Tag: John McCain

The Mitt Comes Off | The Reign of McCain.

“I must now stand aside, for our party and our country. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.” With an eye to 2012, Governor Mitt Romney is out, meaning the GOP nominee is now, for all intent and purposes, John McCain.

So, now part of the question for our party becomes, which Democrat is more likely to beat McCain? I’m betting you can guess my answer. As Nicholas Kristof notes: “When pollsters offer voters hypothetical matchups, Mr. Obama does better than Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain. For example, a Cook Political Report poll of registered voters released this week found Mr. McCain beats Mrs. Clinton, 45 percent to 41 percent. But Mr. Obama beats Mr. McCain, 45 percent to 43 percent. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found similar results.“

See also David Broder: “In either scenario, women break for the Democratic candidate. McCain leads Clinton by 13 points among men, but only runs even with Obama. Party lines are sharp, and the battle for independents would be close. Currently, independents give McCain a 12-point lead over Clinton but favor Obama by 6 points over the Republican.“

Update: Another TIME poll agrees: “Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain’s 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each…The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that ‘independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton. But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator.” Independents, added Schulman, ‘are a key battleground.’“

The Sun Shines on McCain.

“My friends, as I said the other week in South Carolina, there is nothing in our country that is inevitable. We can overcome any challenge as long as we keep our courage, and stand by the principles that have made our party and our country great.”

Florida votes, and Arizona Senator John McCain is the big winner and — arguably — now the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican nomination (much to the consternation of the conservative base.) Given that he’s easily the GOP candidate with the most crossover appeal, that’s bad news for the Democrats, particularly if we decide to get behind the one person on this earth (well, two people, counting her husband) who could manage to reunite the abysmally fractured GOP.

Speaking of which, Senator Clinton handily won on the (meaningless) Dem side — prompting much rejoicing and e-mailing by the Clinton campaign. (Although, in a bit of a shocker, it turns out she actually tied the delegate count with Mike Gravel.) Seriously, though, given that Florida is particularly choice demographic territory for Clinton, she’d probably have won the Sunshine State in any event. (As George Will and Slate have both recently pointed out, Florida is known as “God’s Antechamber” for a reason, and, as has been the norm, voters over 60 — 39% of the voting Dems — went for Hillary 59%-24%.) But, given that this ended up being basically the name-recognition primary, and that no delegates came of it, I’m not too concerned about the results. On to Super-Tuesday.

Update: Looking over the CNN exit poll numbers for the Dem side, this would seem to be the key stat in viewing both tonight and the road ahead:

When did you decide who to vote for?

Today: (10%): Clinton 34%, Obama 30%
Last 3 Days: (7%): Obama 46%, Clinton 38%
Last Week: (7%): Obama 39%, Clinton 31%
Last Month: (16%): Obama 47%, Clinton 40%
Before That: (33%): Clinton 63%, Obama 27%
Absentee/Early Voter: (26%): Clinton 50%, Obama 31%

So, among voters that have decided since the campaign took off in Iowa, Obama does rather well. It’s the long-time deciders and absentees — 60% of the electorate — where he seriously fell behind. This would indicate name recognition definitely played its part today, and that actual campaigning in Florida could’ve made a significant difference. Good to know, as we move forward.

Rudy’s Taken Out.

“We ran a [9/11] campaign that was [9/11] uplifting. The responsibility of [9/11] leadership doesn’t end with a single [9/11] campaign. If you believe in a cause [9/11], it goes on and you continue to fight for [9/11] it, and we will.” Apparently, 9/11 nostalgia doesn’t extend into the sixth borough….Florida also marked the end of the road for Rudy Giuliani (or Rudy 9iu11iani, as he’s sometimes known.) The mayor is expected to endorse John McCain tomorrow. Can’t say I’m sorry to see him go, although the prospects of Giuliani as McCain’s AG are sorta frightening in their own right.

The GOP: Clinton, Please!

