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Slate’s Nathan Heller points out that both HillaryClinton.com and BarackObama.com now redirect visitors directly to their contributions pages. (Actually, it looks like BarackObama.com just reverted as I was prepping this post.)
Clinton’s minimum suggested contribution: $5
Obama’s minimum suggested contribution: $15
Best Fundraising Ploy of the Day goes to the sudden revelation that Clinton loaned herself $ 6.4 million in April and May. Clinton's two biggest fundraising surges were after her Pennsylvania victory and the announcement that she'd loaned herself $5 million. (Obama got quite a boost from both, as well.) Today's loan announcement, coming on the heels of her Indiana squeeker, gives her the best of both worlds.
But neither candidate has released post-Indiana fundraising numbers, which suggests that their victories didn’t yield quite the cash surge that Pennsylvania did.
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Comedian/magician/author Penn Jillette has been telling a joke about Hillary Clinton for some time now. Or, rather, telling a story about the joke and its supposed meaning. But yesterday, he told it to the wrong people—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski*—in the wrong forum.
At risk of blessing it with repetition, the joke goes something like: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. … And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."
Jillette’s point is that when he told it on stage, the audience didn’t gasp—they went wild. To him, it’s a miniparable about how Hillary can’t win. But Scarborough and Brzezinski were clearly not amused, and there’s been some minor fallout.
But imagine how much there would have been if he’d told it a day earlier. Back in February, Maureen Dowd called jokes like Jillette’s "exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don't want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated—again."
Had his ill-advised words fallen a day or two before the primary—like Obama’s cool brush off in the New Hampshire debate or Clinton’s Diner Sob—they might have gained a bit more traction and maybe even created a backlash. Instead, they got buried under election-day coverage. Not that an off-color remark by a comedian would have handed North Carolina to Clinton. But every bit of outrage counts.
* Oops. This post originally misspelled Mika Brzezinski's name.
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A high-profile change of heart, a multimillion-dollar loan, and more Obama superdelegates drag Clinton down 1.7 points to 2.5 percent.
George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for president in 1972, says he's done supporting Hillary Clinton.
He told Fox that she waged a valiant campaign but that it's time for
her to drop out because the math is too daunting. McGovern had already
flirted with Obama a few weeks ago—he told the Huffington Post that Obama had the better chance of winning in November—but today's announcement is a hiccup that Clinton can't afford.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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George McGovern isn’t a superdelegate, but his switch to Obama
is still important, because it creates a model for other flip-flopping Clinton loyalists to
imitate. Notice his rationale to MSNBC, where he professed “great affection”
for the Clintons:
“They were battling for me 36 years ago when I won the
presidential nomination and that’s why I supported Hillary in considerable part
this time.”
The implication here is that McGovern endorsed Clinton largely for
personal reasons. He never thought she’d make a better president than Obama. He
just owed her. But now that her chances are below zero, he’s shifting
allegiance to the guy who’s going to win, and who he really likes just as much
as Clinton.
That’s actually pretty similar to what
he said back in October, when he first endorsed Hillary: “We are very
fortunate that we have a marvelous collection of candidates, any one of whom I
would be happy to support for the highest office,” he said, but added that “we
have an old rule of currency in the United States: Ladies first.” That
didn’t make much sense at the time, but it makes backing out now a lot easier.
This rationale—I supported Hillary because we’re friends,
but Obama will make a smashing president—is something we’re likely to hear more
in the coming days. It lets supers switch sides without undermining their newfound
commitment to Obama.
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If yesterday’s primaries showed anything, it’s that the slings and arrows of the past few weeks—the Rev. Wright, the "bitter" comment, flag pins, and various other 'gates—have not put a significant dent in Barack Obama’s chances. Meanwhile, a consensus is building that Clinton cannot win unless disaster strikes the Obama camp. But if Wright spewing nonsense about AIDS conspiracies doesn’t derail Obama's candidacy, what will?
I’ve heard some pretty creative descriptions of what must happen to Obama or his campaign for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Back in March, Politico wrote that "she cannot win unless Obama is hit by a political meteor." Slate’s John Dickerson writes that for Clinton to catch up now, "she must bring more states into the union." In an episode of On the Media last month, Bob Garfield described one worst-case-scenario as "a video of Barack Obama in a motel room with a den of Cub Scouts setting fire to the American flag." To which I added, "He has to be client number eight, pretty much."
You can do better. What sort of out-there, long-shot, one-in-a-kajillion occurrences must happen to Clinton or Obama to bring about the Obamapocalypse and hand Clinton the nomination? Send your ideas here, and we’ll post the best ones later this week.
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The foundation of Hillary Clinton’s support is beginning to crack. George McGovern, whom you may remember from his starring role in the 1972 election, has called for Clinton to drop out of the race and says he is now endorsing Barack Obama. He’s the first—and, thus far, only—Clinton supporter who has jumped ship since last night's results*, but he still makes quite a splash.
Guiding his decision may be his own tortured history with drawn-out delegate fights and backroom deals at the 1972 convention. To win the nomination in 1972 he had to fight through several delegate challenges, the most serious of which was about the way California’s delegates would be allocated. There’s a lot of nuance involved—including credentials committee, the Supreme Court, and conventionwide votes, but here’s the gist: The California Democratic Party decided the state would use a winner-take-all system to allot its delegates. McGovern won the state by 5 percent, so he earned all 271 of the California’s delegates. Later, the DNC adopted a proportional allocation system, and McGovern’s opponents wanted to stop California from earning a grandfather-clause reprieve. Essentially, McGovern thought his opponents were changing the rules of the game as time was winding down. Sound familiar?
Per Hunter S. Thompson, here’s what McGovern said after the credentials fight was over:
The confrontations with the Old Guard seldom come in public. There are conversations on the telephone, plans are laid, people are put to work, and it’s done quietly. California is a classic. There will never be a case in American politics of such a naked power grab—straight power, no principle, straight opportunism. I wasn’t aware of it. … We were naïve. … [W]e really got scared when we saw the ferocity of their attack.
Personal experience has soured McGovern on naked power grabs, straight power, a dearth of principle, and straight opportunism. Personal experience has told him he can no longer support Hillary Clinton for president.
*UPDATE 2:10 p.m.: Originally, I neglected to make clear that McGovern is the first to change sides since Clinton's defeat in North Carolina and narrow win in Indiana.
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Over the last few elections the "Limbaugh effect" has gone from grassroots conspiracy theory to Obama-campaign talking point. On a campaign call today, John Kerry said that "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, [Obama] would have won."
Did mischievous Republicans make the difference in Indiana?
There are a couple of ways to look at the math. Clinton won the state by about 18,000. Exit polls show that 10 percent of Democratic primary voters were Republicans, 54 percent of whom went for Clinton. Since about 1.3 million people voted total, that means about 68,000 of them were Republicans who voted for Clinton, compared to about 58,000 who voted for Obama. So if Republicans hadn’t been allowed to vote, as Ben Smith points out, Obama would have gained 10,000—not enough to catch up. Likewise, for "Limbaugh Democrats" to have made the difference, they would have to make up a quarter of the Republicans who voted for Hillary (18,000/68,000 = 0.26). That seems unlikely.
More compelling is an examination of Clinton voters who said they’d vote for McCain in the general. The Obama campaign points out that 16 percent of Democratic primary voters said they’d prefer McCain over Clinton in a general election matchup—and 41 percent of those voters actually voted for Clinton in the primary. That means about 7 percent of the Democratic electorate—about 83,000 voters—voted for Clinton in the primary and said they’d vote for McCain in the general even if Clinton were the nominee.
That number is hard to refute. And there’s scattered anecdotal evidence that Republican voters set out to vote tactically voted for Clinton as part of Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos." But, then again, if the goal is sabotage, why would these people answer pollsters’ questions truthfully?
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In tonight’s Deathwatch, I asked, “Clinton pledged to stay in the race. The question is, why?”
The answer is pretty clear, I now realize, if you look at the upcoming primary calendar. Next Tuesday, West Virginia votes. Polls are sparse, but Clinton is expected to win. A week later comes Kentucky, where Clinton has a massive lead, and Oregon, where Obama is favored. That’s two potentially wide victories for Clinton in two weeks.
It won’t help her numbers much. West Virginia and Kentucky have only 99 delegates combined (pledged and unpledged), while Oregon has 65, so she isn’t going to rack up many delegates. Likewise, she won’t significantly close Obama’s popular-vote lead.
But for Clinton, the nomination isn’t about numbers anymore. There’s no metric by which she can plausibly win, even if Florida and Michigan are counted. Now it’s about derailing Obama or waiting for him to derail himself. Clinton has come this far; why not ride out this rough patch—however many people call for her to drop out—and see what happens?
Worst-case scenario, she spends a few million more dollars and drops out in late May or early June. (Remember how long Huckabee stuck around, just to see what happened?) Better that than drop out tomorrow, only to have some damning revelation about Obama emerge over the next month. Clinton paints herself as a fighter, but her best shot at the nomination is now less about fighting than waiting.
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We're hunkered down in Trailhead HQ watching the cable networks, and the coverage of the frozen Lake County results are striking for one reason, in particular: The pundits keep on chattering about something that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter who wins Indiana—we know that one of the candidates will by one or two points, at which point the delegate margin is neglibile. Indiana has 72 pledged delegates, 25 of which are allocated based on the statewide vote, and 47 of which are allocated based on proportions in each congressional district. There may be a delegate or two to swing in Lake County's district, and there may be one or two up for grabs in the statewide total. Proof of this: NBC News has already allocated all but six of Indiana's delegates.
We aren't in Clinton's war room right now, but we've got a feeling that those few delegates aren't going to decide whether she drops out of the race tomorrow, next week, or next month.