Spin Cycle

A little pickup in the flow of superdelegates to Obama.

In addition to three this morning (one taken from Clinton), he announces endorsements from Hawaii Rep. Mazie Hirono; Laurie Weahkee, a NM superdelegate and Native American organizer; Wilber Lee Jeffcoat, a South Carolina Democratic vice-chair; California DNC members Ed Espinoza and Vernon Watkins.

That's a net gain of eight -- Clinton added one, but last one.

Watkins to AP: "The election is over, everybody knows that. Obama has won,"

With dark blue counties the strongest for Hillary, the map below shows just how well she's likely to do in the rest of Appalachia -- WV and Kentucky -- in the next two weeks. So far there's no sign of a bump for Obama.

So, a blog at Real Clear Politics argues, she's been counted out too soon: 30-40 point wins in Appalachia, a similar performance in Puerto Rico, and Clinton can catch up in at least some measures of the total popular vote. And if she does that, she has a credible claim. Obama, by mostly ignoring the two states, may be hoping to depress turnout and thereby the size if not the spread of the loss:

"What happens to 'It's Over' if Clinton pulls a 40-point victory in West Virginia on Tuesday, then follows it up a week later with a 30-point victory in Kentucky? If these states turn out in the same margins that states since March 4th have averaged, that would imply a net of about 290,000 votes for Clinton. That puts her within striking distance of a reasonable popular vote victory. 'Over' will be over as we turn our attention to Puerto Rico."

Even with those numbers, it's pretty much an outside shot: She's 714,000 behind right now. Even if she picked up another 250,000 in a Puerto Rico blowout, she'd be 160,000 to 200,000 behind. So she'd still have to throw in, say, Florida to make the case. But it's worth knowing there's still a minority opinion out there among political pundits...

The media may have declared Obama the winner, but there's no flood of superdelegates, and no sign that he's pulling away from Clinton in Gallup's three-day national tracking poll. They're in a statistical tie for the 16th consecutive day after Thursday polling.

A Republican National Committee ad attacking Obama. Nothing below the belt, but it gives you a feel of how the definition of "negative" changes in the general -- at least one glove is taken off.

Separately: How about a law making it a federal crime to use slow-motion to make candidates look stupid/evil in political ads? Can't they come up with something slightly creative?

Hillary's latest ad for West Va., a fighter-for-the-middle-class spot. All positive. The new rules: Hillary runs, but doesn't attack?

No wonder Obama isn't paying much attention to West Virginia. He's down 66-23 in a poll out today.

And Clinton is pushing a letter signed by 16 "swing state Democrats" supporting her, that makes the case that she'll be the strongest candidate down-ticket. Signers include NY freshmen Gillibrand, Hall, Arcuri. Full text is after the jump, and it's backed up with a Power Point presentation you can see here.

Her problem, of course, is not that she doesn't have a good argument. She does, and so does Obama. Her problem is that more Democratic voters thought Obama's argument was better.

Here's one of the slides from the PowerPoint:

Continue reading "Poll: Hillary 66-23 in West Virginia" »

More in the Wall Street Journal on Hillary casting herself as the candidate of white America yesterday, in a Peggy Noonan column:

Quote: " 'Even Richard Nixon didn't say white,' an Obama supporter said, 'even with the Southern strategy.' "

Quote: "If John McCain said, 'I got the white vote, baby!' his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party."

Quote: "To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical 'the black guy can't win but the white girl can' is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by."

Quote: " 'She has unleashed the gates of hell,' a longtime party leader told me. 'She's saying, 'He's not one of us.' "

Leon Panetta, a Californian and former Clinton WH chief of staff, tells local TV that Clinton's time has come: "I think there's a time now to concede and unify the party."

Al Sharpton, using many more words on NY1, delivers the same message:

“As you know, I’ve been in the ministry of civil rights all my life, but had dealings with entertainers because of James Brown. The worst thing in the world is when an entertainer doesn’t know when the show is over. The audience is gone, the lights are down, you’re getting ready to cut the mics off and you are still on the stage singing. It’s over, it’s all right, it’s over. Come sing another day, but this show is over Senator Clinton.”

