April 02, 2008

4/2: At What Cost?

The latest Hillary Clinton advisor to take a beating from liberal bloggers is Harold Ickes. In an interview with TPM's Greg Sargent, Ickes "confirmed that the Hillary campaign could still try to woo super-dels even if she lost the popular vote, with Michigan and Florida counted." This admission infuriated Big Tent Democrat, who has fiercely defended Clinton's right to continue her campaign on the grounds that the popular vote should be the key metric in determining the Dem nominee. Markos Moulitsas, on the other hand, isn't surprised by Ickes' admission:

"Clinton's campaign has one premise -- victory at all costs. If that requires sundering the Democratic Party, so be it. She doesn't care. Therefore, there is no logic that applies. The popular vote only matters if it favors her."

On the right, conservative bloggers are going after both Clinton and Barack Obama, after spending the past few weeks directing most of their fire at Obama. Several bloggers are discussing allegations made by Clinton's former boss on the House Jud Cmte, Jerry Zeifman, who claims to have fired Clinton "because she was a liar [and] an unethical, dishonest lawyer." Bloggers are also criticizing Obama for falsely accusing John McCain of advocating 100 years of war in Iraq. It remains to be seen whether the buzz in the conservative blogosphere will have an effect on MSM coverage of the race.

DEM FIELD: Hoosiers Heart Hillary

Liberal bloggers are discussing the new SurveyUSA poll of IN Dems, which shows Clinton leading Obama 52-43%:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The poll has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points, so Clinton's lead just meets the requirements of statistical significance. In short, it looks like this is going to be a fairly competitive contest, though one in which Clinton probably has at least a marginal advantage over Obama."
• Daily Kos' MissLaura thinks this poll establishes the expectations for both camps: "In the two weeks after Pennsylvania's primary, with North Carolina looking strong for Obama, both candidates will presumably be campaigning hard in Indiana as Clinton tries desperately to keep her campaign going and Obama tries to end it for once and for all. Any kind of win in Indiana would help Clinton's narrative as she fights to stay in a race she's lost, though as we know, it wouldn't change the delegate math in a meaningful way. But this poll lays the marker for Indiana, the state to which the Clinton campaign has been directing attention of late. More than a 9-point victory, and Clinton has exceeded expectations; less, and Obama has."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers thinks this poll suggests that Clinton can still win the popular vote: "Overall, while the Indiana poll has improved the situation for Clinton, her path the nomination is still dependent on a Michigan delegation that shuts Obama out entirely, and the Obama-heavy credentials committee will never approve such a delegation (nor should they). The main improvement that the Indiana poll shows for Clinton is that she might now have an outside chance of winning the popular vote. If she can snag big wins in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, and deny Obama a measurable popular vote victory anywhere outside of North Carolina, she might just be able to close the 800,000 vote gap. If she pulls that off, the momentum will be almost entirely in her direction, she might perform better in general election polls than McCain, and have a real argument that superdelegates would consider (popular vote victory, momentum and general election performance puts a lot on the table). It is a real longshot, given that she is heavily out-resourced and that the momentum is currently with Obama, but I will admit that it is not entirely impossible."
• That said, Bowers still expects Obama to win the nomination: "The most dangerous scenarios for the party would be if Clinton secured the nomination without winning the popular vote, and / or if there is no presumptive nominee by the end of June. However, I just don't see either scenario as particularly likely right now, since Obama remains on course to lock up the nomination at some point between May 20th and June 21st. Considering the organizing that will have been done in virtually every state by that point, considering that the general election matchups remain tied, and considering what will be Obama's overwhelming financial advantage on McCain, I still feel confident we are headed toward an Obama Presidency."

CLINTON: The Sticky Icky Ickes

Clinton advisor Harold Ickes is coming under fire from liberal bloggers for several statements he made during an interview with TPM's Greg Sargent. Several bloggers are criticizing Ickes for saying "that the Hillary campaign could still try to woo super-dels even if she lost the popular vote, with Michigan and Florida counted":

• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat, who believes the popular vote is the most important metric, is disgusted: "Just ridiculous. Hillary Clinton is out there arguing in favor of counting the votes in all 50 states and here is Ickes saying that the RESULT of those votes will not matter to the Clinton campaign. This is inexcusable, harmful, stupid and reprehensible. There are other issues in Sargent's interview that others will certainly take issue with, but that statement is, to me, the worst of all. If it is true, I will be the first in line denouncing the Clinton campaign when the time comes."
• Daily Kos' Moulitsas isn't surprised by Ickes' statement: "Clinton's campaign has one premise -- victory at all costs. If that requires sundering the Democratic Party, so be it. She doesn't care. Therefore, there is no logic that applies. The popular vote only matters if it favors her. The pledged delegate lead only matters if it favors her. Michigan and Florida only matter if it favors her. States only matters if they vote for her. Groups and communities in this country only matters if they support her. Super delegates only matter if they cast their lot with her. Clinton personifies the worst of the 'with us, or against us'-type thinking that has gotten us in trouble with the rest of the world. So we have a campaign that is losing by every metric imaginable. And now that campaign says that it doesn't care if she's losing by every metric imaginable. Her campaign will carry on regardless. [...] At this point, this is just pathetic."

