File this under not at all surprising: a new NBC/WSJ poll finds that more American are troubled by John McCain's political alliance with George W. Bush than than are troubled by Barack Obama's association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"McCain will be too closely aligned with the Bush agenda. He has voted 89% of the time for the Bush admin.'s programs" Major concern: 43% No real concern: 27%
"It is hard to know Barack Obama’s values because he has friends like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers" Major concern: 32% No real concern: 36%
Once again, the American public is way ahead of the media. I wonder why the MSM thinks that the picture on the right is a bigger deal than the picture on the left. Hmm. I wonder why...
Update: Another thought occurs to me about this poll. Perhaps we're out-thinking ourselves when we dwell on how or whether to tie McCain to the pastors who have endorsed his campaign (specifically, Ministers Hagee and Parsley).
This poll makes it clear that the elephant in McCain's living room is George W. Bush. Whenever a Republican engages in a guilt-by-association attack against Barack Obama, our strongest response is to talk about the devastating policies that have resulted from the real and meaningful political alliance between Bush and McCain.
There's been a fair bit of speculation about whether or not Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club was a dirty trick by the Clinton campaign.
It wasn't. If you want to explore the details, Michael Calderone has them.
Clinton has done thing to fan the flames of the story, but those things have been awkward and obvious, and have probably hurt her at least as much as Obama. I guess the basic thing to remember is that there hasn't been much subtle about the Clinton campaign, and when she's attacked it's been with a sledgehammer. If she had been behind this gambit, it would have been atypically subtle for her.
Introducing AcipHex (say it out loud, aci like "acid" without the d, and pHex like "effects" without the e). Yes, flatulence is listed as a potential side-effect, though a rare one.
Hillary Clinton staged a "commute" to work today to show her blue-collar bona fides. It didn't quite work out like she had planned. Now we know she hasn't pumped her own gas in years, and she can't work a coffee machine either. Oops:
Obama gets back to the message of change that defines his campaign in this new ad, simply called "Truth." It's airing in both North Carolina and Indiana.
The Obama campaign just posted a new delegate tracker on BarackObama.com and it will count down the delegates until he secures the nomination. It's something you won't see on HillaryClinton.com, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
According to the tracker, Obama needs just 288 more delegates to secure the nomination. That works out to 40% of the uncommitted delegates. Also, given that he's a lock to get at least 200 more pledged delegates, it means he really only needs 88 of the undeclared superdelegates -- just under 30%.
Bottom-line is that barring a catastrophic collapse, Barack Obama's delegate math is just unbeatable. Of course, the media doesn't want to tell you that story -- if people stopped paying attention to the primary campaign, their ratings would suffer.
As for me, all I know is that I barely watch news on television any more -- I just DVR the evening broadcasts and sometimes check them out. (And until the mainstream news blogs start covering the general, I won't be spending much time on them either.) I still do watch is Countdown, though.
I guess I'm glad I don't have a radio show on Air America, because I'd probably get fired for the title of this post. But the title is true: Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos have joined forces to destroy ABC's credibility as a news organization.
Last night, they teamed up on an "analysis" of Barack Obama's speech on Jeremiah Wright. You have to watch it to believe it -- it was almost like a video press release for the Clinton campaign:
They were so overtly biased last night that I decided it was time to go back to the video of the Philadelphia debate and edit together a montage. Before you press play, let me offer one warning: you're going to get angry watching this.
I guess we can thank Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for one thing: they've exposed just how thoroughly corrupt the mainstream media can be.
If you're growing concerned about Barack Obama's prospects, take a moment to watch this video clip from the 1992 documentary The War Room. This clip if from the beginning of the film, when Clinton's primary campaign was sidetracked by allegations of extramarital affairs and draft dodging. The part of the clip to focus on is the end, when a Democratic consultant says he's sure the combined weight of the scandals will force Clinton out of the campaign within days, if not hours.
Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Likewise, today Barack Obama will survive these rough patches. He's the only candidate offering a real change this election, and these false guilt-by-association attacks just won't work. It's important to remember that Bill Clinton survived even tougher attacks -- and won the presidency. (They were tougher because there was more truth to them, and because they concerned Bill Clinton's own behavior, not that of someone he knew.)
Update: I inadvertently posted the wrong video clip at first. (I was on the phone -- shouldn't blog and talk on the phone at the same time, I guess.) So I'll correct the record and say the only thing you have to worry about is my own incompetence.
I’ve been on the road (actually doing a public dialog with Barney Frank on financial reform), so I’m just catching up. Anyway, John McCain has a really bad idea on gasoline, Hillary Clinton is emulating him (but with a twist that makes her plan pointless rather than evil), and Barack Obama, to his credit, says no.
Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.
Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.
The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.
Clearly, Krugman is still clinging to his support for Hillary Clinton, but this is the first major crack in his anti-Obama armor. I'm hoping he begins to see just how much of Clinton's alleged superiority on issues is really a result of pandering on her part. Remember, Krugman favored Edwards, not Clinton. I doubt he comes around before Obama gets the nomination, but this was a pretty big concession, and a welcome one at that. Krugman is definitely a guy we want in our corner this fall -- and I think he'll be there.
I posted this earlier, but it deserves a post of its own. Barack Obama picks a running mate (and she's an eighty-two year old lady from North Carolina!):
Watch it until the end -- what a fun, classic moment on the campaign trail.
Pretty good roundup of reax from the blogosphere intelligentsia
by Andrew Sullivan. Most importantly, he seems satisfied, and he has
had his finger on the pulse of this issue better than anyone out there.
Now I'm just looking forward to seeing how the evening news covers
it, and whether going forward the press allows other topics to be
discussed (as they should).
These two superdelegates seem have their heart in the right place, and I really respect them for having the gumption to make this video. But keeping in mind that they are merely trying to do the best with a broken system, doesn't this tell you just about all need to know to understand why superdelegates are such a horrible idea?
Update: It seems this video was removed. If they repost it, I'll reupdate.
Again, these two are probably the best two superdelegates out there. I'm not dumping on them personally at all. I really do respect their courage in asking for input. But boy, this is a screwed up system.
My advice to them: support whomever wins the pledged delegate battle -- and commit to doing that ASAP.
I just woke about twenty minutes ago (remember, I live in Las Vegas...) and I managed to watch this without any interference from the MSM filter. It's exactly what I was hoping Obama would say. Now I'm going to go read around out of (morbid?) curiosity to see what the press reaction has been but I know that on a personal level, I'm very satisfied.
And I do hope that the media -- and the Clinton and McCain campaigns -- allow us to move on from this. Barack Obama has made it clear the he is his own man. He is not Jeremiah Wright and Jeremiah Wright is not him.
The problems we face in this country are too great to play the kind of gotcha' politics that we have been through over the last five weeks. If there were any indication that Barack Obama himself was as divisive a figure as Jeremiah Wright, it would be a different story. But if that were true, we wouldn't have gotten to this moment in the first place.
They want this campaign to be about FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They want this election to be about Jeremiah Wright. They want it to be about Louis Farrakhan. They want it to be about William Ayers.
They don't want it to be about you. Or me. Or any of us. Barack Obama has a different idea:
On Monday, America's favorite working-class hero told a North Carolina audience: "If you'd had my life, you'd be tough too." It must have been hard, all those years in the Governor's mansion and the White House, followed by a $109 million windfall. Since I couldn't find my violin, I made her this video instead:
First Read has a mini-profile of Missouri National Education Association political director Leila Medley, a superdelegate. It's an interesting window into the world of a superdelegate.
For most of this campaign, the Democratic Party has been unified by optimism that our eventual nominee would trounce the Republican candidate in November, 2008. That began to change towards the end of February, when the contest between Senators Clinton and Obama began to turn sharply negative.
...the New York Times' right-wing propagandist William Kristol completed his embrace of Hillary Clinton. In an unintentionally hilarious column (The Onion could not have come up with a better spoof), Kristol complains that "Hillary gets no respect":
But we also see the liberal media failing to give Hillary Clinton the
respect she deserves. So, since we conservatives believe in giving
credit where credit is due, it falls to us to praise Hillary.
Okay. So Kristol says that Hillary Clinton gets no respect. Perhaps this is what he's talking about?
It will be good for the country to be able to move on, sooner rather than later, from the Clintons and their brand of politics. If the Democratic primary electorate brings this about, THE WEEKLY STANDARD will be first to say something we are not accustomed to saying to the Democratic party--thank you.
I just got a fundraising e-mail from the Obama campaign (you probably did too if you're on the bulk e-mail lists). In the e-mail, for the first time that I've seen, the campaign talks about next week's primaries as potential game enders.
"Next week," the e-mail reads, "we have the opportunity to close out this race and secure the nomination for Barack." (Emphasis added.)
Next week, of course, there are primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Based on the e-mail, it sounds as if the campaign is ready to declare victory in the nomination battle if Barack wins both.
Assuming Barack wins both states, even if Clinton doesn't
immediately withdraw, all indications are that there will be a
superdelegate stampede in his direction. Combined with his pledged
delegate lead, he will then have an insurmountable overall delegate
lead, and the race will finally be over. The celebration can begin.
(Clinton has already hinted that she might drop out if she loses Indiana, and on Meet the Press, Andrea Mitchell said Clinton would drop out within two or three days of losing.)
Thought experiment. You're managing a presidential campaign and you have to rank the following three options in order from most harmful to least harmful, purely on the basis of electoral impact:
Weakness A: Your candidate has a pastor who has made remarks that many white voters will find offensive, and he also once went to the home of someone who was involved with low-grade domestic terrorism.
Weakness B: Your candidate supported the Iraq war from the very beginning, takes credit for the urge to surge American forces there, and also said he was fine with spending one hundred years in Iraq.
Weakness C: A majority of Americans don't believe anything your candidate says, and the $109 million your candidate has earned in the last eight years has just entered the vetting process.
Last month, a 17-year-old Iraqi girl was hacked to death by her father because she fell in love with a British soldier:
Rand Abdel-Qader was stamped upon, suffocated and stabbed by her father, then given an unceremonious burial to emphasise her disgrace. Police released her father without charge two hours after his arrest.
"Not much can be done when we have an honour killing case," said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police.
In the past year, 47 young women have been murdered in similar honor killings in Basra alone. In addition, at least 15 women per month are killed for breaking Islamic dress codes.
Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of
the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through
self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse
masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the
increase.
Du'a Khalil Aswad, 17, from Nineveh, was executed by stoning in front
of mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a boy outside her Yazidi
tribe. Mobile phone images of her broken body transmitted on the
internet led to sectarian violence, international outrage and calls for
reform. Her father, Khalil Aswad, speaking one year after her death in
April last year, has revealed that none of those responsible had been
prosecuted and his family remained "outcasts" in their own tribe.
I don't think we should be in Iraq. But we're there now. What does it say about our priorities that this brutality continues?
FUD stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Here's a good definition from Wikipedia:
Fear, uncertainty and doubt(FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing, public relations, and illiberal democracies. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative (and vague) information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.
I first heard the term FUD when Microsoft announced it would was going to compete with an internet startup I was working for back in the mid-1990s.
I haven't heard the term used often in politics, but it should be used more, especially this campaign season.
FUD is not a good thing, but it can be an effective tactic, and right now, it captures the essence of the Clinton campaign. Fortunately, there's an antidote: Barack Obama and his unbeatable delegate math.
Obama definitely pushed back hard on some of Chris Wallace's questions, but at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense. ... To be clear, Obama wasn't obliged to go after Fox. But a senior adviser said Obama would, as a way of quieting criticism of him. And he didn't.
Sargent predicts Obama's appearance "will likely further dismay liberal bloggers." Well, I can't speak for all liberal bloggers, but this one quickly came to peace with Obama's decision. (In an update, Sargent references Matt Stoller, who was quite negative -- over-the-top so, in my view.) UPDATE: I initially thought Stoller's post was serious, but after playing the video, and reading the comments on that thread (thanks to Josh E. for point them out) I now realize Stoller was just screwing around. (UPDATE 2: I guess I was right the first time -- Stoller was serious after all. Odd.)
I do find it quite striking that Sargent's take on Obama's appearance is so negative, especially in light of his previous reporting. When Hillary Clinton went to Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper and attacked Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright, Sargent didn't even mention Scaife's connection to the newspaper. (He might not have been aware of the link at the time. Later in the day, Josh Marshall did mention Scaife.)
This all is just another reason I'm looking forward to the primary ending -- there's a much bigger fish to fry.
This is pretty funny, in an absurd sort of way. NYT, June 6, 1995:
And before beginning the Memorial Day recess, the Republican-controlled Senate voted 52 to 28 to table the White House proposal to expand emergency wiretapping authority, which Mr. Dole argued could erode constitutional protections on privacy.
Update: Here's a link to the roll call on that vote, which took place on May 26, 1995. Interestingly enough, John McCain was not present for the vote. Hmmm...I wonder if he skipped out on the vote to go on vacation somewhere? Meanwhile, in late February, John McCain called Congress "disgraceful...worse than embarrassing" when it refused to offer immunity to telephone companies participating in illegal wiretaps.
As John McCain continues using guilt-by-association tactics to falsely portray his political opponent as a radical terrorist sympathizer, it's worth remembering that McCain himself has a little terrorism problem of his own.
McCain's terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.
You can vote for or against any candidate based on anything -- and we do that in America. You know, you don't like...oh say, somebody's hairstyle. It's whatever you choose.
You know, I'm just not sure what Clinton meant. It sort of sounds like a permission slip to vote based on someone's appearance (dogwhistle, anyone?), but then she immediately says:
This is too important an election, and we have to know exactly where
people stand. Not what somebody says, but what they've done. ... That's why I want you to approach this like a hiring decision.
That seems to suggest it was just a dumb joke, easily subject to misinterpretation.
Whatever she actually meant, though, it is pretty obvious that she doesn't care if she gives off the wrong impression. Who knows -- I suspect some of her supporters like that about her.
There were really two problems with Hillary Clinton's claim earlier this week that she was ahead in the "popular vote."
First, the popular vote is not a relevant standard for determining who the nominee should be. PocketNines laid three very good talking points at Daily Kos a few days ago. I'll rephrase them here:
If popular vote were the standard, then we'd be counting Missouri four times as much as Minnesota, even though the two states are about the same size. The reason? Missouri holds a primary, Minnesota holds a caucus.
If popular vote were the standard, the candidates would have executed different strategies, likely spending less time in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and more time in larger states like California.
If popular vote were the standard, then states with closed primaries would be counted less than states with wide open primaries because more people vote in wide open primaries than in closed primaries.
Second, Hillary Clinton's claim to be ahead in the popular vote is false, even when you count both Michigan and Florida, and exclude Michigan's uncommitted vote, 73% of which was cast in support of Barack Obama.
I hope you'll indulge me writing about something that doesn't have anything to do with the presidential election. (At least not directly -- there's actually a link, but it's very indirect.)
The Guardian has an article about Palm Jumeirah, the multi-billion dollar real estate development in Dubai billed as the "eighth wonder of the world." Palm Jumeirah is a completely artificial creation extending from Dubai's shore, adding 40 miles of coastline and allowing residents to live in the midst of amazing sea creatures ranging from barracudas to dolphins to sting rays.
Things aren't quite working out as planned, however. Some problems are relatively trivial. Summer temperatures hover around 118F/48C. It's not a dry heat, like here in Vegas -- it's humid. Incredibly, the homes there didn't come standard with air conditioning, despite being worth millions of U.S. dollars.
Over the past month, foreign agents have had a tremendous impact on two key decisions made by John McCain during his presidential campaign. First, McCain endorsed Osama bin Laden's views on the Iraq war. Second, over the past week, McCain has embraced the words of a Hamas leader to divide the American electorate.
Here is McCain in late March, justifying the war in Iraq with Osama bin Laden's declaration that Iraq is the central battle ground in the war on terror:
Sadly, McCain never considered the possibility that bin Laden is perfectly content with us wasting untold billions and needlessly sacrificing American lives in Iraq -- just as long as we don't actually go after him, wherever he might be. It's too bad McCain didn't remember the advice of General George S. Patton: "Never let the enemy pick the battle site."
In satellite interviews with television stations in Indiana and Kentucky, Clinton three times sidestepped questions about whether she would remain in the race if she lost Indiana's May 6 primary.
"We have a long way to go," Clinton told a Louisville station when asked if she would campaign in Kentucky if she lost Indiana. "I'm looking forward to coming up to Kentucky." The Bluegrass State holds a primary on May 20.
Pressed on the question, she said, "Well, I don't make any predictions or speculate on things that haven't happened yet."
Ultimately, who cares what she does? The outcome will be the same either way. But all the same, it is funny watching her change her tune.
On Thursday night, kid oakland posted an exceptionally good diary at Daily Kos about Hillary Clinton's attack on Barack Obama for attending the Trinity United Church of Christ. (He's always a good diarist, but this is one of his best.)
