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Note that now both Clinton and Obama are using the word disenfranchise to describe the other’s plans for Michigan.
Clinton has long insisted that failing to seat Michigan’s delegates would be equal to disenfranchising voters. (That is, after initially agreeing that Michigan wouldn’t count.) Today, she even lumped Michigan’s revote in with the “long struggle” of “women, African-Americans, Latinos and others” to “get to the point where barriers have been knocked down and doors opened.” What would you call that, disenfranchisploitation?
But now Obama’s camp is using the same terminology. Clinton supporters Jon Corzine and Ed Rendell, governors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively, wrote a letter today to Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm reiterating their willingness to pay for a revote. Obama spokesman Bill Burton fired back, denouncing their willingness “to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.”
The Obama campaign’s rationale, in case you missed it: Voters who participated in the Republican primary wouldn’t be included in the Democratic revote. They also argue that young absentee voters—think college students—wouldn’t be included, since there’s a rule saying you must show up in person the first time you vote.
So, to recap: According to Obama, Clinton’s plan would disenfranchise Republicans, independents, and young first-timers—his base. According to Clinton, Obama’s nonplan would disenfranchise traditional Democrats—her base. When it comes to appropriating voting-rights rhetoric to serve their own needs, both campaigns are doing a smashing job.
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With much fanfare, the National Archives today released 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s schedules from her eight years as first lady. Mark Halperin instantly reported that there was no “smoking gun” among the papers. (What would constitute a smoking gun? Meetings with lobbyists? “3:45 p.m.: Cover up land deal”?) The most curious revelation has been that Hillary was in the White House on the day of the famed “blue dress” incident. Also—surprise surprise—Clinton got face time with people who are now superdelegates. But beyond that, slim pickings so far.
The Clinton campaign was quick to turn this into a “challenge” for Obama. They urged him "to release relevant documents and information from his tenure in the State Senate relating to his schedule, to memos, to letters that he may have written to state agencies perhaps on behalf of Mr. Rezko or others."
We’ve seen this movie before: Candidate stonewalls against some reform, finally gives in, then denounces opponent for failing to adopt same reform. (Remember how John Edwards spun taking public funds into a virtue?) So, of course Clinton is now casting herself as the transparency candidate. But how valid is that? Here’s a quick comparison of their records on disclosure:
Tax Returns: Clinton released her tax returns from the White House years when she was running for her Senate seat and challenged her opponent to do the same. But her tax returns since 2000 are still private, and neither she nor her surrogates have provided satisfying answers as to why. (When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, he released records from as far back as 1980, but refused to release those from 1978 to '79.) Obama has released his tax returns every year since 2004.
Earmarks: Last week Obama released a list of earmarks he had requested for Illinois since becoming a senator. Clinton has not followed suit.
Fundraisers: In January, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet successfully pressured the Obama campaign to include more fundraisers on his public schedule. But that only includes those held at public venues like hotels, not private homes. Clinton has not opened fundraisers to reporters.
Donors and bundlers: Obama’s campaign lists the names of bundlers—people committed to raising more than $50,000—on its Web site but doesn’t include cities or states to go with the names. In February, Clinton’s campaign let reporters listen in on a highly staged conference call with major donors.
Personal papers: Now that Clinton has released her personal schedule from the White House years, she’s urging Obama to release his own from his years in the State Senate. When asked about the whereabouts of his pre-2004 records, Obama said he “didn’t have the resources to ensure that all this stuff was archived in some way…. [I]t could have been thrown out.”
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For a campaign whose unofficial motto is “Yes, We Can,” Barack Obama’s operation is acting awfully defeatist when it comes to a revote in Michigan.
A day after Michigan Democratic leaders deemed a revote unlikely, Hillary Clinton traveled to Detroit to call attention to the issue and urge Democrats to revive it. The trip shows just how big a deal this is for Clinton. Without revotes in Michigan or Florida, she loses a key argument in her increasingly tenuous case to superdelegates that they should overturn the pledged delegate count.
Obama’s people, meanwhile, are digging in their heels—some say running out the clock—until the Michigan Legislature’s recess begins on Thursday. The standoff is something of a Catch-22: The legislature can’t draft a revote plan without Obama’s approval, but Obama won’t approve it without seeing a concrete plan.
Politically, stalling makes sense for Obama. A Michigan revote would likely hand Clinton another victory and give her a boost in the popular vote. But his stance is hard to defend on democratic grounds. If there’s a chance to give Michigan voters a voice, how can Obama—the same guy who mocks Hillary for talking about “false hopes”—oppose that?
His campaign’s objections to the revote are a mix of the legitimate and the dubious. Obama attorney (and conference-call crasher extraordinaire) Bob Bauer penned a lengthy memo explaining how a revote wouldn’t allow people who had voted in the Republican primary to participate in the Democratic re-do. Seems fair, although plenty of states hold closed primaries that exclude Republicans and independents. Less convincing are the campaign’s claims that there’s not enough time or money. Back in December, states were still deciding when to hold their primaries. And neither campaign would have trouble finding people to finance the election, if they really tried. Most notably, Bauer doesn’t offer any alternative solutions.
Obama knows he has a winning hand in Michigan. All he has to do is twiddle his thumbs. It’s just funny, and a little sad, that his case rests on saying, “No, We Can’t.”
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Normally, we’d give John McCain the benefit of the doubt if he flubbed an obscure foreign policy factoid and hastened to correct himself. But in the past two days, McCain has managed to botch a piece of information central to the conflict in Iraq not once, but twice.
Speaking to reporters in Jordan yesterday, he said the United States must remain vigilant in combating Iran, since “al-Qaida is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.” This is, according to every piece of intelligence, just plain wrong. (Iran is supporting Shiite militias aligned against al-Qaida, which is Sunni.) Sen. Joe Lieberman, standing beside McCain, leaned in to whisper his mistake. McCain corrected himself: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaida.”
Embarrassing, yes, but forgivable—maybe he just misspoke. Right?
Sadly, no. On conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show the night before, McCain had said the exact same thing: “As you know, there are al-Qaida operatives that are taken back into Iran and given training as leaders and taken back into Iraq.”
Add this to the list of things that, come September, McCain will wish he’d never said. Topping that list would be the time he told the Wall Street Journal, “I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” McCain’s opponent in the general election could have some nasty fun coupling that statement with the al-Qaida/Iran flub. The only thing worse than admitting ignorance is displaying ignorance.