started ticking?
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Hard to believe, but it’s been three weeks since we huddled around the TV to watch Barack, Hillary, and Wolf chitchat on a garishly blue and red stage. This is the 19th debate, so if you’re having trouble motivating yourself to watch, it’s understandable. (Especially considering Lost starts smack-dab in the middle of it for the second debate in a row. Trailhead has confirmed that Obama is not a member of the Oceanic 6. But I digress …) But just think, you’ve come this far. You might as well finish ‘em off.
- Early voting has begun—Underreported story line alert! Texas has already started to vote, and turnout is huge—10 times huger than 2004 in some parts. Considering people are already voting and polls suggests it’s anybody’s state, this debate has more significance than most. At other forums, the voters almost always had at least a few days to think about their impressions before they cast their votes. Now, Texans can run out to the polls first thing in the morning to cast their ballot. (Early voting ends Feb. 29.) The stakes aren’t just high, they’re pressing.
- Obama’s the frontrunner—now what? The knock against Obama at these debates has always been that he stays above the fray and is unwilling to mix it up. Now that he’s the man in charge, isn’t that what he’s supposed to do? If Hillary gets nasty and Obama responds in kind, then he’s an ungracious leader. But if he’s too cocky and doesn’t engage, the pundits will say he couldn’t stop the Hillary uprising when he had the chance. Ah, politics.
- Do issues even matter anymore? After this many debates, there doesn’t seem to be much more ground to cover, issues-wise. And the candidates themselves have largely abandoned issues to talk about who would be the best leader of the country, who would be ready on Day 1, and who would be stronger against John McCain. Tonight, expect issues to be window-dressing on the more contentious—and dare we say substantive—differences between the two Democrats.
- Latino love—Considering her other demographic stalwarts are fleeing, Clinton needs Hispanic voters now more than ever. Obama, meanwhile, has powered his way up the polls without broad-based Latino support. If Hillary overcourts Latinos, Obama could fill the void for white voters. If Obama, meanwhile, doesn’t pander to Latinos, any inroads he’s made in the community could evaporate. Look for more of the same, here.
- Will Hillary be a meanie? Now that she’s finally at a debate with Obama, will she remind him (and the millions watching) that he didn’t want to debate her elsewhere? If so, can Obama respond without flubbing his retort? Clinton may also use this as her launching pad for further attacks against Obama’s record. Thus far, we don’t know what her tone will be over the next two weeks—tonight we’ll find out.
We'll be live, from the Internet, blogging the debate as it happens. Festivities start at 8 p.m. ET.
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If you, like us, have had your face buried the McCain lobbyist story for the past 24 hours, there’s a chance you missed developments in two mini-scuffles—from here on out, McFlurries—involving the senator from Arizona.
The first involves public funding. Last time we tuned in, McCain was attacking Barack Obama for backing away from earlier hints that he would accept public funds during the general election. Obama reassured everyone that if McCain’s in, he’s in. But now it looks like McCain may have no choice but to be in. The chairman of the FEC says that McCain won’t be able to withdraw his request for matching funds—i.e., he’ll be forced to accept them—unless he provides more information about a bank loan in which he may have offered up federal funds as collateral. The details of the loan deal are migraine-inducing (for proof, see the FEC’s response to McCain here), but some folks have begun to sift through them. In short, McCain’s people claim he explicitly excluded federal funds from the collateral agreement but that he reserved the right to re-enter the public-funding system in the future. The FEC chairman points out that even if the commission that approves these things were to convene, it currently has only two of six commissioners—not enough to approve much of anything.
We’ll leave it to the lawyers to hash out the legality of it all, but it’s safe to say McCain would be in deep doo-doo were he suddenly subject to primary spending limits. He has already spent nearly the $54 million to which he would be limited. He could still decline public funding during the general election, but by then Obama would have outspent him a zillion to one. Plus, that gives Obama a great excuse to forego public funds as well.
The second kerfuffle deals with McCain’s stance on the Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill, which would limit CIA interrogations to the techniques laid out in the Army Field Manual, which prohibits torture. In the past, McCain has advocated for a single standard, arguing that the AFM should apply to everyone. But last week he voted against the Senate bill, claiming that the CIA should be able to use techniques beyond the AFM as long as they are not torture. The bill passed anyway, 54-41, but yesterday McCain reaffirmed his stance by urging President Bush to veto the bill.
Supporters of the bill, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, have described a vote against the bill—and a veto—as a vote for water-boarding. McCain disagrees, but by supporting the veto he enters a gray zone that could be difficult to wriggle out of when confronted.
So that makes two more areas in which a future Democratic nominee—let’s call him Barack Obama—could corner McCain on what is supposed to be McCain’s turf. McCain can cite complicating factors: that he made sure to exclude public funds from the loan collateral, for example, or that giving the CIA freedom to use alternative interrogation techniques doesn’t explicitly endorse water-boarding. But it’s hard to defend those decisions and still sound like you’re giving people straight talk.
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Feb. 14: Barack Obama was your new bicycle.
Feb. 16: Hillary Clinton was decidedly not.
Feb. 17: John McCain tried to get in on the joke.
Feb. 17: Ron Paul made it weird.
Feb. 17: Michelle Obama made it annoying.
Feb. 18: Steve Jobs made it jump the shark.
Feb. 19: It all went meta.
One week: That's how much time an Internet meme needs to propagate, become its
own opposite, and then finally collapse back in on itself.
All dates come from Network Solutions domain registration information.
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In our quest to catalog every original song about a presidential candidate, we rarely come across tunes as infectious as this one. Think of it as Raffi meets will.i.am.
A brief excerpt of the lyrics:
Hey mama,
Obama
he got the mo, jama
talkin' 'bout Americana,
H-O-P-E
hope I get a new pajama
do the mamba,
do the samba,
tell the Dalai Lama,
we got the goods—hey!
Also, don’t miss the James Brown homage where they ask permission to “take it to the bridge.” Answer: "Yes we can."
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The New York Times piece on John McCain's lobbyist ties has people scratching their heads over not just why the paper ran it, but why they ran it now. A few rationales being floated:
Theory #1: The Times wanted to influence the election. Rush Limbaugh argued on his radio show that now that McCain has secured the nomination, he has been trying to rally the Republican base by drifting further right. Which, according to Limbaugh, made the Times regret its decision to endorse him. Therefore, they wanted to take McCain down a notch.
Verdict: Silly. If anything, the timing avoided influencing the GOP nomination. (See next theory.) Plus, this theory assumes that news reporters care what their editorial page thinks.
Theory #2: The Times wanted to avoid influencing the election. Back in December, Matt Drudge reported that “[executive editor Bill] Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election." By that logic, the Times held the piece long enough that it would not decide the outcome of the GOP primary.
Verdict: Likely. Keller has been relatively accommodating when it comes to holding stories that could unduly influence events. (See the Times’ wiretapping story, which he held for over a year.) Any earlier, and the Times would have been accused of meddling.
Theory #3: The New Republic was about to break it. According to Gabriel Sherman’s behind-the-scenes TNR piece, a McCain aide claimed that the Times “did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles—they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad.”
Verdict: Possible. Sure, the TNR piece included details of the struggle over Iseman and would have scooped the Times. But it's not like the Times avoided the negative TNR story by rushing their own piece to print. If anything, they guaranteed it would run soonest.
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From John McCain’s press conference today:
I have many friends who represent various interests ranging from firemen to police to senior citizens to various interests that appear before my committee.
McCain defending the honor of lobbyists ... it's not 2000 anymore.
Also, compare his comment with what Hillary Clinton said about lobbyists at YearlyKos last year:
A lot of those lobbyists whether you like it not, represent real Americans. They represent nurses, social workers and yes, they represent corporations and they employ a lot of people.
In other words, don't expect this to be a terrible point of contention if Clinton secures the nomination.
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When ValuJet flight 592 crashed in 1996, negative publicity caused the company’s stock to plummet. But then some genius thought of an easy fix: Rename the business! ValuJet thus became AirTran, and everybody was happy.
Apparently, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had the same idea. For the past few weeks, the campaign had been insisting on including “superdelegates” in their delegate count, but people didn’t seem to like the idea of party leaders and elected officials exercising disproportionate influence. Well, that’s easy: Rename them! Now every reference to these special politicos calls them “automatic delegates.”
TPM reported the coming rhetorical switch last week, and now the “automatic” phrasing has fully entered the Clinton lexicon. On a conference call Wednesday, Clinton adviser Harold Ickes dropped the A-bomb. The campaign also unveiled a new Web site called Delegate Hub, which purports to spread “facts” about the delegate count. (Although their definition of “fact” is different from yours and mine.)
Apparently, the campaign is trying to distance itself from the growing stigma attached to the word superdelegate. “Super” does sound a bit power-trippy, as if these delegates are somehow superior to the rest. (Perhaps the fact that their vote counts tens of thousands of times more than that of your average voter gives that impression.) But “automatic delegates” doesn’t sound much better to these ears. Sure, you lose the caped crusader image, but you replace it with pictures of totalitarian robots. The phrase isn’t a Clinton original—it’s actually a common term that superdelegate has come to replace. (Update 1:33 p.m.: DNC press secretary Stacey Paxton informs me that the official term is unpledged delegate.) But the rebranding (or in this case, retro-branding) seems a little goofy, not to mention arbitrary. What will we call them next week, “powerdelegates”? “Fundelegates”?
Points for creativity. But in the case of delegate counts, the people paying close attention are savvy wonks, not airhead consumers. Renaming your problem doesn't make it go away.
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The story that will set the political agenda over the next week is about whether John McCain is really as squeaky clean on Washington ethics as he claims to be. Except you won’t hear that side of the story. Instead, everybody will be buzzing about McCain’s possible affair with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman—which will distract everyone from the real allegations that could harm his campaign.
Nobody quite knows what to make of the Times piece. Most of the intrigue focuses on the Times’ handling of the “scoop,” which included delaying the story’s publication and relying on several anonymous sources. (The New Republic will reportedly have a story on this today.) Plus, the article relies on the juicy Iseman allegations as its lede, then deserts that narrative entirely for a history lesson on McCain’s Keating Five past, only to return to the Iseman subplot at the end. The authors go 1,567 words without mentioning Iseman’s name at one point. (The whole article is 2,909 words.) It’s like a jelly donut—the shell looks tasty, the middle is just filler, and the whole thing makes you feel a little slimy.
The ethical subtext of the Iseman allegations could do the most damage to McCain’s campaign, but it will be overshadowed by the sexier romance rumors. The central question of the Times piece is whether McCain’s religious attention to ethics reform has made him less self-aware of his own transgressions: “Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.”
Iseman’s story is used as the key and most prevalent example of McCain’s “conflict of interest”—and there’s reason to believe it may have been. McCain wrote letters to the FCC urging deregulation after Iseman requested as much of his office. He flew on her plane, and she kept showing up at his events as well. All of this is damaging to McCain’s candidacy, but none of it will matter—attention is more easily drawn to the flickering neon sign pointing to a romantic affair.
Even if voters and the media cut through the distractions and get to the ethical questions involved, it’s still unlikely to make a dent. Because these allegations come from a poorly sourced New York Times story, conservative stalwarts will be more interested in the Gray Lady than the Graying Maverick. Rush Limbaugh and company will say are already saying* the story is concrete proof that the Times has it out for McCain (this despite the editorial board’s endorsement). In that sense, it’s just as likely McCain’s detractors will rally behind him as it is his supporters will turn against him. Nothing like a common enemy to fuel a presidential run.
Moreover, the timing of this couldn’t have been better for McCain. He already has the nomination all but locked up, and there are eight months before the general election. Even if there’s another Republican rebellion against him, he has plenty of time to move past the allegations. By the time the real campaign starts, he’ll probably have other distractions to worry about.
Note: The headline of this post is the all-too-fitting anagram of Vicki Iseman's name: In vice, I mask.
*UPDATE 12:40 p.m.: McCain's former critics are already rallying in his defense.
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Chris Matthews must dread Wednesday mornings. The always amusing, rarely restrained Matthews is reinvigorating his career this election season by creating YouTube moments nearly every election night. His comments are so far-fetched and hyperbolic that they’re tailor-made for a morning-after viral video binge. Last night, he may have turned in his greatest performance yet. During MSNBC’s election night coverage, Matthews asked pro-Obama state Sen. Kirk Watson to name Obama’s legislative accomplishments, which made Watson stammer like a doofus.
This was a seminal moment in the campaign for Matthews. Finally, here was proof that he wasn’t a total softie when it came to Obama. He’s been derided over and over again for his pro-Obama—and therefore anti-Clinton—bias. Matthews, the former Jimmy Carter speechwriter, has said Obama’s speeches both make him cry and send a thrill up his leg. And don’t forget when he said Hillary owed her political career to Bill’s blue-dress indiscretions in the White House (which he later apologized for).
Surely, a journalist as connected and high-profile as Matthews has heard Clinton aides whispering in his ear to stop with the Obama-is-our-savior shtick. So when Matthews saw he had a frozen Watson in his sights, he realized it was his golden chance to look tough on Obama. Surprisingly, Matthews turned it into a moment of true journalism.
“No, no, what has he accomplished, sir?” Matthews said to Watson. “You have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president. You’re on national television: name his legislative accomplishments. Barack Obama. Sir.” Matthews’ line of questioning is fair, and his repeated insistence that Watson not wriggle his way out of answering the question is admirable. This was cable news as it’s supposed to be—riveting watchdog rather than mind-numbing lapdog.
Matthews shed light on one of Obama’s key weaknesses—that his supporters don’t actually know what he cares about. (Which we’ve already discussed.) Clinton has already latched on to the line of attack, and John McCain is sure to follow, if needed. But if the Obama campaign uses this as inspiration to broadcast his policy positions more widely, then Obama could come out stronger in the end. If that happens, then Matthews may have ended up showing his pro-Obama bias, after all.
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Obamaccomplishment n., something Barack Obama has done, most likely unmemorable.—Encyclopedia Baracktannica
Texas State Sen. Kirk Watson’s spectacular flub on Hardball last night has already handed Hillary Clinton her first post-Wisconsin attack angle: Obama’s supporters can’t name a single accomplishment of his.
It might be the single worst thing that could happen to a surrogate, especially when the top charge against Obama is his inexperience. (To his credit, Watson’s apology is pitch-perfect.) Obama’s just lucky it was Watson and not a more prominent endorser like Caroline Kennedy or a Senate colleague.
But Watson’s amnesia says more about Obama’s supporters than it says about the candidate. As this post points out, Obama has accomplished quite a bit for a first-term Democratic senator working under a Republican administration. (Of course, that’s not a very good excuse if the charge is inexperience.) What’s true, however, is that most Obama fans tend to be unversed in his background beyond his biography.
Some of this can be blamed on the campaign. Obama spends an inordinate amount of oxygen on lofty generalizations—perhaps no more than his colleagues do, but certainly more effectively. And when he does talk policy, it’s not about what he’s done, but programs he would like to see. Hard-core Obama fans could rattle off details of his health-care plan and economic stimulus package, since he repeats them in ads and on the stump. But ask them about the minutiae of his Senate ethics reform package and their eyes begin to dart.
Supporters themselves deserve flak, too. A similar moment occurred on Hannity & Colmes a few weeks ago, when a roomful of Democrats couldn’t name an Obamaccomplishment beyond “ethics reform” and “community organizing.” When the camera panned to him, one guy proudly declared, “Inspiration.” That is just sad. I’ve heard the question asked at parties, with similar responses.
Perhaps this is a wake-up call for Obama. He spends so much time discussing the future, he might consider reminding people of what he has done in the past. For an opponent like John McCain, whose legislative record could encircle the planet, Obama’s relatively tame list of achievements is catnip. Obama’s campaign better start reminding people what the young candidate has done in the Senate, lest he have to do more of it in 2009.
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Slate intern and unabashed Hillary supporter Alex Joseph just passed along this e-mail from the campaign:
From: Hillary Clinton
Date: Feb 20, 2008 12:19 PM
Subject: What it takes to win in Texas and Ohio
Dear Alex,
Here's what you need to know this morning. We were outspent in Wisconsin by a 4 to 1 margin on ads -- and we can't let that happen on March 4.
If we want to win in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, we've got to even the odds. We can't let the Obama campaign overwhelm us financially. Today, I am calling on you and other online supporters to act together, making sure we have the resources to create a fair, level playing field on March 4.
In the last few weeks, thousands upon thousands of people have contributed to my campaign. With so many people acting together, any donation you make today -- even as little as $5 -- makes a difference. …
I have total confidence that, as long as we have the resources to compete, March 4 will be a day of dramatic victories for our campaign. Let's make it happen.
Thanks,
Hillary Clinton [emphasis added]
Meanwhile, Slate has also obtained another e-mail, scheduled for release on March 5.
From: Hillary Clinton
Date: March 5, 2008 4:08 AM
Subject: What it takes to win in Wyoming and Puerto Rico
Dear Alex,
I know you're probably really busy right now, but we're being massively outspent, 28 to 1. If you could spare a quarter, a dime, a nickel, anything you may have, we would really, really appreciate it. If not, perhaps that sandwich? Our fundraising director has not eaten in days, and he is starting to close his eyes for long periods of time. Ever since Mark and Howard joined the Obama campaign, things have been difficult. I just sent Maggie Williams, our campaign manager, down the street to root around for discarded bottles. Also, they turned off the heat here at Hillary HQ. Our supporter list charts tell me you live nearby. Could you possibly bring a blanket over? Lastly, I don’t know what kind of laptop you have, but my battery is almost dead, and I left the charger in Dayton. Please, Alex, help us make a difference. Hillary Clinton is the only candidate ready to lead on Day One, once she returns that money she lost in poker last week.
We can do this. Please.
Hillary Clinton
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Remember how everyone had to peel their jaws off the floor when Obama’s campaign announced it had raised $32 million in January alone? Guess what? They were wrong. It was $36 million.
In any other campaign, an additional $4 million for that month would be a major increase. Forty percent in McCain’s case, 30 percent in Hillary's. But for Obama, it’s an afterthought. How's that for a little morning-after insult to injury?
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Last week we argued that Obama would be unwise to refuse to take public funds in the general election, seeing as he pretty much agreed to do so if McCain did. Sure, Obama stands to lose an impressive and expanding donor pool, the vast majority of which have contributed small amounts. But chucking his image as a reformer out the window would be more politically perilous.
Now it looks as if Obama is trying to wriggle out of his near-promise by turning the tables on McCain. Press secretary Bill Burton sent out a statement saying that McCain “abandoned the latest campaign finance reform efforts in order to run for the Republican nomination and went back on his commitment to take public financing for the primary election this year.”
As proof, Burton offers up McCain’s conspicuous absence from a campaign-finance reform bill introduced in 2006. As for the senator’s alleged “commitment” to taking public financing, Burton cites a recent Washington Post piece detailing how McCain secured a $1 million bank loan by promising to take federal matching funds if his campaign began to falter. There’s some debate over whether, by using a promise of federal funds as collateral for a loan, McCain obliged himself to enter the public financing system. But that is far from settled.
Still, it looks as if Obama’s campaign is developing an excuse to decline federal funds in the general. Even if Obama kinda-sorta promised that he would take them, he will now argue that McCain has disqualified himself from the agreement. Never mind that McCain is essentially responsible for the current campaign finance reform system. The Arizona senator wants to keep his financing options open—something Obama also wants to do—and that is suddenly cause for contempt.
The face-off over public funds involves some game theory. If Obama and McCain both take federal funds, they both look good, but McCain gets Obama to forego his treasure-trove. If Obama refuses funds and McCain accepts, Obama looks bad but has a huge financial advantage. If Obama and McCain both refuse, it’s a wash PR-wise, but Obama maintains a huge financial advantage. (The fourth scenario, in which Obama accepts and McCain rejects, is pretty much impossible.)
