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The first half of today’s RBC meeting was all about “unity”
and healing. The second part, not so much.
After an extended lunch break, the panel returned with a set
of resolutions. The first, presented by committee member Alice Huffman,
proposed seating Florida’s
entire delegation. Even before it was voted down, Clinton supporter Tina Flournoy mourned that
the resolution had “no chance of passing this body.” “That saddens me,” she
said. “It really does.” The motion failed, but it was closer than most people
expected, 15-12. Instead, the committee unanimously passed a motion splitting
the Florida
delegation in half. When DNC Secretary Alice Germond tried to soften the mood
by describing her experience hearing MLK speak in Washington, D.C.,
the Clinton-friendly crowd booed. Okay,
you won, the boos said. Just don’t
pretend it’s democratic.
Things turned even more sour during the Michigan discussion. The committee passed a
motion adopting the Michigan Democratic Party’s 69-59 split, but giving each
delegate only half a vote. The solution nets Clinton five delegates. (If you include Florida, she netted 24 delegates today.) Even before the vote,
everyone knew how it would turn out. Clinton
supporter Don Fowler voiced his disappointment with the resolution, but said he
would vote for it anyway. He then addressed Harold Ickes. “This is my position.
I respect and love you, but this is what I think we should do.”
Ickes, after a pause, leaned into his mic. “We find it
inexplicable,” he said, speaking for himself and Clinton, “that this body that
is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of other than … the
single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process. That is fair
reflection.” As far as he’s concerned, fair reflection—the notion that delegate
allocation must reflect the true vote—is “analogous to the First Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution.” He went on: “The motion will hijack, remove four
delegates from Hillary Clinton.” (In Michigan’s
Jan. 15 vote, “Uncommitted” won 55 delegates; the solution gives him 59.)
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity,” he said. “I submit to you that
hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party
unity.”
Committee member Ben Johnson tried to push back, denouncing
the “propaganda” disseminated by “one of my colleagues that makes it sound like
this motion will hijack” some delegates. But the damage was done. Clinton supporters chanted “Denver! Denver!”
from the balcony. Every time a committee member said the word “vote,” someone
from the audience would yell, “You mean half!”
If the goal of this meeting was to take a step toward party
unity, its final moments don’t bode particularly well. At the end of his
speech, Ickes left us with “one final word: Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve
her right to take this to the Credentials Committee.” An ominous warning for party
healers everywhere.
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Today’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was hyped as one of the
biggest shindigs of the Democratic primary season, and you can see why. It was
in everyone’s interest to inflate its importance. Hillary Clinton needs to rake
in delegates and ratify the popular votes in Florida
and Michigan.
Obama needs to look fair-minded and start courting the two states for the
general. And for Dems, it’s an all-out pep rally—a chance to talk about unity
and voters’ rights while implicitly kick off the general election season.
But if you pare it down to what’s actually at stake, the
event starts to feel rather puffed-up. The solutions proposed by the two
campaigns in the first half of the day don’t differ much. The Clinton
camp demanded a full seating of the Florida
delegates, while the Obama camp endorsed the so-called Ausman compromise, which
would halve the delegation’s influence. The difference between their solutions,
in terms of delegates netted for Clinton,
isn’t much: One gets her 38, the other gets her 19. For Michigan,
Clinton pushed
for a 73-55 delegate split (which would give Obama all the “uncommitted”
delegates), while Obama’s team requested an even 50-50 split. Again, one
proposal gets her 18 delegates, the other gets her zero. Even if the Clinton camp got everything they wanted, Clinton would win about 50 delegates. Given
Obama’s 200-delegate lead, that’s about as useful as a wet sock.
The debate over Florida was
relatively tame compared to the Michigan
issue. The reason, in a nutshell: Obama was on the ballot in Florida. In Michigan’s case, the committee’s problems
sound almost more metaphysical than political: How do you count an election
that wasn’t supposed to count in the first place? How many votes do you give a
candidate no one voted for? Can you assign delegates to a candidate without
implicitly giving him popular votes as well?
The problem is, both sides have good points. RBC member and Clinton supporter Elaine Kamarck voiced reservations about
Michigan’s
proposed 69-59 split, which used a combination of voting number and exit polls
to reach a compromise: “My problem is willy-nilly arbitrary assignment of
delegates when we actually had a legitimate vote. This way lies chaos.” But the
vote we do have, Obama surrogate
David Bonior argued, is flawed. Donna Brazile traced it all back to a simple
lesson: “My mother also taught me, I'm sure you're mother also taught you, that
when you decide to change the rules, especially in the middle game and the end
of the game, that is referred to as cheating.” When Michigan Democrat Mark Brewer
presented the state party’s plan, Eric Kleinfeld asked why he thinks he can
just pick numbers out of a hat: “Are you relying on any rule?” “No,” Brewer
responded, “but we have to do something.”
The difficulty of figuring out that something is probably
why the committee still hasn’t returned from lunch, which started three hours
ago.
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A lawyer for the Clinton campaign fired off a letter today to the co-chairs of the DNC rules committee, outlining the argument they plan to make tomorrow. Their case hinges largely on whether Florida and Michigan have been sufficiently punished. We all agree they’ve been very bad states, the argument goes. Get over it.
The letter rejects the argument made by DNC lawyers that the committee can’t reinstate more than half of the delegations. “This conclusion is incorrect,” the Clinton letter states. “The RBC has broad power to fully reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegations” as long as the state parties “have taken provable, positive steps and acted in good faith to bring the state into compliance” with party rules. Attempts to hold re-votes count as such good-faith steps, even though they failed, according to the campaign. If the RBC buys this argument—that the states genuinely tried to comply with the rules but failed—then the Clinton camp might have a shot at reinstating all the delegates. (In Florida, at least; Michigan is messier by a long shot.)
But there’s another rule the Clinton campaign doesn’t mention. In the same part of the Delegate Selection Rules (PDF) cited by the Clinton team [Rule 20(C)(7)], it says that “other relevant Democratic party leaders and elected officials took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith in attempting to prevent the legislative changes which resulted in state law that fails to comply with the pertinent provisions of these rules.” In other words, Florida Dems have to prove they fought tooth and nail to keep the Republican state legislature from moving the primary date up.
As we’ve pointed out before, that didn’t really happen. The effort to move the date up was initially spearheaded by a state senate Democrat, and tacitly supported by other Dems. In 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that “Florida Democrats are all for it.” Likewise, Michigan Democrats knew full well what they were doing when they moved their primary to Jan. 15.
So even if the Clinton camp is able to prove that Democrats made good-faith effort to hold re-votes, they’ll have a lot more trouble arguing they did everything in their power to prevent the original sin.
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The high-stakes drama of Saturday's rules committee meeting appears
illusory. Meanwhile, Obama rakes in more superdelegates, putting him
40.5 away from the nomination. According to our formula, that sinks
Clinton to 0.4 percent.
T minus one day and counting to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. Can you feel the suspense? Clinton supporters are busing up from Florida. Obama fans are being encouraged to stay home. Tout le média
will hang on Howard Dean's every word, as well as those uttered by the
Obama and Clinton campaign surrogates sent to argue their cases.
But the drama is largely phony. DNC lawyers have said that seating any more than half of the Michigan and Florida delegations would violate party rules. The proposed solutions are well-known. And every likely compromise fails to put Clinton within range of catching Obama, who now leads by 200 delegates. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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One big question lingers over the inflammatory comments made by Father Michael Pfleger, a Chicago priest who said some not-very-nice things about Hillary Clinton at Obama’s church last Sunday: Didn’t he know he’d get in trouble?
Pfleger was fully aware of the guilt-by-association theme of this presidential campaign. In a May 4 op-ed he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, Pfleger mourned the fact that Obama and Wright “are suddenly being held accountable and responsible for whatever the other says. This is not being done in either of the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain.”
Since the beginning, Pfleger has urged Obama not to distance himself from Rev. Wright. The night before he announced his candidacy, Obama withdrew his invitation to Wright, who was planning to give the public invocation. Pfleger disagreed. "I told him I thought it was the wrong decision," he told the Christian Science Monitor.
And most recently, Pfleger defended Wright during Wright’s April media tour. Pfleger told CNN: “I think any human being that for three weeks has been demonized and trivialized and put into a caricature around the world, there's no place he can go that people have not seen him, you know, I don't think it's narcissistic to say, wait a minute, this is not me.”
For someone who was so aware of the ins and outs of the Wright controversy—and who knows that sermons at the United Church of Christ are taped—it’s hard to understand why he would launch attacks on Hillary Clinton from that same pulpit. He even uttered an apology toward the end of his remarks: "Sorry ... don't want to get you into any more trouble," he said. Lynn Sweet reports that folks in Obama’s camp are baffled.
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The Obama campaign has been quick to scrub its Web site of all things Michael Pfleger after the Chicago priest said some not-very-nice things about Hillary Clinton at Obama’s church last Sunday.
The campaign’s "faith testimonials" page contains more than 30 endorsements by religious leaders and supporters, but Pfleger is not included (nor is Jeremiah Wright, obviously).
But a cached version of the page reveals this endorsement:
Father Michael Pfleger
Senior Pastor, St. Sabina Church, Chicago, IL
I’m concerned by issues of poverty and issues of justice and equal access and opportunity especially when dealing with children and education and healthcare. Also, the war in Iraq is non-negotiable: end it! The faith community has to be a prophetic voice to bring us to where we ought to be as a country. Its voice should call every individual to be their best and not assimilate into anything less. Obama is calling back those who have given up and lost hope in the political system both young and old in the belief that we can fix it. He has the intellect for the job and I haven’t heard anyone since Robert F. Kennedy who is causing such an emotional and spiritual awakening to the political possibilities.
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Yesterday we pointed out a major flaw in the debate over the new GI Bill. In fact, the CBO analysis cited by both McCain (in opposing the bill) and Obama (in supporting it) shows that the bounce in recruitment would outweigh the decline in re-enlistment. But as many have pointed out, that view doesn’t take "experience" into account. Who’s to say whether 30,000 new recruits will be better for the military than 7,000 noncommissioned officers who’ve been around the block?
A friend in the Marines who is currently stationed in Iraq (and prefers to remain anonymous) argues that it’s even more complicated than that:
I have to agree with your update in that experience is worth its weight in gold. Everyone dreads the ‘boot drop’ when PFCs and lance corporals straight from MOS school show up knowing ... very little. It's the same with 2nd Lieutenants who show up to a unit—there's a reason they're called boot lieutenants. What's really valuable is retaining someone who's spent years of his life training and actually deploying and working in this war because they have knowledge and experience in both their jobs and in just dealing with military life that you can't create overnight.
Of course, the downside to good retention is that in the military, you can't stay in a job for 20 years no matter how good you are at it. You have to be promoted and move up the ladder until you're promoted to your lowest level of incompetence. So while we say we want a force full of experienced captains and NCOs who have been around the block a few times, we're lying to ourselves if we think retention is the solution. With the current promotion rates (something like 98 percent make it to captain in the USMC, and I think it's the same if not higher in the army) and the accelerated pipeline (I've heard the time from commissioning to captain is 39 months in the Army, with 18 to 1st Lieutenant) it's only a matter of time before that captain, if he's motivated and a performer, will become a major and then a lieutenant colonel, or that shit hot sergeant becomes a staff NCO. So under that system you need a constant input to ensure that at the ranks you want people you can continue to have experienced officers and NCOs while still promoting people out of those ranks. The force structure is very very dynamic and maintaining an equilibrium, or even approaching a desired end state, is very difficult and very temporary. [Emphasis added.]
So while "experience" is important, it means nothing if you don’t have a steady flow of new recruits.
John McCain has the advantage of understanding the chaotic structure of the military—he logged more than 20 years in the Navy and has two sons in uniform. But the GI bill debate inevitably gets squished into the narrow terms of who is "supporting the troops" more. It’s easier to argue that more education benefits are automatically better than to analyze the complexities of the military hierarchy. Which is why, at least on this issue, McCain has failed to persuade his fellow senators.
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When it’s a caucus, according to the Clintons.
In a letter to superdelegates yesterday, Hillary Clinton quietly dropped caucuses from her calculation of who's winning. “[W]hen the primaries are finished,” she wrote, “I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries.” Likewise, Bill Clinton bluntly criticized the caucus system yesterday while touring Puerto Rico:
[T]he party will have to decide whether they believe the caucuses—where you get about one delegate for 2000 votes—are more important than the primaries where you get one for 12,000.
Let’s address these beefs one at a time.
Hillary may be correct that she’ll be winning among noncaucus pledged delegates once all is said and done. Among caucus states alone, Obama leads by 135 delegates. (Calculated from the New York Times and AP counts.) If you remove those from the equation, his pledged-delegate lead drops from 149 to 14. A blowout win in Puerto Rico, with 55 delegates at stake, could push Clinton past Obama. A favorable decision on Florida could net Clinton another 19 delegates. But remember: That’s if you pretend caucus states—15 of the 57 Democratic contests—don’t exist.
As for Bill’s complaint: Say caucuses did only give one delegate for every 12,000 votes, instead of for every 2,000? (Bill’s numbers are approximate, but generally correct.) You can convert the numbers by dividing their caucus delegate counts by six. So Obama’s 135-delegate lead in caucus states would become a 22.5-delegate lead. Factor that into his overall pledged-delegate lead, and he’d be ahead by 36.5 pledged delegates. Again, big Clinton wins in Puerto Rico and on the Florida question could put her over the top.
Why all these logical gymnastics? Only to point out just how convoluted these arguments are. Saying Hillary Clinton will win “delegates earned through primaries” requires ignoring 15 states that did count and counting one state that didn’t. Saying caucuses are unfairly weighted, but counting Michigan’s lopsided vote (Obama wasn’t on the ballot) toward your popular vote tally, requires equally odd logical leaps.
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One of the strongest arguments in favor of Jim Webb’s new GI Bill, which passed in the Senate last week, is that while higher education benefits might decrease re-enlistment, they would increase recruitment. This was the case made by the New York Times editorial page over the weekend:
[Opponents of the bill] have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying—as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are—to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.
Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits—by 16 percent.
This is true. The CBO analysis (PDF) does predict that the proposed educational benefits "would result in a 16 percent increase in recruits" while estimating a "16 percent decline in the reenlistment rate, from about 42 percent to about 36 percent" (emphasis mine).
The problem is, the "16 percents" aren’t necessarily equal. You need to know the underlying numbers of recruits and re-enlistments to know whether, as the Times claims, the two figures "offset" each other.
The CBO estimate concluded that the 16 percent increase in recruitment would add an additional 30,000 recruits annually, while a 16 percent decline in re-enlistment would result in 7,000 fewer re-enlistments annually. In other words, new recruits would greatly outnumber soldiers who decline to re-enlist. These numbers make the New York Times case—and Barack Obama’s—even stronger than they thought.
A couple of caveats. For one thing, the CBO estimate examines an early version of the bill called S.22, which isn’t the same thing as the bill the Senate passed last week. The Senate adopted the GI Bill as an amendment to Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 2642. The CBO is still working on an estimate for that. Also, the CBO emphasized that its estimate doesn't assume there will be a change in the size and composition of the force. Rather, it assumes that the Department of Defense would maintain the current force structure by decreasing enlistment bonuses and increasing re-enlistment bonuses.
Still, both Obama and McCain have invoked the CBO estimate in their arguments for and against the GI Bill. They might want to update their numbers.
Plus: See our original analysis of McCain's objections to the GI Bill.
Update 1:10 p.m.: A smart reader points out that you have to take into account the vast difference between new recruits and non-commissioned officers: "A senior NCO, or even an NCO with 2-3 years of experience, is light
years ahead in terms of competence than a newly minted private." There's obviously no way to know which is "better" -- 7,000
re-enlisted officers or 30,000 new recruits -- but the disparity in experience is worth taking into account.
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As the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting looms, Hillary Clinton
cranks her electability argument up to 11. But Obama continues to woo
superdelegates. Odds of survival hover at 0.5 percent.
Clinton
is now fighting tooth and nail to see that the DNC's rules committee
seats the delegates from Florida and Michigan at the convention in
August. She continues to push for full seating, but that scenario
remains extremely unlikely.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe suggests they're willing to
compromise. The reason: They can afford to. Even the best-case
scenarios don't have Clinton closing Obama's 195-delegate lead. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Sen. Joe Lieberman has been taking some heat on the blogs ever since Huffington Post reported that he will be headlining Pastor John Hagee’s annual Christians United For Israel conference this July. Lieberman, like McCain, has praised Hagee in the past for his support of Israel. But recent remarks about Hitler being sent by God to drive the Jews out of Europe—on top of earlier comments about the Catholic Church—forced McCain to reject Hagee’s endorsement. But Lieberman has remained on the bill for the conference.
Lieberman has posted a statement explaining his decision. Here it is, in full:
I believe that Pastor Hagee has made comments that are deeply unacceptable and hurtful. I also believe that a person should be judged on the entire span of his or her life's works. Pastor Hagee has devoted much of his life to fighting anti-Semitism and building bridges between Christians and Jews. The organization that he has helped build, Christians United for Israel, is a vital force in supporting the war against terrorism and defending our ally, Israel. I will go to the CUFI Summit in July and speak to the people who have come to Washington from all over our country to express their support of America and Israel, based on our shared eternal values and our shared contemporary challenges in the war against terrorism. At that conference, I will also make it clear that it is imperative that our language is always respectful and tolerant of all of our fellow citizens.
I can’t think of any good explanation for this, other than Hagee has naked photos of Joe Lieberman … eating shellfish.
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The Associated Press reported that the Rules and Bylaws Committee cannot fully restore the delegates who were stripped from Michigan and Florida at its meeting, since party rules require a reduction of at least 50 percent since the two states held their primaries early. The report cites a memo sent out by DNC lawyers last night.
But on a conference call today, Clinton adviser and RBC member Tina Flournoy said that’s an "incorrect reading" of the memo. It merely presented arguments that could be made before the RBC, she said, which the committee will then have to evaluate. In other words, the Clinton campaign can still get 100 percent of the delegations seated.
Who’s right?
