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As the Democratic race drags on, expect to see more and more hypothetical scenarios emerge as journalists dig deep into party literature, scouring for clues to how this mess will turn out. Chances are you'll hear about the “minority report” scenario.
Short story: When the DNC’s credentials committee meets in July (a date hasn’t been set), whichever candidate controls more of the committee’s 186 members will decide whether Florida and Michigan are seated. That’s because states allocate committee members proportionally based on their primary votes, so whoever wins more pledged delegates (Obama) essentially controls the committee. (DNC Chairman Howard Dean gets to appoint 25 members as well, so he could also hold sway.) However, if 20 percent of the members disagree with the committee’s decision, they can draft a minority report, which then goes to a vote at the convention in August.
This is an option Clinton’s supporters would no doubt take, since it could be her last lifeline. And this is what Clinton probably meant when she told the Washington Post that “we’ll resolve [the Florida and Michigan question] at the convention—that’s what the credentials committees are for.”
The problem with the minority-report scenario, though, is that it changes nothing. Even if the Florida and Michigan question makes it to the convention floor, whoever has more delegates will instruct them on how to vote. And realistically, we’ll know who has more delegates long before the convention. The only scenario in which the minority report could actually make a difference is if we go into the convention with a sizable chunk of superdelegates uncommitted. But think about how implausible that is. Once all 50 states (and Puerto Rico) are done voting in early May, superdelegates will face enormous pressure to pick sides. Whether or not there’s an official “superdelegate primary” that forces them to vote, most superdelegates will have to get off the fence.
And once that happens, Florida/Michigan will become a moot point. Whoever has more delegates will decide whether to seat them, which means that whoever has more delegates (without counting Michigan and Florida) will be the nominee. Period. To cling to the minority report as a Hail Mary solution to the Florida/Michigan question ignores the facts of the process.
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The contrast between the Democratic and Republican races would be funny if it weren’t so depressing. While Obama and Clinton bruise each other over Iraq, delegates, and Florida and Michigan, John McCain takes a grand tour of the Middle East and Europe, followed by a domestic tour touting his own biography. Voters tuning in have two options: brutal political warfare vs. story time with John McCain. It’s no surprise, therefore, that they’re choosing the latter.
Last week, a Gallup poll showed that more than 20 percent of Clinton and Obama supporters would vote for McCain if their favorite candidate didn’t get the nomination. A full 28 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for McCain if Obama were the nominee.
This calls for a little skepticism. Not that the poll is wrong, necessarily, but that voters are likely to feel a lot different come November than they do now. John McCain looks better now than he ever will again, especially when compared with the embattled Democrats. The moment the Dem nominee turns his or her full energies on McCain—his relationships with lobbyists, his tax-cut flips, his inadvisable and oft-twisted “100 years” remark—his sheen is bound to get a little scuffed. At which point the 20 percent will drop fast.
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Lots of Clinton news over the weekend, not all bad—but bad enough to
dock her another 0.6 points in the Rodhameter, bringing her chances of
winning to 9.7 percent.
Roughest of all is the latest national Gallup poll, which gives
Obama a margin-of-error-busting lead of 10 points—his largest this
year. Rather than destroying him, maybe the Jeremiah Wright flap only
made him stronger (in the short term, at least). That, or Bosnia is the new macaca. ...
Read more at the Hillary Clinton Deathwatch.
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In an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday, Hillary Clinton declared that she will take her presidential bid all the way to the August convention, if necessary.
"I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention—that’s what the credentials committees are for.” [Emphasis added]
Not quite. What Clinton fails to mention is that the credentials committee, which would decide which delegations get seated and which do not, votes in July. The committee is going to be dominated not by Clinton loyalists—although three co-chairs have ties to Bill Clinton—but by people selected by Barack Obama and Howard Dean.
Of the committee’s 186 delegates, Dean appoints 35 himself. This group is going to do whatever he tells them. If the DNC works out a compromise solution to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, they’ll support that. If not, they’ll oppose it. The rest of the committee members, divvied up by state, are allocated proportionally. So if a state has four committee seats and the two candidates split the vote in that state's primary, Obama gets to appoint two members and Hillary appoints two. Since Obama has the lead in pledged delegates—and will have the lead going into the convention—he’ll also have more committee members, and will therefore control the committee when it comes to deciding on Michigan and Florida.