The only thing that I would add to his diary, which focuses on the Pennsylvania debate, is a reminder that Clinton made the initial attack sitting in front of Richard Mellon Scaife, the leader of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that sought to destroy the Clintons in the 1990s. Timothy Noah documented the exceptional hypocrisy of that moment:
"Hate speech [is] unacceptable in any setting," Hillary Clinton today told the Tribune-Review. We turn now to this excerpt from a 1981 Columbia Journalism Review profile of Scaife by Karen Rothmyer, in which the reporter describes a conversation with the distinguished publisher and philanthropist:
"Mr. Scaife, could you explain why you give so much money to the New Right?"
"You fucking Communist c*nt, get out of here."
Well. The rest of the five-minute interview was conducted at a rapid trot down Park Street, during which Scaife tried to hail a taxi. Scaife volunteered two statements of opinion regarding his questioner's personal appearance—he said she was ugly and that her teeth were "terrible"—and also the comment that she was engaged in "hatchet journalism." His questioner thanked Scaife for his time. "Don't look behind you," Scaife offered by way of a goodbye.
Not quite sure what this remark meant, the reporter suggested that if someone were approaching it was probably her mother, whom she had arranged to meet nearby. "She's ugly, too," Scaife said, and strode off.
Simply put, if given the choice between a candidate who worships at a church with a minister like Jeremiah Wright and a candidate who forms a political alliance with Richard Mellon Scaife, I'll take the former every single time.
There is no longer any question about whether or if Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president. The question now is when and how he will be recognized as the party's presumptive nominee.
It will happen sometime before the Democratic National Convention, just as soon as he secures the 2,024 delegates it will take to win the nomination on the convention floor. When that moment is upon us, everything else that has happened in the campaign will be overshadowed, rendered moot in an instant.
Think of that moment like the final touchdown that puts away a football game for good. And in this football game, superdelegates control when and where that touchdown will occur. They have two options. They can try to score themselves, or they can hand the ball off to voters, and let the voters finish the game off.
ARG has a new post-PA poll Indiana showing Clinton leading Obama 50-45.
So here's my prediction: the media + Clinton camp will spin this as a sign of a Pennsylvania "bump."
In so doing, they will cleverly ignore the fact that in the previous ARG poll, Clinton led 53-44.
So her lead has diminished from +9 in early April to +5 in late April -- a drop of four points.
That drop is reflected in the only other post-PA poll of Indiana -- by Research 2000, which shows Obama leading by 1 point. In late-March/early-April, the same poll showed Clinton with a 3 point lead. So she slipped four points in that poll as well, over the same time frame.
My money is on Clinton to win the Indiana primary, but as an Obama supporter, I'll take this kind of bump any day of the week.
Remember, many of the undecided superdelegates would be better characterized as undeclared. Many of them, in fact, already have decided to support Barack Obama -- it's just a question of when they will announce their support.
Take, for example, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. Read this passage from the NYT:
In an interview with The New York Times late Thursday, Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Clinton’s conduct in this campaign had caused what might be an irreparable breach between Mr. Clinton and an African-American constituency that once revered him. “When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar,” Mr. Clyburn said. “I think black folks feel strongly that that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation.”
Mr. Clyburn added that there appeared to be an almost “unanimous” view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were “committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”
Technically, Clyburn is an undeclared superdelegate. But is there any doubt about who he'll vote for as a superdelegate?
I absolutely guarantee Barack Obama will be the nominee. Yesterday, I posted a chart showing why he was unbeatable.
The most realistic worst-case scenario from that chart would have Barack Obama merely winning 48% of the pledged delegates from here on out (he'll actually do better). In that scenario, he'd need just 29% of the uncommitted superdelegates to support him -- and he wins the nomination. There's no doubt that will happen. None. (Edit: I added the preceding paragraph and removed the chart, which you can find in my earlier post.)
Barack Obama's lead is insurmountable. He has a mortal lock on the nomination.
I'm planning on doing a video on the Pennsylvania debate sometime soon. I know it's not really topical at this point, but I'm interested in it, because I want to explore how Obama can improve his game and be ready for some of the tricks that tiny little reactionaries like George Stephanopolous plan on throwing his way during the general.
Here's a textual look at the questions Stephanopolous asked in the first half of the debate, separated out by each candidate, and alternating colors for different topics. (Transcript.)
This chart pretty much tells all you need to know to figure out who the Democratic nominee for president will be.
It offers four different scenarios of how Barack Obama might finish relative to Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegate tally, showing the percentage of remaining pledged delegates he would need to achieve that scenario and the percentage of superdelegates he would need to secure the nomination.
The only plausible scenario here is actually the final one (the others are all too conservative), under which he will finish the primaries and caucuses leading by at least 150 pledged delegates. To get there, he only need to win 48% of the remaining pledged delegates, and he'll actually almost certainly end up doing better than that.
Assuming he ends up leading by 150 pledged delegates (again, a very conservative estimate), to secure the nomination Obama would at that point need just 29% of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates. Piece of cake.
The great thing about these numbers is that the best case scenario on this chart is actually probably a worst case scenario in reality.
At this point, as I've been saying, it's not a question of whether or if Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.
It's a question of when and how. Those are important questions, and not just for our state of mind. We want a narrative of Barack Obama's victory that allows him to triumphantly cross the finish line.
At least the most important question is already resolved: Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.
The Tide is Turning. After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama.
By any measure, double digits or not, Clinton won an impressive victory in Pennsylvania. But it is misleading for her to suggest that she has now overtaken her rival in the popular vote.
Remember that Clinton camp boast about raising $10 million in the 24 hours following her Pennsylvania victory? Um, well, not exactly.
Update: The report I linked to has been updated. The Clinton camp is sticking by the $10 million number and they seem to be correct. So, it would seem, no lie. Absolution! Apologies for passing along incorrect information.
Look, I feel really bad that I keep on beating up on Jake Tapper, especially after ABC's "stellar" performance in the debate last week. But he just keeps on giving me so much material to work with! Don't blame me, blame Jake.
Today's Tapper is a detailed analysis of the scurrilous new anti-Obama ad being pushed by Hillary Clinton's old Whitewater nemesis-turned-ally.
The question Tapper asks readers to answer is whether the ad will work. The thing he doesn't tell readers is that the ad is not currently on air and is only being pushed by Newsmax.com, the Richard Mellon Scaife-owned media outlet. The head of the PAC seeking to put it on the air hopes to raise $300,000 -- which viewed in the larger scheme of the campaign, is nothing. (We're taking about 0.1% what what Clinton and Obama have raised up until this point.)
So no, Jake, no matter how good the ad is, it won't work, because nobody will see it -- unless members of the media like you obsess about its particulars. In fact, that's the entire goal of the ad -- to get the media to debate whether or not such a strategy will work.
Toughen up, Jake. Quit falling for their dirty tricks. Quit letting these hacks set the agenda for you. You write enough smart things that I know you don't really buy the sleaze they are selling. So have the courage to ignore them.
As promised, I've updated the post-Pennsylvania delegate totals and the magic number tracker for ObamaIsWinning.com. The same information is now also available on the sidebar on the home page of The Jed Report.
Earlier, I said I probably wouldn't be posting much if anything today. Four hours later, here I am making another post. It'll be quick.
Check out this blog entry by ABC's senior political correspondent Jake Tapper about the Clinton camp's false representation of ABC's reporting on the (irrelevant) popular vote. The thing that interests me isn't that the Clinton camp lied about what ABC had said -- that happens every day, like sniper fire on a morning run.
No, the thing that interests me is that after he posted the item, he temporarily unpublished it -- because the Clinton camp complained that his debunking was inaccurate (they were wrong, Tapper was right).
UPDATE: The Clinton campaign pushed back on this post...I took this blog post down for a brief time this morning while I was on a train and couldn't fully look into all the arguments the Clinton campaign was making. Minus this update, the above post is the same as it was before.
That gives you a sense of how afraid some reporters are of the Clinton campaign. Tapper wrote something that was accurate, they complained, and so he took it down to double-check what he had already believed to be true. If the Clinton camp is able to intimidate all reporters as thoroughly as they appear to have intimidated Tapper, the rest of this campaign is going to be something of a slog.
It's pretty clear by now that the ongoing contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is doing nobody other than John McCain any good. It's also obvious that Obama will be the nominee: his pledged delegate lead is insurmountable, and superdelegates aren't going to lead coup against the voters.
Superdelegates could in theory end it tomorrow by lining up behind Barack Obama and pledging their support to his candidacy. Logically, that would make sense -- after all, they are going to to do it eventually anyway.
The problem is that it just wouldn't look right for Barack Obama to lose Pennsylvania -- albeit by a narrower than expected margin -- only to have superdelegates appear to bigfoot all over the results by endorsing him. Yes, I know that defies all logic, but this is politics we're talking about.
So how the hell do we end this thing in triumph? Well, documenting the various reasons why Hillary Clinton is screwing the party by not quitting won't end it, unfortunately. (I'm still going to keep on doing that for therapeutic reasons, if nothing else.)
The way I see, there are two ways we can end this campaign in reasonable time, and both of them involve Barack Obama getting across the finish line with a win.
Plan A (May 6): Barack Obama wins both Indiana and North Carolina
If this happens, Clinton will withdraw, and if she doesn't withdraw, half her campaign staff and all her fundraisers will quit. I like this scenario because it happens soon -- May 6, just four days after my birthday -- and because it doesn't require any math.
So as for Plan A: Go, Barack, Go!
Alas, Plan A may not come to pass. Barack is not a favorite to win in Indiana, though he should be able to win in North Carolina.
That brings us to the next scenario.
Plan B (May 20): Uncommitted superdelegates join the "Pelosi Club" (i.e., promise to support winner of pledged delegate contest)
Under Plan B, Barack Obama will win the nomination after he wins Oregon on May 20. Let me work through the math to show you why. (Don't worry, it's simple math.)
To start with, there are 3,253 pledged delegates, and 1,627 of them will constitute a majority. The first candidate to hit 1,627 pledged delegates will be the nominee unless there is a coup by superdelegate.
Now, keep that 1,627 number in mind while we turn to the actual totals of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
After Pennsylvania, Obama will probably have around 1,493 pledged delegates and Clinton will have 1,334. Assuming that she wins Indiana (remember, this is Plan B), West Virginia, and Kentucky, and that Obama wins North Carolina, Guam, and Oregon, on May 20, Barack Obama will have 1,634 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,485. That means on May 20, he will have guaranteed himself a majority of pledged delegates heading to the Denver convention.
Now, as things currently stand, 230 superdelegates support Barack Obama and 255 support Hillary Clinton. 310 are undecided.
That would give Barack Obama a total of 1,864 delegates on May 20 -- 161 short of the 2,025 delegates he needs to win the nomination.
So what we need is about 161 (let's say 170 to be safe) superdelegates to join the Pelosi club, agreeing to support whomever wins the pledged delegate battle.
The beautiful thing about Plan B is that it does not require superdelegates to endorse Barack Obama -- it doesn't require them to "give" him the nomination. Instead, by committing their support to the winner of the pledged delegate battle, these superdelegates will allow Barack Obama to earn the nomination on May 20, crossing the finish line with a win.
That sets up a narrative for a huge, inspiring victory in Oregon.
(Now there's always the chance that Barack Obama will lose Oregon, but I think that if he loses Oregon, enough other bad things will have happened that he won't be hitting 1,627 pledged delegates on May 20. But he's going to win Oregon. Maybe a 5% chance we need a Plan C, but I doubt it. We'll figure out what to do in the unlikely that scenario presents itself.)
Getting superdelegates to join the Pelosi club shouldn't be hard to do. Again, they don't have to endorse anyone, and it's what they are going to do anyway. Even some pro-Clinton superdelegates can join the Pelosi club (some already have according to DemConWatch).
Conclusion:
Over the next two weeks, Barack Obama (and us, as his supporters) should focus his most of his energy on winning both North Carolina and Indiana. Hopefully, that results in two wins, ending the campaign.
On a parallel track, Democratic Party officials who understand that Obama will be the nominee should work to secure 170 or so commitments by superdelegates to join the Pelosi Club.
This sets up a perfect narrative. Either Plan A works -- we win North Carolina and Indiana -- or we mvoe on to Plan B, and by winning Oregon on May 20, Barack Obama will cross the finish line and become the nominee.
Either way, if we head down this path, there's a 95%+ certainty that on May 6 or May 20 we will be celebrating Barack Obama as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
Until that point, who cares about the spin of the media? I find it annoying so I just turn the television off.
We're going to win. It's not a question of whether or if. It's just a question of how and when.
And I think that on May 6 or May 20, one of these two plans will allow Barack Obama to win -- not by default, but by triumph.
So what do you think? Are you ready? Let's close this out!
(I've got some non-campaign obligations to attend to today, so this will probably be my last post for the day, or at least until the late evening. Please leave your thoughts and comments, though -- I'll be reading them and my e-mail.)
After last night, the things we still don't know: how and when.
Not if, not whether, but how, and when.
Clinton won Pennsylvania. Congratulations. She was expected to win. After Barack Obama's worst month (Jeremiah Wright, Bitter, crappy debate, Media pile on) he managed to eat away a little bit at her lead from Ohio even though Pennsylvania was a stronger state for her than Ohio (Closed primary, Gov. Rendell, Mayor Nutter, family roots).
In short: Pennsylvania wasn't a game changer, and the campaign continues. The delegate math is pretty much unchanged, and that's really the only thing that matters.
I want this thing to be over just as much as anybody else; it makes me sick that we're going to have to listen to another few more weeks of this nonsense.
But let's remember: we're going to win. Our challenge now is figuring out how to beat Clinton as quickly as possible so we can turn to McCain.
We can afford to forget the math, because the math is over. We don't need to spin, because the spin won't change who is going to win.
All we need to do is remember: it's not if or whether. It's how and when.
During the 1990s, ultra-conservative Pennsylvania
billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife funded what Hillary Clinton called a “vast right-wing
conspiracy” to destroy her husband’s presidency.
March 25: Clinton met with Scaife
Now, one decade after Scaife’s operation nearly removed her
husband from office, Hillary Clinton has reached a rapprochement with the
reclusive owner of the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review.
At the center of the smear campaign is a television ad produced by
an anti-Obama 527PAC called “The National Campaign
Fund.” (Although the ad is sinister in tone, it is so over-the-top that it’s
actually somewhat humorous.)
The National Campaign Fund is headed by Floyd Brown,
infamous for creating the 1988 “Willie Horton” spot that helped defeat Michael
Dukakis. In 2004, Floyd Brown was a key player in the right-wing assault on John
Kerry.
In the 1990s, Brown was also a key player in the right-wing
campaign to destroy the Clinton presidency. According to Joe
Conason, Brown and his sidekick David Bossie “served as publicity agents
for David Hale, the crooked and discredited former Little Rock municipal judge
whose allegations against the Clintons forced the appointment of an independent
counsel.” Hale was one of the most important early figures in “The Arkansas Project,” the
Scaife-funded effort to destroy Bill Clinton documented in the 2004 movie “The
Hunting of the President.”
Brown, who wrote “Slick Willie” in 1992, played an important
role in shaping the media coverage of the Whitewater investigation throughout
the 1990s, operating out of an organization called “Citizens United.”
Newsmax, which is
now hosting and promoting Brown’s new television ad on its YouTube channel (it
has already received over 50,000 views), was founded by Christopher Ruddy, formerly
one of Richard Mellon Scaife’s top “reporters.” Ruddy spent much of the 1990s trying
to prove outlandish conspiracy theories linking the Clintons to Vince Foster’s
suicide and Ron Brown’s tragic death in a plane crash.
Despite Clinton’s public embrace of Richard Mellon Scaife
and her acceptance of his endorsement, Newsmax
continues to pump out right-wing propaganda aimed at discrediting Democrats,
including Barack Obama.
In addition to pushing the new smear campaign, Newsmax last month published
a false story claiming that Barack Obama had been at church during one of
the Wright sermons broadcast on YouTube. After New York Times columnist William Kristol repeated
the false claim in his column, he was forced retract his claim and
apologize. Despite clear video evidence disproving their claim, Newsmax merely issued an ambiguous “clarification.”
::
On Monday, Keith Olbermann
asked Clinton why she had accepted Richard Mellon Scaife’s endorsement
given his history of opposing the Clintons and the Democratic Party.
Clinton’s answer offered quite a glimpse at her loyalty to
the Democratic Party, focusing completely on Scaife’s support for her and completely
ignoring the ongoing negative impact that Scaife has had on the party. “I do
believe in redemption, Keith. I believe in death bed conversions and I think
it's possible for anyone to see the error of their ways. So I'm bringing people
together as we speak. Anyone who doubts my ability to bridge the most
incredible chasms can point to those recent events.”
It’s obvious that Scaife is using Hillary Clinton as a pawn
with which to attack his real target: Barack Obama, who will almost certainly
be the Democratic nominee in 2008. Apparently, Clinton doesn’t care. As long as
Scaife isn’t after her, it’s not her problem.
