The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire

February 28, 2008, 7:40 am
Political Perceptions: ‘Junk Food Polling’ You Can Just Ignore

Here’s a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web:
By Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray

In their final sprint toward the March 4 primaries, the campaigns of both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are using a lot of “junk food polling” to impress voters and superdelegates—and you should just ignore it, writes MSNBC’s Tom Curry. This is the kind of polling that declares, based on some hypothetical matchup, that one candidate or the other would beat the Republican nominee in some state, and hence is the most “electable” in the fall.

Curry notes, for example, that the Obama forces want you to know “that if the Illinois senator were the Democratic nominee in November, he’d defeat Sen. John McCain in Iowa, winning 53 percent to 36 percent. This, at least according to a Des Moines Register survey of 674 Iowans last week.” Such polling is touted mostly to impress Democratic superdelegates, who can go whichever way they want in the Clinton-Obama matchup. But Curry recalls that similar polling once showed former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (who’s not even in the race any more) poised to beat Obama in Pennsylvania, and had retired Gen. Wesley Clark beating President George Bush nationally in 2004. Don’t take it all too seriously: If voters really know now who will win some state in the fall, perhaps they can also answer this: “What will be the price of gasoline at the pump on Nov. 4?”

With Obama potentially reneging on his promise to publicly finance a general election campaign, and McCain in the beginning throes of a brouhaha with the FEC about fundraising for the primaries, the high and mighty candidates’ images are already tarnishing, writes Salon’s Mike Madden. Both of them are playing into the “political drama” and trying to best each other morally, but it’s likely they’ll both just come out looking bad. “The vision of a McCain-Obama race that raises national politics to lofty new heights is starting to fray,” Madden notes. “If the campaign begins with two self-styled reformers squabbling in the media over which one is actually the biggest hypocrite, it’s hard not to wonder what might come next.”

Time.com’s Karen Tumulty looks at Bill Clinton’s trip on the campaign trail, which has been a lesson in irony as the former hope candidate tries to convince voters that it takes more than talk of hope and change to run the country. Bill Clinton’s contributions have been a double-edged sword as the man who could once woo crowds better than any candidate is outshone by Obamamania, leaving more of his detrimental qualities in the wake. “Bill’s presence has become a reminder of the past and of the style of politics that Barack Obama has promised to bring to an end,” Tumulty writes. “Even worse, say many Democrats, Bill has put his wife’s political career in jeopardy by displaying the same character traits that almost ran his own presidency off the rails—a lack of self-control and an excess of self-absorption.”

Campaign 2008 has shown that the evangelical vote is alive and, well, maturing, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Walter Russell Mead writes in Atlantic Monthly. That’s hardly clear in all the analysis you’ve heard so far, he notes: “This political season has only heightened the confusion over the future of religion in the nation’s culture and politics. Journalistic coverage of evangelical Christianity has oscillated between confident declarations that the Christian right is dead and horrified discoveries of its continuing influence.” But the reality is that the religious vote is spreading, moderating and becoming part of the mainstream of American politics: “In every way, the evangelical movement in the United States looks as if it is maturing. That means more social and political influence, not less, as the movement broadens, reaches into the elite, and develops messages with wider appeal. Yet it also means a more pluralistic and less strident movement, more apt to compromise and less likely to be held hostage by a single issue or a single party.” It is, all told, making a “shift from insurgent to insider, with all of the moderating effects that transition implies,” Mead concludes.

It’s not too soon to recap how this year’s crazed primary calendar has worked out. Stateline.org surveyed the nation’s governors and found that many of them think the incredibly front-loaded schedule actually worked for their states this year—but that, overall, it was “a mess to be avoided for 2012.” States that went early got new influence, and states that “hung back from the Feb. 5 frenzy are even happier” because they have been able to play kingmaker in the extended race. Still, “the current process is nuts, absolutely nuts,” Pennsylvania’ Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell tells Stateline. He, like many others, “advocates dumping the current caucus and super-delegate systems in favor of a rotating regional primary plan,” Stateline reports.

Super Tuesday, Take 2

From Kathy Gill (Kathy's U.S. Politics blog):

Democrats and Republicans go to the polls in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont a week from today -- all primary states. The battleground states, based on number of delegates at stake, are Ohio and Texas.

* Ohio: 141 of 161 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest; 85 of 88 of delegates in the Republican contest (delegates are not legally bound to any candidate).
* Rhode Island: 21 of 32 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest; 17 of the 20 delegates allocated proportionally in the Republican contest;
* Texas: 126 of 228 delegates delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest (in addition, caucuses will commence at 7.15 pm); 137 of 140 delegates in the Republican contest;
* Vermont: 15 of 23 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest;all 17 delegates in the Republican contest.

Obama Surges and Rumors Abound

Obama has moved ahead of Clinton in Texas, but within the margin of error according to two polls. He trails Hillary in Ohio, just outside the margin of error in both the Zogby (44%-42%) and Rasmussen (47%-45%) polls. A rumor is circulating that Hillary will leave the race before Super Tuesday 2 on March 4. It would be surprising to see her do so, but in politics anything is possible.

TNR on McCain Scandal

The New Republic: The Long Run-Up by Gabriel Sherman

Behind the Bombshell in 'The New York Times.'Post Date Thursday, February 21, 2008

Last night, around dinnertime, The New York Times posted on its website a 3,000-word investigation detailing Senator John McCain's connections to a telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The controversial piece, written by Washington bureau reporters Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, Stephen Labaton, and David Kirkpatrick, and published in this morning's paper, explores the possibility that the Republican presidential candidate may have had an affair with the 40-year-old blond-haired lobbyist for the telecommunications industry while he chaired the Senate Commerce Committee in the late-1990s.

Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in
the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.

What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff's reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family's black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.

From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton's former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times' questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.