The one scenario in which the Florida/Michigan question could reach the convention is if 20 percent of the credentials committee decides to file a minority report. That could conceivably allow the entire convention to vote on the Florida/Michigan question. Needless to say, Democratic leaders will do everything they can to prevent this scenario from happening.
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After Mitt Romney endorsed McCain last month, we figured Romney would crawl into a cave, never to return until 2012. The strained smiles, the too-tight handshakes—it felt like a testy family reunion. But since then, Romney has said repeatedly that he would take the VP slot if offered. However, McCain didn’t exactly reach out.
Until today. Right now MittCain (too soon?) is taking a whirlwind fundraising tour around Rocky Mountain country, starting in Utah and finishing up in Denver this evening. The main reason is to drum up cash—McCain raised $11 million in February, compared to Obama’s $55 million. But it’s also a chance for the former rivals to show everyone that now they’re besties. (They look so exuberant it’s frightening.)
Naturally, speculators wonder if this means Romney tops McCain’s veep list. After all, presidential candidates have overcome former bitterness to forge alliances of convenience before. George H.W. Bush, for example, accepted Ronald Reagan’s VP offer after ridiculing Reagan’s “voodoo economics” during the primary season.
But McCain’s situation is different. For him, picking Romney would fly in the face of his entire “straight talk” image. (However spurious.) McCain spent much of the primary slamming Romney not for minor policy differences, but for fundamental dishonesty. Given that McCain already arouses suspicion among many conservatives, the last thing he needs is someone whose reversals on abortion, gay rights, and stem-cell research make McCain’s own reversal on Bush’s tax cuts look consistent. No doubt McCain needs the cash, but as Romney himself discovered, money can’t buy votes. Especially when there's video evidence your running mate can't stand you.
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Earlier this week, the Clinton campaign challenged Barack Obama’s claims that he was a University of Chicago law professor. So, we phoned up U Chicago for their take. The school’s press office indicated that he was technically a senior lecturer but not a professor.
Now it appears they’ve changed their story—or at least nuanced it a bit. They reiterate that he never held the title professor, but they say senior lecturers are, in fact, considered professors. It’s a point that one of our colleagues over at Convictions already made—that yes, technically senior lecturer and professor is not the same title but that trying to tease them apart as proof that Obama deliberately lied is just silly.
Here’s the university’s official statement:
From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.
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Sen. Bob Casey’s endorsement of Barack Obama is big for several reasons—he represents the battleground state of Pennsylvania, he appeals to working-class Dems, and he had said he would remain neutral in the race, making his decision to take sides a potential example for other fence-sitting superdelegates.
Casey says he endorsed Obama because he “can lead us, he can heal us, he can help rebuild America,” etc. etc.
But there’s also some back story there. Back in 1992, Casey’s father, Bob Sr., then governor of Pennsylvania, wasn’t allowed to speak at the Democratic Convention. The reason most commonly cited is that Casey didn’t endorse Clinton during his campaign. But more likely, as Kevin Drum argued awhile back, it had something to do with Casey Sr.’s desire to give a pro-life speech. Either way, the incident generated bad blood between the Clintons and the Caseys.
Friends tell the Times that had nothing to do with the decision to swing toward Obama. And given Casey’s previous statements that he would remain neutral, we’re inclined to believe them. Plus, Clinton campaigned for Casey during his 2006 race against Rick Santorum. (As did Obama.)
More likely, it was another generation of Caseys that influenced him. A “source” tells the Philadephia Inquirer
Casey's decision was also personal, motivated in part by the enthusiasm his four daughters - Elyse, Caroline, Julia and Marena - have expressed for Obama, the source said. "He thinks we shouldn't be deaf to the voices of the next generation."
Makes you wonder if targeting young people is just as valuable for its trickle-up effect—kids influencing their parents—as for its direct impact on youth turnout.
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The main criticism of Howard Dean since he took over as head of the DNC has been his silence. (First he was too loud, now he’s too quiet.) So now anything he says, however off-the-cuff, gets amplified to 300 decibels.
