April 24, 2008

4/24: Point/Counterpoint

Liberal bloggers are fiercely debating Hillary Clinton's claim that superdelegates should support her because (a.) she leads in the popular vote, and (b.) she's more electable than Barack Obama. Most bloggers dispute Clinton's contention that she leads Obama in the popular vote, pointing to the fact that she's only ahead if one includes the results from MI (where Obama wasn't on the ballot) and FL. Other bloggers don't think the popular vote is a valid metric to begin with, since states that hold caucuses (which have fewer participants than primaries) are under-represented. Meanwhile, there's a fierce debate between pro-Clinton bloggers and pro-Obama bloggers about which candidate is a better general election bet.

Liberal bloggers aren't the only ones arguing among themselves, however. Conservative bloggers are having a dispute of their own (albeit a much smaller one). Some righty bloggers think John McCain is smart to disavow the controversial anti-Obama ad created by the NC GOP, since McCain gets to look noble while the cable news networks obsess over the ad anyway. However, other bloggers are angry that McCain is being such a "weenie." Michelle Malkin calls McCain's response "an idiotic strategy to convince more rank-and-file Republicans to stop giving money to the Beltway GOP elite" and encourages her readers to support the ad by donating money to the NC GOP.

DEM FIELD: Debating The Popular Vote

The co-authors of 2006 netroots manifesto Crashing The Gate -- MyDD's Jerome Armstrong (a Clinton supporter) and Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas (an Obama supporter) -- are arguing over which Dem candidate leads in the popular vote. The debate started when Armstrong passed along the the Clinton camp's claim that she now leads Obama by 120,000 votes in the popular vote (if the primaries in MI and FL are included and the caucuses in IA, NV, ME, and WA are excluded):

"After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama. Estimates vary slightly, but according to Real Clear Politics, Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes. ABC News reported this morning that 'Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama' in the popular vote. This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas disputed the Clinton camp's (and Armstrong's) logic: "That's simply ridiculous. Go to Real Clear Politics and look at their popular vote estimates (pre-Pennsylvania). [...] See what they have done -- the Clinton campaign and Jerome have taken the roughly 215,000 net votes Clinton gained in Pennsylvania, and added them to the popular vote count that includes the unsanctioned contests in Michigan and Florida, and excludes caucuses in four states. How's that for inclusiveness? It gets worse. That Michigan vote estimate? Obama wasn't on the ballot. If you count the 'uncommitted' votes for Obama -- all of them anti-Hillary votes, remember -- that would add 237,762 votes to Obama's total. Which means that in Clinton and Jerome's world, Clinton is ahead in the popular vote only IF you exclude four caucus states, IF you include two unsanctioned states, and IF you 'disenfranchise' every voter in Michigan who voted against Hillary Clinton. That takes a new and particularly audacious level of chutzpah."

Armstrong responded: "The real popular vote is very close. Clinton leads by just 12,506 votes, a lead of .04 percent. The numbers I passed on in a post yesterday about Clinton's lead in the popular vote excluded estimates from 4 caucus states, which I didn't realize until being able to check in later (and updated the post). I see that Markos flipped out with a tirade about it. But, rather than be content with calling out a math error, Markos has to up the ante audacious to demand we 'count the count the Michigan "uncommitted" votes for Obama'. Ah, well, John Edwards was still in the race at the time and was surely in the same boat, having also pulled his name off the ballot in Michigan. [...] No one but Obama is to blame for his having no votes in Michigan. His campaign came up with the gambit to take his name off the ballot in MI to score cheap points in IA [...] It didn't work, Clinton took the hit of the political stunt and kept her name on the ballot in Michigan."

DEM FIELD II: Still Debating The Popular Vote

Most liberal bloggers agree with Moulitsas that Obama has the popular vote lead:

• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Kos is right that it is ridiculous to claim Clinton is winning the popular vote right now. Excluding the caucus states and giving Obama zero votes for Michigan is absurd. We can get an exact count if Iowa, Nevada and Maine release the numbers they have in their possession."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Hillary's campaign is today alleging that they overtook Obama in the popular vote last night! Of course, it isn't true, but hey, I guess it depends on what the definition of truth is. Even though Hillary is still half a million votes behind Obama, including primaries and caucuses, her campaign is of course now adding in the votes from Florida and Michigan -- which were disqualified by the DNC. So, yes, if you add imaginary votes to the count then Hillary does take the lead in imaginary-land."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Right now, there is no solid ground for arguing that Clinton is ahead in the popular vote, since she only leads by 10,000 when Florida, estimated caucus turnout, and Michigan are included. However, since Obama supporters obviously made up more than 10,000 of the 237,000 Michigan uncommitted, clearly right now more people who have participated in a nomination event have supported Obama than Clinton."

