Obama, at a press conference right now, is explaining his decision to leave Trinity church right on the cusp of the general election.
The gist: He's leaving because he knows that he has to distance himself from the church at this juncture, given the political imperatives before him, and also because his presence in the church is resulting in too much media scrutiny to the church itself.
Obama noted that members of the church are being harassed, noting that anonymous members of the church are getting calls from news organizations.
Obama also revealed that he and Michelle have been discussing the possibility of leaving since Wright's disastrous press conference at the National Press Club a few weeks ago -- suggesting that they've known for some time now know that going into a general election without ditching Wright and his church is untenable.
In a huge blow to Hillary's hopes, such as they are, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee has now voted in favor of a compromise measure for Michigan, giving 69 pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton and 59 to Barack Obama at a half-vote each.
This effectively ends Hillary's bid to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations in full -- which she was hoping for in a last-ditch effort to close the delegate count and, more importantly for her campaign's moral arguments, to try to narrow Obama's unofficial popular vote lead.
Still, Hillary's chief delegate counter, Harold Ickes, seemed to signal that there's still a possibility that she might fight on. In a harsh tone of voice, Ickes told the committee that Hillary personally informed him that she reserves the right to take the dispute over Michigan to the Credentials Committee in Denver, on the grounds that the committee had no right to transfer "Uncommitted" votes over to Obama.
The 69-59 measure was put forth by the state party's leadership, with Sen. Carl Levin arguing for full voting rights for each delegate. It remains to be seen whether he will fight on over the question of half-votes, or whether the matter is now effectively over.
The vote was 19 in favor to eight opposed, less than the unanimity received by the Florida half-vote compromise.
Hillary's total advantage in pledged delegates for Michigan and Florida is now set at +24 -- well short of the advantage of more than +100 that she once hypothetically enjoyed.
The Obama campaign confirms to us that he has resigned from the church of controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright.
More in a sec.
Late Update: Obama himself will address this soon in South Dakota. Details coming.
Late Update: Here's what may have triggered Obama's final break from the church: Rev. Michael Pfleger mocking Hillary as "white" and "entitled," a performance that was disavowed by Obama himself...
The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee has officially voted, in a unanimous motion, in favor of the compromise measure for the Florida Democratic delegation, seating all pledged delegates and super-delegates at a half-vote each.
The compromise was endorsed by the Obama campaign, and even received the evidently-reluctant support of pro-Clinton members of the committee.
Bottom line: Hillary Clinton will net a +19 edge in pledged delegates for Florida, not enough to significantly change the math. Up next will be the debate on Michigan, which is a much tougher issue to settle.
As expected, the motion to fully seat the Florida delegation according to the results of the January rogue primary has gone down in defeat, following a brief formal debate.
The vote tally: 12 votes in favor, 15 opposed. The committee is now proceeding to debate on a compromise motion that would seat the delegates at half-voting strength, which is expected to carry the day.
The vote was followed by chants of "Denver! Denver!" from a contingent of Clinton supporters in the audience.
Former Michigan Governor James Blanchard, the Clinton campaign's representative at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing, has just laid out the campaign's position in favor of a full seating of Michigan delegates on the basis of the January 15 rogue primary.
Blanchard argued that the primary was not flawed, as many have argued, and criticized Barack Obama and three other candidates for removing their names from the ballot. "It doesn't make the election flawed," said Blanchard. "In my opinion, they had a flawed strategy."
"It makes no sense for our party's rules to be used to disenfranchise voters," Blanchard later added. "That is not the Democratic way, that is not the American way."
Former Congressman David Bonior (D-MI), the Obama campaign's representative in the Rules Committee's hearing on Michigan, has laid out the campaign's position on his state's rogue primary: Split the pledged delegates evenly between the two candidates.
"Due to all these circumstances, the unfortunate reality is that this primary that happened on January 15 was not anything that came close to a normal primary election, and cannot allocate delegates in a normal fashion as a result," Bonior said.
"This does not mean that Michigan should be not represented at the national convention. but it does mean that the delegates should be split evenly between the two remaining candidates, out of simple fairness."
Bonior was then greeted by a mixture of applause from Obama supporters, and a fair amount of booing from Hillary-backers.
On the trail today in South Dakota, Barack Obama will keep up the pressure on John McCain for wrongly saying that the troop numbers in Iraq are now at "pre-surge" levels, using McCain's refusal to admit error over the gaffe as yet another way to strap him to George W. Bush. From the prepared remarks sent over by the Obama campaign:
We all misspeak sometimes. I've done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you'd think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn't do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we've seen this movie before -- a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that's exactly the kind of leadership that we've had through more than five years of fighting a war that should've never been authorized, and should've never been waged.
We don't need more leaders who can't admit they've made a mistake, even when it's about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm's way.
It's clear that McCain's campaign misplayed this one. He could simply have said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I misspoke. I meant to say we're in the process of drawing down to pre-surge levels. Sorry. Now can we get back to the issues?"
But instead, the McCain camp tried to turn this into a debate about "verb tenses" -- the sort of error more often committed by Dems, and more often exploited by Republicans. Who knows how big an impact this will have, but the fact that Obama camp isn't letting up on this will cheer Dems wondering how aggressive the Obama team will be in the general.
It's official: The Obama campaign is supporting a compromise for Florida that would seat all the delegates at half a vote each -- giving Hillary a net gain of 19 delegates.
Obama's representative at the Rules meeting, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler, just endorsed the idea during his presentation.
"Senator Obama should be commended for his willingness to offer this extraordinary concession," Wexler said, adding that he's offering this concession "in order to promote reconciliation with Florida voters."
Though Hillary's team will still insist on a full seating, it's tough to imagine that this compromise won't end up being the final outcome. But again, the real morass is Michigan.
Some folks have already reported this, based on anonymous sources, but now the Obama campaign has made it official via a press release: He and his wife, Michelle, will hold a big rally on Tuesday evening -- the night of the last voting in the Dem primary -- at the site of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
It will be at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Expect Obama to use the occasion to frame his entire argument against McCain.
It's a pretty ballsy move. To state the obvious, the event will strongly symbolize that the real significance of the completion of the Dem primary voting is that the general election has begun, with Obama as the standard-bearer challenging McCain and the GOP.
Jon Ausman, the puckish and bemused Florida DNC member who's trying to get the Florida delegation seated, is bringing the house down with his challenge -- to the extent that any presentation before Rules and Bylaws can bring the house down, of course.
He just wrapped things up, and his final word is this: Seating half the delegates is "acceptable to the challenger."
That's shaping up more and more as the likely outcome. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein cites two sources saying that a deal has already been reached to seat the delegation with each member having half a vote -- which would give Hillary a net gain of 19 delegates.
Of course, few expected Florida to be as tough to resolve as Michigan, which is the real morass. Hillary adviser Harold Ickes will argue that the committee has no legal authority whatsoever to award "uncommitted" delegates to any candidate, meaning that the only legal outcome (in Ickes' view) is Hillary's preferred one.
Howard Dean delivered some strong words in his opening remarks at Rules and Bylaws, telling an anecdote about his bitter, hard-fought loss in 2004.
"I was very very angry at my party for some of the things that had been done," Dean said, going on to recall getting a phone call in the middle of the night from Al Gore, to whom Dean ranted and raved about his loss.
"What do I owe the Democratic Party?" Dean recalled telling Gore. "Why should I be a Democrat after what the party did to me?"
According to Dean, Gore responded: "Howard, you know, this is not about you. It's about your country."
"Nobody could have said that to me except for Al Gore," Dean continued, since Gore had had the presidency snatched from him by "five intellectually bankrupt Supreme Court justices who did the wrong thing."