In early December, according to sources with knowledge of the events, Thompson requested a meeting with Bennett to arrange access to the senator and to discuss why the Republican presidential candidate had sought out a criminal lawyer in the first place. Bennett agreed to meet, and on the afternoon of December 18, Labaton, Rutenberg, and Thompson arrived at his Washington office. During a one-hour meeting, according to sources, Bennett admonished the Times reporters to be fair to McCain, especially in light of the whisper campaign that had sundered his 2000 presidential bid in South Carolina. He told them that he would field any questions they had, and promised to provide answers to their queries. Of the reporters in the room, Bennett knew Labaton the best. In the 1990s, Labaton had covered the Whitewater investigation, and Bennett viewed him as a straight-shooting, accurate reporter who could be reasoned with. Rutenberg he knew less well, and Bennett was miffed that Rutenberg had been calling all over Washington asking probing questions about McCain and his dealings with Iseman. The rumors were bound to get out.

Two days after that meeting, on December 20, news of the Times' unpublished investigation burst into public view when Matt Drudge posted an anonymously sourced item on the Drudge Report. "MEDIA FIREWORKS: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY," the headline proclaimed; the story hinted around the core of the allegations and focused on Keller's decision to hold the piece. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday," the item said, quoting unnamed sources, "but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election."
Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. "If John McCain has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer," one commentator said on Fox News, "that's a big--you don't hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story. You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow." On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of the leak. "They've been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they say we've had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he popped the Monica Lewinsky story first."

Initially, the McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the Drudge post. But by the afternoon of December 20, McCain denied the allegations at a press conference in Detroit, and his campaign released a statement deriding the Drudge item as "gutter politics."

Rumors of the unpublished Times piece swirled through the Romney campaign, then still locked in a tight dogfight for the Republican nomination. After the Drudge item flashed, Romney's traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom went to the back of the campaign plane to ask New York Times reporter Michael Luo, who was covering Romney, if he had heard when the piece was running.

Inside the Times newsroom, the Drudge item sent the McCain piece into hiding, making it both tightly guarded and "a topic of conversation," as one staffer put it. "The fact that it ended up on Drudge pushed it into secrecy," added another staffer. "The paper gets constipated on these things," a veteran former Times staffer said, describing the editors' deliberations over whether to run the piece.

In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.

The Drudge item didn't derail the investigation, however. By late December, the reporters had submitted several pages of written questions to Bennett for comment, and completed a draft of the piece before the New Year. But to their growing frustration, Keller ordered rounds of changes and additional reporting. According to Times sources, Baquet remained an advocate for his reporters and pushed the piece to be published, but sources say Keller wanted a more nuanced story looking less at personal matters and more at questions of Iseman's lobbying and McCain's legislative record. (The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.)
In mid-January, Keller told the reporters to significantly recast the piece after several drafts had circulated among editors in Washington and New York. After three different versions, the piece ended up not as a stand-alone investigation but as an entry in the paper's "The Long Run" series looking at presidential candidates' career histories.

It was at about that time, amidst flurries of rumors swirling about the looming Times investigation, that the Times' McCain beat reporter, Marc Santora, abruptly left the campaign trail after covering the senator for four and a half months, frustrated by the McCain rumors. A rising star at the paper, Santora had been working grueling hours, joining the 2008 election coverage straight from a reporting assignment in Baghdad. As the campaign headed to South Carolina, the site of McCain's defeat in 2000, Santora emailed the Times' deputy Washington editor, Richard Stevenson, to vent about how the rumors were dogging him on the campaign trail, and left the McCain beat on January 10. "The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in this thing," Santora told me. "I was exhausted, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I thought the best thing for me to do was take a break."

Santora wasn't the last casualty of the process. Two weeks ago, in early February, Marilyn Thompson, one of the four reporters working on the McCain investigation quit the Times. Thompson had been a staffer at The Washington Post for 14 years, until 2004. She had spent just six months at the Times and recorded only four bylines before accepting an offer to return to her former employer as an editor overseeing the Post's accountability coverage of money and politics. According to sources, Thompson became increasingly dispirited with the delays, and worked around the clock through the Christmas vacation on the piece, only to see the investigation sputter. Declining to comment on the investigation itself, Thompson told me her decision to return to the Post "was an opportunity to go back to the place that has been a home to me." (Thompson celebrated her byline during her last week at the Times. Her final day at the paper is tomorrow.)

Some observers say that the piece, published today, was not ready to roll. On Wednesday evening, much of the cable news commentary focused on the Times' heavy use of innuendo and circumstantial evidence. This morning, Time magazine managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published such a piece. Since the story broke, the McCain campaign has been doing its best to pin the story on the Times and make the media angle the focus.

Indeed, when TNR started reporting on the whereabouts of the story on February 4th, all parties seemed intent on denying its viability. "There's absolutely no story there. And it'd be a mistake for you to write about a non-story that didn't run," McCain adviser Charlie Black told me last week. "Drudge shouldn't have put that up. He didn't know what the hell he was doing."
McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker told me last week the campaign had no further comment beyond the December 20 statement assailing the allegations. According to McCain advisers, the Times reporters hadn't contacted the campaign about the investigation for several weeks before the piece ran, and only a few reporters from competing news organizations have put in calls on the matter. Two members of the McCain team had contacted TNR's editor to pressure him not to investigate the story.

Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an email to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."

Late in the day on February 19, Baquet sent a final draft of the Times piece to Keller and Times managing editor Jill Abramson in New York. After a series of discussions, the three editors decided to publish the investigation. "We published the story when it was ready which is what we always do," Baquet told TNR this morning. He added: "Nothing forced our hand. Nothing pushed us to move faster other than our own natural desire that we wanted to get a story in the paper that met all of our standards."