Bowers continues: "When measuring the popular vote, it is best to throw the widest possible net. This means to include Florida. It also means to include the estimates from caucus states that did not release popular totals, which stand at Obama 334,084--223,862 Clinton. Finally, it means to include Michigan, but also to allocate Obama 72.91%, or 173,368 of the uncommitted vote. This number is derived by dividing Obama's exit poll support in Michigan by the combined exit poll support of Obama, Edwards and [Bill] Richardson, and then multiplying that number with the total uncommitted vote. Adding in the totals from everywhere else, this results in a grand total of Obama 15,481,172--15,319,525 Clinton, or an Obama margin of 161,647 votes. Problematically, these totals also results in a popular vote total with a margin of error, given the caucus and Michigan uncommitted allocation. [...] Overall, with the complications arising from competing popular vote totals, vote estimation, and that we are facing a plurality winner instead of a majority one, I have to conclude that the popular vote is actually meaning less and less as we go on. The actual nature of the process, as a series of several thousand small elections for delegate slots, is asserting itself."

AMERICAblog's Jacki Schechner doesn't think the popular vote is a legitimate metric to begin with: "The popular vote is not a fair metric in a mixed primary system. [...] Just because the concept is a little tough to understand does not mean it's wrong. Terry McAuliffe et al can scream 'popular vote' all they want, but it doesn't make them right. They would have an argument if all states used a primary. But they don't. Caucuses are harder to participate in (they demand more time and commitment) and, therefore, draw fewer voters. Caucus states are then represented considerably less in the popular vote than primary states. It's why the delegate allocation exists. You can't toss out the contest because you don't like the outcome. I don't know how we've gotten to the point that the press isn't willing to cry foul at the very first suggestion of it."

DEM FIELD III: Debating Electability

Pro-Clinton bloggers are arguing that Clinton is more electable than Obama:

• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "Hillary Clinton is the stronger candidate in November because she is more likely to bring a win in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida, she wins in the big states, and she wins with rural, blue collar and women voters. Her win in PA [Tuesday] was a mirror of her win in Ohio. Barack Obama simply is not connecting with these critical groups of voters."
• Armstrong: "Going by the national polls of registered voters, it is true that Obama does better than Clinton by .9 percent (can I call that 1%?) over McCain. So what, ask Al Gore. A look at the state polls reveals the trouble. The Obama map shows big problems in Florida and Ohio, and most of the midwest region. In fact, if Obama doesn't have the states of Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico to contend for (see Obama's previous positions on gun control for potential trouble), it becomes a very difficult map. Clinton's map is stronger, taking Florida and Ohio over McCain."

Moulitsas pushes back against these arguments: "The Mountain West has huge growth potential for the Democratic Party, which is why the DNCC is in Denver this year. Colorado is leading the way and is definitely a winnable state...with the right candidate at the top of the ticket. Obama makes Colorado competitive, Clinton kills it for us. And that's not just relevant at the top of the ticket. We have a top-tier Senate race in the state, and you better believe Mark Udall is better off with Obama at the top of the ticket than having to make up a 14-point Clinton deficit. [...] Same goes for another Red state we can flip with the right candidate (that 'right' candidate being Obama): North Carolina. Clinton might make this one competitive, but it'd be tough. Obama immediately makes this a top-tier pickup opportunity in a state that McCain can ill-afford to defend. [...] What about the purple states, like Minnesota? Minnesota won't be a state we can take for granted this fall. It will be a tough one for either Obama or Clinton, but it's clear that Obama fares better. [...] Same goes with Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington."