In strictly technical terms, Clinton’s people are. The memo, which summarizes challenges filed in Florida and Michigan to reinstate part or all of the state’s delegations, goes out of its way not to endorse one stance or another. (Michigan’s Democratic Party requested that all of the state’s delegates be reinstated; Florida DNC member Jon Ausman asked for 50 percent of Florida’s pledged delegates and all of its superdelegates to be counted.) As if to reiterate the memo’s toothlessness, the DNC just sent out a statement calling it an "intentionally neutral" analysis that "does not make specific recommendations."
But in a few key parts, the memo points out how the RBC would basically have to violate DNC rules in order to reinstate more than half the delegations. Here are some examples:
"[I]t seems clear that while the RBC could revoke its additional sanctions, leaving in place the automatic sanctions of Rule 20(C)(1), it does not have authority to reverse or prevent the imposition of those automatic sanctions."—Michigan challenge, Page 3
"If the RBC decides to go as far as it legally can in granting the MDP Challenge, it would revoke the additional December 2007 sanctions and leave in place a 50% automatic reduction in pledged delegates."—Michigan challenge, Page 6
"The legally more defensible view seems to be that the RBC had authority, in its discretion, to impose the additional sanction that it did impose in August 2007, but by the same token, that the RBC now has discretion to revoke those additional sanctions, thereby leaving in effect the automatic sanction of Rule 20(C)(1), i.e., a 50% reduction in pledged delegates."—Florida challenge, Page 6
In other words, the RBC could reinstate all of Michigan or Florida’s delegates (although only the Michigan challenge calls for full reinstatement), but that would violate its own rules. Clinton supporters will likely argue that the RBC has the power to overrule itself. As the memo puts it, the committee "is vested with broad authority … to ‘determine and resolve questions concerning the seating of delegates and alternates to the Convention.' " But it also points out that the committee's power is limited to making states comply with party rules. If there's a resolution to seat the full delegations, that will go to the Credentials Committee in late June, which would then throw it to the convention floor in August.
What does this all mean? That we’re in for a really dull RBC meeting. If the Clinton camp can’t get more than 50 percent of the delegations reinstated, they have no hope of turning the tables on Obama. (Even if they could get all of Michigan and Florida’s delegates to count, it would be virtually impossible to catch up among pledged delegates.) Both camps seem to expect mayhem—Clinton supporters are planning protests, while Obama has urged supporters not to stir things up. But chances are the scene outside the building will be a lot more dramatic than inside.
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Perhaps the biggest advantage of campaigning in Puerto Rico is that it forces both candidates to dance.
Obama broke into a timid little groove—it looks kind of like he’s running in place—while campaigning on Saturday in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan (video here; it’s around 1:50). Yesterday, Fox News embed Aaron Bruns managed to persuade Hillary Clinton to make vaguely dancelike movements to Enrique Iglesias’ “Be With You” at a bar.
Both moments are, somehow, incredibly charming. If I were an advance staffer for a campaign, I’d get palpitations every time danceable music started playing. Everyone knows dancing makes perfect stock footage for attack ads. But the high risk comes with high payoff. When Obama shook it on Ellen, he probably won over grandmothers across the nation. In Clinton’s case, showing vulnerability has worked out rather nicely, too.
Best of all, it provides some clear contrast with John McCain (Exhibit A). Every time McCain proposes an unmoderated debate, Obama should propose a pop and lock contest.
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This weekend’s meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will be full of theater. Each campaign must publicly make its case for why Florida's and Michigan’s delegations should or should not be seated, and the committee’s 30 members must deliberate. Clinton supporters will be protesting. But the most intriguing performance will come from RBC member and Clinton delegate guru Harold Ickes, who voted last August to strip Florida of all its delegates but is now pushing to reinstate them.
That may sound like some tough logical gymnastics, but Ickes is a gold medalist when it comes to this stuff. Here’s a quick chronology of his past statements, starting with his justification for stripping the states of their delegations. (Pardon the long quotes—the man can talk.):
“I think this whole system [the primary calendar] is goofy. It's all out of kilter. I think we start way too early.”
—Aug. 26, 2007
“I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. … I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them.”
—Feb. 16 2008
“[W]e think that the Florida vote was fair and square. And the Obama campaign whining about the fact that it wasn't fair when they, in fact -- when he, in fact, broke the pledge that his campaign signed by actually campaigning in Florida, you know, rings high. I don't think any objective observer who looked at that result, in which a million more Democrats came out to vote in this presidential preference compared to 2004, can argue with even a semblance of a straight face that that was not a fair contest and that those results reflect the will of the Democrats who participated. Senator Obama just didn't like the results. I suggest that had the results been just the opposite, he would be rushing to the forefront to try to seat those delegations, and if not, arguing for a redo.”
—March 25, 2008
“We decided to invoke a full stripping of the delegates from those two states to send a very strong signal to other states that if they broke the window, there would be very severe consequences. We think that that signal was received, listened to, no other state broke the window, and it is it is now time as practical political people with very much at stake in deciding our nomination and in winning the general election and in winning the White House … we ought to now turn our attention to that. …
“These states have in fact been punished. They didn’t have primaries run in them. They didn’t have full fledged campaigns run in them. … Some people can disagree on that, but the fact is punishment was imposed by virtue of not running the primaries there. The lessons were learned and it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the general election and make sure that these states—that we do everything to make sure these states are in the Democratic column.
“One million more people participated in that state’s primary than in the prior 40 years. People came out in droves. People knew who they wanted to vote for, they knew why they were voting.”
—May 22, 2008
So first it was about fixing the calendar; then it was about enforcing the rules; then it was about record turnout, Obama breaking the rules (which is debatable), and winning the general election. Next it will be about the deliciousness of Tropicana orange juice.
Set your TiVos to C-SPAN.
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Hillary Clinton's ill-advised invoking of RFK's assassination might
have damaged her campaign if there were anything left to damage.
Meanwhile, Obama closes in on the current magic number of 2,026,
bringing Clinton's odds of winning the nomination to 0.5 percent.
On
the list of campaign no-nos, hinting at the possibility of your
opponent being shot is up there. Yet that's what some people thought
Hillary meant when she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls,
S.D., Argus-Leader that Democratic nominations often extend
into June: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he
won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We
all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I
don't understand it."
The New York Post led the way, blaring, "Hillary Raises Assassination Issue." Drudge quickly followed. The Washington Post fronted the story, albeit less sensationally. But little consideration was given to what Clinton meant. (Watch the video and draw your own conclusions.) Never mind that she had said the same thing to Time back in March and no one noticed. Never mind that her calendar argument is misleading
in the first place: Her husband may not have mathematically secured the
nomination until June, but he was the presumptive nominee in March; RFK
was still campaigning in June because the primary calendar started so
late. The focus was on the "assassination" comparison. "We have seen an
X-ray of a very dark soul," opined the Daily News' Michael Goodwin. That or a very click-hungry media.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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A conversation is already brewing over at "XX Factor" about what Clinton meant when she invoked Robert Kennedy’s assassination as evidence that nomination battles continue through June. Here’s her wording, from an interview with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader editorial board:
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it.” (Video.)
Critics have seized on the quote as evidence that Hillary is secretly hoping Obama gets knocked off in the next few weeks. After all, Clinton didn’t say, "Bobby Kennedy was in the race until June.” She said he got shot in June. The Obama camp, ever eager to take umbrage, whisked out a statement that her comment was “unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.” Others, including Slate’s Rachael Larimore, think Clinton’s motives were benign.
But most bizarre is the Clinton camp’s apology, fired off just now. She claims she was referencing the 1992 and 1968 elections “to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June.” Then, the kicker: “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever.”
At first, the move seems brilliant—saying sorry to the Kennedys without saying sorry to Obama. But it also feels like a weak dodge. By not addressing her specific phrasing—why say "assassination"?—she doesn't put the issue to bed, thereby guaranteeing another round of speculation.
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In a Wednesday post at National Review Online, Larry Kudlow, he of CNBC fame, asserts that the stock market likes Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. How does he know this? Because on two occasions, the stock market went up after Clinton won a primary, and down after Obama won.
The clearest example was Hillary’s massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama’s big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.
Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night’s elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.
Kudlow, to put it simply, is off his rocker. He is asserting that the stock market would react strongly to a Democratic primary after the nominee has been all-but-anointed. One would think an economist like Kudlow would have more faith in the market than to think it was subject to the whims of a now-meaningless primary that pits two very similar candidates against one another.
Kudlow’s facts are right. The Dow went up by an unimpressive 73.26 points after Clinton won West Virginia. Why? Not because Clinton won; because Wall Street got good vibes from a new inflation report. The Dow went up even more after Obama won Wisconsin and Hawaii. He’s also right that the index plunged a substantial 196 points the day after Obama took North Carolina and made Clinton sweat in Indiana. But not because Obama won. AIG, a bellwhether for subprime-affected insurance corporations, was about to unleash a gnarly balance sheet the next day. As Kudlow notes, stocks tumbled nearly the same amount after Obama won in Oregon and clinched a pledged delegate majority. Why? Not because Obama is going to be the nominee; because oil prices hit a record high and inflation edged upward.
Kudlow doesn’t mention that the Dow rose 32 points during Obama’s streak of 10 straight victories, or that it went up after Obama’s South Carolina, Potomoc, and Wisconsin wins. Kudlow must have been dumbfounded when the market didn’t crater in response to Obama’s success. He must think the market agrees with Clinton and must not count caucuses as real votes.
All of those rebuttals take for granted a tacit, yet crucial, piece of Kudlow’s logic—that Clinton and Obama would be drastically different stewards for the economy. This, also, doesn’t make any sense.
Kudlow takes issue with Obama’s “class warfare” of repealing Bush tax cuts and other initiatives.
Obama then repeated his usual litany: big-government health care, an attack on oil companies, a big spending plan for education, big bailouts for housing, and a pension assault on corporations.
Clinton, of course, is for all of those things, as well. Superficially, Clinton is no more of a sure-thing bull economy than Obama is. Kudlow seems to recognize his argument’s flaw, and attempts to push it aside.
Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight a) because she was roughing up Obama for the general-election fight against McCain and b) because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can’t with Obama.
Personifying stocks is always a risky affair, because, oh, you know, they don’t have brains. Traders don’t think “they can do business with Hillary” any more than Kudlow does. Watch this clip of Kudlow castigating Clinton’s economic policies, and you’ll see that Kudlow isn’t exactly a Democratic cheerleader. He’s a staunch supply-side McCain supporter who is using his NRO platform to knock Obama and proliferate McCain talking points. Kudlow saying Obama would be bad for the markets is the same as Karl Rove saying Clinton is the stronger Democrat in November. Even in a quantifiable realm like economics, qualitative spin rules the day.
The Dow Jones is down nearly 150 points today. Maybe it’s because Obama picked up three new superdelegates.
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In today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer slams Barack Obama for what he calls Obama’s "gaffe"-turned-foreign-policy centerpiece. To hear Krauthammer tell it, Obama’s position that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and other unfriendly governments "without preconditions" in the first year of his presidency first surfaced at the July 23 YouTube debate, in his response to a YouTube questioner. (Read the debate exchange here.) Per Krauthammer, Obama's answer just sort of slipped out, and he ran with it: "What started as a gaffe became policy."
Similarly, Matthew Yglesias writes about Obama’s "accidential foreign policy" in this month’s Atlantic, arguing that Obama’s camp "had never articulated such a policy before [the debate], and seemed ill-prepared to defend it on the spot."
But was the July 23 debate really the first time Obama promised to meet with unsavory leaders? I asked Obama spokesman Ben Labolt whether he could point to earlier instances. Here are a few (emphasis mine):
- Back in November 2006, Obama said that "we must engage [Iraq’s] neighboring countries in finding a solution. This includes opening dialogue with both Syria and Iran, an idea supported by both James Baker and Robert Gates." The Baker/Hamilton Report (PDF) recommends that a "Support Group" of nations including the United States "should actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions."
- In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, Obama advocated "tough-minded diplomacy. This includes direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our principles and interests." Obama has also made the Cold War comparison in recent days.
- In April 2007, he said that "effective diplomacy" with "governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran" will require the "personal commitment of the President of the United States."
None of these statements are as strongly worded as the YouTube debate question. But they do signal a willingness engage enemies diplomatically, suggesting that Obama’s statement on July 23 was hardly a departure, let alone a "gaffe."
In recent days, campaign representatives have "clarified" Obama’s position. "I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," Obama supporter Tom Daschle told CNN. "... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us." Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Obama, said that meeting with Iran doesn’t necessarily mean meeting with Ahmadinejad—it could mean lower-level talks.
Again, these statements offer more specifics than before, but—the debate over the meaning of "preconditions" aside—they don’t really contradict Obama’s previous statements.
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John McCain finally rejected, denounced, and bused over Pastor John Hagee, whose remarks about the Catholic Church have been dogging McCain for months. The final straw was a sermon in which Hagee, citing the book of Jeremiah, called Adolf Hitler a “hunter” sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel, which would pave the way for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The rejection was long overdue. In March, McCain drew fire over Hagee’s statements calling the Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system.” McCain said he disagreed with any comments “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” but thought they were “taken out of context.” A McCain spokeswoman clarified: “While we welcome his support, it shouldn't be seen as a wholesale endorsement of all of Mr. Hagee's views.” But McCain did not reject his endorsement until now.
So what changed? You could argue the Hitler shout-out was the deciding factor—any time a supporter drops the H-bomb, he or she becomes radioactive. But take a look at demographics McCain needs to win in the general.
In Florida, a key battleground state, McCain can count on the support of Catholics no matter what. He won 40 percent of the GOP Catholic vote in the primary there (Obama won 22 percent in the Democratic race), and Florida’s Hispanics have voted Republican in the last few presidential elections. McCain’s stance on immigration makes him especially popular among that group. Despite criticism from Catholic leaders over Hagee’s remarks, McCain is unlikely to lose that demographic.
Jews are a different story. Florida Jews are famously skeptical of Barack Obama, particularly on his support of Israel. (Rep. Robert Wexler called Southern Florida “the most concentrated area in the country in terms of misinformation” about Obama.) Hence Obama’s ongoing courtship of Jewish leaders and recent visits to Boca Raton and Miami. McCain, by contrast, is seen as unwaveringly hawkish when it comes to Israel. As one older Jewish Floridian told the New York Times, “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel. They’re going to vote for McCain.”
In other words, now would be a bad time for McCain to risk alienating Jewish voters. At a certain point, the harm of Hagee's remarks starts to outweigh his popularity among evangelicals.
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Lanny Davis, former special counsel to the Clinton White House and a high-profile fundraiser/surrogate for Hillary's campaign, circulated an e-mail a few days ago from Rear Admiral David Stone (Ret.), a Clinton supporter who has visited other veterans across the country. Stone's message includes this passage:
Of note, Senator Obama has zero—repeat zero—traction in the VFW and American Legion Halls. Veterans cite his refusal (until recently) to wear the American Flag pin, the photo where he is shown not saluting the Flag with his hand over his heart, ... his alleged MoveOn.Org relationship and that organization's innuendo (in an ad) of General Petraeus as a traitor, his relationship with Rev. Wright (who once said "God Damn America" in a sermon), Mrs. Obama's comment about only recently being proud to be an American, and Senator Obama's recent comment that some people were "bitter" about their economic situation and thus "cling" to guns and religion as a result. ...
Surrogates can't always be on message, but this is particularly far astray. Obama has not "refused" to wear a flag pin, and the flag-saluting photo has been fairly thoroughly debunked. Instead of correcting these misperceptions, Davis is spreading them, even after the Clinton camp has pointedly toned down its rhetoric on Obama. But attacks on Obama's patriotism have been verboten among Dems for some time now. Most references to the lapel pin or saluting the flag or Michelle Obama's "proud to be an American" comments come from the RNC. Apparently that memo didn't reach Davis.
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In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hillary Clinton reiterates that Florida Democrats shouldn’t be punished for the Republican legislature’s decision to move the primary up to Jan. 29. Democrats "had very little or no choice in the matter," she says. "It was a Republican decision to go forward."
It’s become accepted among Democrats that the early primary date was foisted on Florida Dems by Republicans. But the reality was more complicated. As a Miami Herald columnist pointed out in March:
- The legislation that moved up Florida's presidential primary from the second Tuesday in March to the last Tuesday in January was sponsored by a Democrat, Jeremy Ring, in the Senate, and a Republican, David Rivera, in the House.
- Every single Democrat in both chambers voted for the early date except for one House member, all of them grown-ups knowing full well that the rules of both national parties called for delegate penalties.
There’s more. Back in 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that "Florida Democrats are all for it." Later, when the DNC penalties became clear, Democratic leaders raised token objections. According to a great 2007 account of Florida’s deliberations by the Times’ Adam Smith (who also conducted yesterday’s interview with Clinton), some Dems tried to persuade Republicans to push the date back to the safe zone of Feb. 5 but quickly backed off. Many of them were equally eager to wield more influence in the primary season, and no one truly believed the DNC would erase all their delegates. A last-ditch amendment that would have moved the date back to Feb. 5 failed to pass.
To be sure, the date change measure was folded into a larger election-reform bill, which contained a key Democratic provision to create paper trails for electronic voting machines. That’s why the entire legislature voted for it. Plus, Dems probably didn’t expect to have all their delegates invalidated by the DNC, since party rules only called for half. They may also have declined to fight the measure because they knew they couldn't win. But to describe Florida’s Democratic voters as victims of a Republican scheme is a stretch. At the time, the scheme seemed pretty darn bipartisan.
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Clinton steps up calls for Florida and Michigan to be seated. But
those delegations won't make up the difference. Her chances remain
stagnant at 0.7 percent.
On May 31, the DNC's
Rules and Bylaws Committee will convene in Washington, D.C., to decide
whether and how to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan.
There is a number of possible outcomes, but the most likely one is that
both states get seated but have their delegations chopped in half.
(Figuratively, of course—the DNC is harsh, but not that harsh.)
Depending on how they treat superdelegates, this scenario would change the "magic number" from 2,026 to either 2,131 or 2,118.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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On a conference call just now, Clinton adviser Harold Ickes articulated the campaign’s position on Michigan’s "uncommitted" delegates: Obama shouldn’t get them. Over at Politico, Avi Zenilman points out how this would hinder Obama’s attempts to win the pledged-delegate count.
But it also affects the popular-vote tally. Namely, it justifies Clinton’s declaration that she’s "winning the popular vote," since she counts her own votes in Michigan but not "uncommitted."