That may be true, but Scaife is a problem for Democrats,
though. Even though Clinton is so desperate for support that she doesn’t care
where her friends come from, as Democrats, it is our responsibility to care.
Update: There is a discrepancy between the media's count which shows a 9.4 point Clinton win versus the Pennsylvania Secretary of State which shows an 8.499% win. In either case, it's not a double digit win, and it's narrower than Clinton's Ohio win. It's just not clear whether it's an 8 or a 9 point win. I'll try to sort it out tomorrow but for now, I'll be conservative and assume it's 9 points and update this post accordingly.
Earlier in the evening, I thought Clinton was on her way to a 10-point victory.
Looks like that won't be happening. Instead, she'll probably win by nine points -- a let-down for Clinton folks who had really set their sights on a 10-point win and went to bed last night thinking they had accomplished their goal.
So she's looking at a bit of a drop-off from her Ohio performance.
Given that Pennsylvania was supposed to be a better state for her than Ohio, that's going to be hard for her to explain. As a refresher, here are some of her advantages:
She positioned herself as a favorite daughter with her strong family ties to Scranton.
Pennsylvania has a closed primary, restricted to registered Democrats. (In Ohio, 20% of voters were independents, a group Obama won.)
Obama endured the worst six-week stretch of his campaign (Jeremiah Wright, Bitter-gate, terrible debate).
The media was clearly rooting for her to do well.
Clinton won the endorsement of the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. (Okay, snark.)
Given all those advantages, the fact that she actually lost some of her lead in Ohio is bad news for her campaign. She's already far behind, and can't afford to fall further behind the pace.
All in all, Obama seems to have actually had a stronger performance than the initial numbers would have indicated.
Update: ayjaymay adds a few more good points in the comments, including Clinton's support from Gov. Rendell and Mayor Nutter, plus her husband's popularity in PA in 1996.
Via Michael Calderone, Terry McCauliffe praises FOX New as "fair and balanced" during an interview with Major Garett. (I just posted the video into the video pod at the top of the page.)
Calderone has another funny catch, also from FOX: Karl Rove told Chris Wallace he needed data to analyze and casually mentioned that he would give PA Gov. Ed Rendell a call, noting that he had Rendell's numbers in his cell phone. That Ed Rendell sure does get around...
Excellent diary over at Daily Kos by PocketNines explaining three important reasons why the popular vote total while interesting is not relevant to the nomination battle:
Point Number 1: If the popular vote determined the
nominee, no candidate would ever go to Iowa or New Hampshire. They'd
spend all their time in big urban areas all over the country from the
outset of the campaign, racking up raw numbers. What would be the
point of even visiting New Hampshire if you could camp out in Brooklyn?
Concrete Example: Barack Obama would not have spent only a
day and a half in California before the Feb 5 primary. He would have
never gone to Idaho. Duh.
Point Number 2: If the popular vote determined the
nominee, no state in its right mind would ever hold a caucus, instantly
disenfranchising itself. Concrete example:
Minnesota-Missouri. Minnesota gets credit for 214K votes, and Missouri
gets 822K votes, but they each get 72 delegates. Is Missouri's voice 4
times more important than Minnesota's?
Point Number 3: The arbitrary distinction between
who gets to vote in these primaries is nothing like the general
election, where everyone registered gets to vote. In the primaries,
sometimes it's just Dems, sometimes Dems and Indies, sometimes anyone. Concrete example:
Texas gets a million more votes than similar overall population New
York (2.8M to 1.8M), even though New York is far more Democratic,
simply due to this arbitrary restriction on who can vote (NY = closed,
Texas = open).
So this is off-the-cuff -- I reserve the right to change my mind, and welcome any criticism.
My overall take is that at this point it's not a question of whether Barack Obama wins the nomination, it's question of how he wins the nomination.
Here's how I arrive at that conclusion:
First, if Pennsylvania were the only state that mattered, Clinton managed to win by 8 points -- a smaller margin than her Ohio victory of 10.5 points. Moreover, it was in a closed primary, unlike Ohio, where Obama actually won among independent voters who were about one-fifth of the electorate. Clinton won a solid victory, somewhere around 9 or 10 points. Hats off.
Second, Pennsylvania isn't the only state that matters -- it's important, but 95% of the delegates are selected elsewhere.
Third, Barack Obama still has a mortal lock on the pledged delegate battle, which means that he will be the nominee. The superdelegates just aren't going to overturn the popular vote.
Fourth, Hillary Clinton's continued candidacy means that she would rather see John McCain be president than Barack Obama. She's got virtually no path to the nomination. Continuing this campaign will just further polarize the Democratic Party, and draw vital resources away from defeating John McCain -- and other downballot races.
Fifth, although superdelegates could step up and end the campaign right now, Barack Obama will be best served by defeating Hillary Clinton. He does not want to be seen as having relied on party insiders to "rescue" his campaign. He'd be best served by a trickle of superdelegates between now and then.
Sixth, two weeks from now, he will have won -- in North Carolina. As long as he keeps it closer in Indiana than it is in North Carolina, at that time a stampede of superdelegates in his direction will be welcomed and seen as a sign of strength, not weakness. (Of course, if he wins in Indiana, every superdelegate in town will be fighting to jump on board, even Clinton superdelegates.)
Finally, Obama does I think need to hone his message a bit. Clinton comes across as someone who is running for Mayor -- she is pandering, and promising the world to a lot of people. In effect, she is lying: she is making promises that she can't or won't keep. Obama does need to call her on this, and he can do so in a humorous way. I think voters need to see some of her flip flops, especially on NAFTA. Just as importantly, Obama needs some work on his message to women voters who are sticking by Clinton because they see her as a victim who has fought through extraordinary challenges. I'll post more about that tomorrow, probably in the next couple of days.
I'll close by repeating my opening thought: at this point, it isn't a question of whether Barack Obama wins the nomination -- it's a question of how he wins it.
Update 2: This where you can see how absurd the digit obsession is -- as of right now, it's 9.46%...a 9 point victory, not 10 after rounding. (9:44PM)
Update 3: I am now absurdly obsessed with this: 98.4% reporting, Clinton has an 8.7% lead. If she stays below 9.5%, she can't plausibly claim a double-digit win.
Update 4: 8.5% with 98.8% reporting...
Update 5: (10:53PM, 98.91% reporting) Still 8.5% but getting very close to under 8.5% which would mean an 8 point victory. Left to report are Philly, Chester, Delaware Counties (all pro-Obama) and Allegheny and Bucks (both pro-Clinton). There looks to be many more votes to be counted in the pro-Obama areas, so I'd say 8 points is very likely!
Update 6: (1:20AM) Looks like the PA Sec'y of State website and the AP totals don't match up. AP says it's a 9.4 point Clinton lead. For now, I'd assume that is the right number. The key thing is for the spin game -- it's not a double-digit.
Clinton is now leading by 10% and last I checked the CNN map, it said that Philadelphia had nearly all reported. Unless there are other pockets of support for Obama, or there is some quirk about Philadelphia's reporting that I'm not aware of, it seems likely Clinton will have hit the 10% mark. I'll update this later when we have final numbers.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”
...It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind with they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
Yes it's true -- Barack Obama is guaranteed victory among pledged delegates. What this means is that the only way Hillary Clinton becomes the nominee is by coup by superdelegate. That's not going to happen. This primary is over. Yet it continues. Barack Obama is the underdog who cannot lose.
Watching him now and two things that are interesting:
He's no longer on the same panel as Rachel Maddow, who has consistently kicked his ass. Is he afraid her? I'll bet he is -- because unlike Harold Ford, she wouldn't let him get away with his bulls**t.
"The Interrupter" doesn't interrupt Harold Ford nearly as much as he interrupts Maddow, in part because Ford let's him talk most of the time.
UPDATE: Oh lord will somebody shut this blowhard up! Rachel where are you?!?!?!
...and they didn't call it right away for Hillary Clinton.
So right there, that's something of a victory. Who knows what the final total will be? But certainly seems like Clinton is not on track to get anything near the 20 point win she really needs. Still be interesting to see if she manages a double-digit victory.
It's useful to remember that there are 3,253 pledged delegates overall and tonight 158 are at stake. Currently, Obama leads 1,420-1,249 (171 delegates). So not much is going to change substantively tonight, but it sure will be a media frenzy!
More importantly, as the talking heads on MSNBC are now saying, Clinton's donors will be looking at the final numbers to determine whether or not they will continue to pay for her campaign.
Bill Clinton got himself all caught up in another lie today, directly contradicted by his own words -- recorded yesterday.
Clinton was asked by an NBC reporter about his claim that Obama had played the race-card on him. Clinton's reponse was to deny ever having made the claim. "No, no, no," he said. "That’s not what I said."
But a recording of his conversation with WHYY radio shows that Clinton did in fact make that very claim, saying:
I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it along.
After Clinton thought he was off-air, he told a companion: "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?"
For the record, Obama himself actually never did racialize Clinton's remarks. Back in January, on This Week with George "The Little Patriot" Stephanopoulos, Obama was directly asked about Clinton's remarks and didn't call them racist or race-baiting.
I will say this, however -- however politically savvy they may have been, on a substantive basis, Obama was wrong: Bill Clinton's remarks were race-baiting.
In a shocking turn of events, ABC senior political correspondent Jake Tapper admitted on Monday that he had never heard of the "Stars and Stripes" -- a common nickname for the flag of the United States of America. Tapper also told the entire internet that he was unaware that "pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes" is an obvious reference to the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
After Tapper's stunning concession on his highly trafficked blog "Political Punch," speculation mounted that he does not have sufficient Patriotism(tm) to cover the 2008 presidential election.
Marc Halperin, Hillary Clinton's chief press liasion officer, said Tapper would be lucky to last a week. "Really, I think it's a matter of days before George Stephanopolous frog marches that Europe-loving freakshow out of the office."
Hillary Clinton's chief spokesmodel Howard Woolfson made a short statement available to the press.
Senator Clinton is appalled by Mr. Tapper's remarks, which were deeply hurtful to all Pennsylvanians -- and she hopes all big-state Americans -- because they came after 9/11, and 9/11 was an attack on our country, and Mr. Tapper's remarks were an attack on our country.
We'll know who won Pennsylvania soon enough, but speculation can be fun. So let's take a look at the polling averages, using the Ohio as a point of comparison.
For polls completed on the Sunday or Monday before each contest:
In Pennsylvania, Clinton leads 50%-43% (7 points)
In Ohio, Clinton led 51%-43% (8 points)
During the week before the final Sunday and Monday of each campaign:
In Pennsylvania, Clinton led 49%-42% (7 points)
In Ohio, Clinton led 48%-43% (5 points)
So the good news is unlike in Ohio, Clinton doesn't seem to have
momentum. The bad news is that the numbers were about the same in Ohio as they are now in Pennsylvania.
What does this all mean? I'll tell you on Wednesday.
During last week's debate, George Stephanopolous asked his now-famous question tying Barack Obama to remarks made by William Ayers, a supposedly unrepentant terrorist. Those remarks, as Stephanopolous noted, were published in the New York Times on 9/11.
After Obama made the important point that William Ayers was not a confidant and that it was ridiculous to impute the views of people he knows to himself, Hillary Clinton went on the attack. Here's what she said:
I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers
for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid
directorship position.
And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this
board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were
deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every
American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was
just sorry they hadn't done more.
Notice the references to 9/11? How dare Mr. Ayers have said such horrible things after 9/11?
Except his remarks were actually made well before 9/11. That fact that they were published on 9/11 (really, 9/10, when the first editions are printed) was a purely coincidental.
Needless to say, the answer wasn't satisfactory, but here's video, along with clips from March 25th when she sat down with Richard Mellon Scaife and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial board.
Clinton went on Nightline. Answering the questions was our only hope. Koppel first asked Clinton if he wanted to read the letter on the air, but we weren’t that dumb. A clip of Clinton reading one damaging line out of context would be replayed endlessly. Instead, Koppel read the letter and gave Clinton the whole show to explain himself. Clinton was masterful – calm about the past, impassioned about the future, with just the right degree of indignation about the kind of issues that ought to matter in electing a president. In the final minute of the show he squeezed in a sterling sound bite: “Ted, the only times you’ve invited me on the show are to discuss a woman I never slept with and a draft I never dodged.”
Even had I known for certain then that Clinton’s closing statement wasn’t really true, I would have had a hard time admitting it to myself. I was in battle mode, and nearly anything we did, I believed, was justified by what was being done to us. Tabloid reporters were prowling the streets of Little Rock, offering cash for stories about Clinton. Almost all the rumors swirling around our increasingly gothic campaign – that Clinton sanctioned drug running from Arkansas’s Mena Airport, that Clinton was a cocaine fiend, that Hillary was a secret lesbian – were both malicious and untrue.
Experience can be an asset. But when you've learned all the wrong things from that experience, it becomes a liability. And that's the situation that Hillary Clinton finds herself in today.
Here's Barack Obama's response to Hillary Clinton's fear-mongering ad. I think it's much better than his response to Hillary Clinton's 3AM ad in Texas because he's framing the question in his terms, not hers.
Obama is countering fear with optimism and a positive message of change.
ANNOUNCER: Who has what it takes to really bring change? To finally take on the special interests - not take their money. Who made the right judgment about opposing the war and had the courage and character to speak honestly about it. And who in times of challenge will unite us - not use fear and calculation to divide us.
BARACK OBAMA: We are one people. All of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes. All of us defending the United States of America.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton won the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Clinton actively sought the endorsement -- a bitter irony, given that Scaife had funded The Arkansas Project, which, as this clip from "The Hunting of the President" shows, played an important role in the impeachment of President Clinton:
Incredibly, during Hillary Clinton's editorial board meeting with Scaife, she attacked Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright:
And now, after embracing Scaife and adopting the right-wing tactics that undermined her husband's presidency, Hillary Clinton accuses Barack Obama of hypocrisy?
$109 million later, they learned all the wrong lessons.
I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.
Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.
Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw.
Even though Ed Rendell has said some pretty awful things during this campaign, there's something endearingly off-message about him.
Unfortunately for Rendell, now that video of him has emerged sharing a platform with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, heaping praise upon NOI and one of Farrakhan's ministers, Hillary Clinton's complete embrace of the right-wing's political correctness orthodoxy will rule him out of consideration for the vice presidency.
Here is Rendell at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church on April 14, 1997 (part 2 is here):
Recall that in last week's debate, Clinton attacked Obama for having a pastor who knows Farrakhan. And in February, when Tim Russert asked Obama about his pastor's positive words about Farrakhan, Clinton went on the attack as well, saying:
I just think, we've got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in
any way say these things because of the implications that they have,
which can be so far reaching.
And now here we are, with her top public surrogate standing by Louis Farrakhan's side. It really doesn't even matter whether she denounces or rejects him. The point is that Hillary Clinton trapped by the unbearable political correctness of her campaign.
The bottom-line: she wants to play a game that she herself cannot win. She hasn't learned the right lesson: it's time to change the game.
Correction: When I initially posted this video, I wrote that the video showed "Rendell praising Farrakhan." The specific individual who Rendell praises is not Farrakhan but one of his NOI ministers, Minister Rodney Muhammad. That being said, the essential point is the same. All the ingredients are there for a Hillary Clinton-style guilty by association attack: video showing Rendell sharing a platform with Farrakhan, lavishing praise on NOI, and shaking Farrakhan's hand at the conclusion of his remarks (see part 2).
Hillary Clinton is absolutely determined to wage this campaign on John McCain's terms. Here's her closing argument to Pennsylvanians, complete with an image of bin Laden:
Sometimes you get the feeling that Republicans saw 9/11 as a political bonanza more than anything else. It's too bad that Hillary Clinton is following their lead.
There's nothing new about this kind of politics: in 1984, Ronald Reagan ran an ad with similar themes, but different imagery.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain want to keep on doing things the same way we've done them year after year, with the same old arguments and the same old battle lines.
This year, with Barack Obama, we've got an opportunity to change that game. That's the test of this election. Isn't it time we try something different?
Earlier, I posted a blog entry about John McCain's false attack on Barack Obama, in which he said that Obama had "countenanced" Bill Ayers' violent past. (Obama has done no such thing, and in fact has rejected and denounced them as detestable acts.)
In that post, I said that McCain had brought up the attack on Obama unprompted. My source was Jake Tapper who wrote:
On "This Week with George George Stephanopoulos" this morning, Sen.
John McCain, R-Ariz., unprompted, raised the issue of the connection
between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and William Ayers, a former member
of the radical group the Weather Underground.
Now that I've watched the interview for myself, I find Tapper's frame to be at best deceptive. It was Stephanopolous, not McCain, who brought up the subject of Barack Obama's patriotism. So it was true that McCain was not prompted specifically to talk about Ayers, but he was prompted to talk about Obama's patriotism -- which is close to the same thing.