When the Times did finally publish the long-gestating investigation last night, the McCain camp immediately tried to train the glare back on the Gray Lady. In fact, McCain advisers stated that TNR's inquiries pressured the Times to publish its story before it was ready so this magazine wouldn't scoop the Times' piece. "They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles -- they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad," Salter told reporters last night in Toledo, Ohio.

This morning, after the piece ran, and as TNR's article was about to be posted, Keller finally responded to repeated requests for interviews. In an e-mail, he defended the substance, and the timing, of the story. "Our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready. 'Ready' means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats." Important as the story may indeed turn out to be, it may have provided the Times' critics with a few caveats too many.

Gabriel Sherman is a Special Correspondent to The New Republic.

Where does Rush kneel, anyway?

From Terry Mattingly at GetReligion.com:

Where does Rush kneel, anyway?

By: tmatt

Last week’s Newsweek seemed to sink deeper and deeper into my shoulder bag last week during my journey to greater Los Angeles. Thus, I am only now getting around to reading that cover story about the revolt in talk radio against GOP nominee-in-waiting (pending further New York Times review) Sen. John McCain.

It’s an interesting read, but the only passage that really jumped out at me was this one, which comes after the obligatory opening about Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, etc. GetReligion readers whose eyes glaze over at the mention of Southern Baptists and Dr. Richard Land (flash back) should stop reading at this point (although you’ll miss an interesting quote):

The revolt went beyond talk radio’s political shock jocks. James Dobson, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, declared he could not “in good conscience” vote for McCain and endorsed Mike Huckabee — the first time Dobson had ever taken sides in a GOP primary. . . .

The uncivil war also pulled in some stalwarts of the GOP “base,” such as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “Rush is even ranting against me,” Land tells NEWSWEEK. “I had the temerity to challenge the Great One in his all-knowing wisdom. Rush is underestimating the ability of Hillary or [Barack] Obama to unite conservatives around McCain. Rush says on air, ‘Dr. Land, I’ll tell you, I talk to 20 million people a day.’ No he doesn’t. He talks at 20 million people a day.” (Limbaugh declined NEWSWEEK’s interview request.)

OK, Rush vs. the Southern Baptists is interesting. Round II of his wars with Huckabee?

Now this is where things get interesting and very, very vague.

The numbers suggest an apparent gap between the movement’s leaders and rank-and-file conservatives. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, McCain holds a marginal lead among conservatives (49 to 43 percent) in a showdown with Huckabee. Seventy-six percent of all GOP voters and 69 percent of self-described conservatives say they would be satisfied with McCain as the GOP nominee. However, on Saturday, the first test since McCain became the presumptive nominee, Huckabee trounced McCain in the Kansas caucus, winning around 60 percent of the vote.

As the country learned anew in 2000 and 2004, every vote counts — especially every vote in states (like Ohio) where the margin of victory in a general election is likely to be narrow. If even a handful of conservatives were to follow the Limbaugh-Coulter line and stay home, it could make a real difference. McCain knows that, which is why he is moving to address the trouble to his right. Sens. Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, widely respected among right-to-lifers, have been contacting prominent social conservatives, including many members of Congress, urging them to take a second look at McCain’s record.

Confused? Here’s the question: Who are the GOP leaders and who are the rank-and-file?

This may strike regular GetReligion readers as a bit strange, but I really think that the Newsweek team needed to add some additional, more accurate, labels to this piece. Is Limbaugh the same kind of conservative as Land? What are the differences between the two and why are they clashing? Why is Bill Bennett on one side and Michael Savage on the other? While I am asking questions, why was Limbaugh so opposed to Huckabee’s brand of populist conservatism in the first place?

I am reminded of that earlier quote from Land about the priorities of “evangelical” voters:

“If you were going to prioritize among evangelicals, their social views are first; their foreign policy views are second; and their economic views are third. They vote against their pocketbook all the time and have demonstrated that they do so.”

Now, is that true only for “evangelical” voters? What about the old Reagan Democrats and the centrist Catholics who are the all-powerful swing voters in election after election? What about Orthodox Jews? African-American churchgoers? How about Hispanics in Pentecostal pews? Hispanics who are in Mass once or more a week?

Newsweek missed a major point here and it was sitting right there in the open.

The bottom line: What are the moral and religious views of someone like Rush Limbaugh? In reality?

What are the moral and religious views of someone like Dr. Richard Land?

Where do their values and priorities clash?

Answer those questions and you may be able to figure out what will happen with voters who trust someone like Dobson more than they trust the likes of Coulter. This may also explain why pro-life leaders — cultural conservates, again, as opposed to pure GOP types — have been quicker to endorse McCain than the leaders of the GOP establishment and those who carry their water on radio.

I was reminded, yet again, of scribe Michael Gerson’s 2004 presentation at a Pew Forum meeting in Key West, Fla. Remember that? During a wide ranging speech and Q&A — text of the speech here — Gerson said that the great divide in the W Bush White House was a familiar one, with the small-c “catholics” pitted against those whose conservatism was more libertarian in nature. In other words, conservatives whose first priorities were social and moral vs. those whose first priorities were economic.

Now, ponder that as you tip-toe through the confusion of that religion-haunted Newsweek cover story. I think you will find more than a few ghosts.

Obama: The Democrat Option Play

Two commentators said it today and others must be thinking it: Obama has given anti-Clinton democrats a non-Clinton option and in increasing numbers Democrats are taking that option. According to conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, Obama's frontrunning status and momentum give Democrats a viable candidate and a substantial enough reason for voting against Hillary. Plausible? I think so.

politico.com: Clinton targets pledged delegates

By: Roger Simon
February 19, 2008 05:48 AM EST

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

“I swear it is not happening now, but as we get closer to the convention, if it is a stalemate, everybody will be going after everybody’s delegates,” a senior Clinton official told me Monday afternoon. “All the rules will be going out the window.”

Rules of good behavior, maybe. But, in fact, the actual rules of the party allow for such switching. The notion that pledged delegates must vote for a certain candidate is, according to the Democratic National Committee, a “myth.”