At a breakfast with reporters earlier this month, Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson reportedly suggested that they’d be willing to give Obama the "uncommitted" delegates. Yesterday we wondered why, if they were willing to give him the delegates, they were unwilling to give him the popular votes.
But today, Ickes took a harder stance: "It is presumptuous to assume that each and every one of those delegates is an Obama supporter," he said. He described a different scenario: Rather than going to Obama, the "uncommitted" delegates would attend the August convention as just that—"uncommitted." The campaign would then make their case to the delegates at the convention.
It’s still a stretch to say you’re winning the popular vote while counting a state where your opponent wasn’t on the ballot. But now at least the logic is internally consistent—"uncommitted" delegates shouldn’t go to Obama, nor should "uncommitted" votes.
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Something we didn’t mention in our assessments of Hillary Clinton’s claim that she’s winning the popular vote: the Texas caucuses.
We and many other outlets have taken to using the Real Clear Politics popular vote count. The problem is, RCP factors in the Texas primary but not its caucuses. As a result, we end up underestimating Barack Obama’s popular vote tally. But by how much?
One way to estimate is to look at the results from the evening of March 4. Texas uses a “voluntary” reporting system, so only 41 percent of precincts ended up reporting their results on election night. Those numbers showed Obama winning the caucus by about 10 points. We can also look at the results of Texas’ county and state district conventions in late March, in which Obama won 58 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 42 percent. Again, that’s rough, but it’s the best we’ve got until the state convention in early June.
Based on those numbers, it looks like Obama won by anywhere from 10 to 20 points. (There are no official figures.) The Texas Democratic party estimates that turnout was roughly a million, which means that Obama probably netted anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 votes—enough to cancel out Clinton’s 100,000-vote victory in the state’s primary.
You can see why outlets like NBC choose to ignore Texas entirely when counting votes. “We’re just all screwed up,” laughs Texas Democratic spokesman Hector Nieto. “We’re the only state with stripes on CNN.” There are other caveats: The March 4 caucuses were chaotic, with overflowing caucus sites and accusations of voter fraud. Also, Texas voters could vote in both the primary and the caucuses, and there’s no way to figure out exactly how many votes got counted twice. (Update 8:14 p.m.: Actually, there is: All of them got counted twice, since you had to vote in the primary in order to attend the caucus.)
But if you factor in this rough estimate of the Texas caucus results, Clinton is decidedly not winning the popular vote. RCP puts her ahead by 64,000 votes if you count Florida and Michigan and all the caucus states. But 100,000 votes from the Texas caucus would swing the advantage back to Obama.
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Now that we’ve laid out Hillary Clinton’s logic for how she’s winning the popular vote, it’s worth examining whether and how she can turn this from a tenuous argument into a compelling case.
Right now, superdelegates aren’t buying it, most likely because no one thinks Michigan should be counted toward the popular vote, especially if you’re not counting the "uncommitted" votes for Obama. So if she’s going to persuade them, she needs a lead that doesn’t rely on counting Michigan’s dubious vote in order to put her ahead.
The upcoming votes in Montana and South Dakota won’t help her much. South Dakota currently has 194,000 active registered Democrats. Even if turnout is as high as 50 percent and she wins with a 60-40 split, she’ll only net around 20,000 votes. Turnout in Montana is expected to be in the mid-100,000 range, which likewise won’t net Clinton more than a few thousand votes. And those are optimistic scenarios.
Puerto Rico looks like her best shot. The island has 2.3 million registered voters, all of whom are eligible to vote in the Democratic primary. (Puerto Rico’s parties don’t align with U.S. parties.) I’ve seen turnout estimates of 80 percent. That seems high, but say it’s true and 1.84 million people vote. If Clinton wins a 60-40 split, that would net her about 370,000 votes.
So it’s possible that in the next three contests, Clinton could net as many as 400,000 votes. Obama currently leads by 257,000 votes, counting Florida and all caucus states but not Michigan. Which means Clinton could still come out ahead by more than 100,000 votes. That sort of margin isn’t Florida-proof—it relies on counting Florida’s popular vote in order to hold. But counting Florida could become standard practice if the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee decides to seat the state's delegation on May 31. If all that happens, Clinton could make a reasonable case to superdelegates that more people voted for her than for Obama.
Update 6:16 p.m.: Clinton's task is even harder if you factor in the enigmatic Texas caucuses. Check out the revised analysis here.
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Last night, Clinton announced that she’s "winning the popular vote." It’s a claim she’s been making since Pennsylvania, but now that Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates, it’s really her last plausible argument for the nomination.
As this blog has noted before, the popular vote is a flawed metric because the number of people who participate in caucuses is much smaller than the number of people who vote in primaries. But let’s set that objection aside. What’s the logic undergirding Clinton’s claim?
1) If you count the vote in all primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Obama leads by about 552,000 votes, according to an estimate by Real Clear Politics.
2) If you add in Florida, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, and where the candidates agreed not to campaign, Obama’s lead drops to 257,000.
3) If you further add in Michigan, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, where candidates agreed not to campaign, and where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot, then Clinton leads by 71,000.
But:
4) In Michigan, "uncommitted" received 40 percent of the vote, which seems kind of high. If we count Michigan’s 238,000 uncommitteds for Obama, then he leads by 167,000. Presumably the Clinton campaign isn’t making this final calculation. In the past, though, her camp has explained away the embarrassingly large proportion of Michigan uncommitteds—remember, Clinton was the only major candidate on the ballot— by pointing out that Obama’s Michigan supporters urged primary voters to pull the lever for "uncommitted." Indeed, on May 10 Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Clinton would be willing to give Obama all the Michigan uncommitteds, provided Obama dropped his opposition to seating Michigan and Florida.
Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, a strong proponent of the popular-vote metric, has argued that if you’re going to count Michigan, you have to take this last step. (Incidentally, Hertzberg later discovered that his own calculations understated Obama’s support.)
5) An additional variable is whether you count all the caucuses. Four caucus states—Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington—never reported their popular votes. So the calculations above are based on estimates. If you don’t count these estimates, Clinton’s 71,000 lead rises to 181,000 votes.
6) But isn’t it inconsistent to argue for enfranchising Florida and Michigan while simultaneously disenfranchising Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington? Yes, that’s inconsistent. So let’s disenfranchise Florida and Michigan in addition to the four caucus states. That gives the popular vote lead back to Obama by 442,000.
7) OK, now let’s put Florida and Michigan back in but give Obama the Michigan uncommitteds, per Hertzberg’s recommendation and Wolfson’s May 10 comment. That also gives the popular vote lead back to Obama, this time by about 57,000.
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Results from the last several Republican primaries force one to occasionally stop for a fact-check: Mike Huckebee did drop out of the race, right? Like, almost three months ago?
Or more to the point: Is anyone in the McCain camp worried that an opponent who called it off on March 4 is still winning 10 percent of the vote? Or that their guy is only winning about three-quarters of the vote, largely against defunct candidates?
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Kentucky, McCain won 72.3 percent of the vote. Huckabee raked in 8.2 percent, and Ron Paul, who’s actually still in the race, won 6.8 percent. All told, non-McCain candidates won nearly 28 percent of the vote in the Republican contest. By contrast, Barack Obama won 30 percent in the Democratic contest.
Two weeks ago, Huckabee won 10 percent in Indiana and 12.1 percent in North Carolina.
To be fair, the presumptive nominee doesn’t always receive overwhelming margins of the vote after the contest is functionally over. In May of 2004, John Edwards won 13.4 percent in West Virginia and 11.2 percent in Indiana, well after John Kerry had it wrapped up. Perhaps this is the voters’ way of notching their choice for a running mate?
And look how well that turned out for those two.
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With Tuesday's contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama seizes
a majority of pledged delegates. April fundraising numbers show Obama
still leads in the money race. And key figures ditch Hillary. Obama now
needs about 70 delegates to attain the "magic number" of 2025, so we're
dropping Clinton's chances drop to 0.9 points to 0.7 percent. For every 10 delegates Obama wins, Clinton will drop another 0.1 until … let's just say she'll need a snorkel.
Obama
did not declare victory Tuesday night, but he came about as close as
one can get. "You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination
for president of the United States," he told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd.
He needed only 17 pledged delegates to secure a majority. In Kentucky,
it looks like he won about 14; in Oregon, about 30. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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It’s one thing to damn with faint praise. It’s another to
kill with enthusiastc praise. And that seemed to be Barack Obama’s partial goal
in his speech in Des Moines
tonight.
At times, Obama sounded like a Clinton surrogate. He called her “one of the
most formidable candidates to ever run for this office.” He complimented “her
courage, her commitment and her perseverance.” He even borrowed a line straight
out of Clinton’s
talking points: “In her thirty-five
years of public service, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has never given up
on her fight for the American people,” he said. [E.A.] I half expected him to say Clinton is "ready to lead on Day One."
It’s no surprise that Obama has softened on Clinton. The reverse is true, too. Clinton
insisted tonight that Democrats will unite behind the nominee—she practically
ordered them to, which may be necessary given that nearly half of Kentucy Dems
said they would not support Obama in a general election against John McCain.
But as Obama complements her, he’s paving the way for her
exit. It’s like the euphoria they say comes over you just before death. “No
matter how this primary ends,” Obama said, “Senator Clinton has shattered myths
and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and
yours will come of age.”
This will no doubt get the “dream ticket” fans clucking
again. Look, they’re healing! But
really, it shows just how easy it is to be generous when you’ve won.
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Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight in Louisville was two speeches in one. On the one hand, she seemed more determined than ever to campaign through June 3, seat Florida and Michigan, and reach the “2,210” delegates necessary to win the nomination. But she was simultaneously conciliatory, repeating how she would do everything she can to help a Democrat win in November. She tempered that a bit by saying she’d “support the Democratic nominee, whoever she may be.” But even so, it’s not a pledge you make if you think you’re going to win the race.
How can she have it both ways? Easy. She’s still challenging Obama, but only on process—not on issues. She announced that she is “winning the popular vote,” but no one truly believes that’s an untainted number if you count Florida and Michigan. (Even if you don’t, it’s sketchy.) She dropped the 2,210 figure as the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, but again, she’s the only one counting that way. She still says she’s “ready, willing and able to lead,” but no longer says she’s the only such candidate.
Given this double-speak, Clinton’s goal seems to be shifting. Plan A is still to win the nomination. But Plan B is to preserve her reputation as a fighter. That means campaigning hard in the remaining states, heading to Florida tomorrow to renew calls to seat the delegation, and arguing that she’s most capable of winning the presidency. None of that will hurt Obama—and that’s exactly why it’s OK for her to continue. There’s almost a tacit agreement that Obama will focus on John McCain while Clinton maintains her “fighter” status. As long as she can achieve Plan B without permanently damaging the person she knows to be the all-but-inevitable nominee, there’s no reason to drop out. She’s been in this dozens of weeks; what’s another two?
She’s still fighting, but it’s fighting for fighting’s sake.
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Despite Hillary Clinton’s dominating win in Kentucky this evening, Barack Obama is still going to win enough pledged delegates to own the majority in that metric. He who holds the pledged-delegate majority holds the key to the kingdom, we’re told. But that doesn’t mean Clinton’s win will be for naught. Her queen-size victory may be enough to fortify her superdelegate friends who are still wary of flooding to Obama … for another week or two.
There's no way to be sure of the exact numbers quite yet, but according to Slate’s Delegate Calculator, Obama stands to gain somewhere around 15 to 18 pledged delegates from the Bluegrass State. That opportunity, combined with a likely win in Oregon, should net him between 40 and 50 pledged delegates this evening. Coming into these primaries, DemConWatch had him 108 away from the 2,025 needed for the nomination. If he grabs 40 to 50, that means he’ll need 70 more superdelegates at most.
(Note: We’re using 2,025 as the majority of delegates necessary. This does not include Michigan and Florida. Obama would only need a handful of extra superdelegates to achieve a majority with the two naughty states included.)
Seventy is a lot of superdelegates to get immediately following a win in Oregon, but it’s not a totally unrealistic scenario. Plenty of superdelegates (Pelosi, Carter, and Reid included) have said they will vote for whoever wins the most pledged delegates, and Barack Obama will own that title after tonight. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out and publicly back Obama, especially with such an embarrassing loss in Kentucky. Clinton won more than 70 percent of the white vote, and more than 30 percent of voters say they’d rather vote for McCain than Obama in November. Those aren’t the prettiest numbers to endorse.
So, instead, we’re likely to see the same steady superdelegate stream to Obama that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. But that still means Clinton is going to be mathematically defeated sooner rather than later. At that point, the chorus chanting for her withdrawal will be deafening. Just ask Mike Huckabee.
UPDATE 9:29 p.m: Hawk-eyed reader Titbug reminds us that Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Clinton supporter, has said she'll back the pledged delegate and popular vote leader. A list of superdelegates using pledged-delegate tallies as the deciding factor is available here.
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Another election night, another parsing of the exit polls. As usual, these numbers come from CNN and will probably evolve as the night goes on and the networks receive more waves of exit polls. The gist: As in West Virginia, it’s a sweep, no matter the demographic.
- Nearly the same proportion of men (62 percent) voted for Hillary Clinton as voted for Barack Obama (67 percent).
- Sixty-two percent of voters think Clinton is more likely to win in November. Thirty-five percent of voters say Obama is more likely to win, 17 percent of whom voted for Clinton anyway.
- Forty-two percent of voters say Obama should not pick Clinton as his running mate, 50 percent of whom were Clinton supporters. Twenty-one percent of those who say he should pick Clinton are Obama supporters.
- Thirty-nine percent of college graduates supported Obama; 25 percent of non-college-educated voters supported him.
- Sixty-four percent of voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy. That’s higher than her honesty numbers nationally. More people believe Obama is untrustworthy than think he’s honest.
- Thirty-three percent of voters say they’ll vote for McCain over Obama in November. Eighty-three percent of them are Clinton supporters.
- Seventy-two percent of white voters supported Clinton. Nineteen percent of white voters say race was important in their vote—88 percent of whom voted for Clinton.
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Another quirk of Oregon’s mail-in voting system is the way exit polls are being conducted. Normally, polling firms set up stations at polling places across the state and selectively interview voters as they emerge. The difference in Oregon is that polling firms are calling voters at home.
It’s hard to pinpoint what difference this makes in the numbers, especially since exit polls are unreliable to begin with. But consider these factors:
Young people are less likely to own a home phone, which means they could be underrepresented in polls. Few people actually fill out the contact information section of their mail-in ballots. Normal exit polls are self-selective to an extent, since you’re going to get people who are less shy or hurried; your average voter is more likely to pick up the phone than talk to a stranger in person. Normal exit polls catch voters fresh out of the voting booth; phone surveys rely on many voters who cast their ballots weeks before.
Oregon relied on phone surveys in 2004 and the results weren’t disputed. But they were also less scrutinized, since John Kerry had the nomination locked up by then. When looking at tonight’s demographic breakdowns, it’s worth keeping methodology in mind.
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Story lines in this election have been determined as often by timing as by actual events. Two weeks ago, networks called Barack Obama’s win in North Carolina hours before they called Clinton’s Indiana win, producing wishy-washy headlines like NBC’s "CLINTON THE 'APPARENT' WINNER IN INDIANA." Or remember how people referred to Clintons’ "double-digit" Pennsylvania win, only to discover the next day that she’d actually won by 9.2 points. Or in Nevada, where we learned late in the game that Obama had somehow won more delegates than Clinton.
Tonight’s timing is especially favorable to Clinton. Kentucky results start coming in at 7 p.m. ET, while Oregon results don’t appear until 11 p.m. ET. That leaves four hours for what’s expected to be a Clinton thumping to sink in.
If Oregon came first, the narrative would be, Obama racks up another slew of pledged delegates—can Clinton make a last stand in Kentucky? But since it’s the other way around, it will be, Clinton trounces Obama once again among white working-class voters—has Obama improved at all since West Virginia? Clinton's speech in Louisville, Ky., will have a victory to back it up, whereas Obama won't have decisive results until after he's done speechifying in Des Moines.
That’s not to say the order of the primaries will determine the outcome of the nomination. In the grand scheme, Obama’s weakness among blue-collar voters isn’t as drastic as Clinton’s current weakness among elected delegates. But thanks to the international-time-zone system, Clinton gets to set the tone for the night.
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On normal election nights, results start trickling in when polls close, but it sometimes takes hours for enough precincts to report that you can declare a winner. You end up waiting for areas like Gary, Ind., to get their act together and report. As a result, the early returns often skew toward one candidate or another, only to reverse later in the night.
But tonight, we’re told, things will be different. Oregon conducts its primary using entirely mail-in ballots, which means more than half of the results should be in by the time polls close at 11 p.m. ET. So even though the time difference will keep East Coasters up late, it probably won’t take long to announce a winner.
That doesn’t mean early results won’t be skewed early on. It just means the bias won’t be geographic. (In Indiana, Gary was a known Obama stronghold, which meant that networks couldn’t call the state for Clinton until that city had reported.) Rather, the last votes will come from people who turned in their ballots in person Monday or Tuesday instead of mailing them in soon after May 1, when they were sent out. In other words, the procrastinators.
Procrastinators, needless to say, tend to be younger than their early-mailing counterparts, which suggests that last-minute voters will likely skew slightly toward Obama. “If [the margin] comes out Obama in the first flush, I think it will grow,” says Phil Keisling, former Oregon secretary of state and a strong advocate of mail-in voting.
Some counties are more likely to procrastinate than others. Multnomah County, the state’s largest county, happens to include Portland, the state’s slacker capital. (Eugene, Ore., comes in a close second.) “They take longer to get their ballots in,” says Scott Moore, a spokesman for the Oregon secretary of state.
But when it comes to voting, procrastination can be a good
thing. “It’s a smart procrastinator vote,” Keisling said. In 2004, there were
eight Democratic races on the Oregon ballot (PDF), plus a couple dozen non-partisan offices. The mail-in system lets voters take their time learning about
the various races, rather than hastily circling names they see for the first
time on election day.
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Oregon Democrat Steve Novick has become a media darling in recent weeks. Yes, he’s the scrappy underdog in his state’s senatorial primary. Yes, he has an exceptional background, having earned a law degree from Harvard at age 21. But let’s be honest. You know about him because of his hook hand.