Moulitsas concludes: "Really, I can go through polls all day (and likely will over the coming two weeks), showing how in most states Obama runs stronger and has greater coattail potential than Clinton. I'm even ignoring pre-'Bitter' polls to ensure the numbers aren't just fresh, but include all of Obama's baggage. Yet as we'll see in the vast majority of cases (the biggest exception being Florida, though there are several others), Obama does far better. [...] So remind me again how is Clinton 'more electable' against McCain than Obama? She's lost more contests to Obama than she's won. She's raised less money than he has. She fares poorer in the polling against McCain than he does. She trails in the popular vote. And somehow, despite the fact she runs behind Obama in the general, the supers are supposed to overturn the will of the primary electorate and spur intra-party civil war on her behalf? Is she really that narcissistic? Apparently so."

DEM FIELD IV: Still Debating Electability

Several liberal bloggers are pushing back against John Judis' New Republic article, "The Next McGovern?," which argues that "Obama's weaknesses as a general election candidate grow more apparent with each successive primary":

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "If it's true that Obama has trouble winning over Hillary Clinton's core supporters because of their deep-seated aversion to Obama, then how is he leading in the national polls against McCain? I think Clinton's voters are loyally backing her because they like Hillary Clinton a lot and given her status as a quasi-incumbent, party leader, and her husband's wife it's very hard to knock her off that pedestal. To make a long story short, John's way of looking at the race seems to simply exclude the possibility that both Democrats are running strong campaigns. But I don't see any reason to view either candidate's trouble as reflecting 'weakness' as opposed to his or her opponent's strength."
• The New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "John's assumption that a candidate's primary base will be the same as his general election base strikes me as seriously flawed. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, will her electoral base consist of blue-collar whites? No, it will be highly similar to Obama's, with a major reliance on minorities and white liberals. [...] Right now Obama is having a hard time winning blue collar whites on the economy in large part because he has an opponent with a virtually identical economic platform. When he has an opponent who's tethered himself to President [George W.] Bush's highly unpopular economic policies, winning over blue collar whites on the economy will get a lot easier. Extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business."

Several prominent liberal bloggers agree with Chait's assertion that "extrapolating from primary dynamics to general election dynamics is very dicey business":

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "I think I've said this a hundred times, as have many others. But this article in Thursday's Times is a good moment to revisit the point. As Patrick Healy explains, it is simply a fallacy to claim that winning a state's Democratic primary means you're more likely to win that state in the general election or that your opponent can't win it."
• Bowers: "Any general election electability argument based on results of Democratic nomination events is nonsensical. [...] The voters in primaries are in no way representative of the voters in general elections. For example, winning Iowa or New Hampshire in a caucus or primary does not mean someone can win Iowa or New Hampshire in a general election, because you are dealing with entirely different electorates in general elections than in primaries and caucuses. The same holds true for demographic groups. Winning white Catholics, or Independents, or Latinos, or high-income voters in a primary or caucus is not reflective of an ability to win those groups in a general election, because you will be dealing with entirely different sets of those voters in a general than in a primary or caucus."

DEM FIELD V: Righty Bloggers Chime In

Conservative bloggers generally side with the pro-Clinton bloggers in arguing that Obama will have trouble winning working-class whites in the general election:

• RedState's Dan McLaughlin: "So, Barack Obama has this little problem: he can't seem to win working-class white voters. With rare exception (Iowa, Missouri), he basically only wins states -- and in particular only wins primaries -- where all the working-class white voters are already Republicans, leaving the Democrats a stripped-down shell of African-Americans and college towns. [...] Time was, working-class whites were the backbone, the very reason for the existence of the Democratic Party, FDR's 'forgotten man.' What Obama is running on instead is, essentially, the McGovern coalition."
• RedState's Soren Dayton: "Obama has a real problem. He cannot win votes among a core constituency of the Democratic Party's coalition. [...] Does the Democratic Party not need or want the votes Catholics? What about Hispanics, another group that is increasingly receptive to conservative values and messages -- Bush got 44% and McCain could get even more --, and they also don't like Obama. Does the Obama campaign want them?"
• NRO's Mark Steyn: "If I were a timeserving party hack -- which is to say a 'superdelegate' -- wondering about my support for Hillary, Pennsylvania ought to confirm the shrewdness of my judgment: Obama's a hopelessly weak candidate with minimal appeal beyond blacks and upscale white liberals who enjoy the kinky frisson of racial guilt."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "[Obama's] campaign head David Axelrod commented that Barack Obama can, in essence write, off white working-class voters because '[t]he white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years.' It's rather stunning that Obama seems disinclined to worry about his poor showing with these voters. [...] The reality is that [Obama's] base, built largely on African Americans and college kids, may well fall apart over the course of his national campaign. And telling dependable Democratic voters you don't care about them isn't going to help matters."

