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This election cycle has seen its conventional wisdom
bonfires. Hillary’s inevitability: gone. Obama’s insurmountable lead in New Hampshire: gone.
McCain’s summer of death: long gone. But the most brazen assault on the most
conventional wisdom of all—Giuliani’s decision to neglect the early
states—has failed miserably.
There were moments when the gamble didn’t seem insane. At
one point, Rudy commanded a strong lead nationally and in Florida, which he called his “firewall.”
After Huckabee surged last minute and won Iowa, anything was possible. McCain’s win in
New Hampshire and Romney’s victory in Michigan didn’t exactly
discredit Giuliani’s strategy either. As Slate’s John Dickerson wrote at the time, “the GOP primary
is starting to look like a Pee Wee soccer tournament: Everyone gets a trophy!”
Of course Rudy would get his!
The theory started to crack after Michigan,
when Giuliani’s numbers began sliding nationally and in Florida. By the time both Romney and McCain
snapped up two more trophies, Rudy was all but forgotten. His “slow and steady
wins the race” philosophy crumbled when it turned out he was actually just
slow.
So does this reaffirm the rule that you have to win Iowa or New
Hampshire to win the nomination? Or was this a
worthwhile gamble that didn’t pan out? I’d argue the former. If there was a
year to take the risk, it was this one—the chaotic nature of the contest
appeared to reward patience. And if there was a person who could pull it off,
it was Rudy. He had the national stature to survive without boosts from the
earliest states, and Florida
is big enough that a win there would have reset the game. All the pieces were
there. People are now saying that Rudy did poorly in Florida because
he spent so much time there. Either that or, much as we hate to admit it, the
conventional wisdom was correct.
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John McCain, welcome to the club. In the past, McCain has
been known as everything from maverick to fringe candidate to walking dead man.
(Last month, we used
the words “McCain” and “embalming fluid” in the same sentence.) He has appealed
to an unlikely combination of independents, national security buffs, war hawks,
and immigration moderates. The question was always whether he could assemble
anything resembling the coalition necessary to win the Republican nomination.
Tonight doesn’t seal the deal, but it’s the beginning of the
end. Momentum-wise, McCain will ride into the Feb. 5 states with a crown
already hovering somewhere near his head, if not sitting on it. That means more
free media (as if he needs it), more donations, more endorsements, and bigger
crowds—all the flakes that make up the ever-growing snowball. Delegate-wise,
he’s now the clear front-runner, with 89 pledged delegates to Romney’s 27.
Now McCain has to spend his capital wisely. He has shown he
can win without independents, seeing as this was a closed election. But the
results also prove McCain can compete on Romney’s turf. Exit polls showed him
towering over Romney among Hispanics—a fact he should exploit in California. Floridians
most concerned about the economy also preferred McCain over his rival—and he
should use that, too, in states hit hardest by the recent market swings. After Florida, Romney’s “base”
is starting to look a lot less stable.
There may even a death blow coming. Word has it Giuliani
will endorse McCain tomorrow. (In his remarks tonight, Rudy said everything you
need for a drop-out speech short of “I am dropping out.”) If so, that could
seal the deal for McCain. Granted, Giuliani supporters might have swung to the Arizona senator anyway.
But the endorsement adds symbolic heft to the reshuffling. And even if you tacked
only half of Giuliani’s 15 percent or so from tonight onto McCain’s, he would
have a punishing lead.
“Our victory might not have reached landslide proportions,”
McCain said in his speech tonight, “but it is sweet nonetheless.” If Florida is any indication, he'll taste it again. But he knows the price. "Tonight, my friends, we celebrate," he said. "Tomorrow, it's back to work."
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CNN has called it for Hillary. Her lead is decisive—49 to 29
in the latest tally, with a third of precincts reporting. The campaign
is celebrating the victory with a (now legal!) rally in Davie, Fl.
So on a scale of one to vacuum, how empty is her win?
