May 21, 2008

5/21: Math Wars

Bloggers reacted to Barack Obama's OR victory and Hillary Clinton's KY victory in their usual ways. Many liberal bloggers claim that Obama's convincing win in OR -- a predominantly white state whose per-capita income is lower than the national average -- demonstrates that his weakness among working-class whites is mostly confined to the Appalachian region. In contrast, pro-Clinton bloggers (as well as most conservative bloggers) see Obama's 35-point loss in KY as further evidence that Obama will be a weak nominee.

Most liberal bloggers are getting fed up with Clinton's claim that she leads Obama in the popular vote (which is true only if one awards Obama zero votes from MI, where his name wasn't on the ballot). Yet Jim Geraghty asks an interesting question: Could Clinton win Puerto Rico's primary by enough votes to ensure that she leads Obama in the popular vote even if the MI results are excluded from her total? If that happens, we can expect the fights between pro-Clinton and pro-Obama bloggers to intensify.

DEM FIELD: He's Closing In, Folks...

Many liberal bloggers are pushing the Obama camp's claim that Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "NBC News and CNN report that Obama has now clinched a majority of the pledged delegates, surpassing the 1,627 mark. What's more, assuming Obama is able to secure 30 delegates out of Oregon [...], Obama will have clinched a majority of pledged delegates including Michigan and Florida (assuming a halving of the states' delegations, which Chuck Todd is reporting is a likelihood). What does this mean? Obama has not clinched the Democratic nomination, though his seemingly inexorable move towards securing the nomination was not slowed tonight. Nevertheless, Obama now has a claim to the majority of the pledged delegates under almost any scenario, meaning that the cadre of superdelegates pledging their support to the winner of the pledged delegate battle could move to Obama, and soon."
• The Huffington Post's M.S. Bellows, Jr.: "The truth is that winning the majority of democratically elected delegates is victory. Obama has won the election, which in a democracy means winning the nomination. This isn't a case where three candidates have split the vote so that none has a majority (in which case the superdelegates would play an indispensable role in breaking the deadlock and giving the nominee an apparent majority to carry him into the general election). It's a two-candidate race, and Obama won. Are there still undeclared superdelegates? Doesn't matter, because the superdelegates will, in the end, simply ratify the candidate the voters chose. They'll do this for any of several dozen good reasons -- ranging from a sincere love of democracy, to the self-interested calculation that they'll be run out of office on a rail if they presume to override the voters' choice and their candidate loses to [John] McCain -- but they'll do it."
• Firedoglake's Eli: "[Clinton] is now officially unable to win the nomination without the help of the superdelegates -- and she's trailing on those too."

Other liberal bloggers are asserting that the Dem primary is essentially over:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Despite what [Clinton strategist Terry] McAuliffe and his crew say in their frenetic spinning tonight, this race is over."
• Ezra Klein: "Tonight, the general election began."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat doesn't think Obama should declare himself the pledged delegate winner until FL and MI are resolved: "CNN, along with NBC, at the behest of the Barack Obama campaign, will pretend Florida and Michigan do not exist. They will declare that Barack Obama has won a majority of the pledged delegates in the Dem race. They will declare that 2.3 million voters in Florida and Michigan do not exist. This is not only outrageous of these news organizations, it is monumentally stupid of the Obama campaign. [...] He has handed Hillary Clinton the most appealing battle cry a politician could possibly have -- count the votes."

Open Left's Chris Bowers agrees that Obama shouldn't "declare victory" until FL and MI are resolved: "Clinton won Kentucky 37-14 (or maybe less, as the update indicates) in terms of delegates, which means that Obama is still 0.5 short of a non-Michigan and non-Florida pledged delegate victory. Oregon will put him over that mark. The non-Florida and Michigan 50% + 1 pledged delegate victory will have to wait until one of the following: more Edwards delegates flip, the May 31st meeting of the Rules and Bylaws committee, or Puerto Rico, on June 1st. By that time, enough superdelegates may have chosen Obama in order to declare overall victory. Still, I think it is best for the Obama campaign not to declare victory until the night of June 3rd. That night, however, they should declare victory."

