Friday, January 04, 2008 - Posts
-
On a long-winded conference call today, Hillary Clinton campaign officials did their best to sweet-talk their way around her loss in Iowa. The thesis of their argument: Her organization continues to be better than anybody else's, so they can get out the vote better than anybody else's.
At various points during the call, the Clinton staffers touted different metrics to prove that their GOTV effort is best among Democrats'. A rundown of why none of them makes a convincing case:
Polls: Time and time again, they cited polls from various early primary and Feb. 5 states. All of those numbers are now outdated, thanks to Obama's win. Plus, leading in the polls didn't exactly help Clinton in Iowa.
Delegate count: At one point, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman, said Clinton still led in the delegate count. While true, McAuliffe knows journalists won't take that bait. The race for the U.S. presidency is about momentum, not delegates. Delegates are pesky distractions that make the whole process seem legitimate.
Crowd size: Does this stat really mean anything? It did for Obama in Iowa, but that could be a quirk of the caucuses. Clinton's camp cited her ability to get 2,500 people to a rally in Nevada as proof that she can get people to come out and vote. But doing that while Obama (and Edwards) are holding their own events next door is a whole other matter.
Phone calls and doorknockers: Record turnouts meant independents and Republicans showed up and voted for Obama. That means, in a way the Clinton campaign can never admit, that they would have actually preferred if fewer people voted. The fewer Republicans, the better, at this point. Even McAuliffe had to admit that "we hit and exceeded our target numbers we wanted in Iowa." Despite phone banks and door-to-door canvassing, Clinton lost Iowa because of Obama’s indies. The issue is getting people to vote for Hillary, not vote.
-
A guy who looks like he’s with a Canadian TV network is talking on the phone to a colleague in New Hampshire:
“Be good to Obama’s people. The advance people. I think we’re in for the long haul with them. Maintain that.”
The Canadian press has spoken. Meanwhile, three high school girls volunteering for the Obama campaign are talking about seeing Scarlett Johansson, who had been stumping for Obama:
“I’d seen a girl from Mississippi who looked just like Scarlett Johansson – same hair, same make-up. The next day in the office, I went up to her and was like, ‘Omigod you look just like Scarlett Johanssan.’ And she was like, ‘That’s because I am Scarlett Johansson.’ ”
In other news, I hear the entire Grinnell basketball team showed up to see Johansson speak at a local pizza parlor. Including the coach.
-
As this totally chaotic—but, you gotta admit, totally thrilling—primary approaches complete anarchy, you can see the candidates' rhetoric running together. First, Republicans tried to “out-Tancredo Tancredo” by shifting right on immigration. Then Hillary and Obama ramped up their talk about fighting greedy corporations in an apparent attempt to “out-Edwards Edwards.”
Now it looks like Obama, who threatens to suck independents away from McCain and Romney in New Hampshire, is influencing rhetoric on the Republican side, too. Here are clips from the latest McCain-Romney spitting match:
First, Romney:
“There’s no way that Senator McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say that he’s the candidate that represents change—that he’ll change Washington. He is Washington.”
And the McCain camp’s response:
“It is laughable that Mitt Romney would think anyone buys his latest act as an agent of change …”
Granted, both candidates have at various times angled for outsider status. But in light of yesterday, it sure sounds like the GOP big dogs are trying to out-Obama Obama.
[h/t Mark Halperin]
-
Of the 100 entrants in the official Trailhead Primary Pool, only one, University of Chicago political science student Max Gallop, successfully predicted the first-, second-, and third-place winners for both the Democrats and Republicans in yesterday's Iowa caucuses.
Over all, contestants fared much better predicting the Democratic side. Excluding Gallop, 22 readers guessed the Obama-Edwards-Clinton result in the correct order, while only five predicted a Huckabee-Romney-Thompson finish. McCain's narrow loss to Thompson for third-place honors—the Arizona senator took 13.1 percent to Thompson's 13.4 percent—robbed 13 contestants of a perfect record.
We've left Max a message asking him to inform us who will win the election—stay tuned.
With Chadwick Matlin and Jon Rubin.
-
For a dose of perspective, this is what MSNBC's hompage looked like at 1:35 a.m. early Friday morning.
-
Tomorrow’s headlines will most likely include some version of “Clinton placed third.” And that’s true. But here’s a thought on the Grinnell caucus to put that statement into perspective.
John Edwards just barely edged out Hillary statewide, 30 percent to 29 percent. That means he got only seven more delegates than she did, 744 to 737.
In the Grinnell Ward 1 caucus I attended, Hillary had 44 supporters. She needed 73 to reach the 15 percent viability threshold. Had she been viable, she would have received at least six of the precinct’s 37 delegates. In other words, had 30 more Grinnell residents turned out for Hillary and 30 less for Edwards, she would have tied John Edwards for second in the state.
To speculate even further: Keep in mind that Hillary was the only major Democratic candidate not to come speak at Grinnell College. The students I talked to figured that was a deliberate decision, most likely reacting to the fact that the famous Clinton “plant” was Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, Grinnell ’10. Still, many saw it as a slight. It’s not a stretch to imagine that a personal visit would have won her 30 more caucusgoers.
One more campaign stop → 30 more caucus-goers → six more delegates → tie for second in the Iowa caucuses. And this was just one caucus. Similar stories could have played out in any of the state’s 1,784 precincts.
When you look closely, it really starts to look like the butterfly flapping its wings.
Read the rest of our Grinnell caucus liveblog here.
Correction: Vigilant Fraysters point out that the math here is wrong. And it looks like
they're right. The vote totals from last night -- 744 for Edwards, 737
for Clinton -- are State Delegate Equivalents (SDE), not precinct delegates.
In fact, one precinct delegate is equivalent to about .11 SDE, as you
can see on the caucus results page here.
That means
that 30 more Clinton supporters in Grinnell would not have given her
six more state delegates. It would have given her at most one. And that
would not have come close to helping her tie with Edwards. My apologies
for the fuzzy math.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?