From the Clinton perspective,
this is real--and big. More voters turned out in Florida
than the other primary states so far combined. They’ll say this slows Obama’s
mo’ and provides a more accurate snapshot of the country than South Carolina did. Obama’s people, meanwhile,
are adamant that Florida
shouldn’t matter. Hence this little zinger, sent out by the campaign: “Obama
and Clinton tie for delegates in Florida.
0 for Obama, 0 for Clinton.”
But here’s the problem. Florida represents something, however imprecisely. Say it merely indicates how one
segment of the country sees the two candidates sans campaigning. Even that could be a useful indicator. After all,
most Americans in Feb. 5 states won’t actually see the candidates in person.
They’ll decide based on TV and radio spots, watching speech excerpts on the
news, reading about their policies, and name recognition. And that’s exactly
what informed Democrats in Florida.
Granted, a lot can change in a week, even on a national scale. And of course
this produces no shift in delegates. But to say that the results mean nothing at all seems a little stubborn.
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Early exit polls (Disclaimer: DO NOT BELIEVE!) show a few interesting trends:
Fox News has McCain trouncing Giuliani among Hispanics, 50 to 26. Romney, meanwhile, trails at 16 percent. So much for those ads featuring his Spanish-speaking son Craig.
McCain also beats Romney among voters who listed the economy as the most important issue facing the country. (Nearly half of voters said it was, according to the AP.) McCain: 38. Romney: 34. Margin of error: +/- 4 percent. The economy is supposedly Romney’s biggest strength. That said, Romney is twice as popular as McCain among voters who list immigration as their top issue.
Florida is getting older, and McCain is benefiting. He beats Romney 40 to 31 among senior citizens. More than a third of voters in this primary are 65 or older, the AP reports.
About 43 percent of Republican voters said that Gov. Charlie Crist’s endorsement of McCain mattered to them. That sounds like a lot, given that most endorsements go completely unnoticed. Of those for whom it mattered, 51 percent voted for McCain, compared to 23 percent for Romney—naturally.
(h/t The Page)
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A few things to keep in mind as tonight's numbers roll in:
Winner takes all. Normally, most of Florida's 114 delegates are divided among the candidates who win each of the state’s 25 congressional districts, with the remainder allocated to the statewide winner. But this year, because the national party revoked half of Florida's delegates, all 57 delegates go to overall winner. That means whoever wins a plurality (McCain or Romney, most likely) will take a decisive lead in the overall delegate count.
Sorry, we’re closed. This is a closed primary, which means that independents—i.e., John McCain’s base—can’t vote. Instead, he’s counting on a mix of seniors, veterans, and Latinos to push him past Mitt Romney. Romney’s army of fiscal conservatives, on the other hand, will vote in full force. So, in a sense, a McCain win is bigger than a Romney win, since it proves he can succeed even without his moderate base.
Wait for it. Florida’s panhandle operates on Central Time instead of Eastern Time, so its polls close an hour later. That’s where a group McCain calls his “natural constituency”—i.e., veterans and military retirees—resides. Since it’s a tight race between Romney and McCain, networks probably won’t be able to call it until those numbers come in.
Who won where? Florida is a sort of microcosm of the national GOP. With vets in the panhandle, Hispanics in the south, and a mix of transplanted New Yorkers and retirees and independents in the mid-state Interstate 4 Corridor, there’s something in Florida’s electorate for everyone. So prepare for extrapolation, since whatever happens in Florida will inform how people handicap Super Tuesday. Did McCain do better than expected in Tampa, an area considered Reagan country? Maybe that means Romney is also toast in California. Did Giuliani fare better than expected among Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade? Perhaps that could boost him among Latinos elsewhere. Did Huckabee suck evangelical votes away from Romney across the state? Look for a possible repeat in Georgia.
There’s a lot happening here, so stay tuned.
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Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. Tonight, two candidates are in jeopardy. We pay our pre-mortem respects to Mr. Giuliani below. See Mike Huckabee’s Death Watch here.
