"Over"

Everybody -- and by "everybody" I mean "Tim Russert and his friends" -- says yesterday's NC and IN results basically end the campaign, whether Hillary knows it or not. That's the big narrative of the day, and Obama supporters are predictably jubilant. But the best commentary comes, as usual, from Chris Bowers:

I am finding myself resistant to the way this nomination campaign appears to be ending, mainly because there is no logic to it. All of the arguments that could be used by the punditry to declare the nomination campaign over could have been used really at any point since Wisconsin. For some reason, those arguments appear to be sticking tonight, whereas they weren't earlier. According to the logic that ends the campaign tonight, there was no reason to torture us for the past two months, except to damage Democrats for the sake of damaging Democrats. I guess I should have learned by now that that is reason enough.

The Clinton campaign will probably slog on in some form, as Ben Smith indicates. After all, she is going to win West Virginia, and maybe Michigan really won't have a single delegate for Obama. Or something else absurd that won't happen. However, the truth is that the Clinton campaign has been kept alive by inaccurate and arbitrary media rules that now seem to have arbitrarily shifted against her. Survival in that environment will prove extremely difficult indeed. Live by the arbitrary media narrative, become irrelevant by it. The nomination campaign seems to have outlived its usefulness to the national media.

Absolutely right. This whole thing is just a joke.

The other upside of the drawn-out campaign

USA Today:

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are increasingly funding their presidential campaigns through donations of $200 or less, a USA TODAY analysis shows, in a break from previous contests dominated by wealthier contributors.

More than half of the $194 million that Clinton and Obama collected from January through March for their primary fight came from small donations, according to the analysis of data compiled by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute. That's up from about 15% of the $43.5 million collected by both Democrats during the same period last year.

[...] Obama's small donation outreach is "staggering," said Jonathan Krasno, a political scientist at New York's Binghamton University. "He has done more to reach out to people and to get their donations than I thought was possible."

Krasno said Clinton has had to find "new donors to compete with his fundraising success and to pay for a race that has lasted longer than expected."

This is a direct consequence of the extended primary season. See, our politics historically has been dominated by big money -- but in this cycle, all the wealthy donors gave the $2300 limit way back in early 2007, and the campaigns planned their spending to pretty much end after Super Tuesday. So all the subsequent campaigning has had to be funded by ordinary small donors, simply by default, and the campaigns have been forced to use these new fundraising models! Which, conveniently, are engaging countless thousands of new people into the political process and doing more to wrest control of the system away from the rich than anything else this year. Think about THAT next time you complain about the Endless Campaign...

(via Taegan Goddard)

Completely accurate predictions for today's PA primary

Good news, everyone: using my MAGIC CRYSTAL BALL I have psychically divined the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary! The following things will happen tonight:

1. Everyone will be astonished by how wrong the polls were, just like every other damn time;
2. Obama supporters will immediately claim that the results mean Hillary must drop out;
3. Hillary supporters will immediately claim that they have won a mandate to stay on, and also, Barack Obama hates america;
4. Chris Matthews will get very exercised about some bullshit; and
5. Absolutely nothing of relevance will be decided, as this unkillable zombie-like campaign staggers onward into infinity.

There. Now you can skip watching the primary, and do something better with your time -- like a nice walk along the Charles, several dozen rounds of Boomshine, repeatedly hitting yourself in the face with a mallet, etc. Go! Go and be free!

The "are we hurting the party" question goes meta

You knew it had to come eventually. Steve M., of No More Mister Nice Blog:

With so many prominent Democrats proclaiming that the party is being hurt by the prolonged nomination fight, I can't help wondering: Would this be hurting the party less if there weren't so many prominent Democrats saying, for attribution, that it's hurting the party?

This is what we in the world of serious political journalism call a "mindfuck".

...Of course, Steve M. is quite right to point out that Democrats are propping up the narrative that this endless campaign is gives McCain an advantage, despite minimal actual evidence (those poll numbers you hear cited, about 30% of Clinton supporters jumping ship if Obama wins and so forth, are transparently meaningless). We are much better off than the talking heads would have you believe.

But the real question: by accusing leading Democrats of such miscalculation, isn't Steve M. just engendering more dissension and disunity? WHY ARE YOU HURTING THE PARTY, STEVE M.????