“Delegates are NOT bound to vote for the candidate they are pledged to at the convention or on the first ballot,” a recent DNC memo states. “A delegate goes to the convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular presidential candidate. At the convention, while it is assumed that the delegate will cast their vote for the candidate they are publicly pledged to, it is not required.”

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told me Monday he assumes the Obama campaign is going after delegates pledged to Clinton, though a senior Obama aide told me he knew of no such strategy.

But one neutral Democratic operative said to me: “If you are Hillary Clinton, you know you can’t get the nomination just with superdelegates without splitting the party. You have to go after the pledged delegates.”

Winning with superdelegates is potentially party-splitting because it could mean throwing out the choice of the elected delegates and substituting the choice of 795 party big shots.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned against it. “I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that,” she said. “It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.”

Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000 and is a member of the DNC, said recently: “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit [the DNC]. I feel very strongly about this.”

On Sunday, Doug Wilder, the mayor of Richmond and a former governor of Virginia, went even further, predicting riots in the streets if the Clinton campaign were to overturn an Obama lead through the use of superdelegates.

“There will be chaos at the convention,” Wilder told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.”

“If you think 1968 was bad, you watch: In 2008, it will be worse.”

But would getting pledged delegates to switch sides be any less controversial? Perhaps not. They were chosen by voters, but they were chosen to back a particular candidate.

And it is unlikely that many people, including the pledged delegates themselves, know that pledged delegates actually can switch.

Nor would it be easy to get them to switch.

If, however, after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary the pledged delegate count looks very close, the Clinton official said, “[both] sides will start working all delegates.”

In other words, Clinton and Obama will have to go after every delegate who is alive and breathing.

A Cheeseburger for Obama?

Senator Omama's win last night among cheeseheads in Wisconsin could propel him into a win in beef-rich Texas. That's the suggestion of CNN political observer William Schneider. Obama has won the cheese, but we'll have to wait until March 4th to see about the beef.

With wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii last night, Obama has won the last 10 straight contests.

It's All Uphill From Here

Coverage Adds to Clinton's Steep Climb

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 18, 2008; C01

It was 15 degrees outside on a wind-whipped Pennsylvania Avenue as Hillary Clinton, smile firmly fixed in place, made an early-morning stop for a primary she didn't have a prayer of winning.

Inside the high-ceilinged office of the National Council of Negro Women, as 20 journalists looked on, Sen. Clinton sounded almost wistful last Monday as she noted the racial and gender aspect of her contest against Barack Obama. "One of us will go on to make history," she said, before adding that she believed she would be the one to make it.

Left unspoken -- but very much on the minds of the modest press contingent -- was that she had just lost four states to Obama, had been forced to lend her operation $5 million and had dumped her campaign manager. And no upbeat talk by the candidate was going to change that story line.

The media floodgates opened after Obama swept last week's primaries in the District, Maryland and Virginia. Never mind that the two Democratic candidates remain close in the delegate count, or that Clinton has been described as doomed once before, in New Hampshire. She is drowning in a sea of negative coverage.

The New York Daily News said "the once-mighty Clinton campaign is beginning to feel like the last days of Pompeii." The New York Times quoted an unnamed superdelegate backing Clinton as saying that if she doesn't win Ohio and Texas next month, "she's out." The Washington Post said "even many of her supporters worry" that the nomination "could soon begin slipping out of her reach." Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman likened her campaign to the Titanic. A Slate headline put it starkly: "So, Is She Doomed?"

Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway, citing the back-and-forth nature of the contest, says the campaign isn't worried about the spate of Hillary-in-trouble pieces. "That may emerge as a national story line, but we don't think it influences voters on the ground," he says. "The 'momentum' story is just not all that real. People aren't led around by the nose by the national media narrative." Of course, voters in primary states also watch the networks and read national news online.

Fueling the sense that the former first lady is sinking is increasingly sharp criticism from liberal columnists who are embracing Obama, while few pundits are firmly in Clinton's corner. The Nation, the country's largest liberal magazine, has endorsed Obama. Markos "Kos" Moulitsas, the most prominent liberal blogger, voted for Obama in the California primary and has been ridiculing Clinton's campaign.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that the Clinton machine is "ruthless" and the candidate "crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said Clinton has "an inability to admit fault or lousy judgment" and made an "ugly lurch to the political right" in backing a 2005 bill that would have made flag burning illegal (which, as he later noted, Obama also endorsed).

Arianna Huffington, one of the Net's leading Clinton-bashers, has written of "Hillary's hypocrisy running neck and neck with her cynicism." New Republic Editor-in-Chief Marty Peretz posted an essay last week titled "The End of BillaryLand Is on Its Way. Rejoice!"

For much of the campaign, Clinton, who seemed wary of the press during her eight years in the White House, limited her contact with reporters. She would go days without taking media questions. But since losing Iowa she has become far more accessible, in the tradition of trailing candidates who suddenly realize they need the exposure.

Her campaign can still be inconsiderate toward reporters, sometimes not sending out the next day's schedule until 2 a.m., making it impossible even to plan what time to get up. But tensions have eased as Clinton has held more frequent news conferences.

"She's very comfortable dealing with the media and is perfectly willing to take questions," Hattaway says. "It's got its pluses and minuses. There are those who say it's pushing you off your message of the day. But, by and large, it's good to be accessible, and she's good at it."

On her campaign plane, Clinton started coming back to the press section for off-the-record chats, usually harmless but sometimes including comments that contradicted what she was saying publicly, according to participants. Two weeks ago part of the media contingent revolted, saying the conversations did them no good if they couldn't use the information. Since then, although she walked the aisle with a tray of chocolates to hand out on Valentine's Day, the airborne sessions have dwindled.