Sirens wailed, therefore, when he told CBS (you break that news, CBS!) that he’d like to see the nomination wrapped up by July 1. An aide clarifies to Politico that July 1 is really just a ballpark date, but it’s still a big deal that Dean is weighing in. In a separate interview with the Associated Press, Dean says:
“There'll be some nasty fights if it goes to convention, and people will walk out,” Dean said. “But I've also been talking to a fairly significant number of, by and large, nonaligned people about how we might resolve this.”
Contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s recent statement that she’s ready to take this to the convention, and you’ve got two very differing views of reality.
Dean stops short of favoring either candidate—that’s not part of his job description—but there’s a Pelosi-like quality to his statements. In the AP interview, Dean addresses Clinton’s recent claims that pledged delegates don’t have to vote as directed. Dean charitably calls that "a very technical argument” and adds, “You aren't going to get pledged delegates to move unless something really shocking happens.” He also told the AP that he doesn’t think superdelegates would support the candidate who doesn’t win the pledged delegate count. Given the numbers we’ve been looking at for weeks now, that’s tantamount to saying he thinks Obama has it wrapped up. But, of course, he can’t say that.
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The Clinton campaign is starting to remind us of that immortal scene from Dumb and Dumber, in which Lloyd, played by Jim Carrey, asks his crush what the chances are that she’d marry him. She gives him blunt odds: one in 1 million. After a moment of thinking, Lloyd’s face lights up: “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
Hillary, we’re telling you there’s a chance. But right now—given the delegate count, the popular-vote tally, the failure of Florida and Michigan to secure revotes, the swing of superdelegates toward Obama since Feb. 5, and the growing itch among top Democrats to see this race wrapped up—we’d put your chances today at 12 percent.
Check back for daily updates at the "Hillary Deathwatch."
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It’s fascinating that candidates are allowed to acknowledge contingencies when talking about the economy but not in the case of Iraq. Here’s Barack Obama’s response Maria Bartiromo on whether he would raise taxes:
Well, look, there's no doubt that anything I do is going to be premised on what the economic situation is when I take office. I'm going to be sworn in in January, we don't know what the economy's going to look like at that point.
Sounds reasonable. Yet when his adviser Samantha Power said the same thing about Iraq—that Obama would have to evaluate the situation on the ground when he arrives in office—she was flayed alive.
There are differences, no doubt. Power used the phrase “best-case scenario” to refer to Obama’s plan for withdrawal. She also coupled it with her off-the-record-but-not “monster” comment. (If she hadn’t said that, the Iraq withdrawal exchange might never have made it overseas.) But given what could happen to the economy, perhaps Obama’s $30 billion stimulus package plan is a best-case scenario.
So, why is it OK to discuss hypotheticals with the economy but not with Iraq? Two reasons. For one thing, people know more about what’s happening in Iraq than they do about what’s happening to the economy, and therefore feel more qualified to challenge experts on the topic. But also, it’s that Democrats are politically tethered to withdrawal. Pulling out of Iraq has become an inflexible campaign platform. If conditions in Iraq were to improve (many suggest they are already improving), the Democratic candidates would have a hell of a time admitting it, since that would be seen as a victory for McCain. That’s why even hinting that conditions in Iraq could change—and that plans would then adjust—got Sam Power ousted.
It would be absurd for Obama’s opponents to drill him for saying he’d change his plan to meet current economic conditions. No more absurd, however, than the whole Power pile-on.
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- Barely Political does Tuzla.
- A trailer for Recession:
The Movie.
- If Sarah Silverman met Hillary Clinton: “I’m F*cking Obama.”
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It’s hard to remember, but the manic bickering between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton does have an end in sight: the Democratic National Convention. One of them will ascend the stage in Denver in late August, about 18 months after he or she started campaigning. But even total political junkies still haven’t fleshed out the nuances of the convention. With that in mind, we OD’d on DNC delegate rules to answer three burning questions that haven’t gotten much attention.