CLINTON II: Thanks For The Warning, Harold

Chris Bowers is criticizing Ickes for another statement he made during the interview: his warning that Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright makes him vulnerable in the general election.

"'Look what the Republicans did to a genuine war hero,' Ickes said, in a reference to John Kerry. [...] In a reference to Wright's controversial views, Ickes continued: 'Nobody thinks that Barack Obama harbors those thoughts. But that's not the issue. The issue is what Republicans [will do with them]...I think they're going to give him a very tough time.'"

• Bowers: "Oh no, the Republicans are going to attack us! Whatever shall we do? Surely, Republicans will lay off attacking a different nominee, say Hillary Clinton. Talk about lame hand-wringing. Here is my question: what attacks, exactly, will Obama face in the general election that will be worse than what he has faced in the primary campaign? Will it be worse than arguing that he is a Muslim who attended a madrassa? Will it be worse than selected exceprts from Rev. Wright played on every single news channel for weeks on end? Will it be worse than the most recent Democratic President saying McCain is more qualified to be commander in chief than Obama?"


• Bowers continues: "No, it won't be any worse. In fact, Obama will actually have a much easier time in the general election, media wise, than he has had in the primary. The reason for this is simple: in the general election, the most prominent Democrats in the entire country, the Clintons, will not be reifying every single right-wing attack against Obama. [...] The argument that Obama won't be able to withdstand the oh-so vicious Republican attacks is nonsense, because he is weathering those attacks right now, even when Democrats are helping Republicans out in those attacks. This isn't even my theory -- this is the theory put forth by Clinton senior staffer Peter Daou. If Obama can get past he primary and still outperform Clinton against McCain, then he is pretty much a sure bet to win the Presidency. The rest is just a bunch of hand-wringing by nervous, Clintonista types."


• Conservative blogger Allahpundit also criticizes Ickes' statements: "Hillary aide Harold Ickes: We must destroy Obama with the Wright scandal before the GOP does. We've seen this logic before in various forms -- most recently at MyDD, most famously perhaps with Billy 'Didn't Obama use drugs?' Shaheen -- but it always seems to come from someone on her side, doesn't it? Not once to my knowledge have the Obamites floated the theory that Monicagate and Whitewater and impeachment and the various other peccadilloes that have so endeared the Clintons to us over the years should be revisited in the primary, before the Snidely Whiplashes at the RNC can use them to bludgeon Her Majesty into oblivion. How tragic that our evil has compelled these fine, high-minded progressives to behave so ruthlessly."

CLINTON III: Hillary, You're Fired

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about an allegation made by Jerry Zeifman, Clinton's former boss on the House Jud Cmte, who claims that he fired Clinton "because she was a liar [and] an unethical, dishonest lawyer":

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Dan Calabrese's new column on Hillary Clinton's past may bring the curtain down on her political future. Calabrese interviewed Jerry Zeifman...[who] claims he fired Hillary for unethical behavior and that she conspired to deny Richard Nixon counsel during the hearings [...] The right to counsel is considered one of the inviolable tenets of our justice system. It doesn't speak well of ambitious attorneys working on a highly-charged political investigation that she wanted to deny someone the right to an attorney. Small wonder Zeifman questioned her ethics. [...] We know that the Tuzla Dash covered for something much more significant in Hillary's character. Zeifman shows that all of this forms a pattern of lies, obfuscations, deceit, and treachery."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "The allegations are explosive, and they come from the one person in the best position to know that they are true, Hillary's then-boss."
• Michelle Malkin: "Hillary's a liar, part 99,999,999. As if...you needed...any more evidence..."