Novick has made his hook the centerpiece of his campaign. His smart political spots don’t try to avoid the prosthesis. They show it off. In the best-known ad, he cracks open a beer with the hook.
This would make Novick part of a long tradition of congressmen with deformed hands. You’ve got Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost three fingers on his left hand in a meat grinding accident. There’s Rahm Emanuel, who in high school sliced his finger in an Arby’s machine then went for a swim in Lake Michigan. Surgery left him with a stub for a middle finger. He still uses the stub regularly.
Former senators with manual problems include Bob Dole, who carried a pen in his paralyzed right hand to signal that he couldn’t shake hands properly, and Max Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam after bending down to pick up a grenade.
Others?
Update 1:35 p.m.: Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake lost the tip of his right index finger in an alfalfa field when he was 5.
Update 3:31 p.m.: Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii lost his arm in Italy in 1945 after a grenade exploded at close range.
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For a while earlier today, Yahoo! News had this photo illustrating an article about alleged White House plans to attack Iran -- a piece that had nothing to do with John McCain.
The photo's fixed now. Maybe Obama's attempts to tie McCain to Bush are paying off.
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For a candidate trying to combat portrayals of himself as a fey elitist, Obama could be choosing his speaking venues more carefully.
A headline in today’s Des Moines Register announces that Obama “returns to D.M. today for east-side rally.” The city’s east side is home to many of the sort of white, working-class voters Obama has struggled to win over; you’d think he was trying to reach out. But read further down, and you see that it’s actually the “East Village” where he’s speaking.
Trailhead reader and Obama supporter Doug Cutchins describes his disappointment: “[T]he East Village is a wholly different entity – it’s the gentrified, buy-warehouses-and-turn-them-into-condos-with-an-art-gallery neighborhood of Des Moines. Yuppie latte central. So instead of reaching out, he’s playing to his base (and stereotypes).”
Obama might as well be holding his rally in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Here’s how Adam Nagourney described the area in the New York Times back in December: “The East Village streets, spread out under the State Capitol, were aglow with lights — lavender, icy blue and, of course, red and green — strung out for Christmas. They were bustling with boutiques, bookstores, coffee shops, culinary stores and Smash, an edgy T-shirt shop where the proprietors were listening to Band of Horses while making slightly off-color T-shirts celebrating the Iowa caucuses.”
You can’t blame Obama for wanting to return to the site of his first major victory, and the rally is just blocks from Iowa campaign headquarters. But Clinton’s Kentucky win will be yet another reminder of Obama’s weakness among blue-collar whites. In the past week, Clinton has dropped her argument that Obama can’t win this group, presumably because of the negative reaction to her comment about “hard-working white Americans.” But with venue selection like this, Obama is practically making it for her.
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Barack Obama stepped up his anti-lobbyist rhetoric yesterday after a fifth McCain staffer, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, resigned due to lobbying ties. Obama took the opportunity to reiterate his stance on lobbyists: “We're not gonna take money from PACs, we're not gonna take money from federally registered lobbyists, because we want to be accountable to the American people.”
But it’s almost impossible to get elected without relying to some degree on lobbyists, and the Obama campaign is no exception. Candidates need to know the best-connected people in Washington; and the best-connected people in Washington tend to lobby. So, naturally, any candidate needs to make some exceptions. Here’s a rundown of the campaign’s lobbying loopholes, from smallest to largest:
State and local lobbyists are OK. In January, former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges became Obama’s national co-chair, despite having founded the state-based lobbying firm Hodges Consulting Group in 2003. Likewise, his New Hampshire co-chair is a state lobbyist for the pharmaceutical and financial services industries. Taking money and services from state lobbyists is fair game, Obama says, because he doesn’t have any influence on the state level. But that didn’t stop him from criticizing John Edwards in January when it was revealed that a contributor of his was a state lobbyist. So when you hear the candidates talk about rejecting “Washington lobbyists,” remember that “Washington” is a qualifier.
Employers of lobbyists are OK. Obama has taken $15 million from lawyers/law firms, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and many of those firms employ lobbyists. Clinton has taken slightly more from this group ($15.4 million) while McCain has taken less ($4.2 million).
Employees of firms that lobby are OK. Take Tom Daschle. The former senator was an early and avid Obama supporter and is now a national campaign co-chair. Daschle is not himself a federally registered lobbyist, but he works at Alston & Bird, a firm that employs federally registered lobbyists and raked in $2.6 million in lobbying fees in 2004.
Advice is OK. Obama does not ban even current lobbyists from lending advice to the campaign—which could be considered an “in kind” contribution. Moses Mercado, a former adviser to Dick Gephardt and a lobbyist for Ogilvy Government Relations, volunteers his advice and time for the campaign but declined to be on payroll.
Spouses and family members are OK. Even if being a lobbyist makes you an untouchable scumbag, that doesn’t mean your spouse is. Back in December, The Hill reported that an Obama fundraiser had encouraged a lobbyist to have his wife contribute. “I was quite taken aback,” the lobbyist said. There’s currently no database of spouse contributions.
Former and future lobbyists are OK. The Obama campaign restricts current lobbyists from joining the campaign. But a bunch of former lobbyists have helped out—including deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, Teal Baker, and Emmett Beliveau—who could easily slip back onto K Street once the campaign is over. Obama now has 14 bundlers who are also federally registered lobbyists, but they are currently inactive, according to Public Citizen. (Clinton has 22 lobbyist bundlers; McCain has 70.) However, campaign-finance reformers point out that no campaign has ever taken the step of banning current and former lobbyists. “It’s hard to come up with any stronger of a firewall,” says Craig Holman of Public Citizen.
That’s not to say there isn’t a distinction between Obama and McCain. “The McCain campaign, you can’t spit without hitting another lobbyist there,” says David Donnelly, director of the Public Campaign Action Fund.
Likewise, Obama has kept lobbyists at arm's length all along, while McCain’s campaign only instituted its ethics policy last week after two embarrassing departures. (Regional campaign manager Doug Davenport and Republican convention chief Doug Goodyear had both represented the military government in Burma.) “I believe he now understands that it is going to hurt him,” says Holman. “That’s why he’s taken this new ethics pledge. He recognizes Obama has gained the high road.”
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Obama won't declare victory after Tuesday, but only because the
media will do it for him. Clinton's chances sag another 0.1 point to 1.6 percent.
Despite
reports that Barack Obama would declare victory after May 20, when he's
expected to secure a majority of pledged delegates, he's now expected to keep mum.
The reason: Better to let Clinton exit with dignity than to appear to
be forcing her out of the race. This logic reflects the Obama camp's
supreme confidence that the nomination is in the bag.
Media outlets seem to agree. Just look at today's top New York Times headlines. "McCain To Rely on Party Money Against Obama" doesn't even pretend not to know who the nominee will be. Another piece examines
what a Clinton loss means for women: It's either "a historic if
incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high
office in the first place." Look for more postmortems after Tuesday's
race, barring a Clinton sweep.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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While national security issues have gobbled up most news space over the past week, a couple of harsh analyses of John McCain’s economic plan have sailed under the radar.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund* released a study yesterday concluding that McCain’s plan would create a cumulative debt of $12.7 trillion by 2017—the highest debt since 1951. Corporate tax cuts, a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and an extension of the Bush tax cuts—all staples of the McCain plan—would cost significantly more than the senator’s proposed earmarks cuts and discretionary spending freeze would provide, the study argues. (PDF here.)
Also this week, FactCheck.org calls McCain’s suggestion that he can balance the budget while extending Bush’s tax cuts “dubious at best.” The main problem: Getting rid of earmarks doesn’t mean the money won’t get spent. It just means it doesn’t happen in the form of earmarks. As the writers phrase it, “earmarks often simply tell agencies how to spend money that they are already getting.” And when it comes to discretionary spending, McCain hasn’t detailed what areas he would cut. He says he would exempt military spending, so that’s out. And because the nondefense budget is only $540 billion, he would still have to convince Congress to “slash 18.5 percent of the funding for everything else in the discretionary budget—things like veterans' health benefits, highway construction, elementary and secondary education, and immigration services.”
McCain’s economic plan has its defenders. But neither they nor the McCain campaign has produced numbers to back up the budget-balancing claims. (At least not that I’ve seen.) The argument seems to be that cutting taxes raises revenues, but even McCain’s own senior policy adviser has rejected that claim in the past. Spokesman Brian Rogers dismissed the CAP study as coming from “a left-wing Democratic front group” but did not provide alternative figures. “The fact that they falsely criticize Sen. McCain’s policy proposals is unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising,” he wrote in an e-mail.
*Clarification: We originally credited the Center for American Progress. In fact, it's the Action Fund, the center's 501(c)(4) sister affiliate, that published the report.
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The John Edwards endorsement spawns imitators, and Republicans set
their sights on Obama. Clinton's chances wane another 0.1 points to 1.7 percent.
Obama
nabbed a slew of endorsements yesterday on the heels of Edwards'
announcement, including California duo Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard
Berman. Waxman's backing doesn't carry the weight of a Pelosi or a
Reid, but as chair of the House oversight committee, he's considered
one of the most powerful congressmen around. (His may be the most feared mustache
in Washington.) Berman chairs the chamber's foreign-affairs committee,
lending Obama another bit of global-policy cred. Today, fellow
California Rep. Pete Stark followed suit.
That puts Obama 127.5 delegates away from the nomination (or 121.5 if
you count seven pledged delegates who previously supported Edwards).
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Mike Huckabee’s penchant for dark humor was a minor obsession of ours back when he was still in the race. So it’s good to see he’s still making people uncomfortable. Look what he just told an audience of NRA members after hearing an offstage noise:
"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak," said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."
Maybe Huckabee didn’t get the memo, but assassination jokes aren’t exactly kosher right now. (Not that they ever are, but Obama supporters voice legitimate concern.) It also highlights another reason why Huckabee isn’t a serious vice-presidential pick. Combine his loose lips with the Obama campaign’s umbrage hair trigger and a gaffe-hungry media, and we’d have quips like this splashed across Drudge every week.
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A miniflap bubbled up earlier this week when Barack Obama said that the Iraq war was occupying Arabic translators who could otherwise be working in Afghanistan. OK, so he didn’t quite say that, but he almost said it. (Video here.) It was close enough that ABC still called it a “gaffe,” sparking a testy back-and-forth with campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
But there are a couple of other details Obama might want to get straight before the general election. Here’s his full quote:
So we just don’t have enough capacity right now to deal with—and it’s not just troops by the way, it’s like, Arab, uh, Arabic interpreters. Arab language speakers. We only have a certain number of them. And if they’re all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them. And obviously they may not speak Arabic, but the various dialects that they speak in Afghanistan, oftentimes people who speak Urdu or Pashtun or whatever the languages are, they’re going to be needed in those areas. And a lot of them have ended up being placed elsewhere.
In fact, Urdu is the national language of Pakistan but isn’t spoken in Afghanistan, according to the trusty CIA World Factbook. The Obama campaign points to the presence of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, but it seems clear that’s not what Obama meant by “the various dialects that they speak in Afghanistan.” And Pashtun, which is the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, is not a language. The language is Pashto, sometimes rendered as Pashtu.
Democrats hyperventilated when John McCain appeared to mix up Sunnis and Shiites during his Middle East trip last month. But Obama is considered more vulnerable on foreign policy than McCain is. Slip-ups, however minor, will get interpreted by some as indicators of ignorance or inexperience. Even if Obama's larger point is valid—that Iraq is sucking resources from other conflicts—it's the details that may come back to bite him.
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The biggest news in John McCain’s "2013" speech today is his suggestion that he’d have troops out of Iraq:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.
It’s purely hypothetical—McCain says it’s "what I would hope to have achieved" after his first term—but it’s still a rhetorical shift for McCain. Back in January, he slammed Mitt Romney for what McCain (misleadingly) said was Romney’s commitment to timetables for withdrawal. Until now, he has even declined to say when he’d like to start pulling troops out, let alone when he’d like to have "most" of them out.
Even hinting at a withdrawal date brings McCain way over from his hawkish "100 years" stance to a more palatable middle (even though "100 years" got twisted to sound more hawkish than it was). In the past, McCain has called a withdrawal date tantamount to "chaos, genocide" that would cede Iraq to al-Qaida. But today’s comments will reassure voters that he’s not as excited about keeping troops in Mesopotamia as his opponents claim. No doubt McCain would say that nothing has changed—that he has always "hoped" to be out as soon as possible, but that we’ll only exit once we’ve "won." But in the ears of voters, a date—however vague—sounds a lot more moderate than no date.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, remains tethered to his pledge to have troops out within 16 months—a promise that seems extremely dubious to many experts. He’s had plenty of chances to mitigate that stance, most recently in the CBS debate, when Charlie Gibson asked him whether his pledge was "rock-hard." But Obama refused to wobble. "The president sets the mission," he told Gibson.
The difference now is that McCain has wiggle room where Obama does not. If Obama suggests he might stick around in Iraq for a few more years, he’ll be accused of breaking his pledge. If McCain suggests he’d pull out troops earlier than expected, no one will hold it against him. Obama still has his "I opposed the war" trump card, but McCain’s flexibility in the future could be a strong a weapon as Obama’s correctness in the past.
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Endorsements
from formerly coy John Edwards and the United Steelworkers for Obama
are two more nails in the Clinton coffin. Clinton's odds drop 1.1 to 1.8 percent.
Whatever momentum Clinton picked up from her 41-point West Virginia win
the Obama camp snuffed out with the Edwards coup de grâce. Edwards sat
on his endorsement until long after its game-changing power expired, so
the damage to Clinton's flicker of a campaign is more symbolic than
anything. The crux of his "everyone's doing it" speech last night in Michigan
was that he was mimicking the will of the voters. Because he waited,
Edwards' decision to finally choose a horse reinforces the "it's over"
story line. Watch this narrative get another boost next week when Obama
clinches the pledged delegate lead for good. (He'll hit a majority of
the 3,254 pledged delegates even if he narrowly loses Oregon.)
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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John McCain’s speech on his vision for America may have been comically sunny, but it’s got one nugget of genuine inspiration:
"My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."
As anyone who watches C-SPAN knows, the British Parliament’s Question Time makes the most entertaining (and informative) political viewing imaginable. (See here, here, and here.) Members of parliament get to question, prod, and berate the prime minister into defending the government’s stances. Candor is expected, although PMs dodge questions all the time, and witty barbs are often rewarded with cheers and desk-pounding.
Q&A sessions in the House and Senate wouldn’t be the same. The American chambers are a bit more subdued than their British counterparts, and the rhetorical flourishes of American congressmen and congresswomen aren't as impressive. But certain members of Congress would be in their element. Imagine Joe Biden shredding the president over Iraq. Or Barney Frank taking him to task for his tax plan. The policy battles that normally take place through dry memos and the occasional floor speech would become spectator sports. It would also be catnip for journalists.
McCain’s proposal is especially bold given the chances of an overwhelmingly Democratic congress in 2009. But right now, it gives McCain the moral high ground when it comes to transparency. McCain and Obama are locked in something of a transparency arms race. Both senators have released tax returns. McCain promises to hold weekly press conferences. Obama pledges to post more information about federal spending online. By the end of this election, I expect the candidates to release their teenage diaries. But McCain’s Question Time proposal is hard to beat. Unless Obama pledges to install a live feed in Cabinet meetings, McCain may have won this round.
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If you're looking for entertainment, watch Republican candidates try to imitate Barack Obama’s hope/change shtick. In his now-famous Tuesday night memo to Republicans, NRCC Chair Tom Cole wrote that "Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for." In his speech this morning in Columbus, John McCain took Cole up on his offer, although today he took the utopian imaginings a little far.
He not only pledged to have "most" American troops home from Iraq by 2013 (more on that later), but also laid out a litany of other sunny scenarios: "The Iraq War has been won. … The United States and its allies have made great progress in advancing nuclear security. … The size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased. … The United States has experienced several years of robust economic growth. … Health care has become more accessible to more Americans than at any other time in history. … Obesity rates among the young and the disease they engender are stabilized and beginning to decline. … The United States is well on the way to independence from foreign sources of oil."” (McCain’s new ad, "2013," has a similar message.)
Skepticism was the first response, with one reporter calling McCain’s speech a "magic carpet ride." But McCain knows what he’s up against. It’s official that 2008 is a "change election," whatever that means, and Obama has patented his own brand of Optimism™. McCain can’t let himself get painted as the curmudgeon to Obama’s visionary. When Clinton mocked Obama’s highfalutin tone, it came off as crass and mean-spirited. In this general election, with GOP approval ratings at historic lows, the risk of getting pegged as the naysayer is even greater.
Hence the blindingly sunny forecast. "I cannot guarantee I will have achieved these things," McCain said in the speech. But that’s not the point. No one actually expects complete success. It’s about setting the rhetorical tone. McCain is pre-emptively fending off charges of being the "can’t-do" candidate. But he has to spin it as his own positive agenda, without giving the impression he’s just trying to out-Obama Obama.
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Ever since John Edwards dropped out in January “so that history can blaze its path,” he has been careful not to get in history’s way. Even when his endorsement would have carried real weight—before North Carolina, for example—he was quiet. It almost seemed like he was going far out of his way to make sure his endorsement didn’t matter.
Well, sorry John, but it still matters. Not because it will change the race’s outcome—that was the point of waiting. It matters because it helps redeem Obama among the white working class.
The story line coming out of Obama’s West Virginia thumping is that white working-class voters abandoned him in record numbers, and for possibly ugly reasons. Clinton picked up 69 percent of the white vote, and of the voters who said race influenced their vote, 82 percent went for Clinton. No one thinks Obama’s 40-point loss was enough to derail his campaign. But it does raise tough questions about whether Democrats want a nominee with such paltry support among a potentially key demographic. To put it bluntly: With Kentucky just around the corner, Obama needed some white cred.
Enter John Edwards. By endorsing Obama now, Edwards isn’t handing him the nomination. He’s minimizing the damage wrought upon the all-but-inevitable nominee. Clinton insists a drawn-out election isn’t hurting the party. But it is clearly exposing huge holes in each candidate’s armor. By weighing in now, Edwards is reassuring Democrats—and perhaps telegraphing to Kentucky voters—that Obama is a safe choice.