DEM FIELD II: It Just Doesn't Add Up

Liberal bloggers are annoyed by Clinton's claim that she leads Obama in the popular vote:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "The Clinton campaign keeps claiming that they lead in the popular vote. Just a reminder that the only reason they can do that, is to claim that Obama got zero votes in Michigan, and that voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington don't count. I don't understand how they and Hillary herself can make that claim with a straight face."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Even if you change the rules and fully seat Michaigan and Florida and count them for the popular vote totals and don't count any portion of the Michigan 'uncommitted' (which were understood...to be for Obama) vote for Obama, Hillary is still behind in the popular vote total. The only way she moves ahead in popular vote is if you do all that and don't count four of the caucus states. Some stuff is just too ridiculous to let pass."
• Sudbay: "Hillary told us tonight that she's been told that she's received more votes than any other Democrat who has run for the nomination. Not true, unless the votes are counted her exact way and some states aren't counted at all. Will this never end? Just because they keep repeating this new lie over and over and over, doesn't make it true."
• Firedoglake's Cliff Schecter: "Um, if you run in a contest, like let's say Michigan, and your opponent's name is not on the ballot, that is only a win in Waziristan."

On the right side of the blogosphere, NRO's Geraghty wonders if Clinton can overtake Obama's popular vote lead if one excludes MI: "If you count Florida (where all of them were on the ballot) but not Michigan (where only [Clinton] was), Obama leads by 146,786. Could she make that up in the remaining contests? There are two small, probably pro-Obama states (South Dakota and Montana) remaining and one pro-Hillary territory, Puerto Rico. The last one is an open primary (Operation Chaos!) with 2.4 million registered voters. By the way, the island had 81.7 percent turnout in the 2004 general election, and the one poll that has been done there put Hillary ahead by 13 percent."

OBAMA: Aren't There Hard-Working White People In Oregon?

Liberal bloggers are arguing that Obama's OR victory demonstrates that his problem with working-class whites is mostly confined to the Appalachian region:

• Firedoglake's David Neiwert: "Oregon certainly is home to nearly as many white working-class voters as Kentucky (it's 87% white in Oregon, and 90% in Kentucky). Moreover, the outcome of the primaries throughout much of the West run along similar lines: Obama has run away with the votes in places like Idaho and Wyoming, and is likely to repeat that in Montana -- none of which are exactly renowned as havens of African American voters. In Washington state, Obama won the caucuses in every single one of the state's counties. It doesn't seem to me that [Obama] has a problem with white American working-class voters generically. Looking at the results, it seems he mostly has a problem with white voters in Appalachia. Elsewhere, whites seem perfectly comfortable voting for him."
• Moulitsas: "Are there any hard-working white people in Oregon? Can't possibly be the case, considering [he won] the primary there today. Ranked by per-capita income, Oregon is ranked 23rd in the nation, two slots behind Ohio, and a single slot ahead of Pennsylvania. And since Ohio and Pennsylvania are apparently the gold standard of white working class-ness in this election, Oregon is little different than those two on the economic front. Oregon is also a white state. According to 2005 census projections, Oregon is 9.38 percent Hispanic, 2.38 percent black, 2.44 percent pacific islander, 0.5 percent Native American, and 4.25 percent Asian. That's about 81 percent Anglo."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "As Jeff at Blue Oregon notes, Oregon isn't exactly a paragon of diversity itself, nor is it, for the most part, a terribly wealthy state. [...] I think Jeff's right to conclude that 'Oregon's central role in this election won't be putting Obama over the 50%-mark in pledged delegates...Rather, it's in reminding everyone that his broad base of support includes whites and poorer voters.'"

As usual, Big Tent Democrat disagrees with his fellow liberal bloggers: "Obama STILL has a working class voter problem in Oregon, despite the claims of the Obama News Network (NBC), Clintons win voters earning 30k or less by 54-43. Clinton wins non-college voters by 54-44."

