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Both Democratic candidates spent Friday in Wyoming, poking their heads into a state that has only 12 delegates total. Despite this minor flurry of attention, the Cowboy State—that’s seriously its nickname—still won’t matter when all is said and done. With apologies to Wyoming Democrats, here’s why:
We already (think we) know who’s going to win—Barack Obama will win the Wyoming caucuses. Four states that border Wyoming have already voted—and all of them have gone overwhelmingly for Obama (by an average margin of 37 points). Maybe Clinton should have thought of enacting the mercy rule before the caucuses.
The spin is already set. If Clinton loses, the campaign will quickly spin the loss away. It’s another caucus loss in a red state that Clinton will say doesn’t matter in a general election. Obama’s people will say that it shows he’s back on track and that the losses in Ohio and Texas were aberrations. Clinton will say Ohio and Texas are a lot bigger than Wyoming, and wins in big states matter more. Around and around we go!
The delegate margin will be small. Even if Obama blows Clinton out of the water in Wyoming, his delegate haul will be minimal. To come out with a six-delegate advantage, he’s going to have to win with a margin of 41 percent, according to Slate’s delegate calculator. Needless to say, that’s unlikely, especially since Clinton has actually campaigned in Wyoming. The only times Obama has racked up more than a 41-point advantage are when Clinton doesn’t campaign in a state (Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Idaho).
Even if the press says this is a big deal, it isn’t. We’ve had more narrative changes in this primary than in an average episode of Lost. Yet, after Clinton’s wins, the press started frothing about how this is a whole new race and she once again has a shot at the nomination. She has a shot, but it’s not a whole new race. The same thing happened after Obama won Wisconsin. All of a sudden, Obama was the inevitable nominee, even though it was just one more state added to his streak. If Obama wins Wyoming, it’s still just one win. He was expected to win among the Tetons just like Clinton was expected to win Ohio and Obama was expected to win the Potomac. At this point, every new primary and caucus offers only marginal change.
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Didn’t want to let this one slip by before the end of the day.
Today on a conference call (if I had a nickel for every time I used that phrase), a reporter compared Samantha Power’s “monster” remark to the unsubtle allusion by BET founder Bob Johnson about Obama’s cocaine use.
Keep in mind that Johnson’s denial—in which he claimed he had been referring to Obama’s time spent as a community organizer—was one of the election’s most indefensible statements to date.
But today, two months later, Wolfson half-heartedly went to bat for him:
“In this instance, there was some initial … My recollection on this is not as good as it might be, it feels like it was a million years ago … There was some initial sense that Bob Johnson was referring to one thing, perhaps a sense he was referring to something else. … I don’t honestly remember if he ended up apologizing or not. … That is a decision he made. … I don’t mean to minimize his importance, but he is not part of daily campaign life that I imagine Samantha Power is or has been.”
There you have it. In one fell swoop, Wolfson recapitulates the whole sad flap: Johnson’s absurd denial, inadequate apology, and the campaign’s attempt to distance itself from his remarks, before finally settling back on the message at hand: Samantha Power.
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It’s been a rough day for Samantha Power.
The flap over her “monster” comment was just brewing when another, slightly more substantive charge emerged. In an interview with the BBC, Power said that Barack Obama’s plan to pull out of Iraq within 16 months isn’t a commitment but a “best-case scenario” that Obama will have to revisit when he becomes president.
The Clinton camp is all over this one, saying it shows Obama isn’t actually serious about quick withdrawal. In a conference call today, a Clinton surrogate compared the remarks to what Austan Goolsbee allegedly said to Canadian officials about Obama’s commitment to NAFTA.
He’s right—this is like the NAFTA flap. But not how he means it. As with NAFTA, both candidates have been much more strident in their campaign rhetoric than they can possibly be as president. Obama and Clinton have condemned the free trade agreement but stopped short of saying they will scrap it. The only “commitment” they’ve made regarding NAFTA is to “renegotiate” it, without specifying what parts they would renegotiate. (Both say they would reform the deal’s labor and environmental standards, but that’s not the part manufacturing workers in Ohio are concerned about.)
