-
sponsorship
It’s well-known that Barack Obama’s success has depended largely on independent and Republican voters. The corollary to that, however, has been less thoroughly reported: Obama is losing among Democrats.
Over at the Perfect World, Cal Lanier crunches the numbers and finds that Obama, despite being ahead among pledged delegates, has fewer total votes among people who identify themselves as Democrats. (He has 7,392,809 votes; Clinton has 8,229,063.) That gives Clinton as lead with 52 percent of Democrats. Lanier also breaks the numbers down by race and points out that Obama has won white Democrats in only two states: New Mexico and Illinois.
The numbers are hardly perfect. They rely on CNN and MSNBC exit polls, which are inherently rough. (Extrapolating those percentages to estimate exact numbers of voters is going to compound margins of error.) And because caucuses report delegates, not individual turnout, those stats are going to be a little murky, too. I'd also dispute their inclusion of Florida and Michigan in the count. But Clinton’s lead is still large enough to be significant.
It helps you understand why the party gives so much power to its 796 superdelegates. If they didn’t, independents and Republicans could essentially hijack their election. It also makes you wonder whether Clinton should start citing this number, if she maintains her lead through the convention in August. Even if Obama leads in the popular vote and among pledged delegates, it might disturb party gray beards to learn that the nominee has essentially been chosen by outsiders.
-
sponsorship
Today, on a conference call with the campaign’s finance committee, Clinton heavyweights were celebrating an impressive fundraising month. The campaign raised $35 million over the past 28 days, which is a Clinton record. Thirty-four million of it can be spent on primaries, which means they’re finding new donors and getting old, small-dollar donors to give again. Good news all around. Armed with this cash, Clinton’s ebullient aides said they were competing at full capacity in March 4 states. The only thing that could stop them: the media.
According to the Clinton campaign, if Hillary loses, it’s because the press is pro-Obama. For weeks they’ve been murmuring that the loves Obama so much that they may as well have that “Yes, We Can” video as their iPod’s background. Then, after SNL played mouthpiece, Clinton made her highest-profile complaint against the media yet—and it fell flat on its face.
On today’s call, Harold Ickes acknowledged that Clinton has lost nearly a dozen primaries and caucuses in a row, but he didn’t let it deter his optimism. “The press in the main has given Sentor Obama a pass. They have not scrutinized him closely,” he said. He added that he expected the media to start hunting around Obama’s record now that he’s the front-runner and that once they do, Clinton could start to make effective attacks on Obama’s record. He didn’t say whether that would happen by March 4.
Here’s the thing—we haven’t seen press stories about Obama’s seedy past because there aren’t many more to be found. And the ones that have emerged haven’t stuck. We had the Rezko affair, the cavorting with “terrorists” imbroglio, and the completely false Obama-attended-a-madrassa flap. But that’s pretty much it. Part of the reason why Obama is running for president now is precisely because he doesn’t have enough skeletons in the closet to have his presidential hopes fractured.
A lot of the alleged anti-Clinton reporting is really just fact. Case in point: Today’s fundraising call. Clinton raised a record $35 million—but that’s still 1 million short of the overall record Obama sent last month. Moreover, Obama is set to blast that number out of the water with a $50-plus million total sometime this week. This extends to reporting on polls—where she’s hemorrhaging support nationwide—and superdelegate defections—where there’s a slow but steady trickle toward Obama. Simply put, nearly all of the horse-race metrics favor Obama. Thanks to the two candidates’ similar platforms, this has become a horse-race election rather than an issue-based vote. That means Clinton gets shafted.
And in a horse-race election, complaining doesn’t work. You can only make the media feel guilty so often before they turn on you all over again. It leads to cable-news host blow-ups and New York Times columnists’ scorn. As Obama said at the debate, it makes her look like she’s whining—and voters (who include the press) don’t like whiners.
Clinton’s folk will probably think I have proved their point by writing these paragraphs. If that’s the case, then Clinton really will lose on Tuesday. But not because of opinions, but because of facts.
Pissed off? Think I’m proving the Clinton’s point? Vent at my inbox* or in the Fray.
*UPDATE Feb. 29 7:30 a.m.: Originally I linked to the wrong email. My apologies if you incurred the wrath of the mailer daemon.
-
sponsorship
Slate intern Alex Joseph sends in this dispatch on Ralph Nader's press conference in Washington, D.C.:
Roughly two dozen reporters gathered at the National Press Club today to find out who will be Ralph Nader’s running mate in his fourth consecutive bid for the presidency. Nader has been in the race only a week, but judging from the attitude in the room, he has already overstayed his welcome.