OBAMA II: The Elephant In The Room

Many bloggers are arguing that racism has played a significant role in Obama's losses in Appalachia:

• Marshall: "There's simply no getting around the role of race in the Kentucky and, for that matter, the West Virginia results. From the exit poll numbers tonight, 'Was Race of the Candidate Important to You?' 21% said Yes and 81% of those voted for Hillary Clinton. Given how the levels of under-reporting are that go into a question like that, I don't think you easily get around that number."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "The [KY] exit poll shows that one in five voters openly declared that race was a factor -- and 81 percent of them voted for the Clintons. So one fifth proudly said they voted against a black man. How many more did so but didn't admit it? The AP reports [that] 'Only three in 10 whites who said race was a factor said they would vote for Obama should he oppose McCain in November. Nearly four in 10 said they would back McCain, while the rest said they wouldn't vote.' We're discovering that a core of less educated white voters in the Appalachias will do anything to stop a black man being president of the United States. Good to know."
• The Huffington Post's Bob Cesca: "Norah O'Donnell just reported that 9 out of 10 voters who thought race was important selected Senator Clinton [in KY]. But, of course, that's Senator Obama's 'problem' -- all that racism. His problem. Racist white people are his problem. Yeah. What the hell is wrong with people?"
• Daily Kos' DHinMI: "Beginning with Super Tuesday and then the Potomac primary, the pattern became clear: many counties of Appalachia have voted by margins of over 2 to 1, and sometimes even 9 to 1 for Hillary Clinton. It's inescapable that race is playing a factor in some voting everywhere, but that it's a much greater factor in Appalachia than anywhere else in America. Only in Appalachia has Hillary Clinton won huge margins. As I've written before, Obama does not appear to have a problem with white voters. However, Appalachia has a problem with Obama."

Big Tent Democrat slams DHinMI's post: "Here is a prime example of why Democrats lose white working class voters, this headline -- 'Appalachia's Last Chance to Show It Doesn't Have an Obama Problem'. Yes, tell voters they have a problem when they do not vote for you. Heck of a general election plan. When candidates and/or their supporters are blaming the voters, you know you have a problem."

OBAMA III: Limping Toward The Finish Line?

Conservative bloggers see Obama's blowout loss in KY as further evidence that he is a weak nominee:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "[What] does it say about the likely Democratic nominee that he is getting blown out at this late stage by 35 points in the late primaries?"
• NRO's Mark Steyn: "There's no precedent in modern primary history for a candidate growing weaker* the more his nomination becomes inevitable. His boast of finally getting a majority of pledged delegates -- or whatever cockamie Democrat arithmetical milestone he reached last night -- felt like a steam train running out of coal. He's still moving uphill, just about, but ever slower...and slower...and slo..w...er... [UPDATE: *Poorly phrased: I should have said there's no precedent for a candidate getting 'so weak'. Obviously, presumptive nominees from [Walter] Mondale to [Bob] Dole managed to frost up the base as primary season wore on -- but not to this degree, and not to the point where 50% of Democrat primary voters in Kentucky tell pollsters they wouldn't vote for Obama in November.]"
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Oregon's electorate tends towards the activist Left, driven by energy from college communities -- exactly the kind of demographic that suits Obama. If true, the problems for Obama in a general election may be even greater than thought. Had the split in the Democratic Party merely been racial, one could have expected a rapprochement in the fall, as the party unified to face off against a center-right candidate in John McCain. Now, though, we can understand the high percentages of voters who say they will vote McCain rather than Obama if Hillary loses the nomination in terms of an ideological response. They see McCain as closer to their political positions. [...] McCain has an opportunity to attract votes from Democrats who fear that their party has shifted too far to the left and who fear that Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter."

OBAMA IV: Gaffe Machine?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about Michelle Malkin's latest column, in which she lists a number of verbal slips that Obama has made and concludes that he is a "gaffe machine":

"Barack Obama -- promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah -- is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?"