Another important point: during a 23 minute interview, Stephanopolous and McCain found themselves spending 3 whole minutes -- 13% of the interview -- discussing Barack Obama's patriotism. During that exchange, McCain made several false statements, only a handful of which were parried by Stephanopolous, and not that effectively.
I'll buy you a milkshake if Barack Obama ever has an interview longer than twenty minutes with a major MSM figure where the discussion dwells on McCain's relationships with pastors for 13% of the interview.
Today was the deadline to file FEC reports for March fundraising. If you're a geek like me, view the actual reports here: Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton.
Obama had another huge month, raised $41 million and entered April with $51 million cash on hand, $42 million of which was available for use in the primary. Clinton raised $21 million and McCain raised $15 million.
I'm still trying to figure out how much Clinton has for the primary and how much she has for the general. At most, she entered April with about $12 million available for the primary.
Excluding the $5 million Clinton lent to her campaign, she reported
more than $10 million in debt -- about half of which was owed to Mark
Penn's firm.
Update: I should have taken a look at AMERICAblog before posting this! Joe Sudbay has a good rundown. The bottom-line: As far as the primary is concerned, Clinton began April in the red -- she owed more money than she had in the bank.
In this old commonwealth, the past throws a long shadow and what is familiar tends to muscle aside the promise of change. As Pennsylvania Democrats approach Tuesday's primary, they need to meet the historic moment with the historic courage it demands.
... With Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama differing little on the issues, Democrats can dare to be different and vote for the truly fresh force in this race, the one who has sparked an excitement and energy not seen since the Kennedy years. The bold choice is Barack Obama, who is uniquely placed to bridge America's most bitter divisions. History now calls on Pennsylvania to lead this nation into the future -- and all it requires is the courage to believe.
Today Hillary Clinton won the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper owned by billionaire right-wing activist Richard Mellon Scaife.
If you don't already know who Richard Mellon Scaife is, I apologize in advance for allowing him into your life. In the 1990s, he funded some of the most virulent anti-Clinton efforts, spreading scurrilous smears about Bill and Hillary Clinton through his various media outlets. Take for example this 2002 article published in the Tribune-Review, which tried to paint Clinton as a Marxist radical:
In 1969, a group of Black Panthers was on trial in New Haven, Conn., charged with the torture killing of one of their comrades. The story goes that Hillary Clinton, then a student at Yale and working with the ultra-radical National Lawyers Guild, supported the Panthers and helped shut down the university with protests. Today, Hillary's friends will say, "It is hard to fault her efforts to monitor the trial." They don't want to comment on the fact that the future first lady joined the law office of hard-core communist Robert Truhaft as an intern and worked with him on defense strategies for the New Haven Nine.
If nothing else became clear this week, it should now be obvious that John McCain will not eschew Karl Rove-style politics this campaign season. In fact, he's already embraced them. On Friday, he sent supporters an e-mail falsely suggesting that Barack Obama had ties to Hamas. Today -- unprompted(edit: it wasn't unprompted after all) -- he parroted the Clinton-Hannity-Stephanopolous line of attack and falsely claimed Barack Obama supported William Ayers' violent acts -- acts which Barack Obama has repeatedly denounced as detestable.
I've had a quiet day of blogging so far -- something tells me I'm about to get going on some new posts. In the meantime, enjoy this this mashup by buckpowerLA of Barack's "Declare Independence" speech in Philadelphia on Friday night.
MSNBC/McClatchy has a new Pennsylvania poll showing a close race -- 48% to 43%, with Clinton in the lead -- but as Chuck Todd's analysis shows, things probably aren't actually that close. My best guess: Clinton scores a double-digit victory.
The important question then is this: what will Hillary Clinton's near-certain Pennsylvania victory mean for the campaign?
The first thing to remember is that even though all of our attention has been focused on Pennsylvania for the past several weeks, it is just one state of the many that have voted. 158 delegates will be awarded on Tuesday -- precisely 4.9% of all the pledged delegates going to Denver.
That means that 95.1% of all pledged delegates were decided by voters in other states. It's something worth keeping in mind, because it's the voters who will pick the Democratic nominee, not superdelegates. Yes, the rules provide a mechanism for superdelegates to overturn the judgment of voters -- but unless they want a repeat of 1968, that won't happen.
So the real challenge is winning a majority of pledged delegates -- the delegates that are selected by us, the voters. As you may know, there are 3,253 of these pledged delegates, and the first candidate to win a majority of them -- 1,627 -- will win the nomination, unless the superdelegates execute a coup.
1,627, then, is the real magic number. That's the important number.
NYT: Obama Takes Campaign to the Rails in Pennsylvania WYNNEWOOD, Pa. – With a pull of the train’s whistle, Senator Barack Obama boarded his car today at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and opened a four-city rail tour, arriving at his first stop here to hundreds of cheering supporters.
Inspired by the latest Clinton attack on Barack Obama's patriotism, I put together a slightly different recut of The War Room (the documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign) than the one I posted earlier today:
It's sad watching this knowing that the Clintons have embraced the right wing politics that they were once fighting against. But it is satisfying to know that that this time, Barack Obama will win.
Yesterday David Brooks proved his toolishness once again, taking a whack at explaining how Barack Obama fell to earth. (Brooks was using a rhetorical magic trick favored by polemicists, explaining why something has happened without ever establishing that it actually has happened.)
Bleh. Don't waste your time with Brooks -- I can't think of an occasion where he's said something worth reading that you couldn't have gotten somewhere else. Such is the nature of partisan hacks. (Some might even say that about me, I suppose.)
Brooks has sung Obama's praises, earning him undeserved respect among some (but not most) Obama supporters. Brooks' presents himself as earnest and open-minded, but unlike conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan, Brooks' intellectual curiosity is not genuine. (Though Sullivans' initial take on Brooks was a bit more sympathetic than I would have expected. Later, he linked to Glenn Greenwald's discussion of Brooks' phoniness.)
On June 16, 2004, Bill Clinton told an audience in New York that even though the Democratic approach to government is favored by most Americans, the Republican approach to cultural issues like "God, gays, and guns" helps keep the GOP competitive in places like Oklahoma. He also cited white racism (euphemistically described as "white Southerners who were opposed to civil rights") as an important part of the Republican coalition.
In 2007, Clinton said that economic anxiety leads to anti-trade and anti-immigrant politics. The problem, he said, was that there wasn't "enough good new jobs."
Here's the video:
To be fair, in these video clips, Bill Clinton chose his words better
than Barack Obama did on that one occasion in San Francisco, but viewed
in combination with Obama's other remarks on this topic, it is clear that both are talking about the same political dynamic.
I was watching the DVD extras for The Hunting of the President (yes, I know, that's pretty sick), and I came across this beaut of a moment from 2004: Bill Clinton lauding MoveOn.org's role in bypassing the traditional media:
It should come as no surprise that Bill Clinton was a fan of MoveOn.org -- after all, the activist organization was formed to defend him during his impeachment.
But now that the MoveOn.org membership has endorsed Barack Obama, I guess we've been added to the Clintons' enemies list.
Huffington Post has audio tape of Clinton slamming Democratic activists and falsely accusing them of opposing the war with Afghanistan. Here's a transcript:
"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."
There's tons of things wrong with what Clinton said, but let's start with the facts.
MoveOn.org never opposed the Afghanistan War -- a fact the organization established years ago when when Karl Rove falsely claimed otherwise.
She wasn't just lying about MoveOn.org -- she was also in effect lying about Barack Obama. After 9/11, he strongly supported invading Afghanistan.
Despite her campaign's relentless attacks on Barack Obama's qualifications and electability, Hillary Clinton has lost a lot of ground with Democratic voters nationwide going into Tuesday's critical primary in Pennsylvania, a new NEWSWEEK poll shows.
The survey of 1,209 registered voters found that Obama now leads Clinton by nearly 20 points, or 54 percent to 35 percent, among registered Democrats and those who lean Democratic nationwide.
Another day, more hypocrisy, this time from the co-chair of Michigan campaign, former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard who during a discussion on NAFTA tells a group in Toronto that he has "not seen anything that would constitute a threat to trade with Canada."
In a little over two days, the "trailer" for Bosnia and Back Again (above) has become my second most viewed video. It's gaining ground on the trailer for Hillary in Tuzla: The Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire, the first YouTube clip to juxtapose the CBS footage with Clinton actually saying "sniper fire." (There was one earlier clip that contrasted the CBS footage with her press conference defending the remarks, but she didn't actually use the words "sniper fire.")
Some cool stats:
The video has been played more than 268,000 times and is now ranked as the sixth most watched video on all of YouTube
For the week, it's the #1 top rated video in the news and politics category and #5 for YouTube overall.
For the month, it's the #7 top rated video in news and politics -- not bad for two days!
With more than 6,500 Diggs, it is the #1 most dugg story in the last week (despite a concerted pro-Clinton effort to bury the digg).
Viral Video Chart ranks it #12 on their list of viral videos (down from #5 yesterday).
In the last month, Hillary Clinton's campaign channel has had about 1.2 million videos played. My channel? 1.7 million. My total investment -- a lot of time, plus $99 for video editing software.
If you happen to see other positive blog mentions or any other factoid I should add to the list, please drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.
Most of all, if you haven't already, please watch the clip and send it to your friends, family, and other bloggers -- especially if they are in Pennsylvania!
And finally, thanks to everybody who has been so supportive -- without an audience for this material, there really wouldn't be a point to it.
Ben was disappointed with the questions asked during the debate. "I agree with a lot of the critics that Wright-pin-Ayers wasn't a
balanced line of questions, and that it was odd not to hear anything
about Mark Penn, Colombia, or Bill Clinton, and that the policy issues
surfaced late."
He notes that Clinton thought the questions were just fine.
Now that Clinton has unloaded the kitchen sink, expectations for her are higher than they were before. If she doesn't win big, it will be seen as a victory for Obama.
Ben avoids tying Ayers and 9/11: In this post,
he refers to Ayers comments as having been made in 2001, a far more
accurate way of saying it than the inflammatory "9/11" construction
used by both Clinton and Stephanopolous. (Ayers' comments were made
before 9/11 -- they weren't published until 9/11, but the paper was
physically printed before the WTC attacks.)Hints that Clinton's "elitism" attack on San Francisco is a bit hypocritical, and may be backfiring there.
To the extent that there has been any delegate movement of late, it's been towards Obama.
Obama is winning endorsements from former Clinton allies (Robert Reich) as well as Bloomberg-style moderates (Boren and Nunn).
McCain is struggling to defend not releasing his wife's tax returns.
It's true that Ben's blog has been the hub of some pretty tough attacks on Barack Obama -- but there is a difference between reporting Clinton's attacks and supporting them, and Ben's role is as a reporter, not attacker. He can't ignore something that Clinton operatives define as a central tenet of their campaign simply because it is offensive.
But it's worth remembering that even before Hannity put the topic in front of Stephanopolous, ABC News reported that the Clinton campaign itself was pushing the "story"
in the middle of February, if not before. So while Hannity might have
talked about it on air with Stephanopolous on Tuesday, it wasn't
anything new to Stephanopolous or ABC News.
Stephanopolous also knew that Hillary Clinton herself had a bit of a similar situation -- also reported by ABC back in February and amplified today.
Asked today if Sen. Clinton thought it was wrong for her husband to pardon Evans and Rosenberg [domestic terrorists convicted in the 1980s], a Clinton campaign spokesman refused to answer the question.
... [the spokesman] added that, "Bill Ayers is unrepentant of what he did…and that is a difference, of course, between Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg."
But when Evans was released after Bill Clinton pardoned her, she told the Austin American-Statesman, "I'm not repentant. That's for sure. I wouldn't go about it the same (violent) way." But "we still need solutions, and we still need justice just as badly as we ever did."
The entire Ayers discussion has been B.S., of course. But if we are going to have it, Stephanopolous should at least have been fair enough to point out that (a) the Clinton camp has been pushing this story for two months and (b) the Clintons have far greater exposure on this issue than Barack Obama.
Ultimately, the thing that really damns Stephanopolous' integrity isn't that he asked the question at the suggestion of Sean Hannity. The thing that really damns his integrity is that he knew that the Clinton campaign had been pushing the story, and he knew that they were far more vulnerable to attack than Barack Obama -- and yet he said nothing.
Some journalists will close ranks and defend Stephanopolous, but the smart ones will dig deeper and demand a full accounting from him -- because his blunder put their integrity on the line as well.
In case anyone was wondering, last night's debate proved once and for all that nothing good is coming out of Hillary Clinton's kamikaze campaign. John Aravosis puts it well:
It's no longer just Hillary using right-wing talking points in an effort to destroy the guy who will be running against McCain in the fall, now the mainstream media has bought into the "let's destroy Obama" game. ... If this keeps up, every Swift Boat style attack against Obama will be considered a serious issue by the media, all because Hillary made it so.
Now, it's been clear for more than two months that the only way Hillary Clinton could win was coup by superdelegate. Sooner or later, superdelegates are going to need to decide if they will participate in that coup, and as the Clinton Repugnancy continues to spiral out of control, it's becoming increasingly clear that sooner is better.
Dean on CNN today
Fortunately, Howard Dean is stepping up, making the case on CNN that the time has come for undecided superdelegates to make up their minds.
I need them to say who they’re for starting now. We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and
healing time. We’ve got to know who our nominee is.
Howard Dean has been patient -- probably too patient. Now that he's acted, it's up to the superdelegates to decide whether they will participate in the coup or not.
Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton among elected superdelegates -- congressmen, governors, and senators who hold their elite status at the Democratic National Convention by virtue of holding a major public office. Clinton still leads Obama among the mostly anonymous DNC members, the group of four hundred or so superdelegates who hold their position by virtue of being party officials.
There are 3,253 pledged delegates. Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 1,419 to 1,250 in this category. Clinton needs to win two-thirds of the remaining 566 delegates to secure a majority.
Of the 795 superdelegates, 301 are governors, senators, or congressmen. They support Obama, 105 to 97. (The rest are undecided.)
417 are DNC members or distinguished party leaders. They support Clinton, 153-119. (The rest are undecided.)
Just more evidence for what we already knew: Sen. Clinton is the candidate of insiders. Barack Obama is the candidate of the voters.
(I excluded the add-on delegates because their selection is connected to the voting process.)
Feeling bitter about the debate? Well, the good news is that Barack will cheer you up. In Raleigh today, he struck exactly the right note about last night's debate.
It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices.
Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element.
Here's the digg for the official campaign video (NOT this blog):
Obama's ability to draw sharp contrasts with a smile is one of his greatest political assets. I don't to say how he compares with Sen. Clinton on that score...just watch the shame on you mashup currently playing in the video pod at the top of the page.
As irresponsible as Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were last night, the fact still remains that the topics of debate belonged to Hillary Clinton. She can try hide behind Mark Penn, or Bill Clinton, or the media -- but she is the one turning this campaign into a paid political advertisement for John McCain.
As this diary on Daily Kos puts it: Hillary could've stopped it - but she didn't. "In fact, she goaded the moderators on to continue their birdshitting.
She didn't stand up for her fellow Democrat; she chose to embrace those
right-wing talking points to use against him."
I've got something like 165 videos on my YouTube channel, and it's not always easy for me to find what I'm looking for. So I decided to take my top videos and put them in a vodpod video gallery. You can find it here, and there will always be a link to it on the sidebar and at the top of the page.
Here's a sample from the collection -- a video I put together at the end of February about Barack Obama and Iraq.
In the past month, I've had about 1.4 million videos played from my YouTube channel. According to Tech President, during that entire span Hillary Clinton's campaign has had about one million videos played. And yes, my budget ($99 plus a lot of time) is a bit lower than hers.
It's true that ABC carried Clinton's water last night, and they deserve blame for having done so. But remember, it was Clinton's water they were carrying. The questions posed to Obama were all Clinton arguments in some form or another.
I thought Obama did just fine. Part of the reason may have been that I listened more than watched, and by the time that I was able listen/watch to the first part of the debate, I already knew what to expect.
One very important thing to note is that there were no disastrous moments for Obama. In a debate like this, Obama having done nothing memorable is a good thing.
Obama always does better in debates when sitting down. Fortunately, McCain will probably want to sit down in the general.
So many people were disgusted by the debate that it could actually help generate new enthusiasm for Obama's campaign and style of politics. So far this campaign season, things that we thought were going to be disasters weren't. Wright. Bitter-gate. Now the same could happen with his debate. Ask yourself: what do you remember from the debate? I think most Democrats will say they remember being angry at Clinton and angry at ABC. In that sense, the debate could have gone far worse.
The Country Club of Little Rock, where Bill Clinton has played golf
several times a year since he became Governor, sits on a graceful hill
in an exclusive neighborhood called the Heights, its greens sloping
down to the Arkansas River. Opened just after the turn of the century,
it recalls an older South in many ways, including its membership: 500
white men and women.
Last week Mr. Clinton, his quest for the
Democratic Presidential nomination seemingly wrapped up, found himself
under fire for playing at the club, and he quickly admitted he had made
a mistake and vowed never to play there again until it was integrated.