DEM FIELD VI: Show Us Your Cards, Superdelegates

Liberal bloggers continue to urge the undeclared superdelegates to make their choices known:

• Yglesias: "Undeclared superdelegates [should] state their preferences. If there's a large pro-Clinton group out there, fine. So be it. Stand up and let yourselves be counted. If not, if you're for Obama, then even better -- raise your hand. [...] At this point, we know what we need to know. We know the policy differences between the candidates, we know the 'freak show' issues surrounding the candidates, we know the basic shape of each candidate's core electoral coalition, and we know that in the end Obama will have a modest but real lead in elected delegates. Everyone should declare."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "Dear Superdelegates...Will you please listen to our party chairman, Howard Dean, and tell us who the hell you're voting for? We just went through another grueling primary in which tens of millions of dollars are spent, both sides beat the crap out of each other over trivial personality shit and behaved in increasingly demeaning ways (Crown Royal?! Bowling!?!?!) and the net result is -- yet again -- a virtually unchanged delegate count. [...] Democratic superdelegates, unless you are the biggest attention whores/megalomaniacs on the planet, there's no good reason why you can't tell us who you're with now. We've been looking at these candidates for 13 months, we've seen them from every angle imaginable, we know more about them then we knew about John Kerry, Al Gore and Bill Clinton. And there's nothing Guam or Puerto Rico or South Dakota is going to tell us that we didn't already know. Show us your cards."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "I'm sorry to break it to the superdelegates, but this is in their hands -- just as it has been for weeks. Whether they decide in August, June, or April, these insiders are going to deliver the nomination to one candidate or the other. What are they waiting for? They know they'll have to make a decision, but they're still undecided? Still? One candidate is going to enter the convention with more delegates, more states, and almost certainly more popular votes. If superdelegates find that compelling, fine, back Obama. One candidate will enter the convention with more 'big-state' victories and stronger support among the elderly and blue-collar workers. If they find that more compelling, fine, back Clinton. Just do something."

OBAMA: Still In The Driver's Seat

Liberal bloggers are defending Obama's performance in the PA primary:

• Ezra Klein: "A 9 point loss for Obama wasn't some cosmic drubbing. It was actually a substantial closing of the margin in a state where Obama was hit by the Jeremiah Wright videos and 'Bittergate', and where Clinton started with a 20-point lead and the endorsement of the popular and hard-campaigning governor. [...] One could just as easily spin these results into a decisive problem for Clinton: In a state where Obama faced brutally inhospitable demographics and weathered two major scandals in the course of six weeks, she saw her lead cut by more than half, rather than expanded by a third. If she couldn't knock him out here, where, and in what circumstances, can she knock him out?"
• Moulitsas: "What was a 10.5% win in demographically friendly Ohio has become a 9.4% win in similar Pennsylvania, except the state was even less black and with a much smaller youth voter population (Pennsylvania's seniors accounted for 32 percent of the electorate, compared to 23 percent in Ohio). And, those gains were made despite the Wright controversy as well as manufactured bullshit about 'bitter' and flag pins and whatnot. On top of that, Obama has had to run against Hillary Clinton, against former President of the United States Bill Clinton, and against John McCain and the entire GOP apparatus, which has trained its guns on Obama hoping to give Clinton a boost. Yet he continues to gain among most of Clinton's best demographics, is still raising more money, leads comfortably in delegates, leads comfortably in the popular vote, leads in states won, leads in the national polls, and does better in the head-to-head matchups against McCain. So why should the supers spark an intra-party civil war by overturning the will of the electorate again?"
• In a separate post, Moulitsas gives another reason why Obama lost: "Clinton has nothing to lose, so she's thrown the kitchen sink and then some at Obama. Her path to the nomination necessarily requires her sundering the party in civil war, so if she pisses a few people off? Who cares! It's all part of the plan! Obama, on the other hand, can't take that approach. He's already won this thing, so he has to tread carefully. He gets too aggressive with Clinton, he risks pissing off her supporters more than they are already pissed off (can you believe that Obama insists on staying in the race even though he's won?!). So he can't really open up on Clinton and make the same kind of arguments she's making against him. He's trying to maintain some modicum of unity rather than engage in the sort of slash-and-burn politics that now characterizes the Clinton campaign handbook. The inability to truly go negative is a real disadvantage in politics."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay agrees with Moulitsas' latter point: "Hillary and her crew have really exploited this situation. She loves to invoke Rev. Wright and had a field day with the 'bitter' comment. It's not like there isn't plenty of ripe material in her past that could be political fodder. But, Obama doesn't go there. The Republicans will. So, she is using the GOP attacks on Obama (the kind of attacks that the GOP will use on Hillary), but Obama, for the reasons Markos stated, doesn't respond in kind."