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Of course MSM is covering for him, but new media keeps educating the public on the fact that Obama is far out of his depth. He's a lightweight propped up by friends with cameras and microphones, and keeping the big con going through November will prove difficult."
• Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "George Bush was misunderestimated. These two Democratic candidates seem to have been consistently misoverestimated. Doesn't mean we can count Obama out in a general, but we can probably count on him messing up with delightful regularity."
• Morrissey: "Some of the gaffes Michelle notes belong in the 'potatoe' file, silly mistakes that could be attributed to exhaustion or misspeaking. Obama mixed up Sioux Falls and Sioux City last week, which I might do if I ever bothered to go to either city. [...But others] don't really qualify as 'gaffes' in the sense of momentary lapses in memory or factual recall, which all of us make. They represent deliberate positions intended to gin up support on the basis of obviously erroneous allegations. [...] Obama's assertion that the US had a shortage of Arabic translators in Afghanistan was part of an argument that blamed the stalling operations in Afghanistan on the Iraq War. And minimizing the Iranian threat in Oregon played into the minds of those who think that the Bush administration is the biggest threat to world peace. None of these are in the same 'potatoe' league as [ex-VP Dan] Quayle's highly-publicized missteps. These are mistakes with a purpose. The Young Gaffer may or may not know any better, but he's banking on the American voter not knowing any better this fall."

MCCAIN: Trapped By His Own Rules

Liberal bloggers are pleased that the press is devoting substantial coverage to McCain's lobbyist problem:

• Sudbay: "John McCain is supposed to be the great reformer. That's just pure bull. He scammed the FEC's public financing system last year -- something for which he's not been held accountable -- yet. And, his campaign is rife with very powerful D.C. lobbyists who work for some very shady characters -- and that's really starting to damage the McCain brand. [...] This is all his fault. He gathered all these lobbyists to run his campaign. Obviously, McCain didn't think it would be an issue -- but it is."
• dday: "Ever since John McCain implemented new rules that should have forced him to fire his entire staff, and ended up in him actually firing his convention manager, one of his national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide, there was no way for the press to ignore such a barrage without reporting on it. [...] The ubiquity of the lobbyists in his campaign finally breaking out into the open is deadly, because he's carefully cultivated the image of being an independent maverick, and it's being assaulted on all sides. [...] McCain isn't going to be able to run from these associations but we're now down to people like [senior adviser Charlie] Black and [campaign manager Rick] Davis who aren't expendable."
• The New Republic's Michael Crowley: "Maybe, with the issue of lobbyists in the campaign festering, McCain had to address it head-on and get the pain over with, rather than suffer a drip-drip of stories over the coming weeks about which aide worked for which dubious government or corporation. But it sure seems like his campaign write large was not well-prepared for its new vetting edict. And the immediate effect has been to make the press spotlight a long list of lobbyists affiliated with McCain to whom no one was paying any attention before."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "The McCain gang just walked into this one. They never vetted aides, they never thought to check client lists, and then when confronted, they started purging lobbyists-turned-aides without thinking about the implications. This isn't going away."

MCCAIN II: Campaigning On Ignorance?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about an exchange that McCain had with Time's Joe Klein at a press conference yesterday. Klein reports:

"I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking about Obama's alleged willingness to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has no power over Iranian foreign policy, rather than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who does. He said that Ahmadinejad is the guy who represents Iran in international forums like the United Nations, which is a fair point. When I followed with the observation that the Supreme Leader is, uh, the Supreme Leader, McCain responded that the 'average American' thinks Ahmadinejad is the boss. Didn't get a chance to follow up to that, but I would have asked, 'But isn't it your job to correct those sorts of mistaken impressions on the part of the American public?' Oh well."

• Benen: "Is that really McCain's preferred standard for international affairs? Whomever the 'average Americans' thinks is in charge should be considered the leader?"
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "McCain: I Can Demagogue About Iran Because Public Is Ignorant. Okay, that's not quite what he said, but pretty darn close."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "It's increasingly clear that John McCain intends to use his special relationship with the press to run a campaign based on relentlessly lying about his opponent. [...] McCain and McCain's allies in the world of neoconservative punditry have deliberately created the entirely false notion that Ahmadenijad runs Iranian foreign policy. One point I've been making in my book-related appearances is that it's not a coincidence that the preventive war crowd told a lot of whoppers about Iraq before the war and is telling a lot of whoppers about Iran now -- the right knows that contrary to the prevailing conventional wisdom, there's just no evidence that the American people are deep down yearning for senseless violence and imperial adventurism."
• Democracy Arsenal's Ilan Goldenberg: "As Klein points out, the President's job is to educate the public on questions of policy. So if the 'average American' thinks that Ahmadinejad is the ultimate leader of Iran, it's up to the President to dissuade them of this notion -- not reinforce it. Back in 2002 more then half of Americans thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and President [George W.] Bush did nothing to disprove this assumption (In fact, while never directly claiming that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 the Administration did everything it could to reinforce the notion). That doesn't mean our policy should be based on those false assumptions. [...] Considering the bellicose language and all the speculation about war with Iran, you'd think the Republican nominee for President who consistently touts his foreign policy expertise should either get better briefings on the structure of Iran's government or start exercising that 'straight talk' he is supposedly so famous for."