"This is not about Barack Obama," Dean went on, speaking about the current primary. "This is not about Hillary Clinton. This is about our country. This is about restoring America to its greatness" and "moral authority."
"There have been very tough disagreements and ugly moments. Emotions have run very high. There have been blatantly sexist comments, particularly by some members of the media. And blatantly racist remarks. And we know that those comments have no place in our society."
So the meeting is about to get underway at the Rules and Bylaws committee -- the meeting at which a decision may be reached about what to do about the Florida and Michigan delegations, a decision that could effectively end the Democratic Primary.
Dems on the committee met until 1:30 A.M. last night, and were still unable to reach an agreement on how to resolve the impasse.
The key sticking point is how to allocate delegates in Michigan where Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., took his name off of the ballot.
There appears to be more agreement on how to proceed with Florida.
The most likely scenario is for the Sunshine State's entire delegation to be seated -- each member with 1/2 vote.
DNC chair Howard Dean is getting ready to deliver opening remarks. We'll be blogging the meeting -- somewhat intermittently -- right here.
The Obama campaign is in good spirits as Friday's happy hour rolls around, chiefly because they clearly won today's political skirmishes with John McCain. They got McCain to admit he was wrong to use General Petraeus' photo in a political attack. And they put him on the defensive over his flubbing of a fact about troop levels in Iraq.
And Obama will continue to squeeze the troop-levels gaffe -- in which McCain wrongly said that we'd drawn down troops to pre-surge levels -- in a Montana speech tonight. Prepared excerpts from the campaign:
He's been proposing a joint trip to Iraq that's nothing more than a political stunt. He's even been using it to raise a few dollars for his campaign. But it seems like Senator McCain's a lot more interested in my travel plans than the facts, because yesterday - in his continued effort to put the best light on a failed policy - he stood up in Wisconsin and said, "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels" in Iraq.
"That's not true, and anyone running for Commander-in-Chief should know better. As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own view, but not your own facts. We've got around 150,000 troops in Iraq - 20,000 more than we had before the surge. We have plans to get down to around 140,000 later this summer - that's still more troops than we had in Iraq before the surge. And today, Senator McCain refused to correct his mistake. Just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake. His campaign said it amounts to "nitpicking."
"Well I don't think tens of thousands of American troops amounts to nitpicking. Tell that to the young men and women who are serving bravely and brilliantly under our flag. Tell that to the families who have seen their loved ones fight tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged.
As the DNC prepares to decide the fates of the Florida and Michigan delegations tomorrow, a key question has to be asked: Did those rogue primaries truly reflect the will of their states' Democratic voters?
The case against that proposition, it turns out, is a fairly compelling one in statistical terms.
Here's why: If you take a close look at the numbers, it turns out that while the Florida primary turnout was high relative to past primaries within the state, the relative Democratic turnout vs. the Republican primary lagged way behind relative party turnout in other primaries and caucuses across the country, where the voting counted from the start. And in Michigan in particular, the voting level there was simply abysmal.
This suggests the possibility that far more Democratic voters would have come out in both states if they'd expected the contests to count, meaning that it's hard to argue that the primaries that actually took place really reflected the will of the people.
This is important context to keep in mind given that the Hillary campaign will argue tomorrow that the only way of preserving the people's will is giving them the solution they want -- a full seating of both delegations in accordance with the primary voting.
Nancy Pelosi, in an interview today, cranks up the warnings to Clintonites who may or may not be plotting to take things all the way to the convention:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday warned supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are threatening to take the delegate fight as far as the Democratic National Convention, that they are pursuing "a scorched earth philosophy" that would seriously damage the chances of electing a Democratic president in November.
"There is too much at stake in our country for us to be thinking that we can afford the luxury of intra-party battles eight weeks before the election," said Pelosi, in her strongest words yet on the battle over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Meanwhile, Hillary struck an even tone today when asked about pressure from party leaders to end this, saying: "I think that after the final primaries people are going to start making up their minds. I think that's the natural progression that one would expect."
The question, though, is whether the Clinton camp will fight on even after the super-dels have made up their minds.
That's a victory for the Obama campaign, which today bashed McCain's use of the pic as politicizing the military.
But it raises a question: What, specifically, won't happen again? The McCain campaign won't use any images of Petraeus again for political or fundraising purposes for the rest of the campaign? They won't henceforth politicize the images of any members of the military?
The Obama and McCain campaigns are battling it out today over whether a McCain comment about Iraq troop levels was a gaffe that betrayed his lack of knowledge of the facts on the ground -- and the early media coverage suggests that the Obama team is winning this spin war.
The comment in question was made by McCain yesterday to reporters. He said: "I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."
Pre-surge troop levels? Not so much, countered the Obama campaign, which pointed out that troop levels are at 155,000 right now, well above the 130,000 pre-surge mark.
The McCain campaign is battling aggressively to limit media pickup of McCain's mistake, telling reporters that they shouldn't be nit-picking about what was merely a "verb tense" mistake. But judging by the first round of coverage in The Washington Post, the Obama team is getting the story told its way...
McCain Asserts Return to Pre-Surge Iraq Troop Levels
Sen. John McCain has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for not traveling to Iraq to see the "facts on the ground." But a recent statement by McCain about troop levels has his opponents raising questions about his own knowledge.
That's exactly the coverage the McCain camp doesn't want, and that the Obama camp does want. Will the rest of the coverage follow suit? It seems like flubbing a fact about troop levels is a bit of a gaffe for someone who regularly attack his opponent's experience and fitness to be commander in chief.
The Hillary campaign has taken a great deal of heat for their demand that Hillary be awarded all her delegates in Michigan and that none of the so-called "uncommitted" delegates go to Obama.
On a conference call with reporters this afternoon laying the groundwork for tomorrow's DNC meeting about the delegations, top Hillary adviser Harold Ickes extensively rebutted that criticism, pointing out that in addition to Obama, John Edwards and Joe Biden also weren't on the ballot (only Hillary was).
"It's impossible to discern what was going on in the minds of the uncommitted [voters]," Ickes said. "Some may have voted for Senator Obama. Some may have voted for Senator Biden. And some may have been voting for just plain 'uncommitted.'"
"The Rules and Bylaws Committee does not have the jurisdiction or the power to take uncommitted delegates," Ickes continued, "and award them to Senator Obama, or any other presidential candidate, any more than it has the power to take uncommitted delegates that were awarded to Hillary Clinton and give them to another candidate."
This is a pretty striking conclusion. If this committee lacks the power to award the uncommitteds to anyone, as Ickes said, it's hard to see why Hillary supporter Lanny Davis proposed a solution that would have split the uncommitteds between Hillary and Obama.
What's more, if this is true, how can the Committee craft any compromise solution? How can it split the whole delegation 50-50, or by any other percentage, between the two candidates? Wouldn't that involve doing what Ickes says the Committee lacks the power to do -- that is, award the uncommitteds to a candidate?
This legal reading seems designed to make the case that the only legal solution that the Committee has at its disposal is the Hillary solution. Maybe I'm missing something here.
Late Update: Ickes' position is apparently not that these delegates never go to a candidate. It's that the Committee can't pick which candidate they go to -- at the Convention, the uncommitteds can support whomever they wish. Of course, under this scenario, they wouldn't count in Obama's column in the short term, while hers would count.
With Barack Obama and John McCain battling again today over foreign policy, the question is worth asking: Which candidate is actually winning the argument over Iraq right now?
The new Pew poll we posted on yesterday has some fascinating numbers buried in it that shed some light on this question. The survey found that more people trust McCain than Obama to handle Iraq, with a big, big caveat...