When the campaign offered to send Chelsea Clinton -- who never grants interviews -- to the back of the plane, some journalists objected to the off-the-record restriction, and the candidate's daughter bagged the idea.

Accessibility, though, doesn't necessarily translate into candor. And examining the way Clinton answers media questions helps explain why she is portrayed as a conventional politician pitted against a cultural phenomenon.

Last Monday, when ABC's Jake Tapper asked about the obvious problems in her campaign, Clinton said she'd had a "great night" on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, an "enormous response" from donors after lending her campaign money, and that the replacement of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle was "Patti's decision" -- granting not a glimmer of recognition that anything was less than perfect.

On Tuesday night, when she was swamped in the Potomac primaries, Clinton gave a speech in Texas that made no mention of the results. Reporters were incredulous the next day when she stuck to her everything's-fine stance at a media availability: "Some weeks one of us is up, and the other's down, and then we reverse it." What about Obama pulling ahead in delegates? "That's what I always thought would happen."

A similar dynamic was on display in a "60 Minutes" interview, when Katie Couric couldn't get her to acknowledge that she ever contemplates losing the nomination. "You have to believe you're going to win," Clinton insisted.

At an MSNBC debate last month, when Tim Russert asked the candidates to name their greatest weakness, Obama made the minor admission that he has trouble keeping track of paperwork. And Clinton's confession? She gets "impatient" and "really frustrated when people don't seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other."

By late last week, some pundits were conjuring up scenarios for a Clinton comeback, if only to find something new to say. But she was still depicted as a mathematical long shot.

A national figure since 1992, Clinton is a disciplined and detail-oriented candidate, with a style that produces few sparks, while Obama is filling basketball arenas with thunderous oratory. That is why her choking up in a New Hampshire coffee shop became such a huge story -- because we rarely get a peek behind the steely exterior.

By contrast, there is little question that some journalists have gotten swept up in the Obama excitement. After Obama's victory speech Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews said he "felt this thrill going up my leg." Some reporters have brought their kids to Obama events, while others have danced to the music played at the rallies.

Obama has defied the laws of journalistic gravity, somehow avoiding the usual scrutiny applied to front-runners. A few attempts to examine his life and record -- such as a Times piece on Obama's pattern of voting "present" in the Illinois legislature, and another on Obama watering down a bill affecting a nuclear power company that contributed to his campaign -- barely caused a ripple. Now Obama's wife, Michelle, who did interviews with Larry King and Couric last week, is getting the treatment, drawing mostly soft-focus questions. A Newsweek cover story out today calls her "direct and plain-spoken, with an edgy sense of humor . . . she can be tough, and even a little steely." She is "outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy, and sometimes sarcastic," cutting "an athletic and authoritative figure," a front-page Times profile declared.

A handful of columnists, such as Time's Joe Klein, have questioned whether the Obama campaign has cultish qualities, but they are in the minority. It took a British magazine, the Economist, to carry the cover headline last week: "But could he deliver?"

While few in the media world will say so out loud, a Hillary collapse ("The Fall of the House of Clinton," as a Weekly Standard cover put it last month) is a more dramatic outcome than a win by the woman originally depicted as inevitable. But there is considerable danger in writing that story prematurely.

Hillary: Omniscient and Rude

With Barrack Obama winning eight straight states, Hillary is showing new sides of her inner life. In McAllen, Texas Hillary claimed that everything is happening as she expected and congratulated Obama for his latest victories. The rudeness comes from her ignoring Obama's victories when speaking with supporters on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. This is standard operating procedure for Clinton who rarely mentions Obama's wins or her losses as she speaks to supporters in rallies and fundraisers. The way this generally plays is that Hillary only acknowledges her defeats when directly questioned by the press as happened in McAllen today.
Is this any way to run a political campaign? Apparently this is how a Clinton losing campaign is done (in more ways than one).

"Who's Inevitable Now?"

From politico.com:
Obama takes on new aura of momentum
By: Ben Smith and Avi Zenilman and Kenneth P. Vogel Feb 12, 2008 11:56 PM EST
Landslide victories lead Barack Obama supporters to crown him with sense of inevitability.

Who’s inevitable now?

With three landslide victories in Tuesday’s “Chesapeake Primary” in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and a widening lead by any measure of delegates, Senator Barack Obama’s supporters have begun to suggest a case that, just a few months ago, was coming from Hillary Rodham Clinton: He’s a lock.

In a conference call with reporters before polls closed Tuesday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited “the cold, hard reality of the math.”

"I don't think it's so much about momentum as the reality of the math," he said, citing the campaign’s success in building a small but unmistakable lead among pledged delegates. “If we continue to do that, mathematical reality sets in and it becomes harder and harder to overcome."

Plouffe’s aim was to begin the process of massing uncommitted Democratic leaders behind a front-running Obama, the same end to which Clinton and her aides wielded her high poll numbers last year.

The stress on Obama’s delegate lead was also the opening of an effort to muscle Clinton – now trailing by almost any count of delegates – from the race.

But on the numbers, Plouffe has a point. An analysis of the delegate count by Politico indicates that Obama’s wide margins in contests over the last week mean that Clinton will be forced to answer with not just victories, but landslides of her own, in the big states on which she is staking her hopes – Ohio and Texas, which vote March 4.

“We’re going to sweep across Texas in the next three weeks, bringing our message about what we need in America: The kind of president that will be required on day one to be commander in chief, to turn the economy around,” Clinton told a crowd of thousands in El Paso Thursday night. “I’m tested. I’m ready. Let’s make this happen."

This exhortation came hours after her campaign announced the departure of her deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry, in the latest reflection of staff turmoil.

Clinton’s challenge is to keep the count of pledged delegates close, while protecting her lead among the party officials known as “superdelegates,” who can vote independently at the Democratic National convention – but who may be reluctant to defy the popular vote.

The Obama campaign now argues that the superdelegates should follow the majority of the pledged delegates.