"A
guy asked me to play nine holes of golf," he said on Friday. "It was
the only place we had time to play. I should not have done it."
Hillary Clinton stood by the then-Governor's side without challenging his decision to play golf with racists, even after the media revealed that her husband had involved himself in this segregated organization for years.
In her own words, people don't choose their parents, but they do choose who they have relationships with. So by her own rules, isn't it a fair question to ask why she stood by her husband after his affiliation with a racist organization?
Now, to be clear, I'm not a fan of this sort of gotcha' politics. But Hillary Clinton is. And it seems to me that the media is perfectly entitled to raise these questions with her, since they freely challenge Barack Obama for having acquaintances who have said or done things that some people deem objectionable. (And they gave Michelle Obama hell for saying she was proud to be an American.)
It really would have been a great question for either Charlie Gibson or George Stephanopoulos to ask. But, not surprisingly, they whiffed.
Perhaps the reason is that Stephanopoulos worked for Clinton at the time. In fact, it was his job to explain Clinton's affiliation with the racist group to the media.
Irony, eh?
(By the way, contrary to some reports that Clinton paid $20,000 to join the club, it seems that Clinton was not a member. I'm not 100% sure about that, but it turns out that all Arkansas governors are allowed to play there as a
matter of club policy. The NYT article also doesn't claim that he was
a member.)
Update @ 9:45pm: Third time is the charm. The digg link to the video hosted on Andrew Sullivan's site just became popular. We're on the front page of Digg now -- excellent work everybody!
Bosnia and Back Again, my latest video, is off to a strong start -- it's gotten at least 86,323 views (up from somewhere between 36,697 and 66,064 view when I first wrote this post) and is currently the #2 top rated video in YouTube's news & politics category, and #5 #8 overall. It's also generating buzz on the web -- over at The Nation, Ari Melber calls it a "devastating" video. Reddit currently has Ari's post as its #1 feature. Andrew Sullivan posted it under the headline: "No One Left To Lie To." And of course AMERICAblog, The Field, and the Daily Kos community helped it get off the ground.
The new video digg
Despite that strong positive reaction, shortly after the video was posted on Digg, some (presumably pro-Clinton) digg users buried the video, despite getting over 300 Diggs. So it seems pretty clear that someone doesn't want people to see this video.
What can you do about this? Well, someone has set up a new digg to Andrew Sullivan's post about the video. Please digg that story. E-mail the video to friends, post it on your blog, and in comments. Go to reddit, StumbleUpon, and other sharing sites -- and rate it up. Help get this video in front of as many people as possible! It's free -- and you can make an impact.
Out here in Las Vegas, the debate won't be broadcast until 8pm local time (a bit over two hours), and I didn't realize until just now that I could watch it live on the Internet.
So of course as soon as I tune in, Senator Clinton is attacking Barack Obama for having served on a board on which William Ayres also served. When Obama was eight, Ayres was a member of the radical group The Weather Underground, which planned bombings against the U.S. government.
Officials Criticize Clinton's Pardon of an Ex-Terrorist (January 22, 2001) An unusual combination of New York political and law enforcement leaders have condemned former President Bill Clinton's pardon of Susan L. Rosenberg, a one-time member of the Weather Underground terrorist group who was charged in the notorious 1981 Brink's robbery in Rockland County that left a guard and two police officers dead.
The Goldwater Girl is returning to her right-wing Republican roots.
More self-mocking hilarity from Camp Clinton. One of the outraged "Pennsylvanians" in her new attack ad on Barack Obama's "bitter" comments actually voted in New Jersey on Feb. 5:
Clyde Thomas, who sports a goatee in the ad and says, “the good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said,” is actually registered in New Jersey. He voted there for Clinton Feb. 5.
To be fair to Clinton, apparently Thomas recently moved to Bethlehem. But it's still pretty funny.
“It shouldn’t be a big deal. I explained it to the campaign,” Thomas
said in an interview. “I see Pennsylvanians for what they are. I grew
up with the values of Pennsylvanians.”
Still, you'd think they could have found someone who actually votes in Pennsylvania...
"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."
The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House" -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching "Reagan Democrats."
Apparently, the Clinton camp wasn't too eager to discuss this with Stein.
The Clinton campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Presenting the newest production from The Jed Report -- Bosnia and Back Again, the story of Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Senator Clinton plays herself in a performance AMERICAblog calls "the most spectacular display of sniper fire since Tuzla." The Field declares that her effort seems like "a paid political ad for John McCain." Watch the trailer now:
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Turnout at the "100 Mayors for Hillary" rally was a little under 20 percent.
Nineteen mayors of Pennsylvania cities showed up for Tuesday's rally in the Rotunda of the Pennsylvania Capitol. Other mayors' names were listed on placards supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for the Democratic presidential nomination.
... One mayor who did show up was Easton's Sal Panto, who wildly overstated the size of the crowd when he introduced former President Clinton at a rally later Tuesday at Easton Area High School.
"Earlier today I was in our Capitol in Harrisburg, in the Rotunda, where I was joined by 100 other mayors across our state, in a coalition that this state has never seen, in support of Sen. Clinton," he said to cheers.
Today's WaPo is out with results from a new poll confirming what we had hoped -- Clinton's "bitter" gambit
boomeranged. In a companion article, the Post explores Clinton's growing honesty perception problem -- most voters don't think she's honest or trustworthy.
In that article, the most revealing passage was this one -- and it
had nothing to do with the poll itself:
One Clinton insider announced in a strategy meeting it was
ridiculous to have imagined the first lady ever having been in danger,
or for Clinton to have thought she was -- a slap at the senator from
New York that other advisers described as disrespectful.
That right there is the entire problem of the Clinton campaign.
Saying something obviously true is considered a slap. In healthy
organizations, telling the truth is rewarded; in dysfunctional ones, it's treated as disrespect and you get shunned.
We can't afford another President who won't let his or her staff speak truth to power.
That's the kind of organizational failure that gets us stuck in Iraq.
To paraphrase Keith Olbermann, if bittergate is Obama's worst gaffe of the campaign, the polls are starting to suggest he might want to gaffe more often. Seems like the pundits might have this one about as right as...Wright.
It's a long article, and I admit I didn't read every district. The key stat: CQ projects the district-by-district split to be narrow, 53-50 (for Clinton). Another 55 delegates will be distributed by statewide popular vote, meaning that overall Clinton might net 15-20 delegates -- tops -- out of Pennsylvania. (h/t: Ben Smith)
As a reminder, when people say things like Barack Obama has won, or Hillary Clinton has lost, it's not idle rhetoric. Obama's numerical lead really is insurmountable:
Clinton's best case scenario is to end the campaign trailing by 100 to 150 delegates. At that point, she'd need about two-thirds of the uncommitted superdelegates to sign up for a coup. And there just isn't any evidence that will happen. Indeed, superdelegates are moving the opposite direction, either endorsing Barack Obama, or embracing the Pelosi standard: pledged delegates will determine the nominee.
Most ominously for Senator Clinton, her own supporters are moving towards the Pelosi standard (Barney Frank is the most recent example).
This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.
HILLARY CLINTON: I know that many of you, like me… were disappointed by recent remarks that he made. (jeers)
ANNOUNCER: There's a reason people are rejecting Hillary Clinton's attacks. Because the same old Washington politics won't lower the price of gas or help our struggling economy. Barack Obama will represent all Americans. He offers a new approach.
OBAMA: When we get past the politics of division and distraction and we start actually focusing on what we have in common, there's nothing we can't accomplish…I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.
So the polls are suggesting the immediate fallout from Bittergate is minor. Going forward, that means the actual words that Obama said
will grow decreasingly relevant.
Now, just like in the spin room after a debate, the battle is over how his
remarks will be characterized and remembered.
Clinton, channeling McCain, wants to the controversy to become a
symbolic short-hand for Obama's race and non-traditional childhood.
Obama, while conceding that his remarks were awkward and inelegant,
wants people to remember the fundamental truth of the economic
bitterness of which he spoke.
There's an obvious absurdity to all this: in normal life, when someone
says something ambiguous, you ask for a clarification. Barack Obama has
provided such a clarification over and over: he was conveying a concept
that isn't at all controversial, one that is shared by both Clintons.
Hillary Clinton refuses to accept that basic fact, however. The reason
has nothing to do with what's right or wrong. The reason is that she
believes that to become president, she must destroy Obama first.
The irony is that probably more than any other single factor, the thing
that has cost Senator Clinton the nomination is her constant pattern of
attack.
The YouTube description of this ad says it is on air, but I can almost guarantee that it is web only -- it doesn't have the "approved by" tag required for TV ads.
It's also text-heavy, which is great for the web, but bad for broadcast TV. But if this style of a new ad campaign -- I think the Obama campaign will be onto something very strong.
The video of Clinton defending lobbyists is really priceless.
According to Pollster.com's index of Pennsylvania primary polls, tere have been four new polls conducted at least partially since "bittergate" came to dominate the campaign.
The most important takeaway I think is that the ARG poll is very likely an outlier, suggesting that the initial damage of Obama's remarks is relatively minor. In fact, according to SurveyUSA, 43% of Pennsylvanians agreed with what Obama said, whereas 50% disagreed.
Al Giordano is taking a bullet for the team and hosting Hillary's sickening new ad at The Field. He asks:
The question is, how many Clinton supporters are there that aren’t
signing up for the slash-and-burn-down-the-Democratic-Party strategy
that is now naked and running around on TV? Those that remain silent
will probably lose credibility later on because in times of moral
crisis, silence is seen as complicity. That’s another reason Rendell
has drawn limits on his own participation in these attacks.
As
The Field blog puts it: "New Ad for John McCain Hits Pennsylvania
Airwaves." Too bad it's paid for and produced by Hillary Clinton. Watch Hillary's latest kamikaze ad, then ask yourself if you'll ever vote for this woman again.
I know my answer to that question. As far as I am concerned, Hillary Clinton is no longer a Democrat.
At this point, I'm rooting hard for Obama to fire back with a humorous -- but sharp -- ad challenging Hillary Clinton's credibility. She has lied repeatedly to voters in contest after contest -- and that's the real condescension. That's the real elitism.
The voters of Pennsylvania deserve the truth about Hillary Clinton, and I hope Barack Obama gives it them. And you know what? Even if they decide to support Hillary Clinton's kamikaze campaign, it's not enough. She still cannot win this nomination. Do the math. She loses.
Who knows what sniper fire illusions about 2012 are running through her mind, but this much is true: she is aiding and abetting John McCain -- and destroying her future in the Democratic Party.
In December, Bill made similar points on trade, immigration
...however in honor of more hypocrisy, I'll make an exception for this one:
"If [Republicans] could cut funding for Medicare, Medicaid, education,
and the environment, middle-class Americans would see fewer benefits
from their tax dollars, feel more resentful paying taxes, and become
even more receptive to their appeals for tax cuts and their strategy of
waging campaigns on divisive social and cultural issues like abortion,
gay rights, and guns." -- Bill Clinton, in his 2004 memoirs, My Life, making the same argument as Sen. Barack Obama.
There really isn't much difference between Bill's quote and Obama's. The key difference is that Obama uses a more active construction "cling" while Bill uses a more passive construction "more receptive to." But the essential point is exactly, one hundred percent indistinguishable.
Must be just one more example of an issue where Bill and Hillary disagree. Oh wait -- but Bill is on the trail falsely pimping the meme. I guess they are just cynical opportunistic hypocrites.
Second, existenz at Daily Kos reminds us, earlier in the campaign McCain said he couldn't imagine someone picking lettuce for a living, even for $50 an hour. Keep in mind that $50 an hour is $100,000 dollars a year, just a trifle above the median income.
But even though dainty John McCain can't imagine getting his hands dirty, I bet a lot of Americans would be willing to make $100,000 per year, even if it meant picking lettuce. $100k might be peanuts for McCain -- but not to most Americans.
I'm not aware of any video of McCain's remarks, but there is audio, and Barely Political included it in this funny video:
Clinton whacks Obama at a forum in Pittsburgh hosted by a Steelworkers-backed group, and is met by dead silence and, First Read reports, a few groans.
As Ben says, it's still a primary. I don't think Obama's "bitter" remarks will be damaging in general election, but I am certain that Clinton's hypocritical attack on them will ultimately alienate her further from the Democratic Party.
If you are a glutton for punishment want to watch the full attack (which was met with dead silence), MSNBC has the video.
Update: Over at The Field, Al Giordano has a good round-up of reaction to Clinton's remarks.
Update II (and bump): Here's Obama's remarks. The crowd actually liked what he had to say!
Nico Pitney finds some great quotes from Bill Clinton illustrating the breathtaking hypocrisy of Hillary's "bitter" gambit.
Here's Bill in 1991, talking about Republican politics:
When their economic policies fail, when the
country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do?
They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living
daylights out of them.
Those of us who have tried to have a career, tried to have an independent life, certainly somebody like myself...you know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life. -- Hillary Clinton, 1992, dismissing stay-at-home moms
Carthage (a commenter here and at The Field) strikes again. She gets all the credit for finding this video -- video that every single Pennsylvanian should see by next Tuesday.
Seriously. This is *the* video.
Talk about hypocrisy.
When Clinton made her comments, the conservative media trashed her harshly. Here's a relatively mild criticism from William Safire (the conservative former NYT columnist):
The cookies-and-tea stereotype is
elitism in action. Even the columnist Ellen Goodman, a grass-roots
feminist, was moved to comment: "Ouch."
Clinton's comments were indeed dismissive, but my point isn't that I agree with William Safire. Rather, my point is that $109 million later, Hillary Clinton has become William Safire.
I was raised by a single mom (though I did spend time with my dad). Obviously, my mom worked for a living, and she raised me to be a feminist (I'm a guy who proudly accepts the label). And for ten years, I worked for a strong woman who is now a U.S. Senator. So I know where Hillary was coming from.
But that's not the issue. The issue is Hillary Clinton's utterhypocrisy -- and her complete embrace of the right-wing's way of doing politics.
About ten minutes into CNN's special with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about their religious beliefs. It's called the "Compassion Forum" which seems a bit odd (compassion needn't be religious, right?).
Hillary Clinton went first, alternating between saying that Barack Obama should speak for himself on "bittergate" and then characterizing his remarks as a "legitimate political issue."
Whatever -- I'm looking forward to seeing Barack!
Update: Obama is on now, and watching him it reminds me that he is the best antidote to any political attack against him. If you notice, just about all the attacks against him are FUD -- attempts to raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I'm sure some people don't see it the same way I (or we) do, but it's hard for the FUD attacks to work when he gets a chance to directly respond.
There's lots of chatter today about "What Clinton wishes she could say," the VandeHei & Harris piece ticking off the reasons that Hillary Clinton remains in the race.
The striking thing about the article is that the authors themselves never directly say why she can't "rip off the duct tape." Implicitly, the explanation is fear of so-called "reverse racism."
In that sense, the subtext of the "wishes she could say" idea is that Clinton is, yet again, a victim. This has been the story of their political career: victim this, victim that. Now the Clintons are saying they are the victims of racial intolerance? Puhlease.
To the extent Clinton doesn't want to address this stuff head-on, the reason is that in comparison to Obama, her own case is flimsy. Remember what happened when she accused Obama of not being ready to be president? Tuzla. Northern Ireland. NAFTA.
There's more out there about here that people don't know -- it's not just Colombia and Kazakhstan. It's also Bill Clinton's paid relationship with a Chinese company now participating in the Tibetan crackdown. It's the relationship between her staffers, her husband, and the United Arab Emirates, specifically the Dubai Ports deal. It's the next Sniper Fire. It's her lies about NAFTA, Iraq, and more. We have no idea what else might erupt. And to the extent we know what we're going to get -- we know it won't be the truth.
By telling reporters off-the-record that "she can't say" why Obama is unelectable, the Clinton campaign encourages reporters to focus on Obama without considering her own weaknesses; they masterfully manipulate the media into carrying Hillary's water without them even knowing it.
For Pennsylvania Democrats, the best answer in the April 22 primary is Barack Obama.
In
a nomination campaign that has defied convention, Mr. Obama has
energized an entire generation of voters that, for the most part,
otherwise had checked out of political participation. That, at least,
portends a new approach to governance that can help to dissipate the
political miasma that has engulfed Washington at least since the
impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.
... But Mrs. Clinton also is a political lightning rod. There is little
doubt that a second Clinton presidency would further the deep
divisiveness that characterizes American politics — a divisiveness that
dug itself deep during the Clinton presidency, and even deeper during
the Bush-Cheney years.
The first task for the next president is
to get past that. And it might not be possible if the presidential
cycle goes Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.
Update: He also got the endorsement of the Allentown-Lehigh Morning Call.
If you're John McCain in the general election, do you run an ad using the scratchy audio recording of Obama speaking in San Francisco, or do you use video of Hillary Clinton's attack?
