Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - Posts
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Barack Obama’s campaign announced today the endorsement of Puerto Rico Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, pretty clearly timed to showcase Obama’s appeal to Hispanics as the Texas primary looms.
But it also highlights the role Puerto Rico will play on June 7 as the last Democratic primary contest. If the race for delegates remains neck and neck, people might be tempted to look at the battle over Puerto Rico’s 63 delegates as a deciding factor in the war for the nomination.
But in reality, the PR caucuses (they might switch to a primary last-minute if they want to boost turnout) aren’t going to change much. For one thing, delegates are allocated proportionally, as in other Democratic primaries. Various pundits have floated the notion that Puerto Rico will be a winner-take-all showdown. But that theory has been summarily debunked. (What happened was, the island voted so late in the 2000 and 2004 Democratic primaries that only one candidate was left on the ballot, making it de facto winner-take-all.)
What’s more, even on the spectrum of proportionally allocated contests, Puerto Rico is likely to be closer than most. Remember how districts with an even number of delegates almost always split in half? Well, Puerto Rico has eight districts, and all but one of them have an even number of delegates. (The 2008 numbers haven’t been finalized; apparently Puerto Rico will be getting a “bonus” of three more district delegates.) That means that unless one candidate scores a landslide victory, the 36 district delegates will split more or less evenly. Same with the territory’s 12 at-large delegates and seven PLEOs, all of which are also allocated proportionally. Clinton and Obama are close among superdelegates, too: Three have sided with Hillary; one with Obama.
In other words, Puerto Rico is bound to be a wash. Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be room for hard-hitting, on-scene reporting from the beach.
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A socialist friend of mine once said, “You know why we're going to win? Because we have better poetry. We have better songs.” I informed him that he was crazy.
But after seeing this, I think he might be onto something. You might not be able to win an election with a good song, but you can definitely lose with one that's this bad.
And because we never miss a chance to do a roundup of candidate-themed songs, here's the updated list:
Obama songs here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Hillary songs here, here, here, and (sorry) here.
Others? Send 'em along. h/t Ben Smith
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Back in September, a Vibe magazine cover story asked the probing question: “Can the freshman senator from Illinois stick to his ideals and still become the first man to rock Air Force Ones on Air Force One?”
We can’t answer that just yet. But if he does one day rock them, we seriously hope they look like this.
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Last week, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle (RIP) sent the Obama campaign a letter throwing down the gauntlet and challenging Barack Obama to a debate a week—a sort of Lincoln-Douglas series that would either captivate America or bore it to death. Obama agreed to attend two debates between now and March 4, one in Texas and one in Cleveland, Ohio, but said that any more would be overkill.
Now Clinton has upped the ante. Today she begins airing a new ad in Wisconsin—Obama-land, by all accounts—challenging him to debate her in Milwaukee.
The spot doesn’t quite “go negative.” But it sure does contain fighting words: “Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than to have to answer questions.” It also has all the traditional language of a negative ad, with side-by-side pictures, a smarmy narrator, and a Baroque quartet. Still, it falls far short of trash talk.
As we’ve said before, having more debates benefits Clinton: It gets Obama off the trail, where he flourishes, and onto the stage, where she does. For a while, it seemed as if Clinton might reject the NBC-hosted Cleveland debate in light of MSNBC anchor David Shuster’s “pimped out” comments—an odd move, given that she has been calling for more debates. But today Clinton confirmed that she would be attending. As Ben Smith puts it, her campaign has apparently decided it’s “getting more mileage out of the debate theme than out of the war with MSNBC.”
Indeed. On a conference call at this very moment, Howard Wolfson is arguing that Obama “owes it to the people of Wisconsin” to debate Clinton in their state, adding that Obama is “hiding from the people of Wisconsin.” This claim—even for campaign spin—is patently absurd. This week, Obama will have held eight events in Wisconsin. Clinton has held zero and has none scheduled. (Chelsea and Bill are making stops, however.) Furthermore, every debate is a national event. There’s nothing stopping residents of Wisconsin from watching the Texas and Ohio debates.