Several bloggers think Clinton's PA victory didn't help her all that much:

• Atrios: "In the world of media narratives, how the press will talk about the primary campaign, it's true we're at the status quo. But in terms of who is actually going to win this thing, [Tuesday] night was actually a bad night for Clinton. Somehow she has to win a lot of delegates, and opportunities to do so lessen with each contest."
• The Huffington Post's Robert Creamer: "Pennsylvania provided [Clinton] with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural -- Hillary's voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin -- which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State says was only 9.2% -- fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama's nomination."

OBAMA II: Stay Classy, NC GOP

Several liberal bloggers are discussing the NC GOP's decision to run a sensational anti-Obama ad featuring Wright in spite of McCain's stated opposition to the ad:

• TAPPED's Sam Boyd: "The ad is pretty much what you'd expect: OMG! Barack Obama like totally 'SAT IN HIS PEW!!!' while some black dude said some bad things about America. He clearly is a terrorist!!! Except that he wasn't actually in the church when the clip the ad uses was recorded. As Kevin Drum pointed out, John McCain and the national RNC chairman Mike Duncan are so outraged that they...sent an email and left a polite voice mail message respectively. Feel the fury! I'm sure with this kind of strong response we won't see these sorts of tactics in the general election."
• Atrios: "The Next Six Months: Some Republican or conservative group runs a dumb ad. John McCain nobly distances himself from it. Cable news spends all day talking about it and showing it for free. Rinse. Repeat."

Daily Kos' DHinMI thinks the ad proves that the GOP would rather face Clinton than Obama: "McCain can complain, but it's naïve to think that this ad is being run against the wishes of McCain's strategists. If they thought Obama was the weaker candidate, they would stand aside and let him more quickly end the primary contest. Yes, regardless of who ends up the nominee, the GOP benefits from us still fighting out state-by-state primaries and caucuses (even though caucuses don't count and are in states that don't matter). But what's more important to the GOP, if they have any control over it, is getting the weaker opponent for McCain. Hence, the ads attacking Obama."

Meanwhile, Obama discussed the ad in an interview with Beverly Davis from Huffington Post's OffTheBus:

"Well, my understanding is that the Republican National Committee and John McCain have both said the ad is inappropriate. I take them at their word. And I assume that if John McCain thinks that it's an inappropriate ad that he can get them to pull it down since he's their nominee and standard-bearer."

OBAMA III: Bravo, NC GOP!

Conservative bloggers love the NC GOP ad, which they believe is intended to prolong the Dem primary by helping Clinton:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "The two Democrats mentioned in the clip, [NC LG Beverly] Perdue and [NC Treas. Richard] Moore, are running against each other in the gubernatorial primary. There's no reason for the state GOP to attack both of them now, before either's been nominated -- unless they're looking for an excuse to get this up on the air to help Hillary on May 6. Which is fair: Like the Journal says, '[T]he real winner from the six week Pennsylvania primary campaign was the Republican Party.' It's only proper that we return the favor."
• RedState's Moe Lane: "How could the NC GOP think to intervene in the Democratic primary in this way? They even have a contribution button up, the cheeky so-and-sos -- as if we'd give them money for the express purpose of making our opponents' lives miserable. No, no, the McCain campaign is quite right to decry this, and it's such a crying shame that he cannot of course in good conscience interfere with what is strictly an internal decision by the NC GOP. We're just going to have to live it, alas."

