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It’s one thing to damn with faint praise. It’s another to
kill with enthusiastc praise. And that seemed to be Barack Obama’s partial goal
in his speech in Des Moines
tonight.
At times, Obama sounded like a Clinton surrogate. He called her “one of the
most formidable candidates to ever run for this office.” He complimented “her
courage, her commitment and her perseverance.” He even borrowed a line straight
out of Clinton’s
talking points: “In her thirty-five
years of public service, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has never given up
on her fight for the American people,” he said. [E.A.] I half expected him to say Clinton is "ready to lead on Day One."
It’s no surprise that Obama has softened on Clinton. The reverse is true, too. Clinton
insisted tonight that Democrats will unite behind the nominee—she practically
ordered them to, which may be necessary given that nearly half of Kentucy Dems
said they would not support Obama in a general election against John McCain.
But as Obama complements her, he’s paving the way for her
exit. It’s like the euphoria they say comes over you just before death. “No
matter how this primary ends,” Obama said, “Senator Clinton has shattered myths
and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and
yours will come of age.”
This will no doubt get the “dream ticket” fans clucking
again. Look, they’re healing! But
really, it shows just how easy it is to be generous when you’ve won.
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Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight in Louisville was two speeches in one. On the one hand, she seemed more determined than ever to campaign through June 3, seat Florida and Michigan, and reach the “2,210” delegates necessary to win the nomination. But she was simultaneously conciliatory, repeating how she would do everything she can to help a Democrat win in November. She tempered that a bit by saying she’d “support the Democratic nominee, whoever she may be.” But even so, it’s not a pledge you make if you think you’re going to win the race.
How can she have it both ways? Easy. She’s still challenging Obama, but only on process—not on issues. She announced that she is “winning the popular vote,” but no one truly believes that’s an untainted number if you count Florida and Michigan. (Even if you don’t, it’s sketchy.) She dropped the 2,210 figure as the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, but again, she’s the only one counting that way. She still says she’s “ready, willing and able to lead,” but no longer says she’s the only such candidate.
Given this double-speak, Clinton’s goal seems to be shifting. Plan A is still to win the nomination. But Plan B is to preserve her reputation as a fighter. That means campaigning hard in the remaining states, heading to Florida tomorrow to renew calls to seat the delegation, and arguing that she’s most capable of winning the presidency. None of that will hurt Obama—and that’s exactly why it’s OK for her to continue. There’s almost a tacit agreement that Obama will focus on John McCain while Clinton maintains her “fighter” status. As long as she can achieve Plan B without permanently damaging the person she knows to be the all-but-inevitable nominee, there’s no reason to drop out. She’s been in this dozens of weeks; what’s another two?
She’s still fighting, but it’s fighting for fighting’s sake.
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Despite Hillary Clinton’s dominating win in Kentucky this evening, Barack Obama is still going to win enough pledged delegates to own the majority in that metric. He who holds the pledged-delegate majority holds the key to the kingdom, we’re told. But that doesn’t mean Clinton’s win will be for naught. Her queen-size victory may be enough to fortify her superdelegate friends who are still wary of flooding to Obama … for another week or two.
There's no way to be sure of the exact numbers quite yet, but according to Slate’s Delegate Calculator, Obama stands to gain somewhere around 15 to 18 pledged delegates from the Bluegrass State. That opportunity, combined with a likely win in Oregon, should net him between 40 and 50 pledged delegates this evening. Coming into these primaries, DemConWatch had him 108 away from the 2,025 needed for the nomination. If he grabs 40 to 50, that means he’ll need 70 more superdelegates at most.
(Note: We’re using 2,025 as the majority of delegates necessary. This does not include Michigan and Florida. Obama would only need a handful of extra superdelegates to achieve a majority with the two naughty states included.)
Seventy is a lot of superdelegates to get immediately following a win in Oregon, but it’s not a totally unrealistic scenario. Plenty of superdelegates (Pelosi, Carter, and Reid included) have said they will vote for whoever wins the most pledged delegates, and Barack Obama will own that title after tonight. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out and publicly back Obama, especially with such an embarrassing loss in Kentucky. Clinton won more than 70 percent of the white vote, and more than 30 percent of voters say they’d rather vote for McCain than Obama in November. Those aren’t the prettiest numbers to endorse.