Since April, McCain has lost much of his advantage in opinions about which candidate is better able to make wise decisions about what to do in Iraq. Currently, 46% favor McCain while nearly as many (43%) favor Obama. In April, McCain held a 50%-38% lead on handling Iraq.
It's interesting that McCain holds any advantage over Obama on Iraq at all, given that majorities continue to favor withdrawal.
Still, the more important point here is that Obama has, since April, closed the gap on this from 12% to three percent in a period when the public has been focusing more on the prospect of Obama as nominee and on the developing clash between him and McCain over Iraq. Does it mean Obama is getting the better of the exchange? Unclear, but the narrowing gap is decent news for Obama.
As noted below, the McCain campaign is already using a member of the military -- General Petraeus, to be precise -- as a prop in an attack on Obama, sending out a campaign email bearing Petraeus' image to raise money and slam Obama on Iraq.
The Obama camp's response? On a conference call with reporters moments ago, Obama advisers pointed to a rather relevant letter sent out just a few days ago by the Joint Chiefs urging that members of the military stay out of the presidential race.
"The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways," wrote the Joint Chiefs chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen. "It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway."
On the call, Obama spokesperson Josh Earnest argued that McCain had used Petraeus' image politically even though the ink was barely dry on the Joint Chiefs' directive. "It's interesting that just days later, the McCain campaign jumped in with both feet," Earnest pointed out, adding that the McCain camp had both politicized Iraq and used Petraeus to raise money.
Petraeus himself, presumably, wouldn't want his image used in such a context, given the Joint Chiefs' preference. Indeed, as it happens, Petraeus' own spokesperson has already weighed in on this topic. Last September, when Rudy Giuliani used Petraeus' image in a political ad, Petraeus spokesperson distanced the General from it, saying he had "not condoned the use of his photo" in the spot.
Late Update: Here's the audio from the Obama campaign's conference call:
Looks like the skirmish between Obama and McCain over Iraq is going to continue today -- and this time, General Petraeus is getting dragged into the fray.
The Obama campaign is holding a conference call this morning to respond to this fundraising pitch from McCain, in which the Arizona Senator uses the image of Petraeus in uniform to raise cash and attack Obama...
In the email, McCain sought to keep the issue of visiting Iraq alive, blasting Obama yet again for refusing to accompany McCain on his next "Baghdad Stroll."
"He has only been to Iraq once, on a trip two years ago. Senator Obama speaks openly about his willingness to sit down with our enemies and engage in open talks, but he hasn't gone to Iraq in over two years to meet with our leaders and see that progress is being made on the ground," McCain's email read.
"Something is wrong with your judgment when you want to sit down unconditionally with Raul Castro and Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but you don't take the opportunity to sit down with General Petraeus and learn about the situation in Iraq firsthand," the email continued. "My friends, this is not the `change' we need in our next president."
More on this soon.
Late Update: McCain's full email is after the jump.
Last week we brought you an amazing gay-baiting ad from Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), a spot that attacked his Democratic opponent for supporting "San Francisco values" and even featuring gaudily-dressed people dancing to cheesy disco music.
Well, Graves is apparently undeterred by the outraged response that greeted his first effort, because now he's gotanother gay-baiting spot up on the air:
This new ad singles out support that former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes has received from gay rights organizations, with a cover feature from a local gay newspaper, and accuses Barnes of having an agenda "to make same-sex marriage the law in Missouri."
Keep a close eye on this House race -- it's probably going to get even uglier.
The editorial board of the Argus Leader of South Dakota -- to whom Hillary made her remarks about Robert F. Kennedy's assassination -- gives her a glowing endorsement today:
Her mastery of complex policy detail is broad and deep, and her experience as a senator and former first lady matches that...
As those who have attended her South Dakota rallies can attest, she is quick on her feet and energetic. She frames her ideas clearly in speeches and answers questions with genuine directness.
Her resilience and determination never should be questioned. She has met or overcome every challenge or roadblock in her way, and there have been many. Her determination to carry the nomination process through to its real conclusion has perhaps earned her a grudging respect from those who would never support her.
Clinton might not win this race. In fact, it's a long shot. But whatever some might say, the race is not over, and her name is on the ballot. Win or lose, she's also the best Democratic candidate for South Dakota.
The Argus Leader is the state's largest paper. Clearly, the people who actually heard her make the assassination comments first hand were not terribly offended by them.
In another indication that the Obama camp is shifting gears into the general election campaign, Joe Biden told the Washington Times that Obama has approached him about being a campaign surrogate. Biden has not publicly endorsed either of the remaining Democratic candidates.
"He has asked me to play a more prominent role - not in an administration, in the campaign," Biden said, "meaning would I be more available, would I travel with him occasionally, and I said once he gets the nomination, if he gets the nomination, then I'll do whatever he wants."
In a further sign that the Clinton camp is setting low expectations for the Rules Committee meeting tomorrow, Harold Ickes is now warning that not all of the Clinton-backing committee members -- representing a plurality, but not a majority -- might not vote for the campaign's position of seating all the Florida and Michigan primary delegates.
As for himself, Ickes humorously told the Wall St. Journal that he could "possibly" vote against Hillary's interests, "but it's highly unlikely."
In a quick phone interview with me just now, prominent Hillary supporter James Carville diverged from the Hillary campaign message on several key "electability" questions, saying that he thinks Obama "will" win the general election.
Carville, surprisingly, also seemed to downplay Obama's problems with non-college whites -- a cornerstone of Hillary's electability claim -- saying that if Obama gets the same level of non-college whites that John Kerry did in 2004, he "will" win the general.
Asked if he thought Obama would beat McCain, Carville said: "I think he will. I think Democrats will win in November...There's a crushing desire for change in this country. No one has seen a party or brand held in such low esteem" than the Republicans.
Carville's repeated suggestions that Obama "will" beat McCain contrast with the core Hillary message -- repeated frequently by Hillary advisers -- that Obama merely "can" win a general election, while Hillary "will" win it. Carville's comments also suggest that with the fall contest looming, it's becoming tougher for prominent Hillary backers to sustain any argument that doesn't show full confidence in Obama's chances against McCain.
Carville stressed that he thought Hillary was a better bet against McCain, but reiterated his confidence in Obama. "Hillary would be a stronger candidate, but I think he'll win this thing," Carville said.
Asked about claims that Obama has a problem with non-college whites that could hamper his electability, Carville said that thanks to changes in the electorate, to win Obama merely has to match the performance of Kerry, who underperformed with that group.
"I would argue that if he gets what Kerry got he will still win the election, because the dynamics have changed," Carville said, pointing to likely larger turnout among young voters, African Americans and other demographic changes. Carville joked, however, that he'd be loath to see Obama fall below Kerry's performance.
This plan would halve the votes for all of the Florida delegates, netting Clinton 19 and, more importantly, counting that popular vote. But Michigan's primary results would not be accepted and, instead, that state's delegates would simply be split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama.
All of the delegations, under this compromise, would be seated in full, but each delegate's vote would be counted as 0.5, including the superdelegates.
MSNBC says this is gaining some traction in the right circles, adding that it would make the new magic number for victory become 2,118.
So, under this scheme, Hillary would net an overall total of 19 delegates from Florida. Add in Michigan's 50-50 split, and she would get roughly 84 delegates, Obama would get 65. That would hardly make up much ground for her, since at that point it would bring the total delegate counts (assuming no others decide in the next couple of days) to this:
Obama 2,046
Hillary 1,866
That would mean she'd still have to pull in a huge percentage of the remaining super-dels to prevent Obama from getting to the magic number of 2,118. Of course, she could argue that Florida's popular vote should now be added to the tally, though even that would almost certainly fail to overcome his lead by that metric.
