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The first half of today’s RBC meeting was all about “unity”
and healing. The second part, not so much.
After an extended lunch break, the panel returned with a set
of resolutions. The first, presented by committee member Alice Huffman,
proposed seating Florida’s
entire delegation. Even before it was voted down, Clinton supporter Tina Flournoy mourned that
the resolution had “no chance of passing this body.” “That saddens me,” she
said. “It really does.” The motion failed, but it was closer than most people
expected, 15-12. Instead, the committee unanimously passed a motion splitting
the Florida
delegation in half. When DNC Secretary Alice Germond tried to soften the mood
by describing her experience hearing MLK speak in Washington, D.C.,
the Clinton-friendly crowd booed. Okay,
you won, the boos said. Just don’t
pretend it’s democratic.
Things turned even more sour during the Michigan discussion. The committee passed a
motion adopting the Michigan Democratic Party’s 69-59 split, but giving each
delegate only half a vote. The solution nets Clinton five delegates. (If you include Florida, she netted 24 delegates today.) Even before the vote,
everyone knew how it would turn out. Clinton
supporter Don Fowler voiced his disappointment with the resolution, but said he
would vote for it anyway. He then addressed Harold Ickes. “This is my position.
I respect and love you, but this is what I think we should do.”
Ickes, after a pause, leaned into his mic. “We find it
inexplicable,” he said, speaking for himself and Clinton, “that this body that
is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of other than … the
single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process. That is fair
reflection.” As far as he’s concerned, fair reflection—the notion that delegate
allocation must reflect the true vote—is “analogous to the First Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution.” He went on: “The motion will hijack, remove four
delegates from Hillary Clinton.” (In Michigan’s
Jan. 15 vote, “Uncommitted” won 55 delegates; the solution gives him 59.)
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity,” he said. “I submit to you that
hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party
unity.”
Committee member Ben Johnson tried to push back, denouncing
the “propaganda” disseminated by “one of my colleagues that makes it sound like
this motion will hijack” some delegates. But the damage was done. Clinton supporters chanted “Denver! Denver!”
from the balcony. Every time a committee member said the word “vote,” someone
from the audience would yell, “You mean half!”
If the goal of this meeting was to take a step toward party
unity, its final moments don’t bode particularly well. At the end of his
speech, Ickes left us with “one final word: Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve
her right to take this to the Credentials Committee.” An ominous warning for party
healers everywhere.
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Today’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was hyped as one of the
biggest shindigs of the Democratic primary season, and you can see why. It was
in everyone’s interest to inflate its importance. Hillary Clinton needs to rake
in delegates and ratify the popular votes in Florida
and Michigan.
Obama needs to look fair-minded and start courting the two states for the
general. And for Dems, it’s an all-out pep rally—a chance to talk about unity
and voters’ rights while implicitly kick off the general election season.
But if you pare it down to what’s actually at stake, the
event starts to feel rather puffed-up. The solutions proposed by the two
campaigns in the first half of the day don’t differ much. The Clinton
camp demanded a full seating of the Florida
delegates, while the Obama camp endorsed the so-called Ausman compromise, which
would halve the delegation’s influence. The difference between their solutions,
in terms of delegates netted for Clinton,
isn’t much: One gets her 38, the other gets her 19. For Michigan,
Clinton pushed
for a 73-55 delegate split (which would give Obama all the “uncommitted”
delegates), while Obama’s team requested an even 50-50 split. Again, one
proposal gets her 18 delegates, the other gets her zero. Even if the Clinton camp got everything they wanted, Clinton would win about 50 delegates. Given
Obama’s 200-delegate lead, that’s about as useful as a wet sock.
The debate over Florida was
relatively tame compared to the Michigan
issue. The reason, in a nutshell: Obama was on the ballot in Florida. In Michigan’s case, the committee’s problems
sound almost more metaphysical than political: How do you count an election
that wasn’t supposed to count in the first place? How many votes do you give a
candidate no one voted for? Can you assign delegates to a candidate without
implicitly giving him popular votes as well?
The problem is, both sides have good points. RBC member and Clinton supporter Elaine Kamarck voiced reservations about
Michigan’s
proposed 69-59 split, which used a combination of voting number and exit polls
to reach a compromise: “My problem is willy-nilly arbitrary assignment of
delegates when we actually had a legitimate vote. This way lies chaos.” But the
vote we do have, Obama surrogate
David Bonior argued, is flawed. Donna Brazile traced it all back to a simple
lesson: “My mother also taught me, I'm sure you're mother also taught you, that
when you decide to change the rules, especially in the middle game and the end
of the game, that is referred to as cheating.” When Michigan Democrat Mark Brewer
presented the state party’s plan, Eric Kleinfeld asked why he thinks he can
just pick numbers out of a hat: “Are you relying on any rule?” “No,” Brewer
responded, “but we have to do something.”