1. Can we get to the convention without knowing who our nominee will be?
No matter what Howard Dean and Harry Reid tell you, this is a possible—but not probable—scenario. Picture this: Hillary Clinton stays in the race until June, when all of the primaries and caucuses have been held, the Democrats decide not to hold a superdeledgate primary, and enough indecisive superdelegates still can’t make up their minds after all the voters have had their say, so they stretch their decision-making through the dog days of summer. Clinton, still convinced she has a shot, presses on to the convention. If enough superdelegates don’t go public and side with Obama or Clinton by then, we’ll go into Denver not knowing who the nominee will be—but that doesn’t mean the convention will be “brokered.”
2. Is a brokered convention possible?
Almost certainly not—but a “contested convention” is. Here’s the difference. The definition of a “brokered convention” is a convention with more than one round of voting. If a candidate does not receive a majority of the delegates (2,024) on the first ballot, then the convention will go to a second ballot. If there is still no nominee, a third, and so on. A “contested convention” is when neither candidate reaches the magic number through pledged delegates, but the winner gets the majority needed via superdelegates. A contested convention is settled on the first ballot, but the winner is in doubt leading up to that first vote.
Because we have only two candidates, a second round of voting is nearly impossible. There are a fixed number of total delegates at the convention, so an even split between Obama and Clinton would result in one of the candidates getting the majority needed to win. For example, there are currently 4,047 delegates total. If you split that evenly, one candidate would have 2,023 delegates and one would have 2,024.The candidate with 2,024 would win on the first ballot because of simple math. (Caveat alert! If there were an even number of total delegates, a candidate would have to scrounge up one extra delegate.) In this case, the superdelegates would still decide the nominee because neither candidate can reach 2,024 with pledged delegates alone. But that doesn’t make it a brokered convention.
Keep in mind two highly improbable reasons why that could not happen: indecision and John Edwards. From what I can tell, any delegate could abstain from voting. Considering the candidates essentially control their delegations, this is highly unlikely. Moreover, the campaigns would probably swap the dead-weight delegate out for an alternate if that was the case. (Every state has alternate delegates just in case.) Again, this isn’t going to happen, but it could.
Slightly more likely (but still highly improbable) is that John Edwards could be the difference in the primary. According to DemConWatch, Edwards currently has 16 delegates who are still pledged to his candidacy. Because he suspended (rather than withdrew) his campaign, his delegates have not been released from their pledges to him. Let’s return to our even-split example above. I was a tad misleading by suggesting that all of the delegates were to be split between Obama and Clinton. As of now, all but 16 of the delegates (4,031) will be split between the two. If there’s a completely even split of those 4,031, one candidate would have 2,015 and one would have 2,016. The leading candidate would still be eight short of the number needed for the nomination. If—and I’d like to reiterate how huge of an if this is—Edwards’ delegates continue to vote for him, then we would have a brokered convention because the Democrats would need a second ballot to settle on the nominee.
As you can see, the margin for a brokered convention is terrifically small. If it happened—which it won’t—it would totally overshadow every other historic political story we’ve seen this year. But it’s not going to happen.
3. Will we know whom the superdelegates eventually vote for?
Yes—which means that eventually Howard Dean, Al Gore, and Nancy Pelosi have to choose one of the candidates. All votes at the convention will be made public, but maybe not immediately. The superdelegates make their votes known to a state party official at the same time that pledged delegates do. Their votes are tallied and recorded by the secretary of the DNC, Alice Germond. Eventually Germond will make that list public, but that could take anywhere from two hours to two weeks.
Those are just three questions—there’s plenty more. If you’ve got burning queries, e-mail us and we’ll do our damndest to drum up some details.
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We’re used to spintastic e-mails, but one from the Clinton campaign yesterday seemed especially dizzy. In an e-mail titled “Just Embellished Words,” the campaign wrote that "Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor” (which he has indeed done). The e-mail backs it up with links to Lynn Sweet and Hotline, both of which confirm that Obama was never a professor.
Unsatisfied, we triple-checked with the University of Chicago, where Obama purports to have been a constitutional-law professor. Sure enough, he wasn’t exactly a prof. Obama is considered a senior lecturer at the university, but he was never a professor. According to the Law School’s press office, he was plenty qualified to be a professor, but he just didn’t have the time. Instead of making him a professor, they gave him the senior lecturer gig, which means he didn’t have to publish scholarly works (and therefore wasn’t on tenure track).