Plus, Edwards is still influential. Just look at the 7 percent of the vote he picked up in West Virginia—impressive for someone who dropped out more than three months ago. If Edwards supporters in Kentucky take his cue and vote for Obama, it could tighten the margin of victory a bit. Also, cue speculation that Edwards’ 19 delegates will now swing to Obama, pushing him ever closer to 2025. (See Slate’s Explainer on what happens to Edwards’ delegates.) Expect renewed VP speculation as well, especially if Edwards paints himself as the man who could deliver the working class to Obama.
But Edwards’ endorsement isn’t the last round of battle; it’s the first round of cleanup. Both Democratic candidates insist the party will unite once a nominee is chosen. Edwards’ move tells party officials, more than any endorsement so far, that that moment has arrived.
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Twenty-four hours later, the verdict seems to be that West Virginia’s results weren’t ideal for Obama, but they haven’t hurt him in any lasting way. Still, he’d no doubt prefer to avoid repeating the same experience in Kentucky, a state that’s a lot like West Virginia, but bigger. Can Obama prevent another rout?
The demographics suggest it will be tough. Kentucky is slightly less overwhelmingly white than West Virginia—90.2 percent instead of 94.9 percent—and has a black population of 7.5 percent compared to West Virginia’s 3.3 percent. But if Clinton attracts 69 percent of the white vote, as she did in West Virginia, there’s not much Obama can do to lessen the blow, even if he sways 90 percent of African-American voters. And look at the populations: Kentucky has 4.2 million people; West Virginia had only 1.8 million. After netting about 150,000 votes in West Virginia, Clinton could plausibly net twice that in Kentucky. A win of that size wouldn’t close Obama’s popular vote lead—unless you count Florida and Michigan, which she does—but it would bring her within striking distance, especially if she manages to keep Obama’s Oregon lead in the single digits.
Obama also has the (chosen) disadvantage of not visiting Kentucky. We’ve seen that when he shows his face in a state, as he did in Pennsylvania, he cuts into Clinton’s lead. But Obama logged one paltry stop in West Virginia before the primary, and one in Louisville on Monday, with no more events planned. If 90 percent of life is showing up, Obama hasn’t gotten the message. His strategy of focusing on the general election—he’s in Michigan now—may well pay off. But ignoring Clinton might not work so well if she’s racking up vast margins.
Not that Obama isn’t competing there. He has TV spots up across the state touting his ethics legislation and commitment to “clean coal.” The campaign is also sending out mailers that show Obama standing in front of a big gleaming cross. (Smart move, given many Americans’ impassioned determination to believe that Obama is Muslim.)
It’s clear Obama thinks he can afford to lose Kentucky—even by a landslide. And he’s probably right. He’s 140 delegates away from the nomination, which is ultimately the only metric that counts. But at the same time, he’s giving Clinton yet another reason to hang on through June 3, marshal her own popular vote numbers (counting Florida, Michigan, and Puerto Rico), and make one final plea to supers to make her the nominee.
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Tous les blogs are aflutter today, less over Clinton’s West Virginia victory than over Democrat Travis Childers’ thumping of Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s First District special election. Despite the NRCC sinking $1.8 million into the race—plus robocalls from President Bush and a personal visit by Dick Cheney—Childers managed to pull off a 54-46 win in a district held by the GOP since 1994.
This is now the third special election—the first was for Dennis Hastert’s seat in Illinois’ 14th District, then Don Cazayoux’s Louisiana victory on May 3—in which a Democrat has defeated a Republican on his own turf.
How bad is this for the GOP? Judging by NRCC chief Tom Cole’s panicked memo last night, pretty bad.
One easy way to predict how screwed Republicans are is to compare these three districts with other Republican-held House districts that won’t have an incumbent running in November. Here’s each district’s Partisan Voter Index, which measures how strongly a district leaned over the past two presidential elections.
Special elections already won by Democrats:
IL-14: R +5
LA-6: R+7
MS-01: R+10
Districts held by retiring Republicans:
AL-2: R+13
AZ-1: R+2
CA-4: R+11
CA-52: R+9
CO-6: R+10
FL-15: R+4
IL-11: R+1
IL-18: R+5
KY-2: R+13
LA-4: R+7
MN-3: R+1
MO-9: R+7
MS-3: R+13
NM-1: D+2
NM-2: R+6
NJ-3: D+3
NJ-7: R+1
NY-25: D+3
NY-26: R+3
OH-7: R+6
OH-15: R+1
OH-16: R+4
PA-5: R+10
VA-11: R+1
WY-At large: R+19
Now for some pseudoscience. If you average out the PVIs of the districts Democrats have already won, you get 7.3. Average out the PVIs of the districts that vote in November, and you get 5.6. In other words, on average, the districts already won by Democrats are more Republican than the nonincumbent GOP district Democrats need to win in November.
Of course, these special elections aren’t exactly typical. Childers campaigned on a pro-life, pro-gun platform that his Yankee counterparts can’t exactly emulate. Nor was Cazayoux’s Louisiana win particularly overwhelming. But as a general indicator, the races give House Republicans reason to squirm.
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The past 24 hours have been a combination of sky highs and brutal
lows for Hillary Clinton. She won by double digits in West Virginia—one
of her biggest victories yet. But a superdelegate shutout (Obama won
four today to her zero) and a crippling campaign debt suggest the
victory will be short-lived. We'll bump her up 1.3 points to 2.9 percent, if only because tonight's victory all but guarantees she'll stick around a few more weeks.
First, the good news: Clinton's West Virginia victory gives her what she most desperately needs—arguments.
Her win, while expected, managed to suck away much of Obama's normal
coalition (minus blacks, who made up 4 percent of the electorate). She
can say Obama is weakening, that he's vulnerable in the general, and
that voters want her to stick it out. Not even a landslide victory
would earn Clinton enough pledged delegates to challenge Obama's tally,
and Obama's popular-vote lead
remains daunting. But she now has an excuse to stay in. In the words of
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Clinton is now an "understudy candidate,"
waiting in the wings to see if Obama catches the flu.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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CNN’s projecting that Hillary Clinton will win West Virginia big time. The question is how, if at all, this can help her. She’s been running out of arguments for weeks. But here are a few ways she can spin today's results:
1) Obama’s coalition is splintering. Clinton’s major argument has been that Obama can’t win working-class white voters, and that he relies on too narrow a coalition. Well, tonight helps her case. Clinton won almost every single demographic normally loyal to Obama. She won all income slices, although less decisively among wealthier voters. She won 54 percent of independents, as well as 59 percent of conservatives. She took college graduates by 57 percent. (She even won voters with postgraduate work, 51-47. Hey now!) And, most surprisingly, she won young voters (age 17-29) with 57 percent. Everyone expected Clinton to win West Virginia because of its demographics—they didn’t expect Obama to slip quite so much among his usual fans.
2) He’s too vulnerable. It looked like Obama’s campaign disasters—the Rev. Wright, “bitter,” the flag pin—didn’t hurt him much in Indiana and North Carolina. In West Virginia, though, they clearly did. Fifty-one percent of voters told pollsters they thought Obama shares Wright’s views. Only 47 percent of voters said Obama shares their values—a pretty clear stand-in for questions of patriotism. Clinton could argue that these voters are the tip of a big, judgmental iceberg of general election voters. If you think Obama’s having trouble now, wait till all the racists come out of the woodwork in November.
3) Economy blues. Consider this: Sixty-four percent of voters named the economy as their top issue. At the same time, a whopping 63 percent said her gas tax holiday proposal was a good idea. That despite almost unanimous opposition to the idea by experts. Clinton can now say she’s got the people on her side. She can also argue that if the economy crashes between now and November, she stands to benefit much more than Obama.
4) It’s not over! According to Fox News, 78 percent of voters think Clinton should stay in the race. That includes a good chunk of Obama supporters. If Clinton needs to persuade superdelegates to hold their tongues until June 3, this is the stat she’ll cite. And right now, buying time is the best thing Clinton can do.
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This presidential race is full of celebrity look-alikes. Hillary Clinton and Star Trek's Tasha Yar. Fred Thompson and Javier Bardem. But rarely does someone intimately involved in the race look exactly like someone else intimately involved in the race. Behold the eerie resemblance of new Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr to America's most famous pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
Other things the two men have in common: outspoken personalities, a love of TV cameras, and a roughly equal chance of winning the presidency.
Thanks to Slate's Bill Smee for spotting the resemblance.
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Following up on my last item on West Virginia, a reader spotted another problem with Clinton’s claim that “[e]very nominee has carried the state’s primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916.”
“How many of those West Virginia primaries only had one candidate on the ballot?” Jason Bryant asks. “WV is about the 50th contest in this primary season. If it's been that way for a long time then it seems there wouldn't have been many contests where everyone other than the front runner hadn't dropped out.”
It’s true, West Virginia has traditionally been one of the last states to vote. This year, it’s the 51st contest. In 2004, it was the 40th. It came 43rd in 2000. Bill Clinton was the presumptive nominee before West Virginia’s primary in 1992, as was Michael Dukakis by the time he won the state by a landslide in May of 1988.
So really, it’s not that West Virginia is a litmus test for who becomes the Democratic nominee; it’s that the nominee is usually already decided by the time West Virginia rolls around. It looks like this year will be the exception.
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Hillary Clinton will declare victory in the West Virginia primary tonight against a senator who no longer even considers himself her opponent. While Clinton is scheduled to be in Charleston, W.Va., for Election Night celebrations, Barack Obama will be in Missouri, a state that held its primary more than three months ago. His message couldn’t be clearer: He is now campaigning against John McCain.
This seems extraordinarily unwise. While one can argue the merits of downplaying an unwinnable battle against an opponent who can’t win the war, Obama stands the risk of alienating Democrats who do not yet support him. It resembles the familiar architecture of college rivalries; in order to belittle its counterpart, one school inevitably acts like it’s too good to even compete.
Here’s the speech Obama should be delivering tonight somewhere in West Virginia—say, Morgantown, where there’s a big university.
Some of you may be surprised to see me here tonight. For the past several weeks, it has been clear that Senator Clinton held a commanding lead in West Virginia, and I congratulate her on her victory tonight.
You know, a lot of the senior advisers in my campaign recommended that I skip West Virginia altogether. In fact, ever since we won North Carolina last week and fought to nearly a tie in Indiana, many people have advised that we shift the focus of the campaign to Senator McCain and the general election.
Now, I don’t mean to belittle the advice of the extraordinarily talented strategists on my campaign. Without them, we would not be here today. But let me be very clear: It would be a disservice to Senator Clinton and a disservice to the Democratic Party if we did not continue to compete in this primary as long as there are two strong candidates for the nomination.
In that spirit, I have come here tonight to thank those West Virginians who did vote for me and to say this to those who did not: In the event that I am the nominee for president in the fall, I would be honored to have your vote. I believe it is this preference for robust options in candidates that gave me the opportunity to succeed in this election, and I will not forget that.
Senator McCain will be a formidable opponent in the fall, and I understand the temptation to rev up the general election campaign as soon as possible. But charging into this important contest when the Democratic Party has yet to rally behind one candidate is, I think, unwise. So let me say it again: So long as there are two candidates, you will see me fighting for every vote in the remaining contests.
Idealistic and a tad sappy? Absolutely. To which I respond: When has that ever stopped him before? And as my fellow Trailheader Christopher Beam pointed out to me over by the coffee maker this morning, such a message from Obama might—just might—give Clinton a graceful note to end on.
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The Clinton campaign fired off a new "memo" today arguing that West Virginia is essential to winning in November: "Every nominee has carried the state’s primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916." Clinton predicts that she would beat McCain there, "based on the strength of her economic message," whereas Obama would lose.
But back in April, NBC News predicted on its electoral map that West Virginia wouldn’t be a swing state. Rather, they put it directly in McCain’s "base."
NBC’s Mark Murray explained to me the rationale. Both Al Gore and John Kerry lost West Virginia in 2000 and 2004 because of social issues like guns and abortion, even when people thought the sagging economy would put the state in the Democratic column. (Voters linked Gore with the Clinton administration’s anti-gun laws.) Clinton or Obama could face a similar fate. Sure, the economy could be such a wreck that it overshadows social issues and hands the state to a Democrat, but the past few elections suggest that’s unlikely.
"If we were doing that map now, I think no doubt she’d do better than Obama against McCain in West Virginia," Murray says, adding that they’d probably have the state lean toward McCain rather than putting it in his "base."
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John McCain has some electoral vulnerabilities, but troop-supporting usually is not one of them. It’s a little baffling, then, that he hasn’t signed on to Sen. Jim Webb’s G.I. bill to increase educational benefits for servicemen and veterans. Republicans John Warner and Chuck Hagel are on board. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have signed on, too. And today Obama attacked McCain in West Virginia for failing to support it. Why would McCain open himself up to charges that he doesn’t care about putting troops through school?
McCain says the problem is "incentives." He complains that Webb’s bill gives the same benefits to servicemen whether they serve three years or 20 years, with no added benefits for those who serve longer. Instead, he has proposed legislation that would raise benefits over a longer period of time.
That would be a valid excuse, if McCain’s bill provided as much as Webb’s bill did from the start. After all, there’s nothing wrong with giving more to people who serve longer. Incentives to stick around are only a problem if they come at the expense of soldiers who don’t make military service their career.
But, looking at the numbers, McCain’s bill appears to pay a lot less from the get-go. It gives active-duty members education benefits of $1,500 a month, which shakes out to $13,500 for a nine-month school year. That’s better than the current G.I. bill, which provides only $6,000 a year. But Webb’s version goes further, providing the maximum tuition at your state’s public university system—roughly $14,000 in many states—plus $1,000 a month to cover living costs. All of that totals more than $20,000.
But wait! McCain’s bill raises benefits down the road, right? Yes, but that’s only if you stick around for 12 years of service. And even then, benefits only get raised up to $2,000 a month, or $18,000 over nine months. That’s less than Webb’s bill gives to troops who have served three years.
There are other points of contention. For one thing, Webb’s bill isn’t cheap—estimates put its price tag anywhere from $2.5 billion to $4 billion a year. But that’s not McCain’s complaint. (You can’t really complain about supporting troops too much.) He’s concerned it will make soldiers leave the military before they otherwise would. He might have a point if his bill provided as much as Webb’s for starting servicemen. But that’s not the case.
It’s easy to see how this stance could become a general-election liability. McCain’s background makes him nearly untouchable on military issues, but refusing to give troops benefits could become a gap in the armor. You can see the attack ads now: John McCain says he’s willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years. So why doesn’t he want our soldiers to go to school?? That may be unfair, but the core point stands: If McCain is going to tether himself to the war, he should be willing to pay for it.
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Former Georgia congressman and Clinton impeacher-in-chief Bob Barr announced today that he will be seeking the presidency as a candidate of the Libertarian Party. The first name that pops to mind is Ralph Nader. Republicans fear a repeat of 2000, with Barr siphoning votes from John McCain (although it’s also possible he’d sabotage Obama). Others wonder how Barr’s candidacy will play with Ron Paul supporters.
The Texas Republican, who has slowed his candidacy to a crawl in recent months—but hasn’t dropped out!—has come under pressure to make a third-party run for the presidency. Barr’s announcement appears to have closed the door on a Paul run, at least on the Libertarian ticket.
So what does Ron Paul think of Barr’s announcement? "Our thoughts are that Bob and Ron are friends and remain friends," said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton. You can see why. Some of Barr’s words today sounded as if they could have come out of Paul’s mouth: He accused both parties of "running a charity called the United States of America" and slammed Hillary Clinton for saying she’d "obliterate Iran" if they attacked Israel.
But whatever their similarities, Benton says Paul has no plans to endorse anyone—including Barr. "Ron Paul is a Republican and he’s going to be a part of the Republican party," he says.
Paul is still campaigning in upcoming primaries, including West Virginia and Kentucky. "He’s not going to be the nominee," Benton says. But the congressman maintains a "strong following" of 6 to 8 percent in most states and plans to continue running, he says.
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Be it resolved: John McCain's proposal for a series of unmoderated debates with Barack Obama throughout the summer is “a great idea.” That's what Obama called it, but others aren’t so sure. TNR’s Noam Scheiber argues that free-for-all debates would help McCain overcome his inherent weaknesses against Obama:
They'll draw big crowds and generate lots of buzz. They'll help him get his message out for free. And, just by virtue of appearing frequently at Obama's side and having a civil debate, they'll make him look much more moderate than the Obama campaign wants him to look.
That may all be true. But it discounts what’s guaranteed to be a stark physical contrast: McCain’s shriveled firecracker standing next to Obama’s lanky coolness. Remember the 1960 presidential debates, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon less by out-arguing him than by out-dashing him. Nixon, still recovering from a leg injury, looked pale and gaunt; Kennedy was tan after campaigning in Southern California. Nixon, unfamiliar with the new medium, refused makeup and wore a suit that blended into the background. Kennedy, meanwhile, looked fit and telegenic. We’ve learned a few things since then about broadcast debates, but from an aesthetic perspective, “appearing frequently at Obama’s side” is just about the worst thing McCain can do.
Then there’s the mental factor. McCain has not performed particularly well in debates this past year. (As opposed to 2000, when he wiped the floor with Bush.) He tends to harp on points even after his opponent has parried them. (See his dogged (and incorrect) insistence at the Reagan Library debate that Mitt Romney had proposed timetables for withdrawal from Iraq.) And his best lines—such as his quip about missing Woodstock because he was “tied up at the time”—usually sound canned.
Obama isn’t about to win any debating medals. But in an unscripted setting, Obama is likely to be much quicker on his feet than McCain. And this goes to McCain’s biggest vulnerability: his age. Anything and everything McCain says will undergo a senility test. Even a whiff of marble loss, and it becomes news. Notice how Obama’s recent claim, “I’ve been in 57 states,” failed to catch on. You can bet that if McCain said that, pundits would cart him off to the retirement community. McCain’s people are hyperaware of this; see Mark Salter’s recent hissy over Obama’s claim that McCain was “losing his bearings.” What better setting for a geriatric moment than a series of unscripted debates? Then again, McCain could use these debates to prove the senility hawks wrong.
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Clinton is poised to sweep West Virginia, but Obama has finally
surged ahead in the most important contest of all: superdelegates. Dock
Clinton half a point to 1.6 percent.