The difficulty of figuring out that something is probably
why the committee still hasn’t returned from lunch, which started three hours
ago.
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A lawyer for the Clinton campaign fired off a letter today to the co-chairs of the DNC rules committee, outlining the argument they plan to make tomorrow. Their case hinges largely on whether Florida and Michigan have been sufficiently punished. We all agree they’ve been very bad states, the argument goes. Get over it.
The letter rejects the argument made by DNC lawyers that the committee can’t reinstate more than half of the delegations. “This conclusion is incorrect,” the Clinton letter states. “The RBC has broad power to fully reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegations” as long as the state parties “have taken provable, positive steps and acted in good faith to bring the state into compliance” with party rules. Attempts to hold re-votes count as such good-faith steps, even though they failed, according to the campaign. If the RBC buys this argument—that the states genuinely tried to comply with the rules but failed—then the Clinton camp might have a shot at reinstating all the delegates. (In Florida, at least; Michigan is messier by a long shot.)
But there’s another rule the Clinton campaign doesn’t mention. In the same part of the Delegate Selection Rules (PDF) cited by the Clinton team [Rule 20(C)(7)], it says that “other relevant Democratic party leaders and elected officials took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith in attempting to prevent the legislative changes which resulted in state law that fails to comply with the pertinent provisions of these rules.” In other words, Florida Dems have to prove they fought tooth and nail to keep the Republican state legislature from moving the primary date up.
As we’ve pointed out before, that didn’t really happen. The effort to move the date up was initially spearheaded by a state senate Democrat, and tacitly supported by other Dems. In 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that “Florida Democrats are all for it.” Likewise, Michigan Democrats knew full well what they were doing when they moved their primary to Jan. 15.
So even if the Clinton camp is able to prove that Democrats made good-faith effort to hold re-votes, they’ll have a lot more trouble arguing they did everything in their power to prevent the original sin.
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The high-stakes drama of Saturday's rules committee meeting appears
illusory. Meanwhile, Obama rakes in more superdelegates, putting him
40.5 away from the nomination. According to our formula, that sinks
Clinton to 0.4 percent.
T minus one day and counting to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. Can you feel the suspense? Clinton supporters are busing up from Florida. Obama fans are being encouraged to stay home. Tout le média
will hang on Howard Dean's every word, as well as those uttered by the
Obama and Clinton campaign surrogates sent to argue their cases.
But the drama is largely phony. DNC lawyers have said that seating any more than half of the Michigan and Florida delegations would violate party rules. The proposed solutions are well-known. And every likely compromise fails to put Clinton within range of catching Obama, who now leads by 200 delegates. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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One big question lingers over the inflammatory comments made by Father Michael Pfleger, a Chicago priest who said some not-very-nice things about Hillary Clinton at Obama’s church last Sunday: Didn’t he know he’d get in trouble?
Pfleger was fully aware of the guilt-by-association theme of this presidential campaign. In a May 4 op-ed he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, Pfleger mourned the fact that Obama and Wright “are suddenly being held accountable and responsible for whatever the other says. This is not being done in either of the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain.”
Since the beginning, Pfleger has urged Obama not to distance himself from Rev. Wright. The night before he announced his candidacy, Obama withdrew his invitation to Wright, who was planning to give the public invocation. Pfleger disagreed. "I told him I thought it was the wrong decision," he told the Christian Science Monitor.
And most recently, Pfleger defended Wright during Wright’s April media tour. Pfleger told CNN: “I think any human being that for three weeks has been demonized and trivialized and put into a caricature around the world, there's no place he can go that people have not seen him, you know, I don't think it's narcissistic to say, wait a minute, this is not me.”
For someone who was so aware of the ins and outs of the Wright controversy—and who knows that sermons at the United Church of Christ are taped—it’s hard to understand why he would launch attacks on Hillary Clinton from that same pulpit. He even uttered an apology toward the end of his remarks: "Sorry ... don't want to get you into any more trouble," he said. Lynn Sweet reports that folks in Obama’s camp are baffled.
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The Obama campaign has been quick to scrub its Web site of all things Michael Pfleger after the Chicago priest said some not-very-nice things about Hillary Clinton at Obama’s church last Sunday.
The campaign’s "faith testimonials" page contains more than 30 endorsements by religious leaders and supporters, but Pfleger is not included (nor is Jeremiah Wright, obviously).
But a cached version of the page reveals this endorsement:
Father Michael Pfleger
Senior Pastor, St. Sabina Church, Chicago, IL
I’m concerned by issues of poverty and issues of justice and equal access and opportunity especially when dealing with children and education and healthcare. Also, the war in Iraq is non-negotiable: end it! The faith community has to be a prophetic voice to bring us to where we ought to be as a country. Its voice should call every individual to be their best and not assimilate into anything less. Obama is calling back those who have given up and lost hope in the political system both young and old in the belief that we can fix it. He has the intellect for the job and I haven’t heard anyone since Robert F. Kennedy who is causing such an emotional and spiritual awakening to the political possibilities.