And: “There is no possible scenario that I see without the total destruction of the Democratic Party for Hillary Clinton to become the nominee.”

Full text of his interview after the jump.

Continue reading "Panetta, Sharpton: Time for her to go" »

Obama starts off the day with two more superdelegate adds:

Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey (left), an African American and formerly a Clinton backer, switches over to Obama from Hillary. And he also picks up Rep. Peter Fazio of Oregon (right).

And Clinton gets one: Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania, citing the will of the voters in his district. Clinton won it with 70 percent of the vote.

Update: Another for Obama, American Federation of Government Employees union president John Gage, a Maryland superdelegate.

Newsday takes a look at the idea bubbling in some Democratic circles -- that two are better than one.

By GLENN THRUSH AND CRAIG GORDON

CHARLESTON, W.Va.

There's only one problem with the idea of a Hillary Clinton- Barack Obama "Dream Team" ticket -- neither member of the team is ready to buy the dream.

With Clinton's White House hopes on the wane, chatter of a joint ticket with Obama on the top was making the rounds of Democratic power circles, the media and in the two campaigns themselves.

Obama -- who is said to have resisted the idea privately -- fueled the talk himself Thursday, telling CNN that Clinton is "an extraordinary candidate ... so obviously she'd be on anybody's short list to be a potential vice presidential candidate."

And onetime Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, now ABC's Sunday morning host, reported Thursday top Clinton aides were eager to discuss a peace treaty contingent on the joint ticket.

Clinton advisers deny the campaign is even considering the vice-presidential slot yet. Two people close to the former first lady . . .

Continue reading "Obama-Clinton "Dream Ticket" -- or not" »

Clinton does not seem to be getting that much flack for her comment to USA Today that she can win the nomination because "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again and... the whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me..."

While it made two of the evening news shows, there's been no big denunciation from Obama -- he seems to have decided to move on to McCain, and wouldn't profit from a white/black fight anyway. Some in the blogosphere -- while concerned about the phrasing suggesting that black Americans aren't hard-working -- seem willing to cut her some slack for doing nothing worse than stating the obvious:

TNR's Stump: "It's definitely uncomfortable to hear her say it, but if Hillary thinks white Americans won't elect a black president, is it so transgressive for her to say it out loud? Everyone in politics and media has been having this conversation for more than a year now. If anything it seems better than reliance on cutesy euphemisms like "working class" or "electability." I'm willing to be convinced I'm wrong but I think it's worth considering this before the latest "race-baiter" pile-on gets underway in earnest."

The problem: She is not being analytical, she is saying it with a purpose -- "white," twice, is not a coincidence. The purpose is to emphasize a racial divide as two predominately white states prepare to vote, and to get them to focus on the racial divide instead of ignoring it. If she has the values she espouses, she should be urging those voters to judge the candidates on their merits, not emphasizing the racial divide as her primary talking point.

Jack and Jill Politics: "This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it's meant to give white voters the impression that they would be 'disenfranchised' by an Obama win. It's a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama's success."

Or, here: "She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country's pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race -- aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts -- we're left to deal with the fallout of a "poorly worded" statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases. "

And, of course, the political situation frames everything.

If Obama is the presumptive nominee, he needs the party's second leading figure to urge white working-class voters to give him a second look -- not to go out of her way to cast herself, a fellow white, as their more reliable champion.

In an item earlier today, we linked to a new Washington Times article on Hillary's role in a real estate scam in Arkansas, which seemed to raise questions about her claims that she is "fully vetted."

Now, here's some more from MSNBC:

"Two Republican officials at the Republican National Committee who are involved in "opposition research efforts" in preparation for the general election say the RNC's oppo research dossier on Sen. Clinton runs more than 1,200 pages in length.

"According to these officials, the book includes 'previously undisclosed information about Hillary Clinton's connections to the Whitewater scandal, travel office firings, and Democratic fundraising efforts.' "

It's fair to note that the Clinton camp has a good first response to any of this stuff: It was fully investigated, and she was never charged with anything. But if the stuff actually is new, that stock response may only last a day.