Clinton, meanwhile, has sought to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process by which pledged delegates are chosen, arguing that caucuses aren’t true reflections of the will of the people, and that the exclusion of Florida and Michigan voters because of a dispute over the primary calendar taints the official tallies.

But Obama’s lead in pledged delegates widened Tuesday night to more than 100, even by conservative estimates, and there’s no indication that it will narrow before March.

There are 573 delegates up for grabs between March 4 and April 22. For Clinton to even things up, she needs to get 345 of those 573 delegates, or 60 percent – the sort of margin she won in her home state of New York.

Obama’s dramatic victories Tuesday also put him ahead in the count of pledged delegates even if Florida, whose delegates have not been recognized by the Democratic National Committee, was permitted to seat a delegation.

And his victories put him ahead even in counts that include superdelegates.

“This is the new American majority. This is what change looks like,” Obama said in a speech to an audience of thousands in Madison, Wisconsin Tuesday night.

Obama’s wins were his sixth, seventh, and eighth in a row, and even as Clinton looks forward to March 4, his campaign is looking with relish on Wisconsin and his home state of Hawaii, which vote a week from today.

His widening coalition is becoming part of his message: He won a majority of Latino votes – which had been Clinton’s bulwark elsewhere – in Virginia and Maryland.

He won a majority of white men in both states, and won the support of groups across the economic spectrum, while drawing stunning majorities of support from African-American voters – as high as 90% of their support in Virginia, according to exit polls.

The wide margins – he won with 64% of the vote in Virginia, and appeared headed for victory on a similar scale in Maryland– seemed to answer the Clinton campaign’s arguments that he has not won primaries in large states.

And Obama moved clearly into one traditional frontrunner’s role Tuesday night, trading blows with the likely Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, in their respective victory speeches.

“John McCain is an American hero. We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past,” Obama said in Wisconsin.

“Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for a hundred years in Iraq, which is reason enough to not give him four years in the White House.”

McCain, for his part, jabbed at Obama’s lofty rhetoric of hope in his own remarks in Virginia.

“Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men's hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience,” he said, continuing, however, that “to encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”

And McCain concluded by stealing Obama’s signature line.

“My friends, I promise you, I am fired up and ready to go,” he said.

AP: Clinton Ex-Campaign Manager Backs Obama

Feb 13 11:00 AM US/Eastern
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

Obama Claims ‘New American Majority’ After Wins

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An aide to Barack Obama says the man who led former President Clinton's 1992 bid plans to endorse the Illinois senator.

Obama's campaign plans a 1 p.m. conference call Wednesday to announce the endorsement by David Wilhelm, who later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement would be made public later in the day.

Wilhelm plans to tell reporters that Obama can build a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans needed to win the general election. He also says Obama can bring the change he promises—improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

Wilhelm is a superdelegate from Illinois who was previously uncommitted in the race.

Hillary's Second Firewall

New Hampshire was to be Senator Hillary Clinton's firewall after losing to Senator Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses. Clinton did win in New Hampshire and she continued to win in the Michigan primary and the Nevada caucuses. But then came losses in South Carolina, Alabama and Alaska. In between these contests was a win by Hillary in Florida, and then Hillary went on a roll with wins in Arizona, Arkansas and California.

Since California Obama has won every primary and caucus except for important victories for Hillary in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. The large delegate numbers for those large states enabled Hillary to continue to maintain a slim lead in delegate count, but that lead evaporated last night with the Obama victories in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. So Hillary has set up the Texas primary as a second firewall.

If this Hillary strategy sounds familiar, you may be recall Mayor Rudy Guliani's strategy of making Florida his firewall. Rather than compete in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early states, Guliani focused nearly exclusively on Florida. He lost there and shortly thereafter bowed out of the race. If Hillary loses in Texas, Obama will be well on his way to securing the Democrat Party nomination. Stay tuned.

A Big Night for Obama, McCain Continues to Roll

Senator Barack Obama swept what has been termed the Potomac Primary with big wins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Maryland extended voting hours to 9:30 pm due to weather-related treacherous roads. For the first time Obama moved ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton in delegate count, 1,186 to 1,181. 2,025 are needed to win the Democrat Party nomination for president.

Senator John McCain swept the Potamac Primary races and increased his delegate count to 827 of the 1,191 needed to secure the Republican Party nomination for president.

Kristol: Obama's path to victory

By William Kristol
Published: February 11, 2008

Last summer, George W. Bush told The Washington Examiner's Bill Sammon that Hillary Clinton would probably be the 2008 Democratic nominee. "She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary," he said. "And therefore the person with the national presence who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites has got a good chance to be nominated."
This seemed a reasonable judgment at the time. It may still turn out to be right. But today Barack Obama is neck-and-neck with Clinton in the national polls - and he's shown a greater ability to raise money. After his strong showing over the weekend, it is Obama who now has the clearer path to his party's nomination.
I'll avoid a false precision in the numbers that follow. There are minor differences among news organizations in projecting delegate allocations in states that have already voted, and in counting preferences among the 796 elected officials and party leaders - the "superdelegates" - who vote according to their choice, not voters' instruction.
Obama leads Clinton by roughly 70 delegates among about 2,000 chosen so far in primaries and caucuses. (There are still about 1,200 delegates outstanding.) Among the superdelegates, Clinton is ahead by about 100 superdelegates among the 300 who have declared a preference (though any of them can change their mind, so a count of them now is in large measure premature). All in all, Clinton seems to be slightly ahead.
She won't be for long. On Tuesday Obama is expected to prevail in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. So around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, television networks probably will be announcing, for the first time, that Barack Obama holds an unambiguous delegate lead.
Today in Opinion