Obama started teaching in 1993, when he taught a course called Current Issues in Racism and the Law. (He was a practicing lawyer at the time.) He taught a variety of courses every year through the 2003-04 school year, before he started campaigning in 2004 for his current Senate job.
So, on principle, Clinton’s spin is right—when Obama says he’s a professor of law, he’s misspeaking. Consider us spun.
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In our constant pursuit for the most inspired piece of election art, this Pokemon homage is our latest obsession. It's too bad Fred Thompson wasn't the GOP nominee—then the creators could have just used Snorlax.
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Ever notice how politicians taunt each other with the exact
same insults of which they themselves stand accused? Case in point:
From a McCain email today:
STATEMENT BY MCCAIN CAMPAIGN ON BARACK OBAMA'S OLD-STYLE
POLITICAL ATTACKS [Emphasis Added]
And from Politico’s Playbook:
“Senator Obama, returning to the campaign trail in Greensboro, N.C.,
plans to castigate Senator McCain for an economic plan that Team Obama describes
as ‘vapid.’ ” [E.A.]
Now it’s Clinton’s
turn to accuse both her opponents of being frigid Machiavellian ice robots.
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Everyone has weighed in on Hillary Clinton’s fantastic voyage to Bosnia—Sinbad, Clinton’s former speechwriter, military men, and reporters who were there at the time. Everyone! Except, that is, for Sheryl Crow.
Crow, who accompanied Hillary, Chelsea, and Sinbad on their trip in 1996, has kept mum on the subject. Repeated e-mails to her publicist, Dave Tomberlin, yielded this response: “We're not going to take part in this circus ... our focus is on her music right now.”
Probably a smart move. Unlike Sinbad, Crow’s career survived the '90s. She doesn’t exactly need the publicity. Hillary, on the other hand, could use a little help here.
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When the National Archives released Hillary Clinton’s White House schedules last week, reporters quickly sifted the entire 11,000-page doorstop for clues to her record on NAFTA, her foreign-policy experience, and her whereabouts during the "blue dress" incident.
Missing from the analysis, however, was one of our favorite bloggy pastimes: word counting. Thanks to the New York Times' searchable database of Clinton’s schedules, we were able to tally the number of times certain words appeared. Here’s our Harper’s Index-style analysis of her years as first lady:
(Figures indicate number of pages on which the words appear)
Kofi Annan: 4
Barbara Streisand: 5
Jean Chrétien (prime minister of Canada, 1993-2003): 2
Mickey Mouse: 2
Hollywood: 21
Iraq: 0
Whoopi Goldberg: 12
Benizir Bhutto: 5
Disney: 19
Islam: 2
Photo-op: 200 +
Policy: 76
Dance/dancing: 157
Debate/debating: 20
Celebration: 63
Economics: 4
Opera: 67
Nuclear: 1
Resort: 47
Barracks: 9
Party: 200 +
Legislation: 9
Princess: 52
Premier: 20
Concert: 54
Hearing: 8
Trailhead thanks Seth Stevenson and Rebecca LeGrand.
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Forlorn over the Democrats’ delegate scrap, Gov.—and therefore superdelegate—Philip Bredesen came up with a modestly novel proposal: After all the voters have fun at their primaries and caucuses, the superdelegates should stage their own fiesta in June—complete with a binding declaration of support for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Morevoer, they should have it in Dallas so that everybody can get there easily and the Dems can continue lavishing attention on a red state that has shown flashes of Democratic enthusiasm this year.
It’s a dynamite idea—one part common sense, one part idealism—and therefore exactly the kind of plan we’ve gotten used to the candidates eschewing this election. Yet, at a press conference yesterday, Hillary Clinton let out an unexpected glimmer of hope:
The governor from Tennessee suggested that there be a convention of superdelegates, and I think that it is an intriguing idea. I have not considered it long enough to have an opinion on it.