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Yesterday we pointed out a major flaw in the debate over the new GI Bill. In fact, the CBO analysis cited by both McCain (in opposing the bill) and Obama (in supporting it) shows that the bounce in recruitment would outweigh the decline in re-enlistment. But as many have pointed out, that view doesn’t take "experience" into account. Who’s to say whether 30,000 new recruits will be better for the military than 7,000 noncommissioned officers who’ve been around the block?
A friend in the Marines who is currently stationed in Iraq (and prefers to remain anonymous) argues that it’s even more complicated than that:
I have to agree with your update in that experience is worth its weight in gold. Everyone dreads the ‘boot drop’ when PFCs and lance corporals straight from MOS school show up knowing ... very little. It's the same with 2nd Lieutenants who show up to a unit—there's a reason they're called boot lieutenants. What's really valuable is retaining someone who's spent years of his life training and actually deploying and working in this war because they have knowledge and experience in both their jobs and in just dealing with military life that you can't create overnight.
Of course, the downside to good retention is that in the military, you can't stay in a job for 20 years no matter how good you are at it. You have to be promoted and move up the ladder until you're promoted to your lowest level of incompetence. So while we say we want a force full of experienced captains and NCOs who have been around the block a few times, we're lying to ourselves if we think retention is the solution. With the current promotion rates (something like 98 percent make it to captain in the USMC, and I think it's the same if not higher in the army) and the accelerated pipeline (I've heard the time from commissioning to captain is 39 months in the Army, with 18 to 1st Lieutenant) it's only a matter of time before that captain, if he's motivated and a performer, will become a major and then a lieutenant colonel, or that shit hot sergeant becomes a staff NCO. So under that system you need a constant input to ensure that at the ranks you want people you can continue to have experienced officers and NCOs while still promoting people out of those ranks. The force structure is very very dynamic and maintaining an equilibrium, or even approaching a desired end state, is very difficult and very temporary. [Emphasis added.]
So while "experience" is important, it means nothing if you don’t have a steady flow of new recruits.
John McCain has the advantage of understanding the chaotic structure of the military—he logged more than 20 years in the Navy and has two sons in uniform. But the GI bill debate inevitably gets squished into the narrow terms of who is "supporting the troops" more. It’s easier to argue that more education benefits are automatically better than to analyze the complexities of the military hierarchy. Which is why, at least on this issue, McCain has failed to persuade his fellow senators.
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When it’s a caucus, according to the Clintons.
In a letter to superdelegates yesterday, Hillary Clinton quietly dropped caucuses from her calculation of who's winning. “[W]hen the primaries are finished,” she wrote, “I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries.” Likewise, Bill Clinton bluntly criticized the caucus system yesterday while touring Puerto Rico:
[T]he party will have to decide whether they believe the caucuses—where you get about one delegate for 2000 votes—are more important than the primaries where you get one for 12,000.
Let’s address these beefs one at a time.
Hillary may be correct that she’ll be winning among noncaucus pledged delegates once all is said and done. Among caucus states alone, Obama leads by 135 delegates. (Calculated from the New York Times and AP counts.) If you remove those from the equation, his pledged-delegate lead drops from 149 to 14. A blowout win in Puerto Rico, with 55 delegates at stake, could push Clinton past Obama. A favorable decision on Florida could net Clinton another 19 delegates. But remember: That’s if you pretend caucus states—15 of the 57 Democratic contests—don’t exist.
As for Bill’s complaint: Say caucuses did only give one delegate for every 12,000 votes, instead of for every 2,000? (Bill’s numbers are approximate, but generally correct.) You can convert the numbers by dividing their caucus delegate counts by six. So Obama’s 135-delegate lead in caucus states would become a 22.5-delegate lead. Factor that into his overall pledged-delegate lead, and he’d be ahead by 36.5 pledged delegates. Again, big Clinton wins in Puerto Rico and on the Florida question could put her over the top.
Why all these logical gymnastics? Only to point out just how convoluted these arguments are. Saying Hillary Clinton will win “delegates earned through primaries” requires ignoring 15 states that did count and counting one state that didn’t. Saying caucuses are unfairly weighted, but counting Michigan’s lopsided vote (Obama wasn’t on the ballot) toward your popular vote tally, requires equally odd logical leaps.
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One of the strongest arguments in favor of Jim Webb’s new GI Bill, which passed in the Senate last week, is that while higher education benefits might decrease re-enlistment, they would increase recruitment. This was the case made by the New York Times editorial page over the weekend:
[Opponents of the bill] have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying—as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are—to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.
Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits—by 16 percent.
This is true. The CBO analysis (PDF) does predict that the proposed educational benefits "would result in a 16 percent increase in recruits" while estimating a "16 percent decline in the reenlistment rate, from about 42 percent to about 36 percent" (emphasis mine).
The problem is, the "16 percents" aren’t necessarily equal. You need to know the underlying numbers of recruits and re-enlistments to know whether, as the Times claims, the two figures "offset" each other.
The CBO estimate concluded that the 16 percent increase in recruitment would add an additional 30,000 recruits annually, while a 16 percent decline in re-enlistment would result in 7,000 fewer re-enlistments annually. In other words, new recruits would greatly outnumber soldiers who decline to re-enlist. These numbers make the New York Times case—and Barack Obama’s—even stronger than they thought.
A couple of caveats. For one thing, the CBO estimate examines an early version of the bill called S.22, which isn’t the same thing as the bill the Senate passed last week. The Senate adopted the GI Bill as an amendment to Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 2642. The CBO is still working on an estimate for that. Also, the CBO emphasized that its estimate doesn't assume there will be a change in the size and composition of the force. Rather, it assumes that the Department of Defense would maintain the current force structure by decreasing enlistment bonuses and increasing re-enlistment bonuses.
Still, both Obama and McCain have invoked the CBO estimate in their arguments for and against the GI Bill. They might want to update their numbers.
Plus: See our original analysis of McCain's objections to the GI Bill.
Update 1:10 p.m.: A smart reader points out that you have to take into account the vast difference between new recruits and non-commissioned officers: "A senior NCO, or even an NCO with 2-3 years of experience, is light
years ahead in terms of competence than a newly minted private." There's obviously no way to know which is "better" -- 7,000
re-enlisted officers or 30,000 new recruits -- but the disparity in experience is worth taking into account.
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As the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting looms, Hillary Clinton
cranks her electability argument up to 11. But Obama continues to woo
superdelegates. Odds of survival hover at 0.5 percent.
Clinton
is now fighting tooth and nail to see that the DNC's rules committee
seats the delegates from Florida and Michigan at the convention in
August. She continues to push for full seating, but that scenario
remains extremely unlikely.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe suggests they're willing to
compromise. The reason: They can afford to. Even the best-case
scenarios don't have Clinton closing Obama's 195-delegate lead. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Sen. Joe Lieberman has been taking some heat on the blogs ever since Huffington Post reported that he will be headlining Pastor John Hagee’s annual Christians United For Israel conference this July. Lieberman, like McCain, has praised Hagee in the past for his support of Israel. But recent remarks about Hitler being sent by God to drive the Jews out of Europe—on top of earlier comments about the Catholic Church—forced McCain to reject Hagee’s endorsement. But Lieberman has remained on the bill for the conference.
Lieberman has posted a statement explaining his decision. Here it is, in full:
I believe that Pastor Hagee has made comments that are deeply unacceptable and hurtful. I also believe that a person should be judged on the entire span of his or her life's works. Pastor Hagee has devoted much of his life to fighting anti-Semitism and building bridges between Christians and Jews. The organization that he has helped build, Christians United for Israel, is a vital force in supporting the war against terrorism and defending our ally, Israel. I will go to the CUFI Summit in July and speak to the people who have come to Washington from all over our country to express their support of America and Israel, based on our shared eternal values and our shared contemporary challenges in the war against terrorism. At that conference, I will also make it clear that it is imperative that our language is always respectful and tolerant of all of our fellow citizens.
I can’t think of any good explanation for this, other than Hagee has naked photos of Joe Lieberman … eating shellfish.
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The Associated Press reported that the Rules and Bylaws Committee cannot fully restore the delegates who were stripped from Michigan and Florida at its meeting, since party rules require a reduction of at least 50 percent since the two states held their primaries early. The report cites a memo sent out by DNC lawyers last night.
But on a conference call today, Clinton adviser and RBC member Tina Flournoy said that’s an "incorrect reading" of the memo. It merely presented arguments that could be made before the RBC, she said, which the committee will then have to evaluate. In other words, the Clinton campaign can still get 100 percent of the delegations seated.
Who’s right?
In strictly technical terms, Clinton’s people are. The memo, which summarizes challenges filed in Florida and Michigan to reinstate part or all of the state’s delegations, goes out of its way not to endorse one stance or another. (Michigan’s Democratic Party requested that all of the state’s delegates be reinstated; Florida DNC member Jon Ausman asked for 50 percent of Florida’s pledged delegates and all of its superdelegates to be counted.) As if to reiterate the memo’s toothlessness, the DNC just sent out a statement calling it an "intentionally neutral" analysis that "does not make specific recommendations."