His lead in votes - already in the neighborhood of 200,000 - will probably have widened. And Obama should be able to increase those delegate and popular vote totals on Feb. 19, when Wisconsin and Hawaii go to the polls.
Next comes March 4, when Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island vote. Clinton's campaign believes Ohio and Texas will constitute her firewall. Will it hold?
I suspect not. Obama will have momentum. He will likely have more money than Clinton for advertising. His ballot performance among Hispanics and working-class whites has generally been improving as the primary season has gone on. He intends to push a more robust economic message that could help him further narrow the gap among lower-income voters. And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio.
As for Texas, look for a couple of possible endorsements to help Obama there. If John Edwards campaigns for Obama in East Texas, and Bill Richardson defies the pleas of Bill Clinton and travels across the border from New Mexico to help out, Obama could prevail.
If Obama wins Ohio and Texas - or even wins one - he'll be in good shape. He should take Wyoming on March 8 and Mississippi on March 11.
Then there's over a month until the next contest, in Pennsylvania on April 22. That stretch of time could be key. It could be the moment for many of the uncommitted superdelegates to begin ratifying the choice of Democratic primary voters, and to start moving en masse to Obama.
Many of these superdelegates are elected officials. They tend to care about winning in November. The polls suggest Obama matches up better with John McCain. And the polls are merely echoing the judgment of almost every Democratic elected official from a competitive district or a swing state with whom I've spoken. They would virtually all prefer Obama at the top of the ticket.
All of this will move the superdelegates to Obama - perhaps as early as just after March 4, or perhaps not until April 22, or perhaps not even until the last match-up on June 7. But the superdelegates will want to avoid a situation in which they could be in the position of seeming to override the popular vote, or of resolving a bitter battle over whether and how to count votes from Florida and Michigan, at the convention.
And there are, as a final resort, two super-superdelegates (so to speak) who would have the clout to help Democrats achieve closure: Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. If they stepped forward at the right time, they would earn the gratitude of their party. And they might also enjoy contemplating a derivative effect of their good deed - the fall of the house of Clinton.

Source: The International Herald Tribune

New York Times: For Clinton, Bid Hinges on Texas and Ohio

February 12, 2008

By PATRICK HEALY

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday.
Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.
They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.
“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.
Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington State, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend.
Some said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, might ultimately “go with the flow,” in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.
The Clinton team moved on Monday to shift the spotlight off the candidate’s short-term challenges and focus instead on “the long run,” in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.
“She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said. “Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.”
Clinton advisers have said that superdelegates should support the candidate who they believe would be the best nominee and the best president, while Obama advisers have argued that superdelegates should reflect the will of the voters and also take into account who they believe would be the best nominee. Superdelegates are Democratic party leaders and elected officials, and their votes could decide the nomination if neither candidate wins enough delegates to clinch a victory after the nominating contests end.
With primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, Clinton advisers were pessimistic about her chances, though some held out hope for a surprise performance in Virginia.
And as polls show Mr. Obama gaining strength in Wisconsin and his native state, Hawaii, which vote next Tuesday, advisers, donors and superdelegates said they were resigned to a possible Obama sweep of the rest of February’s contests.
Some donors also expressed concern about a widening money imbalance between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: Obama fund-raisers say he is taking in roughly $1 million a day, while Clinton fund-raisers say she is taking in about half of that, mostly online. Mrs. Clinton’s aides say that the campaign was virtually broke as of the Feb. 5 primaries, but that finances have stabilized.
Mr. Obama’s financial edge allowed him to begin running television advertisements in Ohio and Texas on Monday, while the Clinton campaign plans to begin advertising on Tuesday. Clinton advisers say that she will have advertisements running statewide in both Ohio and Texas, and that she will have advertisements in English and Spanish in Texas.
“I think that clearly things have not been going as great as they were with her victories on Super Tuesday, and we can’t wait to get to March 4,” said Alan Patricof, one of Mrs. Clinton’s national finance chairmen.
Mrs. Clinton will have “a major ad buy” through the next week in Wisconsin, a senior adviser said Monday, and spend a few days campaigning there. But this adviser and others said the bulk of her time would be devoted to campaigning in Ohio, Texas and a bit in Rhode Island. In a sign of Texas’s importance, she plans to fly there Tuesday, even though Wisconsin votes next week.
While Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and allies emphasize that she has the time and the financial resources to regroup, they say she will have to take more significant steps to shore up her candidacy beyond the staff shakeup she engineered on Sunday, when she replaced her campaign manager and longtime aide, Patti Solis Doyle, with another veteran adviser, Maggie Williams.
Campaign advisers said they expected Ms. Williams to bring new energy to both the campaign team and Mrs. Clinton, after a long year of campaigning, and to encourage her to show more spunk and determination on the campaign trail. They say they do not expect the candidate’s political message to change appreciably; she will increasingly focus on the concerns of working-class voters, a key demographic in Ohio, as well as of Hispanics, a significant population in Texas.
As she seeks to erect a fire wall for her candidacy in Ohio and Texas, Mrs. Clinton will deploy her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to campaign in both states, particularly in Ohio, where her advisers believe his popularity will help her with working-class voters, labor union members and black voters.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Mr. Penn, who is also Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, played down some polls that showed strength for Mr. Obama and highlighted Mrs. Clinton’s abilities to beat the leading Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
“We believe that Hillary Clinton in the long run is better positioned to take on John McCain,” Mr. Penn said.
Yet some Clinton donors and superdelegates worry that the focus on Mr. McCain is premature, and that other strategic decisions by the campaign — like counting on Michigan and Florida delegates to be seated at the convention even though their status is in limbo — show faulty thinking that suggests the Clinton campaign does not have a short-term game plan against Mr. Obama.
“They are looking way too much at Florida, Michigan and McCain, because all three won’t matter if she doesn’t blow Obama away in Texas and Ohio,” said a Democrat who is both a Clinton superdelegate and major donor, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of campaign strategy. “Obama has momentum that has to be stopped by March 4.”
Clinton advisers took issue with the notion that Mr. Obama’s momentum was significant, noting that his victory in the Iowa caucuses did not translate into winning the New Hampshire primary five days later, and his South Carolina victory did not prevent Mrs. Clinton from winning the biggest states on Feb. 5.
“There is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum — in fact the evidence is to the contrary,” said Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director.
Hassan Nemazee, another national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton, said he was also telling his network of allies not to get caught up in the headlines about Obama
“I’m telling donors and supporters: Don’t be overly concerned about what goes on in the remainder of the month of February because these are not states teed up well for us,” Mr. Nemazee said.
Asked if that message was sinking in, he pointed to the campaign’s announcement that Mrs. Clinton had raised $10 million online so far this month, and was on pace to raise more than $25 million in February.
“I predict for you we will have our best single fund-raising month in February, and that’s significant,” he said.