If she hasn’t “considered it long enough,” then that means she has considered it a little bit. (Clinton folks tell Ambinder they aren’t seriously considering the plan.) There’s hope yet! And, in the long run, that’s best for everybody. The superdelegate primary presents a rare opportunity for a win-win-win-win scenario for Clinton, Obama, the superdelegates, and the Democrats. Here’s why each party should be jumping at the chance:
Hillary: A June superdelegate primary silences the "drop out now" movement for a few months. Clinton has repeatedly said she’s staying in until June, anyway, and the specter of a superdelegate primary would give her justification for doing so. Plus, it buys her time in case she loses North Carolina and Indiana.
Obama: If Hillary isn’t going to leave the race until all of the states vote, anyway, then he may as well end it as swiftly and decisively as possible after that. A superdelegate primary would give him that venue, and he’d be favored to win since he would be the champ of pledged delegates and popular vote.
The superdelegates: Uncommitted supers get to defer their decisions for another three months, which prevents them from incurring the Clintons’ wrath if they side with Obama before all the votes are in. Plus, having a primary lends the superdelegate process a bit of integrity and transparency that might otherwise may get lost in translation at the convention.
Democratic Party: The sooner this fiasco ends, the better. Assuming Clinton stays in through June, this plan is much better than dragging the superdelegate-endorsement process through the dog days of summer. It already makes Howard Dean sweaty enough, as is.
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She wasn’t misspeaking this time. Hillary Clinton truly,
honestly believes that pledged delegates are going to change their minds and
this will help her win the nomination.
When she said
this in her Philadelphia Daily News
interview the other day, I figured it was a fluke:
And also remember that pledged delegates in
most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody
vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.
But then she repeated it in a curious
new interview with Time’s Mark
Halperin:
[A]s you know so well, Mark, every delegate with very few
exceptions is free to make up his or her mind however they choose. We talk a
lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to
exercise independent judgment.
That’s right. “So-called pledged delegates.” So now, we’re to assume, it’s not just superdelegates who will
overturn the pledged delegate count. Pledged
delegates are going to help overturn it, too. At this rate, why hold elections in
the first place? Let’s skip the rest of the primaries and go right to the
convention, where all the so-called pledged delegates can get down to the
business of ignoring the people’s votes.
The Clinton
camp vehemently denies
that it will actively pursue Obama’s pledged delegates. But then why float the
possibility? It makes zero
sense strategically. True, no one puts a gun to the heads of pledged
delegates and forces them to vote one way or another. But most of them would
never go switch their vote—that would mean burning bridges, betraying friends,
and reversing the will of their own constituents. And from a PR perspective,
it’s disastrous. The Clinton camp has been
screaming “disenfranchisement” in Florida and Michigan. Do they really
want to push an idea that would flush real votes down the toilet?
What began as a series of casual asides—first by Harold
Ickes, then by Clinton herself—is now starting to look a coordinated effort. We don't ask this question lightly, but what are they smoking?
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Via the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Harry Reid assures us that he and Howard Dean have things under control.
Question: Do you still think the Democratic race can be resolved before the convention?
Reid: Easy.
Q: How is that?
Reid: It will be done.
Q: It just will?
Reid: Yep.
Q: Magically?
Reid: No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean (Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean) today. Things are being done.
I thought the point of avoiding a convention was so that backroom deals didn't decide who the nominee would be.
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Barack Obama released his tax returns today for the years 2000-2006. (Check them out here, if combing through your own tax returns hasn't been torture enough.) But Obama held public office for three years before 2000 hit. Why not release those as well and get the whole thing done with?
Symbolism would be my guess. The years between 2000 and 2006 is the exact span of time from which Hillary Clinton has yet to release her (and her husband’s) tax returns. Releasing those specific years, as opposed to the entire batch, turns a capitulation (Clinton has been calling for him to release them) into a challenge.
The parallels here are rich. During her 2000 Senate campaign, Clinton opened up her own records as far back as 1980 and made a big deal about her opponent’s refusal to release his own. Now the roles are flipped, with Obama revealing his taxes and challenging Clinton to do the same. Her rebuttal: She has 20 years of taxes on the books, compared to Obama’s six. Not a bad way to call attention to Obama’s relatively meager time spent in the public eye, but he’s still got her beat on the past eight years.