Huffington Post: OMG SURROGATEZ!!1!1

At the increasingly worthless Huffington Post today:

Two great writers (Tom Edsall is a Pulitzer finalist, and Jason Linkins is the genius behind DCeiver), two stupid-ass stories. This fussing about surrogates has been the leitmotif of the 2008 race: Austan "NAFTAGate" Goolsbee, Sam Power, Ferraro, Wright, the stupid Obama dude, apparently now this lady, the list goes on. Yet does anyone outside the elite media and the fanatic bloggers actually care whose surrogates did or said what? I love me some horse-race politics, but come on. It just isn't news. You might as well make a big deal out of that hissy fit the Clinton diarists had at Daily Kos this weekend... wait, what?

(sound of soft, gentle weeping)

I want this campaign to be over.

Clinton Staff Throwing Mark Penn Under the Bus

I think we can all see the writing on the wall...

Said Ickes: "Mark Penn has run this campaign. Besides Hillary Clinton, he is the single most responsible person for this campaign... It’s pretty plain for anyone to see that he has shaped the strategy of the campaign. He has called the shots. Mark Penn has dominated the message in this campaign. Dominated it."

In a campaign, when a senior strategist is actually giving someone else credit for something, you know it's because the Apocalypse is coming. (Granted, Harold Ickes has been off his meds lately, but like Indira I'm skeptical that his presence will make much real difference one way or the other. There's nothing left to do now but spin.)

...Now, in the event of an unbelievable last-minute turnaround -- which is possible, this is American politics we're talking about -- watch how quickly our boy here would run to the cameras claiming responsibility...

Above: "Guess where I'm calling from? My CELLULAR PHONE!"

Oh, my head

Three months ago I got angry at Barack Obama, as I often do, for talking shit about the 1960s. At the time, I wrote:

[D]oes he just mean that Senator Clinton hasn't been forceful enough in denouncing the Port Huron Statement? Is John Edwards too soft on the Weathermen? What the hell is he talking about?

Ha ha! Funny anachronistic references to defunct 1960s radicals, which illustrate the silliness of the issue because they could never ever crop up in a present-day... what the hell?

The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group... "Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun article reporting a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, to Obama in 2001. (Obama's ties to the radical group first surfaced last week in a Bloomberg News article.)

In a separate e-mail, Singer forwarded an article from Politico.com reporting on a 1995 event at a private home that brought Obama together with Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, another former member of the radical group.

[...] "If the Clinton campaign is truly concerned about the exploitation of the Weather Underground issue by the Republican attack machine, perhaps they should focus on the pardon of some of its members in the waning days of the Clinton administration," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

"The Weather Underground issue." OH MY GOD JUST FUCKING KILL ME. They know there's a WAR going on right now, don't they? Like, not a culture war, a war war? WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS??!!?!?

...The Clinton campaign is simply beyond repair, if this is the level they're sinking to. (Not that Burton's doing himself any favors by jumping right down into their frame -- "Yeah, well, your guy is also a dirty hippie!") I understand such garbage scores points with the pathological media, who of course are obsessed with the 1960s, but for everybody else... this is rapidly becoming the stupidest primary ever. I need a drink...

A brief note for journalists covering the Wisconsin primaries

I can't help but notice that bloggers and journalists, possibly those who were foolish enough to go on assignment to Wisconsin without their long underwear, keep harping on how cold it is. See, e.g., Real Clear Politics:

Wisconsin -- cold, cold, cold. Right now, it's 1 degree F in Madison. One. But, hey, at least it's sunny!

On behalf of the cheeseheads: WE KNOW. THIS IS NOT UNUSUAL. WISCONSIN IS COLD. Now shut up and cover the election.

Of course, twelve hours from now they'll all be packed up and headed to Texas, where they'll probably deliver the amazing revelation that lots of Texans are fairly enamored of Texas. Brilliant.

A legit question to Obama supporters

If Eva can ask Clinton supporters a question, I figure I get one too -- although this is a less practical and more basic one. Here goes...

When I'm arguing with my Obama-supporting friends, inevitably the "unity" thing comes up. More particularly the fact that Obama likes to reach out to conservatives -- "broadening the coalition," so to speak. (By most accounts he's doing a good job of it.) Temperamentally, Obama wants to expand the Democratic Party out to include people who are substantially further right than he is; there isn't much doubt about that.

Why?