MCCAIN III: Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, What's The Difference?

Conservative bloggers are pushing back against Klein's criticism of McCain:

• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The left wants to portray McCain as an ignoramus for constantly mentioning Ahmadinejad -- the most identifiable public face of Iran -- rather than Supreme Leader Khamenei. J. Klein proudly confronted McCain on this at a press conference today. But it isn't as if Ahmadinejad is a member of some opposition party, nor would he be allowed to make the statements he does were his views not shared by the ruling regime. It's pretty clear that his inflamatory statements were just in keeping with long-standing Iranian policy."
• The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb links to a video of Obama implying that the U.S. should not be afraid to meet with Ahmadinejad: "I can't say I'm surprised that Time magazine and the Obama campaign managed to miss this clip which completely undermines their shared narrative. But now we have a new narrative: Obama intends to meet with Ali Khamenei, the man with the real power in Tehran, because even though Obama pledged to meet with Ahmadinejad, and said it was a 'disgrace' that Bush had not, he never had any intention of meeting with Ahmadinejad, and McCain is a liar for saying different. The Dems and their boosters in the press are tying themselves in knots trying to explain Obama's position. So what the heck is his policy? We have a right to know. Does Obama still intend to meet with Ahmadinjead? Does he intend to meet with Khamenei? And if he doesn't intend to meet with A'Jad, why the sudden shift? There is a lot of lying and obfuscation going on here, but none of it is emanating from the McCain camp."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Case For Generic Democratic White Dudes

The New Republic's Josh Patashnik:

"What's become clear at the end of this primary season is that neither Democratic candidate's appeal is as wide as Democrats would prefer. [...] Obama appears to have a problem with working-class whites east of Illinois, and Clinton appears to have a problem with Westerners and more upscale independent-minded voters. This pattern has been remarkably consistent since the beginning of the primary season. My suspicion is that these weaknesses basically cancel each other out, which is why you see both candidates sporting approximately equal-sized small leads over John McCain in national polls.

One wonders, in retrospect, if there were some candidate who could have bridged this divide and appealed equally well to both groups. Somebody like [ex-VA Gov] Mark Warner, perhaps, whom the Obama coalition might have embraced as an entrepreneurial, somewhat postpartisan, reformist fresh face, and whom the Clinton coalition might have embraced as a culturally moderate, economically savvy governor of a border state. (Or, if you prefer a different formulation, a 'generic Democratic white dude.') The reality is that discontent with Republicans runs so deep that there are a ton of people who are open to voting for a Democrat this year -- so many that Democrats can easily win the White House without getting all their votes. Which is a good thing, because...it looks like the Democratic candidate probably won't get all their votes."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Presidential hopefuls John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced Monday their plans to form what many Beltway observers have already dubbed the '2008 Nightmare Ticket,' a calculated move that political analysts say offers voters the worst of both worlds. [...]

'This nightmare ticket presents the American people with an unprecedented lack of opportunity in 2008,' Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote Tuesday. 'For just one vote, citizens will get four years of McCain's brilliant temper, the incredible inexperience of Barack Obama, and the powerful two-headed monster of Hillary and Bill Clinton.'

'It will be very exciting to see what they're capable of destroying,' Cohen added. [...]

At the top of the platform is a military strategy calling for the phased withdrawal of .000006 brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan every seven months over the next 350 years. Universal health care would also be provided, taken away on McCain's birthday, and then provided again only to those wealthy enough to afford it. Abortions would be made available on every other even-numbered Friday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST to all women who can prove residency in Alaska or Nevada."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at May 21, 2008 12:45 PM