Similarly, both candidates are playing chicken on the subject of withdrawal from Iraq. Obama promises to “remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” Clinton’s stance is less decisive: She promises to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to start bringing troops home within 60 days. But neither candidate has presented a definite “timetable for withdrawal,” let alone explained the logistics of pulling out such a massive force in such a short period.
The fact is, Power is exactly right. Whoever becomes president will be confronted with a much messier situation than the candidates acknowledge. “Best-case scenario” might not have been the ideal choice of words—“goal” sounds a little more optimistic— but Power was correct to say that “you can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009.” Essentially her point was that things change—a fact that neither candidate has been willing to admit. It’s disappointing that the first person to do so gets sacked.
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For the second time this week, Hillary Clinton raised the possibility of running on a joint ticket with Barack Obama. First was on Wednesday's morning shows. Then she did it again this morning at a campaign stop in Mississippi. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who has endorsed Clinton, floated the same scenario on a radio show today.
Clinton's campagin is usually unflappably on message (with some exceptions). This can't be a mistake.
But what's her goal? To deliberately plant the idea in people's heads is at odds with the campaign's never-say-die ethos. It's the equivalent of saying "if I win" rather than "when I win." Maybe she's trying to counter suggestions that the long Democratic battle is going to split the party—you couldn't ask for more unity than an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket.
Of course, there's a big difference between those two tickets. Clinton could use Obama's help, but Obama doesn't need Clinton. He can fill arenas on his own, thank you very much. Clinton, on the other hand, would be looking for a smart, young, dashing guy with red-state appeal. Who comes to mind?
Most people have dismissed the "dream team" scenario, arguing that VP is a lame duck position neither candidate would want. But the job has changed since Al Gore. Dick Cheney, whatever you think of his politics, has made the seat much more powerful—and therefore much more attractive to would-be occupants. How ironic would it be if Cheney's well-documented efforts to enhance the power of the executive branch ended up making the Democratic dream ticket possible?
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In a strange seven-and-a-half minute
address to supporters worldwide, Ron Paul said it was time to scale back
the campaign. He’s not quite quitting, but he’s not quite optimistic, either.
He admitted that he can’t achieve “victory in the conventional political
sense.” President Bush may want to steal that line for his next speech on Iraq.
Presumably, Paul supporters are taking this semi-withdrawal even harder than
the candidate himself. Throughout the campaign, it seemed his netroots thought
he could win even more than Paul’s campaign did. We thought it only fitting to
give him a Trailhead send-off by tapping into the pulse of our friends over at
the Ron Paul Forums. What follows are real comments by real Paul fans. (People
are identified by their usernames.)
BillyDkid: All
I can think of is that smug ass George Steffenopollis smirking and feeling self
satisfied with his "rightness". I am sick and furious about this
whole thing.
Actpulsa: Are
we through throwing blame yet? Can we stop and remember that this is about
liberty yet? Do we want us and our kids to be free? Can any one of us do it
alone? Are we on the same side of this war or aren't we? [Note: actpulsa is a frequent commenter on Trailhead’s
Fray.]
Pacelli:
“Regardless of what we want to read into Ron's message, or don't for that
matter, nothing has changed in terms of our duty as Americans in the past few
weeks. I, for one, could care less what is released by the campaign. The
campaign doesn't speak for me, nor does it need to.”
Nodope0695: I
didn't hear the word, "END" or "DROP OUT" anywhere in Ron's
video. I heard "WIND DOWN". He clearly stated that the campaign is
"SCALING BACK", that this is a NEW PHASE - that we ought to continue
to collect votes and delegates.
Dianne: If
someone has the ability to contact Ron Paul personally, I would really
appreciate you putting this in front of him. I for one am not ready to give up
the fight. Paul always said this campaign is about his supporters, not him. In
that case, Paul should allow us to make the decision as to whether we are ready
to support him as a third party candidate. [I’ll spare you the rest, but Dianne goes on to
create a ballot she wants Paul’s campaign to send out to donors]
If you’re feeling Paulstalgia
tap into Trailhead’s
Ron Paul archive. Some select choices: Our journey
inside the Ron Paul blimp and our attempt
to understand his fervent fan base.
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No sooner did the Clinton campaign demand Samantha Power’s resignation for calling Clinton a “monster” than she submitted it.