Going into the general election campaign, Barack Obama's favorable ratings have taken a hit between the attacks from the Clinton camp and the increased scrutiny that comes with being the frontrunner -- but overall he's still in pretty good shape, a new Pew poll finds.
Obama's favorable/unfavorable rating stands at 51%-42%, slightly better than John McCain's 48%-45% rating. When he was flying high in February, Obama's numbers were 59%-35%.
One source of his decline, from Pew's analysis: "In turn, favorable opinions of Obama have tumbled among women who support Clinton - from 58% in March to 43% currently."
In the general election match-up, Obama edges out McCain by a 47%-44% margin, within the ±3.5% margin of error but not bad.
So what's Obama's route to the White House in a general election? How can he make the electoral map work for him? How dramatically does he have to remake that map to gain the Oval Office?
Here's a first stab at trying to answer that question.
So, would Hillary as veep give Barack Obama a better shot of holding on to the crucial industrial swing state of Michigan? It all depends on which poll you read.
The latest polls of Michigan from SurveyUSA and Michigan-based EPIC-MRA agree that John McCain has a narrow edge over Barack Obama in a pure match-up, with a very high number of undecideds. But testing tickets of McCain with Mitt Romney against Obama and Clinton yields dramatically different results between the two reputable firms:
The EPIC-MRA poll has Hillary bringing an astonishing 11 points into Obama's column, putting him well ahead of McCain in this must-win state. On the other hand, SurveyUSA shows her not really bringing anything at all.
In yet another indication that Senate Republicans are really playing on defense everywhere this year, a new Rasmussen poll has bad news for them in even the deep-red state of Mississippi, with appointed Sen. Roger Wicker (R) now trailing former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) in a race that's within the margin of error:
Musgrove (D) 47% Wicker (R) 46%
Sample size: 500 likely voters.
Margin of error: ±4%
As we noted a few days ago, Wicker is already up on the air -- having to introduce himself to voters in a state that President Bush carried with 60% of the vote in 2004.
If the Dems were to manage to knock off a GOP Senator in the Deep South, it really would be a massive victory.
The Obama camp releases a letter from his doctor detailing the health of the would-be next president...
His family history is pertinent for his mother's death from ovarian cancer and grandfather who died of prostate cancer. His own history included intermittent cigarette smoking. He has quit this practice on several occasions and is currently using Nicorette gum with success.
For some old-fashioned souls, this might prove to be a tad on the racy side...
Senator Obama's last medical checkup was on January 15, 2007; he had no complaints. He exercised regularly often jogging three miles. His diet was balanced with good intake of roughage and fluids. A complete review of systems was unremarkable. On physical examination, his blood pressure was 90/60 and pulse 60/minute. His build was lean and muscular with no excess body fat.
The conclusion...
In short, his examination showed him to be in excellent health. Senator Barack Obama is in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency required in the Office of President.
Here's a bit more on what the actual impact could be of the DNC's legal memo yesterday saying that the Rules and Bylaws Committee only has the authority to seat half the delegations.
It appears that Rules and Bylaws can proceed down one of two tracks here if they seat half the delegations. Either they can seat the whole delegation and have each vote counted as a half-vote, or then can cut the delegation in half and seat that.
And as if this weren't complex enough already, it turns out that each of those solutions would give the candidates a different number of delegates. Chuck Todd explains:
As for the actual meeting itself, there's one more angle you ought to be aware of: a 50% cut and a halving of the delegates is not the same thing. For instance, if Florida delegates are seated in their entirety, but only have their vote counted as a .5, then Clinton will net approximately 19 delegates out of the state. But if the delegation is cut in half, that's done in every congressional district as well as statewide, then suddenly Clinton's advantage is only a net of six.
So, a net gain for Hillary from Florida of roughly six or 19 delegates. Marc Ambinder says there is reason to believe that the Obama camp might be able to accept a 19-delegate net gain for Hillary. Michigan, meanwhile, is an entirely different morass...
Hillary goes up on the air in Montana with a pretty standard spot about the Bush economy and taking on the special interests -- with no mention of Obama...
As best as I can determine, no Hillary ad has mentioned Obama at all since the Indiana and North Carolina results suggested that the outcome of the primary is now pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Late Update: I should add that this and other spots have drawn an implicit contrast with Obama.
Here's one other nugget I meant to bring you from yesterday's Obama campaign conference call: Obama top adviser David Plouffe said flatly that reports saying Obama has a massive number of super-delegates secretly banked to roll out after June 3rd are untrue.
"That's not accurate," Plouffe said, when asked about such reports. "You know, we announce super-delegate support as people commit to us. We have done three so far today. So we are announcing them as they pledge their support to us...no, we do not have a bunch of super-delegates in our back pocket."
There's a simple reason that these rumors of blocs of super-dels secretly plotting to move en masse keep proving to be false: This isn't how the dynamic actually works. The reality is that getting indivdiual super-dels to commit -- and getting them to go public -- is hard enough on its own, let alone getting them to do so in a big group.
Once either campaign has got an individual super-del privately locked down, it rushes that super-del out the door and makes it public as quick as possible, in order to make it official. The campaigns don't privately hoard super-dels, because to do so would risk losing them.
You couldn't ask for a clearer declaration from the Obama campaign that the general election is underway -- and the primary is behind us -- than this.
The Obama campaign has just sent out a fundraising pitch that explicitly appeals for donations to take on John McCain and the GOP -- and calls on Obama's vast donor base to prove, right now, that they can stand toe-to-toe with the Republican money machine. In the email, Obama writes...
This week, John McCain and George Bush gathered behind closed doors, away from the cameras, to raise money for McCain's campaign.
McCain used Bush to raise a reported $3.5 million from a group of about 500 Republican contributors.
That's a lot of money that will undoubtedly be used to attack us and make the case to continue George Bush's failed policies.
But I have an idea about how we can match it....
As we prepare to take on John McCain, now is our first chance to show that a grassroots movement of people giving only what they can afford can go toe-to-toe with the Bush-McCain fundraising machine.
John McCain can run from the cameras, but he can't hide from the fact that he's aiming to continue George Bush's policies for a disastrous third term.
Let's show that we're ready to take him on.
Though it's unclear whether the money would go to the primary or the general, this is a pretty clear declaration that the general is under way -- from Obama himself. We'll try to track how much this appeal brings in and will keep you posted.
In a possible recognition that his position on meeting with hostile foreign leaders could become more of a liability than a plus, Barack Obama has now clarified his views in an interview with the New York Times, saying there is a difference between meeting without preconditions versus an unconditional meeting.
Instead, Obama is saying that any meeting would of course have to involve preparations and judgment on whether it would be helpful, but he would not demand up-front policy concessions from the other side that amount to the subject of the whole negotiation.
"I didn't say that I would meet unconditionally as John McCain maintained, because that would suggest whether it was useful or not, whether it was advancing our interests or not, I would just do it for the sake of doing it," Obama said. "That's not a change in position, that's simply responding to distortions of my position."
In the latest round of the foreign policy debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, McCain said he is glad to hear of reports that Obama is considering taking another trip to Iraq -- a trip that McCain says will change Obama's whole position.
"It's long overdue," McCain said. "It's been 871 days since he was there and I'm confident that when he goes he will then change his position on the conflict in Iraq because he will see the success that has been achieved on the ground."
Although all analysts give Hillary Clinton long odds to win the nomination, her major union backers and other big donors clearly haven't given up. The American Leadership Project, the pro-Hillary 527 group, is running a new pair of ads in the upcoming contests of Puerto Rico, where she's favored, and Montana, where Obama is ahead.