Several conservative bloggers think McCain is smart to disavow the ad:

• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "I'm hearing a great deal of complaints about John McCain's disavowal and disapproval of a North Carolina GOP ad that shows Jeremiah Wright's 'God d*** America' sermon and hits two local Democrats for endorsing Barack Obama. Does no one else see what's going on here? How many other North Carolina Republican Party ads have you heard about this year? Last year? The year before that? By criticizing the ad, McCain turned it into a national story, which means the ad is likely to be replayed on the cable networks and linked on YouTube and discussed on the talk shows and talk radio and written about in newspapers and magazines. This ad has 76,000 views on YouTube already, and it was posted online Tuesday. And McCain gets to take the high road, saying he doesn't want to see negative campaigning done on his behalf."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "While some conservatives will, no doubt, think this is a sign of wimpiness, I see it as sagaciousness: McCain stays on the high road in the eyes of the hoi polloi, while the negative stuff still gets out to the media. I am not suggesting that this is done pro forma with a wink and a nod -- I truly believe McCain considers this to be infra dig and wants them to stop running this. And in the case of a GOP organization, McCain may in fact be able to force them to stop running it. But when it comes to outside groups -- who are sure to run these types of ads -- McCain won't have much of a say in the matter..."

Other conservative bloggers are angry that McCain and RNC criticized the ad:

• Michelle Malkin: "Some McCain supporters are spinning the disavowal of the ad as a masterful strategy to stay above the fray. Nonsense. It's an idiotic strategy to convince more rank-and-file Republicans to stop giving money to the Beltway GOP elite. Here's the NC GOP website. They're asking for support. Help 'em out if you can."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "[The ad] uses Wright's own words and calls Obama 'extreme' for buddying up to him. What's even supposed to be wrong with it? If Republicans can't even quote Obama or his 'spiritual mentor' without it being declared out-of-bounds, we might as well just go ahead and concede the election now. Moreover, since the McCain campaign and the RNC are being such weenies about this, here's a suggestion: take any money that you were going to give to the RNC and/or McCain campaign this week and give it to the North Carolina Republican Party instead so we can at least have somebody out there that's not too intimidated to fight against the Democrats."

OBAMA IV: Orange Alert!

Conservative bloggers continue to discuss Obama's connections with ex-Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Ayers and Dohrn were domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, and they are as radical now as they ever were, as evidenced by their own words. Obama emerged from the far-left fringe of Chicago politics, and his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs. Obama has defended his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn by saying that Ayers did 'reprehensible' things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old. He says that Ayers and Dohrn are now respectable, mainstream figures in Chicago. But the reality is quite different; they, like Wright, are anything but 'mainstream' in their views of America. [...] Barack Obama owes the American people an explanation of his choice of friends and political associates."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Last year, twelve years after Obama sought out their blessing for his first political race and five years after Obama's association with them at the Woods Foundation ended, both Ayers and Dohrn still preach that America-hating gospel."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "[McCain] may not have been my first choice, but after what we're seeing and continuing to learn about both Democrat candidates, I'd crawl uphill over broken glass to cast a ballot for him -- and I suspect I'm not alone. Information like this -- in a Chicago Tribune column by John Kass -- is the reason why: One of the Dem candidates associates with terrorists...the other's husband pardons them."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt wants the media to devote more coverage to Ayers and Dohrn: "MSM may not have wanted to look very hard for any background on the friends of Obama, but now that it has been dug up, broadcast, and made easily available, will they report on the current opinions of the friends of Obama that MSM was calling mainstream last week?"

MCCAIN: Weaker Than Advertised?

While liberal bloggers worry that the protracted Dem primary is hurting the Dems' chances against McCain, most still believe that McCain is quite beatable:

