Category: The Dem Primary

The Storm Ahead.

While the focus is now rightly on Wisconsin and Hawaii, some thoughts on the March 4 contests (I didn’t want to post these until the chickens had hatched and the Chesapeake came through):

The good news: Part primary, part caucus, Texas is basically a logistical nightmare. That’s good news for the Obama campaign, since thus far it has shown considerable organizational savvy, particularly as compared to Team Clinton. (In fact, people who seem to know what they’re talking about are predicting a delegate lead for Obama in the Lone Star State.)

The bad news: A SurveyUSA poll released today has Sen. Obama down 17 in Ohio. We have work to do.

Surge along the Potomac.

And now, 8-for-8. Sen. Obama sweeps the Chesapeake primaries, taking Virginia by 29 (64%-35%), Maryland by 23 (currently 60%-37%), and the District by 51 (75%-24%). Best of all, he won across the board and made clear and undeniable in-roads into Clinton’s demographic base. Next stop, Wisconsin and Hawaii, which Sen. Clinton seems to be ceding for her Giulianiesque firewall of Ohio and Texas. (I’m not sure why — both could feasibly play to her strengths.) Update: Clinton’s going to Wisconsin after all.

Capping the night of victories was another splendid speech by Obama, one that clearly and organically weaved some Edwardsian bread-and-butter populism into the existing stump speech. Sen. Obama also spent some time going after John McCain, and, after ekeing out Virginia on his end, McCain returned fire. We still have a ways to go on the Democratic side, of course, and I’m definitely not counting the Clintons out yet. (If anything, they’re more dangerous than ever.) But, Obama’s definitely got the Big Mo. And, at least during the speeches tonight, it was starting to look and sound like a general election…

Update: The target for the Clinton campaign right now appears to be 56% — that’s the percentage of remaining delegates Senator Clinton need to win to defeat Senator Obama in the overall pledged delegate count. But, according to media poobah Howard Fineman, at least, even the Clinton campaign concedes that’s not going to happen, despite all the talk about the firewall strategy in Ohio and Texas. Instead, barring a monumental collapse by the Obama campaign, the Clintons are basically looking for they closest they can get to a photo finish, followed by the superdelegates breaking against the will of the pledged delegates. I seriously doubt that dog will hunt.

Obama endorses La Follette.

From Senator Obama’s impressive victory speech in Wisconsin this evening:

“The politics of hope does not mean hoping things come easy. Because nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere stood up when it was hard; stood up when they were told – no you can’t, and said yes we can.

And where better to affirm our ideals than here in Wisconsin, where a century ago the progressive movement was born. It was rooted in the principle that the voices of the people can speak louder than special interests; that citizens can be connected to their government and to one another; and that all of us share a common destiny, an American Dream.

Yes we can reclaim that dream. Yes we can heal this nation.“

The progressives are back!

Last Stand in Texas and Ohio?

“Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, also said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend. Some of them said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, may ultimately ‘go with the flow,’ in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.” The NYT reports on the general shakiness in the Clinton campaign at the moment, and reemphasizes the importance of Ohio and Texas on March 4. (Jon Chait disagrees.)”‘She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,’ said one Democratic superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. ‘The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.’ Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.“

All well and good, but really: Let’s not put the cart before the horse here. We have the Chesapeake primaries tomorrow, and while the polls clearly favor Sen. Obama, they favored him before New Hampshire as well. Let’s see how those critical primaries shake out first before presuming the Clinton campaign is in full rout. As we should all know by now, there’s nothing more politically dangerous than a Clinton with his or her back to the wall. (And, being as oblique as possible for Wire fans behind the curve, Norman Wilson‘s recent advice to Tommy Carcetti about Clay Davis also comes to mind.)

Spinning the Saturday Sweep.

How will the Clinton campaign rationalize the losses over the weekend? It’s not pretty. Said Senator Clinton: “‘These are caucus states by and large, or in the case of Louisiana, you know, a very strong and very proud African-American electorate, which I totally respect and understand.’ Noting that ‘my husband never did well in caucus states either,’ Clinton argued that caucuses are ‘primarily dominated by activists” and that “they don’t represent the electorate, we know that.‘” So, “activists” and African-Americans, not “real” Dems. Got it. As for Bill Clinton’s take: “‘Her campaign’s broad appeal is largely to people who need a president,’ Clinton told an audience in Silver Spring’s Leisure World retirement community tonight. ‘Very often they are working and busy and dont go to these caucuses.’” Sure. I guess holding them on a weekend probably didn’t help either. As a commenter at TNR wryly characterized the spin last night: “Clearly there’s been a massive flood of Latte sipping African American knowledge workers into rural Maine.“

Mind you, I’ve said before that caucuses may not be the best way to organize a statewide election. But, given both the breadth and depth of Obama’s leads in caucus states all across the country, Sen. Clinton’s continued losses speak less to the inherent problems of caucusing than to the inherent problems of the Clinton campaign. As I said yesterday, if her campaign is any indication of the managerial talent we can expect from a Clinton presidency, the prognosis is not good. To wit, it’s poorly managed, woefully disorganized, suffers from a lack of “activist” enthusiasm, and — like a certain Republican administration I could mention — clearly had no Plan B. (Also, apparently, Sen. Clinton wasn’t apprised of her dismal funding situation until after Iowa. Another managerial coup.)

More Endorsements, and the Big Three.