Here's the Montana spot, promising that Hillary will help middle-class families and end tax breaks for oil companies:
And here's the Puerto Rico ad, centering around health care:
Bill Clinton has taken another step in the Hillary campaign's arguments about the Democratic popular vote, bluntly telling a crowd in Puerto Rico that super-delegates and the party as a whole will have to judge just how much caucuses should matter.
"And the 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," Bill told the crowd.
This is on top of a line from Hillary's new letter to super-delegates, in which she predicted that by the time this race is over, she will have won more pledged delegates from primaries -- a subtle message that Obama's victories in caucus states are illusory as far as how much support they truly represent for him.
The Obama campaign is hitting back at McCain's attack today over Obama's refusal to accompany McCain on his next "Baghdad Stroll."
And the Obama camp has some choice ammo at its disposal: Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new tell-all book, which suggests President Bush misled the nation into war.
From Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton's statement:
"On the day after the former White House press secretary conceded that the Bush administration used deception and propaganda to take us to war, it seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq. Senator Obama challenged the President's rationale for the war from the start, warning that it would divert resources from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Al Qaeda and mire us in an endless civil war."
The McClellan book really comes at a good time for Obama. Right when McCain is trying to focus the argument on the future of Iraq, and to raise general doubts about Obama's judgment, along comes a jarring reminder of the deception campaign that got us into the whole mess in the first place -- a campaign that McCain enabled, and that Obama saw through and opposed.
Late Update: The Republican National Committee is now pressing the issue, posting on its Web site a clock counting the number of days since Obama visited Iraq.
This new ad from Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) is worth a watch -- the fact that she's on the air five months before the election suggests that yet another red-state Senator is worried about her re-election.
Furthermore, the ad is a reminder that Republican candidates haven't given up on illegal immigration as a key issue for the party in the Fall elections:
Democrats are hopeful that their nominee here, state Sen. Kay Hagan, will be able to make this a real race. Despite Dole's high name recognition, multiple polls taken since the primary have shown the two candidates to be in a statistical dead heat.
John McCain apparently thinks he's got a winning issue in Obama's refusal to join him on his next "Baghdad Stroll."
On the stump today, McCain attacked Obama over the statement we posted yesterday, in which the Obama campaign effectively told McCain to take his "invitation" for a joint Iraq trip and stick it in a warm, dark place. Take a look...
"To say that we've failed in Iraq and that we're not succeeding does not comport with the facts on the ground," McCain said. "So we've got to show him the facts on the ground."
One imagines that the McCain camp thinks they effectively laid a trap for Obama by getting him to refuse his invitation. It's only a matter of time until McCain surrogates start arguing that Obama won't meet with the troops.
It's hard to imagine they'll get any real traction with something as transparently silly as this one, though.
On the Hillary conference call, there was a bit of a curious moment: Harold Ickes, who's Hillary's chief delegate hunter, seemed to suggest -- perhaps wishfully -- that she would wind up the primaries only "a few" delegates behind Obama.
By midnight on June 3rd, Ickes said, "neither candidate will have achieved the number to clinch the nomination, and each candidate will have to make their case." Referring to the super-delegates, Ickes continued: "Hillary will probably have to get a few more than Obama at that point."
But a bit later, when Ickes was pressed to say how far behind she'd be in delegates once the voting concluded, he conceded: "It will be over 100." It seemed clear from the context that he'd factored in a Florida and Michigan solution to get this number.
So where are we, then? By one count, there are roughly 197 remaining uncommitted super-dels.
Assume for the sake of argument that none of these decide between now and June 3rd. And assume she ends up with 100 delegates less than Obama, as Ickes predicts.
She would then need at least three-fourths of those nearly 200 super-dels to support her -- and not Obama -- in order to overtake him. That's hardly "a few," obviously.
One thing that had all but vanished from the campaign with Obama close to winning were the daily conference calls that Hillary and Obama advisers had been convening to push the day's spin.
But today, with Saturday's confrontation over Florida and Michigan looming, both sides held calls to lay the groundwork for making their cases this Saturday.
One thing worth noting: The campaigns' positions on the expected protests before the Rules and Bylaws Committee. On the Obama call, campaign manager David Plouffe confirmed that Obama's camp is not encouraging supporters to show up and protest, drawing an implicit contrast between the Obama and Hillary camps.
"We are not encouraging our people to gather in protest on Saturday," Plouffe said. "Obviously with the click of a mouse it would be pretty easy for us to get thousands of people there." He added that they weren't doing that "in the interest of party unity."
Meanwhile, on the Hillary call, Hillary top strategist Howard Wolfson, asked about the protests being organized by Hillary supporters, said his campaign wasn't behind them but again invoked the 2000 Florida recount debacle.
"This is not something that the campaign is organizing," Wolfson said, "but it is in fact something that people in Florida feel very strongly about. Given what happened in Florida in 2000 it's understandable that people feel very strongly."
Late Update: Audio recordings of both the Clinton and Obama calls are available after the jump.
Signaling a renewed push to super-dels in advance of Saturday's meeting on Florida and Michigan, Hillary has sent a letter and memo today directly to the super-dels that once again presses her electability case and appeals to them for support.
In the letter, Hillary continues to try to argue that the Dem primary electorate has not rendered a clear verdict on their choice of nominee, the cornerstone of her strategy to get super-dels to focus on electability:
In addition, when the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee - the one who would be the best President and Commander in Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people will have cast their votes for me.
Her memo includes maps and polling to make her electability case -- including, as Ben Smith notes, Karl Rove's electoral maps.
Many people -- myself included -- have argued that Hillary's performance in states she won against Obama doesn't necessarily tell us anything about who would be better in those same states against McCain.
Hillary has taken the opposite line, arguing that her victories in big states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana shows that she'd be more competitive in those states in a general election.
Now Gallup has released some new numbers that, it claims, bear out Hillary's argument -- but only to a point. Gallup crunches its daily tracking data from May 12-25 and concludes that in the 20 states where she's claimed victory in the primary and caucus elections, she leads McCain by seven points. Obama, meanwhile, is tied with McCain....
Meanwhile, in the 28 states (and D.C.) where Obama has won against Hillary, he doesn't do any better against McCain than she does...
"All of this speaks to Sen. Clinton's claim that her primary-state victories over Obama indicate her potential superiority in the general election," Gallup concludes. "Clinton appears to have the stronger chance of capitalizing on her primary strengths in the general election."
Some obvious caveats: These numbers come many months before the general election, at a time when McCain has enjoyed an essentially free hand while the Dems rip into each other and McCain has been aggressively targeting Obama.
Also, the above data is qualified by the fact that some of the states each Dem won are reliably red, meaning that the Dem wouldn't likely win them in any case. Indeed, Gallup acknowledges that both Dems fare roughly the same against McCain in the purple -- i.e., swing -- states that each won.
Gallup also notes that if you take Florida and Michigan out of the equation, their purple states are roughly comparable in electoral vote size -- "thus the two appear more evenly situated."
In this new ad that just started airing in Puerto Rico, Obama shows off his not-too-bad Spanish speaking skills...
Translation coming in a sec.
Late Update: The translation is after the jump. In the ad, he seeks to bond with Puerto Ricans by saying: "I was born on an island, and I understand that food, gas, and everything costs more."
In what could potentially be a blow to Hillary's electoral hopes, such as they are right now, the Democratic National Committee's lawyers have declared that the Rules and Bylaws committee lacks the legal authority to seat the full Florida and Michigan delegations.