We've
believed for some time that the day Obama overtakes Clinton in the
superdelegate count is the day Clinton throws in the towel. But
Friday was that day, and the towel is still there, mopping up the
Clinton campaign's blood, sweat, and tears by the bucketful. According
to the Associated Press' count,
Obama now has 277 supers to Clinton's 271. It was the last metric in
which Clinton was leading, and Obama's momentum isn't slowing any: Over
the weekend, he got seven supers to Clinton's one. Clinton campaign
Chairman Terry McAuliffe still claims
she's within "striking distance" of the popular vote. But that's only
if you count Florida, Michigan, and now Puerto Rico, which doesn't vote
in the general election. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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As part of her Superdelegate Reassurance Tour, Hillary Clinton today sent out a PowerPoint slide show measuring her performance in the 20 "tough districts" that went for Bush in 2004 but elected Democrats in 2006. She won 16 of them; Barack Obama won 4. The point being that Democrats need to win these districts in the fall and congressional candidates will need a strong top of the ticket.
The slide show then breaks down the districts’ demographics: Thirteen of the districts have more than the average proportion of seniors, Hispanics make up more than 10 percent of voters in four of them, and half of them are more than 40 percent rural.
But one thing the Clinton Power Point doesn’t point out: They’re also really, really white. Here’s the percentage of African-Americans in each of the 20 districts. Districts Obama won are in bold; the rest went for Clinton:
AZ-5: 2.8 %
AZ-8: 3.1 %
CA-11: 3.5 %
FL-16: 6.0 %
IN-2: 8.2 %
IN-8: 3.7 %
IN-9: 2.3 %
KS-2: 5.1 %
MN-1: 1.0 %
NC-11: 4.6 %
NH-1: 0.8 %
NY-19: 5.4 %
NY-24: 3.4 %
OH-18: 1.9 %
PA-10: 1.9 %
PA-4: 3.4 %
TX-22: 9.4 %
TX-23: 3.0 %
WI-8: 0.6 %
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Last week, we traced the New York Times editorial page’s growing disenchantment with Hillary Clinton, whom they endorsed back in February.
Today, the editorial board argues that Clinton has every right to stay in the race. “But …”
we believe just as strongly that Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones. We believe it would also be a terrible mistake if she launches a fight over the disqualified delegations from Florida and Michigan.
In other words, she can stay in the race as long as she doesn’t use the only weapons she has left.
This is what will, I believe, turn the remaining superdelegates against Clinton. (Even after Tuesday, they’ve been hesitant to take sides.) The only weapons she has left are ugly ones. The race case, which Clinton articulated in an interview with USA Today (“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”), is a particularly yucky line of argument. Her point isn’t new; her phrasing is. And when it’s enough to turn off Joe Conason, you know the end is nigh.
Her other case, that Florida and Michigan must be seated, isn’t as bad as the Times suggests. There will certainly be heated negotiations over how to seat the delegates, but the Obama camp isn’t putting up as big a fight as before. The reason: If the DNC halves the votes of the Florida and Michigan delegations, as it likely will, Clinton still can’t catch up. She could claim that counting Florida and Michigan means she won the popular vote, but that's a shaky leg on which to rest your candidacy when Obama wasn't on the Michigan ballot.
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Ever since the Clinton campaign went on life support earlier this week, there’s been speculation that Barack Obama could persuade Hillary to drop out by promising to pay off her campaign debt. The Huffington Post’s Tom Edsall wrote that “it is not uncommon for winning presidential campaigns to pick up some or all of a competitor's debts and obligations, although the size of Clinton's debt and her personal loans to her campaign are unprecedented - somewhere over and above $20 million.” Meanwhile, diarists at DailyKos started hyperventilating that their Obama donations would be given to subsidize Clinton’s ailing campaign. Is their fear justified?
No it’s not. Obama can’t just “pay back” Clinton’s debt. FEC rules limit contributions from one candidate committee to another at $2000, according to FEC spokesman Bob Biersack. So even if Obama wanted to cut Hillary a $10 million check, he couldn’t. Nor could he route his money through the DNC, since national party committees can only give $5000 to a candidate committee.
What Obama can do is fundraise for her. Over the past year, Obama has established a formidable online fundraising apparatus that has raked in more than $240 million since the campaign began. If he called for supporters to chip in for Clinton, or set up a joint fundraising committee, he could probably drum up some cash. How much is unclear. Obama/Clinton relations remain icy, and many Obama supporters might hesitate to cut $2300 checks for the candidate they see as overstaying her welcome in order to weaken Obama against McCain. Plus, if small-bore donors have limited funds, they’re more likely to give Obama cash for the general than to get the multi-millionaire Clinton back on her feet.
Anyway, short story, any money Obama “gives” to Clinton has yet to be raised. Donors who have contribute to his campaign between now and when Clinton drops out shouldn't worry about their dollars replenishing Clinton's coffers.
Also check out Jacob Leibenluft's Explainer, "Can a Campaign Go Bankrupt?"
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In the new issue of Time, Karen Tumulty's list of the Five Mistakes Hillary Made includes a damning anecdote from a Clinton campaign strategy session last year:
As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn
confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her
over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows,
Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their
delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to
award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider
Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and
let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much
vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"
So maybe that's why Clinton says she'd be winning if the Democrats used Republican rules. Her chief strategist thought they did!
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson tells me he's "denying on behalf of Penn" that it ever happened.
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Now that Barack Obama has all but secured the Democratic nomination, his campaign appears to be softening a bit when it comes to Michigan and Florida.
Today, the Michigan Democratic Party settled on its final proposal for divvying up the state’s delegates: Clinton gets 69 delegates, Obama gets 59. (That’s about halfway between a 50-50 split and the state’s Jan. 15 votes, which would have given Clinton 73 and Obama—or, rather, “Uncommitted”—55.) The Obama camp’s reaction? “It is clear results in January won’t be used to allocate delegates, and we agree with that decision,” said spokesman Bill Burton. Not quite a full endorsement of the plan, but it's a far cry from what they could say, given that Obama wasn’t on the ballot there.
Florida, meanwhile, has not finalized a plan to seat the delegates—the “plan” is still to seat them all. But they know that’s not realistic. More likely, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which meets on May 31, will approve a compromise deal. (Or at least to settle on a plan to submit to the Credentials Committee in June.) Last week, one member of the committee, California Rep. Garry Shay, predicted that Florida will be seated based on the January results, with each delegate getting half a vote. That seems likely, if only because the DNC gets to punish Florida for violating the rules without alienating Florida Democrats for all time.
In this case, too, it looks like the Obama camp is coming around. “I think they’ve loosened up a lot,” said a Democratic insider familiar with the seating process. “They went from suggesting 50-50 to now saying we can work something out. It doesn’t matter to them anymore. They’re looking toward the general election, and that’s far more important.”
In other words, they know they’ve already won. Obama reportedly plans to declare victory on May 20, when he’s all but guaranteed to secure a majority of pledged delegates. He currently leads by 166 pledged delegates, so losing 10 of them to Clinton in Michigan and 40 in Florida (a proportional delegate split would be 111-74) wouldn’t make him vulnerable. By May 20, it won’t matter whether or not Florida and Michigan are seated—Hillary isn’t catching up.
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Yesterday, Trailhead invited readers to imagine what would have to happen for Barack Obama to lose the Democratic nomination. And boy did you respond. You, dear readers, are a motley assortment of creative and disturbed geniuses.
Scenarios tended to fall into a few categories: embarrassing revelations, major screw-ups, Clinton ex machinas, and unfortunate occurrences. Others involved Obama turning out to be someone—or something—other than himself, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“note that you never see the Rev. & Obama in the same place!”), “the smoke monster from Lost,” Dennis Kucinich in disguise, and John McCain’s illegitimate black child. Several other scenarios involved zombie attacks and alien invasions. Yet another described a heinous Aristocrats-like stage performance by the Obama family.
We can’t possibly share them all, but here’s a sampling organized by category. Winners are at the bottom.
Embarrassing revelations:
Obama is actually 34 years old, too young to be president.—Marc Sylvestre
Video surfaces of Obama at that Rev. Wright “God Damn America” sermon that he claims he didn't attend, especially if the video shows him applauding that statement.—Brian Weber
Obama photographed raising pinky while sipping latte!—Benjamin Clark
Customs agents find one of Natalee Holloway's “Carlos ’n Charlie's Aruba” T-shirts in his luggage.—Tom Grayman
Obama’s opening his mail while being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. He drops a Hallmark card. O’Reilly helpfully picks it up for him and reads the inscription: “Barack: Thanks for the visa! See you soon! Your BFF, Nadhmi.”—Boyd Reed
Pictures of an 8-year-old Obama in his local neighborhood bomb-making class with William Ayers and other Weather Undergrounders.—Jen Geiger
The Drudge Report uncovers shocking photographic evidence that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden were actually college roommates. … They depict Bin Laden doing keg stands while Obama stands to the side holding his turban and counting in Arabic.—Rudy Santelises
He shot Alexander Hamilton. And there's video.—Andrew Rice
Reader Mark Schondorf submits a whole list of shocking twists, including: “Hillary summons a Kraken”; “Obama was a ghost THE WHOLE TIME!!!”; “Hillary goes back in time to kill Obama’s mother”; “Hillary wins because, as it turns out, she's Keyser Söze”; and “Unbelievably, the aliens are afraid of water.”
Major screw-ups:
Obama confesses that the blackout “ending” of the series finale of The Sopranos was his idea.—Scott Schiefelbein
The only way that Obama could possibly lose the nomination is if video of him punching a baby surfaced.—Nick Wilhelmy
There is only one unforgivable crime in America … dogfighting.—Tom Bianchi
The reason he doesn't believe the government created AIDS is because he did.—Shane Mehling
Clinton ex machina:
The best scenario for Hillary is to run as John McCain’s running mate. And for McCain to die.—Dea Henrich [So Obama would still be the nominee, but we had to include.—Ed.]
The Clinton campaign digs up records in the National Archives proving that Hawaii was not a state at the time of Obama's birth, thereby making him ineligible.—Pamela Belyn
Bill Clinton starts campaigning on his behalf before June 3.—Eric Samuels
Hillary sheds two tears.—Jon Cowan
Unfortunate occurrences:
Obama will need to be photographed windsurfing … and then get eaten by a shark.—Stephen Defibaugh
Obama, trying to fit in with the Oregon locals, goes on a white-water rafting tour arranged by Lanny Davis Excursions.—Boyd Reed
Hillary invites Barack to her home in Chappaqua to talk about ending the race. The visit eerily resembles the movie Misery.—Boyd Reed
The winners: The best submissions managed to make a concise joke, summarize all of Obama’s vulnerabilities at once, or vividly capture the mind-bending paucity of Clinton’s odds of survival. Here are three that did the job:
3rd place: Hillary appeals to the Supreme Court, which, based upon a 2000 ruling, decides that the candidate with fewer votes wins the election.—John Kirkbride
2nd place: Hillary Clinton must parachute into Pakistan while under heavy sniper fire, infiltrate al-Qaida using a fake beard, putty nose, and duct tape, and capture Osama Bin Laden, whilst singing the “Star Spangled Banner” with one hand over her heart and an American flag lapel pin prominently shown on her outfit. She must film all of this in HD and create a montage scored to Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the U.S.A.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama must publicly convert to Islam and change his name to Osama Hafez al-Mohammed Hussein Ayatollah Obama, while burning an American flag in the Crystal Cathedral as he replaces the crucifix with a do-it-yourself Piss Christ, while performing an abortion on the exhumed body of Terri Schiavo. He should also be naked. It should then rain frogs. That ought to do it.—Jason in San Diego
1st place: One of the lesser-known consequences of quantum physics is an event called “quantum tunneling.” Here's how it happens: At a campaign stop in West Virginia, completely out of the blue, the aggregate wave functions of all the particles in Barack Obama's body end up instantaneously transporting him through the entire Earth and leaving him treading water somewhere in the Indian Ocean, or leaving his various particles scattered inside the mantle. The odds of this occurring are such that any macroscopic object tunneling through any barrier is highly unlikely in the lifespan of the universe, but it could occur!—Michael Blessington
Thank you for the submissions. You heard them here first!
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More Clinton supporters get antsy, Obama unveils a bold new strategy
to ignore Clinton, and her money woes could be deeper than expected.
All of which sinks Clinton's chances another 0.2 points to 2.3 percent.
California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an early and dogged supporter of Hillary
Clinton, voiced doubts that Clinton "can get the delegates that she
needs" to the Hill yesterday. Feinstein also cited "negative dividends" from the race dragging on much longer. Combined with yesterday's McGovern defection, dissent in the ranks seems to be spreading. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Slate’s Nathan Heller points out that both HillaryClinton.com and BarackObama.com now redirect visitors directly to their contributions pages. (Actually, it looks like BarackObama.com just reverted as I was prepping this post.)
Clinton’s minimum suggested contribution: $5
Obama’s minimum suggested contribution: $15
Best Fundraising Ploy of the Day goes to the sudden revelation that Clinton loaned herself $ 6.4 million in April and May. Clinton's two biggest fundraising surges were after her Pennsylvania victory and the announcement that she'd loaned herself $5 million. (Obama got quite a boost from both, as well.) Today's loan announcement, coming on the heels of her Indiana squeeker, gives her the best of both worlds.
But neither candidate has released post-Indiana fundraising numbers, which suggests that their victories didn’t yield quite the cash surge that Pennsylvania did.
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Comedian/magician/author Penn Jillette has been telling a joke about Hillary Clinton for some time now. Or, rather, telling a story about the joke and its supposed meaning. But yesterday, he told it to the wrong people—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski*—in the wrong forum.
At risk of blessing it with repetition, the joke goes something like: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. … And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."
Jillette’s point is that when he told it on stage, the audience didn’t gasp—they went wild. To him, it’s a miniparable about how Hillary can’t win. But Scarborough and Brzezinski were clearly not amused, and there’s been some minor fallout.
But imagine how much there would have been if he’d told it a day earlier. Back in February, Maureen Dowd called jokes like Jillette’s "exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don't want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated—again."
Had his ill-advised words fallen a day or two before the primary—like Obama’s cool brush off in the New Hampshire debate or Clinton’s Diner Sob—they might have gained a bit more traction and maybe even created a backlash. Instead, they got buried under election-day coverage. Not that an off-color remark by a comedian would have handed North Carolina to Clinton. But every bit of outrage counts.
* Oops. This post originally misspelled Mika Brzezinski's name.
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A high-profile change of heart, a multimillion-dollar loan, and more Obama superdelegates drag Clinton down 1.7 points to 2.5 percent.
George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for president in 1972, says he's done supporting Hillary Clinton.
He told Fox that she waged a valiant campaign but that it's time for
her to drop out because the math is too daunting. McGovern had already
flirted with Obama a few weeks ago—he told the Huffington Post that Obama had the better chance of winning in November—but today's announcement is a hiccup that Clinton can't afford.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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George McGovern isn’t a superdelegate, but his switch to Obama
is still important, because it creates a model for other flip-flopping Clinton loyalists to
imitate. Notice his rationale to MSNBC, where he professed “great affection”
for the Clintons:
“They were battling for me 36 years ago when I won the
presidential nomination and that’s why I supported Hillary in considerable part
this time.”
The implication here is that McGovern endorsed Clinton largely for
personal reasons. He never thought she’d make a better president than Obama. He
just owed her. But now that her chances are below zero, he’s shifting
allegiance to the guy who’s going to win, and who he really likes just as much
as Clinton.
That’s actually pretty similar to what
he said back in October, when he first endorsed Hillary: “We are very
fortunate that we have a marvelous collection of candidates, any one of whom I
would be happy to support for the highest office,” he said, but added that “we
have an old rule of currency in the United States: Ladies first.” That
didn’t make much sense at the time, but it makes backing out now a lot easier.
This rationale—I supported Hillary because we’re friends,
but Obama will make a smashing president—is something we’re likely to hear more
in the coming days. It lets supers switch sides without undermining their newfound
commitment to Obama.
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If yesterday’s primaries showed anything, it’s that the slings and arrows of the past few weeks—the Rev. Wright, the "bitter" comment, flag pins, and various other 'gates—have not put a significant dent in Barack Obama’s chances. Meanwhile, a consensus is building that Clinton cannot win unless disaster strikes the Obama camp. But if Wright spewing nonsense about AIDS conspiracies doesn’t derail Obama's candidacy, what will?
I’ve heard some pretty creative descriptions of what must happen to Obama or his campaign for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Back in March, Politico wrote that "she cannot win unless Obama is hit by a political meteor." Slate’s John Dickerson writes that for Clinton to catch up now, "she must bring more states into the union." In an episode of On the Media last month, Bob Garfield described one worst-case-scenario as "a video of Barack Obama in a motel room with a den of Cub Scouts setting fire to the American flag." To which I added, "He has to be client number eight, pretty much."
You can do better. What sort of out-there, long-shot, one-in-a-kajillion occurrences must happen to Clinton or Obama to bring about the Obamapocalypse and hand Clinton the nomination? Send your ideas here, and we’ll post the best ones later this week.
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The foundation of Hillary Clinton’s support is beginning to crack. George McGovern, whom you may remember from his starring role in the 1972 election, has called for Clinton to drop out of the race and says he is now endorsing Barack Obama. He’s the first—and, thus far, only—Clinton supporter who has jumped ship since last night's results*, but he still makes quite a splash.
Guiding his decision may be his own tortured history with drawn-out delegate fights and backroom deals at the 1972 convention. To win the nomination in 1972 he had to fight through several delegate challenges, the most serious of which was about the way California’s delegates would be allocated. There’s a lot of nuance involved—including credentials committee, the Supreme Court, and conventionwide votes, but here’s the gist: The California Democratic Party decided the state would use a winner-take-all system to allot its delegates. McGovern won the state by 5 percent, so he earned all 271 of the California’s delegates. Later, the DNC adopted a proportional allocation system, and McGovern’s opponents wanted to stop California from earning a grandfather-clause reprieve. Essentially, McGovern thought his opponents were changing the rules of the game as time was winding down. Sound familiar?
Per Hunter S. Thompson, here’s what McGovern said after the credentials fight was over:
The confrontations with the Old Guard seldom come in public. There are conversations on the telephone, plans are laid, people are put to work, and it’s done quietly. California is a classic. There will never be a case in American politics of such a naked power grab—straight power, no principle, straight opportunism. I wasn’t aware of it. … We were naïve. … [W]e really got scared when we saw the ferocity of their attack.