If you followed politics back in 1992, you probably remember that Hillary Clinton was ferociously (and unfairly) attacked for making this remark in a 60 Minutes interview about her husband's marital fidelity:
You know I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man
like Tammy Wynette.
The kitchen
sink must be just about empty, because now Hillary Clinton is using an
argument that would make Karl Rove blush: she's making the case that she's more
authentically American than Barack Obama.
I've edited together the essence of her message. Even if you've seen her statement before, watch this clip -- it's short, and I promise it'll be worth your while:
There was no subtlety to her point: in her four minute long attack
on Obama, Hillary Clinton used America (or one of its forms) 18
separate times. Compare that to primary night in New Hampshire, when in a twelve
minute victory speech she used it just ten times.
Obviously, there's nothing wrong with using the word America in a political speech. But there is something wrong with using it as a political weapon. And that's exactly what Hillary Clinton was doing today.
I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people
in small town America. Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are
out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of
Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know — not the Americans
I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent
in New York.
Hillary Clinton's meaning is clear: I'm more American than Barack Obama. In case there's any doubt, consider this statement in light of the fact that Barack Obama's father was a Kenyan citizen (the elder Obama was in the United States on a student visa):
"As far as I know"
When my dad grew up it was in a working class family
About six weeks ago, Hillary Clinton accused Barack Obama of employing the worst quality of politics, reminiscent of Karl Rove. "Shame on you," she said.
From Bill Clinton's December 15 interview with Charlie Rose:
So I think that the rise
of this is sort of crystallized for a lot of people, that I think
doubling healthcare premiums has had a lot to do with this -- the
further loss of health insurance coverage in America. So there's a lot
of economic anxiety.
In the Republican Party, it expresses itself as
this sort of very hard line against immigration. In the Democratic
Party, it expresses itself in a very hard line against trade. But the
real problem is we haven't created enough good new jobs.
Thanks to MasterSitsu, a kossack who alerted me to this section of the interview.
The contrast between Obama's and Clinton's remarks about bitterness is pretty striking, all the more so when you watch them side-by-side. So I put them into this five minute montage. I won't claim that I was trying to be fair to Clinton, but I did include what she said yesterday, plus the video that I had of her attack from today.
The big news for me today is that I get to vote for Barack Obama for the first time -- the Clark County (Las Vegas) Democratic Convention is today, and delegates are supposed to vote between 8am and 7pm. (Technically, I voted for Obama a month or so ago, but that convention got so crowded they had to cancel it in the middle of voting, so today is a do-over.)
Earlier today, Barack Obama once again found himself under attack from both John McCain and Hillary Clinton. What motivated their attack? These sentences from informal remarks he made at a fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot
of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years
and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton
administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive
administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna
regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get
bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who
aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as
a way to explain their frustrations.
Perhaps not the most elegant way for Obama to make his intended point, but informal remarks in small gatherings rarely are. But viewed in that light, Obama has nothing to be defensive about, and in his response to the McCain-Clinton attack, he stood his ground and went on offense, employing the patented Obama-Jujitsu (focused, rightly, on McCain).
I've posted the Obama's counter-attack in the video pod at the top of the page as well as in the sidebar. It is incredible -- I've never heard him talk like that before. The subtext of the McCain-Clinton attack is that Obama is an elitist. Listen to him -- you'll see he's got all the pickup truck they can handle. If he integrates this tone into his stump speech, he'll have conquered one of the key challenges he has had in connecting with working-class white voters.
Out of touch, privileged, elitist, entitled, helpless, hapless, clueless. Gack. Via WaPo, it appears he’s having trouble adjusting to life as a “man of the people.”
Also, side note -- I've been spending much of the day working on a new video to capture Bill's bizarre embrace of some aspects of Hillary's Bosnia tale. I hope to have it up sometime this evening, but it might not be ready until the morning.
I can say this: so far, it's a fun video editing project!
A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Carthage, an Obama supporter who posts here and at The Field. She had found a video that I'd been desperately searching for: that moment in
February, 2007 when Hillary Clinton not only refused to admit making a
mistake on Iraq, but also told people they ought to consider supporting Obama or
Edwards if such an admission was important to them.
I've taken that clip and integrated it into a new video, Hillary Clinton: War, Lies, and Misjudgment. Here it is:
As always, let me know what you think, and if you like it, please digg it and share it with friends!
Barbosa says she was pretty fair to her
clients and got them the best deal she could in the marketplace. But
she says there was plenty of incentive not to put the customer first:
Lenders would offer her 1 percent or 2 percent of the price of the loan
as a kickback if she persuaded her client to take a higher interest
rate. That was legal and commonplace.
...so I'm watching this video I found on digg of a kangaroo jumping around on the loose in an Australian city, and I decided to digg it. The first comment?
I think this story should be about the kangaroo sniper lady...
Update, Friday morning: I just posted the video of Bill's remarks. Now I'm going to go catch a couple hours of sleep. When I wake up, I'll be working on a new Hillary (and Bill) in Tuzla trailer.
On Thursday, Bill Clinton decided to complain about the media and used Hillary's Bosnia story as example #1. (Transcript from ABC, with my own debunking.)
Bill in Boonsville, IN defends the tale
BILL: A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y'all see all that. Oh, they blew it up. Let me just tell you.
"One time late at night"? Um, not exactly, Bill. Try at at least three different days -- and at least 2 of them were not late at night at all. And it was 1996, Bill. 1996!
BILL: The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark -- who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way -- both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flack jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters.
Okay...she did go into the cockpit. But the airplane's pilot said the flak jacket thing was bunk. Nice, irrelevant story about Wes Clark, by the way.
BILL: So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.
Whoa there bill. Did you not see the eight-year-old girl reading Hillary and Chelsea that poem?
BILL: Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this.
Yeah, she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt...except for that other First Lady, Pat Nixon, who went to a war zone in Vietnam in 1969.
BILL: And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11:00 at night, too.
Again, with this 11:00 at night nonsense! Repeat after me Bill:
p.s.: It's even worse that you're blaming her age for the her Bosnia lies. If you think she can't tell a straight story at 11PM at night, what's she gonna' do at 3AM?
Today, Gallup offered more data confirming the correlation of education levels with general election preferences. Here's the numbers, along with Kerry and Gore for comparison's sake:
As you can see, the gap between the two candidates is large -- double digits in every category except "some college." On balance, Obama is in better position than Clinton, stronger in three of the four categories, falling short only among voters with a high school education or less.
Overall, this confirms that Obama will be the Democratic Party's strongest nominee. Still, I'd like to see him do a lot better among voters with just a high school education. We can't afford a Kerry-like performance.
So why does Hillary Clinton do better than Obama with these voters? Part of the explanation is that these voters genuinely like Hillary Clinton, who knows how to connect with them.
At the same time, these numbers suggest that less-educated voters are reacting against Barack Obama. So what's turning them off? Race? Bad bowling? Cerebral rhetoric? Clinton's attacks?
I'm sure all of those are having an impact, but I think probably the biggest turn-off to these voters is the false Muslim smear -- which more than any other group of voters, these voters believe to be true. Take a look at this data from a recent Pew survey:
It's pretty breathtaking, eh? Those with a high school education or less were three times as likely to believe Obama was a Muslim than college graduates.
Compare these numbers to those of Hillary Clinton. Among those who believe Obama is a Muslim, Clinton trails McCain by 10 points -- a whopping 16 points closer than Obama. Meanwhile, among voters who believe Obama is a Christian, he leads McCain by 8, Clinton by just 3.
I put together a spreadsheet and estimated that most of McCain's owes most of his lead over Obama among these voters to the false Muslim smear, and probably one-third to one-half of the gap between Obama and Clinton versus McCain is a result of the smear.
This is actually good news. To the extent that the education gap is a function of false perceptions, then correcting those false perceptions should mostly erase that gap.
Viewed in that light, a good chunk of the education gap isn't so much a weakness as it is a problem that can be fixed.
To be fair, it was a robocall reminding me that Clark County Democratic Party (Las Vegas) is holding its convention on Saturday and that I needed to get my butt over there to vote for Barack. Already on the calendar, Bill!
Andrew Sullivan posits that McCain's lead (recently more of a tie) is fleeting, and others agree.
I think one of the things likely dampening the poll numbers for both Obama and Clinton is that in the midst of a campaign, partisan supporters of each candidate have strong, self-generated incentives to believe the worst about their opponents.
In the case of Clinton supporters, you need look no further than Lanny
Davis and his take on Jeremiah Wright. I'd like to think that most
Clinton supporters in normal times would reject what is being said
about Obama by Davis, but now they have a strong incentive to grab a
hold of anything that they believe might help them win, no matter how shaky it
might be.
In the case of Obama supporters, you see it when we read David Brooks
or Peggy Noonan without realizing that in some ways they are merely
setting the rhetoric which they plan to use against Obama during the
campaign. Or in my personal case, accepting the New York Times account
of a Clinton yarn without remembering that the New York Times has the
same credibility issues as does Clinton.
The key fact right now is that Obama is going to win, but the campaign won't end until Hillary Clinton decides to concede.
Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government action to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the government to help qualified homeowners with subprime mortgages refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages.
Both Clinton and Obama called McCain out for his sudden reversal. Nice to see that.
Colin Powell has a lot to answer for on Iraq, but he remains a potent political force in America. It's a pretty big deal when he speaks as forcefully -- and positively -- as he did about Barack Obama, especially when it came to Jeremiah Wright. (From ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast 4/10.)
The relevant - the only relevant - question is: are Obama's beliefs
represented by the handful of video clips of the most incendiary of
Wright's sermons? Or to unpack it a little further: Does Obama believe
that black people should damn America? Does he believe that racial
separatism is a viable option? Is he a black liberation theologian?
Seriously, I can find absolutely no evidence that he is, and if anyone can, I will gladly eagerly air it.
Today, Jake Tapper today presented the case for fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Barack Obama, now being pimped by Sean Hannity and Karl Rove as well as the Clinton campaign.
Tapper's thesis was that
Obama is vulnerable because he has "some connections" to Willam Ayres,
a sixties radical who planned bombings
against the U.S. government (Ayres never killed or hurt anyone outside
of his own organization). The connections? In 1995, Obama visited
Ayres' home and Ayres later contributed $200 to Obama's state senate
campaign. They appeared on the same panel in 2002, and though Tapper
doesn't mention this, I think they were both members of a non-profit
board. Ayres' wife is also active in the school that Obama's children
attend.
Ayres is now a professor at the University of Illinois, and there is absolutely no indication whatsoever in anyway that Barack Obama holds any of Ayres' objectionable views. In fact, Obama, who was eight when Ayres was an active radical, has specifically denounced Ayres activities, and does not have close relationship with the man.
So there is no "there there." Still, the Clinton camp has pressed the case that this should be an issue -- never mind the fact that Bill Clinton actually pardoned several domestic terrorists, including a one-time member of Ayres' group arrested with 740 pounds of dynamite in her trunk.
Other than the tidbit about Hannity and Rove (big surprise), the only new piece of information in Tapper's article is this nugget:
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, has not endorsed Obama precisely
because he worries Obama is not tough enough to deal with attacks such
as these, such as the fact that this Ayres story is still out there,
with very little pushback from Obama -- or even, frankly, any
acknowledgment as to why some voters might not like the idea of Obama
being friendly with a man such as Ayres.
Color me skeptical. I don't believe Edwards nor anyone close to him has communicated this to Tapper. My view is that Edwards non-endorsement of Obama has more to do with their disagreement on health care than anything else.
But if Edwards has communicated this to Tapper, then I'm disappointed in him for participating in a whisper campaign of this nature.
If Tapper's claim is accurate, Edwards should air his concerns publicly, giving Barack Obama a chance to respond. Whispering has a way of magnifying fear, because it raises doubts and uncertainty that can only be resolved by raising questions in the public sphere. That can be initially uncomfortable, but in the end, it's the only way to fully dispense with irrational concerns.
If, as I suspect, Tapper inaccurately described Edwards'
concerns about Obama, I'd like to see Tapper issue a correction.
In the last few days, Hillary Clinton's campaign has finally seemed to recognize that she very well might lose, firing Mark Penn (with an asterick, the size of which no one seems to know) and hiring Geoff Garin, who immediately pledged there will not be a "thermonuclear climax" to the campaign.
At the same time, her campaign has continued press a two-front attack
on Barack Obama, accusing him of hypocrisy in a new radio ad campaign
and, on at least two public occasions, continued waging a campaign of
fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) against Barack Obama. (Specifically, I'm
talking about Lanny Davis and Ed Rendell.)
On the surface, this may seem schizophrenic, but I actually think savvy is more like it. The Clinton operation is now trying to deliver its attacks in more sophisticated fashion, recognizing the catch 22 she faces. They know the only way Clinton can win is by knee-capping Barack Obama, but if she is seen as knee-capping Barack Obama, then she can't win.
The only way that a sustained attack on Barack Obama can be executed without Clinton paying a personal price is if surrogates like Lanny Davis do the dirty work.
The problem for Clinton is that given Obama's commanding lead, it is unlikely that anyone other than the Clintons' closest friends (Davis goes back decades) will do their dirty work.
That means it will soon fall back onto the candidate herself to lead the attack. At that point, the question will be whether Hillary Clinton is willing to scorch the earth if no one else will do it for her.
In her personal life, Hillary Clinton may be $109 million richer than she was seven years ago, but on the campaign trail, her money woes are mounting.
According to Sacramento's CBS13, UC Davis is getting ready to serve the deadbeat Clinton campaign with collection papers. The university is owed more than $6,000 from an event held there this past January. The expenses include:
$500 for the school's marching band
$250 for janitorial cleanup services
$5,600 for security provided by the UC Davis Police
The television station reports that Clinton's Sacramento office closed two months ago, and that the Clinton campaign press office did not return a reporter's phone calls.
UC Davis will send its final notice to the campaign this week. If that doesn't result in payment, the university's next step will be to send the bill to a collection agency.
Update: As Joe Sudbay notes, tonight's big Elton John fundraiser means Clinton has got enough cash to pay back her creditors -- they better jump on it!
Bill Buckner returned to Fenway today and received a five minute standing ovation. Video at HuffPo, along with his classic error in the 1986 World Series. As an '86 Mets fan, I'm glad for the guy -- I really am -- though I can guarantee you the fans wouldn't have been this effusive if the BoSox hadn't won the '04 and '07 World Series.
On a related note, never wear a Cubs batting glove under your fielding glove, at least not if you play first base for the BoSox in the World Series.
Actually, there are so many reasons Barack Obama is winning. But at the center of it: judgment, intellect, and steady resolve -- three traits he displayed brilliantly before the Iraq war. As Obama reminded Democrats on Nov. 23, 2004:
It's important for us to stand our ground and take our licks, rather than what sometimes is our habit, which is to cave and whine about it afterwards, which makes us not only look weak, but petty.
It'd be okay if Bill were to support free trade agreements during Hillary's presidency, even if she opposed them.
But when Bill was president, she had to to a "good soldier" (David Gergen's words) on NAFTA, helping to secure its passage even though she personally opposed it?
That's either sexist as hell, or she was in fact inwardly as well as outwardly a supporter of NAFTA. Which is it?
As journalists prepare the inevitable obituaries for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, I hope we will remember what is -- at least for many of us -- the single most important reason that Hillary Clinton is losing the presidential nomination: her stubborn refusal to admit she made a mistake in voting for the war in Iraq. As she said in February, 2007:
If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did
not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are
others to choose from.
I have been fruitlessly hunting for a video Clinton's remarks, but today a reader (Carthage, here and The Field) tracked one down and got it to me. It's an ordinary CNN report, but watching it I'm still dumbfounded.
I still remember when I first heard those words, and I still believe they doomed her candidacy. As kos put it at the time:
The closer we get to the primaries, the more Hillary will realize that she can't escape her Iraq dilemma. I don't want her to apologize. I want her to say, "I made a mistake." Edwards did it. Just about every other Democrat who idiotically trusted this president and supported the war has done it. Had Hillary done this last year, the issue would be moot.
To be sure, Hillary Clinton says that knowing what she knows now, she would not have voted for the war. She gets no great credit for that concession, however. Anyone with a pulse would vote against the war if given a do-over with the benefit of hindsight.
But in life you don't get do-overs, and she did have enough information at the time to have made a different decision. She did make an error in judgment -- an avoidable one, and by refusing to admit that fact, she offered us no indication that she would avoid the very same error in the future.
Hillary Clinton will not have completely lost until she exits the race, whether it's in the next few weeks or it's in August. And as long as she stays in, the campaign continues, for better or for worse.
But there's no doubt that she will lose, and that moment from February 17, 2007 in Dover, New Hampshire is the single most important reason why.
One of the most amusing spectacles of the campaign has been watching Hillary Clinton claim that she didn't vote to authorize war, that she was only voting to put inspectors on the ground inside Iraq, and that Bush abused the limited authority that he was given. That doesn't seem to be what she thought on March 20, 2003 when she supported the following resolution:
I don't mention this to take Clinton's claim seriously. Just the opposite, in fact.