The DNC's lawyers sent a memo late yesterday to members of the committee telling them that the two states must lose half of their convention delegates for skirting party rules and holding earlier elections.
That's trouble for Hillary, who is pushing for a full seating of the delegations to narrow Obama's pledged del lead and to proclaim herself the popular vote winner in order to argue that Dem primary voters didn't render a clear verdict on their preference as nominee.
One way the delegations could end up being seated in full is if the Credentials Committee takes up the matter in late June -- but this would mean that the fight would drag on to the convention, because any Credentials Committee ruling would go to the convention floor for a vote.
Outstanding questions right now: Is there some sort of maneuver that could get around this apparent contraint, or does this mean that the only way for the full delegations to be seated is for this to go to the convention? What do the Hillary forces have to say about this, and what will they do?
In the latest instance of Hillary Clinton using an argument of electability as her fallback position on why she should be the nominee, Hillary told a Montana crowd last night that every piece of evidence shows her to be the stronger candidate against John McCain.
"You have to ask yourself, who is the stronger candidate?" Clinton said. "And based on every analysis, of every bit of research and every poll that has been taken and every state that a Democrat has to win, I am the stronger candidate against John McCain in the fall."
The three presidential candidates have taken a break from their attacks on foreign policy, coming together to release a joint statement on a crucial humanitarian issue.
"Today, we wish to make clear to the Sudanese government that on this moral issue of tremendous importance, there is no divide between us," the candidates declare in a joint statement released by the Save Darfur Coalition. "If peace and security for the people of Sudan are not in place when one of us is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2009, we pledge that the next administration will pursue these goals with unstinting resolve."
However, as the New York Times points out: "The statement is largely symbolic because the three are not proposing any specific Congressional action against Sudan. Nor are they calling for tangible steps by the United States to put pressure on the Sudanese government."
Although the Democrats have generally done a lot better at fundraising than the Republicans this cycle, the long primary campaign might be taking a toll on one key aspect of party organization: Funding for the convention that will officially nominate the presidential candidate.
The host committee responsible for financing the Denver convention is seriously short of its goal, and would need to raise $15 million by June 16 in order to remain on schedule. By contrast, the GOP's host committee is on track to meet its goals for financing their convention in St. Paul.
In a sign that he isn't taking the remaining contests totally for granted as he shifts into the general eletion race, Barack Obama has this new ad in Montana:
The spot uses footage from a rally held in the state, where a recent poll has put him ahead of Hillary Clinton by a substantial margin.
Barack Obama has decided that he has no interest in joining John McCain on his next "Baghdad Stroll."
McCain, in an interview yesterday, suggested that Obama take a trip to Iraq, and even agreed to a joint trip for the two candidates.
I asked the Obama camp for a response, and here it is, from Obama spokesperson Bill Burton:
"John McCain's proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don't need any more 'Mission Accomplished' banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don't want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer."
Obama hasn't visited since 2006, and McCain had tendered his invitation by saying, with characteristic civility: "He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time."
Not the best way to persuade someone that you'd make a fun travel companion, obviously.
The Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting this Saturday -- where the fates of the Florida and Michigan delegations, not to mention the Democratic Primary, may be decided once and for all -- is certainly stirring an intense amount of public interest.
It turns out that hundreds of tickets for members of the general public to watch the proceedings live sold out within minutes.
Meanwhile, a key organizer of Hillary supporters who are planning to show up en masse to insist on a full seating of both delegations vows of the proceedings: "We're trying to flood it."
It's yet another surprising turn in a race full of surprises that a meeting of something called the "Rules and Bylaws Committee" has the potential to produce must-watch political theater -- with great consequence. But it likely will be just that.
You can watch all the Saturday drama live on, um, C-Span. We will be.
The Obama campaign is hitting back at McCain's speech today attacking Republicans and Democrats for failing on nuke proliferation.
Camp Obama's response is kind of fun: They're basically thanking McCain for, in effect, highlighting Obama's record on nukes by speaking out on the issue. From Obama spokesperson Bill Burton's statement...
"By embracing many aspects of Barack Obama's non-proliferation agenda today, John McCain highlighted Obama's leadership on nuclear weapons throughout this campaign, and his bipartisan work with Richard Lugar in the Senate. No speech by John McCain can change the fact that he has not led on non-proliferation issues when he had the chance in the Senate, and that his support for a war against Iraq -- which had no active nuclear program -- diverted us from our efforts to secure loose nuclear materials, hampered our ability to pressure countries like North Korea and Iran, and sets back our ability to lead the world against the threat of nuclear weapons."
The Obama camp has compiled a bunch of past quotes from him on the topic that it claims show McCain's more a follower than a leader here. View them after the jump.
The Obama campaign insists that their candidate has 'led the fight in the U.S. Senate for arms control.' But the record should be clear: Sen. Obama, after he entered the Senate in 2005, joined Sen. Lugar and the many other members who have supported the Nunn-Lugar program and other nonproliferation programs for years. His campaign points as evidence of his leadership to a bill so non-controversial that it passed the Senate by unanimous consent. There was no 'fight' for Sen. Obama to lead.
In yet another sign of the disastrous recruiting difficulties that continue to plague the GOP, a top New York Republican has just acknowledged in an interview that most of the party's choices to replace scandal-plagued Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) have already opted out of the race, opening up this GOP-leaning district to a strong Democratic challenge.
It's hard to overstate how much this race tells us about the GOP's national troubles, and what tough sledding they're facing this Fall in the Congressional races -- after all, this is the party's local stronghold in New York City, but they haven't been able to find a candidate.
"Unfortunately, as you go down the list, most of them have taken themselves out," said former Rep. Guy Molinari, the unofficial leader of the Staten Island GOP, in a phone call with Election Central.
Not long ago we brought you word of a new mailer that Hillary-backer AFSCME had dropped in Indiana.
The piece didn't have the acronym "AFSCME" anywhere on it and didn't identify the source of the mailing beyond saying that it was "brought to you by your union." In theory this could be misleading if it fell into the hands of a member of a non-Hillary-backing union.
Now AFSCME has sent out another mailer in Montana which, similarly, says that it's "brought to you by your union." Click on the image below to enlarge:
In the case of the first mailer, an AFSCME official told us that this was a justifiable way of identifying the sender because it wasn't a mass mailing. The current, piece, however, was mailed out. So what gives?
AFSCME has now offered a clearer explanation for this practice. According to AFSCME director of public affairs Ethan Rome, the union has been sending out pieces like this in tandem with other unions supporting Hillary. The piece is identified in this way because it makes it possible to use the same mailer in different states, where there might be different unions AFSCME wants to collaborate with.
"It's from a number of unions that are united to support Hillary for president," Rome says. "The constellation of unions isn't the same in every state."
Rome added that the mailer is sent only to the homes of members of participating unions. "It's either mailed to people's homes or distributed at the workplace," he said. "I don't think it's very likely that it would make it to an unintended audience."
This is kind of fun. In a big speech John McCain just delivered on nuclear proliferation, there was an amusing little nugget that seemed like a pretty obvious effort to dispel worries about his age:
Today, we are the world's oldest constitutional democracy, yet we remain a young nation. We still possess the attributes of youth -- spirit, energy, vitality, and creativity. America will always be young as long as we are looking forward, and leading, to a better world.
As Jimmy Durante would say, our country is amongst the very young at heart -- and so, implicitly, is John McCain.
The full prepared text of the speech is available after the jump.
Hillary's up with two new ads in South Dakota -- positive spots, suggesting she continues to be more or less committed to an ad strategy that will end this on a gentle note.
There's this spot on the economy...
The Clinton camp also released a radio ad today that says that "some people say the presidential primary in South Dakota doesn't much matter."