The larger point: Like Obama, she's not risk-free. No one is.

Here's three interesting McCain-related videos. First, Obama looks pretty strong today complaining about McCain's attempts to link him to Hamas -- except he says McCain has "lost his bearings," and in a memo (after the jump) McCain's campaign calls that age-ist:

Second, in addition to getting endorsed by John Hagee, who thinks the Catholic Church is the great whore, McCain is also tight with Rev. Rod Parsley, who sounds pretty inflammatory and Wright-ishly bombastic in this video from Mother Jones:

And, third: Cindy McCain, whose considerable wealth kind of underwrites the McCains' lifestyle, explains why she's a special case who shouldn't have disclose her tax returns like most first couples do:

Continue reading "McCain video trifecta: Obama, nutty preacher, taxes" »

Obama gets a second superdelegate today -- US Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington. AP:

"Obama's performance this week in primaries in North Carolina and Indiana show 'he can take a pounding and come back strong to deliver his message of hope and change. He is tough as nails,' Larsen said."

From the Nation, a very nice chart showing how Obama fared in his rough journey across the Rust Belt from March to May.

On the one hand, the chart shows stability -- he's not going from behind to ahead among tough demographics. So it's the makeup of states that has a larger effect on outcomes. But on the other, it shows fairly steady progress from Ohio -- his share of all the slices is going up, not down. It's a counter to the Clinton electability argument:

"In Indiana, Obama improved his support across several key demographics, despite a bruising month of attacks on his pastor, patriotism and populism. Compared to Ohio and Pennsylvania, he generally drew more votes from white women, Catholics, gun owners, households earning under $50,000 annually, voters prioritizing the economy, and voters without a college degree."

This is from John McCain.

The excuse is Mother's Day. But the subtext seems to be, if my mom is still this cool, how could I be too old?

The first/only superdelegate announcement of the day: Obama gets Rep. Brad Miller (left) of North Carolina:

“I look forward to serving on a unified Democratic ticket with Senator Obama. He has shown great vision, strength and resilience during a very tough campaign against a worthy opponent.”

But it hasn't exactly been a flood since Tuesday, has it? Based on the evidence so far, the media was a little more impressed by Obama's performance on Tuesday than the superdelegates were.

There seem to be several things going on. Whatever the press says, Clinton is not completely dead yet. A lot of the uncommitted probably don't see advantage in alienating half the party until/unless they have to. Obama has not exactly erased questions about the strength of his coalition and his electability. Most of the easy sells among supers are gone. And like the Obama campaign itself, superdelegates probably want to give a cornered Hillary space.

The campaign has been emphasizing May 20 -- the date of the Kentucky/Oregon primary, and the date it expects to clinch a majority of the pledged (i.e. elected) delegates. Today, Obama himself brought it up on NBC: “That will be an important day. If at that point we have the majority of pledged delegates, which is possible, then I think we can make a pretty strong claim that we’ve got the most runs and it’s the ninth inning and we’ve won.”

Putting two and two together: It sounds like a lot of superdelegates are saying they want a neutral benchmark -- victory among the pledged delegates -- before they jump. That way, they can say they're honoring the process and the voters, not picking Obama over Clinton.

Until then, it's looking like it will be a trickle. The problem: Obama is going to have to endure a drubbing in West Virginia and another round of commentary about his unpopularity with working-class white voters before he reaches critical mass, never a healthy thing for the presumptive nominee.

So far, we haven't even seen West Virginia on his schedule -- he's in Washington today, then Oregon Friday and Saturday.

As a political tactic, it's probably smart to downgrade a race you're going to lose, but amid the ongoing bitter/elitist narrative it may not be smart to evade the kind of voters you need to win over. Why not dive into the hollers and do a fight-for-every-vote thing?

Kind of capturing the state of the presidential race, Time's The Page features this graphic under the headline, "Now What?"