For Obama, this last scenario (in which both refuse) is clearly the most desirable. But for that to happen, he needs to convince McCain that he won’t take federal funds under any circumstances. And for that to happen, he needs a plausible moral rationale. The McCain-is-a-hypocrite tack appears to be the strategy of choice.
Needless to say, it’s risky. There are a few areas where Obama has a strong, high-contrast case against McCain—Iraq, health care, jobs, and the economy, among others. Campaign finance is not one of them. If Obama wants to make it one of his first battlegrounds, good luck with that.
Update 4:09 p.m.: As a reader points out, Obama weighed in on the subject in a USA Today column on Wednesday, reiterating his commitment to a "meaningful agreement in good faith that results in real spending limits."
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We usually do a digest of all the juicy data from the exit polls on primary nights. But tonight one datum matters most: When voters made up their mind, and who they voted for once they did. Since Hillary Clinton went sort-of negative on Barack Obama in the past week, she should see the fruits of her labor among voters who decided in the past seven days. Instead, she got sour grapes.
Clinton’s negative attacks were designed to prevent Obama from capitalizing on any momentum he gained from eight consecutive wins on Feb. 9 and 12. But they didn’t work. According to CNN’s exit polls, 27 percent of Democratic voters made up their minds since the Potomac primary one week ago, and the majority of them—58 percent—favored Obama. Compare that to the 26 percent who made up their minds in “the past month” (but also, assumedly, before the past week). They favored Obama 66 percent to 31 percent for Clinton.
The eight-point differential between the two blocs is the metric of interest. Exit polls are notoriously flimsy, but it’s safe to assume that some of that eight-point drop is because of Clinton’s debate-baiting ads and plagiarism accusations. But it probably amounted to only a 2 percent decline in the overall vote tally. That won’t even a form a ripple in the nomination ocean—especially when delegates are allotted proportionally.
Tonight, Clinton’s campaign learned that slightly negative attacks aren’t enough to derail Obamamentum. And if it didn’t stop him pre-Wisconsin, it sure as hell isn’t going to stop him afterward. Clinton tried being nice in the lead-up to Super Tuesday—it didn’t work. Leading up to tonight, Clinton tried being stern in the lead up to Wisconsin—and it still didn’t work. The only option left is all-out negativity.
That’s not a tasty choice. An eight-point hit among 27 percent of voters isn’t enough of an impact for Clinton to justify tearing down the (gulp) likely Democratic nominee and ruining her own political legacy. If Clinton really thrashes Obama over the next two weeks, she may drain enough support to win Ohio and Texas, and therefore the nomination. But in the meantime she’ll probably weaken her own chances in the general election. Swing voters don’t like negative politicians—especially those who take down members of their own party. And last we checked, swing voters like John McCain.
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Back when Hillary Clinton was the "inevitable" front-runner, she bragged about how much the GOP candidates talked about her. Apparently those days are over. In his victory speech tonight, McCain refers to his eventual opponent, and it sure doesn't sound like Hillary:
"I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than people."
Notice how McCain picks up where Hillary left off. He echoes her message that Obama is all rhetoric—an "eloquent but empty call for change"—and adds a dollop of small-government orthodoxy for taste. He also previews the generational war that would play a larger role in an Obama-McCain contest than it did in the Democratic primary: "I'm not the youngest candidate. But I am the most experienced."
Obama hasn't started engaging McCain to the same degree—he has a primary to win, after all. But look for Obama to keep thanking McCain for his "five decades of service" every chance he gets.
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John McCain has won yet another primary, this time in Wisconsin, which puts him ever closer to officially surpassing the number of delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination. He once again beat the quixotic Mike Huckabee, who Republicans (and sometimes McCain) have started to regard as a nuisance. But that’s a foolish mistake—he’s actually helping McCain.
With every McCain win, the Republican race has an excuse to butt in to cable news’ wall-to-wall coverage of the much-more-intriguing Democratic race. If Huckabee were to drop out, McCain’s victories would be completely empty—and completely unnewsworthy. McCain’s continued triumphs over Huckabee make him look like a winner, which fits into his own personality as a fighter and his campaign’s message that he can beat the Democrat in November and win the war on terror. (That Huckabee is always termed as the “insurgent candidate” is the cherry on top.)
As McCain has evolved into his party’s leader, Huckabee has morphed into the party’s gadfly. As he draws blood from the Republican base, he’s making McCain’s weaknesses explicit, which allows the entire party to rally and heal the wounds. If there’s any time for McCain to address his weaknesses, it’s now, while the Democrats continue to squabble over superdelegates and plagiarism. Plus, McCain is insulated from any real harm since he has the nomination and the party establishment wrapped up. He's like a Republican Bubble Boy.
Huckabee has often said he’ll continue to soak up the social conservative vote until McCain reaches the magic delegate number of 1,191. While it happens, McCain should be soaking in the wins.
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The Wisconsin exit polls were just starting to trickle in when the Clinton campaign released “excerpts” from her speech tonight. This isn’t the optimistic nonconcession speech she gave after Obama’s win last week in the Potomac primary. Tonight, she trades quips about George W. Bush being “all hat and no cattle” for barbs directed at Obama: “Both Senator Obama and I would make history. But only one of us is ready on day one to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans.”
It’s a continuation of the contrast strategy Clinton has been using for the past week—a strategy that, as the Wisconsin results show, didn’t work. First, she picked a fight over the number of debates, hoping to paint Obama as all style, no substance. Then her campaign pushed the plagiarism accusation. (The campaign denies leveling the charge in the first place.) Needless to say, neither accusation stuck. The people of Wisconsin didn’t feel “ignored,” as Howard Wolfson suggested, nor did they buy that Obama borrowing words from a friend and colleague was grounds for punishment in the polls. Exit polls show that 53 percent of voters answered “yes” when asked whether Clinton attacked unfairly, as opposed to 33 percent when asked about Obama.
But instead of backing off, Clinton is doubling down. She’s in a good position to do so. She maintains a comfy lead in Ohio and a sizable one in Texas. Exit polls show Obama closing in on whites and voters with incomes under $50,000—two Clinton strongholds—but her lead among Latinos remains untouched.
The difficulty, though, lies in presenting a contrast that voters will believe. The debate shtick didn’t work, nor did the knock on Obama’s authenticity. Clinton needs a better hook to illustrate the contrast between herself and Obama. The best forum for that has never been the airwaves—it's been the stage. Luckily for her, a debate is right around the corner.
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A few years ago, the Boston Globe Magazine declared billion the new million. Previously unimaginable, it was the new yardstick of an expanding society—the new standard for what it takes to make you say whoa.
Now the same spirit of growth has pervaded the Democratic contest, which often resembles an arms race more than a political race. Fundraising is booming, crowds are swelling, and YouTube has raised the bar for what makes a successful campaign video.
Here are some of the new benchmarks, falling short of which now constitutes failure:
- Superdelegates stolen from opponent: 1 a week
- Conference calls held with reporters: 4 a day
- Facebook friends: 588,537
- Full-time familial surrogates: 2
- YouTube views for campaign ad: 465,000
- Songs about candidate: 3 a week
- Day on which you’ll be ready to lead: 1
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Let’s take a breath and remember that a couple of weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was supposed to win the Wisconsin primary. Then Barack Obama survived Super Tuesday, swept 10 contests in a row, and out-campaigned Clinton in the Badger State. All of a sudden, Obama had the momentum, and it was his state to win—not Clinton’s.
But there’s a real chance the state will revert to the former conventional wisdom and Hillary will win. It’s also likely that Obama will continue his assault on the pledged delegate ledgers. It all depends on your half-glass tendencies going into tonight’s results. Here’s why Clinton might win and why Obama may not lose:
Clinton will win:
- Demographics: Obama’s recent wins have started infringing on Clinton’s normal demographics (women, whites, and middle-class voters, primarily), but Wisconsin is her chance to reclaim her turf. Ninety percent of the state is white; in 2004, half the electorate made less than $50,000, and most of the residents called themselves moderate or conservative. If Clinton can’t retain these voting blocs, then she has bigger problems than Wisconsin on her hands.
- Polls: The people paid to know what’s going on don’t know what’s going on in Wisconsin. In American Research Group tracking polls, Clinton was up by six points, only to be down by 10 points a day later. If that trend holds, then she’ll be up again by the time polls close. (Other polls show Obama comfortably ahead.)
- Negativity: Hillary didn’t quite get mean as she did get critical. First came the televised repartee over Obama’s refusal to debate in Wisconsin. Then Clinton controlled the news cycle for 36 hours with allegations that Obama “plagiarized” a speech from longtime friend and supporter Deval Patrick. It may not make Obama’s core supporters switch to Clinton’s side, but it may make some of his independent newcomers flake away and stay home today.
- Backlash: Obama has jumped the shark among the political elite, and that may start to trickle down to the average voter. If the cheese heads in Wisconsin think Obama is too cocky, they may punch him in the ego and tell him to suck it up. Let’s see Barack Obama be the country’s new bicycle after that.
- Republicans: Wisconsin’s primary is super-duper open, so independents and Republicans can vote in it. If Republicans want to prolong the Democrats’ nightmare, they’ll cast a Democratic ballot for Clinton rather than a relatively meaningless vote for John McCain.
Obama won’t lose:
- Independents: Republicans aren’t the only non-Democrats who can vote for a donkey. So can independents. And with McCain’s all-but-nomination, free-agent voters don’t have to rally to the maverick’s side anymore. They can all flock to the Democratic side, where their vote really matters. Polls suggest Obama does significantly better among non-Democrats.
- Neighbors: Wisconsin is bordered by four states, three of which have voted for Obama. The only one that didn’t was Michigan, and Obama’s absence from the ballot may have had something to do with that. Moreover, nearly every county that directly borders Wisconsin favored Obama over Clinton. (The only one that didn’t was a Minnesota county that had Clinton and Obama tied.) Plus, Wisconsin’s southern border is snuggled right next to Illinois’ northern edge. Not even a border fence could stop Obama’s homeland love.
- Weather: It’s frozen-tundra cold in Wisconsin today. Single-digit temperatures hovered outside of polling stations, which means Clinton’s elderly voters may not be able to brave the chill. Fewer old people means more celebrations for Obama.
- Stumping: Obama campaigned twice as much as Clinton in Wisconsin. Absence probably won’t make the heart grow fonder.
- Shmoshmentum: Previously, momentum hasn’t meant squat, because voters didn’t want to coronate a winner too soon. Now, the Democrats may be worried about choosing a nominee too late. If there’s ever a point where Democrats are going to rally behind a candidate, it’s now.
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After the crime against humanity that was “Hillary
4 U and Me,” it’s hard to imagine a Clinton fan one-downing it.
Well, consider it done. It has to
be an Obama supporter making these, right?
(h/t Wonkette)
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When is a primary not a primary?
I feel as if we’ve been asking that question every five minutes. First, the Michigan primary didn’t matter. Then Florida. Today, the state of Washington joins the club as the latest primary to not matter at all.
But, wait, didn’t Washington vote already? Yes, and that’s the point. The state held its caucuses on Feb. 9, when Obama swept with 68 percent to Clinton’s 31 and McCain eked out a victory over Huckabee. But according to state rules, both parties also must hold a primary. The Republicans have chosen to allocate 19 of the state’s 37 pledged delegates in today’s primary; the Democrats have chosen to give zero. So in an ironic twist, the uncontested contest (McCain vs. Huck) has delegates at stake, whereas the contested contest (Clinton vs. Obama) does not. Each contest means nothing in its own special way.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Michigan and Florida, it’s that any contest can be squeezed for meaning, no matter how few delegates are at stake. The Clinton campaign’s strongest argument for having Florida count has been turnout—how can you ignore the wishes of 1.5 million voters? Washington is also expected to have super-high turnout, given that most voters vote by mail and 30 percent of voters in some counties had cast ballots a week before election day. If the primary tally favors Hillary, watch the Clinton campaign use it to try to stanch the bleeding of the past eight contests. A Clinton victory would also boost their claim that Obama can only win caucuses, while giving the strong impression of a reversal.
Only in the most rational, left-brain, up-is-up-and-down-is-down state of mind can you say that the Washington primary means nothing. But this election has been about as rational as a cucumber. At this point, it would almost be more surprising if Washington's primary didn't end up deciding the nomination. So maybe that's a stretch, but keep an eye on the results tonight. If there's anything there that could stunt Obama's growth, expect to hear that Washington matters after all.
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The Obama campaign has a new favorite story. Politico’s Roger Simon reports that Hillary’s camp is courting not only superdelegates—that’s old news—but pledged delegates as well.
Sweet-talking pledged delegates is perfectly legal, according to DNC rules. A “pledged” delegate is merely someone who signs a pledge, which they’re entitled to violate with no more punishment than if they’d broken a promise to a friend (or in this case, a lot of friends).
But Team Obama is in hysterics, alleging that Clinton is trying to subvert the will of the American people. And if you think about the mechanics of swinging pledged delegates—you’re essentially undoing hundreds of thousands of real votes—it does seem freakout-worthy. (Although Clinton spokesman Phil Singer says the Obama campaign is doing the same thing. [Update 1:21 p.m.: Both camps deny pursuing each other's pledged delegates.]) Obama's people don’t claim that it’s illegal. Rather, they’re saying, Who cares if the rules don’t explicitly forbid it? It’s wrong.
Their logic on superdelegates, however, is a lot more muddled. The question of how superdelegates should behave, which we explored last week, has two possible answers. Either they should vote with their heart (or brain, or gut) or they should go with whoever wins more pledged delegates. (The first method is thought to benefit Clinton; the second, Obama.) At first Obama said that supers should follow the lead of voters, but his campaign has since been murky on the issue. “I do think they need to exercise their independent judgment,” said campaign manager David Plouffe on a conference call today. But he also said that “a lot will go into their calculus” and that “one of the things they need to bring into their thinking is the will of voters.”
Wait, so they should exercise independent judgment and factor in the pledged delegate count? That’s like saying, Make your own decision, as long as you make it this way.
So, why all the word games? Why not just pick a methodology and stick with it? The reason is that circumstances may shift. Pledged delegate hegemony benefits whoever is leading; “independent judgment” benefits whoever is losing, or who has more sway among party faithful. According to that calculus, the rhetorical shift among Obama’s people signals a dip in confidence that Obama will be leading in pledged delegates when this whole thing wraps. Why else resurrect the “independent judgment” language? Sure, it’s the kind of hedging a front-runner has to do. But it also reeks of trying to have it both ways.
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Slate associate editor Daniel Engber sends along this dispatch from the AAAS meeting in Boston.
None of the candidates has agreed to attend the long-sought-after presidential debate on science and technology, scheduled for April 18. But in what may have been a gesture of consolation, envoys from both the Clinton and Obama campaigns made surprise visits to Boston Saturday, to conduct a 90-minute "forum" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
About 400 science researchers, policy wonks, and journalists packed into a meeting room to see the surrogates duke it out. In the Clinton corner was Tom Kalil, a ruddy, thick-necked bureaucrat armed with a PowerPoint presentation and a full clip of obscure facts about academe. (Did you know that the average age for receiving your first NIH R01 grant is 41?) Representing Obama was Alec Ross, a smarmy and pandering thirtysomething in shirtsleeves. “I'm one of those guys who’s deeply moved by data,” he said, and then failed to adduce a single obscure fact about academe through the course of the session.
In this battle of the campaign stereotypes, Hillary came out the clear winner. Kalil began with a series of charts depicting the decline of American research funding. Then he laid out Clinton's plan to double funding for the NIH, the NSF, the NIST, and the research arms of the DOD and DOE. She'd reverse the ban on embryonic stem cell research, triple the size of graduate research fellowships, push for the creation of an ARPA-E, and restore the authority of the presidential science adviser. And this was just "Version 1.0" of her agenda. The audience seemed appreciative—if not deeply moved—by the details.
Ross responded by saying that Obama's plan is even more "detailed" than Clinton's, “both in terms of breadth and in terms of detail.” He then invited us—repeatedly—to visit www.BarackObama.com, where we'd see just how often they “really get into the weeds on an issue.” Those without laptops learned only that Obama planned to double federal research funding, spend $150 billion on biofuels, and appoint a national chief technology officer.
What about the debate on April 18—would the candidates come out for that? Clinton: "Time will tell." Obama: "It's being given serious consideration."
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As we went to bed last night, the juicy New York Times headline "Black Leader, a Clinton Ally, Tilts to Obama" tucked us in. The story explained the soon-to-be defection of Georgia Rep. John Lewis from Hillary Clinton's camp to Barack Obama's. Lewis is a superdelegate and a civil rights leader whose district voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in Georgia's Super Tuesday primary. If he officially defected, his change of heart was thought to be a bellwhether for all of Clinton's superdelegates whose districts voted for Obama. The Times reported that Lewis "said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention," but that Lewis was still weighing whether to officially endorse Obama.
But after changing his mind on Clinton, he may be changing his mind on Obama. The Times fronted the story as an off-lead this morning, but the denials came flooding in before the story even appeared in its dead-tree version. Lewis' spokesperson says the Times' story and a similar one from the AP were inaccurate, and both campaigns say they haven't heard from Lewis about a switch. Jeff Zeleny, who co-wrote the Times piece, is standing by his story, and Lewis' spokesperson later told NBC News that he's switching his superdelegate vote, but not his endorsement. It seems Lewis has settled on hedging his bets—endorse Clinton (whom he almost surely voted for on Super Tuesday) but give his superdelegate vote to Obama (because his district liked Obama better).
If that's the case, Obama has an old-fashioned political dilemma on his hands. Lewis is essentially swallowing his pride and personal feelings to listen to his constituents, a process Obama's campaign has advocated (especially when it favors them). In Lewis they now have a poster boy for "ethical" (read: pro-Obama) superdelegate behavior. Lewis is an elected official, and elected officials get paid to follow the wills of the people—endorsement be damned.
And now Obama is damned if he does praise Lewis and damned if he doesn't. He can't exalt Lewis' switch too strongly or he stands to lose some of his own supers. John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Deval Patrick, for example, would all follow suit and abandon Obama for Clinton because Clinton won Massachusetts. Clinton would be happy to let Obama keep their endorsements, just as long as she got those precious superdelegate votes. As the Democratic race becomes a high-stakes scavenger hunt for superdelegates, it doesn't matter if a super actually likes you best—just as long as they vote for you first.
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Mitt Romney’s endorsement of John McCain today was a fitting coda to his campaign, if only because you couldn't believe a single thing coming out of his mouth. (At least he knows how to do a proper endorsement, unlike Fred Thompson, who might as well have scribbled his on the back of an ATM receipt.)
After assuring everyone that today’s press conference “promises to be one of our more pleasant exchanges,” Romney acknowledged that “things can get rough in a political campaign.” But “even when the contest was close and our disagreements were debated,” he said, “the caliber of the man was apparent.”
This seems like an appropriate moment to recap some of our favorite moments when neither man's caliber was particularly apparent to the other:
Romney promised to “pledge” his 289 delegates to McCain, which McCain says puts him above the 1,191-delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination. For more details on the logistics and limitations of delegate-gifting, see here and here.
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At last, the rebuttal!
After Hillary Clinton began broadcasting a TV spot challenging Barack Obama to accept an invitation to debate her in Wisconsin, the question was whether Obama would dignify her with a response or give her the silent treatment.
Apparently, he couldn’t let it go unremarked. Today, his campaign released a counterad : “After 18 debates, with two more coming, Hillary says Barack Obama is ducking debates? It’s the same old politics of phony charges and false attacks.”