So, instead, we’re likely to see the same steady superdelegate stream to Obama that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. But that still means Clinton is going to be mathematically defeated sooner rather than later. At that point, the chorus chanting for her withdrawal will be deafening. Just ask Mike Huckabee.
UPDATE 9:29 p.m: Hawk-eyed reader Titbug reminds us that Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Clinton supporter, has said she'll back the pledged delegate and popular vote leader. A list of superdelegates using pledged-delegate tallies as the deciding factor is available here.
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Another election night, another parsing of the exit polls. As usual, these numbers come from CNN and will probably evolve as the night goes on and the networks receive more waves of exit polls. The gist: As in West Virginia, it’s a sweep, no matter the demographic.
- Nearly the same proportion of men (62 percent) voted for Hillary Clinton as voted for Barack Obama (67 percent).
- Sixty-two percent of voters think Clinton is more likely to win in November. Thirty-five percent of voters say Obama is more likely to win, 17 percent of whom voted for Clinton anyway.
- Forty-two percent of voters say Obama should not pick Clinton as his running mate, 50 percent of whom were Clinton supporters. Twenty-one percent of those who say he should pick Clinton are Obama supporters.
- Thirty-nine percent of college graduates supported Obama; 25 percent of non-college-educated voters supported him.
- Sixty-four percent of voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy. That’s higher than her honesty numbers nationally. More people believe Obama is untrustworthy than think he’s honest.
- Thirty-three percent of voters say they’ll vote for McCain over Obama in November. Eighty-three percent of them are Clinton supporters.
- Seventy-two percent of white voters supported Clinton. Nineteen percent of white voters say race was important in their vote—88 percent of whom voted for Clinton.
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Another quirk of Oregon’s mail-in voting system is the way exit polls are being conducted. Normally, polling firms set up stations at polling places across the state and selectively interview voters as they emerge. The difference in Oregon is that polling firms are calling voters at home.
It’s hard to pinpoint what difference this makes in the numbers, especially since exit polls are unreliable to begin with. But consider these factors:
Young people are less likely to own a home phone, which means they could be underrepresented in polls. Few people actually fill out the contact information section of their mail-in ballots. Normal exit polls are self-selective to an extent, since you’re going to get people who are less shy or hurried; your average voter is more likely to pick up the phone than talk to a stranger in person. Normal exit polls catch voters fresh out of the voting booth; phone surveys rely on many voters who cast their ballots weeks before.
Oregon relied on phone surveys in 2004 and the results weren’t disputed. But they were also less scrutinized, since John Kerry had the nomination locked up by then. When looking at tonight’s demographic breakdowns, it’s worth keeping methodology in mind.
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Story lines in this election have been determined as often by timing as by actual events. Two weeks ago, networks called Barack Obama’s win in North Carolina hours before they called Clinton’s Indiana win, producing wishy-washy headlines like NBC’s "CLINTON THE 'APPARENT' WINNER IN INDIANA." Or remember how people referred to Clintons’ "double-digit" Pennsylvania win, only to discover the next day that she’d actually won by 9.2 points. Or in Nevada, where we learned late in the game that Obama had somehow won more delegates than Clinton.
Tonight’s timing is especially favorable to Clinton. Kentucky results start coming in at 7 p.m. ET, while Oregon results don’t appear until 11 p.m. ET. That leaves four hours for what’s expected to be a Clinton thumping to sink in.
If Oregon came first, the narrative would be, Obama racks up another slew of pledged delegates—can Clinton make a last stand in Kentucky? But since it’s the other way around, it will be, Clinton trounces Obama once again among white working-class voters—has Obama improved at all since West Virginia? Clinton's speech in Louisville, Ky., will have a victory to back it up, whereas Obama won't have decisive results until after he's done speechifying in Des Moines.
That’s not to say the order of the primaries will determine the outcome of the nomination. In the grand scheme, Obama’s weakness among blue-collar voters isn’t as drastic as Clinton’s current weakness among elected delegates. But thanks to the international-time-zone system, Clinton gets to set the tone for the night.
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On normal election nights, results start trickling in when polls close, but it sometimes takes hours for enough precincts to report that you can declare a winner. You end up waiting for areas like Gary, Ind., to get their act together and report. As a result, the early returns often skew toward one candidate or another, only to reverse later in the night.
But tonight, we’re told, things will be different. Oregon conducts its primary using entirely mail-in ballots, which means more than half of the results should be in by the time polls close at 11 p.m. ET. So even though the time difference will keep East Coasters up late, it probably won’t take long to announce a winner.