OBAMA: We've Seen This Movie Before

Some liberal bloggers are decrying the media's fixation with Obama's low bowling score:

• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Obama stopped by a bowling alley in Altoona, Pa., over the weekend, and bowled a few frames -- for the first time in 30 years. The senator, who's apparently far more comfortable on a basketball court, didn't exactly take to the game, and apparently bowled a 37 (though it's not quite clear how many frames that includes). The point of the campaign stop, of course, wasn't to bowl well, but rather to help Obama establish a connection with the blue-collar community. The low score didn't seem to bother locals, and the media in South-Central Pa. played up the appearance as a great success. And then there's the national media. It's hard to imagine MSNBC (which allegedly favors Obama), for example, spending five-and-a-half minutes on the subject of Obama's score, and yet, that's exactly what happened yesterday morning. [...] And people wonder why I've sworn off watching television news."
• dday: "The fact that Republicans distinctly try to feminize Democratic Presidential candidates is nothing new. Neither is the fact that the media has internalized this narrative so completely that Republican feminization efforts become redundant. If Clinton somehow takes the nomination, Republicans will have to recalibrate, but I'm sure we'll hear more 'she's a castrating rhymes-with-witch' in the media. This isn't about gender, of course, it's about weakness, it's about a B.S. macho worldview that you have to be tough and rugged to lead, that Democrats can never be tough or rugged, that Republicans are tough and rugged by default. The question is whether or not that works anymore, post-[George W.] Bush. But it hasn't exactly been disproven in Presidential politics, and the media is so lazy (and of course, heavily invested in this worldview) that they'll continue to frame everything in this way."

Clinton's online supporters, on the other hand, are arguing that Obama's low bowling score demonstrates his lack of blue collar cred:

• Taylor Marsh: "It seems for some elite Democrats, bowling is an activity, but not a sport, that anyone can master on the moment, the Ozarks is for the inbred, and the Mississippi River can only be appreciated by hicks...The disdain and ignorance in elite Democratic circles is so completely out of control that people don't understand what these types of activities mean to some people. [...] What pompous, elitist progressives and Obama supporters really don't get is that 'Reagan Democrats' aren't going away and won't soon be an extinct group. [...] There will always be Reagan Democrat types as long as there is America. To win the general election Democrats have got to win a good majority of them, too. There are two candidates right now and one can, while the other one can't, at least not right now. Bowling 37 doesn't help. You know why? It's really hard to bowl a 37. I know, this may seem like a cheap shop, but you try it. I bet your teenage daughter can do better without even breaking a nail. But what's worse is that Obama figured, how hard can it be? I'm an athlete, and after all, it's only bowling. That's revealing."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt agrees that Clinton is the better candidate for blue-collar Dems: "We've only got one working class hero in this race, and it's Hillary. 30 years ago, she could have been Tess (Melanie Griffith) in the movie Working Girl. You can speechify and borrow and take credit for work done by others, or you do what Hillary does, and learn every facet of the problem and have a hand in creating a proposal that results in a solution."

MCCAIN: Enough With The Media Love Affair!

Liberal bloggers continue to complain that the media has a pro-McCain bias:

• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "The Democratic nominee must overcome the media's blind love affair with John McCain, a bias so effective in shielding McCain from criticism it could put McCain in the White House. McCain's media supporters and apologists understand the game and they know their assignments. The Bush/Cheney maladministration has made the Republican brand toxic. Its catastrophic foreign and economic failures should result in a crushing defeat. So the conservative media's job is to save the Presidency for John McCain, and the way they'll do that is by defending him not only as principled, honest and 'centrist,' despite his campaign finance dodge, blatant flip-flops, rightwing and religious pandering and surrounding himself with lobbyists...but more importantly as someone whose policy beliefs are so different from George Bush's that voters can reject Bush and still embrace McCain. It is a breathtaking fraud, and it may succeed."
• Atrios: "I don't know what it will take to convince the media industrial complex that John McCain doesn't know anything about anything and they only think he does because he's learned to cater to their intellectual vanity by pretending to agree with people about everything."
• Firedoglake's Eli: "Is anyone else getting deja vu? Back in 2000, the media did all they could to portray a blueblooded New England fratboy as a genial salt-of-the-earth cowboy, a likable reg'lar fella who you could have a beer with. And people were fooled. [...] And now it's 2008, and what's happening? The media are telling us that corrupt, angry, out of touch John McCain is a straight-talking, independent-minded, maverick reformer. This is the same John McCain who was a member of the Keating Five. Who cheated on and dumped his invalid first wife for a much younger and richer woman. Who made one grand campaign-finance reform gesture to rehab his image and turned his back on it forever, to the point where he actually ignores campaign finance laws."