...so I could write headlines like Oliver Willis, who asks Sean Wilentz to stop whining:
And If I Was Six Inches Taller, Had Abs Of Steel And Looked Like Denzel Washington I Would Be Jessica Alba’s Baby Daddy. But I’m Not.
...If Senator Clinton wished to run for the nomination of a party with a winner-take-all nomination process, she would be well within her legal rights to do so - she simply needed to have changed her party affiliation to Republican.
In January, Clinton said called for more openness with regard to foreign government investment funds. She didn't mention that her chief strategist represented several such funds.
Now that the Colombia story is starting to gel, there's another story that deserves some discussion: the relationship between the Clintons, their aides (including Mark Penn), and the U.A.E.
A good place to start would be the Dubai ports deal.
The more I watch Barack Obama, the more impressed I am by his intellectual capacity. You just don't expect to see political leaders communicate with the clarity that Obama does.
I'm saying this after watching his questioning of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker. He wrapped up with the fundamental question that the Bush Administration has failed to answer. What does victory mean? What are our goals? What are we trying to achieve?
Needless to say, Petraeus and Crocker didn't answer. In fact, they were nearly speechless.
How can we ever expect to leave if we don't even know what we're doing there?
2005: Bill Clinton paid $800,000 to speak to Latin American audiences by
a Colombia-based business investment organization that supports the
Colombian trade agreement. On the trip, Clinton praised the Colombian and other trade agreements. He had supported the Colombian agreement since 2000.
April 2007: Al Gore withdraws from an environmental conference in Miami to avoid appearing with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, widely criticized for human rights and labor abuses. Gore calls Uribe's record "troubling."
April 2007: The Colombian government hires Glover Park Group, a lobbying firm founded by Clinton administration officials, to help win passage of a free trade agreement with the United States. Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's current communications director, was a principal employee and currently retains an equity stake in the firm.
May 2007: The Colombian government hires Burson-Marsteller, a public affairs firm headed by Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, to support the free trade agreement.
May 2007: Obama joins Chris Dodd and six other Senators in expressing "grave concern regarding the infiltration of important Colombian state
institutions by terrorists and drug traffickers" to Sec'y of State Rice (via Think on These Things).
Clinton and Uribe, June 2007
June 2007: Bill Clinton accepts "Colombia is passion" award from Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. "We need to remember that we are friends," said the former president.
"We need to remember that we want to share a common future."
March 31: Penn meets with Colombian government to push trade deal.
April 2: Colombian President Uribe attacks Barack Obama for opposing the trade deal.
April 4: Penn's meeting becomes public. The Clinton campaign says Penn's meeting was unrelated to the campaign, but the Colombian government does not corroborate that account.
April 5: The Colombian government announces it is firing Penn.
April 6: Penn loses his title with Clinton campaign, though the extent to which his influence will diminish is unclear.
What more is out there? And given the Clintons' deep organizational and personal ties to Colombia, does anybody really believe that mark Penn's 3/31 meeting was entirely apolitical?
Finally, a note to keep this in perspective. As Ben Smith notes, prominent Obama supporters like Tom Daschle are advocates of the Colombian deal, and on balance, Obama -- like Clinton -- seems to be a proponent of more trade, not less -- although he has been steadfast in his support for labor and environmental standards.
The key difference is that Obama himself does not seem to have any personal financial ties to Colombia, certainly none such as the link between Bill Clinton and Alvaro Uribe, and neither do his top campaign aides.
Update: Reader BF alerted me to a May 07 entry, now added. Obama and Dodd expressing grave concerns about Colombia to Condoleeza Rice.
Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of
dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade
pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post
that the former president shared their sentiment.
In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000
by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches
throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a
development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and
educating world leaders about the Colombia's business opportunities.
Even if Clinton wins 56% of the remaining delegates -- a near impossibility -- she'd still need 65% of the uncommitted superdelegates to stage a coup. That's not going to happen.
Two more weeks until Pennsylvania, which means in two more weeks it could be all over. If Clinton doesn't manage to get 60% of Pennsylvania's delegates, she will have absolutely no path to the nomination.
I think the press will set 55% as the key benchmark, which is far too generous, so they will probably continue paying attention to Clinton, but her small flicker of hope will be completely extinguished if she falls short of 60%.
But even though the press will be paying the irrelevant Hillary Clinton attention, we don't have to. So here's my proposal:
Let's go on strike against talking about Hillary Clinton as a political opponent if she doesn't get at least 60% of the delegates in Pennsylvania. For the balance of the month of April, we will not mention her name as a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination. We can then reevaluate in May.
What do you think? If she can't win enough delegates to attain relevancy, it'll time be time we focused on McSame, eh?
Update (via Andrew Sullivan): More evidence that Clinton is unlikely to hit the 60% threshold. Quinnipiac gives her a 50-44 lead, down slightly from her 50-41 lead last week -- and women may be moving towards Obama.
Update II: Two more polls, one by Rasmussen and one by SurveyUSA. Rasmussen has it as 48-43 for Clinton; SurveyUSA has it as 56-38 -- a huge 18 point lead. As Carthage notes in the comments, SurveyUSA has a track record as one of the most accurate pollsters out there, adding:
HRC rising in PA. We need to keep working like we are 30 points behind, and not let the expectations be raised!
I started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did.
-- Hillary Clinton, 4/5/08
Yes, that's a pretty crazy thing to say, but this being Clinton,
there's some parsing involved. In her mind, anything that happened
before January, 2005 doesn't count, because she and Barack Obama
weren't both in the Senate.
Okay -- but as Jake Tapper documented, Clinton's story was flat-out false.
I did a bit of digging, found the video of Barack Obama on January
18, 2005 at Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearing. This is the Barack
Obama we love -- intellectual and sincere, respectful but
uncompromising. And criticizing the Iraq war as a U.S. Senator --
before Hillary Clinton.
Here's Clinton on Saturday (extended version here):
As Tapper explained, the only evidence Clinton's folks could come up with to defend her claim was a written statement from January 26, 20058 -- eight days after Obama questioned Rice. Note that this was a statement for the record -- she didn't give it herself, and may never have seen it.
Meanwhile, a few weeks later, in February 2005, she was touring Iraq with BFF John McCain.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, and Sen. John McCain were part of a five-member congressional delegation visiting Iraq.
Faleh Kheiber, AP
BAGHDAD (AP) — As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.
Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 elections.
"The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters inside the U.S.-protected Green Zone, a sprawling complex of sandbagged buildings surrounded by blast walls and tanks. The zone is home to the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy.
When they returned from Iraq, Clinton and McCain made a joint appearance on Meet the Press. Not surprisingly, she was hardly critical of the war. Sorry, no video, but I've posted the full transcript of Iraq-related questions put to Clinton here.
Meanwhile, the truth is that Barack Obama has been consistently strong on the Iraq war:
...does The Page (Halperin's site) sometimes look embarrassingly like a steaming hot press release, straight from Camp Clinton? (Large image after the jump. And yes, I know this blog is partisan, but Halperin is supposed to be "objective"!)
BAGHDAD (AP) — As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.
Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 elections.
"The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters inside the U.S.-protected Green Zone, a sprawling complex of sandbagged buildings surrounded by blast walls and tanks. The zone is home to the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy.
When they returned from Iraq, Clinton and McCain made a joint appearance on Meet the Press. I've included the Iraq-related questions put to Clinton after the jump. (Sorry, no video!)
Sean Wilentz has a pro-Hillary essay at salon.com that arguing that "if the system made sense," Hillary Clinton would win.
Wilentz favors a state-based winner-take-all system, and it is indeed true that if we retroactively instituted a winner-take-all delegate allocation method, Clinton would have a lock on the nomination.
But there's a glaring flaw with this argument: if the system were winner-take-all, Obama would have used a different strategy -- resulting in different outcome.
WaPo's Michael Dobbs (The Fact Checker guy who gave the Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire four Pinocchios) has a really good truth squad article from January about Clinton and Obama on Iraq. There's lots of interesting tidbits -- including that it seems that Clinton and Obama have differed on two Iraq-related votes, not just one as Clinton had claimed.
I don't quite agree with his net takeway (that they've both been fibbing a little) but then again, he wrote this in January, before Clinton took her campaign of disinformation and put into overdrive.
A few minutes ago, I was trying to hunt down a video clip of Hillary saying this:
If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did
not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are
others to choose from.
Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful -- but I did run across this prophetic post by kos that made the search at least somewhat worthwhile:
I started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did.
Seriously. She said that. No joke.
I mean at least with sniper fire, there was a chance -- however slim -- that she'd get away with it.
But this? This is just plain crazy.
Clinton made the claim on Saturday in Eugene, Oregon. In her full answer, she told other mistruths.
Now, this being a Clintonism, there's a bit of parsing involved. But even using Clinton's convoluted metric, her statement is false. ABC's Jake Tapper explains:
Clinton on Saturday told Oregonians, "when Sen. Obama came to the
Senate he and I have voted exactly the same except for one vote. And
that happens to be the facts. We both voted against early deadlines. I
actually starting criticizing the war in Iraq before he did."
It's an odd way to measure opposition to the war -- comparing who
gave the first criticism of the war in Iraq starting in January 2005,
ignoring Obama's opposition to the war throughout 2003 and 2004. (And
Clinton's vote for it.)
But even if one were to employ this "Start Counting in January 2005"
measurement, Clinton did not criticize the war in Iraq first.
Tapper goes on to show that Obama criticized the Iraq war on January 18, 2005 during Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearings. Clinton says she started criticizing the war on January 26, 2005 -- 8 days after Obama.
Of course, Clinton's "January '05" metric is absolutely inane -- Obama opposed the war from the beginning, and she supported it. But it is rather hilarious that even by her own ridiculous standards, her story is false.
I'm probably going to be doing a new video about this last tale, but to tide you over and to start setting the record straight, here's a video about Barack Obama's record on Iraq:
Got any ideas, suggestions, or recommendations on what other video clips -- pro and con -- that I should include?
Long overdue. Also, last week Charlie Black, who was not only McCain's top campaign adviser but also the long-time chairman of Mark Penn's lobbying firm, resigned from Penn's firm to go work full-time on the McCain campaign.
Update: Changed title from Mark Penn Resigns to Mark Penn Sidelined.Sidelined (Ben Smith's words) is better way to put it. Penn is still with the campaign -- just in a less powerful role (at least officially).
Update 2:Changed "Sidelined" to "Loses Title." I like the way Ari Melber puts it best -- Mark Penn has lost his title. I tend to agree with dawnt: it's smoker and mirrors. Penn will continue to hold at least as much power as he did before losing the title.
Back in early January, John Edwards put a spotlight on Nataline Sarkisyan, a murder-by-spreadsheet victim who had just died because an insurance company refused to authorize treatment for her leukemia.
In the final debate before New Hampshire, Edwards raised Nataline's case as an illustration of the importance of fighting against corporate power. He then spoke about his work in the U.S. Senate to help pass the patient's bill of rights -- legislation that George Bush and the GOP eventually blocked.
Clinton's unprovoked attack
Amazingly, Hillary Clinton launched into an unprovoked attack on Edwards. To some, it seemed as if she was blaming Edwards for Nataline's death. If she wasn't, she came damn close.
Here's what Clinton said:
CLINTON: You know, Senator Edwards did work and get the patient bill of rights through the Senate -- it never got through the House. One of the reasons that Natalie (sic) may well have died is because there isn't a patient's bill of rights. We don't have a patient's bill of rights.
The very next day, Edwards held a town hall event with the Sarkisyan family. Once again, the Clinton campaign launched an unprovoked assault on Edwards, accusing him of exploiting a tragedy for political gain.
Edwards responds to Clinton's attack (h/t: Michael Moore)
KEENE, N.H. – John Edwards angrily took on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at two news conferences in a row on Sunday, saying that her campaign “doesn’t seem to have a conscience.”
Mr. Edwards was responding to a comment from Jay Carson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, who suggested that “the references in Senator Clinton’s speeches are about people she has actually helped and changes she has actually made, not stories she’s pulled from the newspaper and included in her stump,” Mr. Carson wrote in an E-mail message.
Mr. Carson’s comment was in reference to an emotional town hall event Mr. Edwards held in Manchester early Sunday afternoon, featuring an appearance by the parents of Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient who died in December after her insurance company denied her a liver transplant. Mr. Edwards had recently incorporated the story into his stump speech as a criticism of insurance companies.
The town hall with the Sarkisyans actually highlighted the core
problem with health care in America: our system of private insurance.
Clinton's story, on the other hand, put at least as much blame on the
front-line providers as it did on the system, in the process placing
the focus on the wrong part of the system.
Note @ 12.38pm: I've updated this post with the material from the debate.
For the record, via Taylor Marsh (I think she may live here in Las Vegas too, yikes!), Big Tent Democrat has what seems to be the officially unofficial response
by the pro-Clinton blogosphere to the whole health care story debacle.
Perhaps the biggest open question at this point is whether Clinton continued telling the story after her campaign learned it wasn't true. It seems likely that she did based on the following timeline:
Clinton told the story Friday night during a speech on Grand Forks, ND. The speech began at 9:45PM Eastern time. (It was 8:45PM local.)
According to Google News, by midnight that same night, the New York Times had published its story.
Unless the NYT waited to contact the Clinton campaign until 9:45PM Friday night, Clinton told the story after her campaign had been told -- and accepted -- that the story was false.
Since the article was published at midnight, If the NYT did wait until 9:45PM to contact Clinton, it would have had to have done so in the next two hours and fifteen minutes. Given the late hour and the narrowness of that window, that seems to be a very unlikely scenario.
Therefore, in all likelihood, the Clinton campaign was aware the story was false as Clinton continued to tell it.
If that is proven true, then the question becomes: why did Clinton continue to tell the tale? Were people afraid to tell her? Were lines of communication bad? Did they think nobody would notice?
It's doesn't just go to credibility -- it also goes to judgment.
Update on April 7, 2008: The AP is out with a report that partially vindicates some elements of Clinton's story. The essential facts from the story:
The deceased woman "did in fact have health insurance when she and her baby died."
At an earlier time, the woman was uninsured and did run up bills and was refused treatment at a clinic. It is not clear when that earlier time was.
The woman went to an O'Bleness facility 30 miles to the north and was treated there.
The woman's aunt felt "medical professionals did all they could to save" the woman.
The woman's town has "about 2,000 residents and two medical clinics. One is affiliated with O'Bleness, the other is the Holzer Clinic, part of a nine-facility chain."
The woman did not go to the local O'Bleness clinic and "''she would not have been turned away for lack of payment'' if she had sought treatment there."
Holzer, the other clinic, says it has no records of the woman going to its clinic at any point in the last five years.
This is still a bit of a mystery, because the woman's aunt says she was refused care in her hometown, but both of the clinics there deny that to be the case.
I'll update if there is any further clarity.
***
Major update: I've completely overhauled this post. The original is here.
OVERVIEW:
Saturday's New York Times described a horrifying tale told by Hillary Clinton in speeches over the past month:
Clinton tells the tale in Wyoming
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.
Just one problem: the story, intended to illustrate the need for a universal health care system, turns out to have been false. According to Times, contrary
to what Clinton had claimed, the deceased woman actually did have insurance
and did receive care.
Moreover, according to the Times, the non-profit hospital where
the woman was treated says the Clinton campaign had never contacted them to
check if the story was true. For its part, the Clinton campaign
has conceded it had never vetted the story, and accepted that the story was not true.
::
THE GOOD NEWS: HILLARY CLINTON DID NOT IMAGINE SNIPER FIRE:
Clinton was told the story by a local sheriff's deputy in Ohio, and her versions of the story seem to match the ones he shared with her and the media five weeks ago. So it's pretty clear that she didn't make anything up on her own, at least not anything major.
She did, however, spend one month of her campaign using a compelling but false story -- one that her campaign had never bothered to check -- as a key part of her argument for universal health care, which she says is the centerpiece of her campaign.
Sounds kinda' like the way Bush handled the imaginary WMDs in Iraq. Just because something makes a good story doesn't make it true. Just because something helps you make a case for a policy you support doesn't make it true.
If you're the president, you've got to check your facts.
::
VIDEO:
You really have to watch Hillary Clinton tell the tale to get a sense of why the Times report will reinforce the hardening perception that she has a reckless disregard for the truth. Here is a CNN discussion of the affair, including a clip of her telling the story Friday night in Grand Forks, North Dakota:
Here's ABC Evening News from Saturday:
Can you imagine telling a story like that day after day after day and not checking the facts?
Hillary Clinton did not vet her story: The details strain credulity -- a hospital denying emergency care to a pregnant woman who didn't have $100 to her name? If warning bells weren't going off in her mind, they should have been. We don't need another president who doesn't check the facts.
Hillary Clinton presented the imaginary elements of this story in vivid detail: Even though she had not checked to see if the story was true, Hillary Clinton told the story as if she had been there herself. Perhaps she had -- in her own imagination.