Everyone says this like it's a good thing and I just don't get it. There are plenty of reasons not to let conservatives near our party -- for starters, the historical fact that everything they touch turns almost immediately to shit -- but there aren't any reasons for it. The Democratic coalition is plenty big already, and it'd be unstoppable if only we had an infrastructure to turn it out (which will come from the left, not the center or right). We don't need conservatives; why would we want them?

Obama's finally talking economic justice

This is a good start, anyway:

We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control. The fallout from the housing crisis that’s cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington – the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it’s produced.

It’s a Washington where George Bush hands out billions in tax cuts year after year to the biggest corporations and the wealthiest few who don’t need them and don’t ask for them – tax breaks that are mortgaging our children’s future on a mountain of debt; tax breaks that could’ve gone into the pockets of the working families who needed them most.

It’s a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who’ve seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear; workers whose right to organize and unionize has been under assault for the last eight years.

[...]So today, I’m laying out a comprehensive agenda to reclaim our dream and restore our prosperity. It’s an agenda that focuses on three broad economic challenges that the next President must address – the current housing crisis; the cost crisis facing the middle-class and those struggling to join it; and the need to create millions of good jobs right here in America– jobs that can’t be outsourced and won’t disappear.

YES OBAMA! MORE! MORE! MORE!

Hardcore populists like yours truly have kind of been in the weeds since Edwards dropped out; neither frontrunning candidate has done much of anything to address class and economic issues. Like Edwards himself, reportedly, I'm torn between Clinton and Obama. (For the record, in the Massachusetts primary I voted for Hillary, but completely without enthusiasm.) So it's very nice to see Obama -- who thus far has been pathologically averse to anything that even hints at class consciousness -- finally stepping up and delivering a real, solid, Democratic economic message. Or at least part of one; this is still pretty timid stuff, and I'd like to hear him address corporate control of politics (plus, in a dream candidacy, the problem of right-wing market orthodoxy), but at this point you take what you can get.

Of course, this could just be a strategic move to peel off more of Hillary's white working-class base (which he's already been doing with some success), but what the hell. Like David Sirota said today, opportunism is not really a problem if it leads us to the right policies. I don't give a damn if Obama is sincere or not; every minute he spends saying this to his supporters is a step forward for progressive populism. He's got a lot of ground to cover yet before I'll buy it, of course, but this is a heartening beginning.

...Along similar lines, here's Obama showing some uncharacteristic rhetorical muscle (directed at McCain, no less) in Baltimore on Monday. The tough-guy stuff works for him, believe it or not:

This is not Obama the friendly hopemonger; this sounds like a candidate who's ready to close the deal and lead his party into battle. It's just what skeptical voters like me are looking for. And with Hillary's campaign seemingly stuck in second gear, now would be the perfect time for him to make that move...

Mid-Atlantic sweep

In a series of events that should surprise nobody, Barack Obama carried Virginia, Maryland, and DC in what has been variously described as the "Mid-Atlantic Primaries," the "Potomac Primaries," the "Pundit Primaries," and the "Beltway Primaries," among others. My personal favorites are "Half-Assed Tuesday" and the "Has It Really Only Been Six Weeks Since Iowa? Primaries," but your suggestions are more than welcome, as I'm sure we're going to be analyzing today's complex results for weeks to come.

The race moves next to a pair of February 19th contests in two very different states: caucuses in Obama's home state of Hawaii, and primaries in my beloved Wisconsin. Hawaii is widely presumed to be a shoo-in for Obama (unfortunate since I'm sure everyone would have loved to set up shop there rather than Wisconsin), and the latest polling out of Wisconsin gives Obama a 50-39 lead. (That said, as any good Obama supporter should have learned to do by now, I will here reiterate my distrust of polling. Nothing is ever guaranteed in elections.) Some good signs for Barack, though: Madison turned out en masse for him tonight (almost undoubtedly the warmest reception a Bears fan has ever received in the state of Wisconsin), the primary is open to independents and Republicans (we don't have partisan voter registration), and he's got the endorsement of Governor Jim Doyle, who makes Barack's hair look really good.

Tuesday also features a befuddling second contest in Washington State, which, as you'll recall, already had a caucus on Super Tuesday (Obama won solidly). I've been trying to figure this one out for a while, but fortunately the Washington Secretary of State provides this explanation:

Political parties retain the authority to decide if they will use the Presidential Primary to allocate delegates to the national nominating conventions. The political parties may also use caucus results, or a combination of primary results and caucus results.