Neither candidate is glasslike in his or her transparency. Obama hasn’t opened up his personal papers and schedules from his time as a state senator. (He claims they’re badly organized or thrown away.) But Clinton’s refusal to release her tax returns until April—she’ll do it at least three days before the Pennsylvania primary, her camp assures us—should raise eyebrows. At least, with her White House schedules, she could use the Presidential Library’s dinosaur pace as an excuse. There’s nothing stopping her from releasing her taxes today, tomorrow, or the next day. If there’s anything damaging in there, better to get it out of the way now than right before a key election. If there’s not, she gets points for openness.
So how about it?
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Over at Slate’s polling haven, "Election Scorecard," we’ve been poring over a new poll from PPP (PDF) that suggests an Edwards endorsement would actually hurt Hillary’s chances to win the state. A jarring 31 percent of North Carolina voters would be less likely to support Hillary if Edwards endorsed her. About one-third as many people (12 percent) say they would be more likely to vote for her after an Edwards endorsement. The poll didn't provide any numbers speculating what an Edwards endorsement would mean for Barack Obama.
These are really stunning numbers for a reasonably liked, homegrown senator who had a legitimate shot at becoming president. According to this poll, nearly one-third of North Carolina Democrats and unaffiliated voters dislike Edwards so much that he would taint Clinton’s candidacy. Barely one-tenth of voters like him enough to have it positively affect their opinion.
The cynic would suggest that Obama voters sabotaged the question by saying an endorsement would hurt Clinton, but the numbers don’t completely follow that logic. After crunching some cross-tabs, we discovered that 35 percent of those Clinton-Edwards sourpusses are currently Clinton supporters. We’ll reiterate: Edwards is so toxic that one-third of Hillary’s Carolinian base would think twice before voting for her. No wonder he and Kerry didn’t win North Carolina in 2004.
We should caution that Edwards isn’t planning on making an endorsement of Clinton or Obama. With polls like these, maybe it should stay that way.
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What do you get when you cross Hillary Clinton, Chilean comedy,
synth pop, and Aphex Twin?
This. It's SFW, but probably NSF people with dwarf phobia.
[Via Gawker]
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As long as we’re chronicling
the number of references Hillary Clinton has made to the Tuzla sniper incident, don’t
forget her crowd-pleaser of a line in Dubuque all the way back in December:
So, we landed in one of those corkscrew landings
and ran out because they said there might be sniper fire. I don't remember
anybody offering me tea on the tarmac.
Tea, no. Adorable eight-year-old girls with flowers, yes.
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When we said the Bosnia sniper flap was our favorite subplot of this campaign, we weren’t expecting it to become the actual plot. But thanks to Hillary Clinton’s wildly inexpert handling of the controversy, it’s now dominating the news to the point of obscuring her substantive policy speeches.
After Sinbad disputed Clinton’s account of landing amid sniper fire in war-torn Bosnia in 1996, Clinton could have acknowledged her mistake and changed the subject. But instead, she doubled down, dismissing Sinbad as “a comedian” and ratcheting up the detail in her accounts of the trip: “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport,” she said at a March 17 campaign event, “but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” That’s when the noncomedians pounced. Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post, Michael Hirsh of Newsweek, and CBS News all presented evidence that Clinton’s story had gone from dubious to plainly untrue. The bloody weapon was video footage of Clinton cheerily greeting a small Bosnian girl on the tarmac.
Yesterday, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said that Hillary “misspoke” in her March 17 speech. Clinton herself used the same word yesterday in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News. She elaborated: “I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left.”
One problem with the “misspoke” explanation is that she’s been repeating the same story for weeks. In fact, coupled with anecdotes about pushing for peace in Northern Ireland and women’s rights in China, it’s been a focal point of her claims to foreign-policy experience. The other problem is that she's been given ample opportunity to revise her story. When Sinbad challenged her account, she declined. When Dobbs ran a "Fact Checker" piece questioning her account, surrogates emerged to unconvincingly defend her. Only when the footage explicitly disproving her story emerged did she back off. And even then, it wasn’t that she embellished or misled people. It was that she "misspoke." If someone wanted to chronicle instances of Clinton refusing to acknowledge mistakes—starting, of course, with her Iraq war vote—the Bosnia flap could be its own chapter.