Hillary Clinton is a fabulist:Tuzla. NAFTA. Superdelegates. Now this. All politicians stretch the truth from time to time -- yes, that includes not just McCain but also Obama -- but Clinton does it with comfort that is terrifying.
This campaign, Clinton has embarrassed herself repeatedly with exaggerations and falsehoods. Voters don't trust her -- and she keeps on giving them good reason not to. Clinton says that she, not Obama, is the candidate who can beat John McCain. Actually, the opposite is true.
This is my obligatory defend the Clinton campaign post of the month...
Newsweek's Andrew Romano posits that up to $13 million of the $20 million the Clinton campaign says they raised in March could be designated for the general election, meaning that they raised a meager $7 million for the month. If true, that would be a political earthquake and would almost certainly mean the imminent demise of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Only one problem -- Romano's conjecture is totally wrong.
The title of the post is a fitting epitaph for the Clinton era in the Democratic Party. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't -- the words belongs to Joel Connelly, the top political reporter in the northwest and one of the best in the country. He's now a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and his most recent column (digg it) is a devastating appraisal of the Clinton campaign as it heads into its final days.
As Joel argues, whether the Clintons are ready to accept the situation or not, Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency is in its closing stages -- and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
The miscalculations and misjudgments -- which likely have cost Hillary Clinton the nomination, and Bill Clinton much of his reputation -- are the campaign's own doing.
In years past, the Clintons showed an amazing knack for getting themselves into binds, then escaping tight corners. It has deserted them.
As the saying goes, it ain't over 'til it's over -- but it's pretty close to over. All that's left is for us to finish the job.
Most people think Obama's going to win, and that took the sting out of James Carville's Judas attack. Losers can't be bullies, and a growing number of people see the Clintons as losers -- and Barack Obama as a winner.
The polls don't yet fully reflect this trend, but it's real. Here are some examples:
1. Grassroots enthusiasm much stronger for Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton
In 2007, Hillary Clinton outraised Barack Obama, ~$121 million to ~$107 million. So far in 2008, Obama has outraised Clinton $127 million to $68 million.
More importantly, Obama's fundraising has come from over one million individual donors. Last month, his average contribution is less than $100 -- a remarkable achievement.
Meanwhile, on the campaign trail Barack Obama is a rock star. He fills arenas, drawing 22,000 to a rally last weekend in Pennsylvania.
2. Obama has maintained the same rationale for his candidacy throughout the campaign
Barack Obama is making the same arguments today that he was making earlier in the campaign. Perhaps the best example: the central message of "The Speech" was exactly the same as his Ebenezer Sermon. True, he dealt with a new wrinkle -- the Wright flareup -- but he dealt with it successfully.
Clinton on the other hand has been forced into a kitchen sink strategy. You never know what she'll come up with next -- and neither does she. Case in point: Richard Mellon Scaife.
Clinton, on the hand, blew the Bosnian sniper fire gaffe at every opportunity.
3. Barack Obama quelled concerns from superdelegates by forcefully dispensing with Wright flareup, which could have become a full-scale crisis
Barack Obama's speedy and decisive handling of the Wright flareup is the mark of a winning candidacy. It was the most severe test any candidate has faced during the entire campaign and he passed with high marks all around.
4. Barack Obama has stuck with a simple -- and widely accepted -- definition of what it means to win
Barack Obama hasn't budged an inch from his position that voters should determine the nominee. Perhaps he only takes that position because he's leading, but that's not relevant -- his position is the right one.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has tried out just about every argument there is, among them:
Clinton's new rules are anything but consistent
arguing that delegates from some states don't count as much as others
claiming that Obama is trying to deny voters the right to have their voices heard
concluding that the process will be over by February 5th
attacking Obama supporters who say the race will be over in May or June
agreeing that the votes in Michigan and Florida won't impact the nomination
saying that the votes in Michigan and Florida should be counted
arguing that we must count all the votes while urging superdelegates to overturn the judgment of voters
saying the number of electoral votes that a state has should determine should guide superdelgates
proclaiming that it's un-American to ignore the will of voters while suggesting pledged delegates should consider switching from Obama to Clinton
This type of absurdity is the mark of a doomed candidacy.
5. Obama's standard for victory has gained wide acceptance, and now even Clinton's own supporters are adopting his standard
6. Barack Obama is closing the gap in the competition for superdelegates
Superdelegates are turning towards Obama. According to today's LA Times:
In December, according to an Associated Press tally, Clinton led Obama by 106 superdelegates. In February, her lead had been cut to 87. As of Thursday, it was 30.
7. Barack Obama has won a virtually insurmountable delegate lead
1,627 is the real magic number -- once Obama hits that number, he'll become the nominee unless there is a coup by superdelegates. And with 1,419 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1250, he's a virtual lock to hit the number, needing just one-third of the remaining delegates.
When all the voting is done, Obama will probably lead by around 150 pledged delegates. But even if he only leads by 100 -- at this point, a worst-case scenario -- Clinton would need 65% of the remaining superdelegates to go her way. Given the growing consensus that superdelegates will not overturn the vote, 65% is unattainable, especially if she loses any of her current superdelegate supporters.
::
Even though there's virtually no chance Hillary Clinton will win the nomination, as long as she remains a candidate, we've got to take her seriously.
Personally, I don't understand why Clinton is remaining in the race. She had a better chance of getting away with the Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire than she does now of winning.
But it's not my decision to make. Still, saying she's going to lose is not the same as telling her to quit.
And so this bizarre campaign will continue, for another few weeks at least.
In December, according to an Associated Press tally, Clinton led Obama
by 106 superdelegates. In February, her lead had been cut to 87. As of
Thursday, it was 30.
McCain acknowledged that he was wrong to oppose creating a federal holiday in honor of the slain civil rights leader.
“We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King,” McCain said. “I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans. But he knew as well that in the long term, confidence in the reasonability and good heart of America is always well placed.”
Update: Penn says the meeting was an "error in judgment" and repeats claim that Clinton's opposition was not discussed. The skepticsnark in me wonders if Penn's statement might be ripe for some parsing -- perhaps her opposition wasn't discussed because they discussed her support? I still think there needs to be an explanation why the Colombian government, which has close ties to the Clintons, didn't understand what Penn's role was.
Everybody is talking about the WSJ bombshell that Hillary Clinton's top campaign aide met with the Colombian government on a trade deal she claims to oppose and that he's working to pass. All sides agree that the aide, Mark Penn, is a hired gun for both Clinton and Colombia. The question is who was he representing at the meeting? Camp Clinton says Penn represented his firm, Burson-Marsteller. The Colombian government isn't so sure, however. The WSJ:
A spokesman for Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe said
the ambassador met with Mr. Penn to discuss the bilateral agenda.
"There have also been meetings with the advisers to the campaigns of
Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain," he said. "It's the embassy's
job to explain Colombia's reality."
The spokesman said he didn't know if Mr. Penn was
representing Sen. Clinton or Burson-Marsteller, which signed a
$300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy in March 2007 to
work on behalf of the trade deal and anti-drug-trafficking initiatives,
according to the Justice Department filings.
A spokesman for Sen. McCain, the likely Republican
presidential nominee, said a team of policy advisers met recently with
20 Latin American ambassadors, including Colombia's. An Obama spokesman
and the Colombian Embassy spokeswoman both said the Colombian
ambassador had never met with an Obama representative.
Ironically, last month, Hillary Clinton played the victim card when she alleged an Obama adviser had done the same thing Penn did.
Peering at the 50 or so reporters packed into a small hotel conference
room here, she added: "I would ask you to look at this story and
substitute my name for Sen. Obama’s name and see what you would do with
this story ... Just ask yourself [what you would do] if some of my
advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments."
Clinton's gambit was succesful, I might add. The NAFTA story was a very big deal in the final days before Ohio.
Clinton falsely attacked Obama for doing what her chief strategist has now done
Today's Wall Street Journal reports that on Monday, Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, met with the Colombian government to "discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement," a trade deal Clinton says she opposes. (h/t: Joe Sudbay)
The agenda of Penn's meeting with the Colombian ambassador was explicit: winning support for a new free-trade agreement.
This is a pretty remarkable act of hypocrisy: during the past month, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly and falsely attacked
Barack Obama on NAFTA, claiming that his top economic adviser told the
Canadian government to ignore Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric. Now her chief strategist is working with the Colombian government to enact a trade deal she claims to oppose?
I wish I could take credit for writing the title to this post, but I can't. Those words belong to Joel Connelly, the top political reporter in the northwest and one of the best in the country. He's now a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and his most recent column is required reading.
AS HER ham-handed handlers insult entire states, and her
self-absorbed husband indulges in red-faced, finger-wagging outbursts,
Sen. Hillary Clinton soldiers on.
It is a joyless campaign, with stump speeches that carry tales of
woe and get delivered in a booming voice that could open a wall safe.
A full three months after the Iowa caucuses, nearly two months after
Washington's caucuses, the Clintons seem bent on turning the Democrats'
fertile ground into scorched earth.
It gets better from there -- including his Judas line. You can digg the article here -- this is a column people should read.
(For the sake of full disclosure, I should note that I've known Joel since 1994, when I was the Press Secretary for a U.S. Senate campaign that he was covering.)
To give you an idea of how good a reporter Joel is, this past January a few days before the Nevada caucuses, I went to go see John Edwards at a town hall event -- and Joel was at the event. Keep in mind Joel is a Seattle-based reporter and he was doing a more thorough job than many DC-based reporters, most of whom pretended that John Edwards didn't even exist.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, by all accounts Hillary Clinton's most important surrogate, makes Rev. Jeremiah Wright the centerpiece of Clinton's electability argument against Obama during an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper:
"I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate." -- Gov. Rendell on Feb. 12
You don't think the Republican 527s are going to leave this stuff
alone do you? You don't think you're going to see 527 ads
with the explicit comments Rev. Wright said, about Rezko and the land
deal? You're going to see 527 ads about all of those things.
This is a classic FUD campaign -- a strategy to paralyze the playing field by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. (I first heard the term in the 1990s, when it was used to describe Microsoft's business practices in the 1990s. At the time, I was a marketing executive for one of MSFT's competitors.)
Clinton's FUD attack should help dispel the notion that she is giving up, or that she is going positive. Her candidacy may be doomed, but that doesn't mean her campaign will in any way restrain its attacks against Obama.
Can you imagine if a top Obama surrogate like Bob Casey had said that Republican 527s will raise impeachment or Whitewater investigations? It's one thing to attack Obama's credibility on something like energy policy -- that's totally fair game. But using Wright and Rezko as the centerpiece of a FUD campaign is quite another.
Moreover, on the merits, Rendell's argument is wrong. Obama has actually weathered both the Wright and Rezko flareups quite well -- Clinton, on the other hand, took a serious hit after her bizarre tale of Bosnian sniper fire.
The biggest reason for that? Barack Obama is not Jeremiah Wright, and there's nothing to suggest he believes any of it. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, made the sniper fire claims herself.
Everything we've learned during this campaign suggests Barack Obama is more likely to win the presidency than Hillary Clinton. But don't take my word for it. Here's what the voters say:
Few things in politics are less attractive than the sight of Karl Rove challenging someone's patriotism, and unfortunately it's looking like that's where he's planning to go. Undoubtedly, Rove hopes to use FOX News' wildly unfair caricature Rev. Jeremiah Wright as the basis for his swift-boating campaign.
Leaving aside for a moment the essential issue, which is that there is no transitive relationship between Barack Obama's views and Jeremiah Wright's views, it's also true that while Rove, Cheney, Bush are Chickenhawks, Jeremiah Wright proudly served this nation in the armed forces.
While John McCain is touring the country to tell his life story, it is worth remembering that he finished 894th out of 899 students at the Naval Academy. From the Des Moines Register's detailed timeline of McCain's life:
Summer 1958: Graduates fifth from the bottom of his Naval Academy class and is commissioned as officer.
That's not very impressive. Obviously, he missed some important lessons.
Update: I just saw on CNN that sources say Clinton raised $20 million. Reupdate: Ben Smith says the same thing.
Joe Sudbay notes the significance of the Clinton campaign's refusal to release its March fundraising numbers, concluding with the key political issue:
The
superdelegates should probably be asking about the financial viability
of the Clinton campaign. Remember, money was part of the Clinton
campaign's inevitability -- and she finished February with lots of debt and unhappy creditors.
Hillary Clinton just inflicted another 3AM ad upon the world, this time focusing on the economy. Of course, the whole idea of getting a 3AM phone call on the economy is absurd, so that raises the question: who would really be calling Hillary Clinton at 3AM? Well, now we have the answer:
Politico's Ken Vogel has the details on Clinton's debt problems, saying that her campaign has earned "a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles." And it's not just the embarrassment of being a deadbeat -- Clinton's money trouble is yet another indicator of a campaign struggling to survive.
Special thanks to newyorknewyork, a Kossack who e-mailed me with the idea of doing a video.
Al Giordano has an excellent post over at The Field detailing three critical reasons why Hillary Clinton is the prohibitive favorite to win in Pennsylvania. (Full disclosure: you have to skip over one of my videos to get to the good stuff.)
The super-short version of Al's post is: (1) There's a lot of Ohio in Pennsylvania. (2) It's a closed primary. (3) Don't forget about the Limbaugh Effect. I know there are polls showing Obama gaining ground there, and no doubt he is, but don't forget, he gained ground in Ohio and Texas too. Bottom-line: stay realistic.
More importantly, Obama doesn't need to win the state -- all he has to do is win at least 40% of the delegates at stake. And even that is a slightly high bar.
The Clinton folks are now portraying this campaign as an epic civil rights struggle, casting Barack Obama as the oppressor and Hillary Clinton as the oppressed.
They say that the small number of people who have called on her to withdraw from the race are denying people the right to vote.
On its face, that's an absurd position, especially in light of the fact that Barack Obama himself has clearly stated he believes she should stay in as long as she and her supporters want.
But the real absurdity is that even the Clinton campaign admits that in all likelihood, the only way Hillary Clinton can win is by overturning the judgment of voters.
There is a slim chance she could end up winning the democratic part of the process, and for that reason I wouldn't call on her to withdraw. The problem is, every indication is that the central reason she continuing the campaign is to give herself a chance to overthrow the will of the voters.
If that's her plan, she ought to think about changing it.
Perfect timing -- I just happened to turn on MSNBC and Barack Obama is on Hardball's college tour. What a reception he got from the crowd. The first question was a tough one:
You know, as a shareholder and director of our company, I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else. -- Hillary Clinton at Wal-Mart stockholder meeting
The Bill Clinton who met privately with California's superdelegates at last weekend's state convention was a far cry from the congenial former president who afterward publicly urged fellow Democrats to "chill out" over the race between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama. ...
A calmer Bill Clinton: "Chill out!"
According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.
But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.
It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.
"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted. ...
"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " one delegate told us.
"We couldn't help but think he was also talking to himself."
One of the things you hear a lot of is that the contest between Obama and Clinton extinguishing debate over issues that "matter" (like Iraq), or that it's taking away from the campaign versus McCain. There's probably a lot of truth to that.
But the reality is until we have a nominee, the problem will persist. So to those who berate Obama and Clinton partisans for ignoring bigger issues, I have a suggestion. Since you don't think it matters much who we pick, why don't step down from your moral perch and get dirty with us down in the trenches. Help us bring the campaign to a close -- until a winner emerges from the primary, we won't be able to unify the party and start the process of taking on John McCain.
(And no, in case you were wondering, this wasn't a call for Hillary Clinton to quit the campaign. That's a question for her and her supporters. All that I know is that she's going to eventually lose, and the sooner we can make that happen, the better.)
The centerpiece of the Clinton argument about Florida is that the January primary date was established by Republicans against the strong wishes of the Democratic leadership. Therefore, the argument goes, Democrats were victimized by Republicans, and the only way to right that wrong is to change the Democratic nomination process in the middle of the game.
Just one thing. The story is about as true as Bosnian sniper fire. Kos has more, including the video.
Aren't interrupters annoying? And don't you just absolutely love Rachel Maddow?
Update II: I've swapped out the video for this extended version, which includes some of Rachel's best moments against the The Interrupter.
Update:Today is Rachel's birthday. Happy birthday, Rachel! (Over at Daily Kos, Liberal Youth also posted her biography, which is damn impressive -- Rhodes Scholar, political activist, radio show host. Simply awesome.)
AS staff members who traveled with the first lady, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, to Bosnia in March 1996, we have followed with more than
passing interest the extensive news coverage of her landing in Tuzla.
Video footage clearly shows that Mrs. Clinton’s assertions that she
landed “under fire” and that the arrival ceremony was canceled were
wrong. She said so herself last week.
Hillary Clinton says she opposed NAFTA from the beginning. That's not what the record says, and my new video aims to expose Hillary Clinton's NAFTA story as the "sniper fire" nonsense that it really is.