“I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign,” Power said in a statement.
Power, a top foreign-policy adviser to Obama, originally told the Scotsman newspaper that Clinton “is a monster, too—that is off the record—she is stooping to anything.” Apparently she and the paper had different definitions of “off the record.” She later apologized, declaring her admiration for Hillary Clinton. But for the Clinton campaign, that wasn’t enough—a surrogate called the decision of whether to keep Power around “a test of character” for Obama. Presumably he has passed the test.
The resignation matters symbolically, but that’s about it. Power has called herself an “informal adviser” to Obama, and she wasn’t exactly part of the regular campaign entourage. (She did travel with the campaign in Iowa and South Carolina.) Her stepping down doesn’t mean she and Obama can’t talk. It just means they can’t appear together in public. Plus, keep in mind that Obama has already rolled out his major foreign-policy initiatives. Power could have been useful given Clinton’s latest attempts to bring Afghanistan front and center, but again, this is a resignation—not a restraining order.
Yet again we see how Obama’s talk about a “new kind of politics” opens him up to charges of “same old, same old.” Power’s words were nasty, sure, but hardly as offensive as Bill Shaheen and Bob Johnson’s winking hints about Obama’s cocaine use. Their charges had political weight, whereas Clinton was never, in fact, a giant, rampaging Cloverfield-style she-beast. But because Obama has sold himself as Mr. Clean, his opponents can point to any dirt as evidence of hypocrisy.
At the very least, Power’s transgression—coupled with Susan Rice’s recent slip-up and the Austan Goolsbee flap—will make the Obama campaign more careful about which surrogates they put out front.
Click here for Part 2 of the Samantha Power saga.
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Responding to calls for Hillary Clinton to release her tax returns, the campaign has said it will release them “on or around” April 15. But they still haven’t answered the central question: Why not release them now?
“I'm a little busy right now,” Clinton said two weeks ago, but since then hasn’t elaborated on the campaign’s rationale.
Naturally, the Obama camp has piled on, releasing a memo a couple days ago asking, “What does Clinton have to hide?” (Obama has released his tax returns since 2004.) They point out that during her 2000 Senate campaign, Clinton attacked her opponent Rick Lazio for not releasing his own tax returns.
Today in a conference call, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson called the difference between Clinton now and Lazio then “night and day.” About 20 years of Clinton’s tax returns—from 1980 to 2000—are on the public record, he said, whereas Lazio had released none of his.
Of course, it’s not those 20 years people are interested in. It’s the post-presidential years, when the business dealings of Clinton and her husband haven’t undergone as much scrutiny. If there’s anything juicy in the financial documents, it would have to do with whether the Clintons used tax shelters to reduce their tax bill—something she has opposed for large corporations—as well as income from stocks and how much they gave to charity.
So if there’s nothing damning in the papers, why not release them now? And if there is, wouldn’t Clinton be better off confronting it now than on April 15, a week before the must-win (and probably will-win) Pennsylvania primary? Perhaps that’s too quick a turnaround for reporters to fully vet the papers, in which case the stalling might work, but you can be sure Obama’s oppo folks will be pulling all-nighters. As it is, Clinton’s stonewalling just feeds Obama’s case about her lack of transparency.
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Yesterday, we chronicled the recent gaffes of Obama surrogates nationwide. Less than 24 hours later, it's time to scratch another mark on the tally. One of Obama's foreign-policy advisers, Samantha Power, told a Scottish newspaper that Hillary "is a monster, too—that is off the record—she is stooping to anything." (The Scotsman did not regard her comment as off the record because she did not ask for confidentiality beforehand.)
Other newsworthy quotes from Power's interview:
The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.
You just look at her and think, "Ergh."
We f***** up in Ohio. ... In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
These kind of gaffes didn't have to happen. The Scotsman interview was supposed to be about Power's new book, but instead it created a new line of attack for both parties.
(Hat tip to Ben Smith.)
Update 10:44 a.m.: On a conference call this morning, a group of Clinton surrogates calls for the Obama campaign to remove Power. Rep. Nita Lowey says this is “a test of character” for Obama. “If I or anyone had used the word Samanatha Power used, we would not be on this campaign this morning,” says communications director Howard Wolfson.