That doesn’t mean early results won’t be skewed early on. It just means the bias won’t be geographic. (In Indiana, Gary was a known Obama stronghold, which meant that networks couldn’t call the state for Clinton until that city had reported.) Rather, the last votes will come from people who turned in their ballots in person Monday or Tuesday instead of mailing them in soon after May 1, when they were sent out. In other words, the procrastinators.
Procrastinators, needless to say, tend to be younger than their early-mailing counterparts, which suggests that last-minute voters will likely skew slightly toward Obama. “If [the margin] comes out Obama in the first flush, I think it will grow,” says Phil Keisling, former Oregon secretary of state and a strong advocate of mail-in voting.
Some counties are more likely to procrastinate than others. Multnomah County, the state’s largest county, happens to include Portland, the state’s slacker capital. (Eugene, Ore., comes in a close second.) “They take longer to get their ballots in,” says Scott Moore, a spokesman for the Oregon secretary of state.
But when it comes to voting, procrastination can be a good
thing. “It’s a smart procrastinator vote,” Keisling said. In 2004, there were
eight Democratic races on the Oregon ballot (PDF), plus a couple dozen non-partisan offices. The mail-in system lets voters take their time learning about
the various races, rather than hastily circling names they see for the first
time on election day.
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Oregon Democrat Steve Novick has become a media darling in recent weeks. Yes, he’s the scrappy underdog in his state’s senatorial primary. Yes, he has an exceptional background, having earned a law degree from Harvard at age 21. But let’s be honest. You know about him because of his hook hand.
Novick has made his hook the centerpiece of his campaign. His smart political spots don’t try to avoid the prosthesis. They show it off. In the best-known ad, he cracks open a beer with the hook.
This would make Novick part of a long tradition of congressmen with deformed hands. You’ve got Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost three fingers on his left hand in a meat grinding accident. There’s Rahm Emanuel, who in high school sliced his finger in an Arby’s machine then went for a swim in Lake Michigan. Surgery left him with a stub for a middle finger. He still uses the stub regularly.
Former senators with manual problems include Bob Dole, who carried a pen in his paralyzed right hand to signal that he couldn’t shake hands properly, and Max Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam after bending down to pick up a grenade.
Others?
Update 1:35 p.m.: Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake lost the tip of his right index finger in an alfalfa field when he was 5.
Update 3:31 p.m.: Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii lost his arm in Italy in 1945 after a grenade exploded at close range.
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For a while earlier today, Yahoo! News had this photo illustrating an article about alleged White House plans to attack Iran -- a piece that had nothing to do with John McCain.
The photo's fixed now. Maybe Obama's attempts to tie McCain to Bush are paying off.
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For a candidate trying to combat portrayals of himself as a fey elitist, Obama could be choosing his speaking venues more carefully.
A headline in today’s Des Moines Register announces that Obama “returns to D.M. today for east-side rally.” The city’s east side is home to many of the sort of white, working-class voters Obama has struggled to win over; you’d think he was trying to reach out. But read further down, and you see that it’s actually the “East Village” where he’s speaking.
Trailhead reader and Obama supporter Doug Cutchins describes his disappointment: “[T]he East Village is a wholly different entity – it’s the gentrified, buy-warehouses-and-turn-them-into-condos-with-an-art-gallery neighborhood of Des Moines. Yuppie latte central. So instead of reaching out, he’s playing to his base (and stereotypes).”
Obama might as well be holding his rally in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Here’s how Adam Nagourney described the area in the New York Times back in December: “The East Village streets, spread out under the State Capitol, were aglow with lights — lavender, icy blue and, of course, red and green — strung out for Christmas. They were bustling with boutiques, bookstores, coffee shops, culinary stores and Smash, an edgy T-shirt shop where the proprietors were listening to Band of Horses while making slightly off-color T-shirts celebrating the Iowa caucuses.”
You can’t blame Obama for wanting to return to the site of his first major victory, and the rally is just blocks from Iowa campaign headquarters. But Clinton’s Kentucky win will be yet another reminder of Obama’s weakness among blue-collar whites. In the past week, Clinton has dropped her argument that Obama can’t win this group, presumably because of the negative reaction to her comment about “hard-working white Americans.” But with venue selection like this, Obama is practically making it for her.