Clinton (trying to stay relevant?) writes a letter directly to Obama. She scolds him over Florida and Michigan, insists on a settlement:

"Your commitment to the voters of these states must be clearly stated and your support for a fair and quick resolution must be clearly demonstrated." (Full text after the jump).

Remember: She didn't say a word last year -- not a word -- when Michigan and Florida were stripped of their delegates for violating the DNC primary calendar. Her top political aide, Harold Ickes, a DNC member, voted in favor of the sanctions, and she said on the campaign trail that the outcomes wouldn't matter.

Now, she wants to change the rules after the fact because she's losing, use some uncontested primaries to try to reverse the flow of the most hotly contested intra-party race in years -- and act like it's such a matter of life and death that Obama ought to help her!!!

There is, by the way, progress today in both Florida and Michigan working toward compromise plans that would seat delegates, but disonnect the proportions from the popular vote and not give Hillary what she needs.

The letter seems to be setting her up to reject such plans. It demands "a solution that honors the votes of the millions of people who went to the polls in Florida and Michigan. It is not enough to simply seat their representatives at the convention in Denver."

Continue reading "Hillary: A letter to Obama on Fla., Mich." »

Gravel's soft landing:

From El Mundo.

Media-coronated or not, Obama by all accounts is going to get drubbed next week in West Virginia. Why?

The West Virginia political blog West Virginia Blue recently compared statistical data on the state's population to a New York Times write-up comparing the demographics of Clinton counties with Obama counties across the country:

None of the Mountain State's 55 counties has an African American population of more than 20 percent. Overall, it's only 3 percent black.

Clinton does well in counties where less than 78 percent of residents have a high-school education, Obama does well when the percent is more than 87 percent. In WV 41 are less than 78, and none are above 87 percent.

Eleven of the remaining counties have median per capita incomes below $30,000, where Clinton usually wins.

At the end of the analysis only two counties -- Kanawha and Ohio, with 16 percent of the state's population -- project for Obama, because of their population density. He does well in high-density counties.

The site, for what it's worth, projects a possible net of 12 delegates for Clinton because the small state is so skewed in her favor.

This analysis, of course, predates Obama's win in NC and near miss in Indiana.

For more on demographics as destiny, see this.

In North Carolina and Indiana, Bill Clinton became Hillary's chief Bubba-vote campaigner, spending a lot of time stumping in rural towns.

How'd he do?

First Read finds that he made 50 campaign stops in 41 NC counties -- and just 18 went for Hillary. That was better than Hillary: She made 22 stops in 15 counties, and won only 3 (although she racked up a big margin in those three).

In Indiana, where Hillary pretty much dominated the rural geography, the stats were much better. Bill visited 35 counties in the Hoosier state, and Hillary won 27 of them.

Here's the final NC map -- deeper green is more and more Clinton, deeper purple is more and more Obama:

One of the big remaining Clinton arguments is that Hillary has been "fully vetted," while Obama is a question mark who might be vulnerable to unexpected attacks from the GOP -- i.e. an "October surprise."

The Washington Times this morning has a piece that reflects the problem with that argument. It adds a few facts, but no game changers, to one of the most vulnerable parts of Hillary's "vetted" past -- her claim to have known nothing about a fraudulent real estate deal that she did work on as a lawyer in Arkansas.

The WT story reports on documents describing internal deliberations among Starr prosecutors about whether to indict her for lying (they never did). What is interesting is the unexpected source of the story, which suggests that it's a mistake to ever be confident that something strange won't come flying in at you out of a left field you never thought of.

Here's how the paper got the documents

"Ordinarily, such files containing grand jury evidence and prosecutors' deliberations are never made public. But the estate of Sam Dash, a lifelong Democrat who served as the ethics adviser to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, donated his documents from the infamous 1990s investigation to the Library of Congress after his 2004 death, unwittingly injecting into the public domain much of the testimony and evidence gathered against Mrs. Clinton from former law partners, White House aides and other witnesses."

The point: There's lots of stuff about Hillary in lots of places no one ever thought of. When the stakes are the presidency, there's no such thing as "fully vetted."