Personal experience has soured McGovern on naked power grabs, straight power, a dearth of principle, and straight opportunism. Personal experience has told him he can no longer support Hillary Clinton for president.
*UPDATE 2:10 p.m.: Originally, I neglected to make clear that McGovern is the first to change sides since Clinton's defeat in North Carolina and narrow win in Indiana.
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Over the last few elections the "Limbaugh effect" has gone from grassroots conspiracy theory to Obama-campaign talking point. On a campaign call today, John Kerry said that "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, [Obama] would have won."
Did mischievous Republicans make the difference in Indiana?
There are a couple of ways to look at the math. Clinton won the state by about 18,000. Exit polls show that 10 percent of Democratic primary voters were Republicans, 54 percent of whom went for Clinton. Since about 1.3 million people voted total, that means about 68,000 of them were Republicans who voted for Clinton, compared to about 58,000 who voted for Obama. So if Republicans hadn’t been allowed to vote, as Ben Smith points out, Obama would have gained 10,000—not enough to catch up. Likewise, for "Limbaugh Democrats" to have made the difference, they would have to make up a quarter of the Republicans who voted for Hillary (18,000/68,000 = 0.26). That seems unlikely.
More compelling is an examination of Clinton voters who said they’d vote for McCain in the general. The Obama campaign points out that 16 percent of Democratic primary voters said they’d prefer McCain over Clinton in a general election matchup—and 41 percent of those voters actually voted for Clinton in the primary. That means about 7 percent of the Democratic electorate—about 83,000 voters—voted for Clinton in the primary and said they’d vote for McCain in the general even if Clinton were the nominee.
That number is hard to refute. And there’s scattered anecdotal evidence that Republican voters set out to vote tactically voted for Clinton as part of Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos." But, then again, if the goal is sabotage, why would these people answer pollsters’ questions truthfully?
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In tonight’s Deathwatch, I asked, “Clinton pledged to stay in the race. The question is, why?”
The answer is pretty clear, I now realize, if you look at the upcoming primary calendar. Next Tuesday, West Virginia votes. Polls are sparse, but Clinton is expected to win. A week later comes Kentucky, where Clinton has a massive lead, and Oregon, where Obama is favored. That’s two potentially wide victories for Clinton in two weeks.
It won’t help her numbers much. West Virginia and Kentucky have only 99 delegates combined (pledged and unpledged), while Oregon has 65, so she isn’t going to rack up many delegates. Likewise, she won’t significantly close Obama’s popular-vote lead.
But for Clinton, the nomination isn’t about numbers anymore. There’s no metric by which she can plausibly win, even if Florida and Michigan are counted. Now it’s about derailing Obama or waiting for him to derail himself. Clinton has come this far; why not ride out this rough patch—however many people call for her to drop out—and see what happens?
Worst-case scenario, she spends a few million more dollars and drops out in late May or early June. (Remember how long Huckabee stuck around, just to see what happened?) Better that than drop out tomorrow, only to have some damning revelation about Obama emerge over the next month. Clinton paints herself as a fighter, but her best shot at the nomination is now less about fighting than waiting.
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We're hunkered down in Trailhead HQ watching the cable networks, and the coverage of the frozen Lake County results are striking for one reason, in particular: The pundits keep on chattering about something that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter who wins Indiana—we know that one of the candidates will by one or two points, at which point the delegate margin is neglibile. Indiana has 72 pledged delegates, 25 of which are allocated based on the statewide vote, and 47 of which are allocated based on proportions in each congressional district. There may be a delegate or two to swing in Lake County's district, and there may be one or two up for grabs in the statewide total. Proof of this: NBC News has already allocated all but six of Indiana's delegates.
We aren't in Clinton's war room right now, but we've got a feeling that those few delegates aren't going to decide whether she drops out of the race tomorrow, next week, or next month.
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Tapping into our Map the Candidates archive, we discover that Clinton has made five stops in Lake County; Obama has made two. That includes one stop from each in Gary.
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Warning: The post you’re about to read is very math-heavy, and very speculative. But it’s worth a read if you’re waiting on the returns from Lake County in Indiana, which may not come in until after midnight.
Lake County is the only substantial county yet to report its vote tallies. We crunched some numbers to estimate what percentage of the county’s vote Obama would need to earn to beat Clinton overall in Indiana.
First, we have to project how many people have voted tonight in Lake County based on Indiana’s overall turnout. To help, we’ll compare those numbers to the general election turnout in 2004.
Tonight, 1,039,781 people voted with 84 percent of precincts reporting. If you extrapolate it out to 100 percent, about 1,237,835 people will vote overall in the Democratic primary.
In 2004, 2,445,153 people voted for president in Indiana, 967,346 of them for Kerry. Tonight's estimated turnout is almost exactly half of the total votes cast in '04.
Now, we’ll zoom in on Lake County, and using its contribution to the overall vote in 2004, we’ll estimate the county’s turnout in today’s primary.
In 2004, 108,219 Lake County residents voted for John Kerry, while 68,512 voted for Bush. Combined, that's 176,731. That’s 7.2 percent of the state's total vote, 11.2 percent of the state’s total Democratic vote.
Now, we’re at a crossroad in our assumptions. We’ll set up a range for Lake County’s possible turnout. Our lower bound will be that Lake County makes up 7.2 percent of the state’s total vote in the primary. Our upper bound will be the 11.2 percent figure.
Multiplying our bounds by the total projected turnout for today’s primary vote, we can get hard numbers for our projected turnout in the county.
If Lake County comprises 7.2 percent of the state's total primary vote, it will cast 88,442 total votes. If it comprises 11.2 percent of the state's total primary vote, it will cast 137,006 votes.
Obama currently trails by 42,500 votes with 84 percent reporting.
Now, we’ll calculate the percentage of votes Obama needs to win in Lake County, using both of our bounds.
If the county casts 88,442 votes (7.2 percent of the state’s total), he'll need to win 74 percent of the votes in the county—65,471 total—to get the net gain of 42,500 he needs.
If Lake County casts 137,006 votes (11.2 percent of the state’s total), he'll need to win 65.5 percent of the votes in the county—89,739 total—to get the net gain of 42,500 he needs.
As you can see, Lake County’s turnout greatly affects the percentage of vote Obama needs from the county to overtake Clinton. Both numbers are achievable, though, because Lake County includes Gary, Ind., which is 85 percent African-American.
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Obama comes up big in North Carolina, and Clinton ekes out a win (as
of 11 p.m.) in Indiana, the combination of which all but ends Clinton's
shot at the nomination. Her chances drop 8.4 points to 4.2 percent.
For
the past few weeks, Hillary Clinton's candidacy has rested on two
possibilities: 1) Winning the popular vote and 2) convincing
superdelegates that Obama cannot win certain types of voters. (The
delegate count is out of reach; she would need at least 70 percent of
the remaining delegates to surpass Obama.) Today, Obama exploded both
arguments.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Ever since Barack Obama started racking up primary and caucus wins after Super Tuesday, analysts have summed up Hillary Clinton’s prognosis with an odd statistic: the percent of the vote she needs in every remaining primary to catch up in pledged delegates.
Going into tonight, that margin was just over 69 percent. Based on current estimates for Indiana and North Carolina, by tomorrow morning it will be close to 85.
I should hasten to point out that this statistic has always been mostly meaningless since some states have many more delegates than others. But it’s a convenient way to express an ugly reality for Clinton: the longer this race goes on, the less time and fewer delegates she has with which to catch up.
One could argue that this is an unfair statistic; even the Clinton camp doesn’t argue that they can catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, and we’ve long surpassed the point where Obama could clinch the nomination even with 100 percent of the remaining vote.
But the statistic does remind us of this: The high-water mark for Clinton has risen after every contest, even after a win. After Obama won D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, she needed about 57 percent of the remaining vote; after March 4, it was 63 percent. Even when she picked up a net gain of 12 delegates in Pennsylvania, the mark inched up by a fraction of a percent, to 69. The finish line has simply outrun her.
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Obama is speaking in North Carolina now. At least as far as we can tell, everybody behind him is white. Only one person is male.
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Right now, Clinton’s best shot at winning the nomination is to overtake Obama in the popular vote. But Obama’s strong North Carolina win could kill Clinton’s chances of winning that metric.
Obama currently leads Clinton by about 650,000 votes. (Real Clear Politics is heroically updating its popular-vote tally as tonight’s results roll in.) That lead is cut waaay down to about 85,000 if you count the Florida and Michigan votes, which Clinton hopes we do. At the beginning of tonight, Clinton appeared to be within striking distance—wins in North Carolina and Indiana, plus in the remaining states, could have narrowed that gap significantly.
But look at the size of the two states: North Carolina has 115 pledged delegates at stake; Indiana has 72. It’s hard to gauge turnout, but predictions of 1 million-plus people going to the polls in Indiana don’t appear to be exaggerated. In North Carolina, almost 500,000 votes have been logged with only 15 percent of precincts reporting, which suggests massive turnout. (Not that precinct percentage is in any way proportional to voter turnout, but this is a rough guide.) So even if both Obama and Clinton win North Carolina and Indiana by similar margins, Obama will get a lot more delegates and votes out of it. But his margin appears to be much bigger than hers—about 14 points in North Carolina compared with about seven in Indiana, by one count—which will put him even further ahead in the popular vote.
If Clinton can’t win the popular vote, that means she won’t have a single metric to back up her claim to superdelegates that she deserves the nomination. (Obama has pledged delegates and number of contests, as well.) Without that, hers will be a tough case to make, no matter how many more dumb things the Rev. Wright says.
Update 11:29 p.m.: With 96 percent of precincts voting, Obama leads Clinton in North Carolina by 220,000 votes. With that, he erases her popular vote gains in Pennsylvania, where she netted 215,000 votes.
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Barack Obama was always supposed to win North Carolina. Twenty-one percent of the state’s population (Republicans and Democrats) is black; independents (but not Limbaugh-following Republicans) were allowed to vote; and Obama won both of the neighboring states’ primaries. Despite all this, his win, which exit polls suggest will be by double-digits, feels like a pretty big deal. Why?
Because Obama hasn’t won anything—not even a news cycle—since he won Mississippi on March 11. That was nearly two months ago, and since then he’s lost nearly every news cycle to Clinton. The Rev. Wright, bitter-gate, a lackluster debate, negative attack ads, the Rev. Wright redux—all of that has happened in the last seven weeks. It’s been the equivalent of middle school for Obama—bad things just keep happening, and everything seems like the most important and dramatic event ever.
Obviously that’s not to say that Obama hasn’t had good news to report—throughout his dry spell he was picking up superdelegates at a faster clip than Clinton. He won his battles here and there—the gas tax is a perfect example—and Clinton never spun the broader narrative away from Obama is the front-runner; the math is daunting for Clinton.
But Obama wasn’t exactly laughing his way to an easy victory in North Carolina over the last few weeks. His lead in the polls was steadily deflating, John Edwards stayed mute, and the state’s governor endorsed Clinton. If his win is by double-digits, as is expected, it will be an impressive feat—even if it wouldn’t have been one a month ago.
Sure, the victory isn’t perfect. Obama still struggled with white voters (grabbing only 36 percent) and relied heavily on African-American support (91 percent of all black voters supported him). Half of the voters said the Rev. Wright issue was important, and 60 percent of those voters supported Clinton. But he won every socioeconomic bracket besides voters who earn $50,000 to $75,000, he’s seen as the more trustworthy candidate, and the majority of new voters sided with him.
Exit polls aside, Obama’s win feels momentous because of how different the alternative would have been. If Clinton would have won North Carolina, the wind wouldn’t have just been taken out of his sails—he would have been sailing in a vacuum. One Slate staffer even suggested that if Clinton won both Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination on the Hillary Deathwatch should jump to 50 percent. But now, with a hearty victory in populous North Carolina, he likely has bumped the popular vote out of Clinton’s reach. Finally, Obama has something to smile about.
Read more of our live-blogging coverage of today's primaries.
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Exit polls out of North Carolina suggest that Obama has won the state by about 14 percentage points. While CNN does not report the overall percentages for each candidate, we can divine them by weighting the demographic breakdown between the candidates by each demographic’s turnout. For example, here’s the exit poll data for gender:
|
Clinton |
Obama |
| Male (43%) |
40 |
56 |
| Female (57%) |
42 |
54 |
From here, we deduce:
Clinton = (40% of males) * (43% male voters) + (42% females) * (57% female voters) = 41 percent of the vote
Obama = (56% of males) * (43% male voters) + (54% females) * (57% female voters) = 55 percent of the vote
We can do this for any of the exit poll categories and we’ll get similar results.
Accord to Slate’s Delegate Calculator, a 14-point win for Obama in North Carolina will grant him a 66-49 advantage in pledged delegates in the state for a net gain of 17. Clinton netted 12 pledged delegates in her nine-point win in Pennsylvania, though it’s worth noting that the estimates of pledged-delegate leads are more likely to shrink than grow as the results from individual districts are reported.
If, however, Obama does end up posting a win in North Carolina of this magnitude, he is well positioned to at least cancel out the progress in delegates Clinton made in Pennsylvania.
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Some highlights from the (sketchy, unreliable, not-to-be-trusted) exit polls:
How’d Wright play? Thirty percent of voters said the Rev. Wright’s comments were “very important” to their vote. Of them, 69 percent voted for Clinton. Fox News concludes from this that it’s “clear” Wright has hurt Obama. But beware of false causation. Someone already planning to vote for Clinton is more likely to be “very” affected by Wright, just as an Obama supporter in Pennsylvania was more likely to be affected by Clinton’s sniper story. It’s a stretch to conclude that Wright caused all these people to vote against Obama.
It’s the economy. Two-thirds of Indiana voters and almost as many in North Carolina identified the economy as the most important issue. You’d think this bodes well for Clinton, given her recent populist stances. And indeed, Clinton performed better among these voters in Indiana. But Obama wins this group in North Carolina. And in Indiana, both candidates are about even on the question of who is most likely to improve the economy.
Limbaugh effect. With anecdotal evidence circulating that some Republicans are voting for Clinton—it's an open primary, so indies and GOPers can vote—exit polls in Indiana show the GOP vote going to Clinton, 53-45. Apparently, Limbaugh is already taking credit.
Race/gender. Demographics break down pretty much as you’d expect: In Indiana, Obama won 92 percent of blacks, and Clinton won about 60 percent of whites. The numbers are roughly the same in North Carolina. On the gender front, both candidates win men and women by about the same numbers, with a slight advantage to Obama for men and to Clinton for women.
Attack of the attacks. More Indiana voters answered “yes” when asked whether Clinton attacked unfairly (64 percent) than did those asked whether Obama did (44 percent). But when asked which candidate attacked unfairly, a plurality of voters answered “both.” So although more voters may see Clinton as an unfair attacker, both candidates are held responsible.
Gas-tax referendum? Did the gas debate influence the vote much? Unlikely. About three-quarters of Indiana voters said they made up their minds before last week, when the gas-tax controversy was just brewing. Late deciders were even more rare in North Carolina, with about 80 percent of voters saying they decided before last week.
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As we’re waiting for the Hoosier/Cackalack results to come in, what better time to talk long-shot hypotheticals? Let's look at Hillary Clinton’s best-case scenario tonight and what it would mean for her campaign.
She wins Indiana by double digits and North Carolina by single digits. Not only will rural whites have shied from Obama in greater numbers than before, but blacks won’t have come to his rescue. "Why can’t Obama close the deal?" becomes not just a quip but a rallying cry. Demographic abandonment helps her make the case that Obama is weak and getting weaker.
She tightens his delegate lead. Right now Obama leads by 154 pledged delegates—his strongest case against her. There’s no plausible way she can close this gap, as the Obama campaign delights in pointing out. What she can do, though, is close his lead so far—say, to within 100 delegates—that a popular vote win could swing the tide in her favor.
She wins the popular vote. This seems unlikely, barring disaster in Obamaland. Clinton has Kentucky and West Virginia in her pocket, but it would take a real zeitgeist shift for Oregon and South Dakota to swing her way. But if they did, she’d be within striking distance of Obama’s current 610,000 vote lead. To overtake him, though, she still needs to make sure …
Florida and Michigan count. Clinton can’t overtake Obama in the pledged delegate count, even if she persuades the DNC to seat these two delegations. But getting their delegates seated gives her an excuse to count their combined 1.7 million votes toward the popular vote tally. Right now, counting these two states, Obama leads her only by 123,000. Combined with wins in the remaining contests, she could well surpass him.
She persuades superdelegates Obama can’t win. If the last four things happen, then Clinton might get the remaining superdelegates to support her in large numbers. (We’re talking 60 percent to 70 percent of the uncommitted superdelegates.) Those currently supporting Obama could defect, too. Her case in a nutshell: Sure, some metrics might be on his side. But nominating him would be like racing a horse with its legs pre-broken. And who knows what "October surprise" lies in store.
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Before the networks call the winners in a primary, they don't have much to talk about beside exit polls. (Neither, frankly, do we.) The exit polls are notoriously unreliable, especially because the networks update their numbers as new waves of data come in. (This helps them adapt their calculations as they learn more information about turnout, votes by region, etc.) But in a state like North Carolina, where nearly 500,000 people have already voted early, are exit polls faulty because they don't survey early voters?
No—not even a little bit. The name "exit poll" is misleading in states that have early voting because the pollsters don't just survey voters as they're exiting the polls. The same outfit conducts exit polls for all of the networks, and that outfit has already interviewed 400 people by telephone in North Carolina. Given past results and current projections, they're expecting early voters to make up 30 percent of all voters. So if turnout is around 1.33 million, which makes early voters 30 percent of the electorate, the exit polls will accurately incorporate early voters. If turnout tops 1.33 million, which some observers say it may, then they'll have to adjust their model.
Either way, the bases are covered. That's one reason fewer to distrust the exit polls. Many more to go.
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Welp, here we are, 124 days after Iowa caucus-goers had their say, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still campaigning to make sure the sun rises tomorrow morning. They’ve made more than 100 stops in Indiana and North Carolina, and, after tonight, there are more uncommitted superdelegates to be coerced than there are pledged delegates to be earned. For Clinton, the two states can improve her still-distant chances of winning the nomination. Obama, meanwhile, has been closing in on the nomination for weeks, but superdelegates won’t let him get there without the approval of the Hoosiers and Tar Heels.