The Republican Party used the results of the primary to allocate all of the Washington delegates in 1992, half of its delegates in 1996, and one third of its delegates in 2000. The State Republican Party has decided that it will use the 2008 Presidential Primary to allocate 51% of its delegates. The remaining 49% of the delegates will be allocated based on caucus results.

The Democratic Party has never used the results of the primary to allocate delegates. The State Democratic Party will only use caucuses to allocate delegates in 2008.

There you have it: caucuses count or sort of count, and the primaries sort of count or don't count at all, but Washington Democrats should still go cast their ballots next Tuesday, because dammit, it's civic participation!

I leave you with this visual evidence of why Wisconsin is awesome:


Cheeseheads for Change. I'm pretty sure that says it all.

Hillary Clinton, Outsider?

AT THE RISK of inflaming the very same argument that I tried to kill in yesterday's thread (using the best weapon I know how -- children's television), I have to point out that Hillary Clinton has shown a new and surprising strength in online fundraising, if not to the extent that Obama has. Matt Stoller gives an intriguing take on why (emphasis mine):

What happened now, though, is that the Clinton campaign just tapped out of its McAuliffe big dollar donors, and Clinton was forced to rely on her real base - the women who love her. (I question the "women" bit, but it's not key to the argument --Markus) And unwittingly, with her showing in the Super Tuesday states and her $5 million donation to her own campaign, she asked them for support in a way she never had. And they responded.

It's remarkable, because it is converting voters and supporters into activists and donors, only it's probably not the creative class anymore. Clinton, like Dean, became an underdog, a real underdog, with more public support than Village support, and her public directly responded over the internet to close this gap.

In other words, the Obama campaign has had a strategy of cultivating online donors and activists, they know how to do it, and they are very good at it. The Clinton campaign has not done any of this particularly well because it hasn't been their strategy. And somehow, they are at rough parity over the last 48 hours.

Well, shit. This race has just completely scrambled the insider-outsider dynamic, hasn't it? We all thought that Hillary Clinton was the consummate moneyed insider, and Barack Obama the upstart people-powered outsider. Whether this was ever true is arguable -- but it's certainly not anymore.

Obama's establishment support at this point is on par with Hillary's; all kinds of party apparatchiks have lined up behind him, bringing donors along for the ride. You cannot credibly call him an outsider anymore, just like you cannot credibly call him the underdog. Meanwhile Hillary -- whose campaign tried very hard, stupidly, to paint her as the inevitable Übercandidate -- is now forced by pure financial necessity into more of an outsider role.

It's not an unnatural fit for her, believe it or not; the Clintons' arrival in Washington predates memory for most of us, but the fact is they were (and are) viewed with a definite elitist skepticism by many of the Village doyennes. They and their people were seen as a bunch of Arkansas good ol' boys, hicks who talked funny and hung out in some very unfashionable parts of Washington; it was an affront to many of the older D.C. socialites (Democratic and Republican). Consequently the Clinton administration had a lot of trouble gaining traction (both in the media and legislatively). Think of the way David Broder, king of Old Washington, famously said it in 1998:

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

Bill and Hillary Clinton were always awkward heads of the establishment, and I think they'd both be much more comfortable running from outside it -- much like, we are beginning to see, their supporters. The question ss whether her campaign is capable, institutionally, of making such a switch. (Certainly Mark Penn is not the man to do it, that worthless union-busting choadbag -- if this once-inevitable candidate actually winds up losing, it will be almost completely his fault -- but other folks in the Clinton organization show more promise.) It's quite possible that they're not, or that the circumstances will dictate a different course, or that the idea will just be too utterly ridiculous to stick.

But if Hillary really can recast herself as the outsider candidate, expect to see a subsequent popular (and populist) Clinton surge -- one that will give both the old-line media who've hated her from the beginning, AND the elite bloggers who are convinced of her pervasive establishmentarianism, a new and altogether confusing kind of heartburn...

A thought about the "divided" Democratic Party

I realize that for many of us hyperpolitical types, the Obama-Clinton contest looks like a HELLACIOUS APOCALYPTIC DEATHMATCH that will tear the party asunder, make small children cry, etc. But is it not equally possible that this close margin -- 48.7% to 48.4% if you aggregate yesterday's votes -- is a result of Clinton and Obama being functionally identical? You would get just that same result by flipping a coin 15 million times...