The presumption right now is that the two candidates are sticking to substance. At least that’s the impression Obama wanted to give at yesterday’s speech on the economy, when he promised to “take it down a notch. This is going to be a speech that’s a little more detailed. It’s going to be a little bit longer, not as many applause lines.” He proceeded to outline an economic recovery plan, which Hillary claims pilfers her own ideas. The two have also been butting heads over NAFTA. Plus, they regularly come to fisticuffs whose health-care plan covers more people. Any more substance and our brains would be full.
But the subtext of Clinton’s debate charge is that Obama isn’t willing to talk substance. With the debate debate laying the groundwork, this could become the running story line of the coming weeks. Who has the wonkier memos? Who can dig up the most obscure statistics? Who pointedly delivers the fewest applause lines? It’s the kind of anti-narrative that can only emerge in a race that’s run over countless news-cycles with seemingly insatiable media coverage. This one certainly qualifies.
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After discussing the campaign finance cudgel McCain could use against Obama, I figure it’s worth mentioning the brickbat Obama could now use against McCain: torture.
McCain has been a regular critic of harsh interrogation techniques, insisting in a presidential debate on Nov. 28 that the Army Field Manual, which prohibits the use of force, should be the standard. But yesterday he voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill that, among other things, would ban torture in CIA interrogations.
If Obama wanted to nail McCain for saying one thing and doing another, he would invoke this vote. McCain’s whole identity rests on his opposition to torture—it’s never too early to start putting holes in that armor.
In fairness, the bill was fixed to put McCain in a bind. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein snuck the anti-torture language into the bill last-minute in what looks like an attempt to drive a wedge between McCain and other Republicans. Plus, President Bush has promised to veto the bill anyway.
Maybe McCain would have voted for it if he thought his vote would make a difference. But the vote was close—51-45—and he probably didn’t want to risk handing the Democrats a legislative victory. And anyway, a veto by Bush would mean that McCain had expended political capital for no reason.
But that doesn’t stop Obama from raking McCain over the proverbial coals. If McCain wants to chide Obama for declining to take public funds (a decision that is still a ways off) or for his "present" votes in the Illinois state Senate, Obama can always cite the day McCain voted against his own principles.
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On the tip of bloggy tongues everywhere is the question of what will happen if McCain takes public funds for the general election. McCain says he will if Obama agrees to do the same. Would Obama follow suit, as he has suggested in the past?
McCain’s campaign has been mentioning Obama’s “pledge” to accept public funds, basically daring him not to keep his word. "If I were raising $35 million a month, I would think that through …” said McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis. “I think there is more a more likely chance he'd break his pledge than John [would].”
Now Obama’s people appear to be downplaying the idea. Spokesman Bill Burton describes public funding as an “option,” but refuses to call it a “pledge.” But is it an option he would really turn down?
For Obama, this would be the ultimate test of practicality vs. idealism—and a dangerous one, too. The candidate made a big deal of petitioning the FEC last February for a “truce” that would allow the front-runners of both parties to give back money raised for the general election. The move earned him plenty of coverage, and helped bolster his image as someone committed to cleaning up Washington. Even if his “pledge” wasn’t explicit—if the words “I will accept public funds if my opponent does” never came out of his mouth—his alleged commitment to campaign finance reform is too much a part of his public character to reverse course suddenly.
For one thing, his idealistic fans might turn on him. The Obama luster is bound to get scuffed up at some point, but to have it happen over an obviously controllable issue like campaign finance—as opposed to ancient ties to goons like Tony Rezko—would be especially damning. Plus, McCain would have a field day. Every time the subject of ethics or promise-keeping came up, he would have the public funds cudgel at the ready. McCain’s conservative detractors often cite his campaign finance record as a strike against him. But if it gave him the moral high ground over Obama, they couldn’t help but cheer him on.
It makes sense that Obama’s campaign wouldn’t commit itself to public funding before securing the nomination. And, of course, it would be a major sacrifice to forgo such a huge monetary advantage. But they have to recognize the ammo it would provide—and already is providing—for McCain. It may still be just an “option.” But it’s an option Obama can’t afford not to take.
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From the constantly expanding department of Obama fetishization, check out these photos of some guy getting a tattoo of the senator’s face on his arm.
Let this be grist for those concerned that Obama heralds a new era of cult-of-personality fascism.
Comments on Digg, which first linked to this, tend to be variations on “Can you imagine anyone getting a Hillary tattoo?” No, but then again, shouldn't this guy at least have waited for the general? Imagine someone walking around right now with a Lieberman tat.
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Barack Obama’s campaign announced today the endorsement of Puerto Rico Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, pretty clearly timed to showcase Obama’s appeal to Hispanics as the Texas primary looms.
But it also highlights the role Puerto Rico will play on June 7 as the last Democratic primary contest. If the race for delegates remains neck and neck, people might be tempted to look at the battle over Puerto Rico’s 63 delegates as a deciding factor in the war for the nomination.
But in reality, the PR caucuses (they might switch to a primary last-minute if they want to boost turnout) aren’t going to change much. For one thing, delegates are allocated proportionally, as in other Democratic primaries. Various pundits have floated the notion that Puerto Rico will be a winner-take-all showdown. But that theory has been summarily debunked. (What happened was, the island voted so late in the 2000 and 2004 Democratic primaries that only one candidate was left on the ballot, making it de facto winner-take-all.)
What’s more, even on the spectrum of proportionally allocated contests, Puerto Rico is likely to be closer than most. Remember how districts with an even number of delegates almost always split in half? Well, Puerto Rico has eight districts, and all but one of them have an even number of delegates. (The 2008 numbers haven’t been finalized; apparently Puerto Rico will be getting a “bonus” of three more district delegates.) That means that unless one candidate scores a landslide victory, the 36 district delegates will split more or less evenly. Same with the territory’s 12 at-large delegates and seven PLEOs, all of which are also allocated proportionally. Clinton and Obama are close among superdelegates, too: Three have sided with Hillary; one with Obama.
In other words, Puerto Rico is bound to be a wash. Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be room for hard-hitting, on-scene reporting from the beach.
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A socialist friend of mine once said, “You know why we're going to win? Because we have better poetry. We have better songs.” I informed him that he was crazy.
But after seeing this, I think he might be onto something. You might not be able to win an election with a good song, but you can definitely lose with one that's this bad.
And because we never miss a chance to do a roundup of candidate-themed songs, here's the updated list:
Obama songs here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Hillary songs here, here, here, and (sorry) here.
Others? Send 'em along. h/t Ben Smith
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Back in September, a Vibe magazine cover story asked the probing question: “Can the freshman senator from Illinois stick to his ideals and still become the first man to rock Air Force Ones on Air Force One?”
We can’t answer that just yet. But if he does one day rock them, we seriously hope they look like this.
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Last week, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle (RIP) sent the Obama campaign a letter throwing down the gauntlet and challenging Barack Obama to a debate a week—a sort of Lincoln-Douglas series that would either captivate America or bore it to death. Obama agreed to attend two debates between now and March 4, one in Texas and one in Cleveland, Ohio, but said that any more would be overkill.
Now Clinton has upped the ante. Today she begins airing a new ad in Wisconsin—Obama-land, by all accounts—challenging him to debate her in Milwaukee.
The spot doesn’t quite “go negative.” But it sure does contain fighting words: “Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than to have to answer questions.” It also has all the traditional language of a negative ad, with side-by-side pictures, a smarmy narrator, and a Baroque quartet. Still, it falls far short of trash talk.
As we’ve said before, having more debates benefits Clinton: It gets Obama off the trail, where he flourishes, and onto the stage, where she does. For a while, it seemed as if Clinton might reject the NBC-hosted Cleveland debate in light of MSNBC anchor David Shuster’s “pimped out” comments—an odd move, given that she has been calling for more debates. But today Clinton confirmed that she would be attending. As Ben Smith puts it, her campaign has apparently decided it’s “getting more mileage out of the debate theme than out of the war with MSNBC.”
Indeed. On a conference call at this very moment, Howard Wolfson is arguing that Obama “owes it to the people of Wisconsin” to debate Clinton in their state, adding that Obama is “hiding from the people of Wisconsin.” This claim—even for campaign spin—is patently absurd. This week, Obama will have held eight events in Wisconsin. Clinton has held zero and has none scheduled. (Chelsea and Bill are making stops, however.) Furthermore, every debate is a national event. There’s nothing stopping residents of Wisconsin from watching the Texas and Ohio debates.
Obama’s decision to accept two debates and reject the rest walks the line between cooperation and independence; he appears accommodating, but not overly so. Spokesman Tommy Vietor dismissed the latest Clinton spot as a “political stunt to get headlines.” “Look, they’ve debated 18 times in this primary,” he said. “They’re going to debate two additional times. … Sen. Obama believes debates are important. That’s why we’re doing 20 of them total.”
To waste so much breath on the “debate debate” seems silly, but it’s the sort of micro-battle that gets attention in a tight race. And with Obama slated to take 10 states (and territories) in a row, Clinton needs the free media. But why settle for that, when you can get free media about the free media?
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We don’t believe in shmoshmentum, but we do believe in numbers—and Obama’s numbers are looking very, very good. Barack Obama’s campaign, though, thinks they’re practically unstoppable. But he’s not Highlander quite yet. For Hillary Clinton to beat Obama in pledged delegates, she’s going to need to win big (20-point margins, probably) in nearly every state—preferably beginning with Wisconsin on Tuesday. It sounds impossible, but it’s not.
Five things could puncture Obama’s air of inevitability and give flight to Hillary Clinton’s comeback:
- John Edwards endorses Clinton—Edwards has never had stronger leverage on his former adversary than right now. Clinton needs an overwhelming narrative to drop out of the sky in the next two weeks, and Edwards’ endorsement is the only thing likely to fall. Edwards can dangle an endorsement in front of Hillary while forcing her to give him a Cabinet position and put poverty at the forefront of her campaign. Clinton will agree out of desperation. It’s like the domestic version of carrot-and-stick diplomacy.
- Hillary goes negative—She put her pinky toe into this murky pool in Wisconsin, where she released an ad chiding Obama for not agreeing to a debate there. The sternest line—“Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions”—alludes to the potential all-rhetoric-no-results attack she’ll mount on Obama. Going negative after months of positive campaigning has a real chance of backfiring, but so does standing by and smiling while Obama marches in a Democratic victory parade.
- Debate flubs—It looks like there will only be two more debates, despite Clinton’s debate-a-week request. Obama isn’t always the smoothest debater, so there’s major potential for Clinton to make him look foolish in a high-stakes forum. If Clinton is going negative over the air, then she’ll go negative at the two debates, which could put Obama in an uncomfortable spot. He could either act too timidly or too angrily. Either way, finicky voters could flee to the safer, more experienced bet.
- Obama gets cocky—Obama is already treated like a rock star, and now he actually has reason to act like one. But we’ve seen front-runners flame out over and over again in this race, partly because they got a bit too comfortable (think pre-Iowa Clinton, pre-New Hampshire Obama, summer Giuliani, and fall Romney). Obama has the uncomfortable task of trying to look like the inevitable nominee—so Democrats coalesce around him—and still appearing hungry for the nomination—so his supporters don’t get apathetic and stay home. Obama’s campaign seems to be aware of this and is still trying to spin the press into thinking that Obama has been the underdogs in “every contest.” They’re going to have to do better than that to douse the campaign’s ego.
- Michigan and Florida, Take 2—Obama’s lead wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if Michigan and Florida’s 350-plus delegates counted. There’s a small movement in the party to have the two states stage a do-over contest, which would mean voters would have to go to the polls again. If Clinton could hold or increase on her 15-point margin in the delegate-rich states, that would help narrow the pledged-delegate gap. As is, the states’ delegations will only be seated if they don’t alter the outcome of the race.
If all else fails, Clinton can still try to organize a superdelegate rebellion. Just because she’s all but guaranteed to lose in the pledged delegate count doesn’t mean she can’t still win the nomination. If she can find a way to convince the superdelegates to ignore their constituents’ wishes and the popular-vote tally, she may be able to build a winning coalition of insiders that can overwhelm Obama’s pledged delegate lead. Unfortunately for her, that’s even more unlikely than her toppling Obama’s pledged delegate lead.
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For a good half-hour there, John McCain’s campaign was having a coronary. Virginia was teetering between their candidate and Mike Huckabee. When it tipped, the state—and its 60 winner-take-all delegates—went to McCain. He ended up with 50 percent to Huckabee’s 41 percent. But it was close enough that McCain can’t exactly claim the party is rallying around him. Some showing for the party’s presumptive nominee.
Huckabee, on the other hand, isn't just alive. He has all but sucked the life out of Mitt Romney’s desiccated campaign and used it to reanimate his own. Early exits showed evangelicals favoring Huck over McCain by a whopping 40 points. He beat McCain handily in the South and the Shenandoah Valley. Without Romney to split evangelicals and social conservatives, Huckabee appears to have lapped them all up.
This doesn’t change the fact that John McCain will be the party’s nominee. After picking up most of the 113 delegates at stake today, he will wake up tomorrow beating Huckabee by at least 500 delegates and closing in on the 1,191 needed for the nomination. (See up-to-date numbers here.) His relatively narrow victory reflects the deep uneasiness many Republican voters still feel toward him, even now that he’s been essentially declared the nominee.
Keep in mind that the state’s circumstances favored Huck. In an open primary like Virginia’s, Obama no doubt sucked independents away from McCain. Plus, many moderate Republicans probably think of the race as settled, and therefore didn’t turn out for McCain. Huckabee fans, on the other hand, know he can still use their help. Nevertheless, for all McCain’s appeals to conservative unity, he doesn’t seem to be getting through.
So what’s in it for Huckabee? Shouldn’t he realize that the longer he stays in the race, the more he undermines the mandate of the party’s inevitable nominee? Doesn’t he realize that McCain has him beaten on the board? Perhaps. But for Huckabee, it’s not about the numbers. “I didn’t major in math,” he has been saying. “I majored in miracles.” But unless he can miraculously turn back time and stop Fred Thompson from entering the race, or alter the GOP’s winner-take-all primary system, or call down a lightning bolt upon John McCain’s head, he’s going to be disappointed.
More likely, Huckabee will drop out once he feels he has made his point—but before he has ticked off McCain. So far, he has managed to maintain friendly relations with his opponent. But that will become harder and harder if Huckabee appears to be undermining McCain’s candidacy with his presence. Who knows, maybe McCain will offer him the vice presidency just to get him off his back.
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We knew the Democrats were more excited about their nomination race, but the Republicans' apathy reached new lows in Washington, D.C.
With 88 percent of the precincts reporting, the Democratic turnout is 102,783, while the Republican turnout is 9,456* 5,127. (There are about 29,000 registered Republicans in the city, overall.) These numbers will change as the rest of the precincts report, but the ratio probably will not. More than 10* 20 times the number of Democrats came to the polls than Republicans. Ten point eight* That's twenty Democrats for every one Republican, to be exact. In the 2004 general election, John Kerry outdrew George Bush 10-to-1. The city-wide ratio is estimated at around 10-to-1, as well.
UPDATE 10:55 p.m.: I originally miscalculated the number of Republicans who voted, and therefore the ratio of Democrats-to-Republicans.
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It’s difficult to remember, but it was Super Tuesday only one week ago. Since then we’ve seen 31 states and territories go to the polls and caucuses. In just seven days, Hillary Clinton went from in-control front-runner to holding-on-for-dear-life candidate.
If politics was sport, then the Democratic division standings would look something like this:
|
W |
L |
PCT |
Streak |
| Obama |
23 |
12 |
.657 |
Won 8 |
| Clinton |
12 |
23 |
.343 |
Lost 8 |
(These tallies exclude Michigan and Florida, which we’ll treat as exhibition games.)
It’s easiest to key in on that shiny "streak" stat, which shows that after tonight’s wins, Obama will have now won eight states and territories in a row. Factoring in likely wins in Hawaii and Wisconsin, he’ll probably be 10 for 10 going into March. But his streak amounts to little more than empty momentum. It’s his overall win/loss record that’s starting to become overwhelming.
This cycle, Obama has already won a majority of states, and it's soon to be a majority of states in the entire union. He has won 22 states and one territory, far outstripping Clinton’s number.
On top of that, Obama is building a tower of pledged delegates that could spear him the nomination. He’s already up by at least 80 delegates, and that number will only increase once we know the full results of tonight’s contests. It’s a lead that will be tough to knock down if Clinton doesn’t take a significant hack at it in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. (Obviously, that’s a big if.)
All of these metrics are important because Obama and others are peer-pressuring the superdelegates into supporting whoever has the most metrics on their side. As of now, there are three big-picture metrics the superdelegates can use as a rationale to place their support: winner of the most states, winner of the most pledged delegates, and/or winner of the most votes overall. Obama is nearly guaranteed a win in the first, is leading in the second, and is neck and neck with Clinton in the third. Assuming the superdelegates stick to those metrics (which is no guarantee), Obama is in good shape.
Does that mean Clinton has already lost? Absolutely not. But during the last seven days—and the last month and a half—it has become clear that Obama is the winner and Clinton is the loser.
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If God himself had designed a jurisdiction for the sole purpose of supporting Barack Obama, it might look something like Washington, D.C. The majority black population across the city, the elites in Georgetown, the college kids at GW and American—you have to look hard to find the enclaves that don’t support him. No surprise, then, that he won it. (NBC has called it; CNN hasn't.)
Still, it's worth nothing that he beat Hillary on her home turf. I mean that: You could argue that Washington, D.C., is as much Hillary’s home town as Little Rock, Ark., or Chappaqua, N.Y. No, the District never elected her. But she lived in D.C. for eight years, compared to eight in New York. That would make Obama’s D.C. win his first victory in Hillary-land.
It’s hard to extrapolate much from his victory without knowing specifics—how much he won by, who voted for him, and why. Did Hillary represent in Hispanic areas of Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan? How about the rest of white D.C.? Was Obama’s margin any less than expected?
Symbolic victories are overrated—and the District primary commands only 15 pledged delegates—but it can’t hurt to know that if you do end up in the White House, you’ll be surrounded by friends.
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Barack Obama’s win in Virginia is a small victory for Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who was the second governor in the country to endorse Obama. Kaine announced his support for Obama nearly a year ago, when the junior senator from Illinois gave the keynote address at the state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Va.
The two men are fond of pointing out their odd similarities. Both went to Harvard Law School—as did both of their wives—though the two men missed each other by five years. On a stranger note, both of their mothers hail from El Dorado, Kan., population 12,000. Obama also campaigned for Kaine in his 2005 gubernatorial bid.
This win gives endorsing governors a nine-and-four record in the Democratic primary, according to the tally of superdelegates at the Democratic Convention Watch. (Our count does not include Iowa Gov. Chet Culver’s endorsement of Obama, which he announced after the caucuses.) Should Obama win Maryland tonight, as he is expected to do, this would make governors nine-and-five, as Martin O’Malley has endorsed Clinton.
Virginia used to be overlooked in presidential elections—one of those states that the cable news stations would color in red the moment the polls closed. But the last three statewide elections have gone to Democrats, and Kaine insists that the state will be in play for the Democrats in the general election whether Obama is the nominee or not.
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Sure, exit polls are notoriously unreliable and they don’t matter, but they’re all the data we have for a while. So, let’s delve into the juicy stats from the surprisingly close GOP race in Virginia:
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At
least one poll leading up to today's event showed McCain making strides among Evangelicals, but it looks like those numbers were very exaggerated. Half of the state’s voters were born-again Christians or evangelicals, and they favored Huckabee over McCain by 40 points.
- Sixty-one percent of voters said McCain was most qualified to be commander in chief, but 30 percent of that bloc still voted for Mike Huckabee anyway.