But in a few key parts, the memo points out how the RBC would basically have to violate DNC rules in order to reinstate more than half the delegations. Here are some examples:
"[I]t seems clear that while the RBC could revoke its additional sanctions, leaving in place the automatic sanctions of Rule 20(C)(1), it does not have authority to reverse or prevent the imposition of those automatic sanctions."—Michigan challenge, Page 3
"If the RBC decides to go as far as it legally can in granting the MDP Challenge, it would revoke the additional December 2007 sanctions and leave in place a 50% automatic reduction in pledged delegates."—Michigan challenge, Page 6
"The legally more defensible view seems to be that the RBC had authority, in its discretion, to impose the additional sanction that it did impose in August 2007, but by the same token, that the RBC now has discretion to revoke those additional sanctions, thereby leaving in effect the automatic sanction of Rule 20(C)(1), i.e., a 50% reduction in pledged delegates."—Florida challenge, Page 6
In other words, the RBC could reinstate all of Michigan or Florida’s delegates (although only the Michigan challenge calls for full reinstatement), but that would violate its own rules. Clinton supporters will likely argue that the RBC has the power to overrule itself. As the memo puts it, the committee "is vested with broad authority … to ‘determine and resolve questions concerning the seating of delegates and alternates to the Convention.' " But it also points out that the committee's power is limited to making states comply with party rules. If there's a resolution to seat the full delegations, that will go to the Credentials Committee in late June, which would then throw it to the convention floor in August.
What does this all mean? That we’re in for a really dull RBC meeting. If the Clinton camp can’t get more than 50 percent of the delegations reinstated, they have no hope of turning the tables on Obama. (Even if they could get all of Michigan and Florida’s delegates to count, it would be virtually impossible to catch up among pledged delegates.) Both camps seem to expect mayhem—Clinton supporters are planning protests, while Obama has urged supporters not to stir things up. But chances are the scene outside the building will be a lot more dramatic than inside.
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Perhaps the biggest advantage of campaigning in Puerto Rico is that it forces both candidates to dance.
Obama broke into a timid little groove—it looks kind of like he’s running in place—while campaigning on Saturday in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan (video here; it’s around 1:50). Yesterday, Fox News embed Aaron Bruns managed to persuade Hillary Clinton to make vaguely dancelike movements to Enrique Iglesias’ “Be With You” at a bar.
Both moments are, somehow, incredibly charming. If I were an advance staffer for a campaign, I’d get palpitations every time danceable music started playing. Everyone knows dancing makes perfect stock footage for attack ads. But the high risk comes with high payoff. When Obama shook it on Ellen, he probably won over grandmothers across the nation. In Clinton’s case, showing vulnerability has worked out rather nicely, too.
Best of all, it provides some clear contrast with John McCain (Exhibit A). Every time McCain proposes an unmoderated debate, Obama should propose a pop and lock contest.
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This weekend’s meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will be full of theater. Each campaign must publicly make its case for why Florida's and Michigan’s delegations should or should not be seated, and the committee’s 30 members must deliberate. Clinton supporters will be protesting. But the most intriguing performance will come from RBC member and Clinton delegate guru Harold Ickes, who voted last August to strip Florida of all its delegates but is now pushing to reinstate them.
That may sound like some tough logical gymnastics, but Ickes is a gold medalist when it comes to this stuff. Here’s a quick chronology of his past statements, starting with his justification for stripping the states of their delegations. (Pardon the long quotes—the man can talk.):
“I think this whole system [the primary calendar] is goofy. It's all out of kilter. I think we start way too early.”
—Aug. 26, 2007
“I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. … I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them.”
—Feb. 16 2008
“[W]e think that the Florida vote was fair and square. And the Obama campaign whining about the fact that it wasn't fair when they, in fact -- when he, in fact, broke the pledge that his campaign signed by actually campaigning in Florida, you know, rings high. I don't think any objective observer who looked at that result, in which a million more Democrats came out to vote in this presidential preference compared to 2004, can argue with even a semblance of a straight face that that was not a fair contest and that those results reflect the will of the Democrats who participated. Senator Obama just didn't like the results. I suggest that had the results been just the opposite, he would be rushing to the forefront to try to seat those delegations, and if not, arguing for a redo.”
—March 25, 2008
“We decided to invoke a full stripping of the delegates from those two states to send a very strong signal to other states that if they broke the window, there would be very severe consequences. We think that that signal was received, listened to, no other state broke the window, and it is it is now time as practical political people with very much at stake in deciding our nomination and in winning the general election and in winning the White House … we ought to now turn our attention to that. …
“These states have in fact been punished. They didn’t have primaries run in them. They didn’t have full fledged campaigns run in them. … Some people can disagree on that, but the fact is punishment was imposed by virtue of not running the primaries there. The lessons were learned and it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the general election and make sure that these states—that we do everything to make sure these states are in the Democratic column.