...as opposed to Republicans, who are actually splintering along real ideological lines. McCain seems poised to win despite minimal support from conservatives, and the absolute visceral hatred of the right wing; meanwhile, evangelicals are stubbornly clinging to Mike Huckabee no matter what their leadership tries to tell them, and you have to assume that lots of those people -- critical to GOP strategy since the Reagan years -- are willing to go down with the ship. In any given scenario, between now and the Minneapolis convention some critical portion of that party will be marginalized.

So when you hear analysts saying that the GOP is ready to rally around John McCain, while Democrats face a bitter and damaging struggle between two frontrunners, I think they've got it exactly backwards. Democrats are fighting over a miniscule and arbitrary difference in image, one that can be easily healed with a few kind words in Denver (only the most passionate Clintonites or Obamaniacs would really think of leaving the party); Republicans face existential crisis. Despite the illusions produced on Super Tuesday, and the scorched-earth campaigning that's likely to come, our position overall is still much stronger than theirs; I wouldn't worry too much about a protracted nomination battle damaging our general-election prospects. Just sit back and enjoy the ride...

32 million???

The '08 presidential campaign has now been going on for exceptionally long time, but apparently the money hasn't dried up yet. While many campaigns have been strapped for cash (as Rudy was before he bowed out, along with other remaining Republicans not named Romney or Paul), Barack Obama's totals are surprisingly stronger than ever. While his campaign has been gaining energy while he narrows the gap in the national polls and picks up various endorsements, few could have expected that he would pull in a whopping 32 million in one month, as the New York Times political blog reports.

Even Hillary supporters must admit that Obama's campaign machine is incredibly fine tuned. By attracting 170,000 new donors (most of whom are donating in small chunks, and thus are able to give more), Obama has built an incredibly strong base with which to fund a possible general election campaign.

Either way, no matter who the democratic candidate is, it is increasingly clear that the Republican candidate will face an uphill fund-raising battle when the general election approaches. The gigantic figure raised by Obama is enough to tell Republicans that they should be very wary come November.

And on a final note, let me just say this:

damn, that's a lot of money.

Massachusetts Matters!

Rasmussen has it that Obama is only six points away from Hillary here in the Commonwealth, 43% to 37%.  For the first time in my political life, the Massachusetts primary is actually going to matter!  Edwards pulled in 11% of the poll, and of Edwards supporters, 78% of them like Obama, as opposed to 59% of them liking Clinton.  (h/t to BMG and TPM) 

BMG credits the senior senator from MA with the bump.  For those who enjoy fine Boston accents, the Kennedy family, or just awesome speeches, you should check out his endorsement speech.   

And for a happy note to end on, for any Hillary supporters who feel unkindly towards the messenger, BMG has a funny idea for an ad that should be run by the DNC:

At $2.4 million, ads aren't cheap come Super Bowl time.  Nor is a Super Bowl quite the best use of candidate money.  But there's an ad I wouldn't mind seeing this Sunday.  I imagine it would require DNC funding, but is there any finance 2-step that could get a little campaign change into the coffers to make it happen? [All speakers face the camera before outdoor backgrounds in various locations and climates] Obama: I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message because in America we need to address our challenges hopeful for success, not worried about failure... [quick fade] Clinton: I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message because in America we need a health care system that provides a long healthy life for all our citizens...

[quick fade] Edwards: I'm John Edwards, and I approve this message because in America hard work should bring success for all, not just a few... [quick fade] Richardson: I'm Bill Richardson, and I approve this message because America should be a leader in the world, not the world's bully... [quick fade] Biden: I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message because America can only have a future as strong as its education system... [quick fade] Dodd: I'm Chris Dodd, and I approve this message because America is built on civil liberties, and we can only defend America if we defend our freedoms... [quick fade] Kucinich: I'm Dennis Kucinich, and I approve this message because America deserves a tax system that is not written by the rich, for the rich. [quick fade] Gravel: I'm Mike Gravel, and I approve this message because in America, the government must listen to the voices of its citizens. Howard Dean:  As Democrats, we have our differences.  But we all know that what unites our party and our country is greater than what divides us. So no matter what happens over the next few months, we ask in November that you vote Democratic.  Now enjoy the game!