- Sixty-six percent of voters consider themselves conservatives (rather than moderates). Conservatives favored Huckabee over McCain by 23 points.
- Ninety-three percent of the Republican electorate was white. Sixty-one percent of Democratic voters were white.
- Sixty percent of Republicans said they listen to conservative talk radio. Huckabee led among those voters by 12 points.
- Pro-life Republicans are still favoring Huckabee over McCain (56 percent to 35 percent), while pro-choicers continue to ally themselves with McCain (64 percent to 24 percent).
We offer our usual disclaimer that these numbers can change. All stats taken from CNN’s stats.
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Roughly 0.00003 seconds after declaring Virginia for Obama, CNN posts its exit polls. (Disclaimer: DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ.) The main story is that Barack Obama has cut across demographics more than before by challenging Hillary among whites (48 percent to Clinton’s 51 percent) and winning among women (58 percent to 42 percent) and seniors (53 percent to 47 percent).
More tidbits:
- This is bizarre. Apparently only 84 percent of Clinton voters believe Clinton is most qualified to be commander in chief, while 16 percent think Obama is. Meanwhile, 99 percent of Obama voters believe he is most qualified. Perhaps this represents an electability argument for Obama, but it still seems odd that so many people would admit to voting for the candidate they believe it less qualified.
- Class still played a factor in the election, but less so than usual. Obama dominates in all regions except western Virginia, where downscale rural voters gave Clinton 54 percent of the vote. However, there was barely any difference between Obama’s victory margin among college grads and non-college grads. When broken down by yearly income, polls show that Obama won every tax bracket.
- Clinton eked out a victory among white voters and slammed Obama among white Democrats, 58 percent to 41 percent. But Obama dominated white independents, 64 percent to 35 percent. To the extent that he's cutting into the white vote, it appears to be primarily among independents. Blacks, however, supported Obama in almost equal numbers (roughly 87 percent), regardless of their party status.
- As in the past, last-minute deciders went for Clinton. Among people who made up their mind today, 51 percent voted for Clinton. Everyone else—people who decided in the last three days, last week, last month, and before—swung toward Obama.
- Listen up, Texans: Obama won the Latino vote with 55 percent. Granted, that's with Latinos comprising only 5 percent of the electorate. But until now they've been reliably pro-Clinton. Keep an eye on this number in Maryland and D.C.
- Obama may have won voters 60 and older, but his numbers are inversely proportional to voter age. In other words, his numbers decline among older voters. Conversely, Hillary’s trend upward.
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Barack Obama finally has a big-state primary win that the Clinton campaign can’t question. When he won the Illinois primary on Super Tuesday, it was because he had home-field advantage. When he beat her in Georgia it was because of the high number of African-Americans in the state. When he barely beat her in Missouri, the slim margin suggested it wasn’t all that important of a win. But tonight those caveats don’t apply. He won in the 12th-most populous state in the union, which is 20 percent black. And exit polls suggest he didn’t just win, he strutted to victory.
For Obama, this begins to erase another of his weaknesses. First, the pundits complained that he could win only caucuses—Super Tuesday proved that wrong. Next, they said he couldn’t reliably attract white voters—increased gains (and even some wins) among whites put that idea to rest. (Tonight he was essentially tied with her among whites.) The most recent knock was that he couldn’t win the big states—the ones that mattered in the election. Virginia isn’t the biggest win imaginable, but it should chop down some of the talk and boost Obama’s delegate lead. (We won’t know by how much until the proportional-allotment dust clears late tonight.) Plus, all three of tonight’s contests carry symbolic capital—if the Washington area favors Obama in the primary, then they probably wouldn’t mind him living there for four years. It’s like an early Valentine’s Day card.
For Clinton, this is a disappointing—but expected—defeat. She sank resources into the state, spending time there herself and sending Bill and Chelsea out on the trail for her. But her attention is already elsewhere. She’s spending the night in Texas, which doesn’t vote until March 4, and Bill Clinton is on his way to Wisconsin, which votes in a week.
Before tonight, Barack Obama had won nine primaries, but only two of them—Illinois and Georgia—were in the 15 most populated states in the country. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, had won six of them (including Michigan and Florida). But soon Obama will be tested again in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—all among top 10 biggest in the country. Now he knows that he can win big-state primaries. More importantly, Hillary does, too.
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One running sub-myth of the Clinton/Obama saga is that Obama is outnumbered. Hillary has Bill and Chelsea, the thinking goes, which gives her an edge on the campaign trail. She even had them touring as full surrogates in South Carolina. One of the campaign’s tensest moments came at the Myrtle Beach debate in January, when Obama snapped, “I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."
But to say that Obama is outnumbered is to discount his wife, Michelle. She has been a strong presence on the trail, often revealing details about her husband and their relationship that bring him down to earth. Her oratory skills rival that of her husband, and her bold words have drawn admiration and scorn alike. And now it looks like she’s drawing crowds that compete with Bill’s.
Michelle Obama spoke to a crowd of 1,200 at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Monday morning. That’s not spouse numbers. That’s candidate numbers. (John Edwards regularly drew fewer than that in Iowa and New Hampshire.) More importantly, that’s former president numbers.
At a Bill Clinton rally at George Mason University, roughly 1,500 people showed up. Sure, Michelle was speaking at a highly pro-Obama historically black college. But George Mason is the second largest university in Virginia, and Bill is one of the most famous people on the planet. That their crowds are even comparable should say something about Michelle’s effectiveness as a surrogate.
Assuming her crowds remain strong, Obama’s defenders can stop describing the race as a triple team. Three-on-two is more like it.
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We will also admit that we had no idea Fred Thompson had endorsed John McCain. Maybe it’s because he released a stealth statement to the Associated Press on a Friday afternoon. That’s what you do when you resign after appearing on some escort-service phone list—not when you’re endorsing a presidential candidate.
McCain could have used a more public blessing, too. The conservative radio mouths calling for his head (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter) might tone it down a bit if they knew that one-time GOP messiah Fred Thompson was backing him. A message from the ghost of Fred might also have blunted Huckabee's strength among evangelicals. But Fred has always done things his own way. It’s as if he wanted to back a winner but didn’t want to give McCain the satisfaction of a flashbulb handshake.
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Another Tuesday has arrived, which means we get to spend another night watching results crawl across cable news tickers. Before you snuggle up in front of the fireplace with Wolf, Matthews, or Brit, here are some things to keep an eye on.
Can Hillary win a single congressional district? At this point, you’re tired of everybody telling you the Democrats assign their delegates proportionally, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t say it again—Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. assign their delegates proportionally statewide and by congressional district. According to a recent poll, Clinton is going to lose both states' overall votes and is only within striking distance in two Maryland congressional districts (on the east by the bay) and one Virginia district (in the D.C. metro area). The two Maryland districts have an odd number of delegates up for grabs, which means somebody will walk away with a one-delegate advantage.
How will Washington, D.C.’s two districts differ? Since Washington D.C. is a (meaningless) congressional district in and of itself, its delegate assignments are roughly split into East D.C. and West D.C., which also means it's split along socioeconomic and demographic lines. Obama’s lead in the East is larger because of a larger African-American population. The West, meanwhile, is whiter.
If Obama wins in all three contests, will he have proven he can win a primary? The knock on Obama’s recent winning streak is that it has included too many caucuses. If he wins two medium-to-large-sized states tonight, will that make the criticism evaporate? It's doubtful, especially considering his flubs in Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey. But wins in Virginia and Maryland will give the Obama campaign some ammo to refute Clinton’s caucuses-don’t-count-as-much attack.
Can John McCain make serious inroads among evangelical voters? These three contests should get Mike Huckabee off McCain’s back. But Huckabee is unlikely to drop out of the race as long as his core base of evangelical voters continues to rally around him instead of around McCain. At least one poll showed McCain narrowly leading Huckabee among evangelical voters, but even a close second will be enough to impress.
What’s the margin of victory? It’s not about who wins and who loses anymore. Now everything revolves around the margin of defeat. If Obama emerges from tonight with only a 20-delegate haul, consider it a disappointment. The poll mentioned earlier puts his projected total in the low 30s. Thirty-five delegates or more and his night is a rousing success, even though the Obama campaign only assumed a nine-delegate advantage from the three states originally.
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If you thought counting delegates was hard, try counting superdelegates. Scratch that—don’t. Politico is doing it for you.
The project is a running tally of superdelegates, updated regularly as reports come in from news sources, readers, and the endorsers themselves. It’s a major undertaking given its specificity—you can break the endorsements down by state, type of official (party leader, governor, representative, etc.), and individual.
Clinton is ahead in the total count, with 229 superdelegates to Obama’s 138.5. (The .5 comes from overseas delegates, who count half.)
A few other juicy bits:
- Clinton and Obama are fairly close among governors (10-10, respectively), senators (12-9), and congress members (71-58). It’s among DNC officials that Clinton really takes the lead, with 125 to Obama’s 57.5. In other words, Clinton’s sway appears to be much stronger among party hacks than among elected officials.
- The candidates’ home states represent the most lopsided support. In Arkansas, Clinton has all 10 committed superdelegates. She also captures 38 New York superdelegates to Obama’s zero. In Illinois, Obama has 18 to Clinton’s one.
- Clinton has more delegates than Obama in all three “Potomac primary” jurisdictions. In Maryland, Clinton has three times as many committed superdelegates, although most of them still haven’t decided. This balance is likely to shift after today.
- Clinton trounces Obama in California, the state with the most superdelegates, 26-11. But another 29 are still holding out.
Update 5:39 p.m.: We should mention that Democratic Convention Watch has been doing this some time already, and Politico relies partially on its numbers. Because as we're learned, there's no such thing as too many delegate counts.
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Slate’s Josh Levin reports in with this dispatch:
As I left my apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., this morning, I passed a small group of vocal Obama supporters. Closer to my polling place, a neighborhood church, I spotted a more famous Obama supporter: D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. The mayor extended his hand, smiled, and asked if I was going to vote. When I responded in the affirmative, he asked, “Barack Obama?” After saying something inarticulate like, “Uh, OK,” I went in and cast my ballot. By the time I emerged, Fenty had disappeared. That’s when I realized that the mayor had been standing directly between two signs that demarcated a no-electioneering zone. Which makes sense, considering that he was right in front of the church entrance.
For the legal sticklers out there, D.C. Code section § 1-1001.10(b)(1)(2)(A) says that, “No person shall canvass, electioneer, circulate petitions, post any campaign material or engage in any activity that interferes with the orderly conduct of the election within a polling place or within a 50-foot distance from the entrance and exit of a polling place.” And what’s Mayor Fenty’s likely punishment? “A person who violates the provisions of this paragraph shall, upon conviction, be fined not less than $50 or more than $500 or imprisoned for not more than 30 days, or both.”
Fenty’s press secretary, Dena Iverson, told me that the mayor would be out all day today encouraging District residents to vote for Obama. When told that the mayor had been encouraging this reporter right next to a pair of “no electioneering” signs, Iverson sighed, “Oh, great.” She continued, “The only other polling place I saw him at, he was doing it outside the signs. I will make sure he will not accidentally cross any lines he’s not supposed to.”
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After waking up in Washington, D.C., today, Hillary Clinton is flying to Texas, while Barack Obama is flying to Wisconsin. Think of it as claiming their turf for the coming battles.
But it’s not as simple as his-and-hers. Obama has won every contest since Super Tuesday. If he wins today’s Chesapeake hat trick, he’ll be positioned to take both Hawaii and Wisconsin next Tuesday. He would then have won 10 contests in a row—a daunting number, even if Clinton is favored in Ohio and Texas next month.
So, Wisconsin is her best shot at breaking Obama’s streak before the three-week break (break being a relative term). The state has 74 delegates, plus a good chunk of working-class Democrats, making it a sensible place to stage her blockade. To that end, Clinton’s camp today unveiled a new TV ad hitting airwaves across the state. The spot focuses on her health-care plan—which has become the centerpiece of her case against Obama—calling her “the only candidate for president with a plan to provide health care for every American.” (Now that Edwards is gone, Hillary ganks his line that universal care is “America's moral obligation.”) She has also agreed to a debate in Milwaukee; Obama has not.
Likewise, Obama can’t afford to rest on the would-be laurels of his hypothetical 10-state sweep. Texas’ Latino population (20 percent of voters in 2004) outnumbers its African-American electorate (12 percent in 2004). To that end, Obama has a new Spanish-language radio ad going up today across Texas, pointing out his decision to work as a community organizer “instead of accepting job offers that paid a lot of money.”
Their mutual turf invasion plans have one downside: Neither candidate has deniability in the expectations game. In a handful of caucus states, the Clinton campaign dismissed Obama’s victories since it hadn’t invested resources there. In Wisconsin, that won’t be an option. Similarly, Obama can’t say he isn’t trying in Texas. (Given his bulging coffers, not trying would be dumb.)
Expectations management isn’t everything. In the Democratic primaries, which allocate delegates proportionally, it doesn’t pay to ignore a state entirely. Better to reduce your opponent’s margin and delegate take as much as possible. But campaigns always have to factor spin into strategy. And this time, both camps will have trouble brushing off the coming races.
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Exactly a year and a day has passed since Barack Obama stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Il. and declared his candidacy for president, the wind in his sails. About a month later, a Democratic consultant anonymously created and posted a homemade ad for Obama called “Vote Different,” a parody of the famous dystopian 1984 Apple ad. According to ViralVideoChart.com, the ad has been viewed more than 5 million times. (The creator was identified about two weeks after its posting.)
Zip ahead to Feb. 2 of this year, when a cabal of pro-Obama celebrities release its instant hit, “Yes We Can.” It receives more than 3 million views on YouTube in eight days. A virus that potentially would wipe out humanity.
The video is powerful, inspiring, and asinine. Better yet, it is blissfully ironic. Less than a year after “Vote Different,” which perfectly captured the sentiment that the Obama campaign was an answer to the Nutrasweet hegemony of Hillary Clinton, “Yes We Can” captures the sentiment that the Obama campaign has become a cult of its own. This is probably not what the beautiful faces in the video intended, but consider the conceit: a parade of cultural icons repeating their dear leader’s words as he utters them, stringing together happy phrases around that strophic refrain. Totalitarianism doesn’t have to be gloomy to be vicious.
In the early months of his campaign, Obama made an effort not to act like the savior his most fervent supporters wanted him to be. I saw him deliver the keynote address at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond last February, a week after he formally announced his bid, and at the press conference before his speech, he said something very interesting: “People have been noticing we’ve been attracting big crowds. I’d like to say it’s just me. But I think I have come to represent, in the minds of some, turning a new page, and getting beyond the slash and burn, very tactical politics that we've become accustomed to in Washington.”
It was a talking point, no doubt, couched in Obama’s special brand of humility, but it’s still a sentiment we’ve heard less of from his campaign as the months have worn on. While it’s impossible to say exactly whom Obama was thinking of when he qualified that statement with “in the minds of some,” I would wager that it’s a highly overlapping set with the people who still have that “Yes We Can” video linked in their away messages.
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Over the weekend, Barack Obama won caucuses in Washington, Nebraska, and Maine, bringing his total number of caucus victories to 11. He and Hillary Clinton have won nine primaries each. But in terms of caucuses, he’s way in the lead—she has won only two. Why does Obama do so much better in caucuses than in primaries?
There are as many theories as there are theorists. Here are some of the most prevalent ones, teased apart as best we could:
The Organization Theory: Caucuses favor strong organization, and Obama supporters are better organized.
True? In most caucus states, yes. For a while there, Obama’s campaign was opening offices like cans of Pepsi. In late January, he had 12 offices and 75 paid staffers in Colorado, compared with Clinton’s single office. He was also the first candidate to open offices in Idaho and Kansas. In other states, however, Hillary’s organization rivals Obama’s.
The Passion of the Caucus-Goers: Obama’s supporters are more enthusiastic, and enthusiasm counts in caucuses.
True? His supporters are generally younger and therefore probably have the edge in terms of energy. But these days, caucuses are more like straw polls than raucous rallies. Ever since John Edwards dropped out, viability thresholds are no longer an issue, so there’s usually only one round of voting, which offers little opportunity to persuade your fellow caucus-goers.
So Little Time: Obama’s supporters are younger and wealthier than Clinton’s, which means they’re more likely to have an hour or two to attend a caucus. Lower- and middle-class voters, by contrast, are more likely to be working late.
True? Sounds plausible, although both candidates made sure in Iowa and elsewhere to provide travel arrangements and baby-sitting for people who have trouble caucusing. Also, a caucus takes about an hour—not much longer than waiting in line to vote. Plus, when a caucus happens on a weekend, the “working class” excuse doesn't carry as much weight.
Clinton Wasn’t Trying: After Obama took Nebraska and Washington, the Clinton campaign reminded everyone that Obama “has dramatically outspent our campaign” in those states. She also declined to advertise in many caucus states, including Kansas and North Dakota. Instead, she focused her resources on large-impact, delegate-rich contests like Texas and Ohio.
True? Somewhat. While it’s true that Clinton abandoned Nebraska and Idaho to Obama, she made more campaign stops in Washington than he did. She also put up a fight in Maine, and it’s nonsense to claim she wasn’t trying in Iowa.
The Bradley Effect: The theory refers to black candidates who perform better in polls than they do on election night, suggesting that voters conceal their prejudices when talking to pollsters. It’s possible the same thing happens with caucuses: Voters support the black candidate in a public setting, but not in the privacy of the voting booth.
True? There’s no way to measure prejudice, but it’s hard to imagine that fear of appearing politically incorrect factors into the thinking of caucus-goers. If that were the case, wouldn’t they be equally ashamed of not voting for Hillary, the first viable female candidate? Caucuses might offer tyranny-of-the-majority scenarios, but they can swing both ways.
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Trailhead readers, unite! Considering "brokered convention" is the buzz word of the week, it's surprising how little anybody knows about what it actually means. And since we're all about informing the citizenry, we want to help refresh your (and our) memories on what exactly brokered conventions are, why they exist, and how they work. So, send all the questions you can muster to TrailheadContest@gmail.com. We're going to try and churn this out ASAP, so the sooner you send the questions the better. Conference with the fam at the dinner table and get back to us.
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It feels as if every five minutes there’s a new delegate debate. Should Florida's and Michigan’s delegates be seated? Should we count superdelegates in our total tallies? What about nonbinding caucus delegates? Add a new kerfuffle to the mix: How should superdelegates vote?
I know it’s hard to believe, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama disagree on this issue. (You get the sense that if Obama said he liked oranges, Hillary would release a statement lauding apples for their superior color, crispness and vitamin content.) We thus see two superdelegate philosophies emerging:
The first school of thought says that superdelegates should support whoever wins more pledged delegates. Democratic strategist and delegate guru Tad Devine argued this point in his Sunday New York Times op-ed, in which he called on superdelegates to stop endorsing and wait to see whom the American people choose. Obama said he also believes that “if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates from the most voters in the country, that it would be problematic for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters.”
The other school of thought says that superdelegates should decide for themselves which candidate they like better. Hillary Clinton articulated this philosophy over the weekend: “Superdelegates are, by design, supposed to exercise independent judgment.” Of course, “independent judgment” can be influenced with phone calls, visits, and dinners with friends who also happen to be supporters. But it’s true that the superdelegate system is meant to give party officials a disproportionate say in choosing their nominee.
What’s amazing here—but hardly shocking—is how conveniently the candidates’ philosophies align with their political needs. Obama is expected to emerge ahead in the delegate count after the “Potomac primary” on Tuesday, so naturally he wants superdelegates to follow the voters' lead. Hillary, meanwhile, prefers to maximize her longtime connections to the Democratic establishment. In this situation, Obama is taking the side of democracy, while Clinton is arguing to uphold the party rules.