“In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being ‘tested’ by her ’35 years of experience’ won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief ‘on Day One’ when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.” The NYT’s Frank Rich sees a Clinton v. McCain contest as tantamount to political suicide for the Dems. I’m inclined to agree.

Oh, Carolina!

In South Carolina, Barack Obama wins in a rout, beating Hillary Clinton by 28 points and winning more votes than Clinton and Edwards combined. (And, as Andrew Sullivan noted tonight, Obama also scored more Palmetto votes than McCain and Huckabee combined…something to consider for the general election.) Some of the interesting numbers:

  • Aside from Horry County (a.k.a. Myrtle Beach), which went for Hillary Clinton, and Seneca County, where John Edwards was born, Barack Obama won the entire state — 44 of 46 counties (including Florence, where I grew up…this makes me quite happy.)

  • Obama won the African-American vote — both male and female — by 4 to 1. However, he also won 1 in 4 white votes — considerably higher than anticipated. (Clinton won 1 in 3 white votes, the rest went to the local native, Edwards.)

  • Obama — and this accords with my understanding of the South — won the white youth vote big. (52% to 27% for Clinton and 21% of Edwards.) White voters over 60, however, went 42% each for Clinton and Edwards, with only 15% for Obama. Sadly, the generation gap — among whites — persists.

  • White men went 45% for Edwards, but otherwise split evenly between Clinton and Obama (28%-27%) White women, unsurprisingly, went for Clinton: 42% to Edwards’ 35% to Obama’s 22%.

    So now, we move to Super Tuesday, and the main demographic problem facing Senator Obama — the generation gap among whites — remains. (How the generation that coined the term “Don’t trust anyone over 30” became so distrustful of Obama’s Kennedyesque appeal remains, frankly, more than a little depressing.)

    But, hope remains, while the company is true. I’ve been volunteering at Obama events over the past week and expect to continue to do so over the next nine days. Let’s each of us do what we can. The stakes are too high not to give it our all…And, if South Carolina is any indication, the times are definitely a-changin’.

    • Kristof: “Experience” is a canard.

    “The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred. In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty.” LIke Tim Noah, the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof argues Clinton’s claims of superior “experience” don’t hold up. “[T]he presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the ‘experience’ camp — best qualified to become the next president. That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case.”

    Lies, Damned Lies, and “Dunce-Cap Dems.”

    While the NYT, in venerable (and dismaying) establishment form, swung behind Senator Clinton (and John McCain) — despite contradicting their 2006 endorsement — this morning, others in the commentariat are not so sanguine about the prospect of a Clinton restoration:

    “Obama’s best hope is that Democratic voters aren’t as dumb as Hillary and Bill Clinton think they are.” Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter decries the Clintons’ cynical strategy of misinformation. “Obama is stronger among well-educated Democrats, according to polls. So the Clintons figure that maybe their base among less educated white Democrats might be receptive to an argument that assumes they’re dumb. Less well-educated equals gullible in the face of bogus attack ads. That’s the logic, and the Clintons are testing it in South Carolina before trying it in Super Tuesday states. They are also road-testing major distortions of Obama’s positions on abortion, Social Security and the minimum wage.“

    USA Today experiences Clinton fatigue. “[H]is famous lack of discipline, angry outbursts on the campaign trail and habit of drawing attention to himself all suggest that voters have every right to wonder how this would actually work.“

    But the NYT‘s Matthew Continetti senses a pattern, and calls shenanigans on red-faced Bill’s recent (and conveniently timed) public screeds. “It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans. But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call ‘strategic emotion,’ the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press.“

    Claiming “‘if Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander,’ E.J. Dionne remembers when Clinton loved Reagan. “His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to ‘set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.’ Clinton’s ‘readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,’ the paper wrote, ‘is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.’“

    And, despite having written Primary Colors, TIME‘s Joe Klein just can’t wrap his mind around it all: “Let me get this straight: Obama wins Iowa. In a desperate move — unprecedented for an ex-President in American politics — Bill Clinton decides to impede Obama’s momentum by inserting himself into the campaign. He attacks Obama on an almost daily basis, sometimes falsely. He makes a spectacle of himself. And then he blames the press for not covering the substance of the campaign?”