“One million more people participated in that state’s primary than in the prior 40 years. People came out in droves. People knew who they wanted to vote for, they knew why they were voting.”
—May 22, 2008
So first it was about fixing the calendar; then it was about enforcing the rules; then it was about record turnout, Obama breaking the rules (which is debatable), and winning the general election. Next it will be about the deliciousness of Tropicana orange juice.
Set your TiVos to C-SPAN.
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Hillary Clinton's ill-advised invoking of RFK's assassination might
have damaged her campaign if there were anything left to damage.
Meanwhile, Obama closes in on the current magic number of 2,026,
bringing Clinton's odds of winning the nomination to 0.5 percent.
On
the list of campaign no-nos, hinting at the possibility of your
opponent being shot is up there. Yet that's what some people thought
Hillary meant when she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls,
S.D., Argus-Leader that Democratic nominations often extend
into June: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he
won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We
all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I
don't understand it."
The New York Post led the way, blaring, "Hillary Raises Assassination Issue." Drudge quickly followed. The Washington Post fronted the story, albeit less sensationally. But little consideration was given to what Clinton meant. (Watch the video and draw your own conclusions.) Never mind that she had said the same thing to Time back in March and no one noticed. Never mind that her calendar argument is misleading
in the first place: Her husband may not have mathematically secured the
nomination until June, but he was the presumptive nominee in March; RFK
was still campaigning in June because the primary calendar started so
late. The focus was on the "assassination" comparison. "We have seen an
X-ray of a very dark soul," opined the Daily News' Michael Goodwin. That or a very click-hungry media.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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A conversation is already brewing over at "XX Factor" about what Clinton meant when she invoked Robert Kennedy’s assassination as evidence that nomination battles continue through June. Here’s her wording, from an interview with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader editorial board:
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it.” (Video.)
Critics have seized on the quote as evidence that Hillary is secretly hoping Obama gets knocked off in the next few weeks. After all, Clinton didn’t say, "Bobby Kennedy was in the race until June.” She said he got shot in June. The Obama camp, ever eager to take umbrage, whisked out a statement that her comment was “unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.” Others, including Slate’s Rachael Larimore, think Clinton’s motives were benign.
But most bizarre is the Clinton camp’s apology, fired off just now. She claims she was referencing the 1992 and 1968 elections “to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June.” Then, the kicker: “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever.”
At first, the move seems brilliant—saying sorry to the Kennedys without saying sorry to Obama. But it also feels like a weak dodge. By not addressing her specific phrasing—why say "assassination"?—she doesn't put the issue to bed, thereby guaranteeing another round of speculation.
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In a Wednesday post at National Review Online, Larry Kudlow, he of CNBC fame, asserts that the stock market likes Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. How does he know this? Because on two occasions, the stock market went up after Clinton won a primary, and down after Obama won.
The clearest example was Hillary’s massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama’s big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.
Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night’s elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.
Kudlow, to put it simply, is off his rocker. He is asserting that the stock market would react strongly to a Democratic primary after the nominee has been all-but-anointed. One would think an economist like Kudlow would have more faith in the market than to think it was subject to the whims of a now-meaningless primary that pits two very similar candidates against one another.
Kudlow’s facts are right. The Dow went up by an unimpressive 73.26 points after Clinton won West Virginia. Why? Not because Clinton won; because Wall Street got good vibes from a new inflation report. The Dow went up even more after Obama won Wisconsin and Hawaii. He’s also right that the index plunged a substantial 196 points the day after Obama took North Carolina and made Clinton sweat in Indiana. But not because Obama won. AIG, a bellwhether for subprime-affected insurance corporations, was about to unleash a gnarly balance sheet the next day. As Kudlow notes, stocks tumbled nearly the same amount after Obama won in Oregon and clinched a pledged delegate majority. Why? Not because Obama is going to be the nominee; because oil prices hit a record high and inflation edged upward.
Kudlow doesn’t mention that the Dow rose 32 points during Obama’s streak of 10 straight victories, or that it went up after Obama’s South Carolina, Potomoc, and Wisconsin wins. Kudlow must have been dumbfounded when the market didn’t crater in response to Obama’s success. He must think the market agrees with Clinton and must not count caucuses as real votes.
All of those rebuttals take for granted a tacit, yet crucial, piece of Kudlow’s logic—that Clinton and Obama would be drastically different stewards for the economy. This, also, doesn’t make any sense.
Kudlow takes issue with Obama’s “class warfare” of repealing Bush tax cuts and other initiatives.
Obama then repeated his usual litany: big-government health care, an attack on oil companies, a big spending plan for education, big bailouts for housing, and a pension assault on corporations.
Clinton, of course, is for all of those things, as well. Superficially, Clinton is no more of a sure-thing bull economy than Obama is. Kudlow seems to recognize his argument’s flaw, and attempts to push it aside.
Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight a) because she was roughing up Obama for the general-election fight against McCain and b) because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can’t with Obama.
Personifying stocks is always a risky affair, because, oh, you know, they don’t have brains. Traders don’t think “they can do business with Hillary” any more than Kudlow does. Watch this clip of Kudlow castigating Clinton’s economic policies, and you’ll see that Kudlow isn’t exactly a Democratic cheerleader. He’s a staunch supply-side McCain supporter who is using his NRO platform to knock Obama and proliferate McCain talking points. Kudlow saying Obama would be bad for the markets is the same as Karl Rove saying Clinton is the stronger Democrat in November. Even in a quantifiable realm like economics, qualitative spin rules the day.
The Dow Jones is down nearly 150 points today. Maybe it’s because Obama picked up three new superdelegates.
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In today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer slams Barack Obama for what he calls Obama’s "gaffe"-turned-foreign-policy centerpiece. To hear Krauthammer tell it, Obama’s position that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and other unfriendly governments "without preconditions" in the first year of his presidency first surfaced at the July 23 YouTube debate, in his response to a YouTube questioner. (Read the debate exchange here.) Per Krauthammer, Obama's answer just sort of slipped out, and he ran with it: "What started as a gaffe became policy."
Similarly, Matthew Yglesias writes about Obama’s "accidential foreign policy" in this month’s Atlantic, arguing that Obama’s camp "had never articulated such a policy before [the debate], and seemed ill-prepared to defend it on the spot."
But was the July 23 debate really the first time Obama promised to meet with unsavory leaders? I asked Obama spokesman Ben Labolt whether he could point to earlier instances. Here are a few (emphasis mine):
- Back in November 2006, Obama said that "we must engage [Iraq’s] neighboring countries in finding a solution. This includes opening dialogue with both Syria and Iran, an idea supported by both James Baker and Robert Gates." The Baker/Hamilton Report (PDF) recommends that a "Support Group" of nations including the United States "should actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions."
- In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, Obama advocated "tough-minded diplomacy. This includes direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our principles and interests." Obama has also made the Cold War comparison in recent days.
- In April 2007, he said that "effective diplomacy" with "governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran" will require the "personal commitment of the President of the United States."
None of these statements are as strongly worded as the YouTube debate question. But they do signal a willingness engage enemies diplomatically, suggesting that Obama’s statement on July 23 was hardly a departure, let alone a "gaffe."
In recent days, campaign representatives have "clarified" Obama’s position. "I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," Obama supporter Tom Daschle told CNN. "... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us." Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Obama, said that meeting with Iran doesn’t necessarily mean meeting with Ahmadinejad—it could mean lower-level talks.
Again, these statements offer more specifics than before, but—the debate over the meaning of "preconditions" aside—they don’t really contradict Obama’s previous statements.
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John McCain finally rejected, denounced, and bused over Pastor John Hagee, whose remarks about the Catholic Church have been dogging McCain for months. The final straw was a sermon in which Hagee, citing the book of Jeremiah, called Adolf Hitler a “hunter” sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel, which would pave the way for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The rejection was long overdue. In March, McCain drew fire over Hagee’s statements calling the Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system.” McCain said he disagreed with any comments “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” but thought they were “taken out of context.” A McCain spokeswoman clarified: “While we welcome his support, it shouldn't be seen as a wholesale endorsement of all of Mr. Hagee's views.” But McCain did not reject his endorsement until now.
So what changed? You could argue the Hitler shout-out was the deciding factor—any time a supporter drops the H-bomb, he or she becomes radioactive. But take a look at demographics McCain needs to win in the general.
In Florida, a key battleground state, McCain can count on the support of Catholics no matter what. He won 40 percent of the GOP Catholic vote in the primary there (Obama won 22 percent in the Democratic race), and Florida’s Hispanics have voted Republican in the last few presidential elections. McCain’s stance on immigration makes him especially popular among that group. Despite criticism from Catholic leaders over Hagee’s remarks, McCain is unlikely to lose that demographic.
Jews are a different story. Florida Jews are famously skeptical of Barack Obama, particularly on his support of Israel. (Rep. Robert Wexler called Southern Florida “the most concentrated area in the country in terms of misinformation” about Obama.) Hence Obama’s ongoing courtship of Jewish leaders and recent visits to Boca Raton and Miami. McCain, by contrast, is seen as unwaveringly hawkish when it comes to Israel. As one older Jewish Floridian told the New York Times, “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel. They’re going to vote for McCain.”
In other words, now would be a bad time for McCain to risk alienating Jewish voters. At a certain point, the harm of Hagee's remarks starts to outweigh his popularity among evangelicals.