Notice that this is an inversion of the fight over Florida and Michigan. In that flap, Hillary is the one making paeans to democracy, arguing that the DNC must seat delegates from those two states, both of which she won. Meanwhile, Obama claims that we need to play by the rules of the DNC, which stripped the states of their delegates. Clinton stands up for democracy when it helps her and backs down when it doesn’t. Obama likewise defers to the rule book when it serves him and throws it out the window when democracy seems more useful.
This isn’t to cast a pox on both houses. Obama’s deference to the DNC rules in Florida and Michigan isn’t purely self-serving—it’s also fair, given that Hillary was the only viable candidate on the Michigan ballot. Nor is it novel for politicians to bend their ideals to suit their needs. But in the case of superdelegates, it seems obvious that one path—having superdelegates take the electorate’s cue—is the democratic one.
Of course, you could fill a book cataloging the undemocratic aspects of the nomination contests. (Caucuses, caucuses, and caucuses, to name three.) But there’s only so much griping you can do; political parties reserve the right to choose their own nominees. If you don’t like it, you can go start your own party. Plus, the nominating process is too complicated to say that superdelegates will vote either for the pledged delegate winner or for their personal preference. Back in 1984, superdelegates swung toward Walter Mondale. According to Tad Devine, it was because Mondale won 40 more pledged delegates than his opponent, Gary Hart. If you ask Hart, it’s because Mondale was the establishment figure with more clout among party leaders. Even after the convention this August, observers may disagree on what happened.
The real nightmare scenario, though, is if one candidate wins the popular vote and the other wins more delegates. In that case, it won’t be democracy vs. party power. It will be one definition of democracy versus another, with superdelegates more powerful than ever. As Ted Olson speculates, it would be Bush v. Gore all over again, only this time it would rupture the party instead of the country. In that case, no matter what your philosophy, the Democrats are screwed.
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COLLEGE PARK, Md.—When I saw Barack Obama two weeks ago in California, the Kennedy comparisons were flying. Ted Kennedy compared Obama to both of his brothers, Obame name-dropped the Democratic royalty every chance he got, and warm-up speakers compared him to an RFK who wouldn't get assassinated. (They used more gentle terms.)
But after he lost California and Massachusetts—the two places Ted Kennedy's support was supposed to help most—the Kennedy mentions have dropped precipitously. The only time a Kennedy came up at today's rally was when Obama trotted out his well-worn Kennedy allusion, "[JFK] said we can never negotiate out of fear but we can never fear to negotiate." Then he kept going for a few seconds, only to cut himself off in a rare sign of ADD, "Strong countries and strong presidents—"
Obama had spotted Maryland's varsity women's basketball team, and he was determined to give them a shout-out, even if it meant breaking off from the almighty JFK. "Is that the basketball team on the way out?" he said. "What's up girls? How you all doing, ladies? We love you!" After finding out they're 25-2 on the year, he said, "You all are going to the finals. … If I had brought my sneakers I'd suit up … I still got game." Then he picked up on his JFK thread, almost out of obligation.
It seems Obama has moved beyond trying to be the next Kennedy. Now he's all about electability. First, Obama tackled Hillary Clinton's claim that she's the electable one. "Lately Sen. Clinton says, well, you better elect me because I've been around a long time so I can go after the Republicans. I'm tough." he said. Then he pivoted, "Let me tell you something, I may be skinny, but I'm tough, too." As canned as it was, the crowd liked that one.
With Clinton out of the way, he turned his attention across the aisle. "I'm looking forward to mixing it up with John McCain," he said before paying tribute to McCain's service and detailing McCain's conservative positions on taxes and Iraq. "I am happy to have an argument with the Republicans. Not only that, I think I can get some Republican votes." Cue the various token Republicans in the crowd, who started wildly pointing at themselves. Obama spotted one, called him out, and the entire crowd went nuts. "They call 'em Obamacans," he said.
But Obama never mentioned that the polls show he leads in hypothetical match-ups. He had a natural opportunity to do a little bragging about his poll numbers in a state that already likes him, but he shied away. That timidness is not going to work in states like Ohio and Texas, where he's going to have to dig a little deeper to fend off Hillary Clinton.
Somebody needs to tell him he has to start making his electability more explicit. Maybe Ted Kennedy's the best guy to do it.
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Now that will.i.am is a household name, it was
only a matter of time before we saw this.
Note the tagline: “Like Hope, Only Different.” McCain should
steal that.
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COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Obama's Maryland co-chair and the state's attorney general, Doug Gansler, just went way overboard in his warm-up speech. Feeling the crowd's energy, he fired off this salvo:
This is the state that tomorrow will put the nail in the coffin when we win this election.
Simmer down, Dougie. Simmer down. Maryland's 99 delegates aren't going to be hammering any Clinton coffins.
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COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- As I walked past thousands of people queued outside of a Barack Obama event at the University of Maryland, one guy shook his head in disbelief. "I wouldn't show up for that if God himself was coming," the guy said, "The lines are too long."
I laughed but didn't tell him that every now and then Obama thinks he's the next best thing. All Messiah talk aside, the Comcast Center on campus is absolutely jammed. Officially, the stadium's capacity is a little less than 18,000 people, and it looks like there are only a few hundred to 1,000 seats empty. Considering how many people were lined up outside, the empty seats aren't an issue of demand--it's timing. Obama is due to speak in 10 minutes.
They're killing time by playing will.i.am's "Yes, We Can" video. Everybody is standing and facing the JumboTron like it's the American flag. Instead of holding their hands over their hearts, they're holding their cameras out in front of them. Everybody's mouthing the words and clapping. One woman is already crying.
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Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, as quoted in the Politico:
Republicans believe in markets. We also should believe in political markets. And the market has spoken here. Not the party fathers, not pundits, the American people. Republican voters have given us a soldier, and it just may be what the Republican Party needs to take that hill in 2008. [emphasis added]
Take that Hill? I really, really hope this doesn’t catch on.
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Barack Obama swept all five contests this weekend—Washington, Nebraska, Maine, Louisiana, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—and the whispering has already begun. These aren’t just any victories, people are saying. Nor do they merely give Obama delegates. They also give him … you know … shmoshmentum.
The word is everywhere: The New York Times wrote that “these victories should give him momentum going the primaries on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.” Talking Points Memo called Maine “another sizable victory in a state that was supposed to act as a check on his momentum after yesterday's trio of landslide wins.” The Associated Press said Clinton was now looking to “put a brake on Barack Obama's momentum.”
How quickly they forget. After the CW-busting reversals of New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Feb. 5 itself, everyone is now talking about shmoshmentum (I can’t in good conscience say the actual word) as if the last month never happened. I expected the press to declare a moratorium on that sort of language after New Hampshire. No such luck.
Obama’s weekend victories were significant, no doubt. He was slated to win in almost all of the contests, but he won them by wide margins: 68 to 31 percent in Washington, 68 to 32 in Nebraska, and 59 to 41 percent in Maine. That he won so decisively in states with huge white populations is also important, given the narrative that he has trouble attracting lower- and middle-income white voters.
But his wins don’t justify mental relapse among analysts who have seen their assumptions (Obama is dead, Hillary is dead, Obama is dead again) explode repeatedly during this cycle. Momentum has lost its meaning, if it had any to begin with. Normally, it means that one candidate takes enough of a lead that voters think supporting another candidate would be throwing away their vote. But both Clinton and Obama have proven themselves viable. A Hillary supporter won’t think Hillary is suddenly doomed just because Obama wins a few contests in a row, and vice versa. Sure, some voters may consciously or unconsciously support whomever they’ve seen win most recently. But previous primaries have shown that most voters don’t think this way and that to assume they do makes an ass out of you, me, and the entire media establishment.
Expect the shmoshmentum frenzy to build if Obama takes Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., especially if they are landslide victories. Wins in Hawaii and Wisconsin the following week will work momentucrats into a lather. If that happens, he will have won 10 contests in a row—no small feat. But even then, to talk about shmoshmentum is to discount the upcoming behemoths—Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—which vote in March and April. Those three states alone command 577 delegates—nearly as many as all 10 post-Super Tuesday states Obama will likely have won (595). After February, Hillary could close in on Obama’s lead and more.
So, when you hear people speak of shmoshmentum, close your ears. It’s no more meaningful than it was last month.
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It looks like Mike Huckabee is probably going to win in Louisiana—but it won't count. Despite clear evidence that the state prefers Mike Huckabee over John McCain, no delegates will be awarded based on this primary. That's because of a silly rule that the Republican primary results only impact the state's delegate allotment if the winner gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Instead, the delegates will be based on a late-January caucus that barely anyone cared about. To make things even more confusing, the "winner" of the caucus wasn't a candidate—it was a "pro-life uncommitted" slate. That means those state delegates can pick John McCain or Mike Huckabee at the state convention. From there, the national delegates will be selected.
Confused? Check out our previous post on the Louisiana caucus. A choice excerpt to whet your arbitrary-democracy appetite:
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.
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We don't know which Republican won in Washington quite yet, but we do know that even if John McCain wins, he lost.
With 37 percent of the precincts reporting, John McCain is winning 22 percent of the vote while the rest of his opponents run laps around him. Mike Huckabee, who has no business winning in Washington, is leading with 27 percent. But that's not even the juiciest story line. Ron Paul is only two points behind McCain, and Mitt Romney is only five points back. In case you needed a reminder, Mitt Romney is no longer running for president.
We already knew that McCain hasn't yet convinced conservatives that he shares their values. But that was partly because Romney was still in the race and Huckabee was playing well in the South. But now John McCain—to reiterate, the Republican nominee-to-be—can't even pull one-quarter of his party's vote in the Pacific Northwest. Moreover, Washington is a blue state, so McCain's moderate stances shouldn't scare his own party as much as it does elsewhere.
More than 67 percent of Washington residents caucused for Huckabee, Paul, or Romney tonight. But that's not the worst of it. McCain failed so badly that 10 percent of caucus-goers showed up only to stay uncommitted. McCain, it seems, is inspiring the apathetic to stay apathetic.
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Barack Obama won both Nebraska and Washington state—and by won, I mean made Hillary Clinton look like a second-tier candidate. Obama has once again produced impressive margins of victory, and once again the victories come in two caucus states.
With the majority of precincts reporting, Obama has at least two-thirds of the vote in both states. That’s the eighth time he’s topped 60 percent of the vote in caucus contests (Iowa and Nevada are the only exceptions). Clinton has won only one caucus—Nevada—where she pulled in 51 percent of the vote. (John Edwards barely factored into the results.)
Naysayers and the Clinton campaign will probably suggest that Obama naturally does better in caucus systems, where his “fervent” supporters can try to convince their neighbors to switch allegiances. That thinking may have applied in Iowa and Nevada, but it doesn’t anymore. Now that Edwards is out of the race, viability thresholds aren’t as prevalent of an issue, so these caucuses are more like glorified straw polls than democratic wasteland. When it’s one candidate against another, caucus meetings morph into a really disorganized primary—and that doesn’t favor either candidate.
Sure, caucuses take longer than primaries (an hour or two compared with 15 or 20 minutes). But these caucuses were on a Saturday, when most people—fervent fans and lukewarm supporters—have an hour to kill. Clinton competed hard in Washington—she made more campaign stops than Obama—and she got beat. No complaining allowed.
Obama isn’t beating Clinton in caucuses—he’s beating her in the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and the Rockies. Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, and Washington have all chosen Obama over Clinton. Attempting to cheapen his wins by crying caucus is so early January. It’s time to ask why Obama caucus states favor Obama, not caucus procedures. Add Utah to the mix and it’s clear the region, not caucuses, want optimistic change, not experience, to take up residence in the White House. And they're making their voices heard in impressive margins.
To Clinton’s relief, there are only two more caucuses left on the primary schedule. But considering the black vote once again handed her a loss in Louisiana's primary and that she's expected to lose Virginia's and Maryland's primaries on Tuesday, things still look bleak in the short term. According to exit polls in Louisiana, only 19 percent of voters there thought experience was most important in a candidate. Clinton should be thankful that momentum doesn't matter this cycle. But losses still do.
At this point, the one thing that should really soothe Clinton's nerves is that after tonight, almost every Great Plains state is out of the way. Ohio and Texas can't come vote soon enough.
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John McCain is going to stop Mike Huckabee from winning the nomination, but he can't stop him from winning Kansas. Huckabee won 60 percent of the vote, more than twice the number of votes as Mr. Nominee-to-Be. He'll get 39 delegates, an ego boost, and an excuse to stick around a little longer. Hooray for Huck.
More importantly, about 17,000 fewer people turned out for the Republican caucuses than the Democratic caucuses earlier this week. That's a small margin in a multimillion-vote state, but not in Kansas. Both of the caucuses were closed, so the 17,000 gap implies nearly twice as many true Democrats caucused as true Republicans. In 2004, nearly twice as many Kansans voted for George Bush than for John Kerry.
Granted, the Republican race is Nanook of the North to the Democrats' Transformers. Plus, the governor of Kansas is a vocal Barack Obama supporter, which may have stimulated turnout for the Democrats (Obama won 74 percent of the vote). But if even Kansas is more excited about Barack Obama than John McCain, all of the Republicans-are-unexcited nightmare scenarios could come true. Once again, we may be asking ourselves, What's the Matter With Kansas?
Note: For those unaware, the slightly risque headline owes its heritage to Arrested Development.
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Barack Obama hasn’t had the best luck in the polls this cycle. Over the past six months, he lagged far behind Hillary Clinton in national polls, he was teased by glowing numbers before his New Hampshire collapse, and he had his candidacy pigeonholed because of hard evidence that he doesn’t appeal to Latinos and women.
But today the numbers finally started to play nice. A new national poll from Time suggests that Obama—not Clinton—is the stronger candidate against McCain. In hypothetical matchups, Obama beats McCain by seven points while McCain ties Clinton. That, despite the fact that Obama still trails Clinton by six points among Democrats. This jives* jibes with a bunch of other polls that have Obama as the stronger general election warrior. It seems Obama, aided by independents, is more electable in the general election than in the Democratic primary.
In a primary race that is increasingly becoming about personality—not issues—electability is going to start to matter again. Primaries are now explicitly about what’s best for the party—not just what’s best for a state or the country. This is where John McCain’s early(ish) coronation helps Democrats—despite talk otherwise. The opponent across the aisle is no longer abstract. Previously, with a wide-open Republican field, there were too many calculations to make. Voters going to the polls now have to judge which candidate can best take down a moderate, independent-courting Republican. Obama now has the concrete data to combat the Dems’ concrete Republican opponent.
Moreover, this helps quiet the “all-fluff” criticisms that have dogged Obama. Who cares if hope and change seem like they shouldn’t be electable messages? Polls show they are!
The Democratic campaign has evolved from a primary to a primary-general election hybrid. McCain is the sometimes-talked-about elephant in the room—they’re running as much against one another as the Republican nominee. As the candidates run out of things to say about each other, they’re going to start talking about Johnny Mac a whole lot more. And as of now, Obama has more to brag about.
*UPDATE Feb. 11, 4:40 p.m.: A loyal and hawkeyed reader points out that I totally misused the word jive. It should have been jive. Sorry for dancing around the appropriate wording.
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With his primary rival out of the race and his secondary rival hardly a threat, John McCain can now begin scouring the Earth for the perfect running mate. The size of that world is not very big. In fact, there are a few specific factors McCain will be looking for in a nominee. Here’s what they are, and who might fit the bill.
Location, location, location. When asked what factors he would consider in a vice president, McCain insisted that geography would not be one of them. But everyone knows he could use a little help below the Mason-Dixon. On Super Tuesday, he lost to Mike Huckabee in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Plus, despite his conservative record on social issues, many Republicans still see him as weak. (See Dobson, James.) So who has Southern cred? Fred Thompson fits the bill—but then again, he lost those states, too. Huckabee himself is an obvious choice, although his “fair tax” evangelism would quickly alienate fiscal conservatives, even if they like his real evangelism. Which brings us to:
Money man. Before dropping out, Mitt Romney carried the torch of fiscal conservatism for Campaign 2008. Now McCain will have to pick it up, but he could use the help of a stalwart, limited-government veep. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s name has been floated, given his commitment to health-care markets and school choice, as well as the toothectomy he wants to give Sarbanes-Oxley. On the executive side, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has fought the state legislature’s spending initiatives, vetoing 106 items in 2004 in an attempt to balance a $155 million deficit. Now there’s a guy who hates the other white meat.
United we stand. McCain is widely known (and widely despised) for cross-aisle initiatives, from McCain-Feingold to his role in the bipartisan “Gang of 14” that negotiated a compromise in the filibuster battle of 2005. In the same spirit, he has brought Sen. Joe Lieberman on the trail, with generally positive reception. Choosing Lieberman as a running mate, as Newt Gingrich has suggested, could be an effective weapon against Obama’s calls for unity. Or, if Hillary were the nominee, it could help McCain win disaffected Democrats. That said, it could cost him immeasurably among true believers. Conservatives may love Lieberman because he’s an apostate Democrat—but he’s still a Democrat.
Who’s the boss? As a senator, McCain doesn’t have executive experience. Then again, neither will his Democratic opponent. But choosing a veep who has “run something” would give him an added edge, especially among conservatives concerned with an efficiently run government. Huckabee would be ideally suited, if he weren’t famous for his relatively liberal economic policies as chief exec of Arkansas. Romney would be great, too, if he and McCain hadn’t already blasted each other to bits over who’s more conservative. Govs. Tim Pawlenty (Minn.), John Huntsman (Utah), and Charlie Crist (Fla.) have shown up on speculative short lists as possible veeps. Pawlenty has been an enthusiastic Mac backer; Huntsman, a Mormon, abandoned Mitt Romney for McCain in the former’s home state, where 90 percent of Republicans are Mormon and Romney took 89 percent of the vote; and the hugely popular Crist nudged Florida over to McCain. Plus, their conservative bona fides fairly shimmer.
Just a number. The last time a septuagenarian won the presidency, he turned his age to his advantage by joking that he wouldn’t hold his opponent’s “youth and inexperience” against him. McCain can play the same card, but questions about his health and energy level will persist, especially if confronting a fresh-faced youth like Obama. There’s a batch of vice presidential young’uns out there, including South Dakota Sen. John Thune and former Sen. George Allen, who endorsed McCain on Thursday. Then again, just about anyone would look youthful standing next to John McCain.
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After the fourth quarter of 2007, we thought the donations war was over until the next quarterly FEC reports. How naive.
It’s gotten only more intense. First, Obama announced his fund-raising totals for January: $32 million. Hillary wouldn’t say how much she had raised that month—she told reporters they could wait to see the reports—but her campaign chairman blurted to MSNBC that it was somewhere around $13.5 million.
Then on Wednesday, word leaked that Hillary had loaned herself $5 million. At first, the news seemed dire. The campaign immediately sent out an e-mail to supporters setting a fund-raising goal of $3 million in three days. They got $6.4 million in two days. Act of desperation or brilliant fund-raising ploy? You decide.
Obama’s camp tried to regain the moment by announcing that it had raised $7.2 million in the same 48 hours. Then today, Clinton’s team announced that it has raised $8 million since Super Tuesday.
Do I hear 8.1? $8.1 million, anybody?
This is the problem with a contest that drags on past Super Tuesday: The campaigns find smaller and smaller things to bicker over. At this point, they might as well hold 24-hour conference calls with running financial updates, taking breaks only when they fall behind in the monetary arms race. We'll update you when the Obama campaign sends out its counter-statement. Probably, oh, five minutes from now.
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By Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin
This time, we really don’t know what to expect. Pollsters, still scrambling to catch up after Super Tuesday, haven’t sunk many resources in the next batch of contests, so we get to live a dream scenario where we—and the voters—don’t actually know whom the public favors. And from the polls we do have, we can’t construct a reliably solid average, since we can’t be sure that the limited numbers we’re seeing aren’t outliers.