“‘Sen. Obama has been talking about hope and change and improving the morale of this country,’ Mr. Anchia said. ‘Gen. Patton once said that 80 percent of leadership is improving morale. And right now the country is in a pretty demoralized state and looking to get out of it, and I think Sen. Obama has the most compelling message there.’” More recent Obama endorsements of note: Rep. Rafael Anchia (representing Dallas), Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (representing the San Antonio area), and Northern Virginia Rep. James Moran (this last one, it seems, might actually hurt Obama.) Sen. Obama also seems to have made fans across the aisle in former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Senator Lincoln Chafee. Meanwhile, checking in on the Big Three of remaining endorsements (that is, presuming Speaker Pelosi stays neutral until a candidate is decided):

Al Gore: Every few days a rumor circulates from the Clinton campaign side that Al Gore is set to endorse Obama. But, despite “unbelievable” animus reported between the Clintons and Gores, no word from the Nobel Prize-winner yet. Presumably, he’s waiting because either [a] he doesn’t want to endanger his post-partisan cachet or [b] he senses the Democratic Party might need people who seem above the fray to broker a pre-convention deal. Either way, it doesn’t seem like he’ll be getting involved anytime soon. Update: CNN reconfirms: Gore sources say he’s staying out of it.

John Edwards: Here’s where a lot of the attention seems to be at the moment, given that a Thursday meeting between Clinton and Edwards leaked, and a planned Obama-Edwards meeting today was postponed. At the moment, media speculation seems to be that Edwards’ endorsement is truly up for grabs, although as I said here, given his previous statements about Clinton’s “status quo” campaign, I’d think he’d have to be leaning toward Obama (or risk losing quite a bit of credibility.) In their report on the Clinton-Edwards meet, CNN said that two friends of Elizabeth Edwards said she preferred Obama. If that’s true, that would seem to clinch it, but one never knows, and now “sources close to the Edwards family flatly deny that she favors one candidate over the other.“

Russ Feingold: Sen. Feingold, whose endorsement may well carry more weight than that of Edwards (particularly in upcoming Wisconsin) has said he’s planning to endorse after the Feb. 19 primary. He’s previously been very critical of Edwards, and some see that playing a role in the Obama-Edwards discussions at the moment. Again, given the previous dust-ups between Feingold and Clinton, I’d think the Wisconsin Senator would be leaning Obama. But he’s spent a lot of time with both candidates, and he doesn’t look to be moving off the fence before the 19th, after which he may likely just follow the choice of his state.

In short, now that we’re past Super Tuesday, it seems the Big Guns mainly want to see how things will play out. Update: The Man Who Fell to Earth? Greg Sargent’s sources say Sen. Clinton is about to pick up a decently important endorsement in former Ohio Senator John Glenn. Hmm, that’s too bad. I’d have liked to have Sen. Glenn in our corner. Ah well, godspeed regardless.

Krugman Jumps the Shark.

“Why, then, is there so much venom out there? I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody.” He’s been teetering on the brink for awhile now. (Not for nothing did TNR deem his last anti-Obama column the “least surprising NYT column ever.”) But NYT columnist Paul Krugman finally, irrevocably jumps the shark with his column this morning, which blames the “cult of personality” around Obama for all the venom in the Democratic race at the moment, and claims Obama is turning the Democratic party into “Nixonland.” Um, yeah.

First off, it doesn’t seem like Krugman gets out around the blogosphere much, since every political board you can find out there is strewn with Clinton supporters saying wildly intemperate things. (I’m sure he’s suffering from a selection bias — given that he’s invariably writing anti-Obama pieces, he probably gets a lot more prObama hate mail.) Second, there’ no mention at all of any of the shadier tactics employed by the Clinton campaign over the course of the past few months, of course (and he cherry-picks rather drastically when it comes to discussion of the race card.) No, the problem for Krugman resides only in Obama cultists and a vast media conspiracy. Right.

When it comes to economics, Krugman is usually a sound thinker, even if I do think he has a tendency to belittle the progressive position on matters of political economy. (The title of his recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal, makes it plain.) But, when he strays off the economics reservation to dabble in history or politics, hoo boy. This column, frankly, is partisan hackery of the first order.

Education: The Real Cleave?

“Generally speaking, the more education a Democrat has, the less likely he or she is to support Hillary Clinton, and the more likely to support Barack Obama.” For all the talk of age, race, gender, and class divergences, some analysts at Gallup see a different dynamic at work in the Obama-Clinton race: education. “In short, education is a highly significant predictor of Democrats’ vote choices…Gender, too, is a predictor, but is essentially overwhelmed by the impact of education.”

In fact, a worthy regression analysis of poll data over at dKos pushes the point further: “It is educational attainment, rather than income level, that appears to be the driving force behind Obama’s ‘upscale’ support. In fact, there is some weak evidence that Obama actually does a bit better in states with lower median household incomes, once we control for educational attainment (but, the effect was not quite statistically significant enough to make the final cut). Trust me — I looked and looked for this one, analyzing variables such as household income, per capita income, home values, home ownership, unemployment rates, and union membership. The idea that Clinton does better with working class voters seems to be a myth; she does better with voters without college degrees, but not working class voters per se. To the extent any such effects exist, they appear to point in the opposite direction of the conventional wisdom.” (Speaking of which, there are number of CW-defying findings in this regression analysis, and it’s worth a look-see.) Update: Poblano has more.

Update 2: The WP parses more data and finds the same education cleave. “In each of the states where the Post subscribed to exit polls (and voters were asked about their level of education), Clinton did better among non-college than college-educated white voters. She also outpaced Obama among non-college whites in all 14 of these states, but beat him by more than a single percentage point among college graduates in only five.“

Crook: An Easy Call.

“Republicans, of course, are bound to dislike his liberalism – but what is there for Democrats to think about? Why are they even having this conversation? They have been waiting an awfully long time for a politician like Mr Obama. If, having come so close, they still manage to nominate Mrs Clinton, I think it is a choice they will regret for years and maybe decades.” In the Financial Times, Clive Crook sees the Democratic choice for Obama as a no-brainer.