From where we sit, the primary can split in four different directions, depending on tonight’s results. As usual, it all depends on the margin of victory. Below, we offer up four scenarios based on over-unders of the margins in each state.
Over-Under in North Carolina: Obama by 10 points.
Over: A double-digit victory in North Carolina—where 1.5 million people might vote—would send Obama’s popular-vote tally out of Clinton’s reach, even if Florida and Michigan were included. The popular vote is a flawed metric, especially when Michigan and Florida are factored in, but Obama's popular-vote dominance would eliminate Clinton's last quantitative piece of evidence that she is the deserving victor. Uncommitted superdelegates wouldn’t be able to ignore the numbers any longer. Depending on the outcome in Indiana, there would either be a slow trickle or a steady flood of superdelegates in Obama's direction. That doesn’t mean Clinton would withdraw—quite the opposite, if she wins Indiana—but, rather, the arithmetic disadvantage would eventually end her candidacy.
Most importantly, a big Obama win in North Carolina would mean white voters have returned to the fold; 40 percent of the 400,000 early voters have been black, and observers suggest that in the end, African-Americans will have cast about 35 percent of all votes in the primary. Given that Obama's expected support among black voters is north of 85 percent, he probably would hit double digits only because 40 percent of white voters saddled up with him. That’s a number he didn’t hit in Ohio or Pennsylvania, and it’s a threshold that may show superdelegtes that Obama has moved beyond the Rev. Wright imbroglio.
Under: North Carolina was always supposed to be Obama’s state, and a single-digit loss or a Clinton win would mean that she still owns the white vote. Even if she lost the state, she and her surrogates would have enough grist to stall superdelegates. Coupled with a win in Indiana, Clinton could make the case that Obama’s lead still isn’t safe.
Over-Under for Indiana: Clinton by One Point.
Over: If Clinton wins, she won’t drop out. Instead, she’ll continue to draw out the election until at least June 3, when the final states vote. (At that point, most superdelegates will presumably decide once and for all whom they support.) Sure-thing victories in Kentucky and West Virginia in the weeks to come will only help her cause. She’ll hit the phones hard, trying to persuade the superdelegates that nominating a Democrat who is too flashy to win rural votes in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio is like marrying somebody who will only disappoint you when it’s time to pay the bills. Messy breakups ensue in both scenarios.
Under: If Obama wins Indiana, that means he’ll have gotten his groove back among white voters and that Clinton’s populist appeals worked about as well as they did for John Edwards. The media will view the loss as a referendum on the gas-tax holiday, and Obama will emerge as a nominee that superdelegates can be comfortable with. Even if Clinton doesn’t drop out, the superdelegates will move toward Obama. A loss in North Carolina—all the more unlikely if he wins in Indiana—will delay the race's resolution by a month or so, but for all intents and purposes, Obama will already be the nominee.
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When it comes to policy decisions, Hillary Clinton often follows the rule: When in doubt, call timeout. Rather than find a solution, put everything on pause while we look for a solution.
Most recently, Clinton called for a suspension of the gas tax. The proposal has met with almost universal derision, prompting Clinton to say she doesn’t need to listen to so-called experts. Americans need relief now; we can talk about long-term solutions later.
During the mortgage crisis, Clinton proposed a five-year "freeze" on mortgage rates. Again, critics argued that that the plan would probably drive up interest rates and potentially drive down home prices even further. But we can worry about that later.
Back in November, Clinton called for a "timeout" on trade. Rather than looking at each trade deal independently, the plan would put a moratorium on trade deals—which sounded good to many Iowa voters—and then look at each deal independently. Until then, just suspend the entire system that drives the international economy.
The timeout approach is brilliant, in a way: It makes you look proactive when really you’re just putting off decisions. It's especially effective during a campaign, when the appearance of action is more important than action itself. But in a fast-moving world—and with a slow-moving Congress—it seems counterintuitive to halt trade deals, freeze mortgage rates, and lift gas taxes for a period of three months. (For one thing, they’d have a heck of a time reimposing it.) It’s not the solutions so much as the order of operations that are bizarre. First step: Grind the government to a screeching halt. Then: Examine what’s right and wrong with the system.
Plus, "timeout" sounds vaguely parental: The mortgage rates will have to go sit in the corner and think about what they’ve done.
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Not much changes in the last 24 hours before polls open in Indiana
and North Carolina, keeping Clinton's chances of winning the nomination
at 12.6 percent.
So, a quick snapshot: Polls show tightening races in both Indiana and North Carolina.
Except for the occasional outlier, Clinton leads by a consistent five
to 10 points in the Hoosier state, while Obama stays ahead in the Tar
Heel state by a similar margin.
Remember how Obama started his "countdown to the nomination" yesterday? Clinton counters, as usual, with her own math.
According to her calculations, the magic number to seal the nomination
isn't 2025, as the DNC has said. It's 2208—the number you get if you
include Florida and Michigan. It fits her argument that those states
should be seated at the convention—which Howard Dean says will happen.
The problem is, superdelegates are still running from Hillary. Politico puts her ever-waning lead
at 12 supers. Unless Clinton can make a big impression today—either
with a blowout victory in Indiana or with an exceptionally strong
showing among particular demographics—it's hard to see her stemming the
flow.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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The focus of yesterday’s Teamster flap—it hasn’t quite reached ’gatehood yet—centered on whether or not Obama wants to reduce federal oversight of the country’s fourth-largest union. Obama said that the union had done a “terrific job cleaning itself in-house” with regard to corruption but denied giving a “blanket commitment” to cutting back oversight. Hillary Clinton, too, has that it’s time to “turn the page” on the consent decree, but her campaign says she’s made “no promises.”
But this whole discussion ignores half the issue.
The consent decree, signed in 1989 to settle a racketeering lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, did two things: It established an independent review board in 1992 to investigate mob connections. And it required that the union hold direct elections overseen by a special election officer.
So far, discussion has focused on the first part, but not the second. Proponents of repealing the decree point out that the IRB brought only eight cases last year, compared with 70 in 1992. With the feds out of the picture, the union would police itself, the logic goes, appointing its own official to investigate mob ties and corruption generally.
But some union members are skeptical that the self-policing would extend to internal elections. Right now, the Teamsters’ 240-page constitution (ginormous PDF here) has a section allowing a federally appointed officer to supervise elections every five years. But once the consent decree gets scrapped, so does election oversight.
“The Teamster leadership has made it clear that if permitted, they would raise the threshold to make it impossible for another candidate to run against them,” says Ken Paff, director of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reformist group within the Teamsters. “If you have 12 percent, they’ll make it 15. If you have 15, they’ll make it 20.” The last time a reform candidate won an election was 1992, when Ron Carey swept to victory. But he was forced out in the wake of a financial scandal in 1997.
Others argue that the reform hailed by the candidates has been superficial: Edwin Spier, a respected lawyer hired by Teamster President James P. Hoffa to oversee union reform in 1999, quit in 2004. “I haven't seen anything that the union has done internally that comes close to self-policing,” he told the WSJ.
This whole discussion is largely academic, since the president can’t actually order the Justice Department to repeal the consent decree. The best he or she can do is appoint a U.S. attorney who will prioritize the issue. But if the next president wanted to discuss repealing the decree, keep in mind that mob ties would only be half the story.
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In the board game Risk, if you control Australia, you control the entire game. (As our boy Hurley reminded us recently.) You get an extra few armies every turn, you can amass a three-country-wide firewall across Southeast Asia, and it provides a point-of-deployment for all of your troops. In this Democratic race, the delegate math is Australia. If you control the delegate narrative, you also control the conventional-wisdom-spouting media, who can energize or enervate your campaign. It gives you a few extra points in the polls, builds an arithmetic firewall that can't be busted through, and is a rallying cry for all of your surrogates.
So, it comes as no surprise that Barack Obama is doing everything he can to make sure people know his delegate lead is nearly insurmountable. But he's taken it one step too far with his Web site's latest delegate tracker. On it, the campaign represents the two candidates' delegate hauls with horizontal histogram bars—bars that are ostensibly 2,025 delegates long. When we started working on this post, Obama had 1,750 delegates to Clinton's 1,611. (It's now 1,752 to 1,611.) As a result, Obama should have had 86.6 percent of his bar filled, and Clinton should have had 79.6 percent of hers shaded in. In actuality, Obama severely underplays Clinton's total. Only 61.8 percent of her bar is shaded, nearly 18 percent less than should be to make the image graphically correct. The image is below.
We asked our Slate V and image swami, Andy Bouve, to mock up an image showing what the bar would look like if it were pictured accurately. The thing is, it's clear Obama is ahead in the legitimate version, so one wonders why they're misrepresenting Clinton's total.
UPDATE May 6, 8:14 a.m.: Thanks to the readers who pointed out that the Obama campaign updated the site to correct Clinton's bar graph.
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Barack Obama doesn’t
say he would scrap
the consent decree under which the federal government has overseen the
Teamsters for the past two decades. He just says that he’d start to think
about possibly scrapping it. This maneuver—the soft pander—has been a
staple of the 2008 campaign, particularly for Obama. Don’t make any promises;
just hint at them. Load them up with so many ifs that you won’t get
accused of breaking them when things don’t quite work out.
The Wall Street Journal reported
this morning that Obama got the Teamsters endorsement after telling them he
supported scaling down a federal oversight policy instituted years ago to crack
down on the union’s mob ties. But on Good Morning America, Obama denied
making a “blanket commitment.” He said, "The union has done a terrific job
cleaning house" and promised he’d "examine" the issue as
president. The Obama campaign and the Teamsters both say the candidate hasn’t
contradicted himself, and that anyway no president would have the power to lift
the decree. According to Teamster spokesman Bret Caldwell, “closure to the
consent decree will come through the legal process, not politics.” If that’s
the case, then Obama’s blowing smoke when he promises to “examine” the issue.
Hillary Clinton is doing the same when she says
it’s time to “turn the page” on the decree. The trick is to give the impression you’d shake things
up without making any concrete promises about how.
The candidates took a similar approach to NAFTA. As the
crucial Ohio
vote approached, Obama and Clinton didn’t promise to abolish the trade
agreement. They said they would “renegotiate” it, which could mean as little as
tweaking labor and environmental standards while leaving incentives for
downsizing and outsourcing intact. When Obama’s economic adviser reportedly
urged Canadian officials not to take Obama’s rhetoric too seriously, the NAFTA
purists pounced.
Same with the debate over withdrawal from Iraq.
No
one really thinks Obama could withdraw all combat troops within 18 months.
When Samantha Power, an advisor to Obama on foreign policy, called
Obama’s withdrawal plan a “best case scenario”—an honest acknowledgment that no
one knows what Iraq
will look like in 2009—she was forced out. (Calling Clinton
a “monster” didn’t help.) Here the fudge factor isn’t—indeed, may not be—uttered
out loud. But everyone knows it’s there.
Vague campaign promises are nothing new, but Obama has
elevated them to a fine art. Maybe he might possibly think about considering
whether or not he should hypothetically be more decisive. Or maybe not.
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We’ve gotten complaints about the Hillary Deathwatch before,
but this is a new one.
Dear Application Developer,
A Facebook user requested that we forward an anonymous
report that your application The Hillary Clinton Deathwatch (application ID
#30705275390) is violating Facebook Terms of Use. The user selected "Attacks individual or
group" as the violation category.
Any text entered into the additional comments box appears here: …
I find this
application offensive. If you continue to approve of applications like this, I
will discontinue my account on Facebook and encourage all my readers to do so. [E.A.]
To protect the privacy of our users, we cannot disclose any
further information. Facebook is not
taking any action against your application based on this particular report, but
we are passing this along so you are made aware of potential problems and
respond accordingly to ensure you are in compliance. Please note that failure to comply with the
Terms may result in an enforcement action. …
Thanks,
Facebook
And here we were thinking the Facebook team was on Obama's side.
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The home stretch to Indiana and North Carolina is pocked by negative
ads, indecisive polls, and last-minute revelations about Barack Obama
and the Teamsters. With an Indiana win within reach, Clinton's chances
inch up 0.3 points to 12.6 percent.
Clinton gets a Monday-morning gift in today's Wall Street Journal:
Barack Obama reportedly told the Teamsters that he would reduce federal
oversight of the union. An Obama spokesman confirmed to the WSJ that Obama believes the current oversight system has "run its course." On Good Morning America, Obama denied having made a "blanket commitment" to scrap federal oversight, which was instituted
in 1989 to settle a racketeering lawsuit by the Justice Department.
Rather, he said, "the union has done a terrific job cleaning house,"
and he'll "examine" the issue as president. The Clinton camp today
cried hypocrisy—will he or won't he? But Politico points to a similar statement made by Clinton that she would be "very open" to re-examining the decree. The issue won't decide the primary, but John McCain's ad team can probably squeeze a few spots out of it.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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DemConWatch, the Rain Man of primary delegate counting, today breaks down six different scenarios for how Florida's and Michigan’s delegates could get allocated. If neither state’s delegates are counted, for example, Obama currently leads by 130 delegates. If you count Michigan but not Florida, that lead shrinks to 106. Count Florida but not Michigan, and it’s 107. (Notice how little difference there is between those two scenarios.) Count both contests, deny Obama any of the “uncommitted” votes from Michigan, and his lead shrinks to nine delegates.
The problem is, none of these scenarios is particularly plausible. Howard Dean says he plans to seat both Florida's and Michigan’s delegations at the convention. To do otherwise, when it could affect Democratic morale in November, would be insane. But to fulfill that pledge, he needs to sit both campaigns down and hammer out a compromise. (Assuming one of the candidates doesn’t drop out.) Then the party’s “credentials committee,” which meets in mid-June once voting is done, needs to approve the compromise. But right now it looks like that committee, composed of delegates loyal to Obama, Clinton, and Dean, will favor Obama. So, really, a “compromise” will be approved only if it doesn’t hurt Obama so much that he could lose the nomination, which pretty much rules out counting either state proportionally.
Two scenerios that fit this definition are 1) a 50-50 split, which would be acceptable to the Obama-dominated credentials committee since it essentially nullifies both votes, and 2) an option floated by Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer that falls halfway between the 50-50 split and a proportional allocation. Under this second plan, Clinton would get 69 delegates in Michigan, and Obama would get 59. If you applied the same logic to the Florida vote—not quite 50-50, but not quite proportional—Clinton would get 102 pledged delegates, and Obama would get 83. (The proportional split was 60-40 if you don’t count Edwards, so these numbers come from a 55-45 compromise scenario.)
A 50-50 split would preserve Obama's 130-delegate lead, because it’s as if the two states had never voted. (Dean is happy, though, because at least the delegations get to attend the convention. Phew!) A 111-74 split in Florida and 69-59 split in Michigan pare Obama’s lead down to 91 delegates. For the Obama camp, this is probably too close for comfort, but it would at least also let them say they reached a compromise without giving up a dangerous number of delegates.
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Clinton's prospects for surviving Indiana and North Carolina
continue to look favorable. Howard Dean still wants to seat Florida and
Michigan delegates—which would probably benefit Clinton—while another
former DNC chair endorses Obama. Jimmy Carter indicates he'll follow
the pledged delegates, which is good news for Obama. Plug all that into
the equation and Clinton pops up 0.2 points to 12.3 percent.
Last Friday, we compared the Clinton campaign to a shark that must continuously move forward in order to stay alive. Here's another muddled maritime metaphor that applies: that of a killer whale toying with a baby seal before inevitably eating it. Unfortunately for Clinton, she's the seal.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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In an interview with Nightline yesterday, Clinton said, "If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee."
This line—she and Bill have said it a few times now—has led to some marvelous takedowns, from Jon Stewart to the New Republic’s Christopher Orr. But here are some other things that would be true if Democratic primary had the Republican-style winner-take-all system:
- Barack Obama would have focused his energies on winning big states by a hair instead of racking up huge delegate leads in small caucus states.
- Momentum would be a bigger factor, since every win is a big win, making an 11-victory streak more devastating, PR-wise.
- John Edwards might have dropped out even earlier, freeing up voters in the Nevada and Michigan contests.
- Both candidates would have been free to campaign in Michigan and Florida. Clinton would probably have won Florida, but Michigan would be up in the air. Only half their delegates would count.
In other words, it would be a completely different contest.
And as Chris Wilson pointed out, if the Republicans used the Democratic system, Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee—or at least still in the race.
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Former Slate intern and North Carolina native Jake Melville sends along this dispatch:
Barack Obama pitches himself as a "post-partisan" politician who can bridge our divides. But by playing a pickup game with the University of North Carolina Tar Heels earlier this week, he inadvertently took sides in one of the nation’s bitterest rivalries.
The Duke-UNC rivalry (more like blood feud, really) is the dividing line in North Carolina sports. There may be no red America or blue America, but there are two very distinct shades of blue in North Carolina. Has Obama finally ditched his message of hope and unity by associating with Coach Roy Williams and Tyler Hansborough instead of Coach K. and Greg Paulus?
Perhaps. But shooting hoops with UNC was no doubt a shrewd political move. Everyone knows Obama has had trouble courting white working-class voters. In Pennsylvania, he lost the Rust Belt area around Pittsburgh by a whopping 23 percent. The UNC scrimmage could be a deliberate appeal to this group. Whereas Duke is seen as rich, white, upper-class elite—Obama’s base—UNC is considered more populist, democratic, and working class. For Obama, one Tar Heels scrimmage is worth a thousand rounds of bowling.
Of course, there’s always the risk of alienating Duke fans. The blue-blue divide is so tense, it makes the red-blue divide look amicable. But if Obama can make significant inroads with the UNC demographic next week, it will weaken Hillary Clinton’s argument that Obama can’t win the party’s core voters. Maybe it’s time for Clinton to suit up.
Update 4:17 p.m.: Frayster "sdloughlin" begs to differ:
Obama's recent scrimmage with the Tar Heels was actually very much
in keeping with his efforts to bridge all divides. Prior to this
scrimmage, he had done work on both sides of "the court" if you will.
His body man is Reggie Love, former varsity basketball and football
player for Duke. He picked UNC to win in his NCAA brackets. At his 3 on
3 tournament in Indiana, his teammate was current WNBA star and former
Blue Devil, Allison Bales.
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