Despite all this, we’ll go out on a limb and handicap the weekend’s contests below. Republicans aren’t included because Mitt Romney was a party pooper. If our Democratic predictions are wrong, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Saturday, Feb. 9
Lousiana (67 delegates, closed primary): There are only two things you need to know about the Bayou. First, Barack Obama visited the state this month—to propose a rebuild-New Orleans plan—and Hillary Clinton did not. Secondly, the state’s population is 32 percent black, according to post-Katrina census figures. Look for an Obama win.
Nebraska (31 delegates, closed caucus): It’s an Obama-friendly caucus that borders his mother’s home state of Kansas. Omaha’s paper showered him with praise Friday, running a glowing headline after his visit Thursday: “It’s Obamaha for a day.” Chelsea Clinton has been doing all of the campaigning there for Hillary, who has never made a stop in the state. Obama should win this.
Washington (97 delegates, semi-open caucus): This is the big prize of the night thanks to a relatively large delegate total and built-in road blocks for each candidate. Clinton doesn’t like caucuses, and Obama is without a large black population to drive his vote. In the only poll taken over the last three months, Obama leads Clinton with a majority of the vote. (The poll was taken before Super Tuesday.) Perhaps more importantly, he leads Clinton slightly among women. A quarter of those surveyed say they’re planning to attend the caucus. Both candidates have campaigned in the state: Clinton has made three stops, Obama one. Early poll results mixed with a caucus system point toward an Obama win, unless Hillary’s in-person charm wins the Northwest over.
Virgin Islands (3 delegates, convention): You’re probably better off flipping a coin than taking this paragraph as gospel—but we’ll try anyway. Unsurprisingly, there’s no polling data to work with, but we do know that convention systems favor party die-hards (see Huckabee’s sort-of win in West Virginia). Die-hards tend to favor establishment candidates, so we’ll predict that Clinton picks up three delegates here. You laugh at the puny total now, but wait until we’re neck-deep in obscure delegate law at the convention and these delegates end up making the difference.
Sunday, Feb. 10
Maine (34 delegates, caucus): Both candidates will be in the state Saturday, and Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy campaigned there earlier in the week. A caucus system suggests Obama might be the man of the day, but at least one Maine resident and professor doesn’t get it. The large white population coupled with Clinton’s establishment support suggests Obama’s sunk. But a caucus is a caucus, and until Clinton wins one where Latinos don’t play a disproportionate role (unlike in Nevada and New Mexico), we’ll favor Obama.
Tuesday, Feb. 12
The Potomac Primary
The District of Columbia was originally scheduled to hold its primary Jan. 8 but decided to band together with its Chesapeake siblings Maryland and Virginia to form a regional alliance. Separately, they would melt into the background; together, they could influence the contest big time.
District of Columbia (37 delegates, primary): Despite Hillary’s former occupation of a certain Pennsylvania Ave. residence for eight years, Obama holds an advantage. After Obama won more than 80 percent of the black vote on Super Tuesday, Washington’s largely black population will most likely swing his way. He also has the support of local heavies like mayor Adrian Fenty and councilman Marion Barry. Clinton hasn’t written D.C. off, and even beat Obama in a December straw poll. But it will be rough going. Also worth noting: a victory in the nation’s capital could hold some small symbolic value.
Maryland (99 delegates, closed primary): Maryland’s nickname, the Free State, is fitting, seeing as Obama will likely get it for free. The state’s population includes a mix of Obama’s white support base—wealthy suburbanites, liberals, and college students—and the largest proportion of black voters outside the South. Clinton, however, has the backing of Gov. Martin O'Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown.
Virginia (101 delegates, open primary): Of the three jurisdictions, Virginia will be the most competitive. Obama has Gov. Tim Kaine behind him, but Clinton has extensive connections to the region through spokesman Mo Elleithee and finance official Matt Felan. She’s also been sinking resources into the region, particularly in the outer suburbs of Prince William and Loudon counties. Obama is strong in Northern Virginia, with its immigrants and young professionals, but working-class sections of the southwest, where economic concerns are paramount, may swing toward Clinton.
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John McCain’s speech today at the Conservative Political Action Conference felt like déjà vu. Not because of anything McCain said in the past; he skipped last year’s conference. It echoed Rudy Giuliani’s appearance at the Family Research Council conference back in October, where, like McCain, Giuliani was wading into the piranha den.
“I truly believe that what unites us is much greater than any of the things that divide us,” Rudy said at the time, referring perhaps to his pro-choice record, his support for gay rights, and his soap opera of a personal life. Likewise, McCain emphasized what he and his conservative audience could agree on: Liberty is good, taxes are bad, and Clinton/Obama must be stopped. He still got booed on campaign finance and illegal immigration, the latter of which he had just begun to mention when the hooting started. But every time it did, his supporters cheered louder to drown out the naysayers.
Expect the next few months to sound a lot like that. Every time a Limbaugh or Coulter starts taunting McCain, moderate Republicans are more likely to cheer louder than to try to win over the dissenters. If McCain needs to present a united front in November, it will clearly be a grudging one.
But McCain knows he has a long and difficult courtship ahead of him. “Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years,” he said. “I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is.”
That’s the first step: Acknowledge that your opponents are reasonable people. Secondly, keep harping on your shared dedication to the surge and hawkishness toward Iran and North Korea. Don’t forget to emphasize your fear of a post-apocalyptic world of activist judges, high taxes, and entitlement programs. After that comes the winning over of leaders. Get a Robertson or a Brownback or a Bob Jones III to recommend you to religious voters, plus a few conservative senators who opposed McCain-Feingold. He may never be able to live down immigration reform, but confronting the reasons his plan failed and giving his opponents a fair hearing might be enough.
Rudy Giuliani was never able to wriggle out of his self-imposed security hawk bubble. McCain faces a similar problem, but he has a better nose than Rudy for diplomacy and compromise. With friction on the Democratic side still burning a hole in blue America, McCain can now get a head start on the coalition re-building. Best get going.
A note on the title: I know he's been back for a while. I just wanted an excuse to link to this.
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About five minutes before Mitt Romney strode onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., text messages started flying around the room. Romney was dropping out.
Laura Ingraham was introducing Romney, but it sure sounded like she hadn’t been fully briefed. It gave her whole surly, cocky shtick a morbid overtone, and the knowledge gap produced some cringeworthy moments. “I don’t think any of us in this room think another Ronald Reagan is going to walk through the door,” she said. Indeed not.
Romney arrived already looking deflated. The crowd cheered, but as he spoke, there was a disconnect between audience expectations and his words. He started out by describing John McCain’s lead: “Eleven states have given me their nod, compared to his 13. Of course, because size does matter, he’s doing quite a bit better with his number of delegates.”
The audience waited for a “but." But there was no but.
He didn’t exactly endorse John McCain but said he agrees with the senator on the war and national security. “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win,” he said.
It took a second to sink in. A man from the audience screamed, “Nooooo!” Boos followed. Romney’s eyes looked moist—I’m sure we’ll hear that he cried—and his voice seemed to tighten.
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose,” he said. “… If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.” Again, boos.
It’s a curious rationale for ducking out. He’s essentially saying that a tough Republican race helps the Democrats, which in turn helps the terrorists: “I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” (Does that mean a Romney win would have been a win for terrorists?) Whereas John Edwards dropped out to “let history blaze its path,” Romney is dropping out to let McCain beat Obama and catch Osama.
The fact is, Romney realized he was beaten on the board. Mathematically, he had to win nearly every other primary in order to beat McCain. And every contest lost would be another blow to his integrity and thus the likelihood of another run. Plus, by the time he was done, he would have spent so much of his own money—$18 million and counting—that he might have to change his tune on entitlement programs.
When he left the stage, the crowd filed out in a daze. Romney signs dangled at the sides of supporters, rather than being held aloft. A Ron Paul supporter gleefully pointed out how his candidate outlived Romney, only to be stared down by Romney-ites.
Someone pointed, and I looked over. There was Flip the Dolphin—the stuffed-animal man who has been following Romney everywhere—doing a jig.
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In the proud American tradition, we made an error tallying up the results of Trailhead Primary Pool. As a result we have a NEW WINNER in Robert Ziff, who edged out Mark Lyons with 62 points to Lyons' 61. Contestant Luke Goodwin also had 61 points.
A note on scoring: Because John Edwards suspended his campaign prior to Super Tuesday, we did not award any points for third-place predictions in the four Feb. 5 Democratic primaries in our pool. Thus, the original scoring for Super Tuesday is valid, and Ted Steger remains the honorable mention with 38 points on Tuesday and a respectable 55 over all. Steger had 17 points coming into the week, not the 13 we originally reported, and we thank him for catching our mistake.
Mark, our sincere apologies for falsely elevating your hopes. But please return the proverbial yoga mat.
Original post:
Trailhead reader Mark Lyons has won the Primary Pool with a final score of 59 points, a three-point lead over runner-ups Andrew Packer, Robert Ziff, and David Wohl. Lyons was a consistent presence in the top ten each week, though he only officially led the pack once prior to his victory. Congratulations, Mark!
An honorable mention is in order for Ted Steger, who notched 38 points this week with excellent Super Tuesday predictions. Unfortuantely for Ted, his last-minute blitz could not push him into the lead as he had only 13 points at the beginning of the week.
Our thanks to everyone who threw in their hat for the pool. (Meanwhile, Trailhead never wants to see an Excel sheet again.) Mark, we would love to send you one of our Slate yoga mats, but apparently there are legal problems with offering official prizes. Eternal glory will have to suffice.
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Mitt Romney is pulling out of the Republican race today, most likely after realizing he was mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination. Rather than pray for a brokered convention that turns to him as the party's savior, he's pulling out now while he still has enough dignity in the tank for a 2012 run.
Romney's withdrawal (which is technically a "suspension" of his campaign) means it's down to Mac and Mike. Yes, the two candidates least likely to win the Republican nomination five months ago are now the only two candidates (besides Ron Paul) left standing. For the full effect, we're going to write it one more time: Aw-shucks Huck has stayed in the Republican race longer than moneybags-Mitt.
For weeks, Huckabee has said it's a two-man race—between him and John McCain. Since Iowa, pundits have said that Huckabee was the one draining Romney's votes, but now the chattering class is left with a new question: Was Romney draining Huckabee's votes?
Doubtful. Huckabee won't pick up Romney's fiscal conservative vote thanks to his fair tax plan, and all of Romney's anti-radical-jihad fans are going to flock to McCain. He could scavenge Romney's social conservative bloc, but there probably aren't enough of them to put Huckabee over the top to beat McCain.
McCain will still be the nominee, but Romney's withdrawal will allow Huckabee to make some noise. In the coming weeks, Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, and Ohio all become especially friendly to Huckabee. That, of course, assumes Huckabee is going to stay in the race, even though he can't mathematically win, either. Last we heard, Huckabee said he was going to stay in until somebody had a majority of delegates. Then again, the last we heard from Romney, he said he was staying in through the convention. Consider it his final flip-flop.
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At the Los Angeles Democratic debate last week, anyone expecting to see fur fly was sorely disappointed. Clinton and Obama weren’t just civil. For a second there, they seemed to even like each other.
Well, apparently Hillary liked it so much, she wants to do it again. And again. And again. And again.
This morning, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle sent out a public letter to Obama honcho David Plouffe congratulating him on the Super Tuesday victories but voicing concern that Sen. Obama has declined to participate in a debate a week for the next several weeks. Sorry to excerpt so much here, but you need a nice chunk to appreciate Doyle’s tone:
One of the things I've always appreciated about the Democratic Party is its willingness to engage the toughest issues facing our country, even if we don't always agree on how best to solve them. …
As such, I was disappointed to see that Senator Obama rejected the idea of having more debates given the fact that he and Senators Clinton [sic] have had only a single one-on-one debate. I think we can do better and so does Hillary. …
To that end, we hope Senator Obama will join Senator Clinton for a debate a week beginning this weekend. I'm sure we can find a suitable place to meet on the campaign trail. There's too much at stake and the issues facing the country are too grave to deny voters the opportunity to see the candidates up close.
Slow clap for the Clinton campaign over here. In one swift move, they 1) challenge Obama to accept an offer that, if he accepts it, will make him look deferential, 2) bring him onto turf where Hillary is strong, i.e. the debate stage, and 3) take him off turf where he is strong, i.e. rallies. And given Hillary's apparent financial situation—donating money to herself—free media is better than paid media. You don’t see hat tricks like this every day.
Of course, to suggest that even after 22 Democratic debates this cycle—more than any other primary election ever—we haven’t seen enough of the candidates “up close” seems insane. But who knows, maybe a Lincoln-Douglas style debate-a-thon is what Democrats need to make up their minds.
Read the full letter here.
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It’s been more than 24 hours since the Super Tuesday polls closed, but analysts are still sifting through the reams of data to come out of the 22 Democratic and 21 Republican primaries and caucuses. Here’s a quick rundown of the Feb. 5 numbers that matter, drawn from various news sources as well as our own calculators.
- Turnout
27 percent of eligible citizens voted.
Dems: At least 15,417,521
GOP: At least 9,181,297
Source: Time
- Delegate Count
After tearing our hair out over how media outlets can’t agree on the post-Super Tuesday delegate count, we’ll go with the Associated Press delegate tracker. It's super-detailed, updated frequently, and seems to get the most deference from news organizations. Here’s its most recent estimate:
Dems
Clinton: 832
Obama: 821
Delegates needed for the nomination: 2,025
GOP
McCain: 698
Romney: 278
Huckabee: 192
Delegates needed for the nomination: 1,191
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign predicts he will end up with 847 delegates to Clinton’s 834. Clinton’s team has not released a specific prediction.
- Superdelegate Count
Total superdelegates: 796
Supporting Clinton: 213
Supporting Obama: 139
Source: AP
Dems
Clinton: Ariz., Ark., Calif., Mass., N.J., N.M., N.Y., Okla., Tenn. (9 states)
Obama: Ala., Alaska, Colo., Conn., Del., Ga., Idaho, Ill., Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Utah (13 states)
GOP
McCain: Ariz., Calif., Conn., Del., Ill., Mo., N.J., N.Y., Okla. (9 states)
Romney: Alaska, Colo., Mass., Minn., Mont., N.D., Utah (7 states)
Huckabee: Ala., Ark., Ga., Tenn., W.Va. (5 states)
Source: CNN
Clinton: 1 (American Samoa)
Obama: 7 (Alaska, Colo., Idaho, Kan., Minn., Mont., N.D.)
Huckabee: 0
McCain: 0
Romney: 5 (Alaska, Col., Minn., Mont., N.D.)
Dems
Clinton 48.97 percent (6,967,302)
Obama 48.04 percent (6,835,447)
Difference in terms of actual votes: 131,855
Source: NBC
GOP
McCain: 43.2 percent (3,657,444)
Romney: 35.5 percent (3,001,607)
Huckabee: 21.4 percent (1,809,404)
Source: Calculated using data from NBC
In the 19 states holding both Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses, more than 14 million people voted for Obama or Clinton. More than 8 million people voted for McCain or Romney or Huckabee. Thus, you could say about 73 percent more Democrats turned out than Republicans.
Source: Time
In Missouri, Democratic turnout beat GOP turnout by 70 percent. In 2000, when the state also held two primaries, the opposite was true: Republican turnout trumped the Dems’ by 56 percent.
Source: HuffPo
Obama won 82 percent of the black vote; Clinton won 53 percent of whites and 64 percent of Hispanic voters. Clinton and Obama split white men, while Clinton won white women overwhelmingly.
McCain won the majority of self-identified Republican moderates; Romney won 38 percent of self-identified Republican conservatives. Huckabee won 38 percent of evangelical Christians; McCain came in second among these voters, with 30 percent to Romney’s 27 percent.
Among Republicans who rated the economy as their top concern, McCain won with 42 percent. Clinton beat Obama among voters who said the economy is in poor condition, while Obama won among those who rated the economy good or excellent.
Obama won the youth vote nationwide, with 59 percent of voters under 30, compared with Clinton’s 38 percent. But Clinton won that demographic in California and Massachusetts.
Source: AP
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Last night Barack Obama won in a bunch of places Democrats don't have a history of winning in the general election. Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Colorado, Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota all favored Bush over Kerry in 2004 and Obama over Clinton last night. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, won the red states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Of these states, only Missouri and New Mexico were swing states that went for Bush in 2004. Obama took Missouri, and Clinton took New Mexico—both very, very close races.
Democrats are going to start placing an increasing amount of attention on which Democratic candidate is the stronger general election contender. If the candidate won the primary in a swing state, the thinking goes, then he or she will be better able to rally the troops in the general election. A look at the 2008 Democratic primary results from the 2004 swing states shows an even split. Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri have gone for Barack, New Hampshire, Nevada, and New Mexico for Clinton.
The real battleground is among independents in open primary or open caucus states. If a candidate does well in open primaries, then it's reasonable to think he or she will retain independent votes in the general election. Looking at open contests over the entire primary season shows Obama has slightly more success. Sixty-seven percent of Obama's wins have come in open-contest states (10 of 15 total); 61.5 percent of his Super Tuesday wins were in open caucuses or primaries. Fifty-five percent of Clinton's wins overall and on Super Tuesday came in open contests. That margin is still slim, but it appears to fall in line with the perception that Obama courts more independents than Clinton.
With Alex Joseph
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We all woke up this morning with a delegate hangover—and it’s not going away anytime soon. The Feb. 5 delegate count is a mess, superdelegate questions abound, and whispers of a brokered convention persist. But there may be a cure-all on the horizon: Michigan and Florida.
The two states were punished because they moved their primaries too early in the calendar. Now, Hillary Clinton wants Michigan's and Florida’s delegates to count because she won the states. The conventional wisdom says Clinton is playing dirty and only wants to seat the delegates because it would help her win the nomination. That’s true only if we end up with a brokered convention.
According to my calculations, Clinton would earn about 220 delegates if the two states were seated. Obama would earn about 130—if he picked up all of the uncommitted slate in Michigan. That’s a plus-90 margin for Clinton, which appears to be a relative behemoth in a race that is separated by as few as a dozen delegates. But in a nonbrokered convention, those delegates are never going to get seated unless they’re totally inconsequential.
Since the DNC stripped the states of their delegates, the only ruling body that can reinstate them is the strangely named “credential committee.” The committee mimics the pledged delegate percentages, so whoever has more delegates controls the committee.
This is where things get screwy. Assuming we’re not in a brokered convention, the person who has more delegates will be the nominee. So, if it’s Barack Obama, and he has more than a 90-delegate lead, he’ll seat the states out of good will. If his lead is less than 90 delegates, then he’ll stop them from being seated. Clinton will cry foul, but rules are rules. Obama will still win because he had control of the committee. If Clinton is ahead in delegates, she’ll have control of the committee and seat the delegates. But by then she won’t need their final push—she’ll do it out of the kindness of her heart.
Now, all of this goes to hell if there’s a brokered convention. Then whoever had the lead in delegates wouldn’t have the majority needed to ensure a nomination, but they would have control of the credential committee. In that case, Obama wouldn’t seat the delegations and Clinton would. This becomes especially dramatic if the totals are so close to a majority that the extra 220 delegates would push Clinton above the threshold needed for the nomination.
Yes, we realize we’re dealing in the hypothetical here. So, for good measure, here’s one last scenario: Michigan and Florida could vote again. Since the beginning of this fiasco, the DNC has implored both states to hold a second contest within the sanctioned primary and caucus window (early February through June). That would mean the first results wouldn’t count toward delegate allocations, which won’t make Clinton happy. Furthermore, rumor has it that the contests would be caucuses—not primaries. That’s even worse news for Clinton—Obama won every caucus state on Feb. 5.
