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CNN's Anderson Cooper presses Donna Brazile to discuss a private conversation she had with Obama yesterday. Brazile explains why it's none of his business:
Brazile: You’re not my boo.
Cooper: I want to be your boo.
Brazile coyly looks at her watch.
Brazile: Are we still on TV?
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Poor Montana. They were so, so close to mattering.
The moment South Dakota's polls closed at 9 p.m. ET, the balloons and confetti started raining on the Obama campaign as the Mount Rushmore State awarded Obama the four delegates he needed to clinch the nomination. It wasn't much more than a technicality; Clinton would have had to win the state by about 80 percent to hold Obama off for a few more minutes. But South Dakota can still claim to be the state that gave Obama the nomination.
Montana is officially an afterthought, number 56 of 56, and enjoys the dubious distinction of having been the only state to finish voting after the nomination was decided.
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Tonight is the second time I’ve heard Clinton supporters chant, “Denver! Denver!”—the first being last Saturday outside (and inside) the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting in Washington, D.C.
It’s no secret that Clinton supporters are less eager to vote for Obama in the general election than vice versa. (Only 59 percent of Clinton supporters in Montana said they would vote for Obama in November; in South Dakota, it was 61 percent.) But their apparent willingness to take the contest to the convention—which history shows is tantamount to throwing the general election—is a little startling. At this rate, a vote on the convention floor wouldn't do anything for Clinton besides possibly winning her a few more delegates in Michigan. By then, every political force in the Democratic universe will be pushing to calcify Obama's status as the nominee.
Maybe it's just the strongest way of standing up for your candidate. But the “Denver” chant is also a warning of the strife that awaits Democrats if Clinton doesn’t apply the Band-Aid soon—or even if she does.
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From Obama’s victory speech:
We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in
- but start leaving we must.
Pull out all combat troops within 16 months he will. Meet with our enemies without preconditions he would. Bump fists with Michelle Obama he did.
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As we think back to What Went Wrong with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it’s worth keeping in mind that whatever Barack Obama’s strengths as a candidate, however powerful his oratory, however tight his operation, he really lucked out this time.
Several factors outside of Obama’s control ended up working in his favor.
Michigan and Florida moved up their primaries. If these two states had counted, Clinton would likely have won both, giving her three of the first five contests. Momentum hasn’t been a major factor in this race, but two more big wins would have seriously dulled Obama’s mo’ going into Super Tuesday. They also would have cut into Obama’s pledged delegate lead, state lead, etc. Had the primary still dragged on into June, Clinton’s argument that she’s winning the popular vote—which now requires that you count Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot—would be a lot more compelling.
Proportional primaries. As Clinton loves to point out, she would be winning under the Republican winner-take-all primary rules. (Huckabee says the same thing about Democratic rules.) Sure, the candidates would have run different campaigns if the Democrats had a different system. But given that demographics equals destiny in this election, it’s hard to see Obama winning big states like California (where Clinton wooed Hispanics), New York (her adopted home state), and Pennsylvania (where those “working-class whites” proved loyal). Add in Florida, and she would been a lock.
The quirky calendar. Clinton’s fatal flaw, according to the first draft of history, was expecting to have the nomination wrapped by Feb. 5. Had there not been a rush of states to hold their primaries early, she wouldn’t have had the comforting yet illusory firewall of Super Tuesday. Likewise, Obama benefited hugely from the string of friendly states where Clinton chose not to compete. Not all of them were guaranteed wins (Wisconsin, for example), and he certainly outgamed Clinton. But the looong period between Feb. 5 and March 4 showered Obama a string of 11 victories that put Clinton on the defensive and generated the closest thing to momentum we’ve seen in this cycle.
Clinton’s Iraq war vote. Candidates always try to heighten contrast with their opponents. But Obama was lucky that both Edwards and Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq war in 2002—and that Clinton refused to apologize for her vote. Once it became clear that McCain would be the GOP nominee, Obama’s opposition to the war started to look like a powerful weapon in the general.
Two words: John Edwards. Without Edwards, Iowa would not have been Iowa. Obama might still have won, but he never would have trounced Clinton the way he did, 38 percent to her 29 percent. That win catapulted him from long shot to long shot with a chance. Later, Edwards grilled Clinton for taking money from lobbyists in much harsher terms than Obama ever did. It’s impossible to say how Edwards voters would have swung in Iowa and South Carolina, but his presence indisputably drew attention away from Clinton.
None of this is to discount Obama's extraordinary organization, fundraising apparatus, and political abilities. But it's worth noting how circumstances helped make his nomination possible.
Bonus: Slate's Jeff Greenfield argues that Clinton would have won in the bygone era of contested conventions.
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It's hard to know what to make of the superdelegates who are
just now endorsing Clinton.
Florida DNC member Jon Ausman says he's backing her in the name of party
unity. But what about this one, announced just now by Team Clinton:
The Clinton Campaign today announced the support of Wyoming
Democratic National Committee Member and automatic delegate Cindy Nunley.
Kind of reminds you of John Kerry's famous saying about Vietnam. Who's going to be the last superdelegate to endorse a mistake?
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John McCain is slated to speak at 9 p.m. tonight in New Orleans, a necessary "Me too!" to make sure the Democrats don’t start the general election without him. (What Obama could do, if he really wanted to stir things up, would be to speak at 9:10, so the networks are forced to cut McCain off. A bold opening move, but also kind of mean.) Drudge excerpts the speech, including this bit:
Americans ought to be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who says he’s ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang, but hasn’t traveled to Iraq to meet with General Petraeus, and see for himself the progress he threatens to reverse.
McCain has been making this argument for weeks. It’s only notable here because yesterday Gallup released a poll showing 67 percent of Americans believe "the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States," as well as 59 percent who think the president should meet with the president of Iran. The support cuts across party lines, although Democrats and independents are more likely than Republicans to be pro-meeting. (Obligatory caveats: This is just one poll. Polls are often wrong.)
McCain prides himself on ignoring polls—after all, he wouldn’t be the nominee if he let last summer’s numbers guide his decisions—and this survey won’t change his mind. But it should give him pause. It’s one thing to ding Obama on meeting with the enemy; it’s another to make it a major plank of your opening argument when you know most people agree with him. Whether or not "Americans ought to be concerned" about such policies, this poll refutes the suggestion that they are. McCain has five months to convince them.
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When we saw this New York Times headline (since changed), we thought it could mean only one thing: Barack Obama was planning to recruit Bill Clinton buddies and all-around bad influences Ron Burkle and Steve Bing. Because if there's anything missing from the Obama campaign, it's fun. Namely, barely legal women, out-of-wedlock children, and trans-Atlantic trips aboard "Air F*** One."
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Campaigning yesterday in Milbank, S.D., Bill Clinton effectively declared the race over,
saying, "[T]his may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of
this kind." Clinton's advance team was told its work was done. Her
schedule remains empty after Tuesday night. Even if she doesn't bid
farewell tonight, Clinton and everyone around her know her chances are
a near-nothing of 0.1 percent. (It would be zero, but she still hasn't dropped out.) She is asymptotically dead.
So today is less about what than how. How Obama is going to roll out the necessary delegates to reach the "magic number" of 2,118. How (and when) Clinton is officially going to concede. How she is going to transition into the "healing" phase of the general election.
Still,
the day's news has been an ongoing game of "will she or won't she?"
This morning, the Associated Press reported that Clinton campaign
officials said she would concede Tuesday night that Obama has the
delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. The Clinton camp quickly
denied the report. (Disagreement in Hillaryland? Never!) So the AP took a different tack, declaring
the race over based on a tally of public commitments and "more than a
dozen private commitments." But seeing as the superdelegate metric has
always been about public commitments, it's unclear why that's news. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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n., The eagerness of media outlets to declare Barack Obama the Democratic nominee.
Read more at the Encyclopedia Baracktannica. Thanks to Frayster "progressivebulldog" for coining the phrase.
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With all the "will she or won’t she" speculation about Hillary Clinton dropping out, a lot of people seem to forget that nobody knows how tonight’s elections will turn out. (This lack of interest may have something to do with the low stakes—Clinton’s done either way.) Stoking the drama, such as it is, is a recent ARG poll that shows Clinton leading Obama in South Dakota by a daunting 26 points, 60 percent to 34 percent.
Blog reaction to the poll has been deeply skeptical, at best. "Seriously? Is this actually possible?" gawks Election Inspection. TalkLeft dismisses the poll as "just for fun." The widely read stats blog Five Thirty Eight deems the survey "completely batshit crazy." The skepticism is rooted in the fact the Obama won the surrounding states by almost equally large margins. (See the New York Times’ electoral map here.) Another problem: There’s little to back it up. Pollsters have hardly bothered to survey Montana and South Dakota, leading to wildly differing views.
I called up ARG pollster Dick Bennett, who defended the poll. "It’s what the voters told us," he said. "It’s the same process we’ve used in other states." The survey interviewed 600 people who represented the state’s demographics, without the need for weighting or other fancy modeling.
Bennett dismissed the notion that South Dakota will vote like the surrounding states. "Look at New Hampshire compared to Vermont and Massachusetts and New York," he said. "You can’t pick out states like that."
He also pointed out that South Dakota is the oldest of the recent states except for Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and Clinton has performed well among older voters. According to the U.S. Census, 14.2 percent of South Dakota’s population is 65 years or older. In Pennsylvania, the number was 15.2 percent; in West Virginia, 15.3 percent. The Mount Rushmore State also has a closed primary, which tends to favor Clinton—no "independent bonus voters for Obama," Bennett said—and a large proportion of likely Democratic voters are women.
Another factor is the Native American population. There are no good polls for how Native Americans tend to vote—and in an election as demographically determined as this one, that could be a major factor in South Dakota’s outcome. Both candidates have courted tribal leaders, but it’s unclear who’s favored. Bennett says it doesn’t matter, since Native Americans vote in such low numbers. They make up about 8 percent of the population, but they "didn’t filter through as likely voters," Bennett said. "Barack Obama could get 100 percent of them, and it won’t make a difference."
Clinton is calling her speech tonight in New York a "celebration." If ARG is right—or anywhere near right—she might actually have something to celebrate.
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Dick Cheney has a knack for almost killing people. No matter what his other accomplishments, history will remember him as the first vice president since Aaron Burr to shoot another man while in office.
But now Cheney has outdone himself. Speaking about his family heritage at the National Press Club yesterday, Cheney made a joke about incest, quipping: “I had Cheneys on both sides of the family—and we don't even live in West Virginia.” Several West Virginia officials went ballistic, including 90-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, who criticized the vice president’s “contempt and astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen.”
Later that day, Byrd was hospitalized.
Far be it from us to speculate as to whether Byrd’s ill health was a direct result of Cheney’s insult. All we know, per the Post, is that Byrd was suffering from lethargy and sluggishness and was found to have a fever—all common side effects of having one’s home state ridiculed.
Update 1:48 p.m.: We've got video! Click here to watch Cheney dis West Virginia.