It may not look like it, but Rudy waged a good campaign. He was a solid debater, energetic and dogged on the stump, and was on-message most of the time. But then things soured on two fronts:
- The message: When Rudy was living it up front-runner-style, life was good. His national polls were up in the 40s, the money was rolling in, and with Clinton leading nationally, name-recognition seemed to be the overriding narrative of this election. But once voters actually listened to what Giuliani was saying, the poll numbers sagged. If Rudy’s failure has told us anything, it’s that most Americans just aren’t afraid anymore. Giuliani spread the they’re-going-to-get-us gospel very successfully, but New Hampshire voters in particular just didn’t buy it. When that happened, Giuliani pulled out of New Hampshire—he had already pulled out of the rest—and went to Florida to try his luck there. It seems they don’t want a 9/11 candidate either.
- The primary calendar: Originally, Giuliani’s camp thought that the compressed schedule would help them lay low for a month and then reemerge with a head-start in Florida and a natural constituency in a handful of Feb. 5 states. But they waited one primary too long. In hindsight, Rudy Giuliani needed to win South Carolina just as badly as Fred Thompson did. The only problem: Rudy didn’t have a shot in hell, and he knew it. So he pushed his last stand back to Florida, where he could schmooze with Yankee fans and talk about NASCAR all day. But by the time today’s ballot rolled around, the party coalesced around two guys they don’t really like, but whom they like more than the pro-choice, baseball-polygamist, drag-king Giuliani.
Rudy has intimated that he’ll flee the scene after what’s probably going to be a bloody affair tonight. His aides say they’ll re-evaluate the campaign’s status Wednesday morning, but he’ll probably drop out to avoid embarrassment in the Northeast, where John McCain has eclipsed him recently. There isn’t much chance Rudy will stay in; run a regional Feb. 5 campaign in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; and wreak utter havoc. He’s buddies with McCain, who stuck up for him at the last debate, and wouldn’t want to do anything to help Mitt Romney win the nomination.
So, after tonight, Rudy’s campaign will probably become a mere memory from the 2008 election. This morning, while flying out of Washington, D.C., a newsstand in the airport was selling candidate-themed t-shirts. There was Rudy, staring at me with the White House behind him. I laughed as I realized that this t-shirt was as close as he was ever going to get.
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Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. See our pre-mortem death watch for Rudy Giuliani here.
Mike Huckabee does not have delusions of grandeur for Florida. The day after South Carolina, he said he might not have enough money or support to compete with Romney or McCain, so he hedged his bets. He flitted back and forth all week between Georgia and Tennessee, and he’ll watch tonight’s returns in the latter Missouri*. But don’t expect Huckabee to drop out after today, not when he can still do so much damage.
Huckabee won’t win, but he can drag Romney down with him. Huckabee joined the ranks of the walking dead after he lost South Carolina and his money dried up. But unlike Bill Richardson as he faded away, Huckabee actually has some bite left. If the race becomes a McCromney affair, only Mike Huckabee can stop evangelicals from gravitating toward Mitt. Lately, it seems he’s been auditioning for a role as McCain’s VP, and rightly so: If Johnny Mac wins Florida, it will be partly thanks to Huckabee.
With the opportunity to eat fried-squirrel at official White House dinners, don’t expect Huck to buck the trail quite yet. If he finishes third in Florida (he’s polling fourth), he can gush out a Huckabeeism about David (Huck) defeating Goliath (Rudy) that may get him some mileage. From there, he’ll stay in the South and try to siphon enough votes away from Romney to clear the path for McCain. Ironically, Huckabee is now playing the same role for Romney that Fred Thompson played for him in South Carolina. But if nominated, McCain would sooner make Huckabee the VP than Thompson. The old yet virile war hero and the young but inexperienced spark plug—it’s a match made in heaven, aside from that whole modifying-the-constitution-to-fit-God’s-will part.
*UPDATE 5:56 p.m. PST: Originally this post misstated that Huckabee was spending the night in Tennessee. He was in Missouri.
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Today’s Democratic Florida primary is a political inkblot test.