But the spot doesn't mention Obama or target any pundits that have declared the race over, as other recent ads have.
No audio of the radio spot is yet available; the full script of it is after the jump.
I want to heartily recommend Hendrik Hertzberg's discussion of Hillary's popular vote endgame in the current New Yorker. Hertzberg brings to his analysis a level of nuance and fairness that's been missing from much writing on the subject.
After noting that the popular vote has "no official significance" in our nominating process, Hertzberg breaks down all the different ways of counting the popular vote -- with or without caucus states; including and not including the vote counts in Florida and Michigan, in all their permutations -- and concludes that Obama leads by most counts. He will be the nominee, Hertzberg says...
In a nominating process, especially this one, the "popular vote" is an elusive phenomenon. RealClearPolitics.com, an independent Web site whose numbers political reporters and operatives tend to trust, maintains six separate tallies. At the moment, Obama leads in four of them...
Next week, after the three remaining primaries -- Clinton is expected to sweep the largest of them, Puerto Rico's -- the likelihood is that each candidate will be able to point to "metrics" showing that he or she is the people's choice. Obama will almost certainly have the better case, especially in view of opinion polls showing that his national lead among Democrats has been growing, but the reality is that the two have been almost equally strong. Obama will remain the leader in the delegate count, owing largely to a more astute strategy, and he will be the nominee. If there is a loftier lesson, it is that the nominating "system"--and not just in the Democratic Party--is an irrational mess.
Hertzberg's analysis is noteworthy because he appears to be able to allow several ideas to coexist in his head simultaneously, which quite an achievement these days.
For instance, Hertzberg rightly criticizes Hillary's over-the-top rhetoric about the sanctity of voting, and rightly pillories her "we're winning the popular vote" formulation.
But he doesn't indulge in superfluous speculation about Hillary's motives, and also makes the perfectly legitimate suggestion that our screwed up nominating system -- in addition to Hillary's gaming of it -- is also to blame for the current state of the political conversation. Even if you soundly reject Hillary's arguments as pure Lady-Macbethian cynicism, and even if you think they'll fail, which they almost certainly will, the fact remains that it is within her rights under party rules to make them to super-delegates, and super-delegates are free to listen to them if they wish.
What's more, Hertzberg also insists on making a nuanced argument, rather than a simplistic one. He allows for the fact that the popular vote does carry some weight as a metric with Democrats, and possibly even super-delegates, suggesting that its significance shouldn't be blithely dismissed. At the same time, he accurately notes that Obama is winning by most ways of counting the popular vote, and that ultimately only the delegate count officially matters -- meaning Obama will win the nomination. Yes, all these ideas can coexist.
Hertzberg's last line is a bit overheated, but it's a good piece. Read the whole thing.
Late Update: On reflection, I actually think Hertzberg's whole last graf is over the top, but I still think on balance this is one of the fairer analyses of the situation we've seen.
Al Franken might be starting to recover politically from a damaging story about his taxes, with a new Rasmussen poll showing him locked in a dead heat with Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) for this top-tier Senate race in a blue state. The new numbers, compared to a month ago:
Coleman (R) 47% (-3) Franken (D) 45% (+2)
Sample size: 500 likely voters.
Margin of error ±4%
Franken's poll numbers took a serious hit after he agreed to pay over $70,000 in back taxes to all the states where his businesses had been active, after having paid taxes on that income only to states where he was living. While the movement in the latest poll isn't definitely significant, it is nevertheless a potential sign that he's climbing his way back up.
The Senate Republicans are expected to have a rough time of it this year, but even this is big news: A new Rasmussen poll puts Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) behind his Democratic challenger, businessman Bruce Lunsford:
Lunsford (D) 49% McConnell (R) 44%
Sample size: 500 likely voters.
Margin of error: ±4.5%
Party leaders are often considered safe bets for re-election, but McConnell's ties to President Bush obviously haven't helped his own prospects even in this red state. And with the DSCC out-raising their GOP counterparts, expect the Dems to make a play for this seat and others all over the map.
Late Update: McConnell's campaign quickly released an internal poll showing him ahead, at 50% support to Lunsford's 39%.
John McCain is now getting closer to President Bush as he seeks to fix his campaign's cash-flow problems -- but in a sign that he recognizes the problem of Bush's unpopularity, he's not getting too close in public.
McCain and Bush will co-host a big-money fundraiser in Phoenix today, the first time they've been seen together in three months. The catch: TV footage of the two of them together will be kept to a minimum.
John McCain is upping the rhetorical ante against Barack Obama, issuing a new challenge in an AP interview: That Obama pay a visit to Iraq, which he hasn't visited since 2006, and see up close just how successful things have been.
"He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time," said McCain. "If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn't had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly."
In a piece for The Politico, prominent Hillary supporter Lanny Davis lays out what he calls compromise proposals for Michigan, and urges the Rules and Bylaws Committee to act accordingly:
The Rules Committee has several options. The fairest would be to allocate those 57 [uncommitted] pledged delegates, to Clinton and Obama by the same ratio of their standing to one another in the average of the most recent Michigan statewide polls prior to the Jan. 15 primary. Or perhaps one Solomonic compromise, more generous to Obama than to Clinton, would be to divide the remaining delegates approximately 50-50 between the two of them, 28-27 (giving Clinton the extra delegate since she led in all the latest statewide polls prior to Jan. 15).
On Florida, Davis proposes allocating the delegates based on January's voting. The Hillary camp is officially insisting that the delegations get seated according to the voting in both states, so this piece by Davis can be taken as a hint of compromises on Michigan that the Clinton team might be willing to embrace.
The two solutions Davis proposes above for Michigan will be a tough sell. That's because they both would give her a sizable chunk of the "uncommitted" vote, which is to say that she would get a significant portion of voters that didn't vote for her, even though she was one of the choices on the ballot.
Separately, many of you have asked why it is that Obama won't simply agree to seat the delegations according to the voting, since that won't erase his lead in pledged delegates. One reason, as I understand it, is that Obama advisers don't want her to even come close in the pledged del count (not to mention the popular vote, which is another matter). This could make it that much easier for the Clinton camp to try to spin super-delegates into thinking that no popular verdict was rendered in the primary. It's far-fetched indeed to imagine that folks will buy that argument at any rate, but this is part of what drives Camp Obama's thinking.
It looks like it's going to be a bit more difficult for the GOP to portray Obama as the preferred candidate of hostile foreign tyrants.
Less than a week after John McCain attacked Obama for saying he would be willing to negotiate with the Castro regime, Fidel Castro himself has given a major thumbs down to Obama's plan to let Cuban-Americans visit their relatives on the island, while still maintaining the overall commercial embargo.
"Obama's speech can be translated as a formula for hunger for the country," the retired dictator wrote in a column for the state-run newspaper, going on to call the proposal "propaganda for consumerism and a way of life that is unsustainable."
At the same time, Castro acknowledged that he isn't exactly a sought-out endorsement in American politics: "Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly."
The ad wars are in full swing in the Colorado Senate race, a top-priority race for national Dems, who view this seat as a major pickup opportunity in a Western state that's trending blue.
And here's another sign of just how high-priority this race has become: The League of Conservation voters is pumping nearly $240,000 into the race, running this ad slamming GOP candidate Bob Schaffer as a tool of Big Oil:
The right knows that green issues are big in Colorado -- you might remember the goofy ad we showed you last week from a conservative group, using flowery cartoon imagery to pitch Schaffer as a friend of the environment.