Obama’s decision to accept two debates and reject the rest walks the line between cooperation and independence; he appears accommodating, but not overly so. Spokesman Tommy Vietor dismissed the latest Clinton spot as a “political stunt to get headlines.” “Look, they’ve debated 18 times in this primary,” he said. “They’re going to debate two additional times. … Sen. Obama believes debates are important. That’s why we’re doing 20 of them total.”
To waste so much breath on the “debate debate” seems silly, but it’s the sort of micro-battle that gets attention in a tight race. And with Obama slated to take 10 states (and territories) in a row, Clinton needs the free media. But why settle for that, when you can get free media about the free media?
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We don’t believe in shmoshmentum, but we do believe in numbers—and Obama’s numbers are looking very, very good. Barack Obama’s campaign, though, thinks they’re practically unstoppable. But he’s not Highlander quite yet. For Hillary Clinton to beat Obama in pledged delegates, she’s going to need to win big (20-point margins, probably) in nearly every state—preferably beginning with Wisconsin on Tuesday. It sounds impossible, but it’s not.
Five things could puncture Obama’s air of inevitability and give flight to Hillary Clinton’s comeback:
- John Edwards endorses Clinton—Edwards has never had stronger leverage on his former adversary than right now. Clinton needs an overwhelming narrative to drop out of the sky in the next two weeks, and Edwards’ endorsement is the only thing likely to fall. Edwards can dangle an endorsement in front of Hillary while forcing her to give him a Cabinet position and put poverty at the forefront of her campaign. Clinton will agree out of desperation. It’s like the domestic version of carrot-and-stick diplomacy.
- Hillary goes negative—She put her pinky toe into this murky pool in Wisconsin, where she released an ad chiding Obama for not agreeing to a debate there. The sternest line—“Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions”—alludes to the potential all-rhetoric-no-results attack she’ll mount on Obama. Going negative after months of positive campaigning has a real chance of backfiring, but so does standing by and smiling while Obama marches in a Democratic victory parade.
- Debate flubs—It looks like there will only be two more debates, despite Clinton’s debate-a-week request. Obama isn’t always the smoothest debater, so there’s major potential for Clinton to make him look foolish in a high-stakes forum. If Clinton is going negative over the air, then she’ll go negative at the two debates, which could put Obama in an uncomfortable spot. He could either act too timidly or too angrily. Either way, finicky voters could flee to the safer, more experienced bet.
- Obama gets cocky—Obama is already treated like a rock star, and now he actually has reason to act like one. But we’ve seen front-runners flame out over and over again in this race, partly because they got a bit too comfortable (think pre-Iowa Clinton, pre-New Hampshire Obama, summer Giuliani, and fall Romney). Obama has the uncomfortable task of trying to look like the inevitable nominee—so Democrats coalesce around him—and still appearing hungry for the nomination—so his supporters don’t get apathetic and stay home. Obama’s campaign seems to be aware of this and is still trying to spin the press into thinking that Obama has been the underdogs in “every contest.” They’re going to have to do better than that to douse the campaign’s ego.
- Michigan and Florida, Take 2—Obama’s lead wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if Michigan and Florida’s 350-plus delegates counted. There’s a small movement in the party to have the two states stage a do-over contest, which would mean voters would have to go to the polls again. If Clinton could hold or increase on her 15-point margin in the delegate-rich states, that would help narrow the pledged-delegate gap. As is, the states’ delegations will only be seated if they don’t alter the outcome of the race.
If all else fails, Clinton can still try to organize a superdelegate rebellion. Just because she’s all but guaranteed to lose in the pledged delegate count doesn’t mean she can’t still win the nomination. If she can find a way to convince the superdelegates to ignore their constituents’ wishes and the popular-vote tally, she may be able to build a winning coalition of insiders that can overwhelm Obama’s pledged delegate lead. Unfortunately for her, that’s even more unlikely than her toppling Obama’s pledged delegate lead.
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