The Post had a great piece yesterday about how both candidates have exaggerated their records at times. But there’s a big difference between taking extra credit for a bill you didn’t really work on—something Obama is apparently known for in the Senate—and retelling a repeatedly discredited story. Plus, the rule for politicians is the same as for memoir fabulists: When confronted, fess up. By waiting for incontrovertible evidence to present itself, Clinton only dragged out her own flaying—and gave voters reason to suspect her other claims, as well.
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The media drumbeat for Hillary Clinton to drop out has been building over the past week, with some notable push-back. But now the zeitgeist-capturing Obama Girl has spoken: Hillary must go.
The music isn’t quite as catchy as in the past, and it feels like a weak excuse to show Amber Lee Ettinger rolling around on a white divan. But there’s something tender about the way she sits down with Hillary and gently explains, girl to girl, why she needs to get out.
If Obama Girl doesn't get a Cabinet post out of this ...
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Perhaps the most shocking thing about Gordon Fischer’s Monica joke is that it didn’t happen until now.
A key Obama organizer and adviser in Iowa, Fischer posted an item on his blog over the weekend slamming Bill Clinton for his comment late Friday that many interpreted as an attack on Obama’s patriotism.
“Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping—instead he is hurting—his own party,” Fischer wrote. “B. Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress.”
Cue outrage. On a conference call this morning, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer called it the “most personal attack yet” and an indicator of the Obama campaign’s harsh new strategy. Fischer took down the post and replaced it with a two-part apology. The Obama campaign reiterated its line that “comments like this have no place in our political dialogue.”
So far in this campaign, we’ve seen some liberal umbrage-taking. But now it’s official: The Monica scandal is off-limits too. It’s still unclear, though, to what extent the ban applies. The scandal was a defining moment of her husband’s administration, after all. Is any reference to Monica considered unfair? If anything, the Clinton campaign is lucky the blue dress hasn’t resurfaced until now. Be sure that in a general election, Clinton's Republican opponents would not exercise the same restraint.
Also, here’s an idea. For one day, each candidate allows their surrogates to say all the hateful, inappropriate, uncalled-for things they can think of about their opponent. All the hurled insults would instantly cancel one another out. That way, they can get it out of their systems and bring the umbrage war to a stalemate. Or so we hope.
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In the beginning, it was about momentum. When she lost momentum, it was about pledged delegates. When she lost pledged delegates, it was about the popular vote. And now that she’s on her way to losing the popular vote, it’s about the number of electoral votes held by the states in which the candidates have won primary victories.
Sen. Evan Bayh, a Hillary Clinton supporter, proposed the new metric on CNN’s Late Edition Sunday. The logic: Clinton has won states with a total of 219 electoral votes, whereas Obama has won states with only 202 electoral votes. “So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes," Bayh said, "is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States.”
And that’s not just the cry of a lone surrogate. (Keep in mind that Sunday show appearances by surrogates are always approved by campaigns.) On a conference call today, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer argued that Bayh “makes a compelling point. Senator Clinton has won and performed well in states [like Ohio and Florida] that will be general election battlegrounds.”
First off, let us reiterate a point that apparently can’t be said enough: There is no discernible connection between success in a primary and success in the general. You can argue that Obama wouldn’t be able to match Clinton’s strength in areas like rural Ohio, where she won whites in some counties by as much as 80 percent of the vote. But given the huge disparity in voter turnout between the primaries and the general, the unreliability of exit poll responses (how do you know someone is actually an “independent”?), and Obama’s relative strength in matchups against John McCain, it’s wrongheaded to think that Clinton’s electoral vote lead has any bearing on the “electability” question.
Second, it’s ironic that Bayh chose to push this particular metric. After 2000, he was a strong advocate of overhauling the Electoral College: “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” Then, in 2006 he said, “I think our president should be chosen by the majority of the American people.” To be fair, his remarks about the new metric take into account the electoral system as it is, not as he wishes it were. But perhaps the Clinton camp could have found a better surrogate to push this particular argument.
Update 5:07 p.m.: A Frayster points out that Clinton herself supported abolishing the Electoral College back in 2000.
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