Friday, March 28, 2008 - Posts
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After Mitt Romney endorsed McCain last month, we figured Romney would crawl into a cave, never to return until 2012. The strained smiles, the too-tight handshakes—it felt like a testy family reunion. But since then, Romney has said repeatedly that he would take the VP slot if offered. However, McCain didn’t exactly reach out.
Until today. Right now MittCain (too soon?) is taking a whirlwind fundraising tour around Rocky Mountain country, starting in Utah and finishing up in Denver this evening. The main reason is to drum up cash—McCain raised $11 million in February, compared to Obama’s $55 million. But it’s also a chance for the former rivals to show everyone that now they’re besties. (They look so exuberant it’s frightening.)
Naturally, speculators wonder if this means Romney tops McCain’s veep list. After all, presidential candidates have overcome former bitterness to forge alliances of convenience before. George H.W. Bush, for example, accepted Ronald Reagan’s VP offer after ridiculing Reagan’s “voodoo economics” during the primary season.
But McCain’s situation is different. For him, picking Romney would fly in the face of his entire “straight talk” image. (However spurious.) McCain spent much of the primary slamming Romney not for minor policy differences, but for fundamental dishonesty. Given that McCain already arouses suspicion among many conservatives, the last thing he needs is someone whose reversals on abortion, gay rights, and stem-cell research make McCain’s own reversal on Bush’s tax cuts look consistent. No doubt McCain needs the cash, but as Romney himself discovered, money can’t buy votes. Especially when there's video evidence your running mate can't stand you.
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Earlier this week, the Clinton campaign challenged Barack Obama’s claims that he was a University of Chicago law professor. So, we phoned up U Chicago for their take. The school’s press office indicated that he was technically a senior lecturer but not a professor.
Now it appears they’ve changed their story—or at least nuanced it a bit. They reiterate that he never held the title professor, but they say senior lecturers are, in fact, considered professors. It’s a point that one of our colleagues over at Convictions already made—that yes, technically senior lecturer and professor is not the same title but that trying to tease them apart as proof that Obama deliberately lied is just silly.
Here’s the university’s official statement:
From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.
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Sen. Bob Casey’s endorsement of Barack Obama is big for several reasons—he represents the battleground state of Pennsylvania, he appeals to working-class Dems, and he had said he would remain neutral in the race, making his decision to take sides a potential example for other fence-sitting superdelegates.
Casey says he endorsed Obama because he “can lead us, he can heal us, he can help rebuild America,” etc. etc.
But there’s also some back story there. Back in 1992, Casey’s father, Bob Sr., then governor of Pennsylvania, wasn’t allowed to speak at the Democratic Convention. The reason most commonly cited is that Casey didn’t endorse Clinton during his campaign. But more likely, as Kevin Drum argued awhile back, it had something to do with Casey Sr.’s desire to give a pro-life speech. Either way, the incident generated bad blood between the Clintons and the Caseys.
Friends tell the Times that had nothing to do with the decision to swing toward Obama. And given Casey’s previous statements that he would remain neutral, we’re inclined to believe them. Plus, Clinton campaigned for Casey during his 2006 race against Rick Santorum. (As did Obama.)
More likely, it was another generation of Caseys that influenced him. A “source” tells the Philadephia Inquirer
Casey's decision was also personal, motivated in part by the enthusiasm his four daughters - Elyse, Caroline, Julia and Marena - have expressed for Obama, the source said. "He thinks we shouldn't be deaf to the voices of the next generation."
Makes you wonder if targeting young people is just as valuable for its trickle-up effect—kids influencing their parents—as for its direct impact on youth turnout.
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The main criticism of Howard Dean since he took over as head of the DNC has been his silence. (First he was too loud, now he’s too quiet.) So now anything he says, however off-the-cuff, gets amplified to 300 decibels.
Sirens wailed, therefore, when he told CBS (you break that news, CBS!) that he’d like to see the nomination wrapped up by July 1. An aide clarifies to Politico that July 1 is really just a ballpark date, but it’s still a big deal that Dean is weighing in. In a separate interview with the Associated Press, Dean says:
“There'll be some nasty fights if it goes to convention, and people will walk out,” Dean said. “But I've also been talking to a fairly significant number of, by and large, nonaligned people about how we might resolve this.”
Contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s recent statement that she’s ready to take this to the convention, and you’ve got two very differing views of reality.
Dean stops short of favoring either candidate—that’s not part of his job description—but there’s a Pelosi-like quality to his statements. In the AP interview, Dean addresses Clinton’s recent claims that pledged delegates don’t have to vote as directed. Dean charitably calls that "a very technical argument” and adds, “You aren't going to get pledged delegates to move unless something really shocking happens.” He also told the AP that he doesn’t think superdelegates would support the candidate who doesn’t win the pledged delegate count. Given the numbers we’ve been looking at for weeks now, that’s tantamount to saying he thinks Obama has it wrapped up. But, of course, he can’t say that.
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The Clinton campaign is starting to remind us of that immortal scene from Dumb and Dumber, in which Lloyd, played by Jim Carrey, asks his crush what the chances are that she’d marry him. She gives him blunt odds: one in 1 million. After a moment of thinking, Lloyd’s face lights up: “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
Hillary, we’re telling you there’s a chance. But right now—given the delegate count, the popular-vote tally, the failure of Florida and Michigan to secure revotes, the swing of superdelegates toward Obama since Feb. 5, and the growing itch among top Democrats to see this race wrapped up—we’d put your chances today at 12 percent.
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