So, to review, our options are:
1. Nonbrokered convention -- Michigan and Florida don't matter. Maybe seated, maybe not.
2. Brokered convention -- Michigan and Florida might matter, if Clinton is close to the majority threshold needed for the nomination. Maybe seated, maybe not, depending on who controls the committtee.
3. New contests -- Michigan and Florida might matter, definitely seated.
How's that hangover feeling?
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Slate intern Jonathan Rubin filed this dispatch after watching Obama's speech last night.
Last night at a rally in Chicago, Barack Obama coined a new catch phrase. While talking about time spent as a young community organizer, he said he was surrounded by “doubt” and “cynicism.” He then offered his usual hope shtick: The task of repairing America seemed insurmountable, he said, but ordinary people are still not only capable of affecting change, they are essential to it. And they always have been. Finally, he brought the rhetoric to a climax. “We are the ones we've been waiting for,” he said, and the crowd, which had been applauding throughout the night, roared back. Great line, but was it his?
No, and it wasn’t even the first time his campaign used it. California first lady Maria Shriver used the line while endorsing him in Los Angeles Sunday. At the rally, she gave credit to the real authors—the Hopi Indians, a dwindling Native American tribe now living entirely in Arizona reservations.
Shriver wasn’t the first to adapt the message to politics, either. The liberal left has used it on anti-government rants on YouTube, as have Green Party members. The phrase has percolated in the black community, as well. Alice Walker used it as the title of her 2006 book—We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. African-American AIDS organizations have used it, and it was the title of a 2006 hip-hop album.
But it’s most fitting for Obama. He appeals to many of America’s skeptics—he’s young, he’s bold, he’s black, and he seems different. Obama might be trying to take advantage of Americans’ frustration with their government. Obama’s campaign has always been centered around the hope that Americans are tired of waiting for others to save them. His quote makes the American people their own redeemers—putting the onus on them to change the country. He is just a leader, he implies, while they are the troops on the ground. It’s a nice sentiment, even if it also sounds a little like Gandhi’s famous line, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Maybe the next slogan after this won’t come from Hopis or hippies, but somewhere else entirely—like Facebook, perhaps. There, on Obama’s page, a fan wrote this gem:
"Tell yo mama to vote fo obama!"
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Today’s developing story—well, by now pretty well-developed—is the revelation that Hillary Clinton loaned $5 million of her own money to her campaign.
Time’s Mark Halperin first brought up the loan at a conference call this morning. Howard Wolfson said he didn’t know and would check on that, then released a statement saying the loan “illustrates Sen. Clinton’s commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation.”
At a press conference here in Arlington, Va., Hillary smilingly confirmed the amount of the loan. “I think the results last night prove the wisdom of my investment,” she said. But she wouldn’t say much more. Where did she get the money? “It was my money.” Would she loan herself any more? She referred reporters to her official statement.
The loan suggests the Clinton campaign might have been spooked by Obama’s $32 million January haul. She wouldn’t say how much her campaign had raised last month—“You can wait to see the report”—but campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told Tim Russert on Monday that the total was “about $13 million.” Whether that includes Clinton’s own $5 million or not, who knows.
Donating money to yourself looks bad not just for financial reasons. It also flies in the face of Democratic ideals about campaign finance. Ben Smith points to something Bill Clinton said back in Iowa, that if he loaned money to his wife’s campaign that would “violate the spirit of campaign finance reform.” If any Democrat ended up facing Mitt Romney in the general election, that candidate would no doubt invoke his massive self-gifting as a vice. But now, if Hillary ends up facing a publicly financed John McCain in the general, he would be the one holding that weapon. She seems determined to play it as a necessary move to match Obama’s fund-raising machine. But she might have a tough time making Democrats—not to mention her own donors—see it that way.
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In case you haven’t seen it, the Super Tuesday popular vote tally on the Democratic side is insanely close—like, within 100,000 votes or so.
NBC puts it at:
Clinton 48.97 percent (6,967,302)
Obama 48.04 percent (6,835,447)
Time says:
Clinton: 50.2 percent (7,347,971)
Obama: 49.8 percent (7,294,851)
Whatever the count, it looks like Hillary won. (Will she accept front-runner status now?) But the tightness of the count bolsters extended-calendar theories, which suggest we could be waiting until Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary for answers. But I also think it boosts the this-could-hurt theory. In previous years, even the most virulent supporters of the loser (think Howard Dean) have had little trouble rallying behind the winner (Kerry). But Dean’s “support” proved empty when he couldn’t sustain it even through Iowa. Both Clinton and Obama, by contrast, have fought and won numerous battles by now. Their supporters have tasted victory, and probably like the flavor.
Sure, most Democratic voters tell pollsters they would be happy if the other candidate won. But the longer this drags on, the more polarized it gets. When it all shakes out, it looks like as many as 50 percent of Democrats will be disappointed.
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Here’s the best part about the battle for front-runnership. Both candidates claim to have the delegate lead. (Obama says he’s ahead if you count only pledged delegates; Hillary says she’s winning if you include superdelegates.) But neither of them is willing to take credit for being the front-runner!
NBC’s First Read points out that in conference calls this morning, both candidates vied for underdog status.
Clinton strategist Mark Penn repeated several times that the Obama campaign is now the “establishment” campaign—citing superior January fundraising, high-profile endorsements, and even Sunday’s Super Bowl ad.
Fast forward to less than an hour later: In a press conference in Chicago, Obama maintained that he is still the underdog. “Senator Clinton is a formidable opponent,” he said, calling her organization a “political machine honed over two decades.”
“From my perspective, this makes her the frontrunner,” he added.
So, each candidate claims to be winning the delegate race—but not the actual race. It’s like two people standing in front of a door, each one saying, “No, you go first,” just so they can trip the other when she moves first.
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As if counting delegates weren’t confusing enough, news organizations are calculating their own totals. And they’re all different! Some, like the Associated Press and CNN, include projected delegates in caucuses like Iowa and Nevada, as well as superdelegates. The New York Times numbers don’t include projected delegates. NBC’s most recent estimate doesn’t say what their methodology is. And, of course, counts will differ based on which states have reported (and how thoroughly) and how conservative news organizations are willing to be in their estimates.
Given all that, here are the projections on the Democratic side:
NBC
Clinton: 582
Obama: 485
AP
Clinton: 845
Obama: 765
CNN (Updated 12:54 a.m.)
Clinton: 823
Obama: 741
CBS (Updated 12:54 a.m.)
Clinton: 1058
Obama: 984
New York Times (Updated 12:54 a.m.)
Clinton: 892
Obama: 716
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Count us among those who think Barack Obama's comeback win in Missouri was a moral victory, at best. The difference between losing by 1 percent and winning by 1 percent is negligible, but Obama still gets to brag about winning a key swing state, no matter how close the vote was. So, given that the AP called Missouri for Clinton earlier in the night, what the hell happened?
Nearly the same thing that happened in 2006. Claire McCaskill, Missouri's junior senator and an outspoken Obama advocate, was badly trailing her Republican opponent as election night wound on in the midterm elections. After making gains across the country, it looked like the Democrats were going to fall one senator short of gaining a majority. But then the returns started gushing in from the metro areas and McCaskill mounted a comeback, eventually beating GOP incumbent Jim Talent by a couple percentage points.
Flashforward to tonight, where the AP calls the race for Clinton, then uncalls it, then recalls it—this time for Obama. Thanks to our friends over at the Electoral Map blog, it's pretty easy to see where Obama's support comes from—metro areas. Obama sometimes doubled Clinton's support in densely populated areas, which ensured him the narrow win.
A similar process occurred for the Republicans, whose delegate assignment process was winner-take-all. Mike Huckabee led for most of the night thanks to rural support and then withered under John McCain's metro returns. When it's not 2 a.m., we'll try to call Missouri to see why the metro polls always seem to come in so late. Hillary, meanwhile, can request a recount in the state, but why would she? It's not like that one percentage point matters. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand ...
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California results are still trickling in, but the networks have called it for Hillary. With 22 percent of precincts reporting, she’s got a 20-point lead of 54 to Obama’s 34. (See up-to-date results here.) Her actual delegate lead probably won't be huge, but she can now claim victory in the biggest, if not the most important, state. How did it happen?
Most polls from the past few days showed Obama gaining on her, and one or two even projected he would win. But judging from the voting results, he was too late. The state of California allows voters—not just seniors and absentees, but anyone—to cast an absentee ballot by mail. As a result, more than 3 million Californians voted early this year (one elections official put the number at 4.1 million). And judging from polls in previous weeks, they voted largely for Clinton. If Obama was actually gaining in recent days, the vote totals may not reflect it.
Apparently the “semi-open” election didn’t help Obama much either. “Open” elections normally let independents and Republicans vote in Democratic primaries. California is slightly different: Independents can ask for “decline-to-state” ballots that allow them to vote Democratic, but they have to make a special request. There have been some reports of complications, but nothing widespread.
Exit polls tell a fairly predicable story. (Disclaimer: They’re misleading/wrong/unscientific/godless blah-blah-blah.) They show Clinton winning among white women and Latinos, whereas Obama wins among white men and blacks. Clinton wins among every age group, even the young’uns. (Explanation: America Ferrera.) She also won among voters who attend church by double digits. No matter what the spin, Clinton beat Obama fair and square.
And she sure plans to make the most of it. In their last e-mail blitz of the day, the Clinton team called her win a “Golden Finish” and argued that “Senator Obama made an unprecedented effort to win CA—he campaigned throughout the state and his campaign ended its efforts in the Golden State with a large rally over the weekend.” We’re not going to begrudge her the win, but for the record, this is a stretch. In the past week, Barack Obama appeared at a total of two events in California, including the Los Angeles debate; Clinton attended five. Likewise, he has made five stops in the state since Jan. 1, whereas she has made 11. If Obama’s effort in the Golden State may be “unprecedented,” that’s only because he has never run for president before.
We’ll have more details on the California results once all the precincts have reported. In the meantime, check out the California SecState’s home page for absurdly granular county-by-county and district-by-district results. You can also cross-check that with our analysis of each district’s delegate numbers. Or just wait for us to do it tomorrow.
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Mitt Romney's time has come. But will he admit it?
Romney has won six primaries and caucuses tonight. None of them matters. The two primaries—Utah and Massachusetts—took place in his home state. Four caucuses—North Dakota, Colorado, Montana, and Minnesota—have turned Romney Red. Not exactly an all-star list of high-impact states. The Washington Post is projecting he'll take home 67 delegates.
Even worse: Mike Huckabee is pouring metaphor-laced salt in his wounds. The South badly wanted to elect somebody other than McCain, and it seems nearly every state (with the possible exception of Missouri) chose Huckabee over Romney. Republican voters, faced with a choice between a say-anything robo-pol and a genuine, slightly nutty Southern boy, chose the guy without any money. Romney was so noxious that Republicans actually chose the less viable candidate—not what Republicans are supposed to do.
So, what now? Romney's last hope was to remain relevant in California, but that worked about as well as his two-dozen different campaign messages. The next few contests—Kansas, Louisiana, Washington, Virginia, and Maryland—don't really favor him, but that's because the country doesn't favor him. The only region where Romney did especially well was in the mountain West, where Mormons live and news stories go to die. His political life has run its course. It's time to end it.
We may not see a withdrawal tomorrow, but we should--if only for Romney to save face and his bank account. Between him and Giuliani, the fall's front-runners have both faltered miserably. Instead we're left with two candidates, both of whom had no money, no momentum, and no chance in hell in December. It looks like Romney really is a turnaround specialist. Except this time, he turned himself around.
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Both Clinton and Obama agree that this is a race about delegates. They just can’t agree on how to count.
The two camps spent the last few days bickering over how many delegates each one had—Hillary’s camp insisted on including superdelegates, while Obama has always stuck with pledged delegates. Their philosophies then colored their post-Super Tuesday predictions. And now that the results are coming in, the fight is escalating.
How many delegates will Clinton win tonight? She would “reject the premise of the question,” in flak-speak. Her team doesn’t deal in pledged delegates. Rather, they insist on including superdelegates in the count. The reason is obvious: Recent superdelegate estimates show Clinton leading Obama by at least 100. She’ll emerge from Super Tuesday with a lead in overall delegates no matter what, making that vague prediction fairly useless.
Obama’s people are more specific: On a conference call tonight, Obama strategist David Plouffe projected that Obama was ahead in terms of delegates, 606-534. (There are a total of 1,681 delegates at stake tonight; a candidate needs 2,025 to secure the nomination.) Press Secretary Bill Burton just sent out this email: “With California not yet counted, we currently lead Clinton by 43 pledged delegates -- Obama: 677 – Clinton: 634.” Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? (Of course, it’s easy to be specific when you’re winning.)
The problem with including superdelegates is that they can change their mind whenever they want. Unless the race goes all the way to the DNC—the “brokered convention” scenario Hillary’s camp occasionally floats—the the 800 or so superdelegates will back whoever wins the actual election. If the race is close, however—and especially if the dispute over Florida and Michigan's delegates continues—then the superdelegates could influence who wins the nomination. The division of pledged delegates and superdelegates reflects a tension within the party over how much power to put in the hands of voters vs. how much to vest in party leaders. Historically that balance of power has been adjusted whenever it’s perceived to shift too far in one direction (think 1968) or another (think 1972). If the race comes down to superdelegates this year, the battle could well produce another overhaul of the system.
Clinton is right to play by the rules they’ve been given. If superdelegates matter, and you’re winning by that count, then why not emphasize them? And of course it’s the press team’s job to paint things in the best light. But if we want an honest reflection on the election at hand—and not the potential deal-making power struggle we will hopefully avoid—then we should be looking at pledged delegates. You know, the election part of the election.
UPDATE Feb. 6 1:21 p.m.: Even news organizations can't agree on the delegate count. Check out this item for all the different, contradictory totals.
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A quick assessment of pre-election polling versus election results over at RealClearPolitics shows a typical sampling of accuracy and error in RCP's average of major polls. (See chart at end of post.) But social psychologist Jon Krosnick, a professor at Stanford and an expert on polling methodology, points out that, whether the various polls are dead-on or egregiously off-base at the end of the night, we still will not learn anything about how to do it better next time.
The problem, Krosnick said when I caught up with him this evening, is that pollsters refuse to release their methodology after the fact. There are enough variables in the process -- most importantly, how the pollsters defines the slippery concept of a "likely voter" -- that it is very difficult to independently assess which are more robust.
"What it comes down to is that the people who are
making money by doing polling don’t want to reveal anything that can be used against
them," Krosnick says. "But if
they’re reluctant now, why shouldn’t they release the [complete] polls they did five years
ago?"
Simply releasing the complete data sets, not just the conclusions, he says, would allow him and his colleagues to reconstruct the methodology and compare it to actual voters in previous elections, enabling them to determine which estimates of likely voters were most accurate. As it stands, he says, "there’s really no potential for us to have a
solid scientific basis to determine this."
State
|
% Reporting
|
Margin
|
RCN Poll Avg.
|
Georgia
|
85%
|
Obama + 29
|
Obama + 18
|
New Jersey
|
84%
|
Clinton + 8
|
Clinton + 8
|
Missouri
|
89%
|
Clinton + 3
|
Clinton + 6
|
Tennessee
|
91%
|
Clinton + 18
|
Clinton + 13
|
Alabama
|
97%
|
Obama + 14
|
Clinton + 13
|
|
|
|
State
|
% Reporting
|
Margin
|
RCN Poll Avg.
|
Georgia
|
84%
|
Huckabee + 4
|
McCain + 3
|
New Jersey
|
84%
|
McCain + 28
|
McCain + 26
|
Missouri
|
89%
|
Huckabee + 1
|
McCain + 6
|
Tennessee
|
91%
|
Huckabee + 2
|
McCain + 3
|
Alabama
|
97%
|
Huckabee + 3
|
McCain + 4
|
|
|
|
|
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There’s a reason both the Clinton and Obama campaigns held conference calls at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. It’s the same reason Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney gave their speeches around then, rather than waiting to see the rest of the results: Newspaper deadlines.
If you live somewhere that gets the early editions of the national papers—and somewhere that doesn’t have an Internet connections, in which case you aren’t reading this—the narrative you’ll read about in the morning probably won’t include details on California, Missouri, or the Southwestern states. Rather, it will say that John McCain is the big GOP winner, Romney’s still alive (if barely), Huckabee put up a strong showing, and Obama and Hillary will keep duking it out.
In all likelihood, this narrative may hold till morning. But we still haven't heard from Obama and McCain, which means some papers might miss major details. Tonight really includes two news cycles: The newspaper cycle, and the rest of us.
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Phew—at least Barack Obama won one state in the northeast. After losses in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, Obama knocked out a win in Connecticut. And while it was by only the slimmest of margins (looks like three percentage points as of now), it stops the bleeding up north.
On a local level, his win doesn't mean much. The Nutmeg State awards nearly all of its delegates proportionately, so there isn't much difference between Obama winning by three percentage points and Clinton winning by three percentage points. This becomes especially muddled once they start apportioning delegates by district, where Obama could end up losing if he didn't spread his success throughout all districts.
But on a macro level, Obama's campaign can harp on his Connecticut successes. The probably flawed exit polls hint at some good data for Obama: He won every age group except senior citizens. He performed admirably among women, pulling in 45 percent of the vote. Clinton won 38 percent of the male vote. The African-American population didn't factor heavily into the state's turnout, so Obama held his own without his base. Plus, it was a closed primary state, which means independent votes weren't a factor.
At this point, though, it's all about bragging rights. A win isn't necessarily a win. An edge in a state's delegates, though, is.
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Hillary Clinton's shout-out to American Samoa after her defeat to Barack Obama in the South Carolina primary looks like it was worth it. As the Politico reports, the U.S. territory's caucuses broke in Clinton's favor, 163-121 (that's total people, not delegates), giving her a net gain of one delegate over opponent Barack Obama. Last week, Slate's Jon Rubin investigated the territory's voting rights.
Clinton is a candidate who knows how to say thank you. In her speech that just ended, she quickly mentioned the territory in conjunction with the continental states she picked up tonight.
Financial disclosure: Shortly before the speech, I challenged fellow Trailhead blogger Chadwick Matlin to a $1 bet over whether Clinton would mention the territory. I intend to hold him to this wager.
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Mike Huckabee, responding to a question about why he's still in the race if he won't win the nomination:
"I'm not sure I would say it's so unlikely that we'll get the nomination. No one's got 1,191 delegates yet, and until they do, we're still in it. Nobody thought the New York Giants were gonna be the Super Bowl champions, and everybody had those hats painted up [sic] with the Patriots. Guess what, those are a real bargain today. You can get a lot of Super Bowl hats with the Patriots insignia on it, for a deal. So don't be too quick to say it's over."
So after Huckabee loses, is he going to send
his campaign T-shirts to children in Africa?
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From David Plotz, a longtime friend of the blog and Slate's Bible guru.
Mike Huckabee managed to jam not one but two Bible references into the first four sentences of his victory speech tonight. First the former Baptist pastor mentioned the power of the “smooth stone,” a reference to the David and Goliath story. (David gathered five smooth stones for his slingshot.) A second later, he mentioned “the widow’s mite,” a famous parable of Jesus'. President Bush is famous for sneaking Biblical language into his speeches, subtly dropping references that believers will get and unbelievers won’t notice. We can look forward to more of the same in the Huckabee administration.
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Exit polling conducted in Massachusetts and Missouri appears to have drastically overestimated Barack Obama’s performance, placing him within several percentage points of Hillary Clinton. With more than 50 percent of precincts reporting in Massachusetts and 32 percent in Missouri, Obama trails Clinton by more than 15 points in both states.
