February 14, 2008

2/14: Getting Mac's Back

John McCain's 2/13 conference call with conservative bloggers got positive reviews. He emphasized his conservative views on intelligence-gathering, spending, and Iraq; discussed his differences with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; and promised to continue communicating with bloggers during the months ahead. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are toning down their attacks on the AZ senator and stepping up their attacks on Obama and HRC.

McCain's problems with the GOP base have been well documented. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that most conservative bloggers will have the senator's back during the general election. By disseminating damaging critiques of the Dem nominee's words and record, righty bloggers will prove to be a valuable weapon for McCain (just as they were for George W. Bush in '04).

MCCAIN: Chattin' With The Rightroots

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "John McCain had a blogger call this morning...How did [he] do? Very well, I think. He had a strong, consistently conservative message across a range of issues -- Iraq, spending, government regulation, detainee trials, FISA, etc. Whether this message, from this messenger, will energize conservatives remains to be seen, but it's hard to imagine that, after hearing it month after month in the context of a campaign against Obama or Clinton, many conservatives will be so indifferent as to stay home on election day."

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Responding to an earlier comment about continuing to do the blogger calls, even now that he's the presumptive nominee, [McCain said,] 'I'll never forget you guys were the only ones who would listen to me. You think I'm going to bail on you now?'"

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "I asked [McCain] about Barack Obama's votes on Iraq and on FISA and his endorsement by MoveOn.org and what that said about his readiness to be commander in chief. He declined to say that Obama lacked the judgment to be president but said Obama was wrong on troop withdrawal, the ability of the Iraqi government to function and on the surge, saying 'we'll all be responsible for our record.' (He also reminded everyone that the same MoveOn.org which endorsed Obama had run the 'General Betray-us' ad)."

Townhall's Matt Lewis: "[McCain] declined to speculate on VP picks, saying, it would be 'disrespectful to Governor [Mike] Huckabee' to get into a discussion about a running-mate. In a response to my question, he wouldn't rule-in, or rule-out, either Tom Coburn or Mark Sanford."

MCCAIN II: Looking Toward November

Although they've harshly criticized McCain in the past, conservative bloggers are increasingly defending the soon-to-be GOP nominee while hitting the Dem candidates. Some bloggers are emphasizing the foreign policy differences between McCain and the Dems:

NRO's Andy McCarthy: "Yesterday, Sen. McCain did the right thing and voted in favor of the Senate bill overhauling FISA and preserving our ability to collect intelligence against the enemy...Sen. Obama voted against it...Hillary Clinton was even worse. She didn't show up to vote...This was a simply disgraceful performance. It shows about as starkly as it can be shown that, when it comes to contest for who understands the threat we are facing and who is most fit to be trusted with responsibility for protecting American lives, there is no comparison here: McCain is so head-and-shoulders above Obama and Clinton it's hard to quantify."

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Senator Obama's vote against some key provisions of the FISA renewal bill and his opposition to it overall as well as his skipping the final vote was a defining moment for him...A vote for Obama in November will indeed bring about change: The U.S. will go from hunter to hunted, will go from the offense that has been part of the Bush Administration's policy since 9/11 back to the Clintonian fecklessness that dithered as the enemy nested and metastasized."

Other bloggers are emphasizing the differences between McCain and the Dems on pork-barrel spending:

Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey: "In one corner, we have John McCain, who has not requested an earmark for years and who has vowed to veto any bill as President which contains them. In the other corner, still fighting between themselves, we have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have combined for over $430 million in earmarks just in the last session. Who says there isn't a distinction to be made in November?"

RedState's Dan McLaughlin doesn't think this line of attack will work against Obama: "Now, we know the basics of what John McCain needs to do to beat Hillary Clinton, which is mostly based on (1) reminding voters that she is Hillary Clinton and (2) letting voters get prolonged exposure to watching and listening to Hillary Clinton. But Barack Obama, if he manages to keep his back free of Clinton shivs long enough to secure the nomination, will be a more challenging nut to crack; he has far lower built-in negatives and is surrounded by a protective heat shield of worshipful press coverage...One specific issue that I think needs not to be overplayed in a campaign against Obama [is] pork-barrel spending and earmarks...'Process' issues can grease a candidate's good press but they don't win elections; the big things do, the things that go to people's basic hopes, fears, needs and values."