On the right, Power Line's Paul Mirengoff is pleased with the media's coverage of McCain thus far: "I don't watch CNN these days, but when I got home last night my wife had it on, and correspondent Tom Foreman was reporting on John McCain's bio tour. The report went on for several minutes and, to my surprise, I heard nothing objectionable. Anderson Cooper then discussed McCain's campaign with three other CNN reporters/analysts, and still I heard nothing objectionable. I don't doubt that the MSM will turn en masse against McCain before too long, as the New York Times, with its hints of an extramarital affair, apparently already has. But McCain's positive and heroic image is pretty well engrained. And the longer the media honeymoon last, the less plausibly will be the quicky divorce."

MCCAIN II: Preptastic!

Several liberal bloggers attended McCain's event at his former high school in VA and came away unimpressed:

• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher live-blogged the event: "McCain went here for high school, graduating in 1954. It was an all-boy's school at the time. He's being introduced with a lot of elitist, 'upholding a code of honor' boarding school crap. Makes me want to go light up in the can. [...] Okay McCain's here now, and he's talking about his 'youthful indescretion' and how much he's learned over the course of his life. Obviously trying to get out in front of all the womanizing and temper outbursts. Can I just say how empty the parking lot was? There are more people in line for the bathroom at an Obama event. [...] The student questioners are quite consumed with asking whether the values he learned at Episcopal have influenced his conduct as a public official. None of them seem to have heard the words 'Vicki Iseman'."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "At the event, I was kind of shocked at how bad [McCain] is on the stump. He isn't very quick on his feet, he's extremely brittle, he's self-deprecating to the point where he basically insults his own entire character, and his jokes are mostly hackish ways of reinforcing his own moral righteousness. He also has a straight arrow belief that everything he does is simply sacred and built on honor, and that dishonor and the powerful being insulted is the highest sin imaginable, worse than war, pestilence, or intellectual inconsistency. It was very weird. He's going to hang everything on honor and military experience in Hanoi, and my sense is that the way to get to him personally is to point out that he cheats all the time on pretty much everything by breaking the rules. [...] This guy is carefully sheltered from any real criticism. His handlers know that they can't let him really face any actual questioning about his record, policy decisions, or system of values. We should wipe the floor with him."

MCCAIN III: Getting The Mac's Back

Conservative bloggers are defending McCain against Obama's allegation that McCain wants to continue the Iraq War for another 100 years -- a claim that the Columbia Journalism Review calls "seriously misleading":

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "McCain clearly said that staying in the region for an indefinite period where no Americans were killed or injured in combat, as with Germany and Japan, should give no one any concerns. He then said if the US did not prevail militarily, that would certainly change the calculations, and that he did not favor endless combat operations without hope of victory."
• RedState's haystack: "This '100 year war' tug of war foolishness between Obama and McCain has gone far enough. Barack Obama is lying staight-faced to his followers, and he knows it."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "It seems pretty clear that yes, Democrats are trying to put words in McCain's mouth. On the other hand, are we really surprised?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: You Never Got Me Down, Barack

AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein:

"Hillary Clinton drew headlines today by comparing herself to Philadephia's favorite son Rocky Balboa, but I think a much more apt comparison is to 'Raging Bull' Jake LaMotta.

Before he got his title shot, Rocky was squaring off against the likes of 'Spider' Rico and collecting for a loan shark, while Clinton once held a 20 to 30 point lead over Obama for the nomination. The underdog role doesn't suit her well.

LaMotta, on the other hand, got beaten to a bloody pulp by Sugar Ray Robinson, had no chance to win, but refused to fall out of stubbornness, and the fight came to an end only after the ref intervened to stop it. Despite getting pummeled, a bloody LaMotta gloated to Robinson, 'You never got me down, Ray.' That strikes me as a better metaphor for the current state of the Clinton campaign."

LEST WE FORGET: Also, He Has Experience Fighting Obama!

The Indecision 2008 editorial staff endorses Alan Keyes for President (h/t Patrick Appel):

"Each and every one of the three media darling candidates has, in the course of campaigning, proven themselves to be completely unworthy of the office of which they seek.

• Barack Obama lacks experience and has shown us time and again that he is utterly incapable of answering a telephone after 2:30 or so a.m. Also, he's friends with a guy who says mean things about America sometimes, and we don't like that.
• Hillary Clinton has outed herself as a liar -- and not just any kind of liar, but one who isn't smart enough to not lie about things that television crews have caught on videotape. And we think her husband is kind of a douche these days.
• And John McCain is old and he has a weird unsightly growth on the side of his face. What the hell is up with that thing? It's weird.

For these reasons, and many more, we are proud to announce...that the Indecision 2008 web team has decided to endorse -- excitedly and unequivocally and super-excitedly -- the presidential candidacy of one Mr. Alan Lee Keyes, ambassador, author, humanitarian, talk show host, friend."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 2, 2008 12:47 PM