CNN.com makes it a little difficult to deduce this about the exit polls on first glance, because they do not carry out the basic multiplication to determine the final results. (One can’t help but suspect they’re a little embarrassed.) But they do break out how many women turned out versus men, and how the genders split between the candidates.
For the Massachusetts exit poll, a little third-grade math tells us that:
Clinton: (58% of voters were female) * 57% of women voted for Clinton + (42% of voters were male) * 42% of men voted for Clinton = 51 percent of the vote
Obama: (58% female) * 40% of women for Obama + (42% male) * 54% of men for Obama = 48 percent of the vote
Back here in reality, Clinton leads Obama in Massachusetts by 15 points with 59 percent of the electorate reporting.
In Missouri, the same exit poll calculus gives us Clinton with 47 percent to Obama’s 45 percent. With close to half of precincts reporting, Clinton leads Obama by 14 points.
With that kind of batting average, perhaps we should avoid any sweeping conclusions from all the other numbers in the exit polls. Or, better yet, ignore them altogether.
Note: These exit poll numbers are changing constantly, so the links won't reflect the exact figures in this post. We'll keep an eye on them.
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As you’ll no doubt be reading in, oh, five seconds, the day belongs to John McCain. But Mike Huckabee has now won West Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama—a clean sweep of the Southern states. We knew he was strong in these primaries, but damn.
That’s a total of at least 94 winner-take-all delegates plus a piece of the states’ proportionally allocated delegates. Overall, he should take away more than 120 delegates. Not bad for a guy who hasn’t added a notch to his belt since Iowa.
If this shows anything, it’s that McCain needs Huckabee. Not just in the immediate sense, although indeed it’s hard to see him winning these states in a face-off against Romney. But in the general election, too: McCain would have a hard time finding a VP with more Southern appeal than Huck. And after tonight, McCain owes him.
“They say this is a two-man race," Huckabee said in his partial victory speech. "And guess what: It is! And we’re in it!” He could be right, but not the way he means it.
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It seems John Edwards supporters in Oklahoma and Tennessee don't watch the news. Edwards, who dropped out of the race suspended his candidacy last week, is still pulling in double-digit support in Oklahoma and a relatively strong number in Tennesee. Despite getting out of the way, John Edwards is still getting in the way.
His muted presence doesn't make him a kingmaker—Clinton would have won regardless. But thus far, with 71 percent of precincts reporting in Oklahoma, Edwards is pulling in 11 percent of the vote. With 42 percent reporting in Tennessee, he has 7 percent of the vote. We've always heard Edwards fans are rabid supporters, but this seems a bit much for a Han Solo-like figure whose candidacy is suspended in carbonite. If they're trying to will him back into the race, this is a nice gesture but probably nothing more.
Perhaps we should have seen this support coming. Edwards essentially tied Wesley Clark in Oklahoma in 2004 and finished second to John Kerry in Tennessee last time around. It appears Edwards had a four-year echo working for him.
Edwards fans will suggest that this means their man should have never dropped out. Perhaps. Before Edwards dropped out of the race he was polling in the teens and low twenties in the two states, so he may have been able to make some movement if he ran a regional primary similar to Huckabee's successful effort in the South. But two wins don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. The media still would have said Edwards had been embarrassed on Super Tuesday. Now we know his Oklahoma and Tennessee supporters probably wouldn't have been watching.
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Obama has two chances to blow the world’s mind tonight. One of them just passed him by.
Hillary took her home state of New York, as expected. (As a colleague put it, “How many home states does she have?”) Obama’s camp was hoping he might surprise people. But Clinton’s margin of victory—57 percent to 29 percent—is decisive enough that the Obama camp has no better-than-expected narrative to turn to.
His second chance will come in California, where polls are still open. But things are not looking good. Clinton has already claimed victory in Massachusetts, where she’s leading 58 percent to 39 percent, despite Obama’s vaunted Kennedy endorsement. (She's calling it the "upset of the night.") She appears to be overwhelming him in delegate-rich New Jersey, too. These have no bearing on California's numbers, except that in big liberal states, Obama isn't outperforming expectations.
Keep in mind that all of this is proportional—the winner gets only a few dozen more delegates than the loser in any given state. But if she keeps racking up 30-point leads, those delegates will add up fast.
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The Clinton campaign is shameless in its gloating. Staffers just sent out another "surrogate talking points" memo that presumes Clinton has won Massachusetts, even though no major news outlet has called the race for her—calling it "one of the biggest surprises of the night." They did the same thing with Tennesee, earlier.
While we'd be happy to take the Clinton camp down for their smugness, it's justified. With 12 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton has a wider lead over Obama than Romney has over McCain in the state. (Exit polls suggested a close Democratic race, so the networks haven't projected.) Clinton tops Obama by nearly 20 points in a state where both senators and the governor endorsed Obama.
Considering we saw that the Kennedy endorsement gave Obama some bounce in Georgia, it would seem especially confusing that the same didn't apply in Massachusetts. That means Massachusetts residents gave Obama a second look and still didn't like what they saw. Plus, nobody can say race or age is a factor—the state's governor is a popular young black man.
This, needless to say, is pretty awful news for Obama. Coupled with surprisingly deep deficits in Missouri and New Jersey, it's shaping up to be a bad start of the evening for Barack. Now his hope turns toward the caucus states, where he's expected to dominate Clinton.
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Back-to-back press releases from Mike Huckabee:
Mike Huckabee Wins First Super Tuesday Contest
Former Arkansas Governor Wins All of West Virginia's 18 At-Large Delegates
Then this:
Mike Huckabee Offers His Condolences After Deadly Tornadoes Rip Through Arkansas
Little Rock, AR - Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee has issued the following comment in response to the tragic deaths as a result of severe weather in Arkansas:
"The news of these deadly tornadoes bring back many memories of dealing with numerous tornadoes during my tenure as Governor, and Janet and I know all too well the horrors faced by those in a tornado's path. While we hope tonight is a time for us to celebrate election results, we are reminded that nothing is as important as the lives of these fellow Arkansans, and our hearts go out to their families."
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It was, all in all, a bad day for the apocalypse to strike the lower Midwest. Observe this map from the National Weather Service, compared with a map of the states with primaries and caucuses today, courtesy of our colleagues at the Washington Post.
If you’re having trouble making out the legend, here’s a hint: All those bright colors are highly unpleasant natural phenomena. A tornado watch has engulfed Arkansas and clipped through western Tennessee, the southeast of Missouri, and bits of Illinois. The latter two states are also facing a flash flood warning and your scattered heavy snow. Kansas is under a winter storm warning, while New York and New England merely face a blizzard.
Conventional wisdom holds that, on the Democratic side, bad weather is bad news for Obama, who needs a high turnout. Meanwhile, Trailhead estimates that tornados have accumulated about 50 delegates compared with 65 for floods and well over 100 for snow, and counting.
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CNN just called a slew of states for McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Here's why none of them are suprising:
Connecticut, New Jersey for McCain: McCain had Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani backing him.
Oklahoma for Clinton: Borders Arkansas. There's that whole Arkansas first lady thing in Clinton's past.
Massachusetts for Romney, Illinois for Obama: Home turf for both. The only mild drama was whether McCain's last-second push for Massachusetts would make any noise. It may have, but obviously not enough to stop CNN from insta-projecting Romney the winner. The untold storyline: Some of Massachusetts' delegates are assigned proportionately, so McCain's efforts could have made an imprint on the delegate picture when all is said and done. But we'll have to wait a while to find out.
Illinois for McCain: This is the only one that's somewhat exciting. Illinois is delegate-rich (70) and a nice bellwether for the Midwest. But polls had him way up leading into tonight and the McCain win is more proof of his front-runner status than anything else.
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CNN hasn’t called the Republican race in Georgia yet—with less than 1 percent of precincts reporting, it’s tight between McCain, Romney, and Huckabee (just as predicted). But they can’t stop us from looking at their notoriously iffy exit polls! Hey, with 922 respondents, it’s about as reliable as a regular poll.
Nothing massively surprising here: The most churchgoing voters swung toward Huckabee. (Romney, interestingly, won more of the secular vote—those who said they “never” go to church—than anyone else.) Meanwhile, the voters who thought Giuliani’s endorsement was important went for McCain.
As for age, Huckabee appears to have won the youth vote pretty decisively, taking 41 percent of voters 18-29 and 37 percent among ages 30-44. Older voters are split between McCain and Romney.
What does this say about the rest of the race? Hard to say given that we still don’t know who won. But it confirms that Huckabee is sucking religious voters away from Romney in a big way. If this is any indicator of what other Southern states like Tennessee and Alabama will look like, Romney has reason for concern.
(Watch him win it now.)
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Let the extrapolations begin. Barack Obama absolutely destroyed Hillary Clinton in Georgia, according to CNN’s exit polls. We offer our usual disclaimer about exit polls—that they aren’t actual votes—but these numbers are pretty juicy. Note: The numbers on CNN's Web site are changing as they adjust their turnout models.
First of all, slightly more than half of voters were African-American, with 42 percent of voters saying they were white. The number that should set Obama hearts aflutter: Thirty-nine percent of White voters favored Obama (compared to Clinton’s 57 percent support). That’s a huge boost from his mid-20s support among whites in South Carolina. Moreover, he won nearly 36 percent of white women—unheard of two weeks ago.
His black support was as high as it was in the Palmetto state, which should come as no surprise. Most intriguingly, half of voters said the Kennedy endorsement was important to them (those voters favored Obama over Clinton 4-to-1.)
This could mean a hell of a lot or nothing at all. Georgia is a perfect storm for Obama—high African-American population, an open primary (independents can vote), and regional momentum from his South Carolina win. But his numbers among white voters are promising—so promising that he won't need such a major win among Latinos out West (if the white support holds nationwide). Plus, if the endorsement from Massachusetts-legend Kennedy is playing well down South, then it’s reasonable to think it will play well out West, as well.
It does seem safe to say that this wraps up Alabama for Obama, where polls close at 8 p.m. This could also be good news in Tennessee, where he was trailing badly in the polls. But, outside of that, we still don't know what to expect. This, after all, is just a drop in the electoral pond.
UPDATE, 7:35 p.m.: The Clinton machine responds immediately by releasing its surrogate talking points to the press. Let the spintasms continue! We direct quote below because its just that juicy.
Unlike the Obama campaign, the Clinton campaign never dedicated significant resources to Georgia.
Sen. Obama spent over $500,000 dollars on ads on television and radio; we never went up on TV
The Obama campaign has 9 offices in Georgia. The Clinton campaign only has 2.
Sen. Obama has had staff and significant campaign operation across the state for 8 months. Sen. Clinton only deployed staff to the state in the last couple of weeks.
Polls have consistently showed Sen. Obama with wide lead over Sen Clinton. That lead has only widened over time.
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Rule of thumb for the next hour: Pay no attention to the
bearded man on CNN.
Mike Huckabee won West Virginia
and made a respectable showing in Georgia, where Barack Obama appears
to thoroughly trounced Hillary Clinton. The next round of states don’t close
for an hour, leaving Wolf Blitzer and the rest of the Best Political Team on Television to
follow the golden rule of this election season: Whoever won most recently is
the frontrunner.
Remember when Hillary Clinton’s campaign was on “life support” after losing Iowa and facing moderately bad poll numbers in New Hampshire?
“It's a win,” Blitzer just declared on Obama’s behalf. Only 58 minutes to go.
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Were you unable to get into your polling station? Did some party grunt dump your ballot in the trash? Did your absentee ballot (like mine) never arrive?
Report it! But first you have to decide who you're going to report it to. Both Obama and Clinton have voter protection sites. Who do think will fight harder for your vote?
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Fifteen minutes to go before returns start coming in, and CNN decides to tell us about ... tornadoes in Clinton, Ark. Never has weather and politics been such a natural match.
But more important, what kind of omen is this for Hillary? Are the gods conspiring against Clinton's candidacy? Is Mother Nature a sexist for not wanting a woman in the White House? Or maybe this is all some heavenly effort to keep the after-work working-class voters away from the polls so Hillary loses part of her base. Regardless, when tornadoes descend on the town that shares your last name in your home state, it's not a good start to the night.
Another tornado connection: In the 1996 classic Twister, the male lead is played by Bill Paxton. Coincidence? Only if you think it was random that tornadoes touched down in Clinton.
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Last time Focus on the Family founder James Dobson stepped onto the public stage, it was to harrumph about the disastrous prospect of a Giuliani presidency.
Now he’s back, but this time it’s the second presumed Republican front-runner he’s railing against. In a statement released to the Laura Ingraham radio show, Dobson said he’s “deeply disappointed” that the party is poised to nominate John McCain, whose record on stem-cell research, marriage amendments, filibusters, not to mention his “foul and obscene language,” offends Dobson deeply. If McCain wins the nomination, he said, “I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime.”
The timing of the statement—right before Romney’s likely last stand—seems intended to serve as an evangelical Hail Mary. But his tone is one of resignation rather than hope: “What a sad and melancholy decision,” he laments.
Talk of a third-party candidacy petered out in the fall once Mike Huckabee became a viable candidate. I wonder if his decline and Romney’s will revive that conversation. It seems unlikely. Back in September, the conservative Council for National Policy said it would “consider” running a third-party candidate if the GOP nominee was “pro-abortion.” McCain doesn’t meet this standard, but anything could happen if he rankles other leading evangelicals as much as Dobson. He should probably name check God a few times into his speech tonight for good measure.
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Transcribing Clinton spin is getting tiresome, but here's an addendum to yesterday's post about how the Clinton team is counting delegates. In a conference call today, communications director Howard Wolfson launched into a minihistory of delegate allocation. He said he supports the democratization of the election system after 1968, but that any changes that happened later—implicitly, the expanded role of superdelegates—are now just part of a reality we now have to deal with:
There is a role for superdelegates in our party, as per rules of our party. These are not rules we set; they predate Bill Clinton. We are going to play under the rules we are given.
More than happy. Except, of course, when it comes to the rules the Democratic National Committee set out for early state voting. When it comes to Florida and Michigan, Clinton's camp still thinks their delegates should be seated—even though neither Obama nor Edwards was campaigning in Michigan. When a reporter asked whether those two states should be pressed to hold caucuses and thus comply with the national party's rules, Wolfson said, "There are a number of options," but "that's not for us to say."
So just to be clear: They're going to play by the unfortunate "superdelegate" rules—and even emphasize the role of superdelegates when it doesn't matter—but spurn the rules of the national party. At the same time, they're happy to insist that Michigan and Florida have their votes count, but suggesting another election—one in which more than just their candidate competes—is "not for us to say."
Excuse me while I go shower.
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Poor Mitt. Even when he does something right, he still screws it up. Today at the West Virginia GOP convention, Mitt Romney finished in a strong first place--on the first ballot. Romney racked up 40.9 percent to Huckabee's 33.1 percent after the first round of voting. Because Romney didn't clear 50 percent on the first round, the convention went to a second ballot, this time without Ron Paul on it. Realizing Romney might win, and there was no way McCain could win, McCain's surrogate pulled McCain out of the race and told his supporters to support Huckabee, instead. It was like a politics-themed episode of Captain Planet. By your powers combined, I am Captain No-Mitt!
All green mullets aside, this means absolutely nothing for how the rest of the day will play out. The final vote tally in West Virginia was 557-522. Yes, you read that right. Eighteen GOP delegates were decided based on 1,100 votes. The Republicans who show up to a state convention are the die hards of the party and party officials--not exactly McCain's crowd. Romney's support there was probably as much of a McCain rebuke as Huckabee's win was an anti-Romney alliance.
UPDATE 4:34 p.m.: Ron Paul tells us he brokered a deal with the Huckabee folks to grab three of the 18 delegates available at the convention. Kudos to the Paulies. But they should double check their math before sending out press releases: "With three national delegates, Ron Paul secured 20 percent
of the 18 delegates that were decided at the State Convention." (emphasis added) That's 16.7 percent.
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CORRECTION Feb. 6, 1:05 p.m.: Well, I was wrong. Contrary to my original post, California's exit poll data did include a sample of early voters polled via the phone. From Associated Press' account of the methodology:
There
were 17,454 interviews of Democratic primary voters, and 11,205 GOP voters.
Results included 1,005 telephone interviews of Democratic absentee voters and
813 GOP absentee voters in Arizona, California and Tennessee.
Overall sampling error was plus or minus 1 percentage points for both parties.
We gleaned our information from CNN, which has a misleading exit poll description of its own. What CNN says about their exit polls:
Exit polls are a survey of selected voters taken soon after they leave
their voting place. Pollsters use this sample information, collected
from a small percentage of voters, to track and project how all voters
or a specific segments of the voters sided on a particular race or
ballot measure.
No mention of an early voter phone survey. The entire country uses the same exit poll data, which means CNN uses the same data the AP uses, both from Edison Media Research. I spoke to someone in their office who confirmed the AP's account that a poll was conducted by phone with early voters. We regret the error. The original piece is below.
This item was cross-posted at Slate's Election Scorecard.
Poll junkies beware: California exit polls are not to be trusted.
California
has issued 5.5 million absentee ballots for today's primary, reaching
more than one-third of the 15.7 million total voters registered in the
state. As of yesterday, 3 million ballots had already been returned,
and state officials expect about 75 percent of the ballots to be
returned by the close of polls—that's 4.125 million people who voted
without pulling a lever. (These numbers include both Democratic and
Republican ballots.) The remaining ballots are expected to be turned in
at polling stations today, just like you drop off a movie rental.
For
our purposes, it's the 3 million ballots that have already been sent
back that may play havoc with expectations tonight. Exit polls, as
their name implies, measure only the opinions of residents who go to
the polls and submit a ballot. If you don't show up to the voting
booth, you're not going to be part of an exit poll.
Conventional wisdom suggests early voters chose Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, since Clinton led in the polls until recently. In the most recent SurveyUSA poll,
34 percent of respondents told the pollster they had already voted,
which echoes the predicted vote-by-mail participation rate. Of those
voters, 54 percent favored Clinton and 37 percent favored Obama. We
should note that SurveyUSA shows a stronger Clinton lead than other
polls (Zogby, Rasmussen) released in the last 48 hours.Given
all this, exit polls that show a slight lead for Obama actually may be
bad news for Barack. If SurveyUSA's poll is correct—no sure thing—then
Obama will need a strong lead (around 10 percent) among today's voters
to win California.
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Back when there were more than two presidential candidates on the Democratic side, they liked to joke about wanting to see their opponents in the White House—“as my vice president!” You don’t hear that joke anymore, probably because the two survivors appear to like each other about as much as Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon.
Odd, then, that Clinton strategist Terry McAuliffe would tell NY1 that Barack Obama should “absolutely” be considered as a running mate, seeing he has “excited so many people.” Describing his experience watching the amicable Los Angeles debate, he said, “to sit there and look at that stage—the two finalists, African-American and a woman of the Democratic Party—I think that was exciting.”
Until a week ago, the prospect of a Clinton-Obama ticket would have been laughable. In South Carolina, the two campaigns had reached new heights of viciousness, alternately slamming Obama’s comments about Ronald Reagan and Clinton’s judgment in voting for the war. Obama criticized her for being divisive; she tweaked him for voting “present” instead of yes or no in the Illinois state Senate.
But suddenly the idea doesn’t seem so crazy. If/when John McCain wins the GOP nomination, expect an identity crisis among Republicans. Ann Coulter was joking about voting Democratic if McCain won the nomination, but a lot of Republicans wouldn’t be. A Clinton/Obama power team could capitalize on that, picking up alienated GOPers in the maelstrom. Also, McCain’s strength among independent