    Update: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has had enough: “I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a ‘fairy tale’) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it…we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.“

    Are you experienced? Uh…

    “Clinton’s claim to superior experience isn’t merely dishonest. It’s also potentially dangerous should she become the nominee. If Clinton continues to build her campaign on the dubious foundation of government experience, it shouldn’t be very difficult for her GOP opponent to pull that edifice down. That’s especially true if a certain white-haired senator now serving his 25th year in Congress (four in the House and 21 in the Senate) wins the nomination. McCain could easily make Hillary look like an absolute fraud who is no more truthful about her depth of government experience than she is about why her mother named her “Hillary.” Dennis Kucinich has more government experience than Clinton. (He also has a better health-care plan, but we’ll save that for another day.)”

    So…now that we’ve (hopefully) stepped back from the abyss of identity politics, where does that leave us? Ah, yes, hope vs. experience. Well, drawing on this NYT story of several weeks ago, Slate‘s Tim Noah argues that Clinton’s claims of superior experience just don’t hold up, and particularly once you factor in John McCain. “Oh, please. Thirty-five years takes you back to 1973, half of which Hillary spent in law school, for crying out loud. I don’t mean to denigrate her professional experience…But in government, Clinton’s chief role over the years has been that of kibitzer.” Update: Speaking of Dennis Kucinich, he’s back in tomorrow’s Nevada debate. Update 2: Nope, he’s out again, by decision of the Nevada Supreme Court.

    Obama: Let’s Move On.

    Saying he was “concerned about the tenor of the race in these past few days,” Senator Barack Obama moves to quell some of the arguing over identity politics this past week.

    Concerning Sen. Clinton’s LBJ history lesson: “‘I don’t think it was in any way a racial comment,’ Obama told ABC News. ‘That’s something that has played out in the press. That’s not my view.’ But, he said, the comment was revealing about her political character. ‘I do think it was indicative of the perspective that she brings, which is that what happens in Washington is more important than what happens outside of Washington,’ he said. He said he believes the quote betrays a belief on her part, ‘that the intricacies of the legislative process were somehow more significant than when ordinary people rise up and march and go to jail and fight for justice.’ He called that a ‘fundamental difference’ between them.“

    Concerning Bill Clinton’s fairy tale: “[A]gain, Obama looked past the racial controversy. Instead, Obama directed his response to the dispute over whether opposition to the Iraq War was consistent. (Clinton has since reiterated that is what he meant when he invoked the ‘fairy tale’ line.) ‘Both he and Sen. Clinton have been spending a lot of time over the past month trying to run down my record,’ Obama said. ‘What particularly distresses me is this notion that I wasn’t against the war from the start. This is coming from a former president who suggests that he was and nobody can find any record of it,’ he said.“

    A great, classy response. The Clinton strategy only really works if you play along. As my old employer, James Carville, was wont to put it, “Don’t waste your time wrestling with a pig. You just dirty, and the pig loves it.” (And, just to avoid confusion and just as McCain with Romney, I’m not calling the Clintons porcine, even if they have engaged in some swinish political tactics of late. It’s a figure of speech.)

    Update: Senator Obama continues in the same vein at a press conference this evening. Speaking of a possible Bradley effect in New Hampshire, Senator Obama said: “I don’t think that’s what was going on…as I understand it, basically there was a big shift in undecided’s going towards Sen Clinton, particularly among women in the last minute. And keep in mind there was a big gap, a gender gap that cut both ways — I won among men and she won among women — there were more men than women who voted. If it had been a racial issue, there’s no reason why that would have been something that was unique to women as opposed to men, so I don’t’ think that is the case.”

    Update 2: Speaking yet again of Clinton’s “fairy tale” rant, it seems another — substantive — deception has emerged from Clinton’s remarks (and Hillary’s statement on MtP.) Did you notice how they both keep mentioning anti-war opponent Chuck Hagel? “[T]he talking point appears to misconstrue the facts.”