MCCAIN III: In The Netroots' Sites

Now that McCain has the GOP nomination all but locked up, liberal bloggers are beginning to direct their fire at the AZ senator. Liberal bloggers (and Andrew Sullivan) are accusing McCain of hypocrisy for voting against a Senate bill that banned waterboarding and other controversial interrogation tactics:

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "It seems John McCain just voted against a bill that would have banned waterboarding. Straight talk you can use!"

Atrios: "Saint John McCain decides he likes torture after all."

Think Progress's Satyam Khanna: "A former prisoner of war, [McCain] has spoken strongly in favor of implementing the Army Field Manual standard. When confronted today with the decision of whether to stick with his conscience or cave to the right wing, McCain chose to ditch his principles and instead vote to preserve waterboarding...John McCain: He was against waterboarding before he was for it."

Crooks and Liars' Logan Murphy: "The Senate voted today to ban the CIA from using torture on suspected terrorists and the most famous POW in the Senate voted against the bill. The Maverick is now most assuredly dead and the betrayal is complete...Tell me again how this no jobs, more wars, pro-torture, pro-Bush tax cuts, anti-choice, pro-surge Republican is going to draw Independents and Democrats to his side this fall?"

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "I'm heartbroken. Torture is illegal and immoral whether it is conducted by the military or the CIA. That was McCain's original position. It appears it is no longer."

DEM FIELD: Great Expectations

Several bloggers think that the contests in WI and HI could be tighter than expected:

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "I don't know what the expectations are for Clinton, going into Wisconsin and Hawaii, but they've gotta be pretty low. Believe it or not, there could be an opening for Clinton in both states. Or at least exceed those low expectations...I looked at the WI demographics, and talked with operatives from the state, and it's not a slam dunk for Obama...[Hawaii has] a make-up of 80 percent Asian-descent voters, whom have been the strongest Clinton backers to date; it's a closed caucus only open to registered Democrats, and from what I've read, its a machine-politics state. The machine is backing Clinton. Maybe that's not enough, but it might be."

MyDD's Jonathan Singer notes that the latest Strategic Vision (R) poll of WI LVs has Obama edging HRC 45-41%: "It looks like the race in Wisconsin might be tighter than some otherwise might have expected."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas doesn't think WI and HI will be close: "[Obama]'s got some serious momentum at his back. I always thought Wisconsin would be a double-digit Obama victory, and the poll numbers are finally headed in that direction. Even if you buy the notion that Obama is running a 48-state strategy, that sure beats Clinton's 2-state 'Giuliani' strategy. She'll lose both Hawaii and Wisconsin, and probably by 20+ margins."

DEM FIELD II: Bowers Is Watching You, Superdelegates

Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Today I am pleased to announce the launch of the Superdelegate Transparency Project on Congresspedia and SourceWatch...Until a single leader in the popular vote and pledged delegate count emerges at the end of the primary and caucus season, superdelegates should not make a firm commitment to vote for any candidate at the convention other than the popular choice of their constituents...This project and these values seek to inject much needed transparency and democracy into the Democratic presidential nomination process. Together, with a group effort, we can find out which super delegates are pledging to uphold the popular will of their constituents, and which super delegates are seeking to cancel out the will of their constituents."

Matthew Yglesias feels differently: "I don't think I buy the argument that the Democratic Party's superdelegates have some kind of categorical ethical obligation to obey the dictates of the pledged delegate count...The superdelegates have both an opportunity and an obligation to take seriously their obligation to do the best thing for the party and the country. But part of taking that obligation seriously is recognizing that an extremely drawn-out primary campaign that's ultimately decided by superdelegate wrangling probably doesn't serve the best interests of the party and the country. If, on the morning of March 5, Hillary Clinton did poorly enough the previous day that she's facing a choice between dropping out of the race and pursuing a strategy that involves two months of vicious campaigning and integrally requires her to secure the support of the superdelegates, then I think it would make sense for the superdelegates [to] tell her campaign that it's not going to happen, and they're going to endorse Obama and seal the nomination for him...But if the delegate count genuinely just stays super-narrow, that's another matter, and I don't see it as intrinsically illegitimate for the SDs to put Clinton over the top if Obama's beating her by a half-dozen pledged delegates or something."

OBAMA: Riding The Wave

The Huffington Post's Tom Hayden: "Little can be said about the brilliance of [Obama's] campaign so far. He now is slightly ahead of Clinton in the delegate count, and eight percentage points ahead of McCain in the best polling data (six points more than Clinton)."