Given that no delegates are being awarded (for now), you can pretty much interpret the
“beauty contest” results however you want.
As a result, the propaganda battle between the Clinton and
Obama camps has reached fever pitch. Both sides have held conference calls
outlining their cases for why Florida’s
primary does or doesn’t matter. Here’s a quick rundown of their arguments:
Clinton: Florida is an important state that deserves
a role in the democratic process. I will do everything I can to seat its
delegates at the national convention.
Obama: Because Florida violated the
four-state pledge, the Democratic National Committee stripped the state’s
delegates. Florida is therefore meaningless.
Clinton: A record number of people are turning
out, both in absentee ballots and early voting tallies.
Obama: There’s a
controversial property tax ballot measure drawing people to the polls. Also,
the state has no delegates.
Clinton: Obama violated the four-state pledge
by running national TV ads that broadcast in Florida.
That shows he’s taking the race seriously.
Obama: Sorry, no
delegates.
Clinton: Even if we couldn’t campaign in the
state, there is tons of ground organization on both sides, suggesting that this
is a real contest with significant results.
Obama: No hay
delegatos. Comprende?
Clinton: Florida matters because I’m going to win.
Obama: Not any
delegates, you’re not.
Maybe it’s a little more substantive than that, but not
by much.
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The New Yorker devotes a quickie to Barack Obama’s poker skills. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama won over other politicians by starting a regular poker night. James McManus offers this analysis of his game:
Obama never played for high stakes. Only on a very bad night could a player drop two hundred dollars in these games, typical wins and losses being closer to twenty-five bucks. Link describes Obama as a “calculating” cardplayer, avoiding long-shot draws and patiently waiting for strong starting hands. “When Barack stayed in, you pretty much figured he’s got a good hand,” former Senator Larry Walsh once told a reporter, neglecting to note that maintaining that sort of rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff.
Remember the brave journalist who faced Obama on the basketball court? Some editorial board should invite him to a poker game.
P.S.: Obama should have revealed his passion for poker before Nevada. As we reported long ago, Vegas dealers were all for Hillary.
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In about eight minutes, Barack Obama will give a speech at a college gymnasium in El Dorado, Kan. As his campaign reminds us, “Obama’s grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, were Kansas natives. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born at the military base in Ft. Leavenworth while his grandfather served in the Army during World War II.”
This theme—his family—will probably be a recurring element of the Super Tuesday sprint. Reminding people of Obama’s (ahem) white side plays down his immigrant background and emphasizes that he’s just as American as they are. The military ancestry is just an added bonus.
Until now, this sort of homecoming moment has been staged most notably by John Edwards. Last week, Edwards held an event in his home town of Seneca, S.C. And his background—growing up the son of a poor mill worker—has been a staple of both his presidential campaigns.
For Obama, however, the hometown pander is new. And given his mixed-race heritage, it's likely to be more complicated. On the one hand, you could see it as an advantage: He can claim shared identity with blacks in South Carolina and whites in Kansas. But on the other, people might see it as an attempt to exploit his Kansas roots—a sort of retroactive carpetbagging—when he never really lived there. I'll be curious to see if he’s greeted as a favorite son—or as some guy whose grandparents happened to live there.
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As the Hispanic-heavy votes in Florida, California, Arizona, and New Mexico approach, Bill Richardson is suddenly the most popular guy around. Apparently he’s been fielding calls from the two leading candidates and their surrogates.
Richardson describes himself as “torn.” On the one hand, he served in the Clinton administration. On the other, Obama once bailed him out during a debate. The Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has the hilarious anecdote:
I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, "So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?" But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, "Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening." But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, "Katrina. Katrina." The question was on Katrina! So I said, "On Katrina, my policy ..." Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, "Obama, that was good of you to do that."
Now all Obama needs to whisper is, "Secretary of state. Secretary of state," and Richardson is his!
UPDATE 11:02 a.m.: Hillary will be announcing a "MAJOR ENDORSEMENT" in a 1 p.m. conference call. Could it be? Stay tuned.