NBC News: Obama Favorite Tommorrow

Andrea Mitchell reports that Obama is favored to win tommorrow and gain the lead in the delegate race. Meanwhile, Clinton is trying to twist arms to pick up superdelegates in order to give her an edge in delegate count. The chief arm twister? President Bill Clinton.

The Undemocratic Democrat Party

2205 is the magic number for Hillary or Barack. It is the number needed to clinch the presidential nomination of their political party. After this weekend's primaries and caucuses Clinton leads Obama in delegate count, 1,125 to 1,087. It is likely that the delegates won by each candidate through the election process will remain close and this sets up a highly undemocratic possibility for the Democrat Party. Unlike the Republican Party where all delegates are elected in statewide primaries and caucuses, the Democrat Party has 796 superdelegates. Superdelegates are powerful party insiders who may decide who the Democrat candidate for president will be.

According to an Associated Press (AP) report, "Both campaigns are aggressively pursuing superdelegates" ("Clinton leads among insiders, 2/11/08). Who are these superdelegates? 720 of them are appointed by the party and the remaining 76 superdelegates are elected at state party conventions. Their number includes senators, non-elected party leaders and labor bosses.

In the same AP report cited above, 399 superdelegates have already endorsed a candidate irrespective of the will of the people as expressed in primaries and caucuses. Superdelegates could decide for the party who will run for president in November, against the will of the majority of democrat voters and against the candidate who accumulates the most delegates through the primary and caucus process. This would make the Democrat Party highly undemocratic.

Obama and Huckabee Pick Up Wins

As expected, in yesterday's primaries and caucuses Senator Barack Obama scored wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state and the Virgin Islands. Governor Mike Huckabee won in Kansas, Washington state and in Louisiana, but he did not win the necessary 83.3% of the vote he needs to overtake Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination.

Huckabee garnered nearly 60% of the votes in Kansas, but as the Associated Press reports he is "hopelessly behind" McCain in the delegate count. According to AP, McCain's now has 719 of the 1,191 that he needs to secure the Republican nomination. Huckabee's total is 234.

According to CNN. com, Senator Hillary Clinton holds a slim lead in delegate count, 1100 to Obama's 1039. 2025 delegates are needed to win the Democrat Party presidential nomination.

Today, Maine voters will gather for their state caucuses. On Tuesday, democrat party primaries will be held in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Votes will also be tallied for Americans overseas.

Looking Ahead to Tuesday

2008-2-12	District of Columbia	Presidential Primary
2008-2-12	Maryland	Presidential/State Primary
2008-2-12	Virginia	Presidential Primary
2008-2-19	Hawaii	Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-19	Washington	Presidential Primary
2008-2-19	Wisconsin	Presidential Primary

Today's Primaries and Caucuses

2008-2-9	Virgin Islands	Virgin Islands Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-9	Kansas	Republican Caucuses
2008-2-9	Louisiana	Presidential Primary
2008-2-9	Nebraska	Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-9	Washington	Caucuses
2008-2-9	Maine	Democratic Caucuses

The Huckabee Non-Factor

As Karl Rove demonstrated Wednesday night on Fox's Hannity and Colmes, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has a close to zero chance to overtake Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. After Tuesday, McCain has 719 delegates and Huckabee has 234. 1,191 delegates are needed to win the nomination.

Huckabee needs to win 83.3% of the remaining delegates in order to beat McCain. It isn't going to happen, so why is Huckabee still hanging on? The conventional wisdom is probably correct that Huckabee is angling to become the Vice President on the ticket with McCain. This could have some advantages for McCain since the frontrunner has not done all that well in most of the southern primaries and Huckabee could sure up support for McCain among some conservative voters. However, questions have been raised about Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas, whether he has a conservative track record.

The Worthlessness of National Political Polling

We hear news reporters and political pundits tell us regularly about national polls on the various candidates for president. Since the nomination process is a state by state process, what good are national polls? No good at all except to give news reporters and political pundits something to talk about. They may show trends that can influence voters in the upcoming primaries, but how is this actually helpful? It would better serve the electoral process to hear stories on the positions of the candidates. However, it's easier to report a national poll and explain momentum changes than to explain positions on issues. So, we can expect more reporting on national polls and the current dearth of examination of the candidates' positions on issues. This is just one more example of how the American public is poorly served by the news media.

Rove and Morris on Likely Primary and Caucus Results

Wednesday night on Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rove gave a masterful analysis of the Democrat and Republican races to the presidential nomination. His white board presentation suggests that Senator John McCain has the Republican nomination all but locked up and that Senator Hillary Clinton has the clearest path to the Democrat nomination (she leads in the delegate count over Senator Barack Obama with 1055 to 998). Rove pointed out that Huckabee would need to win 83.3% of the remaining delegates to overtake McCain. On the Democrat side, Obama will likely win today's primaries and caucuses, but that Tuesday's contests favor Hillary, as do future primaries.

Dick Morris on Thurday night's H & C suggested that Obama could gain momentum from today's events that would propel him into victories on Tuesday and in later primaries.

In my view Rove's analysis makes the most sense of the current political landscape.