In a sign that Republicans may sense they are at risk of losing a Senate seat in even the deep-red state of Mississippi, appointed incumbent Roger Wicker (R) has a new ad up introducing himself to voters five months before the election:
Recent polling has shown Wicker in a close race against former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D).
In the wake of a surprise House special election victory for the Democrats in the state a couple weeks ago, the possibility that a GOP Senate seat is even in play in Mississippi is a stunning reminder of the extent to which Republicans are on defense all over the map heading into this Fall.
It's become accepted wisdom in this campaign that Obama's problem with working class voters is largely confined to Appalachia. But in the current issue of Newsweek, writer Evan Thomas claims that even if this is the case, this could still prove to be a major problem:
Appalachia is a big place, encompassing 13 states: southwestern New York, western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, western Maryland, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North and South Carolina, and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. You cannot afford to lose all those states and still win in November. Other pollsters have suggested that the race factor is at least noticeable in a much wider swath of rural America, where 60 million voters reside.
One recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of rural voters in battleground states showed that you are trailing McCain by 9 points (and that Clinton runs even with him). Dee Davis, president of a Kentucky-based advocacy group called the Center for Rural Strategies, points out in a recent article on Salon.com that in June 2004, John Kerry trailed George W. Bush by the same 9-point margin in the same rural battlegrounds.
Your mission is to not wind up like Kerry, who ended up losing the rural vote by 20 points. The "reality," writes Davis, "is that when Democratic candidates run competitively in rural America, they win national elections. And when they get creamed in rural America, they lose."
The problem with all these arguments is that there are countless ways to slice and dice these demographics. As John Harwood of The New York Times points out, if you look at working class whites nationally, Obama is actually where he needs to be among that group right now, running 12 and seven points behind McCain among them in two recent national polls.
By contrast, Al Gore lost among this demographic by 17 points in 2000, and Kerry lost by 23 points four years later. The Dem doesn't need to achieve parity among working class whites to win.
Separately, all this renewed talk about Appalachia reminds me that Obama privately promised John Edwards that he'd undertake a poverty tour in the general election. Why not take that tour, with Edwards at his side, right through the heart of Appalachia?
The skirmishing around Hillary's RFK assassination remarks went into a second frenzied round on the Sunday shows yesterday, with a top Obama adviser coming under questioning as to whether the Obama camp was trying to keep stirring up the controversy by pushing an incendiary interpretation of her comments to reporters.
In response, the adviser, David Axelrod, said that the Obama camp accepted her apology and indicated that it was time to "move forward."
Over the weekend, the Obama campaign circulated a transcript of Keith Olbermann's steroidally outraged special comment from Friday, in which he blasted Hillary as "heartless" and claimed that the RFK remarks signaled that Hillary's motives are "not merely troubling, but frightening."
But both Obama himself and Axelrod have said that they don't believe that she meant the worst by her comments; Obama suggested they had been merely "careless."
Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos whether the campaign was trying to keep the controversy bubbling by pushing Olbermann's Hillary-As-Lady-Macbeth interpretation, Axelrod answered:
"As far as we're concerned, this issue is done. It was an unfortunate statement, as we said, as she's acknowledged. She has apologized. The apology, you know, is accepted. Let's move forward."
Generally, when a campaign circulates an opinion piece in this fashion, it's a quasi-endorsement of the positions contained therein. On the other hand, it's pretty standard political practice for campaigns in such situations to take a public high-road position while simultaneously encouraging reporters sotto voce to believe the worst of their opponent.
Barack Obama's Appalachia problem couldn't be more apparent in a new Rasmussen poll, with Hillary Clinton winning Kentucky in the general election, and Obama losing it in a landslide:
Sample size: 500 likely voters.
Margin of error: ±4%
Obama has done well among white voters in many other parts of the country, but the Appalachian region has become something of a no man's land for him. And with that region spanning a lot of electoral votes, this poll definitely gives some weight to Hillary Clinton's arguments on electability.
As he inches his way closer and closer to the nomination, Barack Obama starts off the morning with the first super-delegates announced today.
Obama was endorsed by three supers from Hawaii: State party chair Brian Schatz, vice chair Kari Luna, and newly selected add-on delegate James Burns, a retired judge.
The latest total delegate numbers, according to DemConWatch: Obama 1,976, Clinton 1,779. Obama only needs 50 more delegates to clinch the nomination, not counting Michigan and Florida.
We all knew that the Democratic money game was breaking records, but how's this: It's crashing software, too.
Earlier this year, Barack Obama filed an FEC report with so many donor entries that spreadsheet programs as recent as Excel 2003 couldn't open them -- an upgrade to Excel 2007 was required. Later on, Hillary Clinton filed a similarly oversized report, as well.
Barack Obama might end up able to claim a pair of resounding victories in the final primaries of the cycle, if a new Mason-Dixon poll of Montana -- the first major poll of the state's June 3 primary -- is any indication:
Obama 52% Clinton 35%
Sample Size: 400 likely primary voters.
Margin of error: ±5%
Obama previously led in a poll for the South Dakota primary, which is also on June 3. Should the two leads both hold up, he will be able to close out the primary season on a high note.
"Almost immediately, some took my comments entirely out of context and interpreted them to mean something completely different -- and completely unthinkable," she wrote. "I want to set the record straight: I was making the simple point that given our history, the length of this year's primary contest is nothing unusual."
"I was deeply dismayed and disturbed that my comment would be construed in a way that flies in the face of everything I stand for -- and everything I am fighting for in this election," she continued.
Meanwhile, it appears that Barack Obama accepts the notion that she didn't intend the remarks as some have chosen to interpret them. Yesterday he said that he thought her comments were the result of the carelessness that inevitably sets in amid the rigors of extended campaigning, adding that he takes her "at her word" when she says that "she did not intend any offense."
With that in mind, it's worth taking a quick look at how the coverage of this unfolded. After her remarks were blared on Drudge on Friday afternoon, Obama spokesperson Bill Burton quickly put out a statement calling her remarks "unfortunate." Burton's initial statement didn't say whether the Obama camp believed she'd intended the worst by them, but that didn't matter: The simple act of offering any sort of criticism, however vague, ensured that this would become a major story.
Nor did anything change when, after the story blew up, Obama senior strategist David Axelrod explicitly stated that he didn't believe she'd meant the worst, claiming that he didn't think she was hoping that a "tragic, catastrophic event" would "intervene."...
Now Obama, too, has basically said the same, and that won't change the coverage of this in any material way, either. Outside observers will continue to insist that she meant the worst, without noting that the Obama campaign has said twice now that they don't think this.
Whatever you think of Hillary's intended meaning, this tells us something about how our gaffe-hungry political press and punditry works, and about how the constant insult-and-offense tennis match has played out in this primary. If Candidate A says something that could be interpreted as an out-of-bounds attack on Candidate B, it simply doesn't matter if Candidate B says he didn't take it as one. It's still a story anyway, because the simple fact that it could be interpreted as such makes it a "gaffe," and therefore news.
Once the comment in question has been deemed news, it simply doesn't matter at all what the aggrieved party says about it, and never will.
Both the Clinton and Obama camps know full well this is how our discourse functions. And both have used it to great effect throughout this campaign.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's necessarily what's happened this time. I'm trying to make a more general point: No matter what Hillary meant here, the pundits and opinion-makers on both sides who throughout this race have professed outrage at this or that slight while pretending that both campaigns don't know exactly how the insult-victim game works have been at best willfully naive, and at worst outright deceptive.
Barack Obama has now publicly responded to the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton's reference to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, saying that he accepts Hillary's explanation.
"I have learned that, when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make, and I think that is what happened here," Obama said during a Puerto Rican radio appearance. "Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it, and I will take her at her word on that."