• Marshall: "Right now McCain is enjoying his post-nomination-clinching honeymoon. He's also got the field completely clear. No one's out there whacking him everyday, which means the press has no McCain-whacking stories to churn through. On the other hand, the Democrats are beating each other senseless. They daily hit on each others' weaknesses, which not only airs their dirty laundry, and gets the press to talk about it. It also breeds resentment between the supporters of the Democratic candidates, thus pushing up the number Democrats saying they're unwilling to vote for the possible nominee. Put that all together and John McCain is enjoying the most favorable environment he's going to get right now and the Democrat (whoever is the nominee) is probably suffering the worst. And with all that, the race appears to be essentially tied."
• Digby: "To me, this primary is actually a good thing for the fall. All this hand wringing strikes me as typical Democratic nervous nellie-ism. A huge increase in Democratic voter registration, building of strong ground operations in most states, new technologies being beta tested, lots of media coverage and battle testing for the nominee are of benefit to the nominee in the fall. Meanwhile, the Democrats stay at center stage while McCain wanders around in obscurity, failing to raise money and leaving a trail of gaffes in his wake. As long as they don't know at whom to aim their fire the Republicans can't cement their narrative. In the end, I remain convinced that we are going into an election that is so fundamentally seismic that either [Obama or Clinton] can win it, even if more closely than we might want, due to the breakthrough nature of their campaigns."
• The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn notes that McCain appears stuck at 45% in head-to-head matchups against both Obama and Clinton: "That 45 percent figure [may represent] a ceiling of his support. After all, barring some outside shock to the political system, there is no reason to think McCain's numbers will go up. People already have overwhelmingly positive feelings about him -- stronger than about either of the Democratic candidates. They see him as a likeable, principled war hero whom they trust on national security. Very few realize that he has supported privatizing Social Security, that he opposes universal health insurance, that he supports free trade without qualification, and so on. Once the voters learn these things, at least some of them are likely to abandon him."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I agree with Jon [Cohn] and then some: McCain simply isn't as strong a candidate as people seem to think he is. Factors working against him include Bush fatigue, a declining economy, his age, his need to pander heavily to the Christian right, his hawkishness in a year when the public isn't feeling very hawkish, his history of flip flopping for transparently political reasons, and a portfolio of extremely unpopular positions (like privatizing Social Security) that Democrats can make a lot of hay with in the fall. What's more -- and go ahead, call me an optimist -- I suspect that at some point there's going to be a press backlash against McCain. His media image is a bubble, sustained by a sort of childlike faith, and once that faith starts to wobble -- something that may already have started -- the bubble is likely to pop."
• Benen: "I'd take issue with Kevin [Drum]'s optimism over the media -- I've been waiting for nine years for reporters to consider a backlash against McCain, and it's never happened -- but the rest of the analysis is sound. McCain, as a candidate, isn't especially scary at all. He's clumsy, unprincipled, arrogant, often belligerent, and usually confused. [...] But taking all of this into consideration, that's all the more incentive to end the Democratic race and get the general election started. Like, now. Dems have a very powerful case to make against McCain, but they can't make it while the party is divided in half, and they're waiting until late August for a nominee."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: To The Losers Go The Spoils

Radar's Josie Swindler explains how "failure pays big" for unsuccessful presidential candidates:

"[John Edwards'] meteoric rise into the national consciousness back in 2004 earned the already wealthy Breck boy a bountiful payday. The sawmill worker's son became an advisor to the hedge fund Fortress, where, by Edwards' own admission, he worked no more than a few days a month. In 2006, he earned $479,512 from Fortress alone -- $79,512 more than he would have made had he won the presidency. [...]

Nearly all presidential aspirants take advantage of the sterling array of lucrative opportunities awaiting them post-election. Dan Quayle chaired a hedge fund; Newt Gingrich (who never even declared) bellowed his way onto Fox News; Bob Dole endorsed Viagra; Al Sharpton got his own radio show; and Rudy Giuliani played himself in Anger Management, The Out-of-Towners, and Law & Order. (Though Fred Thompson's agent didn't return our calls, we expect the sleepy senator is in far greater cinematic demand nowadays than he was pre-candidacy. Someone has to play the president in all those straight-to-DVD movies.)"

LEST WE FORGET: Mmmm, Luther Burgers

Business Week describes some of the culinary perks of working at Google (h/t Alan Jacobs):

"Google's 'microkitchens' -- the snack stations within 200 feet of every worker's desk -- were like mini 7-Elevens. 'We kept adding things and adding things and adding things,' says Google's food services chief, John Dickman (who is leaving the company at the end of April). Like 20 kinds of sugared cereal. Or, in the cafeteria, the Luther Burger, a bacon-cheese number with Krispy Kreme donuts as bun. [...] When Dickman ditched the M&M's, employees argued that the measure was about costs, not calories. (A hard case to make given Google's valet parking, free massages, and bidet-equipped restrooms.) 'There were certain things they couldn't live without,' Dickman says. So the M&M's returned. But the junk-healthy ratio is now 50-50, with agave-sweetened beverages, roasted nuts, sulfate-free dried fruit, and platters of organic crudités."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 24, 2008 01:03 PM