    Update 3: Sen. Clinton seconds the call for truce, although she then somehow failed to get word to Charlie Rangel.

    The Comeback “Kid.”

    Hrm.

    Well, that was unexpected…I must say, if nothing else, “false hopes” had a really good night. But, hey, I guess I should’ve known better. As The Wire continually reminds us, despite all evidence to the contrary, maybe a new day is never dawning. (You know, I should really develop some new interests. Maybe it’s time to become a gardening blog or something.)

    Anyway, looking at the numbers, it looks like the difference voters in New Hampshire were women, who returned to Clinton’s corner in droves (47% to 34%), and older voters, who’ve been there all along (65 and over: 48% to 32%, 50-64: 39% to 30%, 40-49: 44% to 33%.) Well, at least the kids are alright. (18-24: 60%-22%, for Obama.)

    That all makes a certain amount of sense, I guess. Women more readily see Clinton as a candidate of change by her very nature, and, as I wrote at great length about over the weekend, many older voters seem to buy what she’s selling regardless: another eight years of cautious, obfuscating, Grand Theft Auto-blaming and very “experienced” incrementalism.

    To be honest, on its face, New Hampshire going Clinton doesn’t bother me all that much. It’s an older, whiter state, and for all its vaunted independence, it’s usually just contrarian for its own sake, like bad Slate columns and Armond White. Once Clinton became the underdog after Iowa, it was a natural pick-up for her.

    What does concern me, tho’, is the bizarre polling problem we saw tonight. Some polls are occasionally wrong, sure, but every poll — not one poll, every poll — had Obama up between five and twelve points this morning. Ok, well, there were a lot of undecided voters, and clearly most of ’em broke for Clinton. So be it. More disconcerting, however, exit polls — taken after the votes were made, mind you — also had Obama up by five. So, how did we finish down two at the end of the night (with the polls still getting the GOP race exactly right?) How did every poll miss out on that seven point swing, a swing based on post-voting data? I suppose it’s still an open question, but the elephant in the room is the Bradley Effect, and, I gotta say, I’m pretty disgusted right now with my fellow white people. Vote for who you want to vote for, but don’t lie about it before or after the fact. If someone has a better explanation about the disparity in exit polls, I’m all ears. Update: Pollster has a good overview of the various prevailing current theories.

    As for what explains Clinton’s victory, I must confess: even given what I said above, I’m at a bit of a loss. This is mainly because I thought the polls reflected, you know, the actual standings. The only real possible game-changer lately, other than just a collective New Hampshire uprising against media expectations (which is stupid – it was their poll answers creating and driving those expectations), was the “Diner Sob”, as Slate is billing it, the other day. Apparently, a sizable majority of New Hampshire’s older/women voters looked in to Clinton’s heart at that moment, and liked what they saw. Iron Eyes Cody for President! I dunno…admittedly, I’m feeling rather Menckenesque at the moment. Still, I’m reminded of Bernie Birnbaum, John Turturro’s character in Miller’s Crossing: “What were you gonna do if you caught me? I’d just squirt a few and then you’d let me go again.“

    Bleah. A no-good, lousy night, to be sure. Unless you’re John McCain — for him, the news is great on both sides of the ledger. If the current paradigm wins, so do Republicans. Now, I have no real inclination to vote Republican, but the fact remains: When it comes to campaign finance reform —the change issue — McCain has far, far better creds than Clinton.

    Still, it’s not over yet, and adversity builds character, right? We’ve split the first two games, and now attention moves to Nevada and my home state of South Carolina. Neither are necessarily unfavorable terrain for Obama, so if he can weather the post-New Hampshire bounce over the next week, we’re still good to go. But it’s definitely harder now, no doubt. Florence, come to our aid! (For old times’ sake, if nothing else.)

    By the way, New Hampshire? Eff you, you tired, gaseous windbag of an “independent” state. Robert Frost, Alan Shepard, and Christa McAuliffe notwithstanding, you haven’t contributed anything to the polity since Daniel Webster. From now on, I’m hiking in Vermont.