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Lanny Davis, former special counsel to the Clinton White House and a high-profile fundraiser/surrogate for Hillary's campaign, circulated an e-mail a few days ago from Rear Admiral David Stone (Ret.), a Clinton supporter who has visited other veterans across the country. Stone's message includes this passage:
Of note, Senator Obama has zero—repeat zero—traction in the VFW and American Legion Halls. Veterans cite his refusal (until recently) to wear the American Flag pin, the photo where he is shown not saluting the Flag with his hand over his heart, ... his alleged MoveOn.Org relationship and that organization's innuendo (in an ad) of General Petraeus as a traitor, his relationship with Rev. Wright (who once said "God Damn America" in a sermon), Mrs. Obama's comment about only recently being proud to be an American, and Senator Obama's recent comment that some people were "bitter" about their economic situation and thus "cling" to guns and religion as a result. ...
Surrogates can't always be on message, but this is particularly far astray. Obama has not "refused" to wear a flag pin, and the flag-saluting photo has been fairly thoroughly debunked. Instead of correcting these misperceptions, Davis is spreading them, even after the Clinton camp has pointedly toned down its rhetoric on Obama. But attacks on Obama's patriotism have been verboten among Dems for some time now. Most references to the lapel pin or saluting the flag or Michelle Obama's "proud to be an American" comments come from the RNC. Apparently that memo didn't reach Davis.
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In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hillary Clinton reiterates that Florida Democrats shouldn’t be punished for the Republican legislature’s decision to move the primary up to Jan. 29. Democrats "had very little or no choice in the matter," she says. "It was a Republican decision to go forward."
It’s become accepted among Democrats that the early primary date was foisted on Florida Dems by Republicans. But the reality was more complicated. As a Miami Herald columnist pointed out in March:
- The legislation that moved up Florida's presidential primary from the second Tuesday in March to the last Tuesday in January was sponsored by a Democrat, Jeremy Ring, in the Senate, and a Republican, David Rivera, in the House.
- Every single Democrat in both chambers voted for the early date except for one House member, all of them grown-ups knowing full well that the rules of both national parties called for delegate penalties.
There’s more. Back in 2006, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party said that "Florida Democrats are all for it." Later, when the DNC penalties became clear, Democratic leaders raised token objections. According to a great 2007 account of Florida’s deliberations by the Times’ Adam Smith (who also conducted yesterday’s interview with Clinton), some Dems tried to persuade Republicans to push the date back to the safe zone of Feb. 5 but quickly backed off. Many of them were equally eager to wield more influence in the primary season, and no one truly believed the DNC would erase all their delegates. A last-ditch amendment that would have moved the date back to Feb. 5 failed to pass.
To be sure, the date change measure was folded into a larger election-reform bill, which contained a key Democratic provision to create paper trails for electronic voting machines. That’s why the entire legislature voted for it. Plus, Dems probably didn’t expect to have all their delegates invalidated by the DNC, since party rules only called for half. They may also have declined to fight the measure because they knew they couldn't win. But to describe Florida’s Democratic voters as victims of a Republican scheme is a stretch. At the time, the scheme seemed pretty darn bipartisan.
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Clinton steps up calls for Florida and Michigan to be seated. But
those delegations won't make up the difference. Her chances remain
stagnant at 0.7 percent.
On May 31, the DNC's
Rules and Bylaws Committee will convene in Washington, D.C., to decide
whether and how to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan.
There is a number of possible outcomes, but the most likely one is that
both states get seated but have their delegations chopped in half.
(Figuratively, of course—the DNC is harsh, but not that harsh.)
Depending on how they treat superdelegates, this scenario would change the "magic number" from 2,026 to either 2,131 or 2,118.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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On a conference call just now, Clinton adviser Harold Ickes articulated the campaign’s position on Michigan’s "uncommitted" delegates: Obama shouldn’t get them. Over at Politico, Avi Zenilman points out how this would hinder Obama’s attempts to win the pledged-delegate count.
But it also affects the popular-vote tally. Namely, it justifies Clinton’s declaration that she’s "winning the popular vote," since she counts her own votes in Michigan but not "uncommitted."
At a breakfast with reporters earlier this month, Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson reportedly suggested that they’d be willing to give Obama the "uncommitted" delegates. Yesterday we wondered why, if they were willing to give him the delegates, they were unwilling to give him the popular votes.
But today, Ickes took a harder stance: "It is presumptuous to assume that each and every one of those delegates is an Obama supporter," he said. He described a different scenario: Rather than going to Obama, the "uncommitted" delegates would attend the August convention as just that—"uncommitted." The campaign would then make their case to the delegates at the convention.
It’s still a stretch to say you’re winning the popular vote while counting a state where your opponent wasn’t on the ballot. But now at least the logic is internally consistent—"uncommitted" delegates shouldn’t go to Obama, nor should "uncommitted" votes.
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Something we didn’t mention in our