The Time cover is symbolic of what has happened over the last couple of days:

Obama hasn't declared victory. Hillary hasn't conceded. Polls haven't yet recorded a huge Obama leap. Superdelegates haven't broken en masse. Clinton hasn't lost her Florida and Michigan challenges. Obama hasn't won a majority of pledged delegates yet or popular votes yet or total delegates yet. The convention hasn't been held.

But the media has decided, en masse, that it's time for Clinton to leave the stage. It started with Tim Russert on Tuesday night, then the NYPost called her "toast" and Drudge called him "The nominee," and now Time and everyone else is chasing along.

Time even has it's "Hillary's five mistakes" piece of cliche journalism out. It's all political tactics -- not a single mention of Hillary's Iraq vote, which was her single biggest mistake, which was the foundation of every single Obama argument.

You don't have to disagree one bit with the analysis that says Hillary doesn't have a chance, or have one ounce of sympathy for her, to be uncomfortable with the sense that a bunch of unelected people are attempting to declare it over before it's over.

Thrush in Newsday today looks at the "veil of gloom" that has descended over the Clinton campaign, quoting one NY supporter: "I think the challenge now is letting her leave with dignity and grace and letting the process go forward. She has got to leave on a high note. She's got to determine her own exit strategy."

But he also quotes top Hillary fundraiser Hassan Namazee: "As long as you are wearing the uniform, you have a chance to win the game." And Janison, in his column, recalls the Red Sox at 0-3 and David Paterson the day before Eliot Spitzer became Client No. 9, and sharpens it to a fine point:

"In political races, toast is a relative term."

Sen. Clinton argues her case in an interview with USA Today, contending in unusually blunt terms that she should be the nominee because whites support her. YouTube audio is posted at left:

"There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again and how the whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me and in independents, I was running even with him and doing even better with Democratic-leaning independents. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on....There is a pattern emerging here."

In a conference call yesterday, strategist Geoff Garin also emphasized how well Clinton was doing among white voters. So, it's not coincidence.

There are several problems with the argument. At least some of those white voters support Clinton because they are uncomfortable with a black -- so it's a coalition whose foundation is racial antipathy, which has not historically been a Democratic Party value.

It's not necessarily the best way to argue for the support of undeclared black superdelegates, or for superdelegates whose biggest fear is that handing the nomination to Hillary would drive away the African-American base of the Democratic Party.

In North Carolina, Obama got 37 percent of whites, while Clinton got only 7 percent of blacks. In Indiana, Obama got 40 percent of whites, and Clinton got only 11 percent of blacks. In some states -- Iowa, Wisconsin -- Obama has won both the white and black vote. So if she wants to turn it into a race-based contest -- she comes off as the polarizing candidate, he comes off as the candidate with a broad-based coalition, undercutting her point.

Finally, demographics can be sliced and diced lots of ways. Such as:

In Indiana, Obama won 52 percent of the voters from age 17 to 64. In North Carolina, he won 60 percent of that age group.

Hillary's support is limited to people who will be dead in 20 years. Is that the way to build the future of the Democratic Party?

From Washington Post satirist Dana Milbank, who attended Hillary's event and press conference in West Virginia today:

"The signs of a last-minute event were everywhere. Security was minimal, and problems with the sound system gave the Clinton staff fits; it didn't help that one of the men working the sound system wore an Obama T-shirt.

" 'I'm not turning it inside out,' he said, when Clinton supporters protested. In the back of the crowd, a camera riser collapsed with a huge crash, sending bodies, coffee and cameras flying. 'Metaphor?' a reporter asked as he picked himself off the ground? 'Metaphor,' confirmed another."

Today, George McGovern became the first major Democratic figure to call on Hillary Clinton to quit the presidential race. Last year, he endorsed her, and they were pals. Times change:

The Obama campaign has been fairly successful in convincing the press that the vast majority of superdelegates will go with the candidate who has won the most pledged delegates, and the most popular votes.

This success has been, in no small part, the result of warnings from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- also the convention chair -- that it would be a very risky step for the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.

But if you're wondering why Clinton -- who, after last night, has little chance of catching Obama in pledged delegates or popular votes in fully contested primaries -- is staying in the race, read this story in The Hill.

The paper interviewed 42 of the 92 uncommitted Congressional superdelegates. It found only 4 -- four! -- who said they viewed the outcome of the primaries as dispositive. The rest told the paper they were assessing electability, which is where Hillary still thinks she has a strong argument.

Terminology is complicated here. Technically, under DNC rules, it is a fact that the primaries are not dispositive and superdelegates are free to vote for who they want. But it sounds like these Congress members are not simply restating their technical discretion -- they're saying they care more about their own assessment of electability than the outcome of the primaries.

Hillary is meeting with uncommitted superdelegates in Washington this afternoon.

Yesterday's results damaged Hillary's chances of overtaking Obama on popular vote or pledged delegates, damaged her prospects with the media, probably damaged her fundraising.

But if the superdelegates are still open to theoretical electability arguments, there's nothing in yesterday's results that was decisively in Obama's favor.

Obama will reportedly be meeting with uncommitted Congressional delegates tomorrow.

There is a 2 p.m. hearing scheduled for Thursday in which Suffolk County will challenge the injunction Legis. Ricardo Montano won last week to block a vote on Legis. Brian Beedenbender's worker status bill.

At the hearing, scheduled for state Appellate court in Brooklyn, the county will argue that Suffolk District Court Judge Carol MacKenzie erred last week when she issued a temporary restraining order to block the Legislature from considering IR 1105, the bill that would require the county's 16,077 licensed contractors to verify their employees' legal working status.

The county's appeal comes one week before the case is scheduled to be heard in a Riverhead court. But that date comes after next Tuesday's Legislature meeting and would delay any vote on the bill until June 10 at the earliest.

If the restraining order is thrown out, the bill could be brought for a vote at the Legislature's scheduled meeting Tuesday.

The county has hired Garden City law firm Berkman, Henoch, Peterson & Peddy to argue its case. Attorneys from the firm did not return phone calls Wednesday.

George Nolan, the counsel to the Suffolk Legislature, said he did not know what the county would be paying the outside counsel for the case. He said the funds would come from the county attorney's budget.

Montano (D-Central Islip), who is in the odd position of being both plaintiff and defendant in the case, blasted county officials for seeking to overturn the temporary restraining order he won.

"This is a total waste of taxpayer money," he said. "People have economic needs and here we are hiring high-priced lawyers."

Legis. Brian Beedenbender (D-Centereach) retorted, " Its the height of hypocrisy to condemn the defense of an action Legis. Montano initiated."

-- Reid J. Epstein

Apparently, Long Island's state Senate delegation -- like Hillary Clinton -- doesn't care what economists think. They're not going to be caught on the right side of a perfectly good pander just because most of the people who understand it say it's stupid!

Our Albany chief JT Madore reports that all nine members of the LI delegation -- 8 Republicans and 1 Democrat -- voted today to suspend the state gas tax this summer, part of a 46-15 majority. Clinton proposed a similar suspension of the federal gas tax in an attempt to win votes in North Carolina and Indiana, but there's not much indication that it had a big impact.

Almost no economists support the idea. They say suspending the tax wouldn't reduce the price, which is a product of limited refinery capacity and high demand, but would instead result in oil companies getting the money that would have gone to the state.

But it sounds to people like their legislators are trying to help them. And the allure is so politically powerful, albeit substantively wrongheaded, that it puts the likes of Cesar Trunzo (left) and Hillary (right) in the same camp.

The political appeal of the issue was apparent from the vote. Thirteen of the 15 no votes came from the five boroughs, were people don't drive much. Everyone else voted yes. But the state Assembly is a different story.

The proposal is expected to die there, because Speaker Sheldon Silver is opposed.

Whoops! We forgot -- Silver never exercises power. He just listens to his conference. So, his (city dominated) Democratic conference must be opposed.