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum also thinks Obama is in good shape: "Obama has shown a very strong ability to make up ground on Hillary if he's got time and money to devote to a state (even in the big states he lost on Super Tuesday, he did about 10 points better than polls had shown a few weeks earlier), and he now has that. He gets to concentrate on Wisconsin for a few days, and then has two full weeks to work on Texas and Ohio, followed by another few weeks to concentrate on Pennsylvania. And if Josh Green is to be believed, Hillary's campaign burned through money at such a fantastic clip earlier this year that even with her current fundraising going well she's still way behind Obama...Is there any question that Obama is now the frontrunner?"

Daily Kos' DHinMI: "From here onward it's likely that Obama will outspend Clinton. He's taking in twice as much money, and he's getting glorious press coverage. She still starts out ahead in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania (her other 'must win' state). But Obama will probably outspend her, maybe by a lot, and as the campaign comes to their state, they will start seeing coverage on their local news of Obama events in their state and maybe even their local metro area, and they will begin to receive direct voter contact in the form of mail, phone calls, and possibly door-to-door canvassing."

CLINTON: Narrowing The Playing Field?

Many netroots bloggers are criticizing the Clinton campaign for failing to seriously contest many of the smaller states:

Open Left's Mike Lux: "I don't understand exactly what's going on with the Clinton campaign, but they really seem dysfunctional...I don't understand not contesting these primaries more strongly and I don't understand exactly what they're doing in their campaign."

MyDD's psericks: "It was not a lack of funds that led the Clinton campaign to ignore rural areas, to write off multiple states. Rather, the Clinton campaign seemed oddly unprepared, clinging to a misjudgment, counting on national poll numbers, unwilling to run the expansive grassroots national campaign that the Obama campaign had been preparing for for months. By the time Super Tuesday was over, it was clear that the Clinton campaign had done little to build organizations in the subsequent primaries and could do little to contest them. [On Tuesday] alone, they fell an additional fifty delegates behind. Ignoring states you think you will lose only means that you lose them more badly -- instead of trying to even up the delegate count."

Daily Kos' Delaware Dem: "[The Clintons ran] a national campaign that focused entirely on large populations and big states. They were completely prepared to reject the 50 state strategy in its entirety, almost, I think, to prove Howard Dean and his progeny wrong. Hillary Clinton wanted to win this race the Clinton way...So it is not odd that the Clinton campaign was unprepared on the local level in small states to garner as many delegates as they could."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: McCain Aiding Clinton?

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait theorizes:

"I noted yesterday that it's odd McCain would be attacking Obama for lacking specifics, when McCain is far vaguer and more ill-informed than Obama. It's even odder that McCain's campaign is jumping into the question of which Democrat came out with which stimulus plan first. I expected McCain to go after Obama, I just thought it would be on grounds of being a liberal liberal liberal peacenik.

Could the answer be that...McCain's goal is not to hurt Obama in the general election but to hurt him in the primary? Every poll now shows Obama performing better than Clinton against McCain. On average, he does five and a half points better than her, which is a very significant margin.

So it's quite likely that the reason that McCain is amplifying Clinton's attacks on McCain, rather than make attacks that would fit his general election audience, is that they're targetted to the primary. If McCain attacks Obama for wanting to withdraw from Iraq, that helps Obama in the primary. If he attacks him for lacking domestic policy prposals, it helps Clinton. I suspect McCain is trying to pick his opponent here, the way Richard Nixon tried to sink Ed Muskie's primary campaign in 1972, but without the illegality."

LEST WE FORGET: Clinton Secures Endorsement From The Dead

ABC News reports:

"[Hillary Clinton] told a crowd today she can hear the voices of two strong Texas women who have died -- former Texas Governor Ann Richards and former Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan -- urging her to go on.

'I can hear their voices saying, "You keep going! You give the people a real choice about the future!"' Clinton said."

Wonkette's Sara K. Smith:

"Speaking to an audience in Texas yesterday, Senator Hillary Clinton disclosed that she had finally nailed down the support of two very influential Texans who together might tip the balance in her favor on March 4. These high-profile political leaders from the Lone Star State made tremendous inroads for women in their many years of service to state and country. And now they're dead!"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at February 14, 2008 12:52 PM