Nader acknowledged his history with the reporters who showed up. When someone pressed him for specifics during a question, Nader laughingly reminded them that they of all people know he can give specifics. He even condemned Washington Post writer Dana Milbank by name for his negative columns (all but guaranteeing another one), while Milbank sat in the back of the room smiling. It felt like an awkward college reunion, where a group of old classmates gathered grudgingly to reminisce on the good ol’ days.
The most interesting (a relative term) aspect of Nader’s press conference was his new running mate, Matt Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a young, articulate politician who made a name for himself by earning 47 percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate in San Francisco’s 2003 mayoral race. After graduating from Stanford Law in 1990, Gonzalez became a public defender. In 2000, he was elected to San Francisco’s board of supervisors. While Nader harped on how corporations run Washington, Gonzalez laid out three different priorities: election reform, poverty relief, and a quick withdrawal from Iraq.
Nader seemed to recognize Gonzalez’s appeal, at times deferring to him. At one point, Gonzalez tapped Nader on the shoulder while he was speaking, quietly insisting that Nader step aside and allow him to follow up. This may have been Nader’s best decision all afternoon: allowing a fresh face to engage a press corps that’s become increasingly tired of the perennial candidate.
-
sponsorship
The oddly fickle (and spookily accurate) political-futures markets have made some bizarre predictions. Anyone betting against Ron Paul or Al Gore to become president stood to make a lot of money. There was also a big Giuliani-for-VP upswing last week, for no apparent reason.
In the same tradition, a friend points out that today around noon, the Bill Richardson for Vice President stock doubled on InTrade—and it’s unclear why. Buzz about a potential Richardson endorsement has been building for the past week. If Richardson endorses Obama and Obama does better than expected among Texas Latinos, the New Mexico governor could plausibly take some credit.
But nothing particularly game-changing has happened today—has it? Maybe some insider knowledge has leaked to traders but not to the rest of us? (Shouldn’t insider trading be against the rules, anyway?)
Who knows, maybe Richardson himself just bought up a bunch of shares and plans to endorse.
Check out Slate's "Political Futures" page here.
-
sponsorship
The subject of John McCain’s place of birth—he was born on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone, where his parents were stationed in 1936—is back on the table now that he’s got the GOP nomination locked down.
The “debate,” if you can call it that, turns on the question of what the founders meant when they wrote in the Constitution that any American president must be a “natural born citizen.” Some people believe it would be absurd for Americans born abroad to military parents to be ineligible for the presidency. But others … well, today's New York Times piece doesn’t quote a single person opposed to the idea. Which suggests to me that McCain won’t have much of a problem. (It's unclear who would have standing to sue, other than Obama himself.)
But that doesn’t mean Republicans shouldn’t clear this up once and for all. Lawmakers advanced legislation in 2004 that would make it legal for children born abroad to American citizens to run for president, but it never passed. With McCain’s candidacy at stake (or at least at hand), now would be the time to revisit the issue.
The reason, of course, is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ever since he was elected governor of California, supporters have pushed for a constitutional amendment that would allow him to run for president. Petitions have circulated. Even former President George H.W. Bush said with respect to the governor’s presidential hopes, “don’t bet against Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Republicans could use the relatively simple issue of McCain’s eligibility to nudge discussion toward a larger overhaul, which could one day clear the way for Schwarzenegger.
The prospect of President Schwarzenegger has so far been limited to the fictional realm. (Update 6:39 p.m.: How could we forget Demolition Man?) But—and yes, this counts as a crackpot theory—imagine a scenario in which Barack Obama wins the presidency, and the Republicans are scrambling for a challenger in 2012. Romney is still around, but people remember that he lost in 2008 despite being the best-funded of the bunch. Giuliani could make a comeback, but he won’t have any more governing experience in four years than he does now. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, is the complete package: He enjoys wild popularity, he can compete with Obama for moderates, he could take California, he’s married to a Kennedy, and he has a life story that, like Obama’s, is the American dream. He would be the GOP’s answer to Obama.
But none of this would matter unless Republicans started pushing to tweak the Constitution—and soon. The problem is, GOP leaders don’t want to raise doubts about McCain’s eligibility, no matter how minor, so it’s unlikely they’ll go out of their way to